Mad, Bad, and Evil

Abstract

Why has the term evil become so common in the theory and practice of disciplines in which the term—as a morally loaded religious notion—has no natural grounding? There are overlapping but also different reasons why the notion of evil—and not only the word evil, as if it could be divorced from its connotations—is used in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies, and jurisprudence. In each case it points to a reflexive uneasiness and insecurity about the foundations of these disciplines, and nowhere more so than in psychiatry. More is at stake in using the term evil than may seem evident at first. The issue has little to do with merely proscribing usage. I argue for three interrelated claims: (a) It is not possible to naturalize the term evil, (b) the attempt to naturalize the term is undesirable, and (c) psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and lawyers should avoid using the term evil. These disciplines have commitments that are incompatible with the conceptual frameworks in which evil has interpretive or descriptive relevance. The view that these disciplines should be committed to eschewing the notion of evil in their professional discourses has been given short shrift in recent literature. Unsure of the nature of mental illness, and confused about what is cause and what is effect, it has for the most part reduced itself in practice to dispensers of an ever-increasing array of psychotropic drugs that alter behavior and feelings.

My thanks to Psychoanalytic Studies (Carfax publishing) for permission to use material in Levine (10).