For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil' -NYT

[Rose Siding]

Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into homemade chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason.

Among themselves, a few forensic scientists have taken to thinking of these people as not merely disturbed but evil. Evil in that their deliberate, habitual savagery defies any psychological explanation or attempt at treatment.

Most psychiatrists assiduously avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals.
...
Dr. Simon considers the notion of evil to be of no use to forensic psychiatry, in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values. The terrorists on Sept. 11 thought that they were serving God, he argues; those who kill people at abortion clinics also claim to be doing so......

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/08/health/psychology/08evil.html?hp&ex=1107838800&en=17b0e86ada8d8c96&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[LiberalVoice]

1. Those few forensic scientists that think that way...

have done nothing more then buy into the "Good vs. Evil" bullshit that Bush and his cronies spew.

Mental disease is what makes people do such terrible things to others. Not god or satan or santa claus.

[Fridays Child]

2. Well, maybe Santa Claus.

Just kidding, of course. I agree with you. But don't you think that mental disease of that magnitude actually destroys the human core? Whether you call that the soul or the ego, such people must be just as far beyond help as brain dead ICU patients.

[LiberalVoice]

5. Maybe...

but you must admit throwing around the term evil only makes understanding these peoples problems tougher.

[Fridays Child]

13. Yes, not to mention the fact that it can lead victims of...

...such mentally ill predators to the conclusion that they're, somehow, deserving of their suffering.

[LiberalVoice]

20. Precisely...

Couldn''t have said it better.

[Ian David]

24. The Science of Good and Evil

To enthusiasts of debunking quackery, Michael Shermer is a premier skeptic--
a dauntlessly questioning writer and lecturer who is wonderfully clear in
thought and language. His work is a paragon of popularized science and
philosophy. That reputation is confirmed by his latest book, The Science of
Good & Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
(Times Books, 350 pages, $26).

Shermer, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and publisher of Skeptic
magazine, has a Ph.D. in history. He has written five previous books, and
edited others. This volume is the third in a series that began in 1997 with Why
People Believe Weird Things, which was followed in 1999 by How We Believe. Both
were powerful, learned and scientifically disciplined explorations of the
nature of belief and truth. Why People is the most persuasive debunking I have
ever read of popular mass mysticisms, from faith healing and pyramid power to
astrology. In this latest volume, he focuses intently on the capacity of humans
to want to do good, and indeed to do it--without ignoring or glossing over
their capacities for evil. This raises the most personal and fundamental
questions that can be considered by the human mind.

"Evolution," he writes, at the core of his thesis, "generated the moral
sentiments out of a need for a system to maximize the benefits of living in small
bands and tribes. Evolution created and culture honed moral principles out of
an additional need to curb the passions of the body and mind. And culture,
primarily through organized religion, codified those principles into moral rules
and precepts."

Note: religion "codified," made formal -- but did not originate. Shermer's
contention is that human goodness evolved and prevails independent of the
existence of--or belief in--a God or gods.

At the core of this primal dispute is the meaning and nature of religion.
Shermer defines it as "a social institution, one that evolved as an integral
mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and
cooperation, to discourage selfishness and competitiveness, and to reveal the
level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of a
community."

http://www.skeptic.com/

[Erika]

3. Cutting funds for the needy is EVIL

What Bush has recommended in his budget is EVIL. It is EVIL to cut the funding for needy programs. It is EVIL to cut funding for the environment. It is EVIL to cut funding for the vets.

It is EVIL to disregard Christ's Golden Rule.

Back on topic, it is cheap to call people with disorders EVIL. You don't have to fund research and show compassion to the situation or suffer guilt from locking someone up with a mental disease if you just call them EVIL.

[Mandate My Ass]

6. Beautifully put

Yes it's time to demonize the mentally ill again.

Any true scientist would spurn that ridiculous assertion and uselessly emotional label.

[Erika]

11. Thanks, I've known a few mentally ill people

and their families. My first exposure was with a 14 year old girl who went back and forth from being Jesus to the Virgin Mary. I have a co-worker who has scizophrenia in her family. Her uncle committed suicide and her own son has been diagnosed. His first episode was as a young teen when he broke their TV because the people on TV were threatening him. Those two examples were the most extreme I've known. These people can do nothing with their lives because they have no costant view of reality. The hardship and the pain endured by family members is almost unbearable. The Last thing they need to hear is that their loved ones who are mentally ill are EVIL. They are sick not EVIL.

[clspector]

16. No, you missed the point

This article is referring to a specific type of psychopath -- not schizophrenics who suffer from a completely different disorder.

If you bothered to read the entire article, the people they're referring to are vicious predators who brutalize their victims before murdering them.

Frankly, most schizophrenics when unmedicated are too disorganized in their thinking to perpetrate the kind of acts that serial killers routinely indulge in, though there have been cases of cases of people committing violent crimes while in a psychotic break. (One of the more famous cases of involved Charles Dadd a 19th century artist who murdered his father during a full-blown schizophrenic episode.)

This article isn't about schizophrenia where the person has lost touch with reality because their brain chemistry isn't working and they hear voices and believe they're Joan of Arc or Zippy the Pinhead. This article is about a handful of people who perceive their fellow human being as little more than objects to be mutilated for their own pleasure and feelings of power. That's not just sick. That is an utter lack of humanity.

[AlienGirl]

18. It's probably more than a handful of people

Although violent sociopaths draw the media's attention, many researchers think there are a lot of *non-violent* ones out there--people for whom others exist merely as a means to an end, and who have not (yet) started killing because they don't want to be caught by the cops.

:scared:

Tucker

[CAcyclist]

10. Absolutely!

By this article's intent, the author would deem my kitten evil because he will bite very hard - to the bone - if you do something to him he doesn't like - like trying to bathe him or draw blood for a lab test.

He's not evil, he's brain damaged and has no impulse control. He is blind and deaf and has no way of knowing that what he is biting when he is mad is me.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. I have problems with this

MDs readily sterilized "mental defectives" in Virginia in the first half of the twenthieth century. It was for their own good, as well as the good of society. Do you really want MDs determining where on a scale of evil individuals fall? Who decides what constitutes evil?

I found this quote most interesting:

>>
Broken homes and childhood trauma are common among brutal killers; so is malignant narcissism, a personality type characterized not only by grandiosity but by fantasies of unlimited power and success, a deep sense of entitlement, and a need for excessive admiration.
<<

Sound like anyone you know?

[alfredo]

7. Bill O'Reilly?

[Selteri]

8. Oh, so many choices

Who to pick, Bush, Limbaugh, Rice, O'Reily, Rove, Coulter, Blitzer, Putin... it's such a hard decision!

[puddycat]

9. there is NO scientific diagnosis in the whole of psychiatry

I challenge anyone to prove that any diagnostic label in the DSM-IV
actually exists. Its as mythical as religion--and some would say as dangerous.

Like religion, although psychiatry can do good, its often because of
the humanity of the individual practitioners, despite the basic fraudulent foundation.

[Erika]

15. My psychiatrist friend explained it this way...

He said the brain is a part of the body, an organ, and as such is subject to malfunction as any other body part/organ. We just don't yet know what causes the malfunction but that is coming. With the technical equipment we now have we will learn much more.

I was impressed with his musing about how we are going to feel about imprisoning and killing all the people we have in the name of justice, and it turns out that the "criminal" had no freedom of choice in their "criminal" acts and a simple pill a day or a minor surgery would have been enough to prevent that action.

[puddycat]

26. brain malfunctioning? prove it! There is NO proof!

Ok, let me give an example: someone is depressed because their whole family was murdered and they survived, but were raped. Their whole life is ruined. They have flashbacks, depression, headaches, etc. Society doesn't care and after a while even their friends expect them to "bounce back". They can't. My friend, there is NOTHING at all wrong with their brain. They are normal. It would be abnormal to not be depressed in such a situation. But in this capitalistic cut-throat society of ours the people who survive are the ones most apt to have little emotion and feelings about such things. They are the successes. They write the DSMs which describe other, feeling, beings. And we know the victors always write history. Psychology is a bogus fraudulent field that was written by a bunch of sociopaths who had no feelings for people who really were sensitive caring individuals. Its a field that makes everything emotional, caring, etc. into abnormality while it rewards the A-driven success type personality.

This is a sick, up-side down culture, and psychology perfectly feeds it and is in return fed by it.

[reprobate]

12. Not EVIL. Sociopathic. No empathy. Like George the Mad.

[meow2u3]

14. "Psychopath" is the psych term for evil

The article is describing the most intractable of predators: the sociopaths.

Who here thinks (knows) this article describes the 7-headed beast (Bushco) to a T?

[ElectroPrincess]

22. Sociopath or Psychopath ... I believe many of our highly intelligent and

overtly non-violent one's RULE OVER Wall Street, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Project for a New American Century (PNAC), The Carlisle Group, and most importantly - our Executive Branch of the USA Government.


Just take a look-see at the Diagnosis Criteria in our good ole' Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Vol. IV. (DSM-IV).

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/428lect16.htm

The madness of King George? Indeed!

[bvar22]

17. Yes...Evil!

And if they are really good at it, they get to be preznit, or Sec of Defense.

[daleo]

19. The trouble with using the term evil is it doesn't really explain anything

To say someone did action X because he or she was evil doesn't get you anywhere. It is just a way of reiterating and condemning their action without coming any closer to discovering a cause for the behavior. To say that Rumsfeld ordered torture, for example, because he is evil doesn't actually explain his motivations.

Even if you believe in the devil, saying someone succumbed to evil doesn't explain why he or she did, while others didn't (presumably Satan is always tempting all of us, according to this belief system).

Saying someone did an awful act because they were evil is a tautology at best. It is not even pseudo-science - it barely qualifies as pseudo-religion.

That being said, I realize it is a mental habit we all succumb to from time to time.

[leveymg]

21. Sounds like the guys who planned and executed *'s Iraq Strategy

"Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into homemade chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason. . ."

[Tsiyu]

23. They said this about lepers and cancer victims

at one time.

And the most chilling aspect of this psuedo-scientific "diagnosis" is that it may affect returning soldiers, who were told to do evil for George W. Bush the Chickenhawk, Coward, AWOL motherfucker.

Instead of receiving treatmnet to minimize the effects of this administration's rampant and chronic abuse of troops and humanity, the troubled soldiers will be erroneously classified as inherently evil by those who truly ARE evil.

[jdj]

25. I've always hated the word evil, almost as much as the word

moral. Both are manipulative.

[Gyre]

27. AFAIK, the NYT is evil!

Next time please include the whole article, cause I'm not going to register with them.

Gyre

[genieroze]

28. * is evil. eom