THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVIL Devils, Demons, and the Daimonic by Stephen A. Diamond, Ph. D.

Reprinted with the permission of Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. This article originally appeared his book, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic. The book may be purchased at .

Diamond, S. A. (1996). Anger, madness, and the Daimonic. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EVIL
Devils, Demons, and the Daimonic

Stephen A. Diamond, Ph. D.

 

 

Hostility, hatred, and violence are the greatest evils we have to contend with today. Evil is now--ever has been, and ever will be--an existential reality, an inescapable fact with which we mortals must reckon. In virtually every culture there has existed some word for evil, a universal, linguistic acknowledgment of the archetypal presence of "something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity...; the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrongdoing."[1] Yet another of Webster's traditional definitions links the English word evil with all that is "angry... wrathful, [and] malignant."[2] The term evil has always been closely associated with anger, rage, and of course, violence. But today we seem uncomfortable with this antiquated concept. Our discomfort resides largely in the religious and theological implications of evil, based on values, ethics, and morals that many today find judgmental, dogmatic, and passé. In a secular society like ours, we Americans have tended to avoid biblical characterizations such as "sin," "wickedness," "iniquity," and evil."[3] Nevertheless, as Jungian analyst Liliane Frey-Rohn rightly remarks: "Evil is a phenomenon that exists and has always existed only in the human world. Animals know nothing of it.

Evil is an actuality, whether or not we choose to deny it. "In using the word evil, we mean not that an act or pattern of life is necessarily a sin or a crime according to some law, but rather that it leads to damage or pain suffered by people, to social destructiveness of a degree so serious as to call for use of an ancient, heavily freighted term."[5] When employed in this sense, evil is synonymous with "senseless violence." But, on a still subtler level, evil can be considered that tendency which -- whether in oneself or others -- would inhibit personal growth and expansion, destroy or limit innate potentialities, curtail freedom, fragment or disintegrate the personality, and diminish the quality of interpersonal relationships.

The fact that evil, as defined above, exists more or less throughout our world seems incontrovertible. We see evil every day in its infernally multifarious forms. First, there are the cosmic, supernatural, transpersonal, or natural evils like floods, famine, fire, drought, disease, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and harmful, unforeseeable accidents that wreak untimely death havoc, and unmentionable suffering on humanity. This is the metaphysical or "existential evil" with which the biblical Book of Job concerns itself, and which religions worldwide try mightily to explain. Existential evil is an ineluctable part of our human destiny, and one with which we must reckon as best we can, without closing ourselves off to its tragic, intrinsic reality. But there is, of course, another kind of evil at large: human evil, "man's inhumanity to man" in the most panoramic sense. By "human evil," I mean those attitudes and behaviors that promote excessive interpersonal aggression, cruelty, hostility, disregard for the integrity of others, self-destructiveness, psychopathology and human misery in general. Human evil can be perpetrated by a single individual (personal evil) or by a group, a country, or an entire culture (collective evil). The Nazi atrocities directly or indirectly engaged in by the German people dramatically exemplify the latter.

The most pernicious form of evil today (as further discussed in chapter six), may be madness, mental illness, or psychopathology: It is evil in this guise, and in its most radical manifestation--destructive violence--that has now become the target of such intense psychological scrutiny and treatment. With escalating urgency, contemporary culture calls upon the psychologist and psychiatrist to do battle with this evil: to explain, control, or "cure" bedeviled individuals who tend to be homicidal, suicidal, sexually perverted, assaultive, abusive, addicted, anorexic, alcoholic, or otherwise violently destructive to themselves and/ or others. This--I am speaking here of the suffering, not the sufferers--is the true reality of evil today! And it raises the following question: How can the skilled psychologist--let alone the average citizen -- even begin to effectively cope with evil without more fully comprehending its fundamental nature?

 Sigmund Freud, for instance, wrestled with this thorny issue, as have many other notable psychologists and psychiatrists, including Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Bruno Bettelheim, Viktor Frankl, Karl Menninger, Robert Lifton, Rollo May, and most recently, M. Scott Peck .[6]

 Freud's somewhat pessimistic solution took the eventual form of an evil "death instinct" (Thanatos) doing eternal battle with a good "life instinct" (Eros), with evil ever dominating this tragic duel. C. G. Jung, drawing upon Nietzsche's existential philosophy, spoke of the "shadow" to portray the problem of personal and collective evil. His position, summarized here by Frey-Rohn, was that social morality can never be considered the causal source of evil: it only "becomes negative [i.e., evil] whenever the individual takes its commandments and prohibitions as absolutes, and ignores his other impulsions. It is not the cultural canon itself, therefore, but the moral attitude of the individual which we must hold responsible for what is pathological, negative, and evil."[7] Frey-Rohn refers to the subjective relativity of "good" and "evil," and, more importantly, the individual's personal responsibility for deciding what is good or evil for themselves rather than relying solely on external laws, rules, and regulations. [8]

It is admittedly tempting to dismiss the reality of evil entirely due to its inherent subjectivity and relativity. As that wise bard William Shakespeare bade Hamlet speak: "For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."[9] This recognition of the relativity of good and evil, and its basis in egoistic evaluations of right and wrong, positive and negative, has a time-honored tradition in Asian religion and Oriental philosophy. But as Jung said, the fact that the conceptions of "good" and "evil" are limited inventions of the human mind (ego consciousness), convenient cognitive categories into which we try to neatly sort the stuff of life, does not detract from the vital importance of properly discerning between them. For without such psychological distinctions, what ethics will serve to guide our daily behavior? On what moral ground can we stand in making the many minor and major day-to-day decisions modem life demands? To cite Justin Martyr on this matter: "'The worst evil of all is to say that neither good nor evil is anything in itself, but that they are only matters of human opinion."[10]

Evil has an archetypal--or universal--quality. "There is no religion in the world," writes philosopher Paul Carus, "but has its demons or evil monsters that represent pain, misery, and destruction." To those who would deny the reality of evil, its existential facticity, arguing that its relativity ("One man's meat is another man's poison") and subjectivity (what I view as evil, another sees as good) render it illusory, Carus responds: "Evil and good may be relative, but relativity does not imply non-existence. Relations are facts too."[11] To merrily dismiss evil as merely a mental illusion (or "Maya" as Buddhists term it) is to cowardly duck the difficult task and fateful human accountability for consciously coming to know good and evil.[12] Evil is a very real phenomenon. But it is not a "thing," with physical properties of its own apart from those human actions which comprise it; nor is it an "entity" with a will of its own, as the traditional doctrine of the devil advocates. Evil is a process in which we humans more or less inevitably participate.

 Indeed, it is a psychological--or spiritual, if you prefer--process of negation. By "negation" I do not, however, mean non-existence. Negation is as real a force in the world as affirmation; negative and positive are simply two opposite poles of one, single reality. (Consider, for example, a magnet with its two opposing yet integrally related poles.) As Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest John Sanford puts it, the Christian doctrine of privatio boni (the "nothingness" of evil) put forth by Augustine (354-430 A.D.), "does not deny the reality of evil but states what evil is. It says that while evil exists it can only exist by living off the good and cannot exist on its own."[13] Of course, the same may be said of the "good," which cannot exist on its own either, without some reference and comparison to that' which is "evil."

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, whose perspectives will be explored further in chapter seven, proclaims "that [human] evil can be defined as a specific form of mental illness and should be subject to at least the same intensity of scientific investigation that we would devote to some other major psychiatric disease."[14] He defines "evil" as a negative force "residing either inside or outside of human beings that seeks to kill life or liveliness" (pp. 42-43). For Peck, the primary root of most human evil is "malignant narcissism" (p. 78), a term taken from Erich Fromm.[15] Peck identifies evil people not "by the illegality of their deeds or the magnitude of their sins" (p. 71), nor by their evil acts, for then "we should all be evil, because we all do evil things" (p. 70). It is rather "the consistency of their sins" (p. 71), says Peck that makes people 'evil' or 'not evil.' In other words, it is the chronic self-deception, ego-inflation, and "uncommitted will" (p. 78), the constant lying to themselves and others, and their rabid refusal to confront their own flaws that characterize Scott Peck's book "People of the Lie."

Peck's equation of human evil with one specific sort of psychopathology--pathological narcissism--is accurate up to a point. Pathological or malignant narcissism is indeed a variant of human evil, as we shall later see. But human evil can never be simply distilled to one particular psychiatric diagnosis, as Peck proposes. Were such a thing possible--which it is not--we might, like Peck, be enticed to "diagnose" the "evil ones" around us, and--like the witches or Jews--try to "treat," isolate, sterilize, or exterminate them. The problem with Peck's perception of evil, in my view, is his proclivity to project evil exclusively onto some small segment of the population, instead of acknowledging its imminent presence in each of us. Peck pathologizes evil, seeking to turn the term "evil" into a formal psycho diagnostic category specifically describing particular character traits.[16] Yet, in a very real sense, I submit that all psychopathology is a sort of evil, insofar as it entails serious human suffering.

While it may be very tempting to succumb to Peck's argument that evil insidiously manifests itself most commonly in deceptively well-functioning but subtly pathological personalities--or in blatant caricatures of evil like Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or Richard Allen Davis--we would do well to remember that evil remains an ever-present, archetypal potentiality in each of us. To naively or narcissistically think otherwise is tantamount to denying the personal capacity for evil--the permanent presence of the "shadow" or the "Daimonic"--forever dwelling in the fathomless depths of each and every fallible human being. Such denial is evil of the most insipid, prosaic, and dangerous kind.

Prefiguring Peck, Rollo May long held that here in America--with its youthful optimism and naivet--we comprehend little of evil's true nature, and are thus naively ill-prepared to contend with it. As a psychotherapist, May mostly concerned himself with the problem of personal or individual evil. While fully recognizing the grave risks (such as war) and intrapsychic influences of group or collective evil on the individual, May maintained that even in the often crushing influences of collective pressures, we must be mindful of the crucial role played by the individual in evil: "Evil is certainly not exclusively within the self--it is also the result of our social interrelationships--but the participation of the self in evil cannot be overlooked."[17]

Demons

From time immemorial, spirits, devils, or demons have been believed to be the source, and sometimes the personification, of evil (see fig. 4). Sigmund Freud suggested that our forebears--who apparently had no short supply of their own anger, rage, and resentments--projected their hostility onto imaginary demons (fig. 5). Such superstitions as the belief in the existence of demons, said Freud, derive "from suppressed hostile and cruel impulses.  What is more, Freud considered it "quite possible that the whole conception of demons was derived from the extremely important relation to the dead," adding that "nothing testifies so much to the influence of mourning on the origin of belief in demons as the fact that demons were always taken to be the spirits of persons not long dead."[19] Demons served as ready scapegoats and repositories for all sorts of unacceptable, threatening human impulsions, such as anger, rage, guilt, and sexuality.

 The demons' behavior is arbitrary, purposeless, even clumsy and ridiculous, but despite this it is no less terrifying."[20] (See fig. 6.) For this reason, demons are deemed evil, designated by us to carry all of those dreaded aspects of human nature we find too abominable, despicable, and monstrous to bear. But the popular, one-sidedly negative view of demons is simplistic and psychologically unsophisticated. For Freud informs us that those identical demons felt to be angry spirits of recently deceased relatives, though feared at first by our forebears, played an important part in the mourning process: once confronted and psychologically assimilated by the bereaved mourners, these same evil demons were "revered as ancestors and appealed to for help in times of distress."[21] We know from psychotherapy that survivors of the death of loved ones can suffer a great deal of guilt, and anger at having been abandoned. Perhaps our primitive predecessors came to terms with their own projected anger by accepting and befriending the furious "demons" of their dead: by so doing, they, in effect, psychologically transformed their own wrathful feelings from menacing foes to friendly emotional forces and spiritual allies.

It is entirely possible, from what little we understand of their practice of trephining, that inhabitants of the Stone Age, some five hundred thousand years ago, were attempting to release evil spirits from the physically or mentally ill by surgically excising sizable sections of their skulls.

Demonology --the belief in the existence of spirits, demons, or devils--is probably the primeval prototype of the modern science of psychopathology: both paradigms seek to make sense of mental illness and aberrant human behavior.

Our modem English terms "demon" and "demonic" are derived from the Latin spelling popularized during the Middle Ages: daemon and daemonic. Carl Jung, referring to the medieval concept of the daemonic, professed that "from the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process. Complexes are comparable to demons which fitfully harass our thought and actions; hence in antiquity and the Middle Ages acute neurotic disturbances were conceived as [daemonic] possession."[24] Indeed, prior to the seventeenth-century philosophical revelations of René Descartes--which later spawned the scientific objectivism that so characterizes the contemporary study of psychopathology--it was commonly believed that an emotional disorder, madness, lunacy, or insanity was literally the work of evil demons, who in their winged travels would inhabit the unwitting body (or brain) of the unfortunate sufferer. This archetypal imagery of invasive flying entities with supernatural powers is still evident today in such colloquialisms for insanity as having "bats in the belfry," and in the delusional patient's obstinate belief about being manipulated by "aliens" in flying saucers. [25]

The Daimonic

Rollo May made use of the classical Greek idea of the daemon to provide the basis for his mythological model of the Daimonic. "The Daimonic," wrote May,

Is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person? Sex and Eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The Daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both. When this power goes awry, and one element usurps control over the total personality, we have "daemon possession," the traditional name through history for psychosis. The Daimonic is obviously not an entity but refers to a fundamental archetypal function of human experience, an existential reality. . . . [28]

. Some classical scholars say that the term "daemon" was used by writers such as Homer, Hesiod, and Plato as a synonym for the word theos, or god; still others, like van der Leeuw, point to a definite distinction between these terms: The term "daemon" referred to something indeterminate, invisible, incorporeal, amorphous and unknown, whereas "theos" was the personification of a god, such as Zeus or Apollo. The daemon was that divine, mediating spiritual power that impelled one's actions and determined one's destiny. It was, in the judgment of most scholars, inborn and immortal, embodying all innate talents, tendencies (both positive and negative), and natural abilities. Indeed, one's daemon manifested as a sort of fateful "soul" which spurred one on toward good or evil.

Minoan (3,000-1,100 B.C.) and Mycenaean (1,500-1,100 B.C.) daemons were seen as attendants or servants to deities, rather than as deities themselves, and were imagined and represented as half human/half animal figures, such as the fearsome Minotaur (figs. 6 and 7). It was believed during Homer's day (around 800 B.C.) that all human ailments were brought about by daemons. But daemons could also cure, heal, and bestow the blessings of good health, happiness, and harmony. Though there is some debate as to its pre-Homeric presence, E.R. Dodd’s indicates that the idea of the daemon appears in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. "The most characteristic feature of the Odyssey is the way in which its personages ascribe all sorts of mental (as well as physical) events to the intervention of a nameless and indeterminate daemon or 'god' or 'gods.'

  the Judeo-Christian conception of Satan: to oppose, obstruct, accuse, or lead astray the sinner--or the potential sinner.

The Devil

Jeffrey Burton Russell, who has written extensively on the history of Satan, informs us that "the word 'Devil' comes indirectly from the Hebrew Satan, 'one who obstructs,' and [that] the Devil and Satan are one in origin and concept." He further explains, however, that "the origins of the Devil and of the demons are quite distinct.

The demons derived from the minor evil spirits of the Near East, whereas the Devil derives from the Hebrew mal'ak the shadow of the Lord .  The New Testament maintained the distinction by differentiating between the terms diabolos and daimonion, but it was a distinction that was often blurred, and many English translations muddle it further by translating daimonion as 'devil.' . . . By the first century of the Christian era ... evil spirits usually went by the name of daimonia, 'demons.' This Hellenistic classification would lump Satan with the other evil spirits in the category of daimonia." [44]

But according to a different authority, "the word devil is a diminutive from the root div and from it we get the word divine; devil merely means 'little god.' "[45] This multiplicity of "little gods" can be found in the New Testament, demonstrated in this "case history" of Jesus curing a demoniac:

When he [Jesus] had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who lived among the tombs; and no one could bind him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been bound with fetters and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the fetters he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones.... [Jesus] said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit." And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many." (Mark 5:2-9)[46]

The epoch-making Cartesian approach of the late Renaissance separated mind and body, subject and object, and deemed "real" only that aspect of human experience which is objectively measurable, or quantifiable. This advance led, notoriously, to the abject neglect of "irrational," subjective phenomena. Descartes' seventeenth-century breakthrough was a dubious development in human thought: It enabled us to rid the world of superstition, witchcraft, magic, and the gamut of mythical creatures--both evil and good--in one clean, scientific sweep.

Mephistopheles in America

Professor David Manning White comments that "concomitant with the presence of evil as the sum force of mankind's negativity, the concept of the devil has from earliest times played an integral part in religious thought. Although men and women probably had their personal demons from the very beginning of their perplexity about the nature of their existence, it wasn't until Zoroaster named the evil force Ahriman that the devil became a central part of a religion." [50] In several religious systems since then, including the Judeo-Christian tradition, the devil has come to virtually personify evil.

Though there is scant mention of Satan as some supernatural presence in the Old Testament, the New Testament is replete with references to Satan or the devil. "The English 'Devil,' like the German Teufel and the Spanish diablo, derives from the Greek diabolos," writes Russell. "Diabolos means 'slanderer' or a 'perjuror' or an 'adversary' in court.... Although the concept of the Devil--a single personification of evil--does not exist in most religions and philosophies, the problem of evil exists in every world view except that of radical relativism."[51]

Eventually, the devil became a preeminent image of evil.  But while it is almost certainly an archetypal or universal symbol appearing in the myths and legends of many different generations and cultures, Russell reminds us that "the concept of the Devil is found in only a few religious traditions. There was no idea of a single personification of evil in ancient Greco-Roman religions, for example, and there was and is none in Hinduism or Buddhism. Most religions--from Buddhism to Marxism--have their demons, but only four major religions have had a real Devil. These are Mazdaism (Zoroastrianism), ancient Hebrew religion (but not modem Judaism), Christianity, and Islam" (p. 4).

The Demonic vs. the Daimonic

Like many of his contemporaries, Rollo May--who served briefly as a Congregational minister before becoming a psychologist--came to consider the Judeo-Christian notion of the "devil" an anachronistic concept lending itself far too readily to evading our own participation in and personal responsibility for evil. As he saw the situation, "the common personalized term [for evil] which has been used historically, namely the devil, is unsatisfactory because it projects the power outside the self... Furthermore, it always seemed to me a deteriorated and escapist form of what needs to be understood about evil." [59] The devil no doubt does make a convenient scapegoat upon which to heap our disowned evil tendencies (fig. 11). What we lack--and what the archetypal model of the daimonic provides--is a new or renewed vision of that valid realm of reality betokened by the "devil," one which can also include the constructive side of this elemental power. For, when properly interpreted, the symbol of the devil holds truly a coincidentia oppositorum, a coincidence of opposites. This highly significant fact is contained in the etymology of our English term "devil," which, as May explains, "comes from the Greek word diabolos; "diabolic" is the term in contemporary English. Diabolos, interestingly enough, literally means "to tear apart" (dia-bollein). Now it is fascinating to note that this diabolic is the antonym of "symbolic." . . . There lie in these words tremendous implications with respect to ontology of good and evil. The symbolic is that which draws together, ties, integrates the individual in himself and with his group; the diabolic, in contrast, is that which disintegrates and tears apart. Both of these are present in the daimonic." [My emphasis][60]

Like the Greek hero Perseus--whom the goddess Athena helped to behead the Gorgon (see fig. 3), Medusa, by handing him a shiny shield to safely mirror her horrific image--we will always require some means of consciously reflecting on the reality of evil and making sense of it; this is the main function of enduring myths and symbols like Abraxas, or the devil, or the Daimonic. Without such pragmatic intellectual props-we could not live very long in a world so thoroughly riddled with evil. For we cannot too long "gaze into the face of absolute evil"[65] unaided by some mythological, theological, or philosophical filter, or reflective, cognitive mechanism. Myths and symbols serve such protective purposes for the vulnerable human psyche; they buffer and deflect the devastating impact of radical evil, and imbue it with meaning.

But this important theme of "mirroring" and "reflection" in the myth of Perseus and Medusa contains an additional clue for more clearly apprehending evil. Much of the evil we see "out there" in the world, and in others, is in some measure a reflection of ourselves: our own human potential for, and unavoidable participation in evil. The myth counsels that the only meaningful--and ultimately, viable--way of comprehending and combating evil is to understand it as a mirroring of the Daimonic elements eternally present in nature and in all humanity. We are the primary progenitors of evil: we not only define it, but, as we shall see, we wittingly or unwittingly create and perpetuate it. Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility--lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious victim hood. Recall that as a result of Perseus' courageous encounter with Medusa, Pegasus, that magnificent, winged, white steed, arose from her vital lifeblood; and the now reenergized Perseus rode on triumphantly to conquer more monstrous demons, and marry the beautiful maiden, Andromeda. Good can come from defiantly facing evil. But evil, alas, will always find another face.