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(2003). American Imago, 60:481-499

Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Evil: Debating Othello in the Classroom

Barbara A. Schapiro

Since “evil” has become a term much in vogue in our current political climate, it seems ever more important to explore its psychic meanings and origins. What, first of all, do analysts and therapists mean by the word “evil”? The grandiosity of the term, as well as its traditionally religious connotations, perhaps make it unsuited to the therapeutic context. As Ruth Stein (2002) has commented, “‘Evil’ may sound too allegorical or too concrete, too essentialist or too objective for psychoanalytic ways of thinking that are oriented towards the study of individual subjectivity” (394). In an article entitled “Evil in the Mind of the Therapist” (2001), Robert Winer surveyed a number of practitioners and found a general consensus that “an evil person is someone who knowingly deeply hurts innocent people” (613). The emphasis here, he says, is on the “knowingly”—conscious deliberateness is key—as i

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