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There are two intuitive assumptions that we often make concerning the nature of evil: that it exists and that it is a characteristic of those other than ourselves. Another assumption that frequently accompanies these two is that evil is a category whose armour cannot be penetrated by intellectual inquiry (in fact to attempt to do so may expose the inquirer to the accusation of being an apologist for it). The word itself stands alone stripped of qualifying or explanatory accompaniments and simply to deploy the description forecloses further thought or comment. The 2017 headline in The Sun newspaper following the Manchester Arena bombing was, simply, “PURE EVIL” and showed a picture of the young man responsible for the bombing, and one of his child victims. Simply noting this headline defies the reader to seek any further explanation or understanding of the act or the motives of the perpetrator, further, it dangles a Damoclean sword of guilt over the head of anyone who might seek to do so. Sheldon Itzkowitz and Elizabeth F. Howell, in Psychoanalysts, Psychologists and Psychiatrists Discuss Psychopathy and Human Evil, are those that seek to understand the nature of evil and to contemplate the linked notion of psychopathy that some might consider the medicalisation of evil.
A number of themes emerge from this collection of somewhat distinct perspectives, one being the notion of the social construction of the evil actor with the implication that evil can be understood as arising out of damaged and damaging early attachment relationships. This is not a new idea and is powerfully illustrated in Mary Shelley's (1818) Frankenstein wherein the creature is cruelly rejected by his creator-mother, Victor Frankenstein, shortly after birth. It becomes clear that the creation of Victor's “child” is essentially an act of narcissistic grandiosity and Victor's eventual revulsion leads him to run away from his imploring “baby”: