Demonology versus Science?

I would like to begin my talk today by asking you all a question: were you drawn here by the title of this conference or did you come despite its title? I ask you this because I had difficulties with the title of today's gathering. Was I to just ignore it and speak about the traumatic origins of violence, or was I to address my discomfort and that of some of my colleagues who were surprised to see my name associated with the subject of ‘evil’? I have decided to try and make sense of being invited to a cathedral and a talk on ‘evil’ by thoughtful people who are as concerned as I am in addressing the issue of human violence.

You may well ask why am I making such a fuss about this business of ‘evil’? What does it evoke to you? For me, brought up as a Catholic, the concept of ‘evil’ is linked to the devil, to Satan, to the punishment of hell, to sin and demonology. It allows those who use such concepts to feel morally superior and good whilst those who are branded ‘evil’ are seen as bad and inhuman. There is no need to understand evil but there is a need to deal with it through punishment. Our society has a long history of labelling its deviants as ‘evil’ and then dealing with them through imprisonment, torture, murder and even genocide. The moral labelling of our violent members of society as ‘evil’ does not help us learn about the causes of violence and can in fact inhibit any serious attempts to understand or prevent it. If we dehumanize those who carry out terrible acts of cruelty, we can forget that they were probably once human beings like you and me and we lose any interest in trying to find out what made them into the ‘monsters’ they now appear.

However, I will acknowledge that what we seem to lack is a word that truly describes the horror, the terror and the pain of those who are on the receiving end of such people. A woman who was raped repeatedly by her father as a child and then subjected as an adult to the most horrific experiences at the hands of a man who t