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What does it mean these days to call someone evil? Ethnic genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda; terrorist attacks in Oklahoma City, Japan, and France; and the disturbing case of Susan Smith, who drowned her two small children while accusing a fictitious stranger of the crime, are but a few recent examples of the pressing need for all of us to ponder seriously this question.
Unfortunately, there has been a reluctance by psychoanalysts and other behavioral scientists to tackle the problem of evil—the most important social problem ever faced by humankind. Whereas all of us as private citizens can attest to the calamitous presence of malevolence in our daily lives, we, as behavioral scientists, have for the most part acted as if the problem can be safely ignored (left, perhaps, to the theologians and philosophers to ponder as a moral issue) or as if the character structure of perpetrators of heinous actions can be reduced to known and well-understood psychological concepts and psychiatric diagnoses.
Our denial and reductionism have not fulfilled our mandate to the public to provide both meaningful explanations and efficacious interventions for serious social problems. Likewise, unfortunately,