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Destructiveness is the subject of Stephen Diamond's Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic.
Every day scores of men and women, by means of physical force or persuasive influence, cause someone the outrage of undeserved suffering. Some of these acts are violations of conventional morality or statutes of criminality, others are less easy to define as immoral or criminal, especially self-destructive behavior. Nevertheless, all involve treating people without consideration or respect for that person's humanity.
Psychologists, as well as our most brilliant literary writers, have been concerned with destructive human behaviors that fuel the rampages of persistent societal maladies. Both are concerned with determining, first, the extent to which people have choice and responsibility for the acts they commit or influence, and second, the factors that, if recognized and competently acted upon, can change destructive lifestyles.
There are a number of distinctly different ways to try to understand the forces that impel destructiveness. First, there is the perspective from which knowledge is obtained about destructiveness. William James's (1890) distinction between “knowledge of acquaintance” and “knowledge about” is useful in this regard.
Generally, literary writers have assumed the position of “armchair” observer—describing their acquaintance with the experiences of people they have never met. Psychologists, by means of their clinical work with destructive people, have the opportunity to describe the motivations and psychodynamics of destructive people about whom they have in-depth first-hand knowledge. Although Diamond is a psychotherapist and forensic specialist, except for a brief discussion of one forensic patient he treated, he