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THE QUESTION OF EVIL IN PSYCHOLOGY

Of course, abuse is not the only evil with which psychologists deal, but the question of whether satanic ritual abuse truly exists is a common enough problem to discuss more fully before addressing the more general question of evil. The harm that abuse does to children is well known. Until recently, impulsive child abuse, seen in parental reactions to the frustrations of child rearing, dominated the field. Lately, however, ritual child abuse has also become known. Ritual abuse is planned and intentional. It is often attributed to satanic worship in which children are forced to sleep with corpses, view murders, and submit to impregnations. There is a continuing debate in psychology over whether reports of ritual abuse are true (J.G. Friesen, Uncovering the Mystery of MPD: Its Shocking Origins [Here’s Life, 1991]; J.G. Richardson, J. Best, and D.G. Bromley, eds., The Satanism Scare [Aldine De Guyter, 1991]). Further, there are deep-seated disagreements as to whether these abuses are so terrible that they result in "repressed memories" that are forgotten and surface only with the help of psychotherapists (K. Pezdek and W.P. Banks The Recovered Memory/False Memory Debate [Academic, 1996]). Both of these questions have their roots in more basic assumptions about psychological understandings of evil. 

Considered in reverse order, the discussion about repressed memories reflects a difference of opinion in psychology about unconscious motivation. The Freudian position has always been that traumatic experience can be repressed. Repressed experience expresses itself in symptoms of psychopathology. This was a presumption long before the repression of ritual abuse became an issue for discussion. Psychotherapists who believe their clients’ recollections and base their treatment on the healing of these memories are using a fairly traditional approach. Those counselors who believe that their clients would remember, not forget, such terrible experiences, tend to be experimental psychologists. They compare abuse victims with holocaust survivors, who remember all too well what happened to them. 

Of course, the basic issue underneath this discussion is whether the ritual abuse actually occurred in the first place and to whom the label "evil" should be applied. Those who assert the truthfulness of repressed memories tend to locate evil in the abusers—usually parents. Their treatment often includes accusations against parents who supposedly were part of satanic groups. They believe the recovered memories of their clients and believe parents actually planned and carried out the abuses. They tend to recommend no contact with abusing parents until treatment is completed. Many parents have felt falsely judged (S. Mulhern, "Satanism and Psychotherapy: A Rumor in Search of an Inquisition," in The Satanism Scare, 145-72). In contrast, those who doubt the truthfulness of repressed memories locate evil in the connivance between a gullible therapist and an abusive client. For whatever reason, they contend that these memories are the product of projected blame for emotional problems that could better be treated by reflective self analysis. 

In regard to whether the memories that come out in therapy are real or imagined, it is noteworthy that Freud initially felt that stories told to him about parental abuse were true. Later, he decided that they were fantasies. Psychoanalytic theory, like the Christian faith, has always assumed there was a basic inclination in the human being toward self-love and omnipotence. Called "primary narcissism," very similar to "pride" in religion, this drive had to be tempered by adjustment to reality or it would express itself in maladjustment. This became Freud’s understanding of the "evil" in recovered memories. Thus, psychoanalysis agrees with the Christian faith in asserting a basic foundational split in the person from the beginning of life. The evil in repressed memories, from this point of view, would lie in the abused rather than the "supposed" abusers. 

Taking responsibility for one’s evil fantasies while holding onto the view that symptoms are, indeed, expressions of repressed conflict, is an approach attributed to the late O.H. Mowrer (The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion [Van Nostrand, 1961]). Although a critic of psychoanalysis, he agreed that healing resulted from working through underlying and unacknowledged conflicts. Instead of thinking, as did Freud, that disturbance resulted from a conscience that was too strong, Mowrer contended that the conscience of an emotionally disturbed person was too weak. Using his own chronic depression as a model, Mowrer asserted that he only got well when he responded to the call to repent of his sins issued by a visiting minister to the hospital where he was a patient. He decided that taking responsibility for the evil in one’s life was the key to recovery. 

Called a moral theory of mental illness, Mowrer’s approach has resulted in a type of group treatment called Integrity Therapy. In these groups, clients confess their sins and commit themselves to acts of atonement and reconciliation. Although this approach has been criticized for resembling "works righteousness," it takes seriously the somatic and emotional effects of guilt. It also presumes that there is a moral call written into fabric of life which, if violated, can result in structural damage to the human psyche. Humans are made in the image of God, and, according to Mowrer, the essence of this divine image is to love the neighbor. Persons are evil when they do not act lovingly. They are healthy when they do. 

Mowrer’s theory anticipated the treatise Whatever Became of Sin? by K. Menninger, the late well-known psychiatrist (Hawthorn, 1973). Menninger bemoaned the fact that sin had ceased to become a meaningful term. His contention was that sin had been relegated to the realm of private peccadilloes of concern only between persons and their God. Sin had ceased to have any social or psychological meaning. First, sins became crimes to be punished. Then sins became symptoms to be excused. The "insanity defense" is a classic illustration of the latter. Like another psychiatrist, T. Szaza, Menninger called for outlawing the insanity defense in favor of a return to individual responsibility. Moreover, he decried the tendency of psychotherapists to perceive all guilt as false appropriation of the demands of an overly judgmental super ego. In agreement with Mowrer, Menninger protested the reduction of guilt to "guilt feelings." He advocated a return to an admission that most guilt was real. Menninger took Kant’s categorical imperative as the foundation for personal and social existence. This meant that humans were created to be ethical and that ethical violations result in guilt which leads to bodily and emotional harm. 

The psychologist that has made the most helpful distinctions between true and false guilt has been S.B. Narramore (No Condemnation: Rethinking Guilt and Motivation [Zondervan, 1984]). False guilt leads to self-punishment, self-rejection, and low self esteem. True guilt, or constructive sorrow, leads to atonement and reconciliation. It is future-oriented and self-empowering. As opposed to false guilt which results in depression, true guilt leads to self-forgiveness and restoration. Narramore, who is a noteworthy psychologist, combines these distinctions with Christian affirmations about the forgiving work of God through Christ. In contrast to the many psychologists in the past who have naively tried to absolve their clients of all guilt of any kind, he takes seriously the double heritage of humans as seen in the book of Genesis. Here humans are pictured as created in the image of God but destined to violate that image through sin. Like the late theologian, R. Niebuhr, this makes the evil of sin "inevitable, but not necessary" (R. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man [Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1949]). 

This essay has inclined toward the position that evil is located internally within human beings. It has not considered the possibility that evil is located outside them in any personified form such as a "demon." This word "demon" was used to describe the human being by the late psychologist R. May (Man’s Search for Himself [W.W. Norton, 1953]), but his use of the term was quite different from any contention that evil existed outside persons. He agreed with Narramore, Mowrer, and others that there was a proclivity toward evil in the human psyche and he called that proclivity "the demonic." However, he meant something other than a tendency to hurt others. The call to morality for May was the existential call to be true to oneself. To be immoral was not something one did to others but something one did to oneself. Like such self-psychologists as C. Rogers and such humanistic psychologists as A. Maslow, May contended that each person had a destiny to actualize. If one gave over that destiny to the expectations of others, that would be the ultimate expression of immorality and evil. Thus, being true to oneself was to highest moral act in the face of the "demonic" tendency to prostitute oneself to the expectations of others. 

However, there remains the question of the reality of evil outside of individuals. A few psychologists affirm that reality and contend that certain symptoms cannot be explained otherwise (see Friesen, Uncovering the Mystery). While I have not given priority to that point of view, in another publication I have admitted this possibility of demonic oppression, if not demonic possession (H.N. Malony, "Diseased, Deluded, Deranged, Demonized: Options in Diagnosis for Christian Mental Health Professionals," in Integration Musings: Thoughts on Being a Christian Professional, rev ed. [Integration, 1996] 114-18). Although very rare, I agree that there is a specific syndrome that is best called "demonic possession" which is characterized by an altered state of consciousness, multiple personality disturbance, speaking in a cross-sex voice, blaspheming of religion, logic tight delusions, supernormal strength, and rancid body odor. A few psychologists have agreed with this possibility and coupled their belief with the conviction that there are personified evil forces seeking to destroy human beings (J.W. Montgomery, ed., Demon Possession; A Medical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium [Bethany Fellowship, 1976]; K. Olson, Exorcism: Fact or Fiction [Thomas Nelson, 1992]). 

These psychologists have developed deliverance-type treatment procedures for use in treating those they diagnose as being possessed. There is only minimal agreement with these convictions among psychologists in general. Nevertheless, it is widely agreed that psychology is a pragmatic science which is often faced with untreatable disturbances. A psychologist who claimed he had skills in treating satanic-abuse victims and used prayers for deliverance, recently lost his license. I am testifying in his behalf as he tries to regain his license. Although I do not agree with his conviction that satan actually possesses people I acknowledge that much of our knowledge of emotional disturbance is culturally constrained. There are, indeed, more psychopathologies than those listed in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Revised (DSM-IV, Revised) (American Psychiatric Association, 1995). The professional ethics that guide psychotherapists acknowledge this truth. They mandate that those who use untested treatment methods to treat strange maladies do so with caution and with due protection of those they treat. The governing Council of the American Psychological Association recently reaffirmed this position by refusing to affirm a prescriptive resolution that psychologists could only use empirically validated methods in their work. While not agreeing with this psychologist who believes so strongly in personified evil, then, I still affirm his right to use novel approaches in cases where more traditional diagnoses and treatment methods have failed. 

A final word about the DSM-IV, Revised: In a recent article, psychologist J. Carter bemoaned the fact that the volume had become only a descriptive manual of behavior symptoms and seemed to ignore etiological statements of the causes of mental illness such as a basic proclivity toward evil in human beings, espoused by psychoanalysis and Christian theology (J.D. Carter, "Psychopathology, Sin, and the DSM: Convergence and Divergence," Journal of Psychology and Theology 22 [1994] 277-85). The origin of evil, as well as the etiology of mental illness is, in my mind, a yet-unanswered question. Although we have come a long way in understanding the "effects" of many traumas, environments, and reactions, we remain baffled by the occurrence of much that is pathological. While I might agree with Carter that structural predispositional theories about the causes of emotional disturbance are needed, such theories will always remain at the level of assumptions made by some and not by others. Therefore, I do not share his concern about the lack of the same in the DSM-IV, Revised. The manual should remain descriptive and leave to users to determine which underlying theories of etiology they shall use in treatment. Thus, while I do not agree with humanistic psychologists who deny a structural tendency toward evil in persons, neither do I force my opinion on them by advocating a diagnostic manual which requires them to accept a theory with which they disagree. 

By H. Newton Malony, Ph.D., and elder in the UMC; Senior Professor, Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary.