Evil

Most people have probably forgotten why we call psychiatrists “shrinks.” (I had a friend who used to call them “trick-cyclists.”) But the term “shrink” is really a contraction of “head-shrinker,” and comes from the notion that, dealing with our heads as they do, they are like the natives of primitive tribes, who used to shrink the heads of their defeated enemies, and use them as decorations.

In my long career as the owner-operator of a functioning, and sometimes mal-functioning, human head. I’ve been the patient of a number of these professionals – but on my last visit to my current one, he said something which really surprised me. He referred to a certain well-known person of the recent past as being “evil.” For some reason, I didn’t think psychiatrists were supposed to make moralistic judgments like that. It particularly surprised me because the person in question was a former President of the United States.

I myself never make judgments of that kind. In fact, the word “evil” is one I hardly ever use seriously. I can think of people doing very bad things, and I can think of some of those people being very sick mentally – even possibly being born with perhaps irreversible tendencies to do terrible things to other people. I have heard some of such people referred to as “psychopaths,” and “sociopaths,” and, as I understand it, they can be very dangerous, because some of them have the ability to blend in with ordinary society.

But I doubt if any modern psychiatric textbook or manual ever uses the word “evil” – because, to many or most of us nowadays, that word is super-charged with moralism and religiosity. As Hamlet says, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

So, what am I saying? Can killing thousands or millions of people be an evil act, but the person responsible not be entirely evil, perhaps because he likes dogs, and is good to his mother? Historically speaking, certain world figures have been regarded as the very incarnation of evil. English mothers used to frighten their children into obedience with the admonition that otherwise “Boney” (i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte) would get them. His wars cost the lives, possibly of millions of people, and he was regarded as a monster by his enemies. Yet Napoleon, despite all the suffering he caused, is also credited with many benevolent acts, such as emancipating the Jews in countries he conquered, and enacting legal codes which are honored to this day, as in Louisiana. Indeed, his tomb is still a revered monument in Paris. And a nephew of his was proud to take the title of Napoleon III, under which he ruled France as Emperor for 18 years.

But much closer to our own time – perhaps too close – we have the example of Hitler and the Nazis. I say, “too close,” because it’s hard for anyone whose life was directly, or even indirectly, touched by those events, ever to look at that era objectively. The world will have to wait until all of us “survivors” are gone, and possibly for several generations more, before historians will be able to assess Hitler with as much equanimity as we can now regard Napoleon.

In the meantime, modern medicine leads us to wonder whether what we used to call “evil” might not be regarded as some kind of mental aberration. In other words, bad people aren’t really bad – they’re simply mad. And with the right treatment and medication (including, I would suggest, brain surgery) they might become as normal as you or I like to think we are.

The words “evil” and “devil” are obviously related, and, to certain religious groups, the concept of Satan is a very real one (although Milton, in Paradise Lost somewhat muddied the waters, by making his Satan a fallen angel, and, in a way, the hero of the book). But we need look no further than the first pages of Genesis to find the original embodiment of evil, in the Serpent, which first tempted Eve, who then tempted Adam, to eat the Forbidden Fruit.

As it happens, the medical profession has as its symbol the “Rod of Asclepius,” which consists of a serpent wound around a stick. And since all psychiatrists are Medical Doctors, it does make me wonder a little about my own head-shrinker’s rather casual (as it seemed to me) use of the word “evil.”

And (since I know you’ve been wondering) he was referring to Richard Nixon.