The Problem of Evil (again)

I saw an intriguing interview with crime novelist John Connolly on TV3’s Morning program last week, on to promote his new book, The Black Angel. During the interview, one of the presenters asked him his views on the nature of evil. John reflected for a while and observed that this was a topic he had discussed on a number of occasions previously, with police officers, social workers, and psychologists; the best answer he had received, he said, was that evil is “an absence of empathy.”

Well, that got me started, of course. As longtime readers of C&S will know, evil is a subject close to my heart. I have pondered in several past postings the nature of the psychopathic personality, using as my touchstone Harvey Cleckley’s grand opus The Mask of Sanity. My more than passing interest in autism has also cropped up on the odd occasion, particularly when Temple Grandin is in the news, as has the odd reference here and there to better half’s professional contact with psycho- and sociopaths.

It got me started in part because John Connolly is such a well-respected and widely read author, so one might have expected that he could have offered something more insightful into the psychopathic mind, that he would have had a handle on the subject. Not having read any of his works, I can’t say what it is about them that grips readers, but I am surmising on the basis of his response that it is more to do with plot than character, if this is the extent of his understanding.

Why so annoyed? Well, principally because “absence of empathy” is such an inadequate description that leaves out so much. As Temple Grandin tells it, “absence of empathy” is precisely what defines the autistic, not the psychopathic. An autistic person is incapable of intuiting another’s mental states, is unable to put themself into another’s shoes. This renders interpersonal behaviour problematic for autistic people, but it does not make them psychopaths, in part because their incapacity to recognize pain in others actually renders them harmless. They have no desire to inflict pain on others and are incapable of deriving pleasure from the infliction of pain. They might accidentally hurt others, and indeed frequently cause offence through being plain-spoken or apparently neglectful of others’ feelings, but this is a far cry from psychopathological behaviour.

And there’s more to be said, since, as Cleckley’s biographies clearly demonstrate, psychopaths can, if they are lucky, go through their entire lives presenting an appearance of being well-adjusted and ‘normal.’ Circumstances generally conspire against psychopaths because of their impulsive behaviour and feelings of superiority to those around them, but from time to time they will be lucky enough to fall into a social location that enables them to satisfy their impulses while managing to keep up that ‘Mask of Sanity.’

Cleckley’s psychopaths are mostly characterised by impulsive behaviour and a sense of social detachment, an indifference to others that can lead to neglecting others’ feelings but which also leads to indifference to their own reputation and long-term well-being. Cleckley’s psychopaths, generally, don’t care a damn about society’s norms; rather, they impetuously satisfy their own desires regardless of the long-term consequences for all concerned. If you like, we can see this as a form of social autism, an incapacity to conceive of deferred gratification.


There are, however, amongst this group, psychopathic personalities who do constitute a threat to others, the sorts of individuals whom better half encounters in her professional capacity. What distinguishes these people is a sense of resentment absent in Cleckley's other psychopaths. Generally speaking, these are people with a real chip on their shoulders, usually against specific people but often against the world in general, which they think has deprived them of their rightful entitlements. This begrudgery arises because the narcissism so common in psychopaths is thoroughly frustrated in their case: They see people around them whom they consider inferior getting ahead in life, while they, for one reason or another, are prevented from recieving what they regard as their just desserts. Where their sense of superiority comes from is difficult to say—Cleckley acknowledges it but doesn’t try to diagnose it—but one consequence of it is a disdain and disregard for the feelings of others, whose opinions are regarded as worthless or of little merit.

The vicious psychopath doesn’t lack empathy at all. He enjoys inflicting pain, and in order to be able to do so, he needs to be capable of recognizing the interior mental states of others in a way that autistic people cannot. Somewhere in their biography you will be able to find an explanation for the pleasure they derive from inflicting pain—either they see it as a form of revenge against those they imagine have wronged them (their own parents, for instance, for the inadequate upbringing) or else they wish to demonstrate their power over others who might have exhibited such crimes as having lives of their own, independent of the narcissist. In any case, the sine qua non of such a personality is some experience of brutalization that validates rage, revenge, and violence as a way of demonstrating frustration. This brutalization needn’t be beatings; it can be emotional blackmail, deliberate shaming, withholding of affection, or other forms of behaviour that a youngster might anticipate receiving and which he sees being exhibited towards other youngsters.

A sense of injustice, whether warranted or not, lies behind the behaviour of the antisocial psychopath. Cruelty and viciousness wouldn’t satisfy the psychopath at all if he couldn’t empathise. The problem arises because the empathy doesn’t generate concern and guilt in the psychopath, the way it does for everyone else, but the opportunity to hurt and derive pleasure instead.

Cleckley’s 'satisfied' psychopaths could fulfill the role of Eichmann in a Nazi state, detached and indifferent to the significance of all the papers he stamps sending people off to the camps; indeed, what we have come to refer to as ‘instrumental reason’ even encourages that sense of detachment, treating people as objects, numbers, and so on. But the ‘evil-ness,’ the vindictiveness of a real fascist requires empathy gone wrong, empathy in a brutalized and hard-done-by narcissist; someone like Hitler.

Call it ‘evil’ if you want, but there’s no need for a metaphysical explanation, only biographical.