Trauma and the Nature of Evil

It may legitimately be asked, “What is a psychiatrist doing delving into the longstanding philosophical question about the nature of evil?” As we know, finding meaning and redefining reality to incorporate the experience of trauma is a fundamental task for the survivor of overwhelming life experiences (Herman, 1992; McCann and Pearlman, 1990; Janoff-Bulman, 1992). So too, is it one of the fundamental tasks for those of us who listen to the stories of trauma, those who attempt to provide the support needed for victims to turn their nonverbal, inexorable pain into a healing narrative. The effects of trauma are contagious and the witness is always in danger of becoming a secondary victim (Figley, 1995; McCann and Pearlman, 1990; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995). The present philosophical exploration of the nature of evil is one of my own attempts to wrestle with this question of meaning. The vicarious brushes with transparent and veiled evil that are a daily experience in the life of a trauma-based physician have led me to explore the eternal question of the nature of man’s inhumanity to man, always with the purpose in mind of locating some keys to its reduction. Like most of us, I come to the subject with many preconceived, implicit, and unarticulated assumptions about my subject, assumptions that spring largely from my immersion in a Judeo-Christian, Western, modern, psychological culture. It seemed important, then, to begin my exploration by learning about the various discourses on the nature of evil that have challenged the beliefs and behaviors of every culture throughout time. “Theodicy” is the word used to the age-old philosophical attempt to reconcile the goodness of God with the existence of evil, a concept generally shortened to “the problem of evil” (Noddings, 1989; Solomon, 1989). For the sake of organization I have broken these discourses down into categories to simplify my discussion. It is likely that these discourses are intermingled in most modern cultural milieus, but the differentiation allows