"been ignored, neglected, minimized, or dismissed by mainstream psychology but can no longer be denied or avoided without serious consequences. As C.G. Jung (1961) presciently put it, "Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very existence. . . . We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and do not even know what is before us let alone what to pit against it.""
"When evil strikes suddenly and unexpectedly in the form of mass shootings, psychopathic serial killings, racism, antisemitism, bullying, domestic violence, genocide, terrorism, fascism, or war, or in cataclysmic cosmic occurrences like cyclones, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, pandemics, floods, and tragic accidents that wreak untimely death, destruction, and suffering on multitudes of innocent beings, how can we constructively cope with it? Human suffering stemming from the trauma of evil takes myriad forms, such as"
Mainstream psychology has largely ignored or minimized the problem of human evil, yet its effects are pervasive and consequential. Evil appears in mass shootings, serial killing, racism, genocide, terrorism, fascism, domestic violence, bullying, and in natural or cosmic catastrophes that cause untimely death and widespread suffering. Trauma from evil produces grief, rage, anxiety, alienation, guilt, depression, mania, delusions, and hallucinations. Close encounters with evil can precipitate existential crises by undermining meaning and shattering the illusion of safety, revealing existence as precarious. Psychology and psychotherapy must recognize and address evil as an ultimate human concern alongside isolation, meaninglessness, freedom, responsibility, spirituality, and mortality.
Read at Psychology Today
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