Psychosis vs. Evil

[Abishai100]

The great sociologist-philosopher Emile Durkheim suggested that one unique feature of the human mind is its contemplation of perfect self-destruction (or suicide).

Many films and comic books depicting villainy present anti-social characters who seem obsessively focused on the social perspectives on self-destruction (philosophical, political, and psychological). The comic book villain Two-Face (DC Comics), for example, is a nemesis of the valiant masked urban vigilante Batman and is a disfigured extremist-vigilante who partially blames an apathetic society for his disfigurement and administers punishments with cruelty.

In assessing the human mind's tendencies towards self-destruction and cruelty towards others, we can examine the boundaries between 'redeemable psychosis' (or criminal insanity) and 'unforgivable self-indulgence' (or evil).

A person who kills for legitimate retribution may be considered an 'avenger,' while a person who kills for sport or mischief may be considered a 'maniac.'

Americans love horror films, and the two iconic American horror film franchises, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, present two eerily masked super-psychos named Leatherface (a chainsaw-wielding cannibal) and Michael Myers (a serial killer who stalks people on Halloween Eve).

Leatherface and Michael Myers are both clearly insane, but their relentless obsession with murder and gore make them unforgivably evil.

If we try to 'psychologically evaluate' these fictional ghouls, we may make observations that they are manic about 'appearing monstrous' or 'creating bloodshed.' They seem intent on 'disfiguring' the face of humanity by preying on very sensitive sensibilities. Leatherface's chainsaw is meant to cause havoc and devastate the flesh, while Michael Myer's preoccupation with Halloween Eve makes him a 'prophet of fear.'

When we read books/stories about 'civilization bureaucrats' made symbolic by their tedious diligence (e.g., Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener), we get the impression that anarchistic tirades against society norms (as exemplified in the characterization of Leatherface and Michael Myers) affords the anti-social criminal a 'window' into 'spiritual deformity.'

This focus on 'spiritual deformity' and its living relationship to 'appearance disfigurement' may be the best criterion for separating psychosis from evil, since it reveals a specific 'intention to seem ugly' (or abnormal).


====

BATMAN: Why do you want to scare people?
LEATHERFACE: Scarecrow is my brother!
BATMAN: Do you believe your chainsaw is a 'tool'?
LEATHERFACE: It is my sword!
BATMAN: Don't you want to be normal?
LEATHERFACE: Evil!
BATMAN: Do you think you were 'born ugly'?
LEATHERFACE: Born to kill!
BATMAN: You need time to contemplate peace.
LEATHERFACE: Violence is my escape!

====

 

[The Great Goose]

You are confusing psychopathy with psychosis.

Two completely different conditions.

 

[Abishai100]

You are confusing psychopathy with psychosis.

Two completely different conditions.

I agree with this differentiation, but I wanted to make the subject-heading with the more generic term 'psychosis,' since it's easier relating general mental illness with degrees of tendencies towards complete self-destruction.

Everybody knows psychopaths are 'considered' evil, but how can we approach this topic with a more clinically-minded holism?

Does that help?

 

[The Great Goose]

You are confusing psychopathy with psychosis.

Two completely different conditions.

I agree with this differentiation, but I wanted to make the subject-heading with the more generic term 'psychosis,' since it's easier relating general mental illness with degrees of tendencies towards complete self-destruction.

Everybody knows psychopaths are 'considered' evil, but how can we approach this topic with a more clinically-minded holism?

Does that help?

No. How would that help?

 

[midcan5]

"We first kill people with our minds, before we kill them with weapons. Whatever the conflict, the enemy is always the destroyer. We're on God's side; they're barbaric. We're good, they're evil. War gives us a feeling of moral clarity that we lack at other times." Sam Keen


'Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing' by James Waller
http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Evil...ing/dp/0195189493/ref=pd_cp_b_2&tag=ff0d01-20

For those of us to whom the Holocaust changed how we viewed good and evil, personality does matter. Read Stanley Milgram or check out this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html


http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/370086-do-you-believe-in-evil-7.html#post9614613

"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another." Epicurus

 

[Abishai100]

The Limits of Disaster


Let's look at the two iconic American horror film characters/avatars Michael Myers (the eerie masked serial killer from the Halloween film series) and Leatherface (the equally-eerie chainsaw-wielding cannibal from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series).

Michael Myers stalks people on Halloween Eve, and Leatherface is a havoc-creating maniac who terrorizes random passerby in Texas.

Both of these fictional ghouls represent the 'limits of madness' and the will to twist oneself to look like someone (or something) else.

If we can imagine such intolerable psychopaths could exist, then surely we can see how society 'fantasizes' about the conceptualization of evil (and suffering).

 

[ding]

The great sociologist-philosopher Emile Durkheim suggested that one unique feature of the human mind is its contemplation of perfect self-destruction (or suicide).

Many films and comic books depicting villainy present anti-social characters who seem obsessively focused on the social perspectives on self-destruction (philosophical, political, and psychological). The comic book villain Two-Face (DC Comics), for example, is a nemesis of the valiant masked urban vigilante Batman and is a disfigured extremist-vigilante who partially blames an apathetic society for his disfigurement and administers punishments with cruelty.

In assessing the human mind's tendencies towards self-destruction and cruelty towards others, we can examine the boundaries between 'redeemable psychosis' (or criminal insanity) and 'unforgivable self-indulgence' (or evil).

A person who kills for legitimate retribution may be considered an 'avenger,' while a person who kills for sport or mischief may be considered a 'maniac.'

Americans love horror films, and the two iconic American horror film franchises, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, present two eerily masked super-psychos named Leatherface (a chainsaw-wielding cannibal) and Michael Myers (a serial killer who stalks people on Halloween Eve).

Leatherface and Michael Myers are both clearly insane, but their relentless obsession with murder and gore make them unforgivably evil.

If we try to 'psychologically evaluate' these fictional ghouls, we may make observations that they are manic about 'appearing monstrous' or 'creating bloodshed.' They seem intent on 'disfiguring' the face of humanity by preying on very sensitive sensibilities. Leatherface's chainsaw is meant to cause havoc and devastate the flesh, while Michael Myer's preoccupation with Halloween Eve makes him a 'prophet of fear.'

When we read books/stories about 'civilization bureaucrats' made symbolic by their tedious diligence (e.g., Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener), we get the impression that anarchistic tirades against society norms (as exemplified in the characterization of Leatherface and Michael Myers) affords the anti-social criminal a 'window' into 'spiritual deformity.'

This focus on 'spiritual deformity' and its living relationship to 'appearance disfigurement' may be the best criterion for separating psychosis from evil, since it reveals a specific 'intention to seem ugly' (or abnormal).


====

BATMAN: Why do you want to scare people?
LEATHERFACE: Scarecrow is my brother!
BATMAN: Do you believe your chainsaw is a 'tool'?
LEATHERFACE: It is my sword!
BATMAN: Don't you want to be normal?
LEATHERFACE: Evil!
BATMAN: Do you think you were 'born ugly'?
LEATHERFACE: Born to kill!
BATMAN: You need time to contemplate peace.
LEATHERFACE: Violence is my escape!

====




View attachment 100192

Celia who has become disillusioned by love tells her psychiatrist, “I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.” Celia Coplestone, Edward's mistress, T.S. Eliot, "The Cocktail Party"

 

[Abishai100]

The Glass Menagerie

There are so many comic book adapted media involving eerie and ghoulish 'super-villains' who obtain their creepy proportions after 'physical metamorphosis.'

The great horror-crime novelist Thomas Harris penned a super-psychopath named 'Tooth-Fairy' who must be pursued by a detective using the consultation of a notorious incarcerated psychiatrist-turned-murdered named Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Harris' stories were adapted into the well-known Silence of the Lambs/Red Dragon films starring Anthony Hopkins.

In the Harris stories, physical transformation is considered the key in decoding the link between psychosis and evil, since change in body and mind signifies a complete metamorphosis of consciousness, urging the contorted/distorted mind to don a perspective that is both inventive and destructive.

How does such 'transformation storytelling' inform our overall analysis/understanding of mental devastation?



====

Thomas Hewitt, the convicted and incarcerated super-psycho and serial killer was awaiting psychiatric evaluation before being given the death penalty (by electric-chair). Hewitt killed 30 people over the course of only 4 years, ripping up passerby and policemen with his chainsaw. Hewitt wore a distinctive terrifying face-mask made of the human skin of corpses. People consider him the most dangerous psychotic and much more eerie than the likes of even Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson. Peter Parker and Bobby Drake of the Daily Bugle were given the ominous task of reporting the psychiatrists' findings.

Hewitt was being held in the maximum-security wing of Oscorp so psychiatrists could observe his behaviors from a safe distance. Oscorp CEO Norman Osborn agreed to house the chainsaw-wielding maniac in his facility, since it allowed for both psychiatric testing and electric-chair administration. Everything was going as well as could be expected but on the day of Hewitt's live-TV psychiatric evaluation, he escaped from his Oscorp holding-chamber and sneaked into the experimental 'Green Goblin transformation' laboratory where he drank the much talked-about 'goblin serum' which made his muscles grow in size immediately. Hewitt then put on the Green Goblin armor-suit and hopped on the specially-designed jet-glider and picked up the pumpkin-bombs tailor-made for the jet-glider.

As Hewitt soared around NYC as the 'Green Goblin' on the pumpkin-bomb equipped jet-glider designed specifically for the U.S. military, Peter Parker and Bobby Drake reported for the Daily Bugle, "America's most notorious psychopath and serial killer Thomas Hewitt (aka, 'Leatherface') has stolen the Green Goblin prototype suit-and-gear and is soaring around New York as the serum-transformed 'Green Goblin' and has become the 'bane' of Oscorp CEO Norman Osborn!" Peter and Bobby donned their own special weapon-equipped vigilante outfits and became Spider-Man and Iceman and flew into NYC on cobwebs and ice-tracks in search of the Green Goblin (Thomas Hewitt). Peter's girlfriend (and Bobby's ex-girlfriend) Angelica Jones remarked to Peter, "The Oscorp goblin serum has 'transformed' Leatherface (Thomas Hewitt) into 'Green Goblin,' so we should ask, 'Is evil a chameleon?'"

====

 

[BreezeWood]

.
evil is a choice not an abnormality of physiology ...