For all our knowledge of psychopathology and sociopathology--and despite endless examinations of abuse and torture, mass murder and genocide--we still don't have a real handle on why evil exists, where it derives from, or why it is so ubiquitous. A compelling synthesis of diverse schools of thought, Psychoanalysis of Evil identifies the mental infrastructure of evil and deciphers its path from vile intent to malignant deeds. Evil is defined as manufactured in the psyche: the acting out of repressed wishes stemming from a toxic mix of harmful early experiences such as abuse and neglect, profound anger, negative personality factors, and mechanisms such as projection. This analysis brings startling clarity to seemingly familiar territory, that is, persons and events widely perceived as evil. Strongly implied in this far-reaching understanding is a call for more accurate forms of intervention and prevention as the author: Reviews representations of evil from theological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic sources. Locates the construction of evil in psychodynamic aspects of the psyche. Translates vague abstractions of evil into recognizable concepts. Exemplifies this theory with the lives and atrocities of Hitler and Stalin. Applies psychoanalytic perspective to the genocides in Turkey, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Revisits Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil." Psychoanalysis of Evil holds a unique position in the literature and will gather considerable interest among readers in social psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and political anthropology. Historians of mass conflict should find it instructive as well.

Herbert McCabe was one of the most original and creative theologians of recent years. Continuum has published numerous volumes of unpublished typescripts left behind by him following his untimely death in 2001. This book is the sixth to appear. McCabe was deeply immersed in the philosophical theology of St Thomas Aquinas and was responsible in part for the notable revival of interest in the thought of Aquinas in our time. Here he tackles the problem of evil by focusing and commenting on what Aquinas said about it. What should we mean by words such as 'good', 'bad', 'being', 'cause', 'creation', and 'God'? These are McCabe's main questions. In seeking to answer them he demonstrates why it cannot be shown that evil disproves God's existence. He also explains how we can rightly think of evil in a world made by God. McCabe's approach to God and evil is refreshingly unconventional given much that has been said about it of late. Yet it is also very traditional. It will interest and inform anyone seriously interested in the topic.

In the early morning hours of December 31, 2010, Dr. Cornelius H. Evans and his wife received a terrible phone call: their son, Bryant, had been shot and killed. The agonizing days that followed brought Evans face-to-face with the realization that evil had touched his familys life, sending him on a quest to try to understand the role evil plays in our world. Deeply emotional and heartfelt, Surviving Evil in a Depraved Society offers insight into how Evans dealt with the loss of his son by analyzing the root of violence in Americaevil. He examines various theories on evil and its origin, its effects on mankind, and how, according to the Christian belief, evil will remain a part of our society until Christ returns. Evans also challenges ideologies, philosophical beliefs, and theologies on whether one can avoid evil elements. He demonstrates that we can be on our guard against inviting evil into our lives by spiritually guarding ourselves and raising our children with a strong moral foundation. An eye-opening look at the face of evil, Surviving Evil in a Depraved Society offers hope for living in todays world.

Was the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer an evil man responsible for his murders? Or was he an innocent victim of psychiatric illness? Lawrie Reznek addresses these questions and more in his controve rsial investigation of the insanity defence.

Evil in Scripture denotes both suffering and behavior that causes it. Anger often follows suffering. Anger at people is condemned, but anger at God is accepted because biblical faith portrays God as inflicting evil. This faith calls for an understanding of language about God acting and a biblical theodicy revealing God's goodness; both are provided. Portrayals of God as inflicting evil do not deny that, factually, humans inflict it, so the witness about human sin is included. Final chapters offer biblical deliverances from evil.

In this multi-disciplinary collection we ask the question, 'What did, and do, Quakers think about good and evil?' There are no simple or straightforwardly uniform answers to this, but in this collection, we draw together contributions that for the first time look at historical and contemporary Quakerdom's approach to the ethical and theological problem of evil and good. Within Quakerism can be found Liberal, Conservative, and Evangelical forms. This book uncovers the complex development of metaethical thought by a religious group that has evolved with an unusual degree of diversity. In doing so, it also points beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends to engage with the spectrum of thinking in the wider religious world.

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.