The Humanistic Psychology of Human Evil: Ernest Becker and Arthur Koestler

Abstract

Little effort has been made in psychology and psychiatry to study pathologies that afflict, not the aberrant neurotic or psychotic individual or social group, but the greater population of the psychologically normal. A study of such “universal pathologies” requires a focus on the “ evil of banality,” and not the more restricted “banality of evil.” Where the latter phrase was used by Hannah Arendt to refer to the psychological normality of delimited groups of individuals who perpetrate evil (specifically, Nazi leaders during the Holocaust), the “evil of banality” refers to pathologies of normality—to the psychological constitution of the average person that predisposes him or her to participate in aggression and destruction. The article begins by summarizing conclusions reached in the author's The Pathology of Man: A Study of Human Evil (Charles C. Thomas, 2005). This study provides an up-to-date frame of reference within which are discussed the complementary and insightful observations concerning human evil made by two psychologically oriented humanists, Ernest Becker and Arthur Koestler.