The social construction of evil in a forensic setting

This paper is a product of serendipity. It explores how ward-based psychiat ric nurses in one Special Hospital attribute the notion of 'evil' to devian t activities. Staff were asked to read and make comments about a series of vignettes, abbreviated offence scenarios, from which emerged the constructi on of a taxonomic order of evil. These explanations of evil were then juxta posed alongside their counterparts from theodicy. Deviancy attributed to ex treme psychoticism is not credited with being an evil act, such individuals having a primordial contract of innocence. In contrast, extreme crimes com mitted by those with a psychopathic disorder are considered evil. An evil a ct is seen to be one which transgresses a 'natural boundary'; the product o f purposeful action after the accumulation of stages of 'reality testing'; and, finally, a consequence of the extinction of moral bonding leading to r esidual instinctive behaviour.