What Evil Means to Us

C. Fred Alford interviewed working people, prisoners, and college students in order to discover how people experience evil—in themselves, in others, and in the world. What people meant by evil, he found, was a profound, inchoate feeling of dread so overwhelming that they tried to inflict it on others to be rid of it themselves. A leather-jacketed emergency medical technician, for example, one of the many young people for whom vampires are oddly seductive icons of evil, said he would "give anything to be a vampire." Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Alford argues that the primary experience of evil is not moral but existential. The problems of evil are complicated by the terror it evokes, a threat to the self so profound it tends to be isolated deep in the mind. Alford suggests an alternative to this bleak vision. The exercise of imagination—in particular, imagination that takes the form of a shared narrative—offers an active and practical alternative to the contemporary experience of evil. Our society suffers from a paucity of shared narratives and the creative imagination they inspire.

About the Author :
C. Fred Alford is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of eight books, most recently The Man Who Couldn't Lie.

Review :
Alford's writing has a rich quality.... Alford has a great degree of skill in raising thought-provoking questions without premature closure. It is refreshing to read a book that leaves one feeling unsettled, informed, and yet with a desire to pursue further readings and investigation. This book will be of great interest to anyone who studies the social and psychological effects of violence and who is interested in the philosophy of evil. (Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews) Intelligent, erudite, and wide-ranging.... His material is certainly rich, but it is his organization and critical analysis of that material, coupled with his exact and yet sometimes lyrical prose, that makes the book a landmark study.... Alford's book is without a doubt a superlative study. (Journal of Popular Culture) What does the cliché that 'evil spelled backward is live' mean? Fred Alford wants to know, and with this provocative question he takes the reader on an intellectual journey which is, in his words, a 'domestic anthropology' of evil.... This book is provocative, intellectually stimulating, and well written. (Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association) Alford... spent over a year interviewing state prison inmates, college students, and working people to find out how people conceptualize and experience evil. To many of his informants, doing evil is the 'pleasure in hurting and lack of remorse.' It is rooted, from what they told the author, in a baleful, bottomless sense of dread; to cause others to suffer this existential dislocation is somehow (in the mind) expected to alleviate it in oneself.... Alford suggests that hope, and the answer to the problem of evil, may be found through shared narrative—the realm of 'metaphysics and theology.' Although this is a difficult book, it provides an unusually systematic approach to a topic more often addressed through anecdote or abstraction. Of interest especially to professionals who work with people 'on the edge.'. (Library Journal) Alford has written a most interesting volume on how we experience evil.... His book is a beautifully crafted psychoanalytic meditation.... Lyrical and evocative.... Extremely thought provoking, compelling and accessible. I urge all psychoanalysts to read this small gem. (The Psychoanalytic Review) Alford makes many intriguing connections between evil as understood in classic literature and evil as recognized in popular culture. Anyone interested in the anatomy of human destructiveness would do well to consult this book. (Theological Studies) The provocative general thesis of this narrative account is twofold. First, the impulse to do evil is all around us and lies deeply and inextricably within each of us.... Second, the amelioration of evil in society depends on our acknowledging the universality of its grip on human persons and seeking its containment through creative acceptance of the dread that is inherent in the human condition. (Choice) This is a deeply thoughtful and humane book which anyone interested in the phenomenon of evil—and who isn't?—will want to read and ponder. (Review of Metaphysics) This is not a tale for the weak of heart. (Times Literary Supplement) This scholarly gem should appeal to a very broad cross-section of the population.... Even those among us who have thought at great length about evil will likely benefit from Alford's remarkably accessible reflections on the darker side of human interaction. (Virginia Quarterly Review)