Is “possessed of a sociopathic, aggressive personality disorder” the same as saying “evil”? Is it more descriptive? Does it contain more information?
No, I don’t think it does. Where psychology wants to tame the wild social world by labeling it, I want to PARTICIPATE in it–not stand outside it–by interacting with it.
Maybe evil people have certain genes. Maybe they have suffered certain head traumas (as have many serial killers). Maybe they had lousy childhoods.
Yet in the end they still CHOOSE to do what they do. Cruel people choose not only to enjoy cruelty, but to consciously engage in it. They don’t fight it.
Implicit within psychological narratives–their own propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding–is a certain givenness, a certain fatalism.
Within moral narratives, there is the space for choice, and action. This creates more room for movement, and movement is necessary for change.
We have to judge ourselves. This can include forgoing judgement for numbness, but out it will, sooner or later. Moralism is the process of reconciling our self image with our decision patterns. Psychologism, without moralism, is the process of rationalizing what already is.
These are some broad thoughts I will expand on later.
Edit: I have too much else floating around my brain. I want simply to add: where is the concept of Goodness in psychology? In what would it consist? Altruism? What are the categories from which it is built, if not moral categories?
In my view, psychology–a true psychology, of the sort James tried to build (in my understanding)–is necessarily moral first, and descriptive secondarily. I won’t expand on that for now.