Is there evil?

Researchers have called the Dark Tetrad the core of evil – narcissistic – psychopathic – manipulative – sadistic. That is a seriously problematic human.

Is there evil apart from the person who does evil things?

Does love exist apart from the person who loves? Or is love bound within by the heart that holds it? Is love within us, or do we allow ourselves to be captured by something beyond us?

Is love something separate and alive in the universe? Or does love begin and end in us?

Are people evil? Or have people been captured by evil? Are people evil because they have surrendered to something that lives beyond them, that moves in us and through us, but is not us?

Is there evil?

Motivating patterns living in our minds – but patterns apart from us – not us?

My professional pathology is the trans-generational transmission of trauma. The childhood trauma of the parent lives in their minds and they transfer their trauma to the child. I’ve watched evil as it moves between minds.

That’s the best time to stop it, when it’s moving between minds. Once it’s in the child’s mind it becomes more difficult to extract, and if we don’t extract it in childhood, it’s nearly impossible to get out once the adult mind takes its shape.

When it’s moving between minds, from the parent to the child, that’s when it’s most vulnerable – catch it – stop it in transit.

I’ve worked child abuse. I’ve seen evil move from mind to mind. Evil attacks the children. I’ve been there. I still am.

We sacrifice the children by our apathy. We don’t care. We create agencies to pacify us in our continuing slumber, and we barely fund the agencies we create. The sacrifice of children is less expensive. They are expendable humans.

No one sees our abandoned and abused children, because no one cares. You know the feeling. It’s exactly the same thing – the workings of evil – there – here. No one sees. No one comes.

You’ve been abandoned to the evil.

The children of abuse, neglect, and abandonment grow up. They become adults but are still children inside. We all are. We are the patterns of love and fear that formed us. We live to our patterns, we live to our expectations, we live to our fears and desires to be loved.

Is the person evil? Or is the person the victim of evil as well? Is that an adult, or a traumatized child?

I like empathy. That’s a good emotion. It hurts sometimes to be connected to the pain. That’s a good thing – to hurt when there’s hurt.

I like compassion too. It’s different than empathy, similar but different. Warmer.

What happens when we bring empathy and compassion to the damage caused by evil?

I think that would be a good thing. I think empathy and compassion are always good things to apply.

What’s happening in the family courts is evil.

The Dark Triad is here in the family courts, as is the Dark Tetrad. Machiavellian manipulation. Narcissistic. Psychopathic. Sadistic. That pathology, that problem in humanness, is in the family courts.

I’ve been here in this court-involved custody conflict pathology for ten years. I’ve seen it. I’m a trauma psychologist out of child abuse and foster care. That’s why I’m here.

This is my pathology – child abuse – the trans-generational transmission of trauma. It’s the core of evil.

It’s moving between minds in the family courts. I watch it move. That’s the best time to extract it, when it’s moving. Once it settles into the mind, it becomes more difficult.

It hides, and it has hooks into the mind.

The absence of empathy is the capacity for human cruelty. Child abuse and complex trauma originates in the absence of empathy. They are the same thing. The treatment for the traumatic absence of empathy… is empathy.

Abundant empathy – if you’re asking the child to understand you and what you’re saying, empathy is flowing in the wrong direction.

Are people evil?

Or are they children who’ve been damaged by something beyond us, something that moves in us and through us? Evil attacks the children. We sacrifice the children to our gods of apathy and peace, and then wonder at the evil let loose in the world.

Is there evil? Where does it come from? From us, or from somewhere beyond us, moving in us and through us, but not us?

I’m a trauma psychologist out of foster care. This is my pathology, child abuse and complex trauma – the trans-generational transmission of trauma. Ripples.

Where do the ripples begin? When do they end?

It’s a motivational pathology.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.

Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857