Demythologising Evil. A Contextual Perspective

Authors

  • Hamid Reza Yousefi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30820/1664-9583-2021-1-59

Keywords:

primal longing, demonisation, psychopathy, free will, evil, demythologisation, biophilia, necrophilia

Abstract

Human beings are neither good nor evil by nature. The primary and secondary socialisation transform them into the beings they eventually become. Therefore, the category of evil must be subjected to demythologisation. Competitive thinking creates images of enemies. The world is divided into good and evil, friend and enemy, creating identity and a sense of belonging to a group, religion or ethnicity. From these centres of gravity, life becomes a battleground for power and conflicting interests, which force us into an interaction based on stereotypes such as ‹good› and ‹evil›. By contrast, a nonviolent hermeneutic approach can contribute towards empathising with the world of the Other and resolving conflicts amicably.

Author Biography

Hamid Reza Yousefi

Hamid Reza Yousefi ist Professor für Interkulturelle Philosophie und Dialog der Religionen an der University of Religions and Denominations in Qom und Lehrbeauftragter der Universität Potsdam. Zudem ist er Gründungspräsident des Instituts zur Förderung der Interkulturalität e. V. in Trier. Seine Arbeitsfelder sind Theorien der Toleranz, Ethik, Hermeneutik und Psychologie der Kommunikation. Gegenwärtig habilitiert er sich an der Sigmund Freud PrivatUniversität in Wien mit dem Thema «Über die Wiedererweckung der Ur-Sehnsucht. Grundzüge des Avicenna-Modells der Suchttherapie».

Downloads

Published

2021-04-14

How to Cite

Yousefi, H. R. (2021). Demythologising Evil. A Contextual Perspective. Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft, 11(1), 59–66. https://doi.org/10.30820/1664-9583-2021-1-59

Issue

No. 1 (2021): Covid-19: Psychische Belastungen – Angst – Aussonderung

Section

Original Work

License

This journal provides open access to its content in accordance with the basic premise that the free public availability of research benefits the exchange of knowledge throughout the world.

Authors wishing to publish in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The author/s retain/s the copyrights and consent/s to initial publication of the work in the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which allows third parties to use the work by citing the name/s of the author/s and this journal as initial publisher (in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 DE-Licence).
  1. The author/s can enter into additional contracts for the non-exclusive distribution (e.g. publish in a collection or book) of the version published in the journal, if the journal is cited as initial publisher.