Free EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial by Marc Hauser Page B

action. What I have yet to explain is how a psychology of desire to harm others can spiral out of control and how this psychology connects with and motivates a specific action plan to harm others. Though we may wish to harm another person so that we can feel good, what tips individuals over the threshold from an imagined action to a real action? How does the brain let go of the brakes that typically control our hands and feet, and turn them into weapons that can kill? To begin answering these questions, we look next at people who develop a desire to hurt others — a desire that, for many, is the catalyst that results in excessive harms to innocent victims.
    An appetite for violence
    Have you ever ruminated on the possibility of hurting someone else? Have you ever harbored a desire to get back at an ex-lover who dissed you or take out a boss who fired you? The following vignettes represent real cases of violent fantasies:
Prosenjit Poddar told his therapist that he was angry at the woman he was dating because she had expressed interest in other men. He further informed the therapist that he wanted to get a gun and shoot her.
Carl Carson told friends and doctors about his homicidal thoughts, including a recurring fantasy about his desire to kill people; some of his violent thoughts were triggered by the belief that the government was malicious.
Seung-Hui Cho wrote a senior college essay in which he described a revenge fantasy, packed with images of retaliation toward those who had what he lacked. He sent his reflections along with excessively violent photographs and videotapes to the New York headquarters of NBC news.
    In each vignette, the individual upgraded his violent fantasy to violent reality: Poddar killed the woman he was dating — Tatiana Tarasoff; Carson killed a security guard; and Cho killed 32 people and wounded 25 others in what famously became known as the Virginia Tech massacres. If violent fantasies are closely tied to violent actions, then we may have a burden of responsibility to report the fantasizers to the proper authorities. On this view, therapists would be put in the sticky situation of breaking client confidentiality. After all, if violent fantasies lead to violent actions, then early detection should provide us with greater safety. Or, in legal terms, early detection should provide a screening method to determine
future dangerousness
and thus, our risk of being harmed. These are precisely the issues that Poddar’s case triggered. They are issues that led to a controversial California Civil Code decision, often referred to as the Tarasoff duty, that therapists have a responsibility to warn potential victims of danger from a client. This decision, and subsequent interpretations of the law, depend upon the evidence that violent fantasies lead to violent actions.
    Studies of individuals who have committed violent acts, including psychopaths, serial murders, and sexual offenders, suggest that violent fantasies are common. For example, records of sexually motivated murders reveal that between 60-80 percent of individuals report having had detailed and recurring fantasies about harming others, some going back to their childhood. Several described running through their fantasies over and over again, deriving pleasure from them, and even going so far as to enact the violence with household objects. Although these results suggest that violent fantasies are common in violent offenders, and may represent precursors to actual violence, they must be treated cautiously given their retroactive quality. In all of these studies, a clinician asked the offender to recall memories of violent fantasies before they committed acts of violence, and sometimes asked about early memories in childhood. We can’t be certain, therefore, whether they in fact had these fantasies, believed they did because of the violence they carried out, or fed the clinician what they wanted. And given the correlational nature of the evidence, we