Hello All,
Sooner or later those of us who work with victims and perpetrators have to
give some serious thought as to our understanding of good and evil. The
short version might be that they are interdependent, one cannot exist
without the other. Bert's thoughts on this subject have been very
challenging for therapists who believe that their task is to rescue good
victims from bad perpetrators.
Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect has much to offer in explaining
how it is that good people can come to do bad things. In 1971 he conducted
a now famous experiment with Stanford students dividing them into
prisoners" and "guards". It became so brutally out of control that it had to
be stopped after a week.
And then there is also another famous experiment that was done at Yale
during the 1960s by Stanley Milgram. He set up a model whereby actors were
hired to be "learners" who would receive an electric shock if they gave a
wrong answer. There were no actual shocks given. The researcher posed as a
teacher" who then instructed volunteers for the study to administer the
shocks". for the learners own good. Most people would continue to press the
shock lever long after the "learners" (simulated) screams of pain.Few
questioned the instruction to continue inflicting pain as they were told
that this was "necessary"
All for now...
Anngwyn
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
