Joel Richman

The social construction of evil in a forensic setting

Abstract This paper is a product of serendipity. It explores how wardbased psychiatric nurses in one Special Hospital attribute the notion of ‘evil’ to deviant activities. Staff were asked to read and make comments about a series of vignettes, abbreviated offence scenarios, from which emerged the construction of a taxonomic order of evil. These explanations of evil were then juxtaposed alongside their counterparts from theodicy. Deviancy attributed to extreme psychoticism is not credited with being an evil act, such individuals having a primordial contract of innocence. In contrast, extreme crimes committed by those with a psychopathic disorder are considered evil. An evil act is seen to be one which transgresses a ‘natural boundary’; the product of purposeful action after the accumulation of stages of ‘reality testing’; and, finally, a consequence of the extinction of moral bonding leading to residual instinctive behaviour.

Mission Impossible or Paradise Regained

Gives a preliminary exploration into mission statements and their impact on nurses′ attitudes towards them. Mission statements are given much credence by top level management, as part of the thrust towards corporate identity. Only 15 per cent of nurses (from an opportunistic sample of 87) acknowledged that mission statements were directly resonant with their own practice; 75 per cent did not know the originators of their mission statements; others were vague about their organization possessing one. Mission statements are best considered here as an organization rhetoric, a facet of managerial ideology. More research is needed to evaluate critically, by case studies, the impact of mission statements, as an organizational variable on, for example, health treatment and budgeting. Semiotics and communication theories offer this opportunity.