would never really get hurt at all in the vivid unreal laws of therndream . . . the pure primitive man of the dream world killedrnthese men.” Masters has noted how often killers see themselvesrnas a battleground between forces of good and evil, with thernhomicidal behavior being the work of an “inner me,” an “innerrndarkness,” a “darkness within.” In some instances, thisrnlanguage might be a legal ruse, an attempt to create a plausiblerninsanity defense based on a claim of multiple personalityrndisorder, but the terminology is not exclusive to such efforts.rnDepending on the religious background and upbringing ofrnthe particular offender, this inner darkness might be personifiedrnas an objective reality, identified with Satan or somerndemon figure, or even with a twisted image of God. Somernoffenders even claim to be acting as servants of Satan or ofrnsome imagined Satanic cult.rnKnowingly or not, serial killers often speak the language ofrnpossession, of living in a dark reality that wholly separatesrnthem from the world of ordinary humanity. Almost instinctively,rnthey have perfectly formulated the Jungian concept ofrnthe “shadow,” the sinister and dangerous product of forces andrnexperiences that have been driven deep into the unconscious.rnIt is hardly surprising that in seeking to describe such individuals,rnmodern writers have had to resort to a terminology that isrnso out of fashion as to be almost humorous, so that Nilsen,rnBundy, Gacy, and Dahmer become “monsters,” “ghouls,”rn”demons,” “wolves in human form.” They are, in short, evil.rnA great gulf lies between such an interpretation and virtuallyrnall academic writing on the subject by sociologists, criminologists,rnand psychologists. It is simply not acceptable inrnscholarly quarters to use the rhetoric of supernatural evil, howeverrntempting such rhetoric might be. One of the seminal discoveriesrnof 19th-century psychology was that some individualsrncan act in a bizarre or uncontrolled way without demonstratingrnany conventional signs of insanity. Originally termed maniernsans delire, or “moral insanity,” the condition is today termedrn”psychopathy,” and the language used to describe a psychopathrnoften verges on the religious. Though intelligent, they are “paperrnmen” lacking remorse or affect, having no sense of thernharm caused by their actions and failing to recognize the realityrnof their victims. In more traditional language, they arern”monsters” without soul or conscience, but that terminologyrncannot be safely employed. In Thomas Harris’s novel The Silencernof the Lambs, the killer Hannibal Lecter taunts FBI agentrnClarice Starling, rejecting her psychological attempts to findrnwhat made him a killer: “Nothing happened to me OfficerrnStarling. I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.rnYou’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, OfficerrnStarling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothingrnis ever anybody’s fault. Look at me. Officer Starling. Canrnyou stand to say I’m evil? Am I evil?” In real life, the FBI’srnleading serial murder expert was Robert Ressler, who applied tornthe study of these offenders a sophisticated behavioral sciencernanalysis that has exercised worldwide influence. His fine autobiography,rnhowever, bears the title Whoever Fights Monsters.rnNeither social nor behavioral science offers a vocabularyrnadequate to describe actions like those of the London pedophilernring or of individuals like Randy Kraft, the Californiarncomputer programmer who killed perhaps 50 or 60 boys andrnyoung men between about 1975 and 1983. The true-crimernbooks on such cases regularly draw on religious imagery,rnand the studies of the pedophile ring and the Kraft case arernrespectively entitled Lambs to the Slaughter and Angel ofrnDarkness.rnWhere current science fails is in explaining what exactly thernkillers are doing wrong. If a man kidnaps a five-year-old boy offrnthe streets for the purpose of gang rape and strangulation, inrnwhat sense is his conduct wrong? Obviously words like “dysfunctional”rnor “antisocial” are so weak as to be meaningless, butrnby what standards is it wrong or evil, if religious or moral sanctionsrnare not accepted? Conversely, the killer may well believernthat he is acting out of his proper interests, the interests of thernpredator following his natural destiny by destroying a life thatrnfew will miss. By what criteria is he wrong?rnTwo centuries ago, these questions were addressed by a novelist,rnpolitical philosopher, and pornographer named thernMarquis de Sade, who tore through the spurious complexitiesrnof contemporary wisdom to arrive at a great and simple truth:rnwithout God, or without something very like traditional religion,rnthere really were no obstacles to prevent an individualrnfrom doing whatever he or she wished. Nobody, not Paul, Augustine,rnCalvin, or Hobbes, had a better sense of the harm thatrncould be wrought by the unchecked forces of the human will,rnand perhaps none of these writers understood quite as well howrninadequate were mere social or legal sanctions in preventing therndepredations of the human beast. The processes of nature werernbased on continuous destruction, and any creature that actedrnaccording to principles of sensuous egotism was simply followingrn”nature’s fundamental commandment.” Sade writes inrn]ustine, “The wolf who devours the lamb accomplishes whatrnthis common mother designs, just as does the malefactor whorndestroys the object of his revenge or his lubricitv.”rnFor Sade, like Ted Bundv or Dennis Nilsen, the victims wererninsignificant and their deaths illusory: “Man has not been accordedrnthe power to destroy: he has at best the capacity to alterrnforms, but lacks that required to annihilate them.” Pangs ofrnconscience resulting from such acts were simply the socially instilledrnproducts of “an easily subjugated spirit,” and they wererneasily purged by repeated indulgence. What could be more obviousrnthan the relativistic lessons of comparative anthropology,rnthat “what is called crime in France ceases to be crime two hundredrnleagues away … that it is all a matter of opinion and of geography.”rnIf one obeyed the promptings of nature without restraint,rnhow could it be wrong to spend one’s life devising everrnmore sophisticated and excruciating ways to cause pain andrndeath, provided that this activity enhanced the pleasure of thernstrong and enlightened? How, in fact, could anything bernwrong or evil?rnLike Sade in his day, serial murderers pose difficult questionsrnfor contemporary secular society. We know, we feel intuitively,rnthat their conduct is so far removed from the moral normrnthat they are certainly e’il, or what most societies would callrnevil. And yet it would invite mockery to publish an analysisrnplacing the crimes in this context.rnSuch questions are all the more pressing now, because in thernlast year or two political and social debate in the United Statesrnhas so often been concerned with the issue of violence and itsrncausation. This debate has covered numerous cases, includingrnthe notorious kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas in Californiarnand the spate of mass murder sprees in public places,rnfrom subway cars and law offices to malls and post offices, asrnwell as traumatic overseas incidents like the kidnapping of arnBritish toddler by two older boys. Each incident produces arnpredictable range of responses and calls for solutions, for stifferrn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn