Paper delivered at the Moral Evil in Practical Ethics Conference, Oxford 2012.
Secure psychiatric services offer treatments to men and women who are frequently characterised as 'evil'. In my paper, I will explore how the discourse of illness and the discourse of evil are similar and different: specifically in relation to concepts such as insult, injury and damage, and whether it makes sense to think of human value systems as being damaged or impaired. I will use case examples from my clinical practice in a high secure setting to illustrate.
