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psychewritesbs · 1 year

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different anon here but i came across your evil post when i was perusing the tag — i loved seeing your thoughts as someone in the psychology field! i think you only watched the first season (based on the comment of watching 13 eps in 3 days), but if you were to continue watching seasons two and three (and four this summer!) i think you would find that the framing of the catholic church does get a little less "good guys"-y. this is probably in part due to the shift from being a cbs air-on-tv show with season 1, to a paramount+ online streaming show in seasons 2+. it's not a massive difference, to be fair, but they def start discussing some discriminatory aspects of the church, esp in regards to race & a bit in relation to sexuality and views on other religions. there is actually a very interesting plotline in season 3 regarding the catholic church that i would love to see your thoughts on, should you keep watching!

HOLA different anon. THANKS FOR THE ASK!!!! I love nerding out with others about psych. It's my thang.

Ok so, I just finished season 2 and these are my thoughts under el cut'o:

First I want to get this out of the way.

The Leland storyline... you know, where he gets to worm his way into everything that is convenient for the plot? I'm so over him.

I just want to punch him. Mrs. O'Brien and Thomas from Downton Abbey are far better at being cliché villains.

I love cliché machiuvelically tacky evil villains, but I have high standards because of Mexican novelas.

No one can ever trump Soraya Montenegro at being fabulously tacky evil.

Anyways, your comment totally reminded me about how in s1 they address the issue with children in the church and its stance on homophobia. So I love that they continue the theme with the exploration of how the church is racist, and my least favorite--sexist.

I have yet to see beyond the first couple of episodes in season 3, but I can appreciate that the church is framed as not such a good guy after all.

It's just that even if Evil is framing the church in not such a positive light, Evil still frames the Catholic God as "good", and the Catholic Devil as "evil".

At least from what I've seen... perhaps there's more surprises in s3 regarding that idea--the opening has been awfully similar to Westworld's opening since s1 so I get the sense the producers/writers are interested in delivering a similar feast for brainiac types like myself.

Um... ok so... everything comes back to Jujutsu Kaisen 😂.

Feel free to skip this section for more thoughts about the show.

Good vs. Evil

When I said that I preferred morally gray stories, I was specifically thinking about a liveblog post I had written about one of the chapters in the manga Jujutsu Kaisen. I'm not sure if the anon who recommended I watch Evil was thinking along the same lines, or if anon has read my jjk nerderies, but jjk puts a nice twist on the good vs. evil trope that Evil explores.

The mangaka, Gege Akutami, introduced a little symbol that I traced back to William Blake who had taken inspiration from Milton's "Paradise Lost" in his own understanding of the question of good vs. evil.

I haven't looked too deeply into either of their work, so read this with a grain of salt since I also can't confirm the accuracy of what I've read about them online, but I understand they both considered themselves to be Christian men who did not necessarily agree with the traditional interpretation to the problem of good vs. evil.

Regardless of the differences between Christianity and Catholicism, my understanding is that Blake saw "evil" as instinct free from reason, and "good" as reason (instinct may or may not be the right word).

Along the same lines, you have Jung's definition of libido.

Again, it's been years since I've read Jung's collected works, but if I remember correctly, the way Jung spoke of libido was as if it were psychic energy. In other words, unlike Freud, Jung did not necessarily see libido strictly as sexual desire, but rather our aliveness, our will, our desires, our instincts, etc.

Our neuroses, Jung thought, were often the cause of conflicts in the flow of said energy, like say, curbing your desires with reason.

From this perspective "evil" is not necessarily, you know... stereotypical selfish villain who is evil for the sake of evil evil...

... but rather the expression of libido unchecked by reason for self-serving purposes.

This all relates to jjk because jjk explores the idea that the stronger the ego sense of self, the stronger the character, which inevitably means that the character in question is selfish af and has no regard for others.

This is where it gets complicated because... how to say... is it truly evil for Kristen to have killed that serial killer dude when she was doing it to protect herself and her family?

I don't have the answer to it. All I can say is that Kristen had an impulse and acted on it without applying much reason outside of "I am doing it to protect my daughters and I will be careful not to incriminate his wife".

The show, however, explains this away as demonic possession (?) which doesn't sit right with me because it reduces her impulse to something "dark" and "undesirable" that only God (reason) can heal.

But like... reason devoid of instinct is basically artificial intelligence. In the end, you need them both. That is why people like Jung and Blake and even Buddhism advocate for a marriage of opposites, or walking a middle path.

It's really complicated and I feel like I am oversimplifying the whole thing lol. It's like Kant's trolley problem.

Maybe you have some insight about it or some nuance I may be missing that you'd like to share.

Anyways... it is the IRS episode that most felt like what good vs evil is from this Depth Psych perspective. And it kind of sucks because it only got such a brief mention with the Satanist t-shirt guy saying that he likes to do what pleases him as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

So my over-thinking brain can't get over the fact that Evil still frames the "devil" and "evil" as inherently bad. It reduces the concepts to black and white terminology when there is a lot of nuance to be had.

Evil

That out of the way... I was honestly getting bored with s2, ESPECIALLY with Leland, but the way it ended was so powerful. It's like they were saving the best for last.

Between Kristen's emotional confession and how s3 begins, I think I'm going to keep watching, just probably won't be as invested.

By the way, I LOVE Nun Andrea. What a fun and relatable character.

Ok, that's that. Thanks for reaching out! Looking forward to hearing from you again.

#ask the mental gymnastics anime girl #evil 2019 #david acosta #kristen bouchard #evil cbs #evil paramount #evil series #depth psychology

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psychewritesbs · 1 year

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With my "Evil" ask, I can't say in whole faith it's a great show since I haven't even finished it, so I'm unsure if it stays consistent till the end, but I think there are topics portrayed that are nice to pick at while watching, so just take my opinions with a grain of salt and trust your own too 😊

Hey hey. As promised: after binge watching the first season of Evil, here are the #thoughts.

First, I have to thank you again for recommending this show to me because I LOVE shows that delve into Psychology. If you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend Mad Men, another highly Psychological show that deals with how Psychology is used in Advertising.

Next, I'll start by saying that the thing I loved most about Evil is precisely the commentary it makes about Psychology as a "science", like the fact that it explores the fine line between mental illness, as defined in the DSM V, and unexplained psychic phenomena.

Basically, this show embodies the reason I studied Jungian Psychology in grad school instead of enrolling in a traditional program that would have led to licensure as a therapist. Both the smartest and dumbest decision I've ever made if I'm honest.

More Psych nerdery under the cut if you're interested...

Mental illness vs. unexplained psychic phenomena

One of my favorite themes in the show is the idea that science is only interested in repeatable phenomena that can be observed. This in and of itself is at odds with Psychology, since the mind (ego) cannot be observed in the strictest sense of the word.

So Psychology, in an effort to legitimize itself as a science, has sort of gone through great lengths to establish itself as a hard science by finding ways to measure and observe the "ego mind". For example, to bring Mad Men back into the conversation, there are many heuristics attributed to Social Psychology that are used in Advertising for persuasion purposes.

So it's not to say that it's wrong for Psychology to be considered a hard science. If I remember correctly, Jung himself always wrote about Psychology as a science of psychic facts (heuristics).

What's really cool about how Evil approaches the topic, is that the show establishes that there is a fine line between the idea of mental illness as defined by the DSM and unexplained psychic phenomena. Like for example, demonic possession vs. dissociative personality disorder.

But... who is to say that demonic possession cannot manifest as dissociative personality disorder and/or vice versa?

The reason I decided I wanted to study Jungian Psychology in grad school was precisely because I wanted to study a Psychology that acknowledged the existence of unexplained psychic phenomena as a possibility instead of denying it.

To bring it back to the show, more importantly, I loved seeing how, even with diagnostic tools like the DSM, 3 different professionals can still give the same person 3 different diagnosis based on their own "objective" assessment of the person in question.

This is something I saw a lot when I worked in foster care. Children with mountains of diagnosis that would change depending on who gave the diagnosis and that would define them for the rest of their lives.

This is not to say that diagnostic tools are not helpful, but rather that the DSM is an imperfect tool that cannot possibly encompass the whole of the human experience and that try as we may to make it all seem objective, diagnosis is still a subjective endeavor.

What's worse, I don't often play this card, but I have to admit that I don't personally want to be measured against what a group of white men (the DSM was published in 1952, the odds of it being put together by a group of white dudes is high--again, watch Mad Men) think is and isn't appropriate psychologically-speaking.

So in a sense, the DSM is a tool that maintains the status quo in regards to what is and isn't mental illness.

For example, are the Bible's prophets truly prophets? Or were they simply psychotic and suffering from hallucinations?

In another example, there is an anecdote in one of the collected works about Jung talking to a schizophrenic patient who described what she happened to be looking at. Jung later came to find the very thing the patient described in a book he was reading, which Jung felt was unlikely she had seen. Instead, he postulated that her hallucinations were really a manifestation of an ego that could see beyond the veil of "reality" into a collective unconscious.

Again, where is the fine line between mystical experiences and mental illness?

Fascinating stuff.

The Psychologist as Priest

It's been a while since I've read Jung since I kind of burnt out on his work when I graduated, but I distinctly remember Jung often writing about the Psychologist (or therapist) as taking the role of the priest as psychospiritual advisor.

Part of the reason for this, if I remember correctly, was that Jung saw that religion had failed people. I don't exactly remember his reasoning but it might have been something along the lines of religion becoming dogmatic and failing to really speak to the spiritual needs of men and women.

This goes into a deeper conversation like the questions that the show explores like...

Why does God allow for suffering to exist?

Why are some blessed with miracles while others suffer in pain and anguish?

I have not finished reading Jung's "Answer to Job", but it basically seeks to address the problem of good vs. evil, but more importantly (if I understand correctly), how God could be so cruel with Job.

This rabbit hole goes deep because Jung also explored ideas like that of Abraxas (which bridged good and evil) and how the God of the Old Testament was probably not the ultimate God because if he was only "good", then he was not whole since wholeness necessitated that God also be "evil". I'm probably butchering this whole idea but that's my shallow understanding of it.

Anyways, so it's really cool to see how Kristen and David are marrying opposites--Kristen, the rational and objective Psychologist, and David the superstitious believer and Priest in training.

Together they are, literally, Psychologist as Priest.

On that note, it's also interesting to see David confess his "sins" so often. I was raised Catholic but I've only ever done "confession" once in my life and I remember distinctly being nervous about the priest's reaction when in the end he told me to recite a prayer 8 times (Padre Nuestro).

Similarly, the show addresses the idea that Psychology has no certain solutions and that the solutions it often comes up with feel religious and dogmatic at best. Ben says something very specific about it but I didn't write it down in my notes.

Kristen Bouchard

I already really liked Katja Herbers in Westworld, but I loved her more in Evil. Probably because of the link with Psychology, but more importantly because Kristen is somewhat relatable as a character.

First, she's a psychologist, duh.

Second, the girl's wardrobe is impeccable and it is no wonder she can't pay off her student loans.

Third, those dreams she has with George are creepy af.

I've had a couple of very, very, EXTREMELY creepy encounters in dreams with what I can only think of as entities perhaps not exactly like George, but somewhat similar:

Like the time I got pulled out of the window and had something whisper in my ear "I like fucking with you(r mind)".

Or the time I dreamt someone was having sex with me.

Or the time I yelled at something outside my bedroom to leave my house because it wasn't welcome.

Or the time there was a wraith-looking creature with nefarious intentions watching me sleep right above me.

Again... are these just dreams? Or was I looking at something beyond the veil in my dreams?

Needless to say, George reminded me of all of those dream encounters I've had, which made the show in its early episodes all the more unnerving.

That said, I like how the show plays on the idea that Kristen is, in fact, just dreaming, AND the dreams are spilling into her waking life.

Mysterious Universe

If you haven't already, I also recommend you check out the podcast, Mysterious Universe. Not only are the hosts hilarious, they are basically two skeptics exploring unexplained phenomena like UFOs, conspiracy theories, ghosts, telepathy, etc etc.

I'm specifically recommending it precisely because they've been doing the podcast for so long that they've picked up on themes that are repeated--like the idea of demonic possession and how and why it happens when you're psychologically vulnerable. I feel like they actually talk about a lot of the themes presented in Evil.

Now for what I wasn't a fan of...

There are several things I did not like about the show.

First, I'm just not a big fan of how USAmerican network tv uses the "monster of the week" trope. It's just not my cup of tea.

I also ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HATE that Kristen holds back important information when it's most needed--like telling her mother that Leland has been threatening to hurt her daughters. I get that her mom would just write it off as Kristen not wanting her to find another partner blablabla, I get it... and I just wish Kristen would say more. It feels like she's made to stay quiet for dramatic effect.

The writers also rely on plot armor from time to time. I can't think of a specific example right now but I have a tendency to spot plot holes and I've spotted a couple in the later episodes.

I also didn't like that Evil frames "evil" from a religious perspective. But I also get that the show's context is the Catholic Church, so that makes complete sense. ngl, I'd like to see the Catholic Church framed as dogmatic and not necessarily "the good guys" as I do prefer morally gray stories.

I think that's it! Overall I've really enjoyed Evil (I mean, I seriously saw 13 episodes in 3 days lol) quite a lot and can't wait to watch more of it.

Thank you for reading if you've made it this far, and thank you again for recommending the show. I am looking forward to hearing from you if you watch or have watched Man Men or listen to Mysterious Universe.

#evil #evil 2019 #david acosta #kristen bouchard #evil cbs #evil series #evil paramount #psychology #psychology of evil #ask the mental gymnastics anime girl

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