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Generally and historically, whether from the tradition of psychoanalytic psychology, neurobiology, or cognitive science, unconscious thinking (or process) has been considered with the appellation of “outside of conscious awareness.” In some cases authors have correlated unconscious process (or thought) with intuition.

This initial subtitle of Survival is the first in a sequence of facets and necessary underpinnings of the unconscious; that is, the issue of survival leads to the appearance and even the need for an unconscious domain. In this sense, the unfolding of an unconscious domain is essentially understood as an evolutionary adaptation.

At the start it can be announced that the realm of the unconscious (as is usual with any realm) is defined as a phenomenon comprised of the constituents of its realm. The variables that comprise this unconscious realm have been identified in the previous chapter with respect to how these variables of this unconscious realm, relate one to the other; that is, describing the functions of such variables within the unconscious. What was revealed displays the actual sequence of the communicational structure of the unconscious. It was pointed out that the importance of understanding such a communicational sequence sheds light on how one’s conscious feelings, thinking, and behavior are essentially governed by this unconscious communicational system.

In the following discussion is presented the basic behavioral categories that underpin the unconscious arena. The primary emotion representatives of these basic categories, along with corresponding basic emotion/personality constituents include: emotion-defenses, emotion-cognitive correlates, and derivative clinical diagnostic dispositions. Examples of the behavioral act of each of these basic categories and a sample of personality traits associated with each are also cited. Anchoring it all is a reference to the basic-wish inherent in each category.

In discussing the entire issue of evil, it was suggested in the Preface of this book that what is not needed in the approach to understanding the infrastructure of evil is a conclave of individuals from scholarly and scientific domains such as philosophers, theologians, and others who are not particularly trained or experienced in encryption/decryption techniques—especially not equipped in the knowledge of encryption codes of the human psyche. Over many centuries, these specialists claiming province in a host of domains—perhaps especially in the province of evil behavior—have given us prolific amounts of speculations and formulations on the nature of evil, and yet, it seems that the encrypted code regarding the infrastructure of evil has still not been decrypted. As cited earlier, it simply has not been enough to state the corollaries, or the cliches or the axioms of evil such as evil is of a psychopathic nature, or in evil is the lack of empathy and compassion, or even evil is bad!

In this volume, it is clearly established that the wish is identified as a key constituent of the infrastructure of evil. In philosophical references, this wish or will is consistently discussed throughout the recorded history by a wide variety of philosophers. For example, Durant indicates that Schopenhauer framed it in an absolute way

In all of these examples of genocides, it becomes gradually clear that they are based on scapegoating, on identity needs, on group affiliation, on propaganda, and of course on political and economic grounds. However, those individuals who permit themselves to become co-opted into genocidal acts are those who, in the majority of cases, have felt deep hostility either derived from a childhood experience of being brutally treated, and/or later in life based upon jealousy and envy of some subgroup that the mainstream or those in power find it easy to attack. Thus, genocides can be classified generally into two distinct categories. The first example of a typical genocide is, of course, driven by a so-called madman. Hitler and Stalin are examples. The second type of genocide arises not necessarily with a definite God-head figure leading the way, but rather by committee of “severals”—out of the pervasive tone of the overall society and culture of a particular nation in which a defined subgroup has been designated to be deserving first of ostracism and later of punishment.

In examining evil from a philosophical vantage point, Taylor (2000), in his book Good and Evil, first considers what is traditionally among philosophers considered to be “good.” In this way, Taylor approaches the issue of evil essentially by the process of identifying basic elements of “good,” that is, Taylor states that philosophical conceptions of what is “good” specifically include the consideration of virtue, pleasure, and happiness (p. 19). He means that we need to understand “virtue, pleasure, and happiness” to get to the true meaning of what “good” means. As a specific start, the Greeks identified “good,” with well-being. To start off then, pleasure and virtue are surprisingly not at all necessarily in lockstep or inevitably reciprocal and, in addition, perhaps more surprisingly, pleasure and virtue are not entirely, absolutely, or even necessarily always considered to be good. The Greeks even added a qualifier to this conflation of nouns (pleasure and virtue) by considering that being good ultimately relates to being “efficient” especially with respect to function. The idea of “efficiency” and “function” in such thinking concerns the satisfaction of goals. Taylor then joins it all by indicating that these early Greek thinkers (in the time of Socrates) correlated the satisfaction of goals, with the adjective “good.” Such an alignment means that goal satisfaction is a synonym for the gratified wish.

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili alias Joseph Stalin (born, loseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili), a Georgian, and the tyrannical leader of the Soviet Union who ruled with an iron-hand (fist) from 1920 to his death in 1953, was 5 ft 4 in. tall. His official titles were General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as well as Premier of the Soviet Union. Stalin rose to Soviet eminence after the death of Vladimir Lenin who was the implemental inspiration and leader of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

For our purposes here, the question becomes: What might be the operative phrase in part of this Godly introduction to the start of the world? The answer to this question could possibly be that the operative phrase is: “that it was good.” Why did God say of the light “that it was good?” How did He know it was good? Apparently, it could be that He knew it was good because seemingly and perhaps obviously He wished it to be good and because He was God, He knew it would be good. Otherwise, why did God make light in the first place. We certainly wouldn’t attribute such an act to God’s motive to make light and identify it as God’s willy-nilly random choice. In other words, does God make random choices without specific Godly plans or motives?

Before turning to the catastrophe called Adolph Hitler, we begin by quoting Nietzsche as related in Erwin Staub’s volume: The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence.

In this chapter, we shall examine the Turkish genocide against Armenians. It remains a genocide that is relatively fresh in the minds of many people who have either personally experienced the terror of such events, or had family and/or friends eliminated by such events, or, simply followed such events through the media.

It should be noted that genocides develop in two distinct ways. First, a so-called God-head personality such as Hitler or Stalin leads it. Second, there are genocides that occur out of decades of societal events and processes that gradually gain traction in the political climate of the country without any single or major tyrannical person leading it—although, of course, someone does indeed become at least a titular leader.

The human personality relationship with a belief in God is a bifurcated one. On the one hand we find most people who rely on their faith in God as a truth and not as assumption, and on the other hand there are those who rely only on what they consider tangible reality without any belief in a supernatural existence of God whatsoever. Of course there are many in-between shades of faith and/or belief in God, but for all intents and purposes we will consider these two.

Sigmund Freud in his exegesis on religion (1959/1907, 1961/1927) focused mostly on what he considered to be the illusion responsible for religious belief, especially the belief in a super/supra-natural God. He theorized that belief in God was a first step in a general attempt to manage the unfeeling nature of nature, or as Paul Bloom (2005) puts it, “the terrors of nature.” In a specific way, Freud pointed to man’s fate of ultimate death as a particularly onerous contemplation, and posited that religious faith was conceived by man to approach this harsh truth. In essence he saw it as a compensatory balm for this particular anticipatory (and unfair) existential suffering of human-kind.

What was once a biological structure and eventually through evolution ultimately became vestigial, also became transformed or even transmogrified into the human psyche. It was not that this anatomical vestige became the brain. Rather, it was that certain of its functions were then assumed by the brain. From such transmutation of function or transmogrification, it is proposed that man was then able to identify God.

With the disappearance of the tail in the evolutionary process along with the gradual appearance of greater cortical development, the thinking brain became also an ontological one. That is, Homo sapien of course retained its animal concern with survival but added to its existential awareness, that of an expectation and tension about death. And from this knowledge and expectation of the certainty of one’s ultimate demise was born what became known as “ontological anxiety,” defined as an existential concern regarding one’s “being” (Kellerman, 2009a)—a concept philosophically discussed by Kierkegaard and also psychologically elaborated by Rollo May (1950, 1983).

Man’s either real or imagined encounter with God also, and very frequently, relates to man’s corresponding functioning in, and basic attraction to groups. How groups integrate individuals into their prevailing norms and ideology will now be examined. It is basically an analysis of the group mind, as an equivalent to the so-called group mind of animals in which individuals of the group through evolution have an enhanced ability to survive, be safe, and therefore to be more secure as a direct result of group membership.