So when is the last time you seriously thought about murdering anyone?  If you are like me, then the answer is an unequivocal: Never ! ! !  Throughout out, I leave aside the issue of revenge, which is an extremely powerful motivating factor and which is conceptually tied to the belief (however mistaken, ultimately) that one has been wronged. 

Now the interesting question is this: Why have you never seriously thought about murdering anyone?  Is that you have been too busy with other things such as studying or parenting or getting in shape?  Surely you have been outraged by this or that person.  Surely, you find some people utterly despicable.  I know that both of these claims are true of me.  We could now play the philosopher’s game of “What is meant by seriously thinking about murdering someone?”  So let me give you a very weak notion of thinking about the matter seriously.  Have you ever looked at that incredibly sharp butcher knife in your kitchen drawer and so entertained the thought of murdering so-and-so that you shuddered at the very idea that this notion had been so vivid in your thinking?  If you are like me, the answer is still an unequivocal: Never ! ! ! 

Well, a most interesting consideration to raise at this point is that very nearly all serial killers (who are not motivated in the least by revenge) were victims of considerable and sustained child abuse.  And the mark of serial killers is that they can be as calm and as calculating about killing as the typical person can be about following directions or saving money—more so, often enough.  Vicious and sustained child abuse quite naturally results in the truncation of the affective sentiments.  This happens as a means of survival on the part of the child, since the very person who is doing the child so much harm is the very individual who is supposed to being caring for and protecting the child.  So when it comes to killing others, there aren’t any of the affective sentiments to serve as an impediment to committing such atrocious behavior.  (We should really say "serial murderers".  While every murder is a killing, not every killing is a murder.  The 5 year old child who kills her sibling by accident while playing with a loaded gun that she found most certainly did not murder her sibling.  It is much more difficult to commit a murder by accident, though in murdering someone, it is easy enough to make the mistake of killing the wrong person.)

In any case, the fact about serial kilklers to which I have drawn attention tells us something rather profound, namely that if a child is raised in a loving parental environment, then the child’s emotional and psychological development will pretty much make it very difficult for the desire to murder to obtain a purchase upon her or his life.  But if this is true, then there is in fact a non-trivial connection between not having the desire to murder and psychological wholesomeness. 

There is, of course, a straightforward sense in which people, as free moral agents, are free to murder.  But freedom admits of many levels.  It is equally true that I am free to eat dog meat, but the odds of me just waking one morning and exercising that freedom is about as close to zero as one get without actually being zero, precisely because I am so psychologically disposed not to consume dog meat (given my upbringing in Western culture).  It would in fact take an awful lot to get me to eat dog meat.  Obviously, if the choice is between eating dog meat or (say) seeing my child murdered, then I will surely manage to eat the dog meat.  The point, though, is that it would take something of great magnitude.

An analogous claim about exercising the freedom to murder human beings holds for persons who as children were raised in a loving parental environment.  It would take something of great magnitude before the desire to murder could obtain a purchase upon their lives. 

At first glance, it might seem that the rise of murder in the world counts against the argument.  I suspect, though, that it is the other way around, namely that this unfortunate statistic counts in favor of the argument.  This is because you can probably count on your one hand and not move a single finger the number of people who were moved to murder someone simply because murder is on the rise.  That is, people do not approach murdering others rather like people approach trying a new food or item: “Well, so many people are eating or buying such-n-such, I might as well give it a try”.

I have picked one kind of very horrendous wrongdoing, namely murder and I have pointed out that there is congruence between being psychological whole and not being moved to commit murder.  This strikes me as a very, very good thing.  It would be most disconcerting if human beings generally had to struggle mightily in order to refrain from committing murder.   On the one hand, it strikes me as implausible that there is a like congruence between psychological wholeness and refraining from all wrongdoings.  On the other, it is far from insignificant  that this congruence obtains between with respect to psychological wholeness and not wanting to murder.

But why does anyone murder?  There are, atlas, too many reasons.  Just so, let me say this.  Human beings are quite fragile; accordingly, psychological wholeness is more difficult to come by than we are inclined to suppose.  Nor does it sustain itself no matter what, as the Nazi doctors of the concentration camps so poignantly illustrate.  As to the first point, parenting is a task whose difficulty far surpasses the ease with which human beings can find themselves in the situation of being parents.   Finally, it is possible to be functional in the sense of exercising means-end rationality and not be psychologically whole.  Indeed, the serial killer is a paradigm example of just this reality. 

For the record, I have not argued that all people become murderers if, as children, they were victims of vicious and sustained child abuse.  That is clearly false. 

In Living Morally (1989), I employed the notion of "being favored".  That horse A is favored to win over horse B does not entail that A will win the race, but only that given the conditions that pertain to horse racing, there is reason to believe that horse A is more likely to win than horse B.   All sorts of unforeseen variables can bear upon which horse in fact wins.  Persons who as children were raised in a loving environment are favored to be psychologically whole.  In turn, they are favored to be such that the desire to murder cannot obtain a purchase upon their lives.  By contrast, people who as children were the victims of sustained and vicious abuse are disfavored in this regard.