Elliott Cohen asks in his article " Are Evil People Crazy,": "Is being evil really a mark of mental illness?" Cohen notes a sociopath's lack of remorse as an oft-cited symptom of mental illness: There is no question that Petiot would make any top ten list of evil people. But what causes the Triad? Do we choose to be evil, do outside forces make us evil, or is being evil an illness? While not all convicted serial killers demonstrate these behaviors, the Triad seems to predict anti-social tendencies. (Petiot, like Jeffrey Dahmer, was viciously cruel to animals). In combination, these childhood activities have become known as the "Macdonald Triad" and have often been associated with serial killers and other violent criminals. In 1963, New Zealand forensic psychiatrist John Marshall Macdonald published a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry called "The Threat to Kill." This paper described three behaviors - bedwetting past age 5, cruelty to animals, and the setting of fires - as "red flag" indicators of sociopathy and future episodic, aggressive behaviors. This article relates to Death in the City of Light
The Macdonald Triad and the Madness of Evil
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