“There is, so to speak, a “cold” kind of evil and a “hot” kind of evil.
The hot evil is carried, no matter whether by demons or by human beings, by an unquenched emotional affect underneath, like a suffocated fire burning and smoldering all the time, and this kind of repressed affect is highly infectious. It can be seen in cases of explosions or destructiveness in families or nations, or in other social situations.
The infectiousness of affect, or emotion, is a great danger and is responsible for a tremendous amount of evil. If, for instance, you tried to discuss the race problem with an American before an election, you could go far before you met somebody who could treat it with an absolutely objective attitude. Most people get emotional. As soon as somebody gets emotional, it does not matter which side that person takes; the fire has taken hold and the situation is dangerous.
That is one example, but there are such examples everywhere. Emotion gets the person from underneath.
The affect gets him, and objectiveness and the human attitude goes. The best way of knowing within oneself whether one has been caught is to see if one has kept one’s sense of humor; if that has disappeared, one can be sure that an emotional fire has caught one somewhere, and then one is in danger of falling for the principle of evil….”
Marie Louise von Franz, SHADOW AND EVIL IN FAIRY TALES, chapter 9 – Hot evil, p.158
