Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes - Andrew Lobaczewski

tivities professionally, it is more practical to avoid liberating

their aggressions; one could even consider such generally eld-

erly people too old for therapy.

Transforming the world view of people living in countries

with normal man’s systems proves a more troublesome task,

since they are much more egotistically attached to the imagin-

ings suggested to them since childhood, making it more diffi-

cult for them to reconcile themselves with the fact that there are

matters which their natural conceptual system cannot assimi-

286

THERAPY OF THE WORLD

late. They also lack the specific experience available to people

who have lived under pathocratic rule for years. We must

therefore expect resistance and attack on the part of people

protecting their livelihoods and positions as well as defending

their personalities from a vexatious disintegration. Refraining

from such estrangement, we have to count on the accordant

reactions of the majority.

The acceptance of such psychotherapy will be different in

countries where societies of normal people have already been

created, offering solid resistance to pathocratic rule. Many

years of experience, practical familiarity with the phenomenon,

and psychological immunization there long ago produced fer-

tile ground for sowing the seeds of objective truth and natural-

istic comprehension. An explanation of the essence of macro-

social phenomenon will be treated like delayed psychotherapy

which should regrettably have been served much earlier (that

would have enabled the patient to avoid many errors) but is

nevertheless useful because it provides order and relaxation

and permits subsequent reasoned action. Such data, accepted

via a rather painful process there, will be associated with the

experience already possessed. There will be no egoistically or

egotistically inspired protests in that world. The value of an

objective view will be appreciated much more rapidly, since it

ensures a basis for reasoned activity. Soon thereafter, the feel-

ing of realism in apprehending the surrounding world, followed

by a sense of humor, would begin to compensate these people

for the experience they have survived, namely the disintegra-

tion of their human personalities caused by such therapy.

This disintegration of the prior world view structure will

create a temporary feeling of an unpleasant void. Therapists

well know the consequent responsibility of filling this void as

quickly as possible with material more credible and trustworthy

than the contents which were disabused, thus helping to avoid

primitive methods of personality reintegration. In practice, it is

best to minimize patient anxiety by making advance promises

that appropriately objectified material will be furnished in the

form of truthful data. This promise must then be kept, partially

anticipating the appearance of disintegrative states. I have suc-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

287

cessfully tested this technique on individual patients and would

advise its implementation on a mass scale as safe and effective.

For the people who have already developed natural psycho-

logical immunity, their increased resistance to the pathocracy’s

destructive influence upon their personalities, gained due to a

consciousness of pathocracy’s essence, may be of lesser sig-

nificance, but still not without value, since it leads to an ame-

liorated immunization quality at a less burdensome cost in

terms of nervous tension. However, for those hesitant people

who constitute the part of well-adjusted members of the new

middle class, immunizing activities furnished by an awareness

of the pathological nature of the phenomenon may tip their

attitudinal scale in the direction of decency.

The second key aspect of such operations that should be

considered is the influence of such enlightening behavior upon

the personalities of the pathocrats themselves.

In the course of individual psychotherapy, we tend to avoid

making patients aware of permanent aberrations, especially

when we have reason to believe that they are conditioned by

hereditary factors. Psychotherapists, however, are guided by

the consciousness of this condition’s existence in their decision

making. Only in the case of the results of slight brain-tissue

lesions do we decide to make the patient aware of this, so as to

help him elaborate a better tolerance of his difficulties and to

abrogate unnecessary fears. Regarding psychopathic individu-

als, we treat their deviations by means of tactful allusive lan-

guage, bearing in mind that they have a kind of self-

knowledge, and we proceed with the techniques of behavior

modification to correct their personalities, keeping the interests

of society in mind as well.

As far as operations on the macrosocial scale, it will of

course not be feasible to retain these latter cautious tactics of

activity. Traumatizing the pathocrats will be unavoidable to a

certain extent, and even intentional and morally justified in the

interests of peace on earth. Similarly, however, our attitude

must be defined by an acceptance of biological and psycho-

logical facts; renouncing any morally or emotionally charged

interpretation of their psychological deviations. In undertaking

such work, we must consider the good of society to be para-

288

THERAPY OF THE WORLD

mount; nevertheless, we must not abandon our psychotherapeu-

tic attitude and refrain from punishing those whose guilt we are

unable to evaluate. Should we forget this, we would increase

the risk of their uncontrolled reaction, which could bring about

a world catastrophe.

At the same time, we should not nourish exaggerated fears,

for example, that such public enlightenment activities will pro-

voke overly dramatic reactions among pathocrats, e.g. a wave

of cruelty or suicide. No! Those individuals described as essen-

tial psychopaths, in addition to many other carriers of related

hereditary anomalies, have since childhood elaborated a feeling

of being psychologically different from others. Revealing this

awareness to them is less traumatizing than, for instance, sug-

gesting psychological abnormality to a normal person. The ease

with which they repress uncomfortable material from their field

of consciousness will protect them from violent reactions.

What can they do if no ideology can be used as a mask any

more? Once the essence of the phenomenon has been scientifi-

cally unmasked, the psychological result is that they then feel

their historical role to have reached the end. Their work fur-

thermore takes on some historically creative meaning, if the

world of normal people offers them conciliation upon unprece-

dented advantageous conditions. This will cause overall demo-

bilization of the pathocracy, especially in those countries

where, practically speaking, the support of an ideology has

already been lost. This internal demobilization they fear so

much constitutes the second important goal.

A crucial condition and a complement of therapeutic work

must be forgiveness for the pathocrats as derived from under-

standing, both of them and of the signs of the times. This must

be effected by means of correspondingly amended law based

on comprehension of man and of the processes of the genesis

of evil operating within societies, which will counteract such

processes in a causative manner and supersede the former “pe-

nal” law. Forecasting the creation of such law must not be

treated merely as a psychotherapeutic promise; it must be sci-

entifically prepared and thereupon effected.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

289

Forgiveness

The contemporary evolution of legal concepts and democ-

ratic social morality is geared toward dismantling the old tradi-

tions of maintaining law and order by means of punitive re-

pression. Many countries have abandoned capital punishment,

disturbed by its genocidal abuses during the last world war.

Other punishments and the methods of their execution have

also been mitigated, taking psychological motivation and the

circumstances of the crime into account. The conscience of the

civilized nations protests against the Roman principle Dura lex

sed lex, and, at the same time, psychologists discern the possi-

bility that many presently unbalanced people can revert to

normal social life thanks to appropriate pedagogical measures;

practice confirms it only partially, however.

The reason is that mitigating the law has not been balanced

with the corresponding methods of stifling the processes of the

genesis of evil as based upon its comprehension . This pro-

vokes a crisis in the area of societies’ anti-crime protection and

makes it easier for pathocratic circles to utilize terrorism in

order to realize their expansionist goals. Under such conditions,

many people feel that returning to the tradition of legal severity

is the only way to protect society from an excess of evil. Others

believe that such traditional behavior morally cripples us and

opens the door to irrevocable abuses. They therefore subsume

others’ life and health to humanistic values.

In order to emerge from this crisis, we must galvanize all

our efforts in a search for a new road, one which would both be

more humanitarian and would effectively protect defenseless

individuals and societies. Such a possibility exists and can be

implemented, based on an objective comprehension of the

genesis of evil.

In factual essence, the unrealistic tradition of a relationship

between a person’s “crime”, which no other person is in the

position to evaluate objectively, and his “punishment”, which

is rarely effective in reforming him, should be relegated to

history. The science of the causes of evil should strengthen

society’s moral discipline and have a prophylactic effect. Often

merely making a person aware that he was under the influence

of a pathological individual breaks the circle of destructiveness.

290

THERAPY OF THE WORLD

An appropriate psychotherapy should therefore be permanently

included in any measures to counteract evil. Unfortunately, if

someone is shooting at us, we must shoot back even better. At

the same time, however, we should bring back the law of for-

giveness, that old law of wise sovereigns. After all, it has pro-

found moral and psychological foundations and is more effec-

tive than punishment in some situations.

The codices of penal law foresee that the perpetrator of a

penal act who, at the time of his transgression, was limited in

his ability to discern the meaning of the act or to direct his own

behavior as a result of mental illness or some other psychologi-

cal deficiency, receives a lesser sentence to the appropriate

degree. If we should therefore consider the responsibility of

pathocrats in the light of such regulations and in light of what

we have already said about the motivations for their behavior,

we must then considerably mitigate the scope of justice within

the frame of existing regulations.

The above-mentioned legal regulations, which are more

modern in Europe than in the U.S.A., are rather outdated eve-

rywhere and insufficiently congruent with bio-psychological

reality. They are a compromise between traditional legal think-

ing and medical humanism. Furthermore, the legislators were

in no position to perceive macrosocial pathological phenomena

that dominate individuals and significantly limit their ability to

discern the meaning of their own behavior. Susceptible indi-

viduals are sucked in surreptitiously, since they are unaware of

the pathological quality of such a phenomenon. The specific

properties of these phenomena cause the selection of attitudes

to be decisively determined by unconscious factors, followed

by pressure from pathocratic rulers, who are none too fastidi-

ous as to their methods, not even with regard to their own ad-

herents. How should the degree of penal mitigation then judge

them fairly?

For instance, if essential psychopathy is virtually 100% pre-

dictive concerning attraction to and inclusion in pathocratic

activity, should a judgment recognize similar mitigation of

punishment? This should also be applied to other hereditary

anomalies to a lesser extent, since they too have proved to be

primary factors in the selection of attitudes.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

291

We should not fault anyone for having inherited some psy-

chological anomalies from his parents any more than we fault

someone in the case of physical or physiological anomalies

such as Daltonism. We should also stop blaming people who

succumbed to traumas and diseases, leaving brain tissue dam-

age behind, or those who become the object of inhuman peda-

gogical methods.

In the name of their good and that of society, we should use

force with regard to such people, sometimes including forced

psychotherapy, supervision, prevention, and care. Any concept

of blame or guilt would only make it more difficult to behave

in a way which is not only humanitarian and purposeful, but

more effective as well.

In dealing with a macrosocial phenomenon, particularly one

whose life is longer than an individual’s active life, its perma-

nent influence forces even normal people to adapt to a certain

degree. Are we, whose instincts and intelligence are normal

and, according to the criteria of our moral world view, in the

position to evaluate the guilt of these others for actions they