Part 1 : Political Ponerology...Introduction...Some Indispensable Concepts

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY 

A science on the nature of evil 

adjusted for political purposes

by Andrew M. Lobaczewski

EDITOR’S PREFACE

“Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you.” 

---Miyamoto Musashi 

The book you hold in your hand may be the most important book you will ever read; in fact, it will be. No matter who you are, what your status in life, what your age or sex or nationality or ethnic background, you will, at some point in your life, feel the touch or relentless grip of the cold hand of Evil. Bad things happen to good people, that’s a fact. 

What is evil? Historically, the question of evil has been a theological one. Generations of theological apologists have written entire libraries of books in an attempt to certify the existence of a Good God that created an imperfect world. Saint Augustine distinguished between two forms of evil: “moral evil”, the evil humans do, by choice, knowing that they are doing wrong; and “natural evil”, the bad things that just happen - the storm, the flood, volcanic eruptions, fatal disease. 

And then, there is what Andrew Lobaczewski calls Macrosocial Evil: large scale evil that overtakes whole societies and nations, and has done so again and again since time immemorial. The history of mankind, when considered objectively, is a terrible thing. 

Death and destruction come to all, both rich and poor, free and slave, young and old, good and evil, with an arbitrariness and insouciance that, when contemplated even momentarily, can destroy a normal person’s ability to function. 

Over and over again, man has seen his fields and cattle laid waste by drought and disease, his loved ones tormented and decimated by illness or human cruelty, his life’s work reduced to nothing in an instant by events over which he has no control at all. 

The study of history through its various disciplines offers a view of mankind that is almost insupportable. The rapacious movements of hungry tribes, invading and conquering and destroying in the darkness of prehistory; the barbarian invaders of the civilized world during medieval times, the bloodbaths of the crusades of Catholic Europe against the infidels of the Middle East and then the “infidels” who were their own brothers: the stalking noonday terror of the Inquisition where martyrs quenched the flames with their blood. Then, there is the raging holocaust of modern genocide; wars, famine, and pestilence striding across the globe in hundred league boots; and never more frightening than today. 

All of these things produce an intolerable sense of indefensibility against what Mircea Eliade calls the Terror of History. 

There are those who will say that now this is all past; mankind has entered a new phase; science and technology have brought us to the brink of ending all this suffering. Many people believe that man is evolving; society is evolving; and that we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our environment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his Neocons have about 25 years to fight the Endless War against Terror. Anything that does not support this idea is reinterpreted or ignored. 

Science has given us many wonderful gifts: the space program, laser, television, penicillin, sulfa-drugs, and a host of other useful developments which should make our lives more tolerable and fruitful. However, we can easily see that this is not the case. It it could be said that never before has man been so precariously poised on the brink of such total destruction. 

On a personal level, our lives are steadily deteriorating. The air we breathe and the water we drink is polluted almost beyond endurance. Our foods are loaded with substances which contribute very little to nourishment and may, in fact, be injurious to our health. Stress and tension have become an accepted part of life and can be shown to have killed more people than the cigarettes that some people still smoke to relieve it. We swallow endless quantities of pills to wake up, go to sleep, get the job done, calm our nerves and make us feel good. The inhabitants of the earth spend more money on recreational drugs than they spend on housing, clothing, food, education or any other product or service. 

At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially. Crime increases faster than the population. Combined with wars, insurrections, and political purges, multiplied millions of people across the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions. 

And then, of course, drought, famine, plague and natural disasters still take an annual toll in lives and suffering. This, too, seems to be increasing. 

When man contemplates history, as it is, he is forced to realize that he is in the iron grip of an existence that seems to have no real care or concern for his pain and suffering. Over and over again, the same sufferings fall upon mankind multiplied millions upon millions of times over millennia. The totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing. I could write until the end of the world using oceans of ink and forests of paper and never fully convey this Terror. The beast of arbitrary calamity has always been with us. For as long as human hearts have pumped hot blood through their too-fragile bodies and glowed with the inexpressible sweetness of life and yearning for all that is good and right and loving, the sneering, stalking, drooling and scheming beast of unconscious evil has licked its lips in anticipation of its next feast of terror and suffering. Since the beginning of time, this mystery of the estate of man, this Curse of Cain has existed. And, since the Ancient of Days, the cry has been: My punishment is greater than I can bear! 

It is conjectured that, in ancient times, when man perceived this intolerable and incomprehensible condition in which he  found his existence, that he created cosmogonies to justify all the cruelties, aberrations, and tragedies of history. It is true that, man, as a rule and in general, is powerless against cosmic and geological catastrophes, and it has long been said that the average man can’t really do anything about military onslaughts, social injustice, personal and familial misfortunes, and a host of assaults against his existence too numerous to list. 

This is about to change. The book you hold in your hand is going to give you answers to many of the questions about Evil in our world. This book is not just about macrosocial evil, it is also about everyday evil, because, in a very real sense, the two are inseparable. The long term accumulation of everyday evil always and inevitably leads to Grand Systemic Evil that destroys more innocent people than any other phenomenon on this planet. 

The book you hold in your hands is also a survival guide. As I said above, this book will be the most important book you will ever read. Unless, of course, you are a psychopath. 

“What does psychopathy have to do with personal or social evil?” you may ask. 

Absolutely everything. Whether you know it or not, each and every day your life is touched by the effects of psychopathy on our world. You are about to learn that even if there isn’t much we can do about geological and cosmological catastrophe, there is a lot we can do about social and macrosocial evil, and the very first thing to do is to learn about it. In the case of psychopathy and its effects on our world, what you don’t know definitely can and will hurt you. 

Nowadays the word “psychopath” generally evokes images of the barely restrained - yet surprisingly urbane - mad-dog serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, of Silence of the Lambs fame. I will admit that this was the image that came to my mind whenever I heard the word; almost, that is. The big difference was that I never thought of a psychopath as possibly being so cultured or so capable of passing as “normal”. But I was wrong, and I was to learn this lesson quite painfully by direct experience. The exact details are chronicled elsewhere; what is important is that this experience was probably one of the most painful and instructive episodes of my life, and it enabled me to overcome a block in my awareness of the world around me and those who inhabit it. 

Regarding blocks to awareness, I need to state for the record that I have spent 30 years studying psychology, history, culture, religion, myth and the so-called paranormal 1 . I also have worked for many years with hypnotherapy - which gave me a very good mechanical knowledge of how the mind/brain of the human being operates at very deep levels. But even so, I was still operating with certain beliefs firmly in place that were shattered by my research into psychopathy. I realized that there was a certain set of ideas that I held about human beings that were sacrosanct – and false. I even wrote about this once in the following way: 

1 I have never received any academic degrees, so I am not a “professional”, in that respect. 

…my work has shown me that the vast majority of people want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so! With the majority of people having this internal desire, why the Hell isn't it happening? 

I was naïve, I admit. There were many things I did not know that I have learned since I penned those words. But even at that time I was aware of how our own minds can be used to deceive us. 

Now, what beliefs did I hold that made me a victim of a psychopath? The first and most obvious one is that I truly believed that deep inside, all people are basically “good” and that they “want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so….” 

As it happens, this is not true as I - and everyone involved in our research group - learned to our sorrow, as they say. But we also learned to our edification. In order to come to some understanding of exactly what kind of human being could do the things that were done to me (and others close to me), and why they might be motivated - even driven - to behave this way, we began to research the psychology literature for clues because we needed to understand for our own peace of mind. 

If there is a psychological theory that can explain vicious and harmful behavior, it helps very much for the victim of such acts to have this information so that they do not have to spend all their time feeling hurt or angry. And certainly, if there is a psychological theory that helps a person to find what kind of words or deeds can bridge the chasm between people, to heal misunderstandings, that is also a worthy goal. It was from such a perspective that we began our extensive work on the subjects of narcissism, which then led to the study of psychopathy. 

Of course, we didn’t start out with such any such “diagnosis” or label for what we were witnessing. We started out with observations and searched the literature for clues, for profiles, for anything that would help us to understand the inner world of a human being - actually a group of human beings - who seemed to be utterly depraved and unlike anything we had ever encountered before. We found that this kind of human is all too common, and that, according to some of the latest research, they cause more damage in human society than any other single so-called “mental illness”. Martha Stout, who has worked extensively with victims of psychopaths, writes: 

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. 

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fool. 

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. 

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. 

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. 

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. 

How will you live your life? 

What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? 

The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...] 

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. 

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...] 

Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population.... 

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered “alarmingly high,” is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality. 

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth. 

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. 

We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of non-violent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense. 

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. 

Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. 

Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers. 

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. 

What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic  murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. 

What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions. 2 

2 Stout, Martha: The Sociopath Next Door, Broadway. 2005 

We did not have the advantage of Dr. Stout’s book at the beginning of our research project. We did, of course, have Robert Hare and Hervey Cleckley and Guggenbuhl-Craig and others. But they were only approaching the subject of the possibly large numbers of psychopaths that live among us who never get caught breaking laws, who don’t murder – or if they do, they don’t get caught – and who still do untold damage to the lives of family, acquaintances, and strangers. 

Most mental health experts, for a very long time, have operated on the premise that psychopaths come from impoverished backgrounds and have experienced abuse of one sort or another in childhood, so it is easy to spot them, or at least, they certainly don’t move in society except as interlopers. This idea seems to be coming under some serious revision lately. As Lobaczewski points out in this book, there is some confusion between Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy. As Robert Hare points out, yes, there are many psychopaths who are also “anti-socials”, but there seem to be far more of them that would never be classified as anti-social or sociopathic! In other words, they can be doctors, lawyers, judges, policemen, congressmen, presidents of corporations that rob from the poor to give to the rich, and even presidents. 

In a recent paper, it is suggested that psychopathy may exist in ordinary society in even greater numbers than anyone has thus far considered: 

Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather encompasses such personality characteristics as manipulativeness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991). Our own examination of the prevalence of psychopathy within a university population suggested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100 females). 

As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation-seeking, Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain. With respect to their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described. 

The present investigation sought to answer some basic questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non forensic settings... In so doing we have returned to Cleckley’s (1941) original emphasis on psychopathy as a personality style not only among criminals, but also among successful individuals within the community. 

What is clear from our findings is that (a) psychopathy measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics; (b) psychopathy does occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and (c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ... 

Clearly, where much more work is needed is in understanding what factors differentiate the abiding (although perhaps not moral-abiding) psychopath from the law-breaking psychopath; such research surely needs to make greater use of non forensic samples than has been customary in the past. 3 

3 Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova: (2001) “Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach” in Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5), 425-441. 

Lobaczewski discusses the fact that there are different types of psychopaths. One type, in particular, is the most deadly of all: the Essential Psychopath. He doesn’t give us a “checklist” but rather discusses what is inside the psychopath. His description meshes very well with items in the paper quoted above. 

Martha Stout also discusses the fact that psychopaths, like anyone else, are born with different basic likes and dislikes and desires, which is why some of them are doctors and presidents and others are petty thieves or rapists. 

“Likeable”, “Charming”, “Intelligent”, “Alert”, “Impressive”, “Confidence-inspiring,” and “A great success with the ladies”. This is how Hervey Cleckley described most of his subjects in The Mask of Sanity. It seems that, in spite of the fact that their actions prove them to be “irresponsible” and “self destructive”, psychopaths seem to have in abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons. The smooth self assurance acts as an almost supernatural magnet to normal people who have to read self-help books or go to counseling to be able to interact with others in an untroubled way. The psychopath, on the contrary, never has any neuroses, no self doubts, never experiences angst, and is what “normal” people seek to be. What’s more, even if they aren’t that attractive, they are “babe magnets”. 

Cleckley's seminal hypothesis is that the psychopath suffers from profound and incurable affective deficit. If he really feels anything at all, they are emotions of only the shallowest kind. He is able to do whatever he wants, based on whatever whim strikes him, because consequences that would fill the ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment simply do not affect the psychopath at all. What to others would be a horror or a disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience. 

Cleckley posits that psychopathy is quite common in the community at large. His cases include examples of psychopaths who generally function normally in the community as businessmen, doctors, and even psychiatrists. Nowadays, some of the more astute researchers see criminal psychopathy - often referred to as anti-social personality disorder - as an extreme of a particular personality type. I think it is more helpful to characterize criminal psychopaths as “unsuccessful psychopaths”. 

One researcher, Alan Harrington, goes so far as to say that the psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life. 

Certainly, there have always been shysters and crooks, but past concern was focused on ferreting out incompetents rather than psychopaths. Unfortunately, all that has changed. We now need to fear the super-sophisticated modern crook who does know what he is doing ... and does it so well that no one else knows. Yes, psychopaths love the business world. 

Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into their fears and desires, and maneuvered them as he wished. Such a man might not, after all, be doomed to a life of scrapes and escapades ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of murdering others, he might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions rather than their bodies. 

…The consequences to the average citizen from business crimes are staggering. As criminologist Georgette Bennett says, “They account for nearly 30% of case filings in U.S. District Courts - more than any other category of crime. The combined burglary, mugging and other property losses induced by the country’s street punks come to about $4 billion a year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our corporate boardrooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out of between $40 and $200 billion a year.” 

Concern here is that the costume for the new masked sanity of a psychopath is just as likely to be a three-piece suit as a ski mask and a gun. As Harrington says, “We also have the psychopath in respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a loser.” He quotes William Krasner as saying, “They - psychopath and part psychopath - do well in the more unscrupulous types of sales work, because they take such delight in ‘putting it over on them’, getting away with it - and have so little conscience about defrauding their customers.” Our society is fast becoming more materialistic, and success at any cost is the credo of many businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in this kind of environment and is seen as a business “hero”. 4 

4 Ken Magid and Carole McKelvey: The Psychopaths Favourite Playground:Business Relationships. 

The study of “ambulatory” psychopaths - what we call “The Garden Variety Psychopath” - has, however, hardly begun. Very little is known about subcriminal psychopathy. Some researchers have begun to seriously consider the idea that it is important to study psychopathy not as a pathological category but as a general personality trait in the community at large. In other words, psychopathy is being recognized as a more or less a different type of human. 

Hervey Cleckly actually comes very close to suggesting that psychopaths are human in every respect - but that they lack a soul. This lack of “soul quality” makes them very efficient “machines”. They can write scholarly works, imitate the words of emotion, but over time, it becomes clear that their words do not match their actions. They are the type of person who can claim that they are devastated by grief who then attend a party “to forget”. The problem is: they really do forget. 

Being very efficient machines, like a computer, they are able to execute very complex routines designed to elicit from others support for what they want. In this way, many psychopaths are able to reach very high positions in life. It is only over time that their associates become aware of the fact that their climb up the ladder of success is predicated on violating the rights of others. “Even when they are indifferent to the rights of their associates, they are often able to inspire feelings of trust and confidence.” 

The psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche, no need for change. 

Andrew Lobaczewski addresses the problem of the psychopath and their extremely significant contribution to our macro social evils, their ability to act as the éminence grise behind the very structure of our society. It is very important to keep in mind that this influence comes from a relatively small segment of humanity. The other 90-some percent of human beings are not psychopaths. 

But that 90-some percent of normal people know that something is wrong! They just can’t quite identify it; can’t quite put their finger on it; and because they can’t, they tend to think that there is nothing they can do about it, or maybe it is just God punishing people. 

What is actually the case is that when that 90-some percent of human beings fall into a certain state, as Lobaczewski will describe, the psychopaths, like a virulent pathogen in a body, strike at the weaknesses, and the entire society is plunged into conditions that always and inevitably lead to horror and tragedy on a very large scale. The movie, 

The Matrix, touched a deep chord in society because it exemplified this mechanistic trap in which so many people find their lives enmeshed, and from which they are unable to extricate themselves because they believe that everyone around them who “looks human” is, in fact, just like them - emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise. 

To give an example of how psychopaths can directly affect society at large: the “legal argument” as explicated by Robert Canup in his work on the Socially Adept Psychopath. The legal argument seems to be at the foundation of our society. We believe that the legal argument is an advanced system of justice. This is a very cunning trick that has been foisted on normal people by psychopaths in order to have an advantage over them. Just think about it for a moment: the legal argument amounts to little more than the one who is the slickest at using the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who is believed. Because this “legal argument” system has been slowly installed as part of our culture, when it invades our personal lives, we normally do not recognize it immediately. But here’s how it works. 

Human beings have been accustomed to assume that other human beings are - at the very least - trying to “do right” and “be good” and fair and honest. And so, very often, we do not take the time to use due diligence in order to determine if a person who has entered our life is, in fact, a “good person”. When a conflict ensues, we automatically fall into the legal argument assumption that in any conflict, one side is partly right one way, and the other is partly right the other, and that we can form opinions about which side is mostly right or wrong. Because of our exposure to the “legal argument” norms, when any dispute arises, we automatically think that the truth will lie somewhere between two extremes. In this case, application of a little mathematical logic to the problem of the legal argument might be helpful.

Let us assume that in a dispute, one side is innocent, honest, and tells the truth. It is obvious that lying does an innocent person no good; what lie can he tell? If he is innocent, the only lie he can tell is to falsely confess “I did it”. But lying is nothing but good for the liar. He can declare that “I didn’t do it”, and accuse another of doing it, all the while the innocent person he has accused is saying “I didn’t do it” and is actually telling the truth. 

The truth, when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad, especially if the innocent person is honest and admits his mistakes. 

The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in the hands of liars - psychopaths. Even the simple act of giving testimony under oath is a useless farce. If a person is a liar, swearing an oath means nothing to that person. However, swearing an oath acts strongly on a serious, truthful witness. Again, the advantage is placed on the side of the liar. 

It has often been noted that psychopaths have a distinct advantage over human beings with conscience and feelings because the psychopath does not have conscience and feelings. What seems to be so is that conscience and feelings are related to the abstract concepts of “future” and “others”. It is “spatiotemporal”. We can feel fear, sympathy, empathy, sadness, and so on because we can imagine in an abstract way, the future based on our own experiences in the past, or even just “concepts of experiences” in myriad variations. We can “see ourselves” in them even though they are “out there” and this evokes feelings in us. We can’t do something hurtful because we can imagine it being done to us and how it would feel. In other words, we can not only identify with others spatially - so to say - but also temporally - in time. 

The psychopath does not seem to have this capacity.  

They are unable to “imagine” in the sense of being able to really connect to images in a direct “self connecting to another self” sort of way. 

Oh, indeed, they can imitate feelings, but the only real feelings they seem to have - the thing that drives them and causes them to act out different dramas for the effect - is a sort of “predatorial hunger” for what they want. That is to say, they “feel” need/want as love, and not having their needs/wants met is described by them as “not being loved”. What is more, this “need/want” perspective posits that only the “hunger” of the psychopath is valid, and anything, and everything “out there”, outside of the psychopath, is not real except insofar as it has the capability of being assimilated to the psychopath as a sort of “food”. “Can it be used or can it provide something?” is the only issue about which the psychopath seems to be concerned. All else - all activity - is subsumed to this drive. 

In short, the psychopath is a predator. If we think about the interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea of what is behind the “mask of sanity” of the psychopath. Just as an animal predator will adopt all kinds of stealthy functions in order to stalk their prey, cut them out of the herd, get close to them, and reduce their resistance, so does the psychopath construct all kinds of elaborate camouflage composed of words and appearances - lies and manipulations - in order to “assimilate” their prey. 

This leads us to an important question: what does the psychopath really get from their victims? It’s easy to see what they are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances, such as love relationships or faked friendships, it is not so easy to see what the psychopath is after. Without wandering too far afield into spiritual speculations - a problem Cleckley also faced - we can only say that it seems to be that the psychopath enjoys making others suffer. Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people happy, or doing things that make other people smile, the psychopath enjoys the exact opposite. 

Anyone who has ever observed a cat playing with a mouse before killing and eating it has probably explained to themselves that the cat is just “entertained” by the antics of the  mouse and is unable to conceive of the terror and pain being experienced by the mouse. The cat, therefore, is innocent of any evil intent. The mouse dies, the cat is fed, and that is nature. Psychopaths don’t generally eat their victims. 

Yes, in extreme cases of psychopathy, the entire cat and mouse dynamic is carried out. Cannibalism has a long history wherein it was assumed that certain powers of the victim could be assimilated by eating some particular part of them. But in ordinary life, psychopaths don’t normally go all the way, so to say. This causes us to look at the cat and mouse scenario again with different eyes. Now we ask: is it too simplistic to think that the innocent cat is merely entertained by the mouse running about and frantically trying to escape? Is there something more to this dynamic than meets the eye? Is there something more than being “entertained” by the antics of the mouse trying to flee? After all, in terms of evolution, why would such behavior be hard-wired into the cat? Is the mouse tastier because of the chemicals of fear that flood his little body? Is a mouse frozen with terror more of a “gourmet” meal? 

This suggests that we ought to revisit our ideas about psychopaths with a slightly different perspective. One thing we do know is this: many people who experience interactions with psychopaths and narcissists report feeling “drained” and confused and often subsequently experience deteriorating health. Does this mean that part of the dynamic, part of the explanation for why psychopaths will pursue “love relationships” and “friendships” that ostensibly can result in no observable material gain, is because there is an actual energy consumption? 

We do not know the answer to this question. We observe, we theorize, we speculate and hypothesize. But in the end, only the individual victim can determine what they have lost in the dynamic - and it is often far more than material goods. In a certain sense, it seems that psychopaths are soul eaters or “Psychophagic”. 

In the past several years, there are many more psychologists and psychiatrists and other mental health workers beginning to look at these issues in new ways in response to the questions about the state of our world and the possibility that there is  some essential difference between such individuals as George W. Bush and many so-called Neocons, and the rest of us. 

Dr. Stout’s book has one of the longest explanations as to why none of her examples resemble any actual persons that I have ever read. And then, in a very early chapter, she describes a “composite” case where the subject spent his childhood blowing up frogs with fire-crackers. It is widely known that George W. Bush did this, so one naturally wonders... 

In any event, even without Dr. Stout’s work, at the time we were studying the matter, we realized that what we were learning was very important to everyone because as the data was assembled, we saw that the clues, the profiles, revealed that the issues we were facing were faced by everyone at one time or another, to one extent or another. We also began to realize that the profiles that emerged also describe rather accurately many individuals who seek positions of power in fields of authority, most particularly politics and commerce. That’s really not so surprising an idea, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to us until we saw the patterns and recognized them in the behaviors of numerous historical figures and, lately, including George W. Bush and members of his administration. 

Current day statistics tell us that there are more psychologically sick people than healthy ones. If you take a sampling of individuals in any given field, you are likely to find that a significant number of them display pathological symptoms to one extent or another. Politics is no exception, and, by its very nature, would tend to attract more of the pathological “dominator types” than other fields. That is only logical, and we began to realize that it was not only logical, it was horrifyingly accurate; horrifying because pathology among people in power can have disastrous effects on all of the people under the control of such pathological individuals. And so, we decided to write about this subject and publish it on the Internet. 

As the material went up, letters from our readers began to come in thanking us for putting a name to what was happening to them in their personal lives as well as helping them to understand what was happening in a world that seems to have gone completely mad. We began to think that it was an epidemic, and, in a certain sense, we were right. If an individual with a highly contagious illness works in a job that puts them in contact with the public, an epidemic is the result. In the same way, if an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic. Our ideas along this line were soon to receive confirmation from an unexpected source: Andrew Lobaczewski, the author of the book you are about to read. I received an email as follows: 

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen. 

I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy by my computer. You are doing a most important and valuable work for the future of nations.[…] 

I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I took part in a secret investigation of the real nature and psychopathology of the macro-social phenomenon called “Communism”. The other researchers were the scientists of the previous generation who are now passed away. 

The profound study of the nature of psychopathy, which played the essential and inspirational part in this macro-social psychopathologic phenomenon, and distinguishing it from other mental anomalies, appeared to be the necessary preparation for understanding the entire nature of the phenomenon. 

The large part of the work, you are doing now, was done in those times. … 

I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific document, useful for your purposes. It is my book “Political Ponerology – A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes”. You may also find copy of this book in the Library of Congress and in some university and public libraries in the USA. 

Be so kind and contact me so that I may mail a copy to you. 

Very truly yours! 

Andrew M. Lobaczewski 

I promptly wrote a reply saying yes, I would very much like to read his book. A couple of weeks later the manuscript arrived in the mail. 

As I read, I realized that what I was holding in my hand was essentially a chronicle of a descent into hell, transformation, and triumphant return to the world with knowledge of that hell that was priceless for the rest of us, particularly in this day and time when it seems evident that a similar hell is enveloping the planet. The risks that were taken by the group of scientists that did the research on which this book is based are beyond the comprehension of most of us. 

Many of them were young, just starting in their careers when the Nazis began to stride in their hundred league jackboots across Europe. These researchers lived through that, and then when the Nazis were driven out and replaced by the Communists under the heel of Stalin, they faced years of oppression the likes of which those of us today who are choosing to take a stand against the Bush Reich cannot even imagine. But, based on the syndrome that describes the onset of the disease, it seems that the United States, in particular, and perhaps the entire world, will soon enter into “bad times” of such horror and despair that the Holocaust of World War II will seem like just a practice run. 

And so, since they were there, and they lived through it and brought back information to the rest of us, it may well save our lives to have a map to guide us in the falling darkness. 

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD 

In presenting my honored readers with this volume, which I generally worked on during the early hours before leaving to make a difficult living, I would first like to apologize for the defects which are the result of anomalous circumstances. I readily admit that these lacunae should be filled, time consuming as that may be, because the facts on which this book are based are urgently needed; through no fault of the author’s, these data have come too late. 

The reader is entitled to an explanation of the long history and circumstances under which this work was compiled, not just of the content itself. This is, in fact, the third manuscript I have created on this same subject. I threw the first manuscript into a central-heating furnace, having been warned just in time about an official search, which took place minutes later. I sent the second draft to a Church dignitary at the Vatican by means of an American tourist and was absolutely unable to obtain any kind of information about the fate of the parcel once it was left with him. 

This long history of subject-matter elaboration made work on the third version even more laborious. Prior paragraphs and former phrases from one or both of the first drafts haunt the writer’s mind and make proper planning of the content more difficult. 

The two lost drafts were written in very convoluted language for the benefit of specialists with the necessary background, particularly in the field of psychopathology. The irretrievable disappearance of the second version also meant the loss of the overwhelming majority of statistical data and facts which would have been so valuable and conclusive for specialists in the field. Several analyses of individual cases were also lost. 

The present version contains only such statistical data that had been memorized due to frequent use, or that could be reconstructed with satisfactory precision. I also added those data, particularly the more accessible ones from the field of psychopathology, which I considered essential in presenting this subject to readers with a good general education, and especially to representatives of the social and political sciences and to politicians. I also nurse the hope that this work may reach a wider audience and make available some useful scientific data which may serve as a basis for comprehension of the contemporary world and its history. It may also make it easier for readers to understand themselves, their neighbors, and other nations of the world. 

Who produced the knowledge and performed the work summarized within the pages of this book? It was a joint endeavor consisting of not only my efforts, but also representing the results of many researchers, some of them not known to the author. The situational genesis of this book makes it virtually impossible to separate the accomplishments and give proper credit to every individual for his or her efforts. 

I worked in Poland far away from active political and cultural centers for many years. That is where I undertook a series of detailed tests and observations which were to be combined with the resulting generalizations of various other experimenters in order to produce an overall introduction for an understanding of the macrosocial phenomenon surrounding us. The name of the person who was expected to produce the final synthesis was a secret, as was understandable and necessary given the time and the situation. I would very occasionally receive anonymous summaries of the results of tests made by other researchers in Poland and Hungary; a few data were published, as they raised no suspicions that a specialized work was being compiled, and these data could still be located today. 

The expected synthesis of this research did not occur. All of my contacts became inoperative as a result of the wave of post- Stalin repression and secret arrests of researchers in the early sixties. The remaining scientific data in my possession were very incomplete, albeit priceless in value. It took many years of lonely work to weld these fragments into a coherent whole, filling the lacunae with my own experience and research. 

My research on essential psychopathy and its exceptional role in the macrosocial phenomenon, was conducted concurrently with, or shortly after, that of others. Their conclusions reached me later and confirmed my own. The most characteristic item in my work is the general concept for a new scientific discipline named “ponerology” . The reader will also find other fragments of information based on my own research. I also effected an overall synthesis to the best of my ability. 

As the author of the final work, I hereby express my deep respect for all those who initiated the research and continued to conduct it at the risk of their careers, health and lives. I pay homage to those who paid the price through suffering or death. May this work constitute some compensation for their sacrifices, regardless of where they may be today. Times more conducive to an understanding of this material may recall their names, both those which I never knew and those I have since forgotten. 

New York, N.Y. August 1984

PREFACE TO THE RED PILL PRESS EDITION 

Twenty years have passed since the writing of this book. I became a very old man. One day, my computer put me in contact with the Scientists of the Quantum Future Group who convinced me that the time had matured for my book to become useful and to serve the future of humanity. They took the trouble of publishing it. 

The passing of these last twenty years has been fraught with political occurrences. Our world has changed in essential ways due to the natural laws of the phenomenon described in this book. Knowledge has increased dramatically thanks to the efforts of the people of good will. Nonetheless, our world is not yet restored to good health; and the remainders of the great disease are still active. The illness has reappeared connected to another ideology. The laws of the genesis of evil are working in millions of individual cases of individuals and families. The political phenomena threatening peace are confronted by military force. The small-scale occurrences are condemned or restrained by the word of moral science. The result is that great efforts of the past, undertaken without the support of objective natural knowledge about the very nature of evil, have been insufficient and dangerous. All these efforts have been made without taking into account that great maxim of medicine that serves as a motto in this book: Ignota nulla curatio morbid. * The end of Communist subjugation has come at a high price, and those nations that now think they are free will soon find they are paying still. 

* Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand.

The question must be asked: why was this work, produced by eminent researchers and the author for just this purpose – to prevent the spread of the disease of macrosocial evil, not able to perform its function? 

This is a long story. 

I had been recognized as the bearer of this “dangerous” science in Austria by a “friendly” physician who then was revealed to be an agent of Communist Secret Services. All the Red nodes and networks in New York were mobilized to organize a counteraction against the information contained in this book being made publicly and widely available. It was terrible to learn that the overt system of suppression I had so recently escaped was just as prevalent, though more covert, in the United States. It was demoralizing to see how the system of conscious and unconscious pawns worked; to watch people who trusted their conscious “friends” – unknown to them as Communist agents - and performed the insinuated activities against me with such patriotic zeal. As a result of these activities, I was refused any assistance, and to survive, I had to take work as a labourer when already of an age to retire. My health collapsed and two years were lost. 

I learned also that I was not the first such emissary who had come to America bringing similar knowledge; I was rather the third one; the other two had been similarly dealt with. 

In spite of all these circumstances, I persevered and the book was finally written in 1984 and carefully translated into English. It was esteemed by those who read it as being “very informative”, but it was not published. For the psychological editors it was “too political”; for political editors, it contained too much psychology and psychopathology. In some cases, the “editorial deadline was already closed”. Gradually, it became clear that the book did not pass the “insider’s” inspections. 

The time for this book’s major political value is not over; it’s scientific essence remains permanently valuable and inspirational. It may serve a great purpose in coming times, when properly adjusted and expanded. Further investigations in these areas may yield a new understanding of human problems that  have plagued humanity for millennia. Ponerology may buttress the centuries old moral science a by a modern natural approach. Thus this work may contribute to progress toward a universal peace. 

That is the reason that I laboured to retype on my computer the whole already fading manuscript after twenty years. No essential changes have been introduced, and it is presented as it was written in New York all those many years ago. So let it remain as a document of a very dangerous work of eminent scientists and myself, undertaken in dark and tragic times under impossible conditions; still a piece of good science. 

The author’s desire is to place this work in the hands of those who are capable of taking this burden over and progressing with the theoretical research in ponerology, enrich it with detailed data to replace that which has been lost, and put it in praxis for various valuable purposes it may serve – for the good of individual people and for all nations. 

I am thankful to Madame Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Professor Arkadiusz Jadczyk, and their Friends for their heartfelt encouragement, understanding, and their labour in bringing my old work to be published. 

Andrew M. Lobaczewski. 

Rzeszów – Poland, December 2005

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

May the reader please imagine a very large hall in an old Gothic university building. Many of us gathered there early in our studies in order to listen to the lectures of outstanding philosophers and scientists. We were herded back there – under threat - the year before graduation in order to listen to the indoctrination lectures which recently had been introduced. 

Someone nobody knew appeared behind the lectern and informed us that he would now be the professor. His speech was fluent, but there was nothing scientific about it: he failed to distinguish between scientific and ordinary concepts and treated borderline imaginings as though it were wisdom that could not be doubted. For ninety minutes each week, he flooded us with naive, presumptuous para-logistics and a pathological view of human reality. We were treated with contempt and poorly controlled hatred. Since fun-poking could entail dreadful consequences, we had to listen attentively and with the utmost gravity. 

The grapevine soon discovered this person’s origins. He had come from a Cracow suburb and attended high school, although no one knew if he had graduated. Anyway, this was the first time he had crossed university portals, and as a professor, at that! 

“You can’t convince anyone this way!” we whispered to each other. “It’s actually propaganda directed against themselves.” But after such mind-torture, it took a long time for someone to break the silence. 

We studied ourselves, since we felt something strange had taken over our minds and something valuable was leaking away irretrievably. The world of psychological reality and moral values seemed suspended as if in a chilly fog. Our human feeling and student solidarity lost their meaning, as did patriotism and our old established criteria. So we asked each other, “are you going through this too”? Each of us experienced this worry about his own personality and future in his own way. Some of us answered the questions with silence. The depth of these experiences turned out to be different for each individual. 

We thus wondered how to protect ourselves from the results of this “indoctrination”. Teresa D. made the first suggestion: Let’s spend a weekend in the mountains. It worked. Pleasant company, a bit of joking, then exhaustion followed by deep sleep in a shelter, and our human personalities returned, albeit with a certain remnant. Time also proved to create a kind of psychological immunity, although not with everyone. Analyzing the psychopathic characteristics of the “professor’s” personality proved another excellent way of protecting one’s own psychological hygiene. 

You can just imagine our worry, disappointment, and surprise when some colleagues we knew well suddenly began to change their world view; their thought-patterns furthermore reminded us of the “professor’s” chatter. Their feelings, which had just recently been friendly, became noticeably cooler, although not yet hostile. Benevolent or critical student arguments bounced right off them. They gave the impression of possessing some secret knowledge; we were only their former colleagues, still believing what those “professors of old” had taught us. We had to be careful of what we said to them. These former colleagues soon joined the Party. 

Who were they, what social groups did they come from, what kind of students and people were they? How and why did they change so much in less than a year? Why did neither I nor a majority of my fellow students succumb to this phenomenon and process? Many such questions fluttered through our heads  then. It was in those times, from those questions, observations and attitudes that the idea was born that this phenomenon could be objectively studied and understood; an idea whose greater meaning crystallized with time. 

Many of us newly graduated psychologists participated in the initial observations and reflections, but most crumbled away in the face of material or academic problems. Only a few of that group remained; so the author of this book may be the last of the Mohicans. 

It was relatively easy to determine the environments and origins of the people who succumbed to this process, which I then called “trans-personification”. They came from all social groups, including aristocratic and fervently religious families, and caused a break in our student solidarity to the order of some 6 %. The remaining majority suffered varying degrees of personality disintegration which gave rise to individual searching for the values necessary to find ourselves again; the results were varied and sometimes creative. 

Even then, we had no doubts as to the pathological nature of this “trans-personification” process, which ran similar but not identical in all cases. The duration of the results of this phenomenon also varied. Some of these people later became zealots. Others later took advantage of various circumstances to withdraw and re-establish their lost links to the society of normal people. They were replaced. The only constant value of the new social system was the magic number of 6 %. 

We tried to evaluate the talent level of those colleagues who had succumbed to this personality-transformation process, and reached the conclusion that, on average, it was slightly lower than the average of the student population. Their lesser resistance obviously resided in other bio-psychological features which were most probably qualitatively heterogeneous. 

I found that I had to study subjects bordering on psychology and psychopathology in order to answer the questions arising from our observations; scientific neglect in these areas proved an obstacle difficult to overcome. At the same time, someone guided by special knowledge apparently vacated the libraries of anything we could have found on the topic; books were indexed, but not physically present. 

Analyzing these occurrences now in hindsight, we could say that the “professor” was dangling bait over our heads, based on specific psychological knowledge. He knew in advance that he would fish out amenable individuals, and even how to do it, but the limited numbers disappointed him. The trans-personification process generally took hold only when an individual’s instinctive substratum was marked by pallor or certain deficits. To a lesser extent, it also worked among people who manifested other deficiencies in which the state provoked within them was partially impermanent, being largely the result of psychopathological induction. 

This knowledge about the existence of susceptible individuals and how to work on them will continue being a tool for world conquest as long as it remains the secret of such “professors”. When it becomes skillfully popularized science, it will help nations to develop immunity. But none of us knew this at the time. 

Nevertheless, we must admit that in demonstrating the properties of this process to us in such a way as to force us into in-depth experience, the professor helped us understand the nature of the phenomenon in a larger scope than many a true scientific researcher participating in this work in other less direct ways. 

🌎🌍🌏

As a youth, I read a book about a naturalist wandering through the Amazon-basin wilderness. At some moment a small animal fell from a tree onto the nape of his neck, clawing his skin painfully and sucking his blood. The biologist cautiously removed it -- without anger, since that was its form of feeding -- and proceeded to study it carefully. This story stubbornly stuck in my mind during those very difficult times when a vampire fell onto our necks, sucking the blood of an unhappy nation. 

Maintaining the attitude of a naturalist, while attempting to track the nature of macrosocial phenomenon in spite of all adversity, insures a certain intellectual distance and better psychological hygiene in the face of horrors that might otherwise be difficult to contemplate. Such an attitude also slightly increases the feeling of safety and furnishes an insight that this  very method may help find a certain creative solution. This requires strict control of the natural, moralizing reflexes of revulsion, and other painful emotions that the phenomenon provokes in any normal person when it deprives him of his joy of life and personal safety, ruining his own future and that of his nation. Scientific curiosity therefore becomes a loyal ally during such times. 

🌍🌎🌏 

Hopefully, my readers will forgive me for recounting here a youthful reminiscence that will lead us directly into the subject. My uncle, a very lonely man, would visit our house periodically. He had survived the great Soviet Revolution in the depths of Russia, where he had been shipped out by the Czarist police. For over a year he wandered from Siberia to Poland. Whenever he met with an armed group during his travels, he quickly tried to determine which ideology they represented, white or red, and thereupon skillfully pretended to profess it. Had his ruse been unsuccessful, he would have had his head blown off as a suspected enemy sympathizer. It was safest to have a gun and belong to a gang. So he would wander and war alongside either group, usually only until he found an opportunity to desert westward toward his native Poland, a country which had just regained its freedom. 

When he finally reached his beloved homeland again, he managed to finish his long-interrupted law studies, to become a decent person, and to achieve a responsible position. However, he was never able to liberate himself from his nightmarish memories. Women were frightened by his stories of the bad old days and thought it would make no sense to bring a new life into an uncertain future. Thus, he never started a family. Perhaps he would have been unable to relate to his loved ones properly. 

This uncle of mine would recapture his past by telling the children in my family stories about what he had seen, experienced and taken part in; our young imaginations were unable to come to terms with any of it. Nightmarish terror shuddered in our bones. We would think of questions: why did people lose all their humanity, what was the reason for all this? Some sort of apprehensive premonition choked its way into our young minds; unfortunately, it was to come true in the future. 

🌍🌎🌏

If a collection were to be made of all those books which describe the horrors of wars, the cruelties of revolutions, and the bloody deeds of political leaders and their systems, many readers would avoid such a library. Ancient works would be placed alongside books by contemporary historians and reporters. The documentary treatises on German extermination and concentration camps, and of the extermination of the Jewish Nation, furnish approximate statistical data and describe the well organized “labor” of the destruction of human life, using a properly calm language, and providing a concrete basis for the acknowledgement of the nature of evil. 

The autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commander of camps in Oswiecim (Auschwitz) and Brzezinka (Birkenau), is a classic example of how an intelligent psychopathic individual with a deficit of human emotion thinks and feels. 

Foremost among these would be books written by witnesses to criminal insanity such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, from prewar Soviet life; Smoke over Birkenau the personal memories of Severina Szmaglewska 5 from the Oswiecim German concentration camp for women; The Other World, the Soviet memoirs of Gustav Herling-Grudzinski 6 ; and the Solzhenitsyn volumes turgid with human suffering. 

5 Szmaglewska, Seweryna, 1916-92, writer; 1942-45 prisoner in Nazi concentration camps; wrote Dymy nad Birkenau (Smoke over Birkenau, 1945); witness at Nuremberg Trial; stories and novels mainly concerned with war and occupation: Zapowiada sie piekny dzien (Looks Like a Beautiful Day, 1960), Niewinni w Norymberdze (The Innocent at Nuremberg, 1972); novels for young people; anthology of memoirs 1939-45: Wiezienna krata (Prison Bars, 1964). [Editor’s note.] 

6 Herling-Grudzinski, Gustav: Polish writer who after WWII lived in Napoli, Italy. Married the daughter of well known Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. He wrote an account of his time in a Soviet gulag: A World Apart. [Editor’s note.] 

The collection would include works on the philosophy of history discussing the social and moral aspects of the genesis of evil, but they would also use the half-mysterious laws of history to partly justify the blood-stained solutions. However, an alert reader would be able to detect a certain degree of evolution in the authors’ attitudes, from an ancient affirmation of primitive enslavement and murder of vanquished peoples, to the present-day moralizing condemnation of such methods of behavior. 

Such a library would nevertheless be missing a single work offering a sufficient explanation of the causes and processes whereby such historical dramas originate, of how and why human frailties and ambitions degenerate into bloodthirsty madness. Upon reading the present volume, the reader will realize that writing such a book was scientifically impossible until recently. 

The old questions would remain unanswered: what made this happen? Does everyone carry the seeds of crime within, or is it only some of us? No matter how faithful and psychologically true, no literary description of occurrences, such as those narrated by the above-mentioned authors, can answer these questions, nor can they fully explain the origins of evil. They are thus incapable of furnishing sufficiently effective principles for counter-acting evil. The best literary description of a disease cannot produce an understanding of its essential etiology, and thus furnishes no principles for treatment. In the same way, such descriptions of historical tragedies are unable to elaborate effective measures for counteracting the genesis, existence, or spread of evil. 

In using natural 7 language to circumscribe psychological, social, and moral concepts which cannot properly be described within its sphere of utility, we produce a sort of surrogate comprehension leading to a nagging suspicion of helplessness. Our natural system of concepts and imaginings is not equipped with the necessary factual content to permit reasoned comprehension of the quality of the factors (particularly the psychological ones) which were active before the birth of, and during, such inhumanly cruel times 

 7 Ordinary, everyday words which have various meanings, generally benign, and often do not embrace a specific, scientific meaning. [Editor’s note.] 

We must nevertheless point out that the authors of such literary descriptions sensed that their language was insufficient and therefore attempted to infuse their words with the proper scope of precision, almost as though they foresaw that someone – at some point in time - might use their works in order to explain what cannot be explained, not even in the best literary language. Had these writers not been so precise and descriptive in their language, this author would have been unable to use their works for his own scientific purposes. 

In general, most people are horrified by such literature; in hedonistic societies particularly, people have the tendency to escape into ignorance or naive doctrines. Some people even feel contempt for suffering persons. The influence of such books can thus be partially harmful; we should counteract that influence by indicating what the authors had to leave out because our ordinary world of concepts and imaginings cannot contain it. 

The reader will therefore find herein no bloodcurdling descriptions of criminal behavior or human suffering. It is not the author’s job to present a graphic return of material adduced by people who saw and suffered more than he did, and whose literary talents are greater. Introducing such descriptions into this work would run counter to its purpose: it would not only focus attention on some occurrences to the exclusion of many others, but would also distract the mind from the real heart of the matter, namely, the general laws of the origin of evil. 

In tracking the behavioral mechanisms of the genesis of evil, one must keep both abhorrence and fear under control, submit to a passion for epistemological science, and develop the calm outlook needed in natural history. We must never lose sight of the objective: to trace the processes of ponerogenesis; where they can lead and what threat they can pose to us in the future. 

This book therefore aims to take the reader by the hand into a world beyond the concepts and imaginings he has relied on to describe his world since childhood, in an overly egotistic way, probably because his parents, surroundings, and the community of his country used concepts similar to his own. Thereafter, we must show him an appropriate selection from the world of factual concepts which have given birth to recent scientific thinking and which will allow him an understanding of what has remained irrational in his everyday system of concepts. 

However, this tour of another reality will not be a psychological experiment conducted upon readers’ minds for the sole purpose of exposing the weak points and gaps in their natural world view. Rather, it an urgent necessity due to our contemporary world’s pressing problems, which we can ignore only at our peril. 

It is important to realize that we cannot possibly distinguish the path to nuclear catastrophe from the path to creative dedication unless we step beyond this world of natural egotism and well known concepts. Then we can come to the understanding that the path was chosen for us by powerful forces, against which our nostalgia for homey, familiar human concepts can be no match. We must step beyond this world of everyday, illusory thinking for our own good and for the good of our loved ones. 

The social sciences have already elaborated their own conventional language which mediates between the ordinary man’s view and a fully objective naturalistic view. It is useful to scientists in terms of communication and cooperation, but it is still not the kind of conceptual structure which can fully take into account the biological, psychological, and pathological premises at issue in the second and fourth chapters of this book. In the social sciences, the conventional terminology eliminates critical standards and puts ethics on ice; in the political sciences, it leads to an underrated evaluation of factors which describe the essence of political situations when evil is at the core. 

This social science language left the author and other investigators feeling helpless and scientifically stranded early in our research on the mysterious nature of this inhuman historical phenomenon which engulfed our nation, and still fires his attempts to reach an objective understanding of it. Ultimately, I had no choice but to resort to objective biological, psychological, and psychopathological terminology in order to bring into focus the true nature of the phenomenon, the heart of the matter. 

The nature of the phenomena under investigation as well as the needs of readers, particularly those unfamiliar with psychopathology, dictate the descriptive manner which must first introduce the data and concepts necessary for further comprehension of psychologically and morally pathological occurrences. We shall thus begin with human personality questions, intentionally formulated in such a way as to coincide largely with the experience of a practicing psychologist, passing then to selected questions of societal psychology. In the “ponerology” chapter, we shall familiarize ourselves with how evil is born with regard to each social scale, emphasizing the actual role of some psychopathological phenomena in the process of ponerogenesis. This will facilitate the transition from natural language to the necessary objective language of naturalistic, psychological, and statistical science to the extent that is necessary and sufficient. Hopefully, it will not be irksome for readers to discuss these matters in clinical terms. 

In the author’s opinion, Ponerology reveals itself to be a new branch of science born out of historical need and the most recent accomplishments of medicine and psychology. In the light of objective naturalistic language, it studies the causal components and processes of the genesis of evil, regardless of the latter’s social scope. We may attempt to analyze these ponerogenic processes which have given rise to human injustice, armed with proper knowledge, particularly in the area of psychopathology. Again and again, as the reader will discover, in such a study, we meet with the effects of pathological factors whose carriers are people characterized by some degree of various psychological deviations or defects. 

Moral evil and psychobiological evil are, in effect, interlinked via so many causal relationships and mutual influences that they can only be separated by means of abstraction. However, the ability to distinguish them qualitatively can help us to avoid a moralizing interpretation of the pathological factors, an error to which we are all prone, and which poisons the human mind in an insidious way, whenever social and moral affairs are at issue. 

The ponerogenesis of macro social phenomena – large scale evil - which constitutes the most important object of this book, appears to be subject to the same laws of nature that operate within human questions on an individual or small-group level. The role of persons with various psychological defects and anomalies of a clinically low level appears to be a perennial  characteristic of such phenomena. In the macro social phenomenon we shall later call “pathocracy”, a certain hereditary anomaly isolated as “essential psychopathy” is catalytically and causatively essential for the genesis and survival of large scale social evil. 

Our natural human world view actually creates a barrier to our understanding of such questions, thus, it is necessary to be familiar with psychopathological phenomena, such as those encountered in this field, in order to breach that barrier. May then the readers please forgive the author’s occasional lapses along this innovative path and fearlessly follow his lead, familiarizing themselves rather systematically with the data adduced in the first few chapters. Thus, we shall be able to accept the truth of the nature of evil without reflex protests on the part of our natural egotism. 

Specialists familiar with psychopathology will find the road less novel. They will, however, notice some differences in interpreting several well known phenomena, resulting in part from the anomalous situations under which the research was done, but mostly from the more intensive penetration needed to achieve the primary purpose. That is why this aspect of our work contains certain theoretical values useful for psychopathology. Hopefully, non-specialists will depend upon the author’s long experience in distinguishing individual psychological anomalies found among people and factored into the process of the genesis of evil. 

It should be pointed out that considerable moral, intellectual, and practical advantages can be gleaned from an understanding of the ponerogenic processes thanks to the naturalistic objectivity required. The long-term heritage of ethical questions is thereby not destroyed; quite the contrary, it is reinforced, since modern scientific methods confirm the basic values of moral teachings. However, ponerology forces some corrections upon many details. 

Understanding the nature of macro social pathological phenomena permits us to find a healthy attitude and perspective toward them, thus assisting us in protecting our minds from being poisoned by their diseased contents and the influence of their propaganda. The unceasing counter-propaganda resorted to by some countries with a normal human system could easily be superseded by straightforward information of a scientific and popular scientific nature on the subject. The bottom line is that we can only conquer this huge, contagious social cancer if we comprehend its essence and its etiological causes. This would eliminate the mystery of this phenomenon as its primary survival asset. Ignota nulla curatio morbi! 8 

8 Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand.

Such an understanding of the nature of the phenomena that this study brings forward leads to the logical conclusion that the measures for healing and reordering the world today should be completely different from the ones heretofore used for solving international conflicts. Solutions to such conflicts should function more like modern antibiotics, or, even better, psychotherapy properly handled, rather than taking the approach of old-style weapons such as clubs, swords, tanks or nuclear missiles. Healing social problems should be the objective, not destroying society. An analogy can be drawn between the archaic method of bleeding a patient as opposed to the modern method of strengthening and restoring the ill one in order to effect the cure. 

With reference to phenomena of a ponerogenic nature, mere proper knowledge alone can begin healing individual humans and helping their minds regain harmony. Toward the end of this book, we shall be discussing how to use this knowledge in order to arrive at the correct political decisions and apply it to an overall therapy of the world. 

CHAPTER II 

SOME INDISPENSABLE CONCEPTS 

Three principal heterogeneous items coincided in order to form our European civilization: Greek philosophy, Roman imperial and legal civilization, and Christianity, consolidated by time and effort of later generations. The culture of cognitive/spiritual heritage thus born was internally fuzzy wherever the language of concepts, being overly attached to matter and law, turned out to be too stiff to comprehend aspects of psychological and spiritual life. 

Such a state of affairs had negative repercussions upon our ability to comprehend reality, especially that reality which concerns humanity and society. Europeans became unwilling to study reality (subordinating intellect to facts), but rather tended to impose upon nature their subjective ideational schemes, which are extrinsic and not completely coherent. Not until modern times, thanks to great developments in the hard sciences, which study facts by their very nature, as well as the apperception of the philosophical heritage of other cultures, could we help clarify our world of concepts and permit its own homogenization. 

It is surprising to observe what an autonomous tribe the culture of the ancient Greeks represented. Even in those days, a civilization could hardly develop in isolation, without being affected by older cultures in particular. However, even with that consideration, it seems that Greece was relatively isolated, culturally speaking. This was probably due to the era of decay the archaeologist refer to as the “dark age”, which occurred in those Mediterranean areas between 1200 and 800 B.C., and also to the Achaean tribes’ belligerence. 

Among the Greeks, a rich mythological imagination, developed in direct contact with nature and the experiences of life and war, furnished an image of this link with the nature of the country and peoples. These conditions saw the birth of a literary tradition, and later of philosophical reflections searching for generalities, essential contents, and criteria of values. The Greek heritage is fascinating due to its richness and individuality, but above all due to its primeval nature. Our civilization, however, would have been better served if the Greeks had made more ample use of the achievements of other civilizations. 

Rome was too vital and practical to reflect profoundly upon the Greek thoughts it had appropriated. In this imperial civilization, administrative needs and juridical developments imposed practical priorities. For the Romans, the role of philosophy was more didactic, useful for helping to develop the thinking process which would later be utilized for the discharge of administrative functions and the exercise of political options. The Greek reflective influence softened Roman customs, which had a salutary effect on the development of the empire. 

However, in any imperial civilization, the complex problems of human nature are troublesome factors complicating the legal regulations of public affairs and administrative functions. This begets a tendency to dismiss such matters and develop a concept of human personality simplified enough to serve the purposes of law. Roman citizens could achieve their goals and develop their personal attitudes within the framework set by fate and legal principles, which characterized an individual’s situation based on premises having little to do with actual psychological properties. The spiritual life of people lacking the rights of citizenship was not an appropriate subject of deeper studies. Thus, cognitive psychology remained barren, a condition which always produces moral recession at both the individual and public levels. 

Christianity had stronger ties with the ancient cultures of the Asiatic continent, including their philosophical and psychological reflections. This was of course a dynamic factor rendering it more attractive, but it was not the most important one. Observing and understanding the apparent transformations faith caused in human personalities created a psychological school of thought and art on the part of the early believers. This new relationship to another person, i.e. one’s neighbor, characterized by understanding, forgiveness, and love, opened the door to a psychological cognition which, often supported by charismatic phenomena, bore abundant fruit during the first three centuries after Christ. 

An observer at the time might have expected Christianity to help develop the art of human understanding to a higher level than the older cultures and religions, and to hope that such knowledge would protect future generations from the dangers of speculative thought divorced from that profound psychological reality which can only be comprehended through sincere respect for another human being. 

History, however, has not confirmed such an expectation. The symptoms of decay in sensitivity and psychological comprehension, as well as the Roman Imperial tendency to impose extrinsic patterns upon human beings, can be observed as early as 350 A.D. During later eras, Christianity passed through all those difficulties which result from insufficient psychological cognition of reality. Exhaustive studies on the historical reasons for suppressing the development of human cognition in our civilization would be an extremely useful endeavor. 

First of all, Christianity adapted the Greek heritage of philosophical thought and language to its purposes. This made it possible to develop its own philosophy, but the primeval and materialistic traits of that language imposed certain limits which hampered communication between Christianity and other religious cultures for many centuries. 

Christ’s message expanded along the seacoast and beaten paths of the Roman empire’s transportation lines, within the imperial civilization, but only through bloody persecutions and ultimate compromises with Rome’s power and law. Rome finally dealt with the threat by appropriating Christianity to its own purposes and, as a result, the Christian Church appropriated Roman organizational forms and adapted to existing social  institutions. As a result of this unavoidable process of adaptation, Christianity inherited Roman habits of legal thinking, including its indifference to human nature and its variety. 

Two heterogeneous systems were thus linked together so permanently that later centuries forgot just how strange they actually were to each other. However, time and compromise did not eliminate the internal inconsistencies, and Roman influence divested Christianity of some of its profound primeval psychological knowledge. Christian tribes developing under different cultural conditions created forms so variegated that maintaining unity turned out to be an historical impossibility. 

A “Western civilization” thus arose hampered by a serious deficiency in an area which both can and does play a creative role, and which is supposed to protect societies from various kinds of evil. This civilization developed formulations in the area of law, whether national, civil, or finally canon, which were conceived for invented and simplified beings. These formulations gave short shrift to the total contents of the human personality and the great psychological differences between individual members of the species Homo sapiens. For many centuries any understanding of certain psychological anomalies found among some individuals was out of the question, even though these anomalies repeatedly caused disasters. 

This civilization was insufficiently resistant to evil, which originates beyond the easily accessible areas of human consciousness and takes advantage of the enormous gap between formal or legal thought and psychological reality. In a civilization deficient in psychological cognition, hyperactive individuals driven by their internal doubts caused by a feelings of being different easily find a ready echo in other people’s insufficiently developed consciousness. Such individuals dream of imposing their power and their different experiential manner upon their environment and their society.Unfortunately, in a psychologically ignorant society, their dreams have a good chance of becoming reality for them and a nightmare for others. 

Psychology 

In the 1870s, a tempestuous event occurred: a search for the hidden truth about human nature was initiated as a secular movement based on biological and medical progress, thus its cognition originated in the material sphere. From the very outset, many researchers had a vision of the great future role of this science for the good of peace and order. However, since it relegated prior knowledge to the spiritual sphere, any such approach to the human personality was necessarily one-sided. People like Ivan Pavlov, C.G. Jung, and others soon noticed this one-sidedness and attempted to reach a synthesis. Pavlov, however, was not allowed to state his convictions in public. 

Psychology is the only science wherein the observer and the observed belong to the same species, even to the same person in an act of introspection. It is thus easy for subjective error to steal into the reasoning process of the thinking person’s commonly used imaginings and individual habits. Error then often bites its own tail in a vicious circle, thus giving rise to problems due to the lack of distance between observer and observed, a difficulty unknown in other disciplines. 

Some people, such as the behaviorists, attempted to avoid the above error at all costs. In the process, they impoverished the cognitive contents to such an extent that there was very little matter left. However, they produced a very profitable discipline of thought. Progress was very often elaborated by persons simultaneously driven by internal anxieties and searching for a method of ordering their own personalities via the road of knowledge and self-knowledge. If these anxieties were caused by a defective upbringing, then overcoming these difficulties gave rise to excellent discoveries. However, if the cause for such anxieties rested within human nature, it resulted in a permanent tendency to deform the understanding of psychological phenomena. Within this science, progress is unfortunately very contingent upon the individual values and nature of its practitioners. It is also dependent upon the social climate. Wherever a society has become enslaved to others or to the rule of an overly-privileged native class, psychology is the first discipline to suffer from censorship and incursions on the part of an administrative body which starts claiming the last word as to what represents scientific truth. 

Thanks to the work of outstanding pathfinders, however, the scientific discipline exists and continues to develop in spite of all these difficulties; it is useful for the life of society. Many researchers fill in the gaps of this science with detailed data which function as a corrective to the subjectivity and vagueness of famous pioneers. The childhood ailments of any new discipline persist, including a lack of general order and synthesis, as does the tendency to splinter into individual schools, expounding upon certain theoretical and practical achievements, at the cost of limiting themselves in other areas. At the same time, however, findings of a practical nature are gleaned for the good of people who need help. The direct observations furnished by everyday work of therapists in the field are more instrumental in forming scientific comprehension and developing the language of contemporary psychology than any academic experiments or deliberations undertaken in a laboratory. After all, life itself provides variegated conditions, whether comfortable or tragic, which subject human individuals to experiments no scientist in any laboratory would ever undertake. This very volume exists because of studies, in the field, of inhuman experimentation upon entire nations. 

Experience teaches a psychologist’s mind how to track another person’s life quickly and effectively, discovering the causes that conditioned the development of his personality and behavior. Our minds can thus also reconstruct those factors which influenced him, although he himself may be unaware of them. In doing this, we do not, as a rule, use the natural structure of concepts, often referred to as “common sense” relied upon by public opinion and many individuals. Rather, we use categories which are as objective as we can possibly achieve. Psychologists utilize conceptual language with descriptions of phenomena that are independent of any common imaginings, and this is an indispensable tool of practical activity. In practice, however, it usually turns into clinical slang rather than the distinguished scientific language it would behoove us to foster. An analogy can be drawn between this conceptual language of psychology and mathematical symbols. Very often, a single  Greek letter stands for many pages of mathematical operations which is instantly recognized by the mathematician. 

Objective language 

In the categories of psychological objectivity, cognition and thought are based on the same logical and methodological principles shown to be the best tool in many other areas of naturalistic studies. Exceptions to these rules have become a tradition for ourselves and for creatures similar to us, but they turn out to engender more error than usefulness. At the same time, however, consistent adherence to these principles, and rejection of additional scientific limitations, lead us toward the wide horizon from which it is possible to glimpse supernatural causality. Accepting the existence of such phenomena within the human personality becomes a necessity if our language of psychological concepts is to remain an objective structure. 

In affirming his own personality, man has the tendency to repress from the field of his consciousness any associations indicating an external causative conditioning of his world view and behavior. Young people in particular want to believe they freely chose their intentions and decisions; at the same time, however, an experienced psychological analyst can track the causative conditions of these choices without much difficulty. Much of this conditioning is hidden within our childhood; the memories may be receding into the distance, but we carry the results of our early experiences around with us throughout our lives. 

The better our understanding of the causality of the human personality, the stronger the impression that humanity is a part of nature and society, subject to dependencies we are ever better able to understand. Overcome by human nostalgia, we then wonder if there is really no room for a scope of freedom, for a Purusha 9 ? The more progress we make in our art of under standing human causation, the better we are able to liberate the person who trusts us from the toxic effects of conditioning, which has unnecessarily constricted his freedom of proper comprehension and decision making. We are thus in a position to close ranks with our patient in a search for the best way out of his problems. If we succumb to the temptation of using the natural structure of psychological concepts for this purpose, our advice to him would sound similar to the many non-productive pronouncements he has already heard and that never quite manage to really help him to become free of his problem. 

9 Sanskrit. A word literally meaning “man”; but bearing the mystical significance of the “Ideal Man”, the Higher Self within. The term Purusha is often used in the Esoteric philosophy to express the Spirit or the everlasting entitative individual of a Universe, a Solar System, or of a man. Purusha comes from the verb-root pri – to fill, to make complete, to bestow. One of the two  ultimate realities of Sankhya philosophy. The divine Self, the absolute Reality, pure Consciousness. [Editor’s note.]

The everyday, ordinary, psychological, societal, and moral world view is a product of man’s developmental process within a society, under the constant influence of innate traits. Among these innate traits are mankind’s phylogenetically determined instinctive foundation, and the upbringing furnished by the family and the environment. No person can develop without being influenced by other people and their personalities, or by the values imbued by his civilization and his moral and religious traditions. That is why his natural world view of humans can be neither sufficiently universal nor completely true. Differences among individuals and nations are the product of both inherited dispositions and the ontogenesis 10 of personalities. 

10 Ontogeny (also ontogenesis or morphogenesis) describes the origin and the development of an organism from the fertilized egg to its mature form. Ontogeny is studied in developmental biology. [Editor’s note.]

It is thus significant that the main values of this human world view of nature indicate basic similarities in spite of great divergences in time, race, and civilization. This world view quite obviously derives from the nature of our species and the natural experience of human societies which have achieved a certain necessary level of civilization. Refinements based on literary values or philosophical and moral reflections do show differences, but, generally speaking, they tend to bring together the natural conceptual languages of various civilizations and eras. People with a humanistic education may therefore get the impression that they have achieved wisdom. We shall also continue to respect the wisdom of that “common sense” derived from life experience and reflections thereon. 

However, a conscientious psychologist must ask the following questions: Even if the natural world view has been refined, does it mirror reality with sufficient reliability? Or does it only mirror our species’ perception? To what extent can we depend upon it as a basis for decision making in the individual, societal and political spheres of life? 

Experience teaches us, first of all, that this natural world view has permanent and characteristic tendencies toward deformation dictated by our instinctive and emotional features. Secondly, our work exposes us to many phenomena which cannot be understood nor described by natural language alone. An objective scientific language able to analyze the essence of a phenomenon thus becomes an indispensable tool. It has also shown itself to be similarly indispensable for an understanding of the questions presented within this book. 

Now, having laid the groundwork, let us attempt a listing of the most important reality-deforming tendencies and other insufficiencies of the natural human world view. 

Those emotional features which are a natural component of the human personality are never completely appropriate to the reality being experienced. This results both from our instinct and from our common errors of upbringing. That is why the best tradition of philosophical and religious thought have counseled subduing the emotions in order to achieve a more accurate view of reality. 

The natural world view is also characterized by a similar, emotional, tendency to endow our opinions with moral judgment, often so negative as to represent outrage. This appeals to tendencies which are deeply rooted in human nature and societal customs. We easily extrapolate this method of comprehension onto manifestations of improper human behavior, which are, in fact, caused by minor psychological deficiencies. When another individual behaves in a way that we deem to be “bad”, we tend to make a judgment of negative intent rather than seeking to understand the psychological conditions that might be driving them, and convincing them that they are, in fact, behaving very properly. Thus, any moralizing interpretation of minor psychopathological phenomena is erroneous and merely leads to an exceptional number of unfortunate consequences, which is why we shall repeatedly refer to it. 

Another defect of the natural world view is its lack of universality. In every society, a certain percentage of the people has developed a world view a good deal different from that used by the majority. The causes of the aberrations are by no means qualitatively monolithic; we will be discussing them in greater detail in the fourth chapter. Another essential deficiency of the natural world view is its limited scope of applicability. Euclidean geometry would suffice for a technical reconstruction of our world and for a trip to the moon and the closest planets. We only need a geometry whose axioms are less natural if we reach inside of an atom or outside of our solar system. The average person does not encounter phenomena for which Euclidean geometry would be insufficient. Sometime during his lifetime, virtually every person is faced with problems he must deal with. Since a comprehension of the truly operational factors is beyond the ken of his natural world view, he generally relies on emotion: intuition and the pursuit of happiness. Whenever we meet a person whose individual worldview developed under the influence of non-typical conditions, we tend to pass moral judgment upon him in the name of our more typical world view. In short, whenever some unidentified psychopathological factor comes into play, the natural human world view ceases to be applicable. 

Moving further, we often meet with sensible people endowed with a well-developed natural world view as regards psychological, societal, and moral aspects, frequently refined via literary influences, religious deliberations, and philosophical reflections. Such persons have a pronounced tendency to overrate the values of their world view, behaving as though it were an objective basis for judging other people. They do not take into account the fact that such a system of apprehending human matters can also be erroneous, since it is insufficiently objective. Let us call such an attitude the “egotism of the natural world view”. To date, it has been the least pernicious type of egotism, being merely an overestimation of that method of comprehension containing the eternal values of human experience. 

Today, however, the world is being jeopardized by a phenomenon which cannot be understood nor described by means of such a natural conceptual language; this kind of egotism thus becomes a dangerous factor stifling the possibility of objective counteractive measures. Developing and popularizing the objective psychological worldview could thus significantly expand the scope of dealing with evil, via sensible action and pinpointed countermeasures. 

The objective psychological language, based on mature philosophical criteria, must meet the requirements derived from its theoretical foundations, and meet the needs of individual and macrosocial practice. It should be evaluated fully on the basis of biological realities and constitute an extension of the analogous conceptual language elaborated by the older naturalistic sciences, particularly medicine. Its range of applicability should cover all those facts and phenomena conditioned upon cognizable biological factors for which this natural language has proved inadequate. It should, within this framework, allow sufficient understanding of the contents, and varied causes, for the genesis of the above-mentioned deviant world views. 

Elaborating such a conceptual language, being far beyond the individual scope of any scientist, is a step-by-step affair; by means of the contribution of many researchers, it matures to the point when it could be organized under philosophical supervision in the light of above-mentioned foundations. Such a task would greatly contribute to the development of all bio-humanistic and social sciences by liberating them from the limitations and erroneous tendencies imposed by the overly great influence of the natural language of psychological imagination, especially when combined with an excessive component of egotism. 

Most of the questions dealt with in this book are beyond the scope of applicability of the natural language. The fifth chapter shall deal with a macrosocial phenomenon which has rendered our traditional scientific language completely deceptive. Understanding these phenomena thus requires consistent separation from the habits of that method of thinking and the use of the most objective system of concepts possible. For this purpose, it proves necessary to develop the contents, organize them, and familiarize the readers with them as well. 

At the same time, an examination of the phenomena whose nature forced the use of such a system will render a great contribution to enriching and perfecting the objective system of concepts. 

While working on these matters, the author gradually accustomed himself to comprehending reality by means of this very method, a way of thinking which turned out to be both the most appropriate and the most economical in terms of time and effort. It also protects the mind from its own natural egotism and any excessive emotionalism. 

In the course of the above-mentioned inquiries, each researcher went through his own period of crisis and frustration when it became evident that the concepts he had trusted thus far proved to be inapplicable. Ostensibly, correct hypotheses formulated in the scientifically improved natural conceptual language turned out to be completely unfounded in the light of facts, and of preliminary statistical calculations. At the same time, the elaboration of concepts better suited for investigated reality became extremely complex: after all, the key to the question lies in a scientific area still in the process of development. 

Surviving this period thus required an acceptance of and a respect for a feeling of nescience 11 truly worthy of a philosopher. Every science is born in an area uninhabited by popular imaginings that must be overcome and left behind. In this case, however, the procedure had to be exceptionally radical; we had to venture into any area indicated by systematic analysis of the facts we observed and experienced from within a full-blown condition of macrosocial evil, guided by the light of the requirements of scientific methodology. This had to be upheld in spite of the difficulties caused by extraordinary outside conditions and by our own human personalities. 

11 Literally, the absence of knowledge. [Editor’s note.]

Very few of the many people who started out on this road were able to arrive at the end, since they withdrew for various reasons connected to this period of frustration. Some of them  concentrated on a single question; succumbing to a kind of fascination regarding its scientific value; they delved into detailed inquiries. Their achievements may be present in this work, since they understood the general mining of their work. Others gave up in the face of scientific problems, personal difficulties, or the fear of being discovered by the authorities, who are highly vigilant in such matters. 

Perusing this book will therefore confront the reader with similar problems, albeit on a much smaller scale. A certain impression of injustice may be conveyed due to the need to leave behind a significant portion of our prior conceptualizations, the feeling that our natural world view is inapplicable, and the expendability of some emotional entanglements. I therefore ask my readers to accept these disturbing feelings in the spirit of the love of knowledge and its redeeming values. 

The above explanations were crucial in order to render the language of this work more easily comprehensible to the readers. The author has attempted to approach the matters described herein in such a way as to avoid both losing touch with the world of objective concepts and becoming incomprehensible to anyone outside a narrow circle of specialists. We must thus beg the reader to pardon any slips along the tightrope between the two methods of thought. However, the author would not be an experienced psychologist if he could not predict that some readers will reject the scientific data adduced within this work, feeling that they constitute an attack upon the natural wisdom of their life-experience. 

The Human Individual 

When Auguste Comte 12 attempted to found the new science of sociology during the early nineteenth century, i.e. well before modern psychology was born, he was immediately confronted with the problem of man, a mystery he could not solve. If he rejected the Catholic Church’s oversimplifications of human nature, then nothing remained except traditional schemes for comprehending the personality, derived from well known social conditions. He thus had to avoid this problem, among others, if he wanted to create his new scientific branch under such conditions. 

12 Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) was a French positivist thinker who invented the term “sociology” to name the new science made by Saint-Simon. Comte saw a “universal law” at work in all sciences which he called the “law of three phases”. It is for this law that he is best known in the English-speaking world; namely, that society has gone through three phases: Theological, Metaphysical, and Scientific. He also gave the name “Positive” to the last of these. The other universal law he called the “encyclopedic law”. By combining these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including inorganic physics (astronomy, earth science and chemistry) and organic physics (biology and for the first time, physique sociale, later renamed sociologie). Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences, and which would integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole. (Wikipedia)

Therefore, he accepted that the basic cell of society is the family, something much easier to characterize and treat like an elementary model of societal relations. This could also be effected by means of a language of comprehensible concepts, without confronting problems which could truly not have been overcome at the time. Slightly later, J. S. Mill 13 pointed out the resulting deficiencies of psychological cognition and the role of the individuals. 

13 John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873), an English philosopher and political economist, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an advocate of utilitarianism, the ethical theory first proposed by his godfather Jeremy Bentham. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the burdens on Ireland, and became the first person in parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote. In “Considerations on Representative Government”, Mill called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially proportional representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension of suffrage. He was godfather to Bertrand Russell. Mill argued that it is Government’s role only to remove the barriers, such as laws, to behaviors that do not harm others. Crucially, he felt that offense did not constitute harm, and therefore supported almost total freedom of speech; only in cases where free speech would lead to direct harm did Mill wish to limit it. For example, whipping up an angry mob to go and attack people would not be defended in Mill’s system. Mill argued that free discourse was vital to ensure progress. He argued that we could never be sure if a silenced opinion did not hold some portion of the truth. Ingeniously, he also argued that even false opinions have worth, in that in refuting false opinions the holders of true opinions have their beliefs reaffirmed. Without having to defend one’s beliefs, Mill argued, the beliefs would become dead and we would forget why we held them at all. [Editor’s note.]

Only now is sociology successfully dealing with the difficulties which resulted, laboriously reinforcing the existing foundations of science by the achievements of psychology, a science which by its very nature treats the individual as the basic object of observation. This restructuring and acceptance of an objective psychological language will in time permit sociology to become a scientific discipline which can mirror the social reality with sufficient objectivity and attention to detail in order to render it a basis for practical action. After all, it is man who is the basic unit of society, including the entire complexity of his human personality. 

In order to understand the functioning of an organism, medicine begins with cytology, which studies the variegated structures and functions of cells. If we want to understand the laws governing social life, we must similarly first understand the individual human being, his physiological and psychological nature, and fully accept the quality and scope of differences (particularly psychological ones) among the individuals who constitute two sexes, different families, associations, and social groups, as well as the complex structure of society itself. 

The doctrinaire and propaganda-based Soviet system contains a characteristic built-in contradiction whose causes will be readily understandable toward the end of this book. Man’s descent from the animals, bereft of any extraordinary occurrences, is accepted there as the obvious basis for the materialistic world view. At the same time, however, they suppress the fact that man has an instinctive endowment, i.e. something in common with the rest of the animal world. If faced with especially troublesome questions, they sometimes admit that man contains an insignificant survival of such phylogenetic heritage, however, they prevent the publication of any work studying this basic phenomenon of psychology. 14

14 See: “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren, General Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997 where he says: “Since 1950 Soviet psychiatry has not just been standing still, but has gone downhill. Absolutely nothing has changed. The bulk of the [Russian] psychiatrists could never find a job as a psychiatrist in the West. There, methods of treatment are customary about which you cannot even talk anymore in the West. ” [Editor’s note.]

In order to understand humanity, however, we must gain a primary understanding of mankind’s instinctive substratum and appreciate its salient role in the life of individuals and societies. This role easily escapes our notice, since our human species’ instinctive responses seem so self-evident and are so much taken for granted that it arouses insufficient interest. A psychologist, schooled in the observation of human beings, does not fully appreciate the role of this eternal phenomenon of nature until he has years of professional experience. 

Man’s instinctive substratum has a slightly different biological structure than that of animals. Energetically speaking, it has become less dynamic and become more plastic, thereby giving up its job as the main dictator of behavior. It has become more receptive to the controls of reasoning, without, however, losing much of the rich specific contents of the human kind. 

It is precisely this phylogenetically developed basis for our experience, and its emotional dynamism, that allow individuals to develop their feelings and social bounds, enabling us to intuit other people’s psychological state and individual or social psychological reality. It is thus possible to perceive and understand human customs and moral values. From infancy, this substratum stimulates various activities aiming at the development of the mind’s higher functions. In other words, our instinct is our first tutor, whom we carry inside all our lives. Proper child-rearing is thus not limited to teaching a young person to control the overly violent reactions of his instinctual emotionalism; it also ought to teach him to appreciate the wisdom of nature contained and speaking through his instinctive endowment 

This substratum contains millions of years’ worth of biopsychological development that was the product of species’ life conditions, so it neither is nor can be a perfect creation. Our well known weaknesses of human nature and errors in the natural perception and comprehension of reality have thus been conditioned on that phylogenetic level for millennia. 15 

15 Konrad Lorenz: Evolution and Modification of Behavior (1965); On Aggression (1966); Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I (1970); Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume II (1971); Behind the Mirror  (1973); The Natural Science of the Human Species: An Introduction to Comparative Behavioral Research - The Russian Manuscript (1944-1948)(1995). Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university chair under the Nazi regime. His publications during that time led in later years to allegations that his scientific work had been contaminated by Nazi sympathies. When accepting the Nobel Prize, he apologized for a 1940 publication that included Nazi views of science, saying that “many highly decent scientists hoped, like I did, for a short time for good from National Socialism, and many quickly turned away from it with the same horror as I.” It seems highly likely that Lorenz’s ideas about an inherited basis for behavior patterns were congenial to the Nazi authorities, but there is no evidence to suggest that his experimental work was either inspired or distorted by Nazi ideas. [Editor’s note.] 

The common substratum of psychology has made it possible for peoples throughout the centuries and civilizations to create concepts regarding human, social, and moral matters which share significant similarities. Inter-epochal and interracial variations in this area are less striking than those differentiating persons whose instinctual human substratum is normal from those who are carriers of an instinctual bio-psychological defect, though they are members of the same race and civilization. It shall behoove us to return to this latter question repeatedly, since it has taken on a crucial importance for the problems dealt with in this book. 

Man has lived in groups throughout his prehistory, so our species’ instinctual substratum was shaped in this tie, thus conditioning our emotions as regards the mining of existence. The need for an appropriate internal structure of commonality, and a striving to achieve a worthy role within that structure, are encoded at this very level. In the final analysis, our self preservation instinct is rivaled by another feeling: the good of society demands that we make sacrifices, sometimes even the supreme sacrifice. At the same time, however, it is worth pointing out that if we love a man, we love his human instinct above all. 

Our zeal to control anyone harmful to ourselves or our group is so primal in its near-reflex necessity as to leave no doubt that it is also encoded at the instinctual level. Our instinct, however, does not differentiate between behavior motivated by simple human failure and behavior performed by individuals with pathological aberrations. Quite the contrary: we instinctively tend to judge the latter more severely, harkening to nature’s striving to eliminate biologically or psychologically defective individuals. Our tendency to such evil generating error is thus conditioned at the instinctual level. 

It is also at this level that differences begin to occur between normal individuals, influencing the formation of their characters, world views, and attitudes. The primary differences are in the bio-psychical dynamism of this substratum; differences of content are secondary. For some people the sthenic 16 instinct supersedes psychology; for others, it easily relinquishes control to reason. It also appears that some people have a somewhat richer and more subtle instinctual endowment than others. Significant deficiencies in this heritage nevertheless occur in only a tiny percentage of the human population; and we perceive this to be qualitatively pathological. We shall have to pay closer attention to such anomalies, since they participate in that pathogenesis of evil which we would like to understand more fully. 

16 Relating to or marked by sthenia; strong, vigorous, or active. [Editor’s note.] 

A more subtle structure of effect is built upon our instinctual substratum, thanks to constant cooperation from the latter as well as familial and societal child-rearing practices. With time, this structure becomes a more easily observable component of our personality, within which it plays an integrative role. This higher effect is instrumental in linking us to society, which is why its correct development is a proper duty of pedagogues and constitutes one of the objects of a psychotherapist’s efforts, if perceived to be abnormally formed. Both pedagogues and psychotherapists sometimes feel helpless, if this process of formation was influenced by a defective instinctual substratum. 

~~~ 

Thanks to memory, that phenomenon ever better described by psychology, but whose nature remains partly mysterious, man stores life-experiences and purposely acquired knowledge. There are extensive individual variations in regard to this capacity, its quality, and its contents. A young person also looks at the world differently from an old man endowed with a good memory. People with a good memory and a great deal of knowledge have a greater tendency to reach for the written data of collective memory in order to supplement their own. 

This collected material constitutes the subject matter of the second psychological process, namely association; our understanding of its characteristics is constantly improving, although we have not yet been able to shed sufficient light upon its nurturance. In spite of, or maybe thanks to, the value judgments contributed to this question by psychologists and psychoanalysts, it appears that achieving a satisfactory synthetic understanding of the associative processes will not be possible unless and until we humbly decide to cross the boundaries of purely scientific comprehension. 

Our reasoning faculties continue to develop throughout our entire active lives, thus, accurate judgmental abilities do not peak until our hair starts greying and the drive of instinct, emotion, and habit begins to abate. It is a collective product derived from an interaction between man and his environment, and from many generations’ worth of creation and transmission. The environment may also have a destructive influence upon the development of our reasoning faculties. In its environment in particular, the human mind is contaminated by conversive thinking 17 , which is the most common anomaly in this process. It is for this reason that the proper development of mind requires periods of solitary reflection on occasion. 

17 Conversive thinking: using terms but giving them opposing or twisted meanings. Examples: peacefulness = appeasement; freedom = license; initiative = arbitrariness; traditional = backward; rally = mob; efficiency = small mindedness. Example: the words “peacefulness” and “appeasement” denote the same thing: a striving to establish peace, but have entirely different connotations which indicate the speaker’s attitude toward this striving toward peace. [Editor’s note.] 

Man has also developed a psychological function not found among animals. Only man can apprehend a certain quantity of material or abstract imaginings within his field of attention, inspecting them internally in order to effect further operations of the mind upon this material. This enables us to confront facts, affect constructive and technical operations, and predict future results. If the facts subjected to internal projection and inspection deal with man’s own personality, man performs an act of introspection essential for monitoring the state of a human personality and the meaning of his own behavior. This act of internal projection and inspection complements our consciousness; it characterizes no species other than the human. However, there is exceptionally wide divergence among individuals regarding the capacity for such mental acts. The efficiency of this mental function shows a somewhat low statistical correlation with general intelligence. 

Thus, if we speak of man’s general intelligence, we must take into account both its internal structure and the individual differences occurring at every level of this structure. The substratum of our intelligence, after all, contains nature’s instinctual heritage of wisdom and error, giving rise to the basic intelligence of life experience. Superimposed upon this construct, thanks to memory and the associative capacity, is our ability to effect complex operations of thought, crowned by the act of internal projection, and to constantly improve their correctness. We are variously endowed with these capabilities, which makes for a mosaic of individually variegated talents. 

Basic intelligence grows from this instinctual substratum under the influence of an amicable environment and a readily accessible compendium of human experience; it is intertwined with higher effect, enabling us to understand others and to intuit their psychological state by means of some naive realism. This conditions the development of moral reason. 

This layer of our intelligence is widely distributed within society; the overwhelming majority of people have it, which is why we can so often admire the tact, the intuition, of social relationships, and sensible morality of people whose intellectual gifts are only average. We also see people with an outstanding intellect who lack these very natural values. As is the case with deficiencies in the instinctual substratum, the deficits of this basic structure of our intelligence frequently take on features we perceive as pathological. 

The distribution of human intellectual capacity within societies is completely different, and its amplitude has the greatest scope. Highly gifted people constitute a tiny percentage of each population, and those with the highest quotient of intelligence constitute only a few per thousand. In spite of this, however, the latter play such a significant role in collective life that  any society attempting to prevent them from fulfilling their duty does so at its own peril. At the same time, individuals barely able to master simple arithmetic and the art of writing are, in the majority, normal people whose basic intelligence is often entirely adequate. 

It is a universal law of nature that the higher a given species’ psychological organization, the greater the psychological differences among individual units. Man is the most highly organized species; hence, these variations are the greatest. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, psychological differences occur in all structures of the human personality dealt with here, albeit in terms of necessary oversimplification. Profound psychological variegations may strike some as an injustice of nature, but they are her right and have meaning. 

Nature’s seeming injustice, alluded to above, is, in fact, a great gift to humanity, enabling human societies to develop their complex structures and to be highly creative at both the individual and collective level. Thanks to psychological variety, the creative potential of any society is many times higher than it could possibly be if our species were psychologically more homogeneous. Thanks to these variations, the societal structure implicit within can also develop. The fate of human societies depends upon the proper adjustment of individuals within this structure and upon the manner in which innate variations of talents are utilized. 

Our experience teaches us that psychological differences among people are the cause of misunderstandings and problems. We can overcome these problems only if we accept psychological differences as a law of nature and appreciate their creative value. This would also enable us to gain an objective comprehension of man and human societies; unfortunately, it would also teach us that equality under the law is inequality under the law of nature. 

~~~ 

If we observe our human personality by consistently tracking psychological causation within, if we are able to exhaust the question to a sufficient degree, we shall come ever closer to phenomena whose biopsychological energy is very low, which begin to manifest themselves to us with certain characteristic  subtlety. Discovering this phenomenon, we then attempt to track our associations particularly because we have exhausted the available analytical platform. Finally, we must admit to noticing something within us which is a result of supra-sensory causation. This path may be the most laborious of all, but it will nevertheless lead to the most material certainty regarding the existence of what all the major religious systems talk about. Attaining some small piece of truth via this path brings us to respect for some of the teachings of the ancients regarding the existence of something beyond the material universe. 

If we thus wish to understand mankind, man as whole, without abandoning the laws of thought required by the objective language, we are finally forced to accept this reality, which is within each of us, whether normal or not, whether we have accepted it because we have been brought up that way, or have achieved such gnosis on our own, or whether we have rejected it for reasons of materialism or science. After all, invariably, when we analyze negative psychological attitudes, we always discern an affirmation which has been repressed from the field of consciousness. As a consequence, the constant subconscious effort of denying concepts about existing things engenders a zeal to eliminate them in other people. 

Trustfully opening our mind to perception of this reality is thus indispensable for someone whose duty is to understand other people, and is advisable for everyone else as well. Thanks to this, our mind is rendered free of internal tensions and stresses and can be liberated from its tendency to select and substitute information, including those areas which are more easily accessible to naturalistic comprehension. 

~~~ 

The human personality is unstable by its very nature, and a lifelong evolutionary process is the normal state of affairs. Some political and religious systems advocate slowing down this process or achieving excessive stability in our personalities, but these are unhealthy states from the point of view of psychology. If the evolution of a human personality or world view becomes frozen long and deeply enough, the condition enters the realm of psychopathology. The process of personality transformation reveals its meaning thanks to its own creative nature which is based on the conscious acceptance of this creative changing as the natural course of events. 

Our personalities also pass through temporary destructive periods as a result of various life events, especially if we undergo suffering or meet with situations or circumstances which are at variance with our prior experiences and imaginings. These so-called disintegrative stages are often unpleasant, although not necessarily so. A good dramatic work, for instance, enables us to experience a disintegrative state, simultaneously calming down the unpleasant components and furnishing creative ideas for a renewed reintegration of our own personalities. True theater therefore causes the condition known as catharsis. 

A disintegrative state provokes us to mental efforts in attempts to overcome it in order to regain active homeostasis. Overcoming such states, in effect, correcting our errors and enriching our personalities, is a proper and creative process of reintegration, leading to a higher level of understanding and acceptance of the laws of life, to a better comprehension of self and others, and to a more highly developed sensitivity in interpersonal relationships. Our feelings also validate the successful achievement of a reintegrative state: the unpleasant conditions we have survived are endowed with meaning. Thus, the experience renders us better prepared to confront the next disintegrative situation. 

If, however, we have proved unable to master the problems which occurred because our reflexes were too quick to repress and substitute the uncomfortable material from our consciousness, or for some similar reason, our personality undergoes retroactive egotization, 18 but it is not free of the sensation of failure. The results are devolutionary; the person becomes more difficult to get along with. If we cannot overcome such a disintegrative state because the causative circumstances were overpowering or because we lacked the information essential for constructive use, our organism reacts with a neurotic condition. 

18 Similar to narcissistic withdrawal. [Editor’s note.] 

~~ 

The diagram of the human personality presented herein, summarized and simplified for reasons of necessity, makes us aware of how complex human beings are in their structure,  their changes, and their mental and spiritual lives. If we wish to create social sciences whose descriptions of our reality would be capable of enabling us to rely on them in practice, we must accept this complexity and make certain that it is sufficiently respected. Any attempt to substitute this basic knowledge with the help of oversimplifying schemes leads to loss of that indispensable convergence between our reasoning and the reality we are observing. It behooves us to reemphasize that using our natural language of psychological imaginations for this purpose cannot be a substitute for objective premises.

Similarly, it is extremely difficult for a psychologist to believe in the value of any social ideology based on simplified or even naive psychological premises. This applies to any ideology which attempts to over-simplify psychological reality, whether it be one utilized by a totalitarian system or, unfortunately, by democracy as well. People are different. Whatever is qualitatively different and remains in a state of permanent evolution cannot be equal. 

~~~ 

The above-mentioned statements about human nature apply to normal people, with a few exceptions. However, each society on earth contains a certain percentage of individuals, a relatively small but active minority, who cannot be considered normal. 

We emphasize that here we are dealing with qualitative, not statistical, abnormality. Outstandingly intelligent persons are statistically abnormal, but they can be quite normal members of society from the qualitative point of view. We are going to be looking at individuals that are statistically small in number, but whose quality of difference is such that it can affect hundreds, thousands, even millions of other human beings in negative ways. 

The individuals we wish to consider are people who reveal morbid 19 phenomena, and in whom mental deviations and anomalies of various qualities and intensities can be observed. Many such people are driven by internal anxieties: they search for unconventional paths of action and adjustment to life with a certain characteristic hyperactivity. In some cases, such activity can be pioneering and creative, which ensures societal tolerance for some of these individuals. Some psychiatrists, especially Germans, have praised such people as embodying the principal inspiration for the development of civilization; this is a damagingly unilateral view of reality. Laymen in the field of psychopathology frequently gain the impression that such persons represent some extraordinary talents. This very science, however, then goes on to explain that these individuals’ hyperactivity and sense of being exceptional are derived from their drive to overcompensate for a feeling of some deficiency. This aberrant attitude results in the obscuration of the truth: that normal people are the richest of all. 

19 Diseased; caused by or altered by or manifesting disease or pathology. [Editor’s note.] 

The fourth chapter of the book contains a concise description of some of these anomalies, their causes, and the biological reality, selected in such a way as to facilitate comprehension of this work as a whole. Other data are distributed throughout many specialized works that will not be included here. However, we must consider the overall shape of our knowledge in this area, which is so basic to our understanding of, and practical solutions to, many difficult problems of social life, is unsatisfactory. Many scientists treat this area of science as being peripheral; others consider it “thankless” because it easily leads to misunderstandings with other specialists. As a consequence, various concepts and various semantic conventions emerge, and the totality of knowledge in this science is still characterized by an excessively descriptive nature. This book therefore encompasses efforts whose purpose was to bring to light the causative aspects of the descriptively known phenomena. 

The pathological phenomena in question, usually of a sufficiently low intensity which can be more easily concealed from environmental opinion, merge without much difficulty into the eternal process of the genesis of evil, which later affects people, families, and entire societies. Later in this book, we shall learn that these pathological factors become indispensable components in a synthesis which results in wide scale human suffering, and also that tracking their activities by means of scientific control and social consciousness may prove to be an effective weapon against evil. 

For the above reasons, this scope of psychopathological science represents an indispensable part of that objective language we have dealt with before. Ever-increasing accuracy in biological and psychological facts in this area is an essential precondition for an objective comprehension of many phenomena which become extremely onerous for societies, as well as for a modern solution to age-old problems. Biologists, physicians, and psychologists who have been struggling with these elusive and convoluted problems deserve assistance and encouragement from society, since their work will enable the future protection of people and nations from an evil whose causes we do not as yet sufficiently understand. 

Society 

Nature has designed man to be social, a state of affairs encoded early, on the instinctual level of our species as described above. Our minds and personalities could not possibly develop without contact and interaction with an ever-widening circle of people. Our mind receives input from others, whether consciously or unconsciously, in regard to matters of emotional and mental life, tradition and thought, by means of resonant sensitivity, identification, imitation, and by exchange of ideas, and permanent rules. The material we obtain in these ways is then transformed by our psyche in order to create a new human personality, one we call “our own”. However, our existence is contingent upon necessary links with those who lived before, those who presently make up our society, and those who shall exist in the future. Our existence only assumes meaning as a function of societal bonds; hedonistic isolation causes us to lose ourselves. 

It is man’s fate to actively cooperate in giving shape to the fate of society by two principal means: forming his individual and family life within it, and becoming active in the sum total of social affairs based on his – hopefully sufficient - comprehension of what needs to be done, what ought to be done, and whether or not he can do it. This requires an individual to develop two somewhat overlapping areas of knowledge about  things; his life depends on the quality of this development, as does his nation and humanity as a whole. 

If, say, we observe a beehive with a painter’s eye, we see what looks like a crowding throng of insects linked by their species-similarity. A beekeeper, however, tracks complicated laws encoded in every insect’s instinct and in the collective instinct of the hive as well; that helps him understand how to cooperate with the laws of nature governing apiary society. The beehive is a higher-order organism; no individual bee can exist without it, and thus it submits to the absolute nature of its laws. 

If we observe the throngs of people crowding the streets of some great human metropolis, we see what looks like individuals driven by their business and problems, pursuing some crumb of happiness. However, such an oversimplification of reality causes us to disregard the laws of social life which existed long before the metropolis ever did, and which will continue to exist long after huge cities are emptied of people and purpose. Loners in a crowd have a difficult time accepting that reality, which – for them - exists in only potential form, although they cannot perceive it directly. 

In reality, accepting the laws of social life in all their complexity, even if we find initial difficulties in comprehending them, helps us to come, finally, to a certain level of understanding that we acquire by something akin to osmosis. Thanks to this comprehension, or even just an instinctive intuition of such laws, an individual is able to reach his goals and mature his personality in action. Thanks to sufficient intuition and comprehension of these conditions, a society is able to progress culturally and economically and to achieve political maturity. 

The more we progress in this understanding, the more social doctrines strike us as primitive and psychologically naive, especially those based on the thoughts of thinkers living during the 18th and 19th centuries which were characterized by a dearth of psychological perception. The suggestive nature of these doctrines derives from their oversimplification of reality, something easily adapted and used in political propaganda. These doctrines and ideologies show their basic faults, in regard to the understanding of human personalities and differences among people, all rather clearly if viewed in the light of our natural language of psychological concepts, and even more so in the light of objective language. 

A psychologist’s view of society, even if based only on professional experience, always places the human individual in the foreground; it then widens the perspective to include small groups, such as families, and finally societies and humanity as whole. We must then accept from the outset that an individual’s fate is significantly dependent upon circumstance. When we gradually increase the scope of our observations, we also gain a greater pictorial specificity of causative links, and statistical data assume ever greater stability. 

In order to describe the interdependence between someone’s fate and personality, and the state of development of society, we must study the entire body of information collected in this area to date, adding a new work written in objective language. Herein I shall adduce only a few examples of such reasoning in order to open the door to questions presented in later chapters. 

~~~ 

Throughout the ages and in various cultures, the best pedagogues have understood the importance, regarding the formation of a culture and a person’s character, of the scope of concepts describing psychological phenomena. The quality and richness of concepts and terminology 20 mastered by an individual and society, as well as the degree to which they approximate an objective world view, condition the development of our moral and social attitudes. The correctness of our understanding of self and others characterizes the components conditioning our decisions and choices, be they mundane or important, in our private lives and social activities. 

20 Lobaczewski’s emphasis on language is very important. Semiotics is the study of language or any other symbol system that conveys meaning. One of the great philosophical discussions that has continued for centuries relates to that of the alphabet giver and “namer” of things. In the monotheistic world, Adam is, of course, the one we think of when we think of the “giving of names” to things. In terms of the study of Semiotics, the question is: did he name things based on what they were, in essence, or did he simply create a convention, and arbitrarily name them whatever appealed to him? The theories of Semiotics propose that there are two levels, or “planes of articulation”. At the level of any given language, such as Greek, English, Chinese, or whatever, there is what they call the “Expression plane” that consists of a lexicon, a phonology and syntax. In other words, the Expression Plane is the selection of words that belong to that language, the sounds that the selection of words produce, and the way they are arranged to convey meaning. That is the first plane. The second plane is called the Content Plane. This is the array of concepts that the language is capable of expressing. This last is rather important because, as we have all heard at least once in our lives, Eskimos have many words for snow while people who do not live in an  environment where snow and ice are the dominant features may only have one or two words for these phenomena. 

So it is that the “Content Plane” of a language becomes crucial to what can be discussed in that language. In order for the sounds of speech to be meaningful, the words formed out of these sounds must have a meaning associated with them. In other words, the sounds relate to the Content. The Content Continuum represents the Universe or reality to which our words relate as we are capable of conceiving it. 

Lobaczewski is rightly pointing out that the normal person (not to mention psychology as a whole, though to a lesser extent) has an extremely psychological vocabulary of limited understanding because the content continuum of understanding has been artificially truncated, repressed, or otherwise diminished. [Editor’s note.] 

The level and quality of a given society’s psychological worldview is also a condition of realization of the full socio psychological structure present as a potential in the psychological variety within our species. Only when we can understand a person in relation to his actual internal contents, not some substituted external label, can we help him along his path to proper adjustment to social life, which would be to his advantage and would also assist in the creation of a stable and creative structure of society. 

Supported by a proper feel for, and understanding of, psychological qualities, such a structure would impart high social office to individuals possessing both full psychological normality, sufficient talent and specific preparation. The basic collective intelligence of the masses of people would then respect and support them. 

And so, in such a society, the only pending problems to be resolved would be those matters so difficult as to overwhelm the natural language of concepts, however enriched and qualitatively ennobled. 

However, there have always been “society pedagogues”, less outstanding but more numerous, who have become fascinated by their own great ideas, which might, sometimes, even be true, but are more often constricted or contain the taint of some hidden pathological thought processes. Such people have always striven to impose pedagogical methods which would impoverish and deform the development of individuals’ and societies’ psychological worldview; they inflict permanent harm upon societies, depriving them of universally useful values. By claiming to act in the name of a more valuable idea, such pedagogues actually undermine the values they claim and open the door for destructive ideologies.

At the same time, as we have already mentioned, each society contains a small but active minority of persons with various deviant worldviews, especially in the areas treated above, which are caused either by psychological anomalies, to be discussed below, or by the long-term influence of such anomalies upon their psyches, especially during childhood. Such people later exert a pernicious influence upon the formative process of the psychological world view in society, whether by direct activity or by means of written or other transmission, especially if they engage in the service of some ideology or other. 

Many causes which easily escape the notice of sociologists and political scientists can thus be broken down into either the development or involution of this factor, whose meaning for the life of society is as decisive as the quality of their language of psychological concepts. 

Let us imagine that we want to analyze these processes: we would construct a sufficiently credible inventory method which would examine the contents and correctness of the area of worldview in question. After subjecting the appropriate representative groups to such testing, we would then obtain indicators of that particular society’s ability to understand psychological phenomena and dependencies within their country and other nations. This would simultaneously constitute the basic indicators of said society’s talent for self-government and progress, as well as its ability to carry on a reasonable international policy. Such tests could provide an early warning system if such abilities were to deteriorate, in which case, it would be proper to make the appropriate efforts in the realm of social pedagogy. In extreme cases, it might be proper for those countries evaluating the problem to take more direct corrective action, even to isolating the deteriorating country until the appropriate corrections are well under way. 

Let as adduce another example of a congenial nature: the development of an adult human’s gifts, skills, realistic thought, and natural psychological worldview will be optimal where the level and quality of his education and the demands of his professional practice correspond to his individual talents. Achieving such a position provides personal, material, and moral advantages to him; society as whole also reaps benefits at the same time. Such a person would then perceive it as social justice in relation to himself. 

If various circumstances combine, including a given society’s deficient psychological world view, individual’s are forced to exercise functions which do not make full use of his or her talents. When this happens, said person’s productivity is no better, and often even worse, than that of a worker with satisfactory talents. Such an individual then feels cheated and inundated by duties which prevent him from achieving self realization. His thoughts wander from his duties into a world of fantasy, or into matters which are of greater interest to him; in his daydream world, he is what he should and deserves to be. Such a person always knows if his social and professional adjustment has taken a downward direction; at the same time, however, if he fails to develop a healthy critical faculty concerning the upper limits of his own talents, his daydreams may “fix on” an unfair world where “all you need is power”. Revolutionary and radical ideas find fertile soil among such people in downward social adaptations. It is in society’s best interests to correct such conditions not only for better productivity, but to avoid tragedies. 

Another type of individual, on the other hand, may achieve an important post because they belong to privileged social groups or organizations in power while their talents and skills are not sufficient for their duties, especially the more difficult problems. Such persons then avoid the problematic and dedicate themselves to minor matters quite ostentatiously. A component of histrionics appears in their conduct and tests indicate that their correctness of reasoning progressively deteriorates after only a few years’ worth of such activities. In the face of  increasing pressures to perform at a level unattainable for them, and in fear of being discovered as incompetent, they begin to direct attacks against anyone with greater talent or skill, removing them from appropriate posts and playing an active role in degrading their social and professional adjustment. This, of course, engenders a feeling of injustice and can lead to the problems of the downwardly adapted individual as described above. Upwardly-adjusted people thus favor whip-cracking, totalitarian governments which would protect their positions. 

Upward and downward social adjustments, as well the qualitatively improper ones, result in a waste of any society’s basic capital, namely the talent pool of its members. This simultaneously leads to increasing dissatisfaction and tensions among individuals and social groups; any attempt to approach human talent and its productivity problematics as a purely private matter must therefore be considered dangerously naive. Development or involution in all areas of cultural, economic and political life depend on the extent to which this talent pool is properly utilized. In the final analysis, it also determines whether there will be evolution or revolution. 

Technically speaking, it would be easier to construct appropriate methods that enable us to evaluate the correlations between individual talents and social adjustment in a given country, than to deal with the prior proposition of the development of psychological concepts. Conducting the proper tests would furnish us a valuable index that we might call “the social order indicator.” The closer the figure to +1.0, the more likely the country in question would be to fulfill that basic precondition for social order and take the proper path in the direction of dynamic development. A low correlation would be an indication that social reform is needed. A near-zero or even negative correlation should be interpreted as a danger-sign that revolution is imminent. Revolutions in one country often cause manifold problems for other countries, so it is in the best interests of all countries to monitor such conditions. 

The examples adduced above do not exhaust the question of causative factors influencing the creation of a social structure which would adequately correspond to the laws of nature. Our species-instinct level has already encoded the intuition that the existence of society’s internal structure, based on psychological variations, is necessary; it continues to develop alongside our basic intelligence, inspiring our healthy common sense. This explains why the most numerous part of populations, whose talents are near average, generally accepts its modest social position in any country as long as the position fulfills the indispensable requirements of proper social adjustment and guarantees an equitable way of life no matter at what level of society the individual finds their proper fit. 

This average majority accepts and respects the social role of people whose talents and education are superior, as long as they occupy appropriate positions within the social structure. The same people, however, will react with criticism, disrespect, and even contempt, whenever someone as average as themselves compensates for his deficiencies by flaunting an upwardly-adjusted position. The judgments pronounced by this sphere of average but sensible people can often be highly accurate, which can and should be all the more remarkable if we take into account that said people could not possibly have had sufficient knowledge of many of the actual problems, be they scientific, technical, or economic. 21 

21 Very often false opinion polls are used to attempt to manipulate a society’s perception of its officials. This never works for very long as, eventually, incompetence is revealed to all. [Editor’s note.] 

An experienced politician can rarely assume that the difficulties in the areas of economics, defense, or international policy will be fully understand by his constituency. However, he can and should assume that his own comprehension of human matters, and anything having to do with interpersonal relations within said structure, will find an echo in this same majority of his society’s members. These facts partially justify the idea of democracy, especially if a particular country has historically had such a tradition, the social structure is well developed, and the level of education is adequate. Nevertheless, they do not represent psychological data sufficient to raise democracy to the level of a moral criterion in politics. A democracy composed of individuals of inadequate psychological knowledge can only devolve. [Yeah he is not bulls*#ting there, is he America? DC]

The same politician should be conscious of the fact that society contains people who already carry the psychological results of social maladjustment. Some of these individuals attempt to protect positions for which their skills are not commensurate, while others fight to be allowed to use their talents. Governing a country becomes increasingly difficult when such battles begin to eclipse other important needs. That is why the creation of a fair social structure continues to be a basic precondition for social order and the liberation of creative values. It also explains why the propriety and productivity of a structure-creation process constitute a criterion for a good political system. 

Politicians should also be aware that in each society there are people whose basic intelligence, natural psychological worldview, and moral reasoning have developed improperly. Some of these persons contain the cause within themselves, others were subjected to psychologically abnormal people as children. Such individuals’ comprehension of social and moral questions is different, both from the natural and from the objective viewpoint; they constitute a destructive factor for the development of society’s psychological concepts, social structure, and internal bonds. 

At the same time, such people easily interpenetrate the social structure with a ramified 22 network of mutual pathological conspiracies poorly connected to the main social structure. These people and their networks participate in the genesis of that evil which spares no nation. This substructure gives birth to dreams of obtaining power and imposing one’s will upon society, and is quite often actually brought about in various countries, and during historical times as well. It is for this reason that a significant portion of our consideration shall be devoted to an understanding of this age-old and dangerous source of problems. 

22 Showing one or more branches. In mathematics, ramification is a geometric term used for “branching out”. It is also used from the opposite perspective (branches coming together). [Editor’s note.] 

Some countries with a non-homogeneous population manifest further factors which operate destructively upon the formation of social structure and the permanent developmental processes of a society’s psychological world view. Primarily among these are the racial, ethnic, and cultural differences existing in virtually every conquest-engendered nation. Memories of former sufferings and contempt for the vanquished continue to divide the population for centuries. It is possible to overcome these difficulties if understanding and goodwill prevail throughout several generations. 

Differences in religious beliefs and the moral convictions related thereto continue to cause problems, albeit less dangerous than the above, unless aggravated by some doctrine of intolerance or superiority of one faith above others. The creation of a social structure whose links are patriotic and supra religious has, after all, been demonstrated as possible. 

All these difficulties become extremely destructive if a social or religious group, in keeping with its doctrine, demands that its members be accorded positions which are in fact upward-adjusted with relation to these people’s true talents. 

A just social structure woven of individually adjusted persons, i.e. creative and dynamic as a whole, can only take shape if this process is subjected to its natural laws rather than some conceptual doctrines. It benefits society as a whole for each individual to be able to find his own way to self-realization with assistance from a society which understands these laws, individual interests and the common good. 

One obstacle to the development of a society’s psychological world view, the building of a healthy societal structure, and the institution of proper forms for governing the nation, would appear to be the enormous populations and vast distances of giant countries. It is just precisely these nations which give rise to the greatest ethnic and cultural variations. In a vast spreading land containing hundreds of millions of people, individuals lack the support of a familiar homeland and feel powerless to exert an effect upon matters of high politics. The structure of society becomes lost in wide-open spaces. What remains is narrow, generally familial, links. 

At the same time, governing such a country creates its own unavoidable problems: giants suffer from what could be called permanent macropathy (giant sickness), since the principal authorities are far away from any individual or local matters. The main symptom is the proliferation of regulations required for administration; they may appear proper in the capital but are often meaningless in outlying districts or when applied to individual matters. Officials are forced to follow regulations blindly; the scope of using their human reason and differentiating real situations becomes very narrow indeed. Such behavioral procedures have an impact upon the society, which also starts to think regulations instead of practical and psychological reality. The psychological world view, which constitutes the basic factor in cultural development and activates social life, thus becomes involuted. 

It thus behooves us to ask: Is good government possible? Are giant countries capable of sustaining social and cultural evolution? It would appear, rather, that the best candidates for development are those countries whose populations number between ten and twenty million, and where personal bonds among citizens, and between citizens and their authorities, still safeguard correct psychological differentiation and natural relationships. Overly large countries should be divided into smaller organisms enjoying considerable autonomy, especially as regards cultural and economic matters; they could afford their citizens a feeling of homeland within which their personalities could develop and mature. 

If someone asked me what should be done to heal the United States of America, a country which manifests symptoms of macropathy, inter alia, I would advise subdividing that vast nation into thirteen states--just like the original ones, except correspondingly larger and with more natural boundaries. Such states should then be given considerable autonomy. That would afford citizens a feeling of homeland, albeit a smaller one, and liberate the motivations of local patriotism and rivalry among such states. This would, in turn, facilitate solutions to other problems with a different origin. 

~~~ 

Society is not an organism subordinating every cell to the good of the whole; neither is it a colony of insects, where the collective instinct acts like a dictator. However, it should also avoid being a compendium of egocentric individuals linked purely by economic interests and legal and formal organizations. 

Any society is a socio-psychological structure woven of individuals whose psychological organization is the highest, and thus the most variegated. A significant scope of man’s individual freedom derives from this state of affairs and subsists in an extremely complicated relationship to his manifold psychological dependencies and duties, with regard to this collective whole. 

Isolating an individual’s personal interest as if it were at war with collective interests is pure speculation which radically oversimplifies real conditions instead of tracking their complex nature. Asking questions based on such schemes is logically defective, since it contains erroneous suggestions. 

In reality, many ostensibly contradictory interests, such as individual vs. collective or those of various social groups and substructures, could be reconciled if we could be guided by a sufficiently penetrating understanding of the good of man and society, and if we could overcome the operations of emotions as well as some more or less primitive doctrines. Such reconciliation, however, requires transferring the human and social problems in question to a higher level of understanding and acceptance of the natural laws of life. At this level, even the most difficult problems turn out to have a solution, since they invariably derive from the same insidious operations of psychopathological phenomena. We shall deal with this question toward the end of this book. 

A colony of insects, no matter how well-organized socially, is doomed to extinction whenever its collective instinct continues to operate according to the psychogenetic code, although the biological meaning has disappeared. If, for instance, a queen bee does not affect her nuptial flight in time because the weather has been particularly bad, she begins laying unfertilized eggs which will hatch nothing but drones. The bees continue to defend their queen, as required by their instinct; of course, and when the worker bees die out the hive becomes extinct. 

At that point, only a “higher authority” in the shape of a beekeeper can save such a hive. He must find and destroy the  drone queen and insinuate a healthy fertilized queen into the hive along with a few of her young workers. A net is required for a few days to protect such a queen and her providers from being stung by those bees loyal to the old queen. Then the hive instinct accepts the new one. The apiarist generally suffers a few painful stings in the process. 

The following question derives from the above comparison: Can the human hive inhabiting our globe achieve sufficient comprehension of macrosocial pathological phenomenon which is so dangerous, abhorrent, and fascinating at the same time, before it is too late? At present, our individual and collective instincts and our natural psychological and moral worldview cannot furnish all the answers upon which to base skillful counteractive measures. 

Those fair-minded people who preach that all we have left is to trust in the “Great Apiarist in the sky” and a return to His commandments are glimpsing a general truth, but they also tend to trivialize particular truths, especially the naturalistic ones. It is the latter which constitute a basis for comprehending phenomena and targeting practical action. The laws of nature have made us very different from one another. Thanks to his individual characteristics, exceptional life-circumstances, and scientific effort, man may have achieved some mastery of the art of objectively comprehending the phenomena of the abovementioned type, but we must underscore that this could only occur because it was in accordance with the laws of nature. 

If societies and their wise people are able to accept an objective understanding of social and socio pathological phenomena, overcoming the emotionalism and egotism of the natural world view for this purpose, they shall find a means of action based on an understanding of the essence of the phenomena. It will then become evident that a proper vaccine or treatment can be found for each of the diseases scourging the earth in the form of major or minor social epidemics. 

Just as a sailor possessing an accurate nautical map enjoys greater freedom of course-selection and maneuvering amid islands and bays, a person endowed with a better comprehension of self, other people, and the complex interdependencies of social life becomes more independent of the various circumstances of life and better able to overcome situations which are difficult to understand. At the same time, such improved knowledge makes an individual more liable to accept his duties toward society and to subordinate himself to the discipline which arises as a corollary. Better informed societies also achieve internal order and criteria for collective efforts. This book is dedicated to reinforcing this knowledge by means of a naturalistic understanding of phenomena, something heretofore comprehended only by means of excessively moralistic categories of the natural world view.

In a wider perspective, a constantly improving grasp of the laws governing social life, and its atypical secluded recesses, must lead us to reflect upon the failings and deficiencies of those social doctrines expounded to date, which were based on an extremely primitive understanding of these laws and phenomena. The distance is not far between such considerations and a better understanding of the operations of these dependencies in former and existing social systems; the same applies to substantive critiques thereof. A new idea is about to be born based upon this ever-deepening comprehension of natural laws, namely the building of a new social system for nations. 

Such a system would be better than any of its predecessors. Building it is possible and necessary, not just some vague futuristic vision. After all, a whole series of countries is now dominated by conditions which have destroyed the structural forms worked out by history and replaced them with social systems inimical to creative functioning, systems which can only survive by means of force. We are thus confronted with a great construction project demanding wide-ranging and well organized work. The earlier we undertake the job, the more time we will have to carry it out.

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THE HYSTEROIDAL CYCLE

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