Part 2 : Political Ponerology...The Hysteroidal Cycle...Ponerology

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

A science on the nature of evil 

adjusted for political purposes

by Andrew M. Lobaczewski

CHAPTER III 

THE HYSTEROIDAL CYCLE 

Ever since human societies and civilizations have been created on our globe, people have longed for happy times full of tranquility and justice, which would have allowed everyone to herd his sheep in peace, search for fertile valleys, plow the earth, dig for treasures, or build houses and palaces. Man desires peace so as to enjoy the benefits accumulated by earlier generations and to proudly observe the growth of future ones he has begotten. Sipping wine or mead in the meantime would be nice. He would like to wander about, becoming familiar with other lands and people, or enjoy the star-studded sky of the south, the colors of nature, and the faces and costumes of women. He would also like to give free rein to his imagination and immortalize his name in works of art, whether sculptured in marble or eternalized in myth and poetry. [yes, he is spot on about life and what it should be DC]

From time immemorial, then, man has dreamed of a life in which the measured effort of mind and muscle would be punctuated by well-deserved rest. He would like to learn nature’s laws so as to dominate her and take advantage of her gifts. Man enlisted the natural power of animals in order to make his dreams come true, and when this did not meet his needs, he turned to his own kind for this purpose, in part depriving other humans of their humanity simply because he was more powerful. [and they had no right or authority to do so! DC]

Dreams of a happy and peaceful life thus gave rise to force over others, a force which depraves the mind of its user. That is  why man’s dreams of happiness have not come true throughout history. This hedonistic view of “happiness” contains the seeds of misery and feed the eternal cycle whereby good times give birth to bad times, which in turn cause the suffering and mental effort which produce experience, good sense, moderation, and a certain amount of psychological knowledge, all virtues which serve to rebuild more felicitous conditions of existence. [emephris  dc]

During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy. [how true dc]

Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding its psychological worldview could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad. [well I expect by now 2021, that those folks who are so desperate to hold on to power, have been 'happy' for far to long, to the peril of the planet dc]

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious elimination of data which are, or appear to be, inexpedient gradually turns into habit, and then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. The problem is that any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of psychopathology. [all about perspective of 'good' and balance in the mind about inconvenient facts learned dc] 

Such contented periods for one group of people - often rooted in some injustice to other people or nations - start to strangle the capacity for individual and societal consciousness; subconscious factors take over a decisive role in life. Such a society, already infected by the hysteroida 23 state, considers any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-breeding”. J. G. Herder’s 24 iceberg is drowned in a sea of falsified unconsciousness; only the tip of the iceberg is visible above the waves of life. Catastrophe waits in the wings. In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until everything reverts to “bad” times. [like from leave it to Beaver to Sodom and Gomorrah reality show in the flesh and our faces, we ought not to take this. Herder was not smart making the state a god, you can lay corporations at his feet also. dc] 

We already know that every society contains a certain percentage of people carrying psychological deviations caused by various inherited or acquired factors which produce anomalies in perception, thought, and character. Many such people attempt to impart meaning to their deviant lives by means of social hyperactivity. They create their own myths and ideologies of overcompensation and have the tendency to egotistically insinuate to others that their own deviant perceptions and the resulting goals and ideas are superior. 

When a few generations’ worth of “good-time” insouciance results in societal deficit regarding psychological skill and moral criticism, this paves the way for pathological plotters, snake-charmers, and even more primitive impostors to act and merge into the processes of the origination of evil. They are essential factors in its synthesis. In the next chapter I shall attempt to persuade my readers that the participation of pathological factors, so underrated by the social sciences, is a common phenomenon in the processes of the origin of evil. 

Those times which many people later recall as the “good old days” thus provide fertile soil for future tragedy because of the progressive devolution of moral, intellectual, and personality values which give rise to Rasputin-like eras. [new age= Rasputin on roids dc]

The above is a sketch of the causative understanding of reality which in no way contradicts a teleological 25 perception of the sense of causality. Bad times are not merely the result of hedonistic regression to the past; they have a historical purpose to fulfill.[made me remember dc] 

Suffering, effort, and mental activity during times of imminent bitterness lead to a progressive, generally heightened, regeneration of lost values, which results in human progress. Unfortunately, we still lack a sufficiently exhaustive philosophical grasp of this interdependence of causality and teleology regarding occurrences. It seems that prophets were more clear sighted, in the light of the laws of creation, than philosophers such as E. S. Russell 26 , R. B. Braithwaite 27 , G. Sommerhoff 28 , and others who pondered this question. 

When bad times arrive and people are overwhelmed by an excess of evil, they must gather all their physical and mental strength to fight for existence and protect human reason. The search for some way out of the difficulties and dangers rekindles long-buried powers of discretion. Such people have the initial tendency to rely on force in order to counteract the threat; they may, for instance, become “trigger-happy” or dependent upon armies. 

Slowly and laboriously, however, they discover the advantages conferred by mental effort; improved understanding of the psychological situation in particular, better differentiation of human characters and personalities, and, finally, comprehension of one’s adversaries. During such times, virtues which former generations relegated to literary motifs regain their real and useful substance and become prized for their value. A wise person capable of furnishing sound advice is highly respected. 

How astonishingly similar were the philosophies of Socrates and Confucius, those half-legendary thinkers who, albeit near-contemporaries, resided at opposite ends of the great continent. Both lived during evil, bloody times and adumbrated a method for conquering evil, especially regarding perception of the laws of life and knowledge of human nature. They searched for criteria of moral values within human nature and considered knowledge and understanding to be virtues. Both men, however, heard the same wordless internal Voice warning those embarking upon important moral questions: “Socrates, do not do this”. That is why their efforts and sacrifices constitute permanent assistance in the battle against evil. 

Difficult and laborious times give rise to values which finally conquer evil and produce better times. The succinct and accurate analysis of phenomena, made possible thanks to the conquest of the expendable emotions and egotism characterizing self-satisfied people, opens the door to causative behavior, particularly in the areas of philosophical, psychological, and moral reflection; this tips the scale to the advantage of goodness. If these values were totally incorporated into humankind’s cultural heritage, they could sufficiently protect nations from the next era of errors and distortions. However, the collective memory is impermanent and particularly liable to remove a philosopher and his work from his context, namely his time and place and the goals which he served. 

Whenever an experienced person finds a moment of relative peace after a difficult and painful effort, his mind is free to reflect unencumbered by the expendable emotions and outdated attitudes of the past, but aided by the cognizance of bygone years. He thus comes closer to an objective understanding of phenomena and a view of actual causative links, including such links which cannot be understood within the framework of natural language. He thus meditates upon an ever-expanding circle of general laws while contemplating the meaning of those former occurrences which separated the periods of history. We reach for ancient precepts because we understand them better; they make it easier for us to understand both the genesis and the creative meaning of unhappy times. 

The cycle of happy, peaceful times favors a narrowing of the world view and an increase in egotism; societies become subject to progressive hysteria and to that final stage, descriptively known to historians, which finally produces times of despondency and confusion, that have lasted for millennia and continue to do so. The recession of mind and personality which is a feature of ostensibly happy times varies from one nation to another; thus some countries manage to survive the results of such crises with minor losses, whereas others lose nations and empires. Geopolitical factors have also played a decisive role.[yes manipulated geopolitical factors dc]

The psychological features of such crises doubtless bear the stamp of the time and of the civilization in question, but one common denominator must have been an exacerbation of society’s hysterical condition. This deviation or, better yet, formative deficiency of character, is a perennial sickness of societies, especially the privileged elites. The existence of exaggerated individual cases, especially such characterized as clinical, is an offshoot of the level of social hysteria, quite frequently correlated with some additional causes such as carriers of minor lesions of brain tissue. Quantitatively and qualitatively, these individuals may serve to reveal and evaluate such times, as indicated in history’s Book of San Michele 29 . From the perspective of historical time, it would be harder to examine the regression of the ability and correctness of reasoning or the intensity of “Austrian talk”, although these approximate the crux of the matter better and more directly. 

In spite of above-mentioned qualitative differences, the duration of these time-cycles tends to be similar. If we assume that the extreme of European hysteria occurred around 1900 and returns not quite every two centuries, we find similar conditions. Such cyclical isochronicity may embrace a civilization and cross into neighboring countries, but it would not swim oceans or penetrate into faraway and far different civilizations. 

When the First World War broke out, young officers danced and sang on the streets of Vienna: “Krieg, Krieg, Krieg! Es wird ein schöner Krieg ...”. While visiting Upper Austria in 1978, I decided to drop in on the local parson, who was in his seventies by then. When I told him about myself, I suddenly realized he thought I was lying and inventing pretty stories. He subjected my statements to psychological analysis, based on this unassailable assumption and attempted to convince me that his morals were lofty. When I complained to a friend of mine about this, he was amused: “As a psychologist, you were extremely lucky to catch the survival of authentic Austrian talk (die österreichische Rede). We young ones have been incapable of demonstrating it to you even if we wanted to simulate it.” 

In the European languages, “Austrian talk” has become the common descriptive term for paralogistic 30 discourse. Many people using this term nowadays are unaware of its origin. Within the context of maximum hysterical intensity in Europe at the time, the authentic article represented a typical product of conversive thinking: subconscious selection and substitution of data leading to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter. In the same manner, the reflex assumption that every speaker is lying is an indication of the hysterical anti-culture of mendacity, within which telling the truth becomes “immoral”. 

That era of hysterical regression gave birth to the great war and the great revolution which extended into Fascism, Hitlerism, and the tragedy of the Second World War. It also produced the macrosocial phenomenon whose deviant character became superimposed upon this cycle, screening and destroying its nature. Contemporary Europe is heading for the opposite extreme of this historical sine curve. We could thus assume that the beginning of the next century will produce an era of optimal capability and correctness of reason, thus leading to many new values in all realms of human discovery and creativity. We can also foresee that realistic psychological understanding and spiritual enrichment will be features of this era. 

At the same time, America, especially the U.S.A., has reached a nadir for the first time in its short history. Grey haired Europeans living in the U.S. today are struck by the similarity between these phenomena and the ones dominating Europe at the times of their youth. The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological worldview and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others. 31 This can be considered analogous to the European dueling mania of those times. People fortunate enough to achieve a position higher than someone else are contemptuous of their supposed inferiors in a way highly reminiscent of czarist Russian customs. Turn-of-the-century Freudian psychology finds fertile soil in this country because of the similarity in social and psychological conditions. 

America’s psychological recession drags in its wake an impaired socio-professional adaptation of this country’s people, leading to a waste of human talent and an involution of societal structure. If we were to calculate this country’s adaptation correlation index, as suggested in the prior chapter, it would probably be lower than the great majority of the free and civilized nations of this world, and possibly lower than some countries which have lost their freedom. 

A highly talented individual in the USA finds it ever more difficult to fight his way through to self-realization and a socially creative position. Universities, politics, and businesses ever more frequently demonstrate a united front of relatively untalented persons and even incompetent persons. The word “overeducated” is heard more and more often. Such “overqualified” individuals finally hide out in some foundation laboratory where they are allowed to earn the Nobel prize as long as they don’t do anything really useful. In the meantime, the country as whole suffers due to a deficit in the inspirational role of highly gifted individuals. 

As a result, America is stifling progress in all areas of life, from culture to technology and economics, not excluding political incompetence. When linked to other deficiencies, an egotist’s incapability of understanding other people and nations leads to political error and the scapegoating of outsiders. Slamming the brakes on the evolution of political structures and social institutions increases both administrative inertia and discontent on the part of its victims. 

We should realize that the most dramatic social difficulties and tensions occur at least ten years after the first observable indications of having emerged from a psychological crisis. Being a sequel, they also constitute a delayed reaction to the cause or are stimulated by the same psychological activation process. The time span for effective countermeasures is thus rather limited. 

Is Europe entitled to look down on America for suffering from the same sickness the former has succumbed to several times in the past? Is America’s feeling of superiority toward Europe derived from these past events and their inhuman and tragic results? If so, is this attitude anything more than a harmless anachronism? It would be most useful if the European nations took advantage of their historical experience and more modern psychological knowledge so as to help America most effectively. 

East Central Europe, now under Soviet domination, 32 is part of the European cycle, albeit somewhat delayed; the same applies to the Soviet empire, especially to the European portion. There, however, tracking these changes and isolating them from more dramatic phenomena eludes the possibilities of observation, even if it is only a matter of methodology. Even there, however, there is progressive growth in the grass-roots resistance of the regenerative power of healthy common sense. Year by year, the dominant system feels weaker vis-a-vis these organic transformations. May we add to this a phenomenon the West finds totally incomprehensible, and which shall be discussed in greater detail: namely, the growing specific, practical knowledge about the governing reality within countries whose regimes are similar. This facilitates individual resistance and a reconstruction of social links. Such processes shall, in the final analysis, produce a watershed situation, although it will probably not be a bloody counter-revolution. 

The question suggests itself: Will the time ever come when this eternal cycle rendering the nations almost helpless can be conquered? Can countries permanently maintain their creative and critical activities at a consistently high level? Our era contains many exceptional moments; our contemporary Macbeth witches’ cauldron holds not only poisonous ingredients, but also progress and understanding such as humanity has not seen in millennia. [it comes down to the children, bottom line, and how the adults treat them that decides the fates of nations, and in America there has been a growing trend of parents vacating the spiritual realms of their children to others, or give no direction at all themselves

Upbeat economists point out that humanity has gained a powerful slave in the form of electric energy and that war, conquest, and subjugation of other countries is becoming increasingly unprofitable in the long run. Unfortunately, as we shall see later in this work, nations can be pushed into economically irrational desires and actions by other motives whose character is meta-economic. That is why overcoming these other causes and phenomena which give rise to evil is a difficult, albeit at least theoretically attainable, task. However, in order to master it, we must understand the nature and dynamics of said phenomena: an old principle of medicine that I will repeat again and again is: “Ignota, nulla curatio morbi.” 

One accomplishment of modern science, contributing to the destruction of these eternal cycles, is the development of communication systems which have linked our globe into one huge “village”. The time cycles sketched herein used to run their course almost independently in various civilizations at different geographical locations. Their phases neither were, nor are, synchronized. We can assume that the American phase lags 80 years behind the European. When the world becomes an interrelated structure from the viewpoint of communicating both information and news, different social contents and opinions caused by unlike phases of said cycles, inter alia, will overflow all boundaries and information security systems. This will give rise to pressures which can change the causative dependencies herein. A more plastic psychological situation thus emerges, which increases the possibilities for pinpointed action based on an understanding of the phenomena.[or they could turn the 'village' to a all seeing eye network of spying on every facet of our lives and not for our benefit, but rather a weapon used against us in this war they have been waging against Americans now for over 40 years, but one that has been ramped up the past 20. dc] 

At the same time, in spite of many difficulties of a scientific, social and political nature, we see the development of a new community of factors which may eventually contribute to the liberation of mankind from the effects of uncomprehending historical causation. The development of science, whose final goal is a better understanding of man and the laws of social life, could, in the long run, cause public opinion to accept the essential knowledge about human nature and the development of the human personality, which will enable the harmful processes to be controlled. Some forms of international cooperation and supervision will be needed for this. 

The development of human personality and its capacity for proper thinking and accurate comprehension of reality entails a certain amount of risk and demands overcoming comfortable laziness and applying the efforts of special scientific work under conditions quite different from those under which we have been raised. 

Under such conditions, an egotistic personality, accustomed to a comfortably narrow environment, superficial thinking, and uncontrolled emotionalism, will experience very favorable changes, which cannot be induced by anything else. Specially  altered conditions will cause such a personality to begin disintegrating, thus giving rise to intellectual and cognitive efforts and moral reflection. 

One example of such a program of experience is the American Peace Corps. Young people travel to many poor developing countries in order to live and work there, often under primitive conditions. They learn to understand other nations and customs, and their egotism decreases. Their world view develops and becomes more realistic. They thus lose the characteristic defects of the modern American character. 

In order to overcome something whose origin is shrouded in the mists of time immemorial, we often feel we must battle the ever-turning windmills of history. However, the end goal of such effort is the possibility that an objective understanding of human nature and its eternal weaknesses, plus the resulting transformation of societal psychology, may enable us effectively to counteract or prevent the destructive and tragic results sometime in the not too distant future. 

Our times are exceptional, and suffering now gives rise to better comprehension than it did centuries ago. This understanding and knowledge fit better into the total picture, since they are based on objective data. Such a view therefore becomes realistic, and people and problems mature in action. Such action should not be limited to theoretical contemplation's, but rather, acquire organization and form. 

In order to facilitate this, let us consider the selected questions and the draft of a new scientific discipline which would study evil, discovering its factors of genesis, insufficiently understood properties, and weak spots, thereby outlining new possibilities to counteract the origin of human suffering.

CHAPTER IV 

PONEROLOGY 

Ever since ancient times, philosophers and religious thinkers representing various attitudes in different cultures have been searching for the truth regarding moral values, attempting to find criteria for what is right, and what constitutes good advice. They have described the virtues of human character at length and suggested these be acquired. They have created a heritage containing centuries of experience and reflection. In spite of the obvious differences of originating cultures and attitudes, even though they worked in widely divergent times and places, the similarity, or complementary nature, of the conclusions reached by famous ancient philosophers are striking. It demonstrates that whatever is valuable is conditioned and caused by the laws of nature acting upon the personalities of both individual human beings and collective societies. [we know the difference between what is good for us and what is bad for us, it's in our spiritual DNA, DC]

96S

It is equally thought-provoking to see how relatively little has been said about the opposite side of the coin; the nature, causes, and genesis of evil. These matters are usually cloaked behind the above generalized conclusions with a certain amount of secrecy. Such a state of affairs can be partially ascribed to the social conditions and historical circumstances under which these thinkers worked; their modus-operandi may have been dictated at least in part by personal fate, inherited traditions, or even prudishness. After all, justice and virtue are the opposites of force and perversity; the same applies to truthfulness vs. mendacity, similarly like health is the opposite of an illness. It is also possible that whatever they thought or said about the true nature of evil was later expunged and hidden by those very forces they sought to expose. 

The character and genesis of evil thus remained hidden in discreet shadows, leaving it to literature to deal with the subject in highly expressive language. But, expressive though the literary language might be, it has never reached the primeval source of the phenomena. A certain cognitive space remained as a non investigated thicket of moral questions which resist understanding and philosophical generalizations. 

Present-day philosophers developing meta-ethics are trying to push on along the elastic space leading to an analysis of the language of ethics, contributing bits and pieces toward eliminating the imperfections and habits of natural conceptual language. Penetrating this ever-mysterious nucleus is highly tempting to a scientist. 

At the same time, active practitioners in social life and normal people searching for their way are significantly conditioned by their trust in certain authorities. Eternal temptations such as trivializing insufficiently-proven moral values or disloyally taking advantage of naive human respect for them, find no adequate counterweight within a rational understanding of reality. 

If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. relegated to the shadow of their personal experience relatively non aesthetic disease phenomena because they were primarily interested in studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shadows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all. They risked their own health and made sacrifices in order to discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and, afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of these illnesses. A comprehension of the nature of a disease, and the course it runs, after all, enables the proper curative means to be elaborated. 

While studying an organisms’ ability to fight off disease, scientists invented vaccination, which allows organisms to become resistant to an illness without passing through it in its full-blown manifestation. Thanks to this, medicine conquers and prevents phenomena which, in its scope of activity, are considered a type of evil. 

The question thus arises: could some analogous modus operandi not be used to study the causes and genesis of other kinds of evil scourging human individuals, families, and societies, in spite of the fact that they appear even more insulting to our moral feelings than do diseases? Experience has taught the author that evil is similar to disease in nature, although possibly more complex and elusive to our understanding. Its genesis reveals many factors, pathological, especially psycho pathological, in character, whose essence medicine and psychology have already studied, or whose understanding demands further investigation in these realms. 

Parallel to the traditional approach, problems commonly perceived to be moral may also be treated on the basis of data provided by biology, medicine, and psychology, as factors of this kind are simultaneously present in the question as a whole. Experience teaches us that a comprehension of the essence and genesis of evil generally makes use of data from these areas. Philosophical reflection alone is insufficient. Philosophical thought may have engendered all the scientific disciplines, but the other scientific disciplines did not mature until they became independent, based on detailed data and a relationship to other disciplines supplying such data. 

Encouraged by the often “coincidental” discovery of these naturalistic aspects of evil, the author has imitated the methodology of medicine; a clinical psychologist and medical coworker by profession, he had such tendencies anyway. As is the case with physicians and disease, he took the risks of close contact with evil and suffered the consequences. His purpose was to ascertain the possibilities of understanding the nature of evil, its etiological factors and to track its pathos-dynamics.

The developments of biology, medicine, and psychology opened so many avenues that the above mentioned behavior turned out to be not only feasible, but exceptionally fertile. Personal experience and refined methods in clinical psychology permitted reaching ever more accurate conclusions. 

There was a major difficulty: insufficient data, especially in the area of the science of psychopaths. This problem had to be overcome based on my own investigations. This insufficiency was caused by neglect of these areas, theoretical difficulties facing researchers, and the unpopular nature of these problems. This work in general, and this chapter in particular, contain references to research conclusions the author was either prevented from publishing or unwilling to publish for reasons of personal safety. Sadly, it is lost now and age prevents any attempts at recovery. It is hoped that my descriptions, observations, and experience, here condensed from memory, will provide a platform for a new effort to produce the data needed to confirm again what was confirmed then. 

Nevertheless, based on the work of myself and others in that past tragic time, a new discipline arose that became our beacon; two Greek philologists - monks baptized it “PONEROLOGY” from the Greek poneros = evil. The process of the genesis of evil was called, correspondingly, “ponerogenesis”. I hope that these modest beginnings will grow so as to enable us to overcome evil through an understanding of its nature, causes, and development. 

~~~

From among 5000 psychotic, neurotic, and healthy patients, the author selected 384 adults who behaved in a manner which had seriously hurt others. They came from all circles of Polish society, but mostly from a large industrial center characterized by poor working conditions and substantial air pollution. They represented various moral, social, and political attitudes. Some 30 of them had been subjected to penal measures which were often excessively harsh. Once freed from jail or other penalty, these people attempted to re-adapt to social life, which made them tend to be sincere in speaking to me - the psychologist. Others had escaped punishment; still others had hurt their fellows in a manner which does not qualify for judicial treatment under legal theory or practice. Some were protected by a political system which is in itself a ponerogenic derivative. The author had the further advantage of speaking to persons whose neuroses were caused by some abuse they had experienced. 

All the above-mentioned people were given psychological tests and subjected to detailed anamnesis 33 so as to determine their overall mental skills, thereby either excluding or detecting possible brain tissue lesions and evaluating them in relation to one another.34 Other methods were also used in accordance with the patient’s actual needs in order to create a sufficiently accurate picture of the psychological condition. In most of these cases the author had access to the results of medical examinations and laboratory tests performed in medical facilities. 

A psychologist can glean many valuable observations, such as those used in this work, when he himself is subjected to abuse, as long as cognitive interest overcomes his natural human emotional reactions. If not, he must utilize his professional skills to rescue himself first. The author never lacked for such opportunities since his unhappy country is replete with examples of human injustice to which he was, himself, subjected on numerous occasions. 

Analysis of their personalities and the genesis of their behavior revealed that only 14 to 16 per cent of the 384 persons who hurt others failed to exhibit any psycho pathological factors which would have influenced their behavior. Regarding this statistic, it should be pointed out that a psychologist’s non-discovery of such factors does not prove their non-existence. In a significant part of this group of cases, the lack of proof was rather the result of insufficient interview possibilities, imperfection of testing methods, and deficiency of skills on the part of the tester. Thus, natural reality appeared different in principle from everyday attitudes, which interpret evil in a moralizing way, and from juridical practices, which only in a small part of the cases adjudicate a commutation of a sentence by taking the criminal’s pathological characteristics into account. 

We may often reason by means of the exclusionary hypothesis, e.g. pondering what would happen if the genesis of a particular wrongdoing did not have some pathological component. We then usually reach the conclusion that the deed would not have taken place either since the pathological factor sealed its occurrence or became an indispensable component in its origin. 

The hypothesis thus suggests itself that such factors are commonly active in the genesis of evil. The conviction that pathological factors generally participate in ponerogenic processes appears even more likely if we also take into account the conviction of many scholars in ethics that evil in this world represents a kind of web or continuum of mutual conditioning. Within this interlocking structure, one kind of evil feeds and opens doors for others regardless of any individual or doctrinal motivations. It does not respect the boundaries of individual cases, social groups, and nations. Since pathological factors are present within the synthesis of most instances of evil, they are also present in this continuum. 

Further deliberations on the observations thus obtained considered only a part of the above-mentioned variegated cases, especially those which did not generate doubt by colliding with natural moral attitudes, and those which did not reveal practical difficulties for further analysis (such as absence of further contact with the patient). The statistical approach furnished only general guidelines. Intuitive penetration into each individual problem, and a similar synthesis of the whole, proved the most productive method in this area. 

The role of pathological factors in a process of the origin of evil can be played by any known, or not yet sufficiently researched, psycho pathological phenomenon, and also by some pathological matters medical practice does not include within psychopathology. However, their activity in a ponerogenic process is dependent on features other than the obviousness or intensity of the condition. Quite the contrary, the greatest ponerogenic activity is reached by pathological factors at an intensity which generally permits detection with the help of clinical methods, although they are not yet considered pathological by the opinion of the social environment. Such a factor can then covertly limit the bearer’s ability to control his conduct, or have an effect upon other persons, traumatizing their psyches, fascinating them, causing their personalities to develop improperly, or inciting vindictive emotions or a lust for punishing. A moralistic interpretation of such agents and their legacy works against humankind’s ability to see the causes of evil and to utilize common sense to combat it. This is why identifying such pathological factors and revealing their activities can so often stifle their ponerogenic functions.

In the process of the origin of evil, pathological factors can act from within an individual who has committed a hurtful act; such activity is relatively easily acknowledged by public opinion and the courts. Consideration is given much less frequently to how outside influences emitted by their carriers act upon individuals or groups. Such influences, however, play a substantial role in the overall genesis of evil. In order for such influence to be active, the pathological characteristic in question must be interpreted in a moralistic manner, i.e. differently from its true nature. There are many possibilities for such activities. For the moment, let us indicate the most damaging.

Every person in the span of his life, and particularly during childhood and youth, assimilates psychological material from others through mental resonance, identification, imitation, and other communicative means, thereupon transforming it to build his own personality and world view. If such material is contaminated by pathological factors and deformities, personality development shall also be deformed. The product will be a person unable to understand correctly either himself and others, normal human relations and morals; he develops into a person who commits evil acts with a poor feeling of being faulty. Is he really at fault?

Man’s age-old, familiar moral weaknesses and intelligence deficiencies, proper reasoning, and knowledge combine with the activity of various pathological factors to create a complex network of causation which frequently contains feedback relationships or closed causal structures. Practically speaking, cause and effect are often widely separated in time, which makes it more difficult to track the links. If our scope of observation is expansive enough, the ponerogenic processes are reminiscent of complex chemical synthesis, wherein modifying a single factor causes the entire process to change. Botanists are aware of the law of the minimum, wherein plant growth is limited by contents of the component which is in deficiency in the soil. Similarly, eliminating (or at least limiting) the activity of one of the above-mentioned factors or deficiencies should cause a corresponding reduction in the entire process of the genesis of evil.

For centuries, moralists have been advising us to develop ethics and human values; they have been searching for the proper intellectual criteria. They have also respected correctness of reasoning, whose value in this area is unquestionable. In spite of all their efforts, however, they have been unable to overcome the many kinds of evil that have scourged humanity for ages and that are presently taking on unheard-of proportions.

By no means does a ponerologist wish to belittle the role of moral values and knowledge in this area; rather, he wants to buttress it with hitherto-underrated scientific knowledge in order to round out the picture as a whole and adapt it better to reality, thereby making more effective action possible in moral, psychological, social, and political practice.

This new discipline is thus primarily interested in the role of pathological factors in the origin of evil, especially since conscious control and monitoring of them on the scientific, social, and individual levels could effectively stifle or disarm these processes. Something which has been impossible for centuries is now feasible in practice thanks to progress in naturalistic cognizance. Methodological refinements are dependent upon further progress in detailed data and upon the conviction that such behavior is valuable.

For instance, in the course of psychotherapy, we may inform a patient that in the genesis of his personality and behavior we find the results of influences from some person who revealed psycho-pathological characteristics. We thereby carry out an intervention that is painful for the patient, which demands we proceed with tact and skill. As a result of this interaction, however, the patient develops a kind of self-analysis which will liberate him from the results of these influences and enable him to develop some critical distance in dealing with other factors of a similar nature. Rehabilitation will depend on improving his ability to understand himself and others. Thanks to this, he will be able to overcome his internal and interpersonal difficulties more easily and to avoid mistakes which hurt him and his immediate environment.

Pathological Factors 

Let us now attempt a concise description of some examples of those pathological factors which have proved to be the most active in ponerogenic processes. Selection of these examples resulted from the author’s own experience, instead of exhaustive statistical tallies, and may thus differ from other specialists’ evaluations. Much depends on particular situation. A small amount of statistical data concerning these phenomena has been borrowed from other works or are approximate evaluations elaborated under conditions which did not allow the entire front of research to be developed. Again, may the reader please consider the conditions under which the author worked, and the time and place. 

Mention should also be made of some historical figures, people whose pathological characteristics contributed to the process of the genesis of evil on a large social scale, imprinting their mark upon the fate of nations. It is not an easy task to establish diagnosis for people whose psychological anomalies and diseases died together with them. The results of such clinical analyses are open to question even by persons lacking knowledge or experience in this area, only because recognizing such a state of mind does not correspond to their historical or literary way of thought. While this is done on the basis of the legacy of natural and often moralizing language, I can only assert that I always based my findings on comparisons of data acquired through numerous observations I made by studying many similar patients with the help of the objective methods of contemporary clinical psychology. I took the critical approach herein as far as possible. The opinions of specialists elaborated in a similar way nevertheless remain valuable. 

Acquired Deviations 

Brain tissue is very limited in its regenerative ability. If it is damaged and the change subsequently heals, a process of rehabilitation can take place wherein the neighboring healthy tissue takes over the function of the damaged portion. This substitution is never quite perfect; thus some deficits in skill and proper psychological processes can be detected in even cases of very small damage by using the appropriate tests. Specialists are aware of the variegated causes for the origin of such damage, including trauma and infections. We should point out here that the psychological results of such changes, as we can observe many years later, are more heavily dependent upon the location of the damage itself in the brain mass, whether on the surface or within, than they are upon the cause which brought them about. The quality of these consequences also depends upon when they occurred in the person’s lifetime. Regarding pathological factors of ponerogenic processes, perinatal or early infant damages have more active results than damages which occurred later. 

In societies with highly developed medical care, we find among the lower grades of elementary school (when tests can be applied), that 5 to 7 per cent of children have suffered brain tissue lesions which cause certain academic or behavioral difficulties. This percentage increases with age. Modern medical care has contributed to a quantitative decrease in such phenomena, but in certain relatively uncivilized countries and during historical times, indications of difficulties caused by such changes are and have been more frequent. 

Epilepsy and its many variations constitute the oldest known results of such lesions; it is observed in a relatively small number of persons suffering such damage. Researchers in these matters are more or less unanimous in believing that Julius Caesar, and then later Napoleon Bonaparte, had epileptic seizures. Those were probably instances of vegetative epilepsy caused by lesions lying deep within the brain, near the vegetative centers. This variety does not cause subsequent dementia. The extent to which these hidden ailments had negative effects upon their characters and historical decision-making, or played a ponerogenic role, can be the subject of a separate study and  evaluation of great interest. In most cases, however, epilepsy is an evident ailment, which limits its role as a ponerogenic factor. 

In a much larger segment of the bearers of brain tissue damage, the negative deformation of their characters grows in the course of time. It takes on variegated mental pictures, depending upon the properties and localization of these changes, their time of origin, and also the life conditions of the individual after their occurrence. We will call such character disorders – characteropathies. Some characteropathies play an outstanding role as pathological agents in the processes of the genesis of evil. Let us thus characterize these most active ones. 

Characteropathies reveal a certain similar quality, if the clinical picture is not dimmed by the coexistence of other mental anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species’ natural psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinctive and affective responses, which are natural, albeit often insufficiently controlled. The experience of people with such anomalies grows in the medium of the normal human world to which they belong by nature. Thus their different way of thinking, their emotional violence, and their egotism find relatively easy entry into other people’s minds and are perceived within the categories of the everyday world. Such behavior on the part of persons with such character disorders traumatizes the minds and feelings of normal people, gradually diminishing the ability of the normal person to use their common sense. In spite of their resistance, victims of the characteropath become used to the rigid habits of pathological thinking and experiencing. If the victims are young people, the result is that the personality suffers abnormal development leading to its malformation. Characteropaths and their victims thus represent pathological, ponerogenic factors which, by their covert activity, easily engender new phases in the eternal genesis of evil, opening the door to a later activation of other factors which thereupon take over the main role. 

A relatively well-documented example of such an influence of a characteropathic personality on a macrosocial scale is the last German emperor, Wilhelm II. 35 He was subjected to brain trauma at birth. During and after his entire reign, his physical and psychological handicap was hidden from public knowledge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body were handicapped. As a boy, he had difficulty learning grammar, geometry, and drawing, which constitute the typical triad of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He developed a personality with infantile features and insufficient control over his emotions, and also a somewhat paranoid way of thinking which easily sidestepped the heart of some important issues in the process of dodging problems. 

Militaristic poses and a general’s uniform overcompensated for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his shortcomings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chancellor had to go, that cunning and ruthless politician who had been loyal to the monarchy and had built up Prussian power. After all, he was too knowledgeable about the prince’s defects and had worked against his coronation. A similar fate met other overly critical people, who were replaced by persons with lesser brains, more subservience, and, sometimes, discreet psychological deviations. Negative selection took place. 

Since the common people are prone to identify with the emperor, and through the emperor, with a system of government, the characteropathic material emanating from the Kaiser resulted in many Germans being progressively deprived of their ability to use their common sense. An entire generation grew up with psychological deformities regarding feeling and understanding moral, psychological, social and political realities. It is extremely typical that in many German families having a member who was psychologically not quite normal, it became a matter of honor (even excusing nefarious conduct) to hide this fact from public opinion, and even from the awareness of close friends and relatives. Large portions of German society ingested psychopathological material, together with that unrealistic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selection. 

This occurred during a time when a wave of hysteria was growing throughout Europe, including a tendency for emotions to dominate and for human behavior to contain an element of histrionics. How individual sober thought can be terrorized by a behavior colored with such material was evidenced particularly by women. This progressively took over three empires and other countries on the mainland. 

To what extent did Wilhelm II contribute to this, along with two other emperors whose minds also were incapable of taking in the actual facts of history and government? To what extent were they themselves influenced by an intensification of hysteria during their reigns? That would make an interesting topic of discussion among historians and ponerologists. 

International tensions increased; Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Unfortunately, neither the Kaiser nor any other governmental authority in his country were in possession of their reason. What dominated the subsequent events was Wilhelm’s emotional attitude and the stereotypes of thought and action inherited from the past. War broke out. General war plans that had been prepared earlier, and which had lost their relevance under the new conditions, unfolded more like military maneuvers. Even those historians familiar with the genesis and character of the Prussian state, including its ideological subjugation of individuals to the authority of king and emperor, and its tradition of bloody expansionism, intuit that these situations contained some activity of an uncomprehended fatality which eludes an analysis in terms of historical causality. 36

Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fuehrer a clownish psychopath who made no bones about his pathological vision of superman rule? Under his leadership, Germany then unleashed a second criminal and politically absurd war. During the second half of this war, highly-trained army officers honorably performed inhuman orders, senseless from the political and military point of view, issued by a man whose psychological state corresponded to the routine criteria for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital. 

Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the first half of our century by means of categories generally accepted in historical thought leaves behind a nagging feeling of inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every social level. 

The German nation, fed for a generation on pathologically altered psychological material, fell into a state comparable to what we see in certain individuals raised by persons who are both characteropathic and hysterical. Psychologists know from experience how often such people then let themselves commit acts which seriously hurt others. A psychotherapist needs a good deal of persistent work, skill, and prudence in order to enable such a person to regain his ability to comprehend psychological problems with more naturalistic realism and to utilize his healthy critical faculties in relation to his own behavior. 

The Germans inflicted and suffered enormous damage and pain during the first World War; they thus felt no substantial guilt and even thought that they were the ones who had been wronged. This is not surprising as they were behaving in accordance with their customary habit, without being aware of its pathological causes. The need for this pathological state to be concealed in heroic garb after a war in order to avoid bitter disintegration became all too common. A mysterious craving arose, as if the social organism had managed to become addicted to some drug. The hunger was for more pathologically modified psychological material, a phenomenon known to psychotherapeutic experience. This hunger could only be satisfied by another similarly pathological personality and system of government. A characteropathic personality opened the door for leadership by a psychopathic individual. We shall return later in our deliberations to this pathological personality sequence, as it appears a general regularity in ponerogenic processes. 

A ponerological approach facilitates our understanding of a person who succumbs to the influence of a characteropathic personality, as well as comprehension of macrosocial phenomena caused by the contribution of such factors. Unfortunately, relatively few such individuals can be served by appropriate psychotherapy. Such behavior cannot be ascribed to nations proudly defending their sovereignty without extreme reactions. However, we may consider the solution of such problems by means of the proper knowledge as a vision for the future. 

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Paranoid character disorders: It is characteristic of paranoid behavior for people to be capable of relatively correct reasoning and discussion as long as the conversation involves minor differences of opinion. This stops abruptly when the partner’s arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas, crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or forces them to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before. Such a stimulus unleashes upon the partner a torrent of pseudological, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which always contain some degree of suggestion. 

Utterances like these inspire aversion among cultivated and logical people, who then tend to avoid the paranoid types. However, the power of the paranoid lies in the fact that they easily enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, who have been victims of the egotistical influence of individuals with character disorders, and, in particular, a large segment of young people. 

A proletarian may perceive this power to enslave to be a kind of victory over higher-class people and thus take the paranoid person’s side. However, this is not the normal reaction among the common people, where perception of psychological reality occurs no less often than among intellectuals. 

In sum then, the response of accepting paranoid argumentation is qualitatively more frequent in reverse proportion to the civilization level of the community in question, although it never approaches the majority. Nevertheless, paranoid individuals become aware of their enslaving influence through experience and attempt to take advantage of it in a pathologically egotistic manner. We know today that the psychological mechanism of paranoid phenomena is twofold: one is caused by damage to the brain tissue, the other is functional or behavioral. Within the above-mentioned process of rehabilitation, any brain-tissue lesion causes a certain slackening of accurate thinking and, as a consequence, of the personality structure. Most typical are those cases caused by an aggression in the diencephalon 37 by various pathological factors, resulting in its permanently decreased tonal ability, and similarly of the tonus of inhibition in the brain cortex. Particularly during sleepless nights, runaway thoughts give rise to a paranoid changed view of human reality, as well as to ideas which can be either gently naive or violently revolutionary. Let us call this kind paranoid characteropathy. 

In persons free of brain tissue lesions, such phenomena most frequently occur as a result of being reared by people with paranoid characteropathia, along with the psychological terror of their childhood. Such psychological material is then assimilated creating the rigid stereotypes of abnormal experiencing. This makes it difficult for thought and world view to develop normally, and the terror-blocked contents become transformed into permanent, functional, congestive centers.

Ivan Pavlov comprehended all kinds of paranoid states in a manner similar to this functional model without being aware of this basic and primary cause. He nevertheless provided a vivid description of paranoid characters and the above-mentioned ease with which paranoid individuals suddenly tear away from factual discipline and proper thought-processes. Those readers of his work on the subject who are sufficiently familiar with Soviet conditions glean yet another historical meaning from his little book. Its intent appears obvious. The author dedicated his work, with no word of inscription, of course, to the chief model of a paranoid personality: the revolutionary leader Lenin, whom the scientist knew well. As a good psychologist, Pavlov could predict that he would not be the object of revenge, since the paranoid mind will block out the egocentric associations. He was thus able to die a natural death.

Lenin should nevertheless be included with the first and most characteristic kind of paranoid personality, i.e. most probably due to diencephalic brain damage. Vassily Grossman 38 describes him more or less as follows: 

Symptom: Asthenization. Fixation and stereotypia. 

Lenin was always tactful, gentle, and polite, but simultaneously characterized by an excessively sharp, ruthless, and brutal attitude to political opponents. He never allowed any possibility that they might be even minimally right, nor that he might be even minimally wrong. 

Pathological egotism

He would often call his opponents hucksters, lackeys, servant-boys, mercenaries, agents, or Judases bribed for thirty pieces of silver. 

Paramoralisms. Spellbinding and of consciousness and its effects.

He made no attempt to persuade his opponents during a dispute. He communicated not with them, but rather with those witnessing the dispute, in order to ridicule and compromise his adversaries. 

Lack of the self- criticism. 

Sometimes such witnesses were just a few people, sometimes thousands of delegates to a congress, sometimes millions worth throngs of newspaper readers.. 

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Frontal characteropathy: The frontal areas of the cerebral cortex (10A and B acc. to the Brodmann division) are virtually present in no creature except man; they are composed of the phylogenetically youngest nervous tissue. Their cytoarchitecture is similar to the much older visual projection areas on the opposite pole of the brain. This suggests some functional similarity. The author has found a relatively easy way to test this psychological function, which enables us to grasp a certain number of imaginary elements in our field of consciousness and subject them to internal contemplation. The capacity of this act of internal projection varies greatly from one person to another, manifesting a statistical correlation with similar variegation in the anatomical extent of such areas. The correlation between this capacity and general intelligence is much lower. As described by researchers (Luria et al.), the functions of these areas, thought-process acceleration and coordination, seem to result from this basic function. 

Damage to this area occurred rather frequently: at or near birth, especially for premature infants, and later in life as a result of various causes. The number of such perinatal brain tissue lesions has been significantly reduced due to improved medical care for pregnant women and newborns. The spectacular ponerogenic role which results from character disorders  caused by this can thus be considered somewhat characteristic of past generations and primitive cultures. 

Brain cortex damage in these areas selectively impairs the above mentioned function without impairing memory, associative capacity, or, in particular, such instinct-based feelings and functions as, for instance, the ability to intuit a psychological situation. The general intelligence of an individual is thus not greatly reduced. Children with such a defect are almost normal students; difficulties emerge suddenly in upper grades and affect principally these parts of the curriculum which place burden on the above function. 

The pathological character of such people, generally containing a component of hysteria, develops through the years. The non-damaged psychological functions become overdeveloped to compensate, which means that instinctive and affective reactions predominate. Relatively vital people become belligerent, risk-happy, and brutal in both word and deed. 

Persons with an innate talent for intuiting psychological situations tend to take advantage of this gift in an egotistical and ruthless fashion. In the thought process of such people, a short cut way develops which bypasses the handicapped function, thus leading from associations directly to words, deeds, and decisions which are not subject to any dissuasion. Such individuals interpret their talent for intuiting situations and making split-second oversimplified decisions as a sign of their superiority compared to normal people, who need to think for long time, experiencing self-doubt and conflicting motivations. The fate of such creatures does not deserve to be pondered long. 

Such “Stalinistic characters” traumatize and actively spellbind others, and their influence finds it exceptionally easy to bypass the controls of common sense. A large proportion of people tend to credit such individuals with special powers, thereby succumbing to their egotistic beliefs. If a parent manifests such a defect, no matter how minimal, all the children in the family evidence anomalies in personality development. 

The author studied an entire generation of older, educated, people wherein the source of such influence was the eldest sister who suffered perinatal damage of the frontal centers. From early childhood, her four younger brothers exposed to and assimilated pathologically altered psychological material, including their sister’s growing component of hysteria. They retained well into their sixties the deformities of personality and worldview, as well as the hysterical features thus caused, whose intensity diminished in proportion to the greater difference in age. 

Subconscious selection of information made it impossible for these men to apprehend any critical comments regarding their sister’s character; also, any such comments were considered to be an offense to the family honor. 

The brothers accepted as real their sister’s pathological delusions and complaints about her “bad” husband (who was actually a decent person) and her son, in whom she found a scapegoat to avenge her failures. They thereby participated in a world of vengeful emotions, considering their sister a completely normal person whom they were prepared to defend by the most unsavory methods, if need be, against any suggestion of her abnormality. They thought normal woman were insipid and naive, good for nothing but sexual conquest. Not one among the brothers ever created a healthy family or developed even average wisdom of life. 

The character development of these people also included many other factors that were dependent upon the time and place in which they were reared: the turn of the century, with a patriotic Polish father and German mother who obeyed contemporary custom by formally accepting her husband’s nationality, but who still remained an advocate of the militarism, and customary acceptance of the intensified hysteria which covered Europe at the time. That was the Europe of the three Emperors: the splendor of three people with limited intelligence, two of whom revealed pathological traits. The concept of “honor” sanctified triumph. Staring at someone too long was sufficient pretext for a duel. These brothers were thus raised to be valiant duelists covered with saber-scars; however, the slashes they inflicted upon their opponents were more frequent and much worse. 

When people with a humanistic education pondered the personalities of this family, they concluded that the causes for this formation should be sought in contemporary time and customs. If, however, the sister had not suffered brain damage and the pathological factor had not existed (exclusionary hypothesis), their personalities would have developed more normally even during those times. They would have become more critical and more amenable to the values of healthy reasoning and humanistic contents. They would have founded better families and received more sensible advice from wives more wisely chosen. As for the evil they sowed too liberally during their lives, it would either not have existed at all, or else would have been reduced to a scope conditioned by more remote pathological factors. 

Comparative considerations also led the author to conclude that Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, also known as Stalin, should be included in the list of this particular ponerogenic characteropathy, which developed against the backdrop of perinatal damage to his brain’s prefrontal fields. Literature and news about him abounds in indications: brutal, charismatic, snake-charming; issuing of irrevocable decisions; inhuman ruthlessness, pathologic vengefulness directed at anyone who got in his way; and egotistical belief in his own genius on the part of a person whose mind was, in fact, only average. This state explains as well his psychological dependence on a psychopath like Beria 39 . 

Some photographs reveal the typical deformation of his forehead which appears in people who suffered very early damage to the areas mentioned above. His typical irrevocable decisions his daughter describes as follows: 

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Whenever he threw out of his heart someone whom he had known for a long time, classifying him among his ........

chapter to be continued in next installment 117s

Footnotes

23 Hysteria is a diagnostic label applied to a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. Here it is being used to describe “fear of truth” or fear of thinking about unpleasant things so as to not “rock the boat” of current contentment. [Editor’s note.] 

24 Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), a theologian by training and profession, greatly influenced German letters with his literary criticism and his philosophy of history. Along with W. Goethe and Schiller, he made Weimar the seat of German neohumanism. His analogy of national cultures as organic beings had an enormous impact on modern historical consciousness. Nations, he argued, possessed not only the phases of youth, maturity, and decline but also singular, incomparable worth. His mixture of anthropology and history was characteristic of the age. [Editor’s note.]  

25 Teleology is the supposition that there is design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the works and processes of nature, and the philosophical study of that purpose. [Editor’s note.] 

26 Russell, E.S. 1916. Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology. London: Murray. [Editor’s note.] 

27 Braithwaite, R.B. (1900-1990): British philosopher best known for his theories in the philosophy of science and in moral and religious philosophy. Braithwaite’s work in the philosophy of the physical sciences was important for his theories on the nature of scientific inductive reasoning and the use of models, as well as on the use of probabilistic laws. He also applied his scientific background to his studies of moral and religious philosophy, particularly in the application of mathematical game theory. In his book Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher (1955), he demonstrated the ways in which game theory could be used to arrive at moral choices and ethical decisions. His classic work was Scientific Explanation: A Study of Theory, Probability and Law in Science (1953), on the methodology of natural science. [Editor's note.] 

28 G. Sommerhoff, Analytical Biology (O.U.P., 1950). [Editor’s note.] 

29 Axel Munthe, (1857-1949) physician, psychiatrist, and writer, was born in Oskarshamn, Sweden. He was educated at the University of Uppsala and   Montpellier in Paris where he received his M.D. He studied the work of the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot and used hypnosis in his own work with the physical and psychological symptoms of his patients. He later became physician to the Swedish Royal family. He became known as “the modern St. Francis of Assissi” because he financed sanctuaries for birds. As a writer Munthe recounted his own experiences as a physician and psychiatrist. He is most famous for the autobiographical work The Story of San Michele which was published in 1929. [Editor’s note.] 

30 Paralogism: n. illogical or fallacious deduction. paralogical, paralogistic, a. paralogize, v.i. be illogical; draw unwarranted conclusions. paralogist, n. [Editor’s note.]  

31 The litigious nature of Americans is known the world over. [Editor’s note.] 

32 At the time of writing, 1984. 

33 Medical history: the case history of a medical patient as recalled by the patient. [Editor’s note.] 

34 My basic test battery resembled more those used in Great Britain as opposed to the American versions. I used in addition two tests: one was an old British performance test restandarized for clinical purposes. The other was completely elaborated by myself. Unfortunately, when I was expelled from Poland, it made it impossible for me to transferring any of my many results to other psychologists because I was deprived of all my research papers in addition to almost everything else. 

35 The eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, Wilhelm symbolized his era and the nouveaux riche aspects of the German empire. The kaiser suffered from a birth defect that left his left arm withered and useless. It was claimed that he overcame this handicap, but the effort to do so left its mark, and despite efforts of his parents to give him a liberal education, the prince became imbued with religious mysticism, militarism, anti-semitism, the glorification of power politics. Some have claimed that his personality displayed elements of a narcissistic personality disorder. Bombastic, vain, insensitive, and possessed with grandiose notions of divine right rule, his personality traits paralleled those of the new Germany: strong, but off balance; vain, but insecure; intelligent, but narrow; self-centered yet longing for acceptance. [Editor’s note.] 

36 An interesting comparison is the regime of George W. Bush and the Neoconservatives. It follows, almost point by point, the history of the Kaiser in Germany. [Editor’s note.] 

37 The posterior division of the forebrain; connects the cerebral hemispheres with the mesencephalon; the region of the brain that includes the epithalamus, thalamus, and hypothalamus. [Editor’s note.]  

38 Vassily Grossman was a Soviet citizen, a Ukrainian Jew born in 1905. A Communist, he became a war correspondent, working for the army paper Red Star - a job which took him to the front lines of Stalingrad and ultimately to Berlin. He was among the first to see the results of the death camps, and published the first account of a death camp - Treblinka - in any language. After the war, he seems to have lost his faith. He wrote his immense novel, Life and Fate (Zhizn i Sudba) in the 1950s and - in the period of the Krushchev thaw, which had seen Alexander Solzhenitsyn allowed to publish A Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich - he submitted the manuscript to a literary journal in 1960 for publication. But Solzhenitsyn was one thing, Grossman another: his manuscript was confiscated, as were the sheets of carbon paper and typewriter ribbons he had used to write it. Suslov, the Politbureau member in charge of ideology, is reported as having said it could not be published for 200 years. However, it was smuggled out on microfilm to the west by Vladimir Voinovich, and published, first in France in 1980, then in English in 1985. 

Why the 200 year ban? Because Life and Fate commits what was still, in a ‘liberal’ environment, the unthinkable sin of arguing for the moral equivalence of Nazism and Soviet communism. [Editor’s note.] 

39 L.P. Beria (1899–1953), Soviet Communist leader, b. Georgia. He rose to prominence in the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, became party secretary in these areas, and in 1938 became head of the secret police. As commissar (later minister) of internal affairs, Beria wielded great power, and he was the first in this post to become (1946) a member of the politburo. After Stalin’s death (Mar., 1953), Beria was made first deputy premier under Premier Malenkov, but the alliance was shaky; in the ensuing struggle for power Beria was arrested (July) on charges of conspiracy. He and six alleged accomplices were tried secretly and shot in Dec., 1953. [Editor’s note.]