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

Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto

themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruth-

less 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 betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic

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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

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 pos-

sibly 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 oper-

ated 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 cer-

tainly don’t move in society except as interlopers. This idea

seems to be coming under some serious revision lately. As

!obaczewski 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 en-

compasses such personality characteristics as manipulative-

ness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteris-

tics 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 sug-

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

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

gested 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 char-

acterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopa-

thy as commonly described.

The present investigation sought to answer some basic

questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non foren-

sic 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 indi-

viduals 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) psy-

chopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disor-

ders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...

Clearly, where much more work is needed is in under-

standing what factors differentiate the abiding (although per-

haps 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

!obaczewski discusses the fact that there are different types

of psychopaths. One type, in particular, is the most deadly of

3 Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova: (2001) “Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a

Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach” in Journal of Personal-

ity Disorders , 15(5), 425-441.

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all: the Essential Psychopath. He doesn’t give us a “checklist”

but rather discusses what is inside the psychopath. His descrip-

tion 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”, “Impres-

sive”, “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 psy-

chopath, 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 busi-

nessmen, 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 char-

acterize criminal psychopaths as “unsuccessful psychopaths”.

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

One researcher, Alan Harrington, goes so far as to say that

the psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolu-

tionary 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 esca-

pades ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of mur-

dering 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.

[…T]he 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 in-

duced by the country’s street punks come to about $4 billion a

year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our cor-

porate board rooms 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 san-

ity 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 - psycho-

path 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 con-

science 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 Play-

ground:Business Relationships.

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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