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

intelligent, but narrow; self-centered yet longing for acceptance. [Editor’s

note.]

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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 unreal-

istic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of

arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selec-

tion.

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 particu-

larly 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 hys-

teria 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 pos-

session 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 un-

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109

comprehended 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 Fue-

hrer 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 ab-

surd 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 ac-

cepted 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 psy-

chological problems with more naturalistic realism and to util-

ize 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 ac-

cordance 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

36 An interesting comparison is the regime of George W. Bush and the Neo-

conservatives. It follows, almost point by point, the history of the Kaiser in

Germany. [Editor’s note.]

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disintegration became all too common. A mysterious craving

arose, as if the social organism had managed to become ad-

dicted to some drug. The hunger was for more pathologically

modified psychological material, a phenomenon known to psy-

chotherapeutic 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 se-

quence, as it appears a general regularity in ponerogenic proc-

esses.

A ponerological approach facilitates our understanding of a

person who succumbs to the influence of a characteropathic

personality, as well as comprehension of macrosocial phenom-

ena 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.

~~~

Paranoid character disorders : It is characteristic of para-

noid 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 pseudo-

logical, 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.

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111

A proletarian may perceive this power to enslave to be a

kind of victory over higher-class people and thus take the para-

noid 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 argumenta-

tion is qualitatively more frequent in reverse proportion to the

civilization level of the community in question, although it

never approaches the majority. Nevertheless, paranoid indi-

viduals become aware of their enslaving influence through

experience and attempt to take advantage of it in a pathologi-

cally egotistic manner.

We know today that the psychological mechanism of para-

noid 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 diencephalon37 by

various pathological factors, resulting in its permanently de-

creased 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 assimi-

lated 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

37 The posterior division of the forebrain; connects the cerebral hemispheres

with the mesencephalon; the region of the brain that includes the epithala-

mus, thalamus, and hypothalamus. [Editor’s note.]

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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 Gross-

man38 describes him more or less as follows:

Symptom:

Lenin was always tactful, gentle, and

polite, but simultaneously characterized

Asthenization.

by an excessively sharp, ruthless, and

Fixation and stereotypia.

brutal attitude to political opponents. He

never allowed any possibility that they

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 Krush-