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.

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 an uninvestigated 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 un-esthetic 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 psychopathological, 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 co-worker 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 pathodynamics.

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 psychopathies. 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 readapt 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 derivate. 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 anamnesis³³ 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.

 

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 re-standarized 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.

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 psychopathological 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, psychopathological 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 psychopathological 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.

 

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.]

 

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

 

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.]

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.

 

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 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.

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 diencephalon³⁷ 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.

 

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.]

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:

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 might be even minimally right, nor that he might be even minimally wrong. He would often call his opponents hucksters, lackeys, servant-boys, mercenaries, agents, or Judases bribed for thirty pieces of silver. 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. Sometimes such witnesses were just a few people, sometimes thousands of delegates to a congress, sometimes millions worth throngs of newspaper readers.

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 Khrushchev 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.]

 

 

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 cyto-architecture 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 world view, 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 revengefulness 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.

 

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.]

 

His typical irrevocable decisions his daughter describes as follows:

~~~ Whenever he threw out of his heart someone whom he had known for a long time, classifying him among his “enemies” in his soul, it was impossible to talk to him about that person. The reverse process became impossible for him, namely persuasion that he was not his enemy, and any attempts in that direction made him fly into a rage. Redens, Uncle Pavlusha, and A.S. Svanidze were incapable of doing anything about it; all they accomplished was to have my father break off contacts and withdraw his trust. After seeing any of them for the last time, he said goodbye as if to a potential foe, one of his “enemies”…⁴⁰
 

~~~ We know the effect of being “thrown out of his heart”, as it is documented by the history of those times.
When we contemplate the scope of the evil Stalin helped to bring about, we should always take this most ponerogenic characteropathy into account and attribute the proper portion of the “blame” to it; unfortunately, it has not yet been sufficiently studied. We have to consider many other pathologic deviations as they played essential roles in this macrosocial phenomenon. Disregarding the pathologic aspects of those occurrences and limiting interpretation thereof by historiographic and moral considerations opens the door to an activity of further ponero-genic factors; such reasoning should be thus regarded as not only scientifically insufficient but immoral as well.
 

~~~ Drug-induced characteropathies: During the last few decades, medicine has begun using a series of drugs with serious side effects: they attack the nervous system, leaving permanent damage behind. These generally discreet handicaps sometimes give rise to personality changes which are often very harmful socially. Streptomycin⁴¹ proved a very dangerous drug; as a result, some countries have limited its use, whereas others have taken it off the list of drugs whose use is permitted.

40 Svetlana Alliluieva - Twenty Letters to a Friend.
41 Streptomycin acts by inhibiting protein synthesis and damaging cell membranes in susceptible microorganisms. Possible side effects include injury to
the kidneys and nerve damage that can result in dizziness and deafness. [Editor’s note.]

The cytostatic drugs⁴² used in treating neoplastic⁴³ diseases often attack the phylogenetically oldest brain tissue, the primary carrier of our instinctive substratum and basic feelings.⁴⁴ Persons treated with such drugs progressively tend to lose their emotional color and their ability to intuit a psychological situation.

 

42 Most drugs that are used to treat cancer kill the cancer cells. The word cytotoxic means toxic to cells, or cell-killing. Chemotherapy is properly called “cytotoxic therapy”. There are other treatments that do not kill cancer cells. They work by stopping the cancer cells from multiplying. These treatments are called “cytostatic”. The hormone therapies used to treat breast cancer could be called cytostatic therapy. [Editor’s note.]
43 Neoplasia (literally: new growth) is abnormal, disorganized growth in a tissue or organ, usually forming a distinct mass. Such a growth is called a neoplasm, also known as a tumor. Neoplasia refers to both benign and malignant growths, while “cancer” refers specifically to malignant neoplasia. [Editor’s note.]
44 Chemo Head is the name given by cancer patients to one of the side-effects of chemotherapy. It has been described as an inability to concentrate, reduced memory, or finding it difficult to think clearly. This could be simply attributed to general fatigue, however it seems that there are some very specific triggers and results. Some people get flustered by loud noises and activity around them. Others find that they cannot find the right words to express themselves. One patient described the feeling as “everything seems distant ... it takes me a few seconds longer to think or answer questions. The mental process slows down tremendously.” The symptoms are similar to those of Attention Deficit Disorder. New research concludes “chemo head” continued in up to 50% of survivors as long as 10 years following the end of systemic chemotherapy treatment. [Editor’s note.]

 

They retain their intellectual functions but become praise-craving egocentrics, easily ruled by people who know how to take advantage of this. They become indifferent to other people’s feelings and the harm they are inflicting upon them; any criticism of their own person or behavior is repaid with a vengeance. Such a change of character in a person who until recently enjoyed respect on the part of his environment or community, which perseveres in human minds, becomes a pathological phenomenon causing often tragic results.

Could this have been a factor in the case of the Shah of Iran?

 

Again, diagnosing dead people is problematic, and the author lacks detailed data. However, this possibility should be accepted as a probability. The genesis of that county’s present tragedy also doubtless contains pathological factors which play ponerologically active roles.⁴⁵

Results similar to the above in the psychological picture may be caused by endogenous toxins⁴⁶ or viruses. When, on occasion, the mumps proceeds with a brain reaction, it leaves in its wake a discrete pallor or dullness of feelings and a slight decrease in mental efficiency. Similar phenomena are witnessed after a difficult bout with diphtheria.

 

45 Editor’s reminder that this book was written in 1985.
46 Current Western medical opinion states: Endogenous toxins include heavy metals, pesticides, food additives, and industrial and household chemicals. These can damage the liver and kidneys; they can also cross the blood-brainbarrier and damage brain cells. Workers exposed to high levels of inhaled manganese showed concentrated levels in the basal ganglia, and exhibited Parkinson’s-like syndrome. Observational studies have also shown increased levels of aluminum, mercury, copper, and iron in the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) of Parkinson’s patients. It is not fully determined whether these minerals found in the brain have any clinical significance. (Mitchell J. Ghen, D.O., Ph.D., and Maureen Melindrez, N.D.) [Editor’s note.]
 

Finally, polio attacks the brain, more often the higher part of the anterior horns, which was affected by the process. People with leg paresis rarely manifest these effects, but those with paresis of the neck and/or shoulders must count themselves lucky if they do not. In addition to affective pallor, persons manifesting these effects usually evidence naiveté and an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter.

We rather doubt that President F.D. Roosevelt manifested some of this latter features, since the polio virus which attacked him when he was forty caused paresis to his legs. After overcoming this, years of creative activity followed. However, it is possible that his naive attitude toward Soviet policy during his last term of office had a pathological component related to his deteriorating health.

Character anomalies developing as a result of brain-tissue damage behave like insidious ponerogenic factors. As a result of the above-described features, especially the above-mentioned naiveté and an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter, their influence easily anchors in human minds, traumatizing our psyches, impoverishing and deforming our thoughts and feelings, and limiting individuals’ and societies’ ability to use common sense and to read a psychological or moral situation accurately.

 

This opens the door to the influence of other pathological characters who most frequently carry some inherited psychological deviations; they then push the charac-teropathic individuals into the shadows and proceed with their ponerogenic work. That is why various types of characteropathy participate during the initial periods of the genesis of evil, both on the macrosocial scale and on the individual scale of human families.

An improved social system of the future should thus protect individuals and societies by preventing persons with the above deviations, or certain characteristics to be discussed below, from any societal functions wherein the fate of other people would depend upon their behavior. This of course applies primarily to top governmental positions. Such questions should be dealt with by an appropriate institution composed of people with a reputation for wisdom and with medical and psychological training.

The features of brain-tissue lesions and their character disorder results are much easier to detect than certain inherited anomalies. Thus, stifling ponerogenic processes by removing these factors from the process of the synthesis of evil is effective during the early phases of such genesis, and much easier in practice.
Inherited Deviations

Science already protects societies from the results of some physiological anomalies which are accompanied by certain psychological weaknesses. The tragic role played by hereditary hemophilia among European royalty is well known. Responsible people in countries where the system of monarchy still survives, are anxious not to allow a carrier of such a gene to become queen.

 

Any society exercising so much concern over individuals with blood-coagulation insufficiency or other serious and life-threatening pathology would protest if a man afflicted with such a condition were appointed to a high office bearing responsibility for many people. This behavior model should be extended to many pathologies, including inherited psychological anomalies.

Daltonists, men with an impaired ability to distinguish red and green colors from grey, are now barred from professions in which this could cause a catastrophe. We also know that this anomaly is often accompanied by a decrease in esthetic experience, emotions, and the feeling of linkage to people who can see colors normally. Industrial psychologists are thus cautious whether such a person should be entrusted with work requiring dependence upon an autonomic sense of responsibility, as workers safety is contingent upon this sense.

It was discovered long ago that these two above-mentioned anomalies – hemophilia and color blindness - are inherited by means of a gene located in the X chromosome, and tracking their transmission through many generations is not difficult. Geneticists have similarly studied the inheritance of many other features of human organisms, but they have paid scant attention to the anomalies interesting us here. Many features of human character have a hereditary bases in genes located in the same X chromosome; although it is not a rule. Something similar could apply to the majority of the psychological anomalies to be discussed below.

Significant progress has recently been made in cognition of a series of chromosomal anomalies resulting from defective division of the reproductive cells and their phenotypic psychological symptoms. This state of affairs enables us to initiate studies on their ponerogenetic role and to introduce conclusions which are theoretically valuable, something which is in effect already being done. In practice, however, the majority of chromosomal anomalies are not transferred to the next generation; furthermore, their carriers constitute a very small proportion of the population at large, and their general intelligence is lower than the social average, so their ponerological role is even smaller than their statistical distribution.

 

Most problems are caused by the XYY karyotype⁴⁷ which produces men who are tall, strong, and emotionally violent, with an inclination to collide with the law. These engendered tests and discussions, but their role at the level studied herein is also very small.

47 Sandberg, A. A.; Koepf, G. F.; Ishihara, T.; Hauschka, T. S. (August 26, 1961) “An XYY human male”. Lancet 2, 488-9.

Much more numerous are those psychological deviations which play a correspondingly greater role as pathological factors in the ponerological processes; they are most probably transmitted through normal heredity. However, this realm of genetics in particular is faced with manifold biological and psychological difficulties as far as recognizing these phenomena. People studying their psychopathology lack biological isolation criteria. Biologists lack clear psychological differentiation of such phenomena which would permit studies of heredity mechanics and some other properties.

At the time most of the observations on which this book is based were being done, the works of many researchers who have since shed light upon many aspects of the matters discussed herein, during the latter half of the sixties, were either nonexistent or unavailable. Scientists studying the phenomena described below were hacking their way through a thicket of symptoms based on previous works and on their own efforts.

 

An understanding of the essence of some of these hereditary anomalies and their ponerogenic role proved a necessary precondition for reaching the primary goal. Results were gleaned which served as a basis for further reasoning. For the sake of the overall picture, and because the manner elaborated also brings in certain theoretical values, I decided to retain the methodology of description for such anomalies which emerged from my own work and from that of others at the time.

Numerous scientists during the above-mentioned fertile era, and some subsequent scientists, such as R. Jenkins, H. Cleckley, S.K. Ehrlich, K.C. Gray, H.C. Hutchison, F. Kraupl Taylor, and others did cast more stereoscopic light upon the matter.

 

They were clinicians, concentrating their attention upon the more demonstrative cases which play a lesser role in the processes of the genesis of evil, in accordance with the above-mentioned general rule of ponerology. We therefore need to differentiate those analogic states which are less intense or contain less of a psychological deficit.

 

Equally valuable for ponerology are inquiries concerning the nature of the phenomena under discussion, which facilitate differentiation of their essence and analysis of their role as pathological factors in the genesis of evil.
 

 

Schizoidia

Schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy, was isolated by the very first of the famous creators of modern psy-chiatry.⁴⁸ From the beginning, it was treated as a lighter form of the same hereditary taint which is the cause of susceptibility to schizophrenia.

 

However, this latter connection could neither be confirmed nor denied with the help of statistical analysis, and no biological test was then found which would have been able to solve this dilemma. For practical reasons, we shall discuss schizoidia with no further reference to this traditional relationship.

 

48 Emil Kraepelin (1856- 1926): German psychiatrist who attempted to create a synthesis of the hundreds of mental disorders, grouping diseases together based on classification of common patterns of symptoms, rather than by simple similarity of major symptoms in the manner of his predecessors. In fact, it was precisely because of the demonstrated inadequacy of the older methods that Kraepelin developed his new diagnostic system. Kraepelin also demonstrated specific patterns in the genetics of these disorders and specific and characteristic patterns in their course and outcome.

 

Generally speaking, there tend to be more schizophrenics among the relatives of schizophrenic patients than in the general population, while manic-depression is more frequent in the relatives of manic-depressives. Kraepelin should be credited with being the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics, according to the eminent psychologist H. J. Eysenck in his Encyclopedia of Psychology. Kraepelin postulated that psychiatric diseases are principally caused by biological and genetic disorders. His psychiatric theories dominated the field of psychiatry at the beginning of the twentieth century. He vigorously opposed the approach of Freud who regarded and treated psychiatric disorders as caused by psychological factors. (Wikipedia)

Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species’ common features.

Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.

 

Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: “Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea.” Let us call this typical expression the “schizoid declaration”.

Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when the schizoids embitter other people’s lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.

The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people.

The quantitative frequency of this anomaly varies among races and nations: low among Blacks, the highest among Jews. Estimates of this frequency range from negligible up to 3 %. In Poland it may be estimated as 0.7 % of population. My observations suggest this anomaly is autosomally hereditary.⁴⁹

A schizoid’s ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children.

 

49 Autosomal: the disease is due to a DNA error in one of the 22 pairs that are not sex chromosomes. Both boys and girls can then inherit this error. If the error is in a sex chromosome, the inheritance is said to be sex-linked. [Editor’s note.]

Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider “proper” – i.e. “black or white” - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.

In spite of their typical deficits, or even an openly schizoi-dal declaration, their readers do not realize what the authors’ characters are really like. Ignorant of the true condition of the author, such uninformed readers thed to interpret such works in a manner corresponding to their own nature. The minds of normal people tend toward corrective interpretation due to the participation of their own richer, psychological world view.

At the same time, many other readers critically reject such works with moral disgust but without being aware of the specific cause.

An analysis of the role played by Karl Marx’s works easily reveals all the above-mentioned types of apperception and the social reactions which engendered animosity between large groups of people.

When reading any of those disturbingly divisive works, we should examine them carefully for any of these characteristic deficits, or even an openly formulated schizoid declaration. Such a process will enable us to gain a proper critical distance from the contents and make it easier to dig the potentially valuable elements out of the doctrinaire material. If this is done by two or more people who represent greatly divergent interpretations, their methods of perception will come closer together, and the causes of dissent will dissipate.

 

Such a project might be attempted as a psychological experiment and for purposes of proper mental hygiene.

 

 

Essential psychopathy

Within the framework of the above assumptions, let us characterize another heredity-transmitted anomaly whose role in ponerogenic processes on any social scale appears exceptionally great. We should also underscore that the need to isolate this phenomenon and examine it in detail became quickly and profoundly evident to those researchers – including the author - who were interested in the macrosocial scale of the genesis of evil, because they witnessed it. I acknowledge my debt to Kazimierz Dabrowski ⁵⁰ in doing this and calling this anomaly an “essential psychopathy”.

Biologically speaking, the phenomenon is similar to colorblindness but occurs with about ten times lower frequency (slightly above ½%),⁵¹ except that, unlike color blindness, it affects both sexes. Its intensity also varies in scope from a level barely perceptive to an experienced observer to an obvious pathological deficiency.

Like color blindness, this anomaly also appears to represent a deficit in stimulus transformation, albeit occurring not on the sensory but on the instinctive level.⁵² Psychiatrist of the old school used to call such individuals “Daltonists of human feelings and socio-moral values”.

The psychological picture shows clear deficits among men only; among women it is generally toned down, as by the effect of a second normal allele. This suggests that the anomaly is also inherited via the X chromosome, but through a semi-dominating gene. However, the author was unable to confirm this by excluding inheritance from father to son.

50 Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980):Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, and poet. Dabrowski developed the theory of Positive Disintegration, a novel approach to personality development, over his lifetime of clinical and academic work. [Editor’s note.]
51 Recent research by Robert Hare, then Martha Stout, and finally Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, have tended to increase the probably rate of occurrence in a given population. The latter researchers, in “Construct Validity of Psycho pathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach”, Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5), 425-441, 2001), suggest the prevalence of psychopathy to be perhaps 5% or more, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100 females). [Editor’s note.]
52 Current day research suggests that many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths are closely associated with a profound lack of ability to construct an empathic mental and emotional “facsimile” of another person. They seem completely unable to “get into the skin” of others, except in a purely intellectual sense. [Editor’s note.]

Analysis of the different experiential manner demonstrated by these individuals caused us to conclude that their instinctive substratum is also defective, containing certain gaps and lacking the natural syntonic responses commonly evidenced by members of the species Homo Sapiens.⁵³

 

Our species instinct is our first teacher; it stays with us everywhere throughout our lives. Upon this defective instinctive substratum, the deficits of higher feelings and the deformities and impoverishments in psychological, moral, and social concepts develop in correspondence with these gaps.

 

53 What’s missing in psychopaths are the qualities that people depend on for living in social harmony. [Editor’s note.]

Our natural world of concepts – based upon species instincts as described in an earlier chapter - strikes the psychopath as a nearly incomprehensible convention with no justification in their own psychological experience. They think that customs and principles of decency are a foreign convention invented and imposed by someone else, (“probably by priests”) silly, onerous, sometimes even ridiculous. At the same time, however, they easily perceive the deficiencies and weaknesses of our natural language of psychological and moral concepts in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the attitude of a contemporary psychologist—except in caricature.

The average intelligence of the psychopath, especially if measured via commonly used tests, is somewhat lower than that of normal people, albeit similarly variegated. Despite the wide variety of intelligence and interests, this group does not contain examples of the highest intelligence, nor do we find technical or craftsmanship talents among them.

 

The most gifted members of this kind may thus achieve accomplishments in those sciences which do not require a correct humanistic world view or practical skills. (Academic decency is another matter, however.) Whenever we attempt to construct special tests to measure “life wisdom” or “socio-moral imagination”, even if the difficulties of psychometric evaluation are taken into account, individuals of this type indicate a deficit disproportionate to their personal IQ.

In spite of their deficiencies in normal psychological and moral knowledge, they develop and then have at their disposal a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a natural world view. They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them.

 

They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety. Natural human reactions - which often fail to elicit interest to normal people because they are considered self-evident - strike the psychopath as strange and, interesting, and even comical.

 

They therefore observe us, deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts. They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect heartless experiments. The suffering and injustice they cause inspire no guilt within them, since such reactions from others are simply a result of their being different and apply only to “those other” people they perceive to be not quite conspecific. Neither a normal person nor our natural world view can fully conceive nor properly evaluate the existence of this world of different concepts.

A researcher into such phenomena can glimpse the deviant knowledge of the psychopath through long-term studies of the personalities of such people, using it with some difficulty, like a foreign language. As we shall see below, such practical skill becomes rather widespread in nations afflicted by that macro-social pathological phenomenon wherein this anomaly plays the inspiring role.

A normal person can learn to speak their conceptual language even somewhat proficiently, but the psychopath is never able to incorporate the world view of a normal person, although they often try to do so all their lives. The product of their efforts is only a role and a mask behind which they hide their deviant reality.
Another myth and role they often play, albeit containing a grain of truth in relation to the “special psychological knowledge” that the psychopath acquires regarding normal people, would be the psychopaths’ brilliant mind or psychological genius; some of them actually believe in this and attempt to insinuate this belief to others.

In speaking of the mask of psychological normality worn by such individuals (and by similar deviants to a lesser extent), we should mention the book The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley, who made this very phenomenon the crux of his reflections.

 

A fragment:

Let us remember that his typical behavior defeats what appear to be his own aims. Is it not he himself who is most deeply deceived by his apparent normality? Although he deliberately cheats others and is quite conscious of his lies, he appears unable to distinguish adequately between his own pseudointentions, pseudoremorse, pseudolove, etc., and the genuine responses of a normal person.

 

His monumental lack of insight indicates how little he appreciates the nature of his disorder. When others fail to accept immediately his “word of honor as a gentleman”, his amazement, I believe, is often genuine. His subjective experience is so bleached of deep emotion that he is invincibly ignorant of what life means to others.

His awareness of hypocrisy’s opposite is so insubstantially theoretical that it becomes questionable if what we chiefly mean by hypocrisy should be attributed to him. Having no major value himself, can he be said to realize adequately the nature and quality of the outrages his conduct inflicts upon others? A young child who has no impressive memory of severe pain may have been told by his mother it is wrong to cut off the dog’s tail. Knowing it is wrong he may proceed with the operation.

 

We need not totally absolve him of responsibility if we say he realizes less what he did than an adult who, in full appreciation of physical agony, so uses a knife. Can a person experience the deeper levels of sorrow without considerable knowledge of happiness? Can he achieve evil intention in the full sense without real awareness of evil’s opposite? I have no final answer to these questions.⁵⁴

All researchers into psychopathy underline three qualities primarily with regard to this most typical variety: The absence of a sense of guilt for antisocial actions, the inability to love truly, and the tendency to be garrulous in a way which easily deviates from reality.⁵⁵

54 Hervey Cleckley: The Mask of Sanity, 1976; C.V. Mosby Co., p. 386.
55 In their paper, “Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach,” (op cit.) Salekin, Trobst, and Krioukova, write: “Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather encompasses such personality characteristics as manipulativeness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991)....

 

As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation-seeking, Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain.

 

With respect to their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described. ...

 

What is clear from our findings is that,

(a) psychopathy measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics;
(b) psychopathy does occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and

(c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder.” [Editor’s note.]

A neurotic patient is generally taciturn and has trouble explaining what hurts him most. A psychologist must know how to overcome these obstacles with the help of non-painful interactions. Neurotics are also prone to excessive guilt about actions which are easily forgiven. Such patients are capable of decent and enduring love, although they have difficulty expressing it or achieving their dreams. A psychopath’s behavior constitutes the antipode of such phenomena and difficulties.

Our first contact with the psychopath is characterized by a talkative stream which flows with ease and avoids truly important matters with equal ease if they are uncomfortable for the speaker.

 

His train of thought also avoids those abstract matters of human feelings and values whose representation is absent in the psychopathic world view unless, of course, he is being deliberately deceptive, in which case he will use many “feeling” words which careful scrutiny will reveal that he does not understand those words the same way normal people do. We then also feel we are dealing with an imitation of the thought patterns of normal people, in which something else is, in fact, “normal”.

 

From the logical point of view, the flow of thought is ostensibly correct, albeit perhaps removed from commonly accepted criteria. A more detailed formal analysis, however, evidences the use of many suggestive paralogisms.⁵⁶

56 An unintentionally invalid argument. [Editor’s note.]

Individuals with the psychopathy referred to herein are virtually unfamiliar with the enduring emotions of love for another person, particularly the marriage partner; it constitutes a fairytale from that “other” human world. Love, for the psychopath, is an ephemeral phenomenon aimed at sexual adventure. Many psychopathic Don Juans are able to play the lover’s role well enough for their partners to accept it in good faith. After the wedding, feelings which really never existed are replaced by egoism, egotism, and hedonism. Religion, which teaches love for one’s neighbor, also strikes them as a similar fairytale good only for children and those different “others”.

One would expect them to feel guilty as a consequence of their many antisocial acts, however their lack of guilt is the result of all their deficits, which we have been discussing here.⁵⁷

 

The world of normal people whom they hurt is incomprehensible and hostile to them, and life for the psychopath is the pursuit of its immediate attractions, moments of pleasure, and temporary feelings of power. They often meet with failure along this road, along with force and moral condemnation from the society of those other incomprehensible people.

 

57 Robert Hare says, “What I thought was most interesting was that for the first time ever, as far as I know, we found that there was no activation of the appropriate areas for emotional arousal, but there was over-activation in other parts of the brain, including parts of the brain that are ordinarily devoted to language. Those parts were active, as if they were saying, ‘Hey, isn’t that interesting.’ So they seem to be analyzing emotional material in terms of its linguistic or dictionary meaning. There are anomalies in the way psychopaths process information. It may be more general than just emotional information. In another functional MRI study, we looked at the parts of the brain that are used to process concrete and abstract words. Non-psychopathic individuals showed increased activation of the right anterior/superior temporal cortex. For the psychopaths, that didn’t happen.”

In their book Psychopathy and Delinquency, W. and J. McCord say the following about them:

Hare and his colleagues then conducted an fMRI study using pictures of neutral scenes and unpleasant homicide scenes. “Non-psychopathic offenders show lots of activation in the amygdala [to unpleasant scenes], compared with neutral pictures,” he points out. “In the psychopath, there was nothing. No difference. But there was overactivation in the same regions of the brain that were overactive during the presentation of emotional words. It’s like they’re analyzing emotional material in extra-limbic regions.”

(Psychopathy vs. Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy: A Discussion by Robert Hare; crimelibrary.com)

The psychopath feels little, if any, guilt. He can commit the most appalling acts, yet view them without remorse. The Psychopath has a warped capacity for love. His emotional relationships, when they exist, are meager, fleeting, and designed to satisfy his own desires. These last two traits, guiltlessness and lovelessness, conspicuously mark the psychopath as different from other men.⁵⁸

 

58 McCord, W. & McCord, J. Psychopathy and Delinquency. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1956.

The problem of a psychopath’s moral and legal responsibility thus remains open and subject to various solutions, frequently summary or emotional, in various countries and circumstances.

 

It remains a subject of discussion whose solution does not appear possible within the framework of the presently accepted principles of legal thought.

 

 

Other psychopathies

The cases of essential psychopathy seem similar enough to each other to permit them to be classified as qualitatively homogenous. However, we can also include within psychopathic categories a somewhat indeterminate number of anomalies with a hereditary substratum, whose symptoms are approximate to this most typical phenomenon.

We also meet difficult individuals with a tendency to behave in a manner hurtful to other people, for whom tests do not indicate existing damage to brain tissue and anamnesis does not indicate abnormal childhood experiences which could explain their state. The fact that such cases are repeated within families would suggest a hereditary substratum, but we must also take into account the possibility that harmful factors participated in the fetal stage. This is an area of medicine and psychology warranting more study, as there is more to learn than we already know concretely.

Such people also attempt to mask their different world of experience and to play a role of normal people to varying degrees, although this is no longer the characteristic “Cleckley mask”. Some are notable by demonstrations of their strangeness. These people participate in the genesis of evil in very different ways, whether taking part openly or, to a lesser extent, when they have managed to adapt to proper ways of living.

These psychopathic and related phenomena may, quantitatively speaking, be summarily estimated at two or three times the number of cases of essential psychopathy, i.e. at less than two per cent of the population.

This type of person finds it easier to adjust to social life. The lesser cases in particular adapt to the demands of the society of normal people, taking advantage of its understanding for the arts and other areas with similar traditions. Their literary creativity is often disturbing if conceived in ideational categories alone; they insinuate to their readers that their world of concepts and experiences is self-evident; also it contains characteristic deformities.⁵⁹

 

59 A number of researchers at present are suggesting that Asperger’s Syndrome belongs under the classification of psychopathy. Asperger’s Syndrome describes children who: “lack basic social and motor skills, seem unable to decode body language and sense the feelings of others, avoid eye contact, and frequently launch into monologues about narrowly defined - and often highly technical - interests. Even when very young, these children become obsessed with order, arranging their toys in a regimented fashion on the floor and flying into tantrums when their routines are disturbed. As teenagers, they’re prone to getting into trouble with teachers and other figures of authority, partly because the subtle cues that define societal hierarchies are invisible to them.” ( Steve Silberman, “The Geek Syndrome”: wired.com) [Editor’s note.]

The most frequently indicated and long-known of these is the asthenic psychopathy, which appears in every conceivable intensity, from barely perceptible to an obvious pathologic deficiency.

These people, asthenic and hypersensitive, do not indicate the same glaring deficit in moral feeling and ability to sense a psychological situation as do essential psychopaths. They are somewhat idealistic and tend to have superficial pangs of conscience as a result of their faulty behavior.

On the average, they are also less intelligent than normal people, and their mind avoids consistency and accuracy in reasoning. Their psychological world view is clearly falsified, so their options about people can never be trusted. A kind of mask cloaks the world of their personal aspirations, which is at variance with what they are actually capable of doing. Their behavior towards people who do not notice their faults is urbane, even friendly; however, the same people manifest a preemptive hostility and aggression against persons who have a talent for psychology, or demonstrate knowledge in this field.

The asthenic psychopath is relatively less vital sexually and is therefore amenable to accepting celibacy; that is why some Catholic monks and priests often represent lesser or minor cases of this anomaly. Such individuals may very likely have inspired the anti-psychological attitude traditional in Church thinking.
 

The more severe cases are more brutally anti-psychological and contemptuous of normal people; they tend to be active in the processes of the genesis of evil on a larger scale. Their dreams are composed of a certain idealism similar to the ideas of normal people. They would like to reform the world to their liking but are unable to foresee more far-reaching implications and results. Spiced by deviance, their visions may influence naive rebels or people who have suffered injustice. Existing social injustice may look like a justification for a radicalized world view and the assimilation of such visions.

The following is an example of the thought-pattern of a person who displays a typical and severe case of asthenic psychopathy:

 

	Symptoms:
“If I had to start life all over again, I’d do exactly the same: it’s organic necessity, nor the dictates of duty.	A feeling of being different.
I have one thing which keeps me going and bids me be serene even when things are so very sad.	The shallow nostalgia characteristic of this psychopathy.
That is an unshakable faith in people. Conditions will change and evil will cease to reign, and man will be a brother to man, not a wolf as is the case today.	Vision of a new world.
My forbearance derives not from my fancy, but rather from my clear vision of the cause which give rise to evil.”	Different psychological knowledge.

Those words were written in prison on December 15, 1913 by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a descendant of Polish gentry who was soon to originate the Cherezvichayka⁶⁰ in the Soviet Union and to become the greatest idealist among these most famous murderers. Psychopathies surface in all nations.⁶¹

If the time ever comes, when “conditions will change” and “evil will no longer rule”, it could be because progress in the study of pathological phenomena and their ponerogenic role will make it possible for societies to calmly accept the existence of these phenomena and comprehend them as categories of nature. The vision of a new, just structure of society can then be realized within the framework and under the control of normal people.

 

Having reconciled ourselves to the fact that such people are different and have a limited capacity for social adjustment, we should create a system of permanent protection for them within the framework of reason and proper knowledge, a system which will partially make their dreams come true.

For our purposes, we should also draw attention to types with deviant features; these were isolated relatively long ago by Edward Brzezicki⁶² and accepted by Ernst Kretschmer⁶³ as characteristic of eastern Europe in particular. Skirtoids⁶⁴ are vital, egotistical, and thick-skinned individuals who make good soldiers because of their endurance and psychological resistance.

 

In peacetime, however, they are incapable of understanding life’s subtler matters or rearing children prudently. They are happy in primitive surroundings; a comfortable environment easily causes hysterization within them. They are rigidly conservative in all areas and supportive of governments that rule with a heavy hand.

60 The Cheka was the first secret police set up under Bolshevik rule. Dzerzhinsky was its first Commissar. [Editor’s note]
61 Dzerzhinsky is an interesting case. It is said of him that “His honest and incorruptible character, combined with his complete devotion to the cause, gained him swift recognition and the nickname Iron Felix.” His monument in the center of Warsaw in “Dzerzhinsky square”, was hated by the population of the Polish capital as a symbol of soviet oppression and was toppled down in 1989, as soon as the PZPR started losing power, the square’s name was soon changed to its pre-second world war name “Plac Bankowy” (Bank square). According to a popular joke of that late People’s Republic of Poland-era “Dzerzhinsky deserved a monument for being the Pole to kill the largest number of communists”.
62 My professor of psychiatry – Yagiellonian University – Cracow (a friend of Kretschmer).
63 Ernst Kretschmer is remembered for his correlation of build and physical constitution with personality characteristics and mental illness. In 1933 Krestchmer resigned as president of the German society of Psychotherapy in protest against the Nazi takeover of the government. But unlike other prominent German psychologists he remained in Germany during World War II. Kretschmer further developed new methods of psychotherapy and hypnosis, and studied compulsive criminality, recommending adequate provision be made for the psychiatric treatment of prisoners. [Editor’s note.]
64 Greek root skirtaô: to rebel, to jump. [Editor’s note.]

Kretschmer was of the opinion that this anomaly was a biodynamic phenomenon caused by the crossing of two widely separated ethnic groups, which is frequent in that area of Europe. If that were the case, North America should be full of skirtoids, a hypothesis that deserves observation. We may assume that skirtoidism is inherited normally; not sex-linked. This anomaly should be taken into consideration if we wish to understand the history of Russia, as well as the history of Poland, to a lesser extent.

Another interesting question suggests itself: what kind of people are the so-called “jackals”, hired as professional and mercenary killers by various groups, and who so quickly and easily take up arms as a means of political struggle? They offer themselves as specialists who perform the duty as accepted; no human feelings interfere with their nefarious plans. They are most certainly not normal people, but none of the deviations described herein fits this picture. As a rule, essential psychopaths are talkative and incapable of such carefully planned activity.

Perhaps, we should assume this type to be the product of a cross between lesser taints of various deviations. Even if we accept the statistical probability of the appearance of such hybrids, taking into account the quantitative data, they should be an extremely rare phenomena. However, mate-selection psychology produces pairings which bilaterally represent various anomalies.

 

Carriers of two or even three lesser deviational factors should thus be more frequent. A jackal could then be imagined as the carrier of schizoidal traits in combination with some other psychopathy, e.g. essential psychopathy or skirtoidism. More frequent instances of such hybrids are a large part of a society’s pool of hereditary pathological ponerogenic factors.

The above characterizations are selected examples of pathological factors which participate in ponerogenic processes. The ever-increasing literature in this area furnishes interested readers with a wider range of data and sometimes colorful descriptions of such phenomena. The current state of knowledge in this area is nevertheless still insufficient to produce practical solutions for the many problems human beings face, particularly those on the individual and family scale. Studies on the biological nature of these phenomena are needed for this purpose.

I would like to warn those readers lacking knowledge and experience of their own in this area not to fall prey to the impression that the world surrounding them is dominated by individuals with pathological deviations, whether described herein or not; it is not.

 

The following graphic representation in circle form approximates the presence of individuals with various psychological anomalies within a society

 

Pathological phenomena

as described in approximate proportion of their appearance

The fact that deviant individuals are a minority should be emphasized all the more since there have been theories on the exceptionally creative role of abnormal individuals, even an identification of human genius with the psychology of abnormality.

 

However, the one-sidedness of these theories appears to be derived from people who were searching for an affirmation of their own personalities by means of such a world view. Outstanding thinkers, discoverers, and artists have also been specimens of psychological normality, qualitatively speaking.

After all, psychologically normal people constitute both the great statistical majority and the real base of societal life in each community. According to natural law, they should thus be the ones to set the pace; moral law is derived from their nature. Power should be in the hands of normal people. A ponerologist only demands that such authority be endowed with an appropriate understanding of these less-normal people, and that the law be based upon such understanding.
 

The quantitative and qualitative composition of this biopsy-chologically deficient fraction of the population certainly varies in time and space on our planet. This may be represented by a single-digit percentage in some nations, in the teens in others. Said quantitative and qualitative structure influence the entire psychological and moral climate of the country in question. That is why this problem should be the subject of conscious concern. However it should also be noted that evidence suggests that the dreams of power so frequently present in these circles do not always and necessarily manifest fully in countries where this percentile has been very high. Other historical circumstances were decisive as well.

In any society in this world, psychopathic individuals and some of the other deviant types create a ponerogenically active network of common collusions, partially estranged from the community of normal people. An inspirational role of essential psychopathy in this network appears to be a common phenomenon. They are aware of being different as they obtain their life-experiences and become familiar with different ways of fighting for their goals.

 

Their world is forever divided into “us and them”; their little world with its own laws and customs and that other foreign world of normal people that they see as full of presumptuous ideas and customs by which they are condemned morally. Their sense of honor bids them to cheat and revile that other human world and its values at every opportunity. In contradiction to the customs of normal people, they feel that breaking their promises is appropriate behavior.

One of the most disturbing things about psychopaths that normal people must deal with is the fact that they very early learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals. This dichotomy of worlds is permanent and does not disappear even if they succeed in realizing their youthful dream of gaining power over the society of normal people.

 

This strongly suggests that the separation is biologically conditioned.

In the psychopath, a dream emerges like some Utopia of a “happy” world and a social system which does not reject them or force them to submit to laws and customs whose meaning is incomprehensible to them. They dream of a world in which their simple and radical way of experiencing and perceiving reality would dominate⁶⁵; where they would, of course, be assured safety and prosperity.

 

In this Utopian dream, they imagine that those “others”, different, but also more technically skillful than they are, should be put to work to achieve this goal for the psychopaths and others of their kin.

“We”, they say, “after all, will create a new government, one of justice” ⁶⁶

They are prepared to fight and to suffer for the sake of such a brave new world, and also, of course, to inflict suffering upon others. Such a vision justifies killing people, whose suffering does not move them to compassion because “they” are not quite con-specific. They do not realize that they will consequently meet with opposition which can last for generations⁶⁷.

Subordinating a normal person to psychologically abnormal individuals has severe and deforming effects on his or her personality: it engenders trauma and neurosis. This is accomplished in a manner which generally evades conscious controls. Such a situation deprives the person of his natural rights: to practice his own mental hygiene, develop a sufficiently autonomous personality, and utilize his common sense.

65 i.e. Lying, cheating, destroying, using others, etc. [Editor’s note.]
66 For psychopaths only; injustice for everyone else. [Editor’s note.]
67 “Kill them all; God will know his own,” seems to be the method advocated by psychopaths. [Editor’s note.]
 

In the light of natural law, it thus constitutes a kind of crime - which can appear at any social scale, in any context - although it is not mentioned in any code of law.

We have already discussed the nature of some pathological personalities, e.g. frontal characteropathy, and how they can deform the personalities of those with whom they interact. Essential psychopathy has exceptionally intense effects in this manner. Something mysterious gnaws into the personality of an individual at the mercy of the psychopath and is then fought like a demon.

 

His emotions become chilled, his sense of psychological reality is stifled. This leads to de-criterialization of thought and a feeling of helplessness, culminating in depressive reactions which can be so severe that psychiatrists sometimes misdiagnose them as a manic-depressive psychosis. Many people rebel against a psychopathic domination much earlier than such a crisis point and start searching for some way of liberating themselves from such an influence.

Many life-situations involve far less mysterious results of other psychological anomalies upon normal people (which are always unpleasant and destructive) and their carriers’ unscrupulous drives to dominate and take advantage of others. Governed by unpleasant experiences and feelings, as well as natural egoism, societies thus have good reason to reject such people, helping to push them into marginal positions in social life, including poverty and criminality.

It is unfortunately almost the rule that such behavior is amenable to moralizing justification in our natural world view categories. Most members of society feel entitled to protect their own persons and property and enact legislation for that purpose. Being based on natural perception of phenomena, and on emotional motivations instead of an objective understanding of the problems, such laws in no way serve to safeguard the kind of order and safety we would like; psychopaths and other deviants merely perceive such laws as a force which needs to be battled.

To individuals with various psychological deviations, the social structure dominated by normal people and their conceptual world appears to be a “system of force and oppression”. Psychopaths reach such a conclusion as a rule. If, at the same time, a good deal of injustice does in fact exist in a given society, pathological feelings of unfairness and suggestive statements emanating from deviants can resonate among those who have truly been treated unfairly.

 

Revolutionary doctrines may then be easily propagated among both groups, although each group has completely different reasons for favoring such ideas.
The presence of pathogenic bacteria in our environment is a common phenomenon; however, it is not the single decisive factor that determines whether an individual or a society becomes ill, since natural and artificial immunity as well as medical assistance may play a role as well. Similarly, psychopathological factors alone do not – themselves - decide about the spread of evil. Other factors have parallel importance: socio-economic conditions, and moral and intellectual deficits.

Individuals and nations that are able to endure injustice in the name of moral values can more easily find a way out of such difficulties without resorting to violent means. A rich moral tradition contains the experience and reflections of centuries in this regard. This book describes the role of these additional factors in the genesis of evil, which have been insufficiently understood for centuries; such explication is essential for completing the overall picture and permitting more effective practical measures to be formulated.

Thus, emphasizing the role of pathological factors in the genesis of evil does not minimize the responsibility of social moral failings and intellectual deficits in contributing to the situation. Real moral deficits and a grossly inadequate conception of human reality and psychological and moral situations are frequently caused by some earlier or contemporary activity on the part of pathological factors.

However, we must also acknowledge the constant, biologically determined presence within every human society of this small minority of individuals who are carriers of qualitatively diverse, but ponerologically active, pathological factors. Any discussion on what came first in the process of the genesis of evil, moral failings or the activities of pathological factors, can thus be considered academic speculation. On the other hand, the Bible is worth re-reading through the eyes of a ponerologist.

Detailed analysis of the personality of the average normal person nearly always reveals conditions and difficulties caused by the effects upon him of some kind of pathological factor. If the activity was far removed in time or space, or the factor relatively obvious, healthy common sense is generally sufficient to correct such effects. If the pathological factor remains incomprehensible, the person has difficulty understanding the cause of his problems; he sometimes appears to remain a lifelong slave of imaginings and patterns of behavioral response which originated under the influence of pathological individuals.

 

This is what occurred in the above-mentioned family, where the source of pathological induction was the eldest sister with perinatal damage of the prefrontal fields of her brain cortex. Even when she obviously abused her youngest child, her brothers attempted to interpret this in a paramoralistic manner, a sacrifice in the name of “family honor”.

Such matters should be taught to everyone in order to facilitate auto-pedagogical self-monitoring. Certain outstanding psychopathologists became convinced that developing a healthy functional view of human reality is impossible without factoring in psychopathological findings, are correct, a conclusion difficult to accept by people who believe they have attained a mature world view without such burdensome studies. The older egotistical defenders of the natural world view have tradition, belles-lettres, even philosophy on their side.

 

They do not realize that during the present time, their manner of comprehending life’s questions renders the battle with evil more problematic. However, the younger generation is more familiar with biology and psychology, and is thus more amenable to an objective understanding of the role of pathological phenomena in the processes of the genesis of evil.

Parallax ⁶⁸, often even a wide gap, frequently occurs between human and social reality, which is biological by nature and frequently influenced by the above-mentioned refusal to factor in psychopathological elements, as well as the traditional perceptions of reality as taught by philosophy, ethics, and secular and canon law.

68 The difference in appearance or position of an object when viewed from two different locations. [Editor’s note.]

This gap is easily discernible to those people whose psychological world view was formed in a manner different from the natural way of a normal person. Many of them consciously and subconsciously take advantage of this weakness in order to force themselves into it, along with their myopically-determined activities characterized by egoistical concepts of self-interest. Still people, whether pathologically indifferent to other peoples’ or nations’ hurts, or lacking in knowledge as to what is human and decent, then find an open gate to bulldoze their different way of life through unobliging societies.

Will we ever be able to overcome this age-old problem of humanity sometime in the yet undetermined future, with the assistance of the biological and psychological sciences making progress in the study of various pathological factors participating in ponerogenic processes? That will depend on the support of the societies in question. Scientific and societal awareness of the role played by the above-mentioned factors in the genesis of evil will help public opinion to elaborate an appropriate position against evil, which will then cease to be so fascinatingly mysterious. If properly modified based on an understanding of the nature of phenomena, the law will permit prophylactic countermeasures to the origin of evil.

Over the centuries, every society has been subjected to natural eugenic processes which cause defective individuals, including those with above-mentioned features, to drop out of reproductive competition or reduce their birth rate. These processes are rarely seen as such, often being screened by the accompanying evil or some other conditions apparently relegating them to the background.

 

Conscious comprehension of these matters based on proper knowledge and approximate moral criteria could render these processes less stormy in form, not so full of bitter experience. If human consciousness and conscience are properly formed and good advice in these matters is heeded, the balance of these processes could be tipped markedly in the positive direction.

 

After a number of generations, society’s burden of inherited pathological factors would be reduced below a certain critical level, and their participation in ponerogenic processes would begin to fade away. ⁶⁹

 

69 Lobaczewski seems to be referring to war and other physical conflicts and suggesting that, if normal people would refuse to get involved and allow only the deviants to fight, they would eventually kill each other off. [Editor’s note.]

 

 

Ponerogenic Phenomena and Processes

Following the real space-time network of qualitatively complex causative links as occur in ponerogenic processes requires the proper approach and experience. The fact that psychologists daily face multiple cases of dealing with such deviants or their victims means that they are becoming progressively more skilled in understanding and describing the many components of psychological causation.

 

They are observing feedback on closed causative structures. However, this skill sometimes proves insufficient in overcoming our human tendency to concentrate upon some facts while ignoring others, provoking an unpleasant sensation that our mind’s capacity of understanding the reality surrounding us is inefficient. This explains the temptation to use the natural world view in order to simplify complexity and its implications, a phenomenon as common as the “old sage” known to India’s philosophical psychology. Such oversimplification of the causative picture as regards the genesis of evil, often to a single easily understood cause or one perpetrator, itself becomes, itself, a cause in this genesis.

With great respect for the shortcomings of our human reason, let us consciously take the middle road and use the abstraction process, first describing selected phenomena, then the causative chains characteristic for ponerogenic processes. Such chains can then be linked into more complex structures ever more sufficient for grasping the full picture of the real causative network.

 

At first the holes in the net will be so large that a school of sprats can swim through undetected, although large fish will be caught. However, this world’s evil represents a kind of continuum, where minor species of human evil effectively add up to the genesis of large evil. Making this net denser and filling in the details of the picture appear to be easier, since ponerogenic laws are analogous regardless of the scale of occurrences.

Our common sense thus commits minor errors at the level of minor matters.

In attempting closer observation of these psychological processes and phenomena which lead one man or one nation to hurt another, let us select phenomena as characteristic as possible. We shall see that the participation of various pathological factors in these processes is the rule; the situation where such participation is not noticeable tends to be the exception.

The second chapter sketched the human instinctive substratum’s role in our personality development, the formation of the natural world view, and societal links and structures. We also indicated that our social, psychological, and moral concepts, as well as our natural forms of reaction, are not adequate for every situation with which life confronts us.

 

We generally wind up hurting someone if we act according to our natural concepts and reactive archetypes in situations which seem to be appropriate to our imaginings, although they are in fact essentially different. As a rule, such different situations allowing para-appropriate reactions occur because some pathological factor difficult to understand has entered the picture. Thus, the practical value of our natural world view generally ends where psychopathology begins.

Familiarity with this common weakness of human nature and the normal person’s “naïveté” is part of the specific knowledge we find in many psychopathic individuals, as well some characteropaths. Spellbinders of various schools attempt to provoke such para-appropriate reactions from other people in the name of their specific goals, or in the service of their reigning ideologies. That hard-to-understand pathological factor is located within the spellbinder himself.
Egotism: We call egotism the attitude, subconsciously conditioned as a rule, to which we attribute excessive value to our instinctive reflexes, early acquired imaginings and habits, and individual world view.

 

Egotism hampers a personality’s normal evolution because it fosters the domination of subconscious life and makes it difficult to accept disintegrative states which can be very helpful for growth and development. This egotism and rejection of disintegration⁷⁰ in turn favors the appearance of para-appropriate reactions as described above. An egotist measures other people by his own yardstick, treating his concepts and experiential manner as objective criteria.

 

70 See footnote p. 128. Kazimierz Dabrowski developed the theory of Positive Disintegration which posits that individuals with strong developmental potential tend to experience frequent and intense crises (positive disintegrations) that create opportunities for the development of an autonomous, self-crafted personality. Dabrowski observed that gifted and creative populations tend to exhibit increased levels of developmental potential and thus may be predisposed to experience the process of positive disintegration. (A Brief Overview Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration by William Tillier Calgary, Alberta, Canada) [Editor’s note.]

 

He would like to force other people to feel and think very much the same way he does. Egotist nations have the subconscious goal of teaching or forcing other nations to think in their own categories, which makes them incapable of understanding other people and nations or becoming familiar with the values of their cultures.

Proper rearing and self-rearing thus always aims at de-egotizing a young person or adult, thereby opening the door for his mind and character to develop. Practicing psychologists nevertheless commonly believe that a certain measure of egotism is useful as a factor stabilizing the personality, protecting it from overly facile neurotic disintegration, and thereby making it possible to overcome life’s difficulties. However rather exceptional people exist whose personality is very well integrated even though they are almost totally devoid of egotism; this allows them to understand others very easily.

The kind of excessive egotism which hampers the development of human values and leads to misjudgment and terrorizing of others well deserves the title “king of human faults”. Difficulties, disputes, serious problems, and neurotic reactions sprout up in everyone around such an egotist like mushrooms after a rainfall. Egotist nations start wasting money and effort in order to achieve goals derived from their erroneous reasoning and overly emotional reactions. Their inability to acknowledge other nations’ values and dissimilarities, derived from other cultural traditions, leads to conflict and war.

We can differentiate between primary and secondary egotism. The former comes from a more natural process, namely the child’s natural egotism and child-rearing errors that tend to perpetuate this childish egotism.

 

The secondary one occurs when a personality that has overcome his childish egotism regresses to this state under stress, which leads to an artificial attitude characterized by greater aggression and social noxiousness. Excessive egotism is a constant property of the hysterical personality⁷¹, whether their hysteria be primary or secondary. That is why the increase in a nations’ egotism should be attributed to the above described hysterical cycle before anything else.

 

71 A personality disorder marked by immaturity, dependence, self-centeredness, and vanity, with a craving for attention, activity, or excitement, and behavior that is markedly unstable or manipulative. (The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 2nd Edition 2004; Houghton Mifflin Company) [Editor’s note.]

If we analyze the development of excessively egotistical personalities, we often find some non-pathological causes, such as having been raised in a constricted and overly routine environment or by persons less intelligent than the child. However, the main reason for the development of an overly egotistical personality in a normal person is contamination, through psychological induction, by excessively egotistical or hysterical persons who, themselves, developed this characteristic under the influence of various pathological causes. Most of the above-described genetic deviations cause the development of pathologically egotistical personalities, among other things.

Many people with various hereditary deviations and acquired defects develop pathological egotism. For such people, forcing others in their environment, whole social groups, and, if possible, entire nations, to feel and think like themselves becomes an internal necessity, a ruling concept. A game that a normal person would not take seriously can become a lifelong goal for them, the object of effort, sacrifices, and cunning psychological strategy.

Pathological egotism derives from repressing from one’s field of consciousness any objectionable, self-critical associations referring to one’s own nature or normality. Dramatic question such as “who is abnormal here, me or this world of people who feel and think differently?” are answered in the world’s disfavor. Such egotism is always linked to a dissimulative attitude, with a Cleckley mask over some pathological quality being hidden from consciousness, both one’s own and that of other people. The greatest intensity of such egotism can be found in the prefrontal characteropathy described above.

The importance of the contribution of this kind of egotism to the genesis of evil thus hardly needs elaboration. It is a primarily societal influence, egotizing or traumatizing others, which in turn causes further difficulties. Pathological egotism is a constant component of variegated states wherein someone who appears to be normal (although he is in fact not quite so) is driven by motivations or battles for goals a normal person considers unrealistic or unlikely.

 

The average person might ask:

“What could he expect to gain by that?”.

Environmental opinion, however, often interprets such a situation in accordance with “common sense” and is thus prone to accept a “more likely” version of the situation and events. Such interpretation often results in human tragedy.

 

We should thus always remember that the principle of law cui prodest becomes illusory whenever some pathological factor enters the picture.

 

 

Moralizing interpretation

The tendency to impart a moralizing interpretation upon essentially pathological phenomena is an aspect of human nature whose discernable substratum is encoded in our specific instinct; namely humans normally fail to differentiate between moral and biological evil. Moralizing always surfaces, albeit to varying degrees, within the natural psychological and moral world view, which is why we should consider this tendency a permanent error of public opinion.

 

We may curb it with increased self-knowledge, but overcoming it requires specific knowledge in the psychopathological area. Young people and less cultured circles always tend toward such interpretations (although it characterizes traditional esthetes too), which intensifies whenever our natural reflexes take over control from reason, i.e. in hysterical states, and in direct proportion to the intensity of egotism.

What or who does it advance? Who does it serve? What’s the point?

We close the door to a causative comprehension of phenomena and open it to vengeful emotions and psychological error whenever we impose a moralistic interpretation upon faults and errors in human behavior, which are in fact largely derived from the various influences of pathological factors, whether mentioned above or not, which are often obscured from minds untrained in this area. We thereby also permit these factors to continue their ponerogenic activities, both within ourselves and others. Nothing poisons the human soul and deprives us of our capacity to understand reality more objectively than this very obedience to that common human tendency to take a moralistic view of human behavior.

Practically speaking, to say the least, each instance of behavior that seriously hurts some other person contains within its psychological genesis the influence of some pathological factors, among other things, of course. Therefore, any interpretation of the causes of evil which would limit itself to moral categories is an inappropriate perception of reality. This can lead, generally speaking, to erroneous behavior, limiting our capacity for counteraction of the causative factors of evil and opening the door for lust for revenge.

 

This frequently starts a new fire in the ponerogenic processes. We shall therefore consider a unilaterally moral interpretation of the origins of evil to be wrong and immoral at all times. The idea of overcoming this common human inclination and its results can be considered a moral motive intertwined throughout ponerology.

If we analyze the reasons why some people frequently overuse such emotionally-loaded interpretations, often indignantly rejecting a more correct interpretation, we shall of course also discover pathological factors acting within them. Intensification of this tendency in such cases is caused by repressing from the field of consciousness any self-critical concepts concerning their own behavior and its internal reasons.

 

The influence of such people causes this tendency to intensify in others.

 

 

Paramoralisms

The conviction that moral values exist and that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man’s instinctive endowment level (although it is certainly not totally adequate for moral truth), and that it does not only represent centuries’ of experience, culture, religion, and socialization.

 

Thus, any insinuation framed in moral slogans is always suggestive, even if the “moral” criteria used are just an “ad hoc” invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or moral by means of such paramoralisms utilized as active suggestion, and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can always be found.

In searching for an example of an evil act whose negative value would not elicit doubt in any social situation, ethics scholars frequently mention child abuse. However, psychologists often meet with paramoral affirmations of such behavior in their practice, such as in the above-mentioned family with the prefrontal field damage in the eldest sister.

 

Her younger brothers emphatically insisted that their sister’s sadistic treatment of her son was due to her exceptionally high moral qualifications, and they believed this by auto-suggestion. Paramoral-ism somehow cunningly evades the control of our common sense, sometimes leading to acceptance or approval of behavior that is openly pathological.⁷³

 

73 Many examples of recent years include children beaten to death by their parents for “religious reasons”. The parents may claim that the child is demon possessed, or that they have behaved so loosely that only beating them will “straighten them out”. Another example is circumcision, both for boys and girls by certain ethnic groups. The Indian custom of suttee, where the wife climbs on the funeral pyre of her husband; or in Muslim cultures where, if a woman is raped, it is the duty of her male family members to kill her to wipe away the shame from the family name. All of these acts are claimed to be “moral”, but they are not, they are pathological and criminal. [Editor’s note.]

Paramoralistic statements and suggestions so often accompany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable. Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for individuals, oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent ever-new moral criteria for someone’s convenience. Such suggestions often partially deprive people of their moral reasoning and deform its development in youngsters. Paramoralism factories have been founded worldwide, and a ponerologist finds it hard to believe that they are managed by psychologically normal people.

The conversive⁷⁴ features in the genesis of paramoralisms seem to prove they are derived from mostly subconscious rejection (and repression from the field of consciousness) of something completely different, which we call the voice of conscience.

 

74 See note p. 46.

A ponerologist can nevertheless indicate many observations supporting the opinion that various pathological factors participate in the tendency to use paramoralisms. This was the case in the above-mentioned family. When it occurs with a moralizing interpretation, this tendency intensifies in egotists and hysterics, and its causes are similar. Like all conversive phenomena, the tendency to use paramoralisms is psychologically contagious. That explains why we observe it among people raised by individuals in whom it was developed alongside pathological factors.

This may be a good place to reflect that true moral law is born and exists independently of our judgments in this regard, and even of our ability to recognize it. Thus, the attitude required for such understanding is scientific, not creative: we must humbly subordinate our mind to the apprehended reality.

 

That is when we discover the truth about man, both his weaknesses and values, which shows us what is decent and proper with respect to other people and other societies.
 

 

Reversive blockade

Emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person’s mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the “golden mean” between the truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit.

 

People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. If the counterfeit of the truth is the opposite of a moral truth, at the same time, it simultaneously represents an extreme paramoralism, and bears its peculiar suggestiveness.

We rarely see this method being used by normal people; even if raised by the people who abused it; they usually only indicate its results in their characteristic difficulties in apprehending reality properly. Use of this method can be included within the above-mentioned special psychological knowledge developed by psychopaths concerning the weaknesses of human nature and the art of leading others into error.

 

Where they are in rule, this method is used with virtuosity, and to an extent conterminous with their power.

 

 

Information selection and substitution

The existence of psychological phenomena known to pre-Freudian philosophical students of the subconscious bears repeating. Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considers it inexpedient or disturbing. This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration.

 

A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be extremely harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data. An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.

The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious. Such substitutions are often effected collectively, in certain groups of people, through the use of verbal communication. That is why they best qualify for the moralizing epithet “hypocrisy” than either of the above-mentioned processes.

The above examples of conversive phenomena do not exhaust a problem richly illustrated in psychoanalytical works. Our subconscious may carry the roots of human genius within, but its operation is not perfect; sometimes it is reminiscent of a blind computer, especially whenever we allow it to be cluttered with anxiously rejected material. This explains why conscious monitoring, even at the price of courageously accepting disintegrative states, is likewise necessary to our nature, not to mention our individual and social good.

There is no such thing as a person whose perfect self-knowledge allows him to eliminate all tendencies toward conversive thinking, but some people are relatively close to this state, while others remain slaves to these processes. Those people who use conversive operations too often for the purpose of finding convenient conclusions, or constructing some cunning paralogistic or paramoralistic statements, eventually begin to undertake such behavior for ever more trivial reasons, losing the capacity for conscious control over their thought process altogether. This necessarily leads to behavior errors which must be paid for by others as well as themselves.

People who have lost their psychological hygiene and capacity of proper thought along this road also lose their natural critical faculties with regard to the statements and behavior of individuals whose abnormal thought processes were formed on a substratum of pathological anomalies, whether inherited or acquired. Hypocrites stop differentiating between pathological and normal individuals, thus opening an “infection entry” for the ponerologic role of pathological factors.

Generally, each community contains people in whom similar methods of thinking were developed on a large scale, with their various deviations as a backdrop. We find this both in characteropathic and psychopathic personalities. Some have even been influenced by others to grow accustomed to such “reasoning”, since conversion thinking is highly contagious and can spread throughout an entire society.

 

In “happy times” especially, the tendency for conversion thinking generally intensifies. It appears accompanied by a rising wave of hysteria in said society. Those who try to maintain common sense and proper reasoning finally wind up in the minority, feeling wronged because their human right to maintain psychological hygiene is violated by pressure from all sides. This means that unhappy times are not far away.

We should point out that the erroneous thought processes described herein also, as a rule, violate the laws of logic with characteristic treachery. Educating people in the art of proper reasoning can thus serve to counteract such tendencies; it has a hallowed age-old tradition which seems to have been insufficiently effective for centuries. As an example: according to the laws of logic, a question containing an erroneous or unconfirmed suggestion has no answer. Nevertheless, not only does operating with such questions become epidemic among people with a tendency to conversion thinking, and a source of terror when used by psychopathical individuals; it also occurs among people who think normally, or even those who have studied logic.

This decreasing tendency in a society’s capacity for proper thought should be counteracted, since it also lowers its immunity to ponerogenic processes. An effective measure would be teaching both proper thought and skillful detection of errors in thought.

 

The front of such education should be expanded, including psychology, psychopathology, and the science described herein, for the purpose of raising people who can easily detect any paralogism.
 

 

Spellbinders

In order to comprehend ponerogenic pathways of contagion, especially those acting in a wider social context, let us observe the roles and personalities of individuals we shall call “spellbinders”, who are highly active in this area in spite of their statistically negligible number.

Spellbinders are generally the carriers of various pathological factors, some characteropathies, and some inherited anomalies. Individuals with malformations of their personalities frequently play similar roles, although the social scale of influence remains small (family or neighborhood) and does not cross certain boundaries of decency.

Spellbinders are characterized by pathological egotism. Such a person is forced by some internal causes to make an early choice between two possibilities: the first is forcing other people to think and experience things in a manner similar to his own; the second is a feeling of being lonely and different, a pathological misfit in social life. Sometimes the choice is either snake-charming or suicide.

Triumphant repression of self-critical or unpleasant concepts from the field of consciousness gradually gives rise to the phenomena of conversion thinking, or paralogistics, paramoralisms, and the use of reversion blockades. They stream so profusely from the mind and mouth of the spellbinder that they flood the average person’s mind. Everything becomes subordinated to the spellbinder’s over-compensatory conviction that they are exceptional, sometimes even messianic. An ideology emerges from this conviction, true in part, whose value is supposedly superior. However, if we analyze the exact functions of such an ideology in the spellbinder’s personality, we perceive that it is a nothing other than a means of self-charming, useful for repressing those tormenting self-critical associations into the subconscious. The ideology’s instrumental role in influencing other people also serves the spellbinder’s needs.

The spellbinder believes that he will always find converts to his ideology, and most often, they are right. However, they feel shock (or even paramoral indignation) when it turns out that their influence extends to only a limited minority, while most people’s attitude to their activities remains critical, pained and disturbed. The spellbinder is thus confronted with a choice: either withdraw back into his void or strengthen his position by improving the effectiveness of his activities.

The spellbinder places on a high moral plane anyone who has succumbed to his influence and incorporated the experiential method he imposes. He showers such people with attention and property, if possible. Critics are met with “moral” outrage. It can even be proclaimed that the compliant minority is in fact the moral majority, since it professes the best ideology and honors a leader whose qualities are above average.

Such activity is always necessarily characterized by the inability to foresee its final results, something obvious from the psychological point of view because its substratum contains pathological phenomena, and both spellbinding and self-charming make it impossible to perceive reality accurately enough to foresee results logically. However, spellbinders nurture great optimism and harbor visions of future triumphs similar to those they enjoyed over their own crippled souls. It is also possible for optimism to be a pathological symptom.

In a healthy society, the activities of spellbinders meet with criticism effective enough to stifle them quickly. However, when they are preceded by conditions operating destructively upon common sense and social order; such as social injustice, cultural backwardness, or intellectually limited rulers sometimes manifesting pathological traits, spellbinders’ activities have led entire societies into large-scale human tragedy.

Such an individual fishes an environment or society for people amenable to his influence, deepening their psychological weaknesses until they finally join together in a ponerogenic union. On the other hand, people who have maintained their healthy critical faculties intact, based upon their own common sense and moral criteria, attempt to counteract the spellbinders’ activities and their results. In the resulting polarization of social attitudes, each side justifies itself by means of moral categories. That is why such commonsense resistance is always accompanied by some feeling of helplessness and deficiency of criteria.

The awareness that a spellbinder is always a pathological individual should protect us from the known results of a moralizing interpretation of pathological phenomena, ensuring us an objective criteria for more effective action. Explaining what kind of pathological substratum is hidden behind a given instance of spellbinding activities should enable a modern solution to such situations.

It is a characteristic phenomenon that a high IQ generally helps a person to be more immune to spellbinding activities only to a moderate degree. Actual differences in the formation of human attitudes to the influence of such activities should be attributed to other properties of human nature. The most decisive factor in assuming a critical attitude is good basic intelligence, which conditions our perception of psychological reality. We can also observe how a spellbinder’s activities “husk out” amenable individuals with an astonishing regularity.

We shall later return to the specific relations that occur among the spellbinder’s personality, the ideology he expounds, and the choices made by those who easily succumb.

 

More exhaustive clarification thereof would require separate study within the framework of general ponerology, a work intended for specialists, in order to explain some of those interesting phenomena which are still not properly understood today.

 

 

Ponerogenic Associations

We shall give the name “ponerogenic association” to any group of people characterized by ponerogenic processes of above-average social intensity, wherein the carriers of various pathological factors function as inspirers, spellbinders, and leaders, and where a proper pathological social structure generates. Smaller, less permanent associations may be called “groups” or “unions”.

Such an association gives birth to evil which hurts other people as well as its own members. We could list various names ascribed to such organizations by linguistic tradition: gangs, criminal mobs, mafias, cliques, and coteries, which cunningly avoid collision with the law while seeking to gain their own advantage. Such unions frequently aspire to political power in order to impose their expedient legislation upon societies in the name of a suitably prepared ideology, deriving advantages in the form of disproportionate prosperity and the satisfaction of their craving for power.

A description and classification of such associations with a view of their numbers, goals, officially promulgated ideologies, and internal organizations would of course be scientifically valuable. Such a description, effected by a perceptive observer, could help a ponerologist determine some of the properties of such unions, which cannot be determined by means of natural conceptual language.

A description of this kind, however, ought not to cloak the more factual phenomena and psychological dependencies operating within these unions. Failure to heed this warning can easily cause such a sociological description to indicate properties which are of secondary importance, or even made “for show” to impress the uninitiated, thereby overshadowing the actual phenomena which decide the quality, role, and fate of the union. Particularly if such a description is colorful literature, it can furnish merely illusory or ersatz knowledge, thus rendering a naturalistic perception and causative comprehension of phenomena more difficult.

One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in a fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic ways. The opinions, ideas, and judgments of people carrying various psychological deficits are endowed with an importance at least equal to that of outstanding individuals among normal people.

The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic. Let us call this the first criterion of ponerogenesis.

Another phenomenon all ponerogenic associations have in common is their statistically high concentration of individuals with various psychological anomalies. Their qualitative composition is crucially important in the formation of the entire union’s character, activities, development, or extinction.

Groups dominated by various kinds of characteropathic individuals will develop relatively primitive activities, proving rather easy for a society of normal people to break. However, things are quite different when such unions are inspired by psychopathic individuals. Let us adduce the following example illustrating the roles of two different anomalies, selected from among actual events studied by the author.

In felonious youth gangs, a specific role is played by boys (and occasionally girls) that carry a characteristic deficit that is sometimes left behind by an inflammation of the parotid glands (the mumps). This disease entails brain reactions in some cases, leaving behind a discreet but permanent bleaching of feelings and a slight decrease in general mental skills. Similar results are sometimes left behind after diphtheria. As a result, such people easily succumb to the suggestions and manipulations of a more clever individuals.

When drawn into a felonious group, these constitutionally weakened individuals become faint-critical helpers and executors of the leader’s intentions, tools in the hands of more treacherous, usually psychopathic, leaders. Once arrested, they submit to their leaders’ insinuated explanations that the higher (paramoral) group ideal demands that they become scapegoats, taking the majority of blame upon themselves. In court, the same leaders who initiated the delinquencies mercilessly dump all the blame onto their less crafty colleagues. Sometimes a judge actually accepts the insinuations.

Individuals with the above mentioned post-mumps and post-diphtheria traits constitute less than 1.0 % of the population as a whole, but their share reaches ¼ of juvenile delinquent groups. This represents an inspissation⁷⁵ of the order of 30-fold, requiring no further methods of statistical analysis.

 

When studying the contents of ponerogenic unions skillfully enough, we often meet with an inspissation of other psychological anomalies which also speak for themselves.

75 To thicken by either evaporation or absorption of fluid. Diminished fluidity, increased thickness. A concentration. [Editor’s note.]
 

Two basic types of the above-mentioned unions should be differentiated: Primary ponerogenic and secondary ponerogenic. Let us describe as primarily ponerogenic a union whose abnormal members were active from the very beginning, playing the role of crystallizing catalysts as early as the process of creation of the group occurred. We shall call secondarily ponerogenic a union which was founded in the name of some idea with an independent social meaning, generally comprehensible within the categories of the natural world view, but which later succumbed to a certain moral degeneration. This in turn opened the door to infection and activation of the pathological factors within, and later to a ponerization of the group as a whole, or often of its fraction.

From the very outset, a primarily ponerogenic union is a foreign body within the organism of society, its character colliding with the moral values held or respected by the majority. The activities of such groups provoke opposition and disgust and are considered immoral; as a rule, therefore, such groups do not spread large, nor do they metastasize into numerous unions; they finally lose their battle with society.

In order to have a chance to develop into a large ponerogenic association, however, it suffices that some human organization, characterized by social or political goals and an ideology with some creative value, be accepted by a larger number of normal people before it succumbs to a process of ponerogenic malignancy.

 

The primary tradition and ideological values of such a society may then, for a long time, protect a union which has succumbed to the ponerization process from the awareness of society, especially its less critical components.

 

When the ponerogenic process touches such a human organization, which originally emerged and acted in the name of political or social goals, and whose causes were conditioned in history and the social situation, the original group’s primary values will nourish and protect such a union, in spite of the fact that those primary values succumb to characteristic degeneration, the practical function becoming completely different from the primary one, because the names and symbols are retained.

 

This is where the weaknesses of individual and social “common sense” are revealed.⁷⁶

76 Just because a group operates under the banner of “communism” or “socialism” or “democracy” or “conservatism” or “republicanism”, doesn’t mean that, in practice, their functions are anything close to the original ideology. [Editor’s note.]

This is reminiscent of a situation psychopathologists know well: a person who enjoyed trust and respect in their circles starts behaving with preposterous arrogance and hurting others, allegedly in the name of his already known, decent and accepted convictions, which have – in the meantime - deteriorated due to some psychological process rendering them primitive but emotionally dynamic. However, his old acquaintances – having known him for long as the person he was - do not believe the injured parties who complain about his new, or even hidden, behavior, and are prepared to denigrate them and consider them liars.

 

This adds insult to their injury and gives encouragement and license to the individual whose personality is undergoing deterioration, to commit further hurtful acts; as a rule, such a situation lasts until the person’s madness becomes obvious.

Ponerogenic unions of the primary variety are mainly of interest to criminology; our main concern will be associations that succumb to a secondary process of poneric malignancy. First, however, let us sketch a few properties of such associations which have already surrendered to this process.

Within each ponerogenic union, a psychological structure is created which can be considered a counterpart or caricature of the normal structure of society or a normal societal organization. In a normal social organization, individuals with various psychological strengths and weaknesses complement each other’s talents and characteristics. This structure is subjected to diachronic⁷⁷ modification with regard to changes in the character of the association as whole. The same is true of a ponerogenic union. Individuals with various psychological aberrations also complement each other’s talents and characteristics.

 

77 Over time; employing a chronological perspective. [Editor’s note.]

The earlier phase of a ponerogenic union’s activity is usually dominated by characteropathic, particularly paranoid, individuals, who often play an inspirational or spellbinding role in the ponerization process. Recall here the power of the paranoid characteropath lies in the fact that they easily enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, or who have been victims of individuals with character disorders, and, in particular, a large segment of young people.

At this point in time, the union still exhibits certain romantic features and is not yet characterized by excessively brutal behavior.⁷⁸ Soon, however, the more normal members are pushed into fringe functions and are excluded from organizational secrets; some of them thereupon leave such a union.

Individuals with inherited deviations then progressively take over the inspirational and leadership positions. The role of essential psychopaths gradually grows, although they like to remain ostensibly in the shadows (e.g. directing small groups), setting the pace as an éminence grise.⁷⁹ In ponerogenic unions on the largest social scales, the leadership role is generally played by a different kind of individual, one more easily digestible and representative.

 

Examples include frontal characteropathy, or some more discreet complex of lesser taints.

 

78 An example would be a paranoid character who believes himself to be a Robin Hood type character with a “mission” to “rob from the rich and give to the poor”. This can easily transform to “rob from anyone to gain for the self” under the cover of “social injustice against us makes it right”. [Editor’s note.]
79 A powerful advisor or decision-maker who operates secretly or otherwise unofficially. This phrase originally referred to Cardinal Richelieu’s right-hand man, François Leclerc du Tremblay, a Capuchin priest who wore gray robes. [Editor’s note.]

A spellbinder at first simultaneously plays the role of leader in a ponerogenic group. Later there appears another kind of “leadership talent”, a more vital individual who often joined the organization later, once it has already succumbed to ponerization. The spellbinding individual, being weaker, is forced to come to terms with being shunted into the shadows and recognizing the new leader’s “genius”, or accept the threat of total failure. Roles are parceled out.

 

The spellbinder needs support from the primitive but decisive leader, who in turn needs the spellbinder to uphold the association’s ideology, so essential in maintaining the proper attitude on the part of those members of the rank and file who betray a tendency to criticism and doubt of the moral variety.

The spellbinder’s job then becomes to repackage the ideology appropriately, sliding new contents in under old titles, so that it can continue fulfilling its propaganda function under ever-changing conditions. He also has to uphold the leader’s mystique inside and outside the association. Complete trust cannot exist between the two, however, since the leader secretly has contempt for the spellbinder and his ideology, whereas the spellbinder despises the leader for being such a coarse individual. A showdown is always probable; whoever is weaker becomes the loser.

The structure of such a union undergoes further variegation and specialization. A chasm opens between the somewhat more normal members and the elite initiates who are, as a rule, more pathological.

 

This later subgroup becomes ever more dominated by hereditary pathological factors, the former by the after-effects of various diseases affecting the brain, less typically psychopathic individuals, and people whose malformed personalities were caused by early deprivation or brutal child-rearing methods on the part of pathological individuals. It soon develops that there is less and less room for normal people in the group at all. The leaders’ secrets and intentions are kept hidden from the union’s proletariat; the products of the spellbinders’ work must suffice for this segment.

An observer watching such a union’s activities from the outside and using the natural psychological world view will always tend to overestimate the role of the leader and his allegedly autocratic function. The spellbinders and the propaganda apparatus are mobilized to maintain this erroneous outside opinion. The leader, however, is dependent upon the interests of the union, especially the elite initiates, to an extent greater than he himself knows. He wages a constant position-jockeying battle; he is an actor with a director.

 

In macrosocial unions, this position is generally occupied by a more representative individual not deprived of certain critical faculties; initiating him into all those plans and criminal calculations would be counterproductive. In conjunction with part of the elite, a group of psychopathic individuals hiding behind the scenes steers the leader, the way Borman and his clique steered Hitler. If the leader does not fulfill his assigned role, he generally knows that the clique representing the elite of the union is in a position to kill or otherwise remove him.

We have sketched the properties of unions in which the ponerogenic process has transformed their original generally benevolent content into a pathological counterpart thereof and modified its structure and its later changes, in a manner sufficiently wide-scale to encompass the greatest possible scope of this kind of phenomena, from the smallest to the largest social scale.

 

The general rules governing those phenomena appear to be at least analogous, independent of the quantitative, social, and historical scale of such a phenomenon.

 

 

Ideologies

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideology and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others.

If such a ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of course provoke “moral outrage”, and not only among the members of the union. The fact is, even normal people, who condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, feel hurt and deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality when a widely idealized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals.

 

Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary motifs. The job of effecting such a “strip-tease” may thus turn out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected.
 

A primary ponerogenic union is formed at the same time as its ideology, perhaps even somewhat earlier. A normal person perceives such ideology to be different from the world of human concepts, obviously suggestive, and even primitively comical to a degree.

An ideology of a secondarily ponerogenic association is formed by gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to functions and goals other than the original formative ones. A certain kind of layering or schizophrenia of ideology takes place during the ponerization process. The outer layer closest to the original content is used for the group’s propaganda purposes, especially regarding the outside world, although it can in part also be used inside with regard to disbelieving lower-echelon members.

 

The second layer presents the elite with no problems of comprehension: it is more hermetic, generally composed by slipping a different meaning into the same names. Since identical names signify different contents depending on the layer in question, understanding this “doubletalk” requires simultaneous fluency in both languages.

Average people succumb to the first layer’s suggestive insinuations for a long time before they learn to understand the second one as well. Anyone with certain psychological deviations, especially if he is wearing the mask of normality with which we are already familiar, immediately perceives the second layer to be attractive and significant; after all, it was built by people like him. Comprehending this doubletalk is therefore a vexatious task, provoking quite understandable psychological resistance; this very duality of language, however, is a pathog-nomonic⁸⁰ symptom indicating that the human union in question is touched by the ponerogenic process to an advanced degree.

 

80 Specific characteristics of a disease. [Editor’s note.]

The ideology of unions affected by such degeneration has certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group, radical righting of the wrong, and the higher values of the individuals who have joined the organization. These motivations facilitate sublimation of the feeling of being wronged and different, caused by one’s own psychological failings, and appear to liberate the individual from the need to abide by uncomfortable moral principles.

In the world full of real injustice and human humiliation, making it conducive to the formation of an ideology containing the above elements, a union of its converts may easily succumb to degradation. When this happens, those people with a tendency to accept the better version of the ideology will tend to justify such ideological duality.

The ideology of the proletariat,⁸¹ which aimed at revolutionary restructuring of the world, was already contaminated by a schizoid deficit in the understanding of, and trust for, human nature; small wonder, then, that it easily succumbed to a process of typical degeneration in order to nourish and disguise a macrosocial phenomenon whose basic essence is completely different.⁸²

81 From the Communist Manifesto: “By proletariat [is meant] the class of modern wage laborers, who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live.” [Editor’s note.]
82 Fascism seems to be the diametric opposite of Communism and Marxism, both in a philosophic and political sense, and also opposed democratic capitalist economics along with socialism and liberal democracy. It viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution de signed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be held in check. Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic which accurately describes what was passed off under the name of Communism.

The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.

Again, we see that Fascism was passed off as Communism. So, what actually seems to have happened is that the original ideals of the proletariat were cleverly subsumed to State corporatism. Most people in the west are not aware of this because of the Western propaganda against Communism. The word “Fascist” has become a slur throughout the world since the stunning failure of the Axis powers in World War II. In contemporary political discourse, adherents of some political ideologies tend to associate fascism with their enemies, or define it as the opposite of their own views. There are no major self-described fascist parties or organizations anywhere in the world.

 
However, at the present time, in the U.S., the system is far more fascist than democratic, which probably explains the existence of the years of anti-Communist propaganda. That would demonstrate an early process of ponerization of Western democracy which, at present, has almost completed the transformation to full-blown fascism. [Editor’s note.]

For future reference, let us remember: ideologies do not need spellbinders. Spellbinders need ideologies in order to subject them to their own deviant goals.
On the other hand, the fact that some ideology degenerated along with its corollary social movement, later succumbing to this schizophrenia and serving goals which the originators of the ideology would have abhorred, does not prove that it was worthless, false, and fallacious from the start.

 

Quite the contrary: it rather appears that under certain historical conditions, the ideology of any social movement, even if it is sacred truth, can yield to the ponerization process.

A given ideology may have contained weak spots, created by the errors of human thought and emotion within; or it may, during the course of its history, become infiltrated by more primitive foreign material which can contain ponerogenic factors. Such material destroys an ideology’s internal homogeny. The source of such infection by foreign ideological material may be the ruling social system with its laws and customs based on a more primitive tradition, or an imperialistic system of rule. It may be, of course, simply another philosophical movement often contaminated by the eccentricities of its founder, who considers the facts to blame for not conforming to his dialectical construct.

The Roman Empire, including its legal system and paucity of psychological concepts, similarly contaminated the primary homogeneous idea of Christianity. Christianity had to adapt to coexistence with a social system wherein “dura lex sed lex” ⁸³, rather than an understanding of human beings, decided a person’s fate; this then led to the corruption of attempting to reach the goals of the “Kingdom of God” by means of Roman imperialistic methods.

 

83 The law [is] harsh, but [it is] the law.

The greater and truer the original ideology, the longer it may be capable of nourishing and disguising from human criticism that phenomenon which is the product of the specific degenerative process. In a great and valuable ideology, the danger for small minds is hidden; they can become the factors of such preliminary degeneration, which opens the door to invasion by pathological factors.

Thus, if we intend to understand the secondary ponerization process and the kinds of human associations which succumb to it, we must take great care to separate the original ideology from its counterpart, or even caricature, created by the ponerogenic process.

 

Abstracting from any ideology, we must, by analogy, understand the essence of the process itself, which has its own etiological causes which are potentially present in every society, as well as characteristic developmental patho-dynamics.
 

 

The Ponerization Process

Observation of the ponerization processes of various human unions throughout history easily leads to the conclusion that the initial step is a moral warping of the group’s ideational contents. In analyzing the contamination of a group’s ideology, we note first of all an infiltration of foreign, simplistic, and doctrinaire contents, thereby depriving it of any healthy support for, and trust in, the necessity of understanding of human nature. This opens the way for invasion by pathological factors and the ponerogenic role of their carriers.

The example of the Roman legal system vis a vis early Christianity mentioned above, is a case in point. The Roman imperial and legal civilization was overly attached to matter and law, and created a legal system that was too rigid to accommodate any real aspects of psychological and spiritual life. This “earthy” foreign element infiltrated Christianity resulting in the Catholic church adopting Imperial strategies to enforce its system on others by violence.

This fact could justify the conviction of moralists that maintaining a union’s ethical discipline and ideational purity is sufficient protection against derailing or hurtling into an insufficiently comprehended world of error. Such a conviction strikes a ponerologist as a unilateral oversimplification of an eternal reality which is more complex. After all, the loosening of ethical and intellectual controls is sometimes a consequence of the direct or indirect influence of the omnipresent factors of the existence of deviants in any social group, along with some other non-pathological human weaknesses.

Sometime during life, every human organism undergoes periods during which physiological and psychological resistance declines, facilitating development of bacteriological infection within. Similarly, a human association or social movement undergoes periods of crisis which weaken its ideational and moral cohesion.

 

This may be caused by pressure on the part of other groups, a general spiritual crisis in the environment, or intensification of its hysterical condition. Just as more stringent sanitary measures are an obvious medical indication for a weakened organism, the development of conscious control over the activity of pathological factors is a ponerological indication. This is a crucial factor for prevention of tragedy during a society’s periods of moral crisis.

For centuries, individuals exhibiting various psychological anomalies have had the tendency to participate in the activities of human unions. This is made possible on the one hand by such group’s weaknesses, i.e. failure in adequate psychological knowledge; on the other hand, it deepens the moral failings and stifles the possibilities of utilizing healthy common sense and understanding matters objectively.

 

In spite of the resulting tragedies and unhappiness, humanity has shown a certain progress, especially in the cognitive area; therefore, a ponerologist may be cautiously optimistic. After all, by detecting and describing these aspects of the ponerization process of human groups, which could not be understood until recently, we shall be able to counteract such processes earlier and more effectively. Again, depth and breadth of knowledge of human psychological variations is crucial.

Any human group affected by the process described herein is characterized by its increasing regression from natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories might consider it an instance of “turning into half-wits” or the development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. A ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the association by pathological factors present in certain individuals who have been allowed to participate in the group because the lack of good psychological knowledge has not mandated their exclusion.

Thus, whenever we observe some group member being treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although they are based on a characteristically different view of human matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion.

 

We shall treat this in accordance with the above described first criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.

Such a state of affairs simultaneously consists as a liminal (watershed) situation, whereupon further damage to people’s healthy common sense and critical moral faculties becomes ever easier. Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements.

For many people, such pressure of collective opinion takes on attributes of a moral criterion; for others, it represents a kind of psychological terror ever more difficult to endure. The phenomenon of counter-selection thus occurs in this phase of ponerization: individuals with a more normal sense of psychological reality leave after entering into conflict with the newly modified group; simultaneously, individuals with various psychological anomalies join the group and easily find a way of life there.

 

The former feel “pushed into counter-revolutionary positions”, and the latter can afford to remove their masks of sanity ever more often.

People who have been thus thrown out of a ponerogenic association because they were too normal suffer bitterly; they are unable to understand their specific state. Their ideal, the reason they joined the group, which constituted a part of the meaning of life for them, has now been degraded, although they cannot find a rational basis for this fact. They feel wronged; they “fight against demons” they are not in a position to identify. The fact is their personalities have already been modified to a certain extent due to saturation by abnormal psychological material, especially psychopathic material.

 

They easily fall into the opposite extreme in such cases, because unhealthy emotions rule their decisions. What they need is good psychological information in order to find the path of reason and measure. Based on a ponerologic understanding of their condition, psychotherapy could provide rapid positive results. However, if the union they left is succumbing to deep ponerization, a threat looms over them: they may become the objects of revenge, since they have “betrayed” a magnificent ideology.⁸⁴

 

84 It should also be mentioned that the same process occurs when a psychological deviant is thrown out of a group of normal people. The way to tell the difference is that a normal group ejecting a deviant will not seek to exact revenge on the ejected member, while the deviant will seek revenge on the group he has been ejected from. [Editor’s note.]

This is the stormy period of a group’s ponerization, followed by a certain stabilization in terms of contents, structure, and customs. Rigorous selective measures of a clearly psychological kind are applied to new members. So as to exclude the possibility of becoming sidetracked by defectors, people are observed and tested to eliminate those characterized by excessive mental independence or psychological normality. The new internal function created is something like a “psychologist”, and it doubtless takes advantage of the above-described psychological knowledge collected by psychopaths.

It should be noted that certain of these exclusionary steps taken by a group in the process of ponerization, should have been taken against deviants by the ideological group in the beginning. So rigorous selective measures of a psychological kind taken by a group is not necessarily an indicator that the group is ponerogenic. Rather one should carefully examine what the psychological selection is based on. If any group seeks to avoid ponerization, it will want to exclude individuals with any psychological dependence on subjective beliefs, rites, rituals, drugs, and certainly those individuals that are incapable of objectively analyzing their own inner psychological content or who reject the process of Positive disintegration.

In a group in the process of ponerization, spellbinders take care of “ideological purity”. The leader’s position is relatively secure. Individuals manifesting doubt or criticism are subject to paramoral condemnation. Maintaining the utmost dignity and style, leadership discusses opinions and intentions which are psychologically and morally pathological.

 

Any intellectual connections which might reveal them as such are eliminated, thanks to the substitution of premises operating in the proper subconscious process on the basis of prior conditioned reflexes. An objective observer might wish to compare this state to one in which the inmates of an asylum take over the running of the institution. The association enters the state wherein the whole has donned the mask of ostensible normality. In the next chapter, we shall call such a state the “dissimulative phase” with regard to macrosocial ponerogenic phenomena.

Observing the appropriate state corresponding to the first ponerological criterion - the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals - requires skillful psychology and specific factual knowledge; the second, more stable phase can be perceived both by a person of average reason and by public opinion in most societies. The interpretation imposed, however, is unilaterally moralistic or sociological, simultaneously undergoing the characteristic feeling of deficiency as regards the possibility of both understanding the phenomenon and counteracting the spread of said evil.

However, in this phase a minority of social groups tend to consider such a ponerogenic association comprehensible within the categories of their own world view and the outer layer of diffusing ideology as a doctrine acceptable to them. The more primitive the society in question, and the further removed from direct contact to the union affected by this pathological state, the more numerous such minorities would be. This very period, during which the customs of the union become somewhat milder, often represents simultaneously its most intensive expansionist activity.

This period may last long, but not forever. Internally, the group is becoming progressively more pathological, finally showing its true qualitative colors again as its activities become ever clumsier. At this point, a society of normal people can easily threaten ponerologic associations, even at the macroso-cial level.
 

Macrosocial Phenomena

When a ponerogenic process encompasses a society’s entire ruling class, or nation, or when opposition from normal people is stifled—as a result of the mass character of the phenomenon, or by using spellbinding means and physical compulsion, including censorship—we are dealing with a macrosocial ponerologic phenomenon.

 

In such a case, however, a society’s tragedy, often coupled with that of the researcher’s own suffering, opens before him an entire volume of ponerologic knowledge, where he can read all about the laws governing such a process if he is only able to familiarize himself in time with its naturalistic language and its different grammar.

Studies in the genesis of evil which are based on observing small groups of people can indicate the details of these laws to us. However, it might be thought that this would present a warped picture that is dependent upon various environmental conditions which are further dependent on the historical period in question; this is the backdrop to the phenomena observed. Nevertheless, such observations may enable us to hazard a hypothesis to the effect that the general laws of ponerogenesis may be at least analogous, regardless of the quantity and scope of the phenomenon in time and space. They do not, however, permit verification of such a hypothesis.

In studying a macrosocial phenomenon, we can obtain both quantitative and qualitative data, statistical correlation indices, and other observations as accurately as might be allowed by the state of the art in science, research methodology, and the obviously very difficult situation of the observer.⁸⁵ We can then use the classical method, hazarding a hypothesis and then actively searching for facts which could falsify it.

 

85 Assuming that one can gather this information and survive the gathering! [Editor’s note.]

 

The wide-spread causative regularity of ponerogenic processes would then be confirmed within the bounds of the above-mentioned possibilities. This is, in fact, what the author and his colleagues undertook to do. It is astonishing how neatly causative regularity of ponerogenic processes observed in small groups govern this macrosocial phenomenon. The comprehension of the phenomenon thus acquired can serve as a basis for predicting its future development, to be verified by time. It is in close and careful observation, and only after time passes, that we become aware that the colossus has an Achilles heel after all.

The study of macrosocial ponerogenic phenomena meets with obvious problems: their period of genesis, duration, and decay is several times longer than the researcher’s scientific activity. Simultaneously, there are other transformations in history, customs, economics, and technology; however, the difficulties confronted in abstracting the appropriate symptoms need not be insuperable, since our criteria are based on eternal phenomena subject to relatively limited transformations in time.

The traditional interpretation of these great historical diseases has already taught historians to distinguish two phases. The first is represented by a period of spiritual crisis in a society,⁸⁶ which historiography associates with exhausting of the ideational, moral, and religious values heretofore nourishing the society in question. Egoism among individuals and social groups increases, and the links of moral duty and social networks are felt to be loosening.

 

86 Sorokin, Pitirim. (1941). Social and Cultural Dynamics, Volume Four: Basic Problems, Principles and Methods, New York: American Book Company. Sorokin, Pitirim. (1957). Social and Cultural Dynamics, One Volume Revision. Boston: Porter Sargent. Simonton, Dean Keith. (1976). “Does Sorokin’s data support his theory?: A study of generational fluctuations in philosophical beliefs.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15: 187-198.

 

Trifling matters thereupon dominate human minds to such an extent that there is no room left for thinking about public matters or a feeling of commitment to the future. An atrophy of the hierarchy of values within the thinking of individuals and societies is an indication thereof; it has been described both in historiographic monographs and in psychiatric papers. The country’s government is finally paralyzed, helpless in the face of problems which could be solved without great difficulty under other circumstances. Let us associate such periods of crisis with the familiar phase in social hysterization.

The next phase has been marked by bloody tragedies, revolutions, wars, and the fall of empires. The deliberations of historians or moralists regarding these occurrences always leave behind a certain feeling of deficiency with reference to the possibility of perceiving certain psychological factors discerned within the nature of phenomena; the essence of these factors remains outside the scope of their scientific experience.

A historian observing these great historical diseases is struck first of all by their similarities, easily forgetting that all diseases have many symptoms in common because they are states of absent health. A ponerologist thinking in naturalistic terms tends to doubt that we are dealing with only one kind of societal disease, thereby leading to a certain differentiation of forms with regard to ethnological and historical conditions. Differentiating the essence of such states is more appropriate to the reasoning patterns we are familiar with from the natural sciences.

 

The complex conditions of social life, however, preclude using the method of distinction, which is similar to etio-logical criterion in medicine: qualitatively speaking, the phenomena become layered in time, conditioning each other and transforming constantly. We should then rather use certain abstract patterns, similar to those used in analyzing the neurotic states of human beings.

Governed by this type of reasoning, let us here attempt to differentiate two pathological states of societies; their essence and contents appear different enough, but they can operate sequentially in such a way that the first opens the door to the second. The first such state has already been sketched in the chapter on the hysteroidal cycle; we shall adduce a certain number of other psychological details hereunder.

 

The next chapter shall be dedicated to the second pathological state, for which I have adopted the denomination of “pathocracy”.

 

States of Societal Hysterization

When perusing scientific or literary descriptions of hysterical phenomena, such as those dating from the last great increase in hysteria in Europe encompassing the quarter-century preceding World War I, a non-specialist may gain the impression that this was endemic to individual cases, particularly among woman. The contagious nature of hysterical states, however, had already been discovered and described by Jean-Martin Charcot⁸⁷.

 

87 Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 - 1893) French neurologist. His work greatly impacted the developing fields of neurology and psychology. Charcot took an interest in the malady then called hysteria. It seemed to be a mental disorder with physical manifestations, of immediate interest to a neurologist. He believed that hysteria was the result of a weak neurological system which was hereditary. It could be set off by a traumatic event like an accident, but was then progressive and irreversible. To study the hysterics under his care, he learned the technique of hypnosis and soon became a master of the relatively new “science.” Charcot believed that a hypnotized state was very similar to a bout of hysteria, and so he hypnotized his patients in order to induce and study their symptoms. He was single-handedly responsible for changing the French medical community’s opinion about the validity of hypnosis (it was previously rejected as Mesmerism). [Editor’s note.]

It is practically impossible for hysteria to manifest itself as a mere individual phenomenon, since it is contagious by means of psychological resonance, identification, and imitation. Each human being has a predisposition for this malformation of the personality, albeit to varying degrees, although it is normally overcome by rearing and self-rearing, which are amenable to correct thinking and emotional self-discipline.

During “happy times” of peace dependent upon social injustice, children of the privileged classes learn to repress from their field of consciousness the uncomfortable ideas suggesting that they and their parents are benefitting from injustice against others. Such young people learn to disqualify disparage the moral and mental values of anyone whose work they are using to over-advantage.

 

Young minds thus ingest habits of subconscious selection and substitution of data, which leads to a hysterical conversion economy of reasoning. They grow up to be somewhat hysterical adults who, by means of the ways adduced above, thereupon transmit their hysteria to the next generation, which then develops these characteristics to an even greater degree. The hysterical patterns for experience and behavior grow and spread downwards from the privileged classes until crossing the boundary of the first criterion of ponerology: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals.

When the habits of subconscious selection and substitution of thought-data spread to the macrosocial level, a society tends to develop contempt for factual criticism and to humiliate anyone sounding an alarm. Contempt is also shown for other nations which have maintained normal thought-patterns and for their opinions. Egotistic thought-terrorization is accomplished by the society itself and its processes of conversive thinking. This obviates the need for censorship of the press, theater, or broadcasting, as a pathologically hypersensitive censor lives within the citizens themselves.

When three “egos” govern, egoism, egotism, and egocentrism, the feeling of social links and responsibility toward others disappear, and the society in question splinters into groups ever more hostile to each other. When a hysterical environment stops differentiating the opinions of limited, not-quite-normal people from those of normal, reasonable persons, this opens the door for activation of the pathological factors of a various nature to enter in.

Individuals we have already met who are governed by a pathological view of reality and abnormal goals caused by their different nature are able to develop their activities in such conditions. If a given society does not manage to overcome the state of hysterization under its ethnological and political circumstances, a huge bloody tragedy can be the result.

One variation of such a tragedy can be pathocracy. Thus, minor setbacks in terms of political failure or military defeat can be a warning in such a situation and may turn out to be a blessing in disguise if properly understood and allowed to become a factor in the regeneration of a society’s normal thought patterns and customs. The most valuable advice a ponerologist can offer under such circumstances is for a society to avail itself of the assistance of modern science, taking particular advantage of data remaining from the last great increase of hysteria in Europe.

A greater resistance to hysterization characterizes those social groups which earn their daily bread by daily effort, and where the practicalities of everyday life force the mind to think soberly and reflect on generalities. As an example: peasants continue to view the hysterical customs of the well-to-do classes through their own earthy perception of psychological reality and their sense of humor.

 

Similar customs on the part of the bourgeoisie incline workers to bitter criticism and revolutionary anger. Whether couched in economic, ideological, or political terms, the criticism and demands of these social groups always contain a component of psychological, moral, and anti-hysterical motivation. For this reason, it is most appropriate to consider these demands with deliberation and take these classes’ feelings into account.

 

On the other hand, tragic results can derive from thoughtless action paving the way for spellbinders to make themselves heard.

 

Ponerology

Ponerology utilizes the scientific progress of the last decades and last years, especially in the realms of biology, psychopathology and clinical psychology. It clarifies unknown causative links and analyzes the processes of the genesis of evil without giving a short shrift to factors which have so far been underrated. In initiating this new discipline, the author has also utilized his professional experience in these areas and the results of his own recent research.

A ponerological approach facilitates an understanding of some of mankind’s more dramatic difficulties on both levels, the macrosocial and the individual human scale. This new discipline will make it possible to achieve first theoretical, and then practical, solutions for problems we have been attempting to solve by ineffective traditional means, resulting in feelings of helplessness against the tides of history.

 

These latter means are based on historiographical concepts and excessively moralizing attitudes, which makes them overrate force as a means of counteracting evil. Ponerology can help equalize such one-sidedness by means of modern naturalistic thinking, supplementing our comprehension of the causes and genesis of evil with the facts necessary to build a more stable foundation for practical inhibition of the processes of ponerogenesis and counteraction of their results.

Synergetic activity of several measures aimed at the same valuable goal, e.g. such as treating a sick person, usually produces better effects than the mere sum of the factors involved. In building a second wing for the activities of moralistic efforts to date, ponerology will make it possible to achieve results which are also better than the sum of their useful effects. By reinforcing trust in familiar moral values, it will make it possible to answer many heretofore unanswerable questions and utilize means not used thus far, especially on a larger social scale.

Societies have a right to defend themselves against any evil harassing or threatening them. National governments are obligated to use effective means for this purpose, and to use them as skillfully as possible.⁸⁸ In order to discharge this essential function, nations obviously utilize the information available at the time in that given civilization relating to the nature and genesis of evil, as well as whatever means they can muster. Society’s survival must be protected, but abuse of power and sadistic degenerations come about all too easily.

 

88 Unless, of course, the government itself is the evil that threatens and harasses the people. [Editor’s note.]

We now have rational and moral doubts about prior generations’ comprehension and counteraction of evil. Simple observation of history justifies this. The general developing opinion in free societies requires that evil repressing measures be humanized and limited so as to set boundaries to possible abuse. This seems to be due to the fact that morally sensitive individuals want to protect their personalities and those of their children from the destructive influence conveyed by the awareness that severe punishment, especially capital punishment, is still being meted out.

And so it is that the methods of counteracting evil are being mitigated in their severity, but at the same time effective methods to protect the citizenry against the birth of evil and force are not indicated. This creates an ever-widening gap between the need for counteraction and the means at our disposal; as a result, many kinds of evil can develop at every social scale. Under such circumstances, it may be understandable that some voices clamor for a return to the old-fashioned, iron-fisted methods so inimical to the development of human thought.

Ponerology studies the nature of evil and the complex processes of its genesis, thereby opening new ways for counteracting it. It points out that evil has certain weaknesses in its structure and genesis which can be exploited to inhibit its development as well as to quickly eliminate the fruits of such development. If the ponerogenic activity of pathological factors -deviant individuals and their activities - is subjected to conscious controls of a scientific, individual, and societal nature, we can counteract evil as effectively as by means of persistent calls to respect moral values.

 

The ancient method and this completely new one can thus combine to produce results more favorable than an arithmetic sum of the two. Ponerology also leads to the possibilities of prophylactic behavior at the levels of individual, societal, and macrosocial evil. This new approach ought to enable societies to feel safe again, both at the internal level and on the scale of international threats.

Methods of counteracting evil which are conditioned upon causation, supported by ever-increasing scientific progress, will of course be much more complex, just as the nature and genesis of evil are complex. Any allegedly fair relationship between a person’s crime and the punishment meted out is a survival of archaic thinking, something ever more difficult to comprehend. That is why our times demand that we further develop the discipline initiated herein and undertake detailed research, especially as regards the nature of many pathological factors which take part in ponerogenesis.

 

An appropriately ponerological reading of history is an essential condition for understanding macrosocial ponerogenic phenomena whose duration exceeds the observation possibilities of a single person. The author utilized this method in the following chapter, reconstructing the phase wherein characteropathic factors dominated in the initial period of the creation of pathocracy.

In teaching us about the causes and genesis of evil, ponerology barely addresses human guilt. Thus, it does not solve the perennial problem of human responsibility, although it does shed additional light from the side of causation. We become aware of just how little we understand in this area, and how much remains to be researched, while attempting to correct our comprehension of the complex causation of phenomena and acknowledging greater individual dependence upon the operation of outside factors. At that point, any moral judgment about another person or his blame-worthiness may strike us as based mostly upon emotional responses and centuries-old tradition.

We have the right and duty to critically judge our own behavior and the moral value of our motivations. This is conditioned by our conscience, a phenomenon as ubiquitous as it is incomprehensible within the boundaries of naturalistic thinking. Even if armed with all the present and future accomplishments of ponerology, will we ever be in a position to abstract and evaluate the individual blame of another person? In terms of theory, this appears ever more doubtful; in terms of practice, ever more unnecessary.

If we consistently abstain from moral judgments of other people, we transfer our attention to tracking the causative processes that are responsible for conditioning the behavior of another person or society. This improves our prospects for proper mental hygiene and our capacity to apprehend psychological reality. Such restraint also enables us to avoid an error which poisons minds and souls all too effectively, namely superimposing a moralizing interpretation upon the activity of pathological factors. We also avoid emotional entanglements and better control our own egotism and egocentrism, thus facilitating objective analysis of phenomena.

If such an attitude strikes some readers as being close to moral indifference, we should reiterate that the here-adduced method of analyzing evil and its genesis gives rise to a new type of reasoned distance from its temptations, as well as activating additional theoretical and practical possibilities for counter-acting it.

 

Also, we should give thought to the astonishing and obvious convergence between the conclusions we can derive from this analysis of the phenomena and certain ideas from ancient philosophies, well stated in the Christian Bible:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

(Mat. 7:1-2)

These values, unfortunately often overshadowed by a government’s immediate needs, as well as the activity of our instinctive and emotional reflexes goading us to revenge and punishment of others, find at least partial rational justification in this new science. Practicing such rigorous understanding and behavior can only confirm these values in a more evident and scientific manner.

This new discipline can be applicable to many walks of life. The author has utilized these accomplishments and tested their practical value in the course of individual psychotherapy upon his patients. As a result, their personality and future were rearranged in a manner more favorable than if it were based on earlier skills.

 

Bearing in mind the exceptional nature of our times, when multi-faceted mobilization of moral and mental values must be effected to counteract the evil threatening the world, in the coming chapters, the author shall suggest the adoption of just such an attitude, whose end result ought be an act of forgiveness heretofore unheard of in history.

 

Keep in mind also that understanding and forgiveness does not exclude correction of conditions and taking prophylactic measures.

Disentangling the Gordian Knot of present times, composed of the macrosocial pathological phenomenon threatening our future, may appear impossible without the development and utilization of this new discipline. This knot can no longer be cut with a sword. A psychologist cannot afford to be as impatient as Alexander the Great. That is why we have here described it within the indispensable scope, adaptation, and selection of data, so as to enable clarification of the problems to be discussed later in the book.

 

Perhaps the future will make it possible to elaborate a general theoretical work.

 

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