extracted from "Political
Ponerology - A Science on The Nature of Evil"
If there were ever such a thing as a country with a communist structure as
envisaged by Karl Marx, wherein the working people’s leftist ideology
would be the basis for government, which, I believe, would be stern, but not
bereft of healthy humanistic thought, the contemporary social,
bio-humanistic, and medical sciences would be considered valuable and be
appropriately developed and used for the good of the working people.
Psychological advice for youth and for persons
with various personal problems would naturally be the concern of the
authorities and of society as a whole. Seriously ill patients would have the
advantage of correspondingly skillful care.
However, quite the opposite is the case within a pathocratic structure.
When I came to the West, I met people with leftist views who unquestioningly
believed that communist countries existed in more or less the form expounded
by American versions of communist political doctrines. These persons were
almost certain that psychology and psychiatry must enjoy freedom in those
countries referred to as communist, and that matters were similar to what
was mentioned above.
When I contradicted them, they refused to believe me
and kept asking why, “why isn’t it like that?” What can politics have to do
with psychiatry? 111
111 In 1950, the
Russian Academy of Sciences determined everyone would follow the theory of
the Moscow professor Andrei Snezhnevsky, which held that “anybody could
suffer from ‘slowly progressing schizophrenia’. One could suffer from it
without knowing, but once Snezhnevsky or one of his followers had
ascertained that you were ill with it, you had to be locked up and knocked
down with sedatives immediately, or the disease would ‘progress’.
...dissidents are simply locked up in a psychiatric institution and said to
be insane.”
Up until his death in 1987 Snezhnevsky denied that his theory was being
abused by the Soviet regime. But his former assistants now admit, that he
knew “all too well” what was going on. The only problem is, that those
assistants still talk about it only on the sly. They work at the Moscow
institutes where the scientific successors of Snezhnevsky are still in
charge. This clique of about thirty or forty psychiatrists at the time
controlled all the important institutes for scientific research in Moscow
and this is practically the same up to now.
The consequence of Snezhnevsky’s ideas, apart
from the fact that they were used as a means of repression, is that
psychiatry in the former Soviet Union “is confronted with a gap of about
fifty years”. Western literature on psychiatry was forbidden in the Soviet
Union, psychiatrists who stood up against the political abuse of their
science ended up behind bars or were themselves declared to be “insidiously
schizophrenic”. “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren,
General Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch
newspaper De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997 [Editor’s note.]
My attempts to explain what that other reality looks like met with the
difficulties we are already familiar with, although some people had
previously heard about the abuse of psychiatry. However, such “whys” kept
cropping up in conversation, and remained unanswered.
The situation in these scientific areas, of social and curative activities,
and of the people occupied in these matters, can only be comprehended once
we have perceived the true nature of pathocracy in the light of the
ponerological approach.
Let us thus imagine something which is only possible in theory, namely, that
a country under pathocratic rule is inadvertently allowed to freely develop
these sciences, enabling a normal influx of scientific literature and
contacts with scientists in other countries. Psychology, psychopathology,
and psychiatry would flourish abundantly and produce outstanding
representatives.
What would the result be?
This accumulation of proper knowledge would, within a very short time,
enable the undertaking of investigations whose meaning we already
understand. Missing elements and insufficiently investigated questions would
be complemented and deepened by means of the appropriate detailed research.
The diagnosis of the pathocratic state of affairs would then be elaborated
within the first dozen or so years of the formation of the pathocracy,
especially if the latter is imposed.
The basis of the deductive rationale
would be significantly wider than anything the author can present here, and
would be illustrated by means of a rich body of analytical and statistical
material.
Once transmitted to world opinion, such a diagnosis would quickly become
incorporated into it that opinion, forcing naive political and propaganda
doctrines out of societal consciousness. It would reach the nations that
were the objects of the pathocratic empire’s expansionist intentions. This
would render the usefulness of any such propagandized ideology as a
pathocratic Trojan horse doubtful at best.
In spite of differences among them, other countries with normal human
systems would be united by characteristic solidarity in the defense of an
understood danger, similar to the solidarity linking normal people living
under pathocratic rule.
This consciousness, popularized in the countries affected by this
phenomenon, would simultaneously reinforce psychological resistance on the
part of normal human societies and furnish them with new measures of self
defense.
Can any pathocratic empire risk permitting such a possibility?
In times when the above-mentioned disciplines are developing swiftly in many
countries, the problem of preventing such a psychiatric threat becomes a
matter of “to be or not to be” for pathocracy. Any possibility of such a
situation emerging must thus be staved off prophylactically and skillfully,
both within and without the empire.
At the same time, the empire is able to
find effective preventive measures thanks to its consciousness of being
different as well as that specific psychological knowledge of psychopaths
with which we are already familiar, partially reinforced by academic
knowledge.
Both inside and outside the boundaries of countries affected by the
above-mentioned phenomenon, a purposeful and conscious system of control,
terror, and diversion is thus set to work.
Any scientific papers published under such governments or imported from
abroad must be monitored to ascertain that they do not contain any data
which could be harmful to the pathocracy. Specialists with superior talent
become the objects of blackmail and malicious control. This of course causes
the results to become inferior with reference to these areas of science.
The entire operation must of course be managed in such a way as to avoid
attracting the attention of public opinion in countries with normal human
structures. The effects of such a “bad break” could be too far-reaching.
This explains why people caught doing investigative work in this area are
destroyed without a sound and suspicious persons are forced abroad to become
the objects of appropriately organized harassment campaigns there.112
112 This is also
why Lobaczewski was deprived of the data he had assembled over so many years
that would have supported the information presented in this book. [Editor’s
note.]
Battles are thus being fought on secret fronts which may be reminiscent of
the Second World War. The soldiers and leaders fighting in various theaters
were not aware that their fate depended on the outcome of that other war,
waged by scientists and other soldiers, whose goal was preventing the
Germans from producing the atom bomb.
The Allies won that battle, and the United
States became the first to possess this lethal weapon. For the present,
however, the West keeps losing scientific and political battles on this new
secret front. Lone fighters are looked upon as odd, denied assistance, or
forced to work hard for their bread. Meanwhile, the ideological Trojan horse
keeps invading new countries.
An examination of the methodology of such battles, both on the internal and
the external fronts, points to that specific pathocratic knowledge so
difficult to comprehend in the light of the natural language of concepts. In
order to be able to control people and those relatively non-popularized
areas of science, one must know, or be able to sense, what is going on and
which fragments of psychopathology are most dangerous.
The examiner of this
methodology thus also becomes aware of the boundaries and imperfections of
this self-knowledge and practice, i.e. the other side’s weaknesses, errors,
and gaffes, and may manage to take advantage of them.
In nations with pathocratic systems, supervision over scientific and
cultural organizations is assigned to a special department of especially
trusted people, a “Nameless Office” composed almost entirely of relatively
intelligent persons who betray characteristic psychopathic traits. These
people must be capable of completing their academic studies, albeit
sometimes by forcing examiners to issue generous evaluations.
Their talents are usually inferior to those of
average students, especially regarding psychological science. In spite of
that, they are rewarded for their services by obtaining academic degrees and
positions and are allowed to represent their country’s scientific community
abroad. As especially trusted individuals, they are allowed to not
participate in local meetings of the party, and even to avoid joining it
entirely.
In case of need, they might then pass for
non-party. In spite of that, these scientific and cultural superintendents
are well known to the society of normal people, who learn the art of
differentiation rather quickly. They are not always properly distinguished
from agents of the political police; although they consider themselves to be
in a better class than the latter, they must nevertheless cooperate with
them.
We often meet with such people abroad, in the countries of normal people,
where various foundations and institutes give them scientific grants with
the conviction that they are thereby assisting the development of proper
knowledge in countries under “communist” governments. These benefactors do
not realize that they are rendering a disservice to such science and to real
scientists by allowing the supervisors to attain a certain semi-authentic
authority, and by allowing them to become more familiar with whatever they
shall later deem to be dangerous.
After all, those people shall later have the power to permit someone to take
a doctorate, embark upon a scientific career, achieve academic tenure, and
become promoted.
Very mediocre scientists themselves, they attempt to knock
down more talented persons, governed both by self-interest and that typical
jealousy which characterizes a pathocrat’s attitude toward normal people.
They will be the ones monitoring scientific papers for their “proper
ideology” and attempting to ensure that a good specialist will be denied the
scientific literature he needs.113
Controls are exceptionally malicious and treacherous in the psychological
sciences in particular, for reasons now understandable to us. Written and
unwritten lists are compiled for subjects that may not be taught, and
corresponding directives are issued to appropriately distort other subjects.
This list is so vast in the area of psychology that nothing remains of this
science except a skeleton picked bare of anything that might be subtle or
penetrating.
A psychiatrist’s required curriculum contains neither the minimal knowledge
from the areas of general, developmental, and clinical psychology, nor the
basic skills in psychotherapy.
Due to such a state of affairs, the most
mediocre or privileged of physicians become a psychiatrist after a course of
study lasting only weeks. This opens the door of psychiatric careers to
individuals who are by nature inclined to serving the pathocratic authority,
and it has fateful repercussions upon the level of the treatment.
It later
permits psychiatry to be abused for purposes for which it should never be
used.114
113 Based
on many reports of the past 5 years, it seems that the United States is well
on its way to having a similar system. In fact, careful analysis indicates
that such a system has been in place for some time now. [Editor’s note.]
114 In Ukraine brain surgery is being performed
on schizophrenics. “Ukraine is confronted with a lack of money, which means
no money to buy medicines, so they look for alternative methods of
treatment. Then there are psychiatrists in Dnepropetrovsk who think: suppose
we cut away a piece of brain, then we can get rid of schizophrenia cheaply.’
Van Voren imagines what they might think: ‘Maybe we’ll even get the Nobel
prize! One can never know!.’
“ ‘On the other hand’, he continues, ‘they know just as well that this kind
of operation is not really accepted. So these schizophrenics become
supposedly epileptic, since in extreme cases of epilepsy surgery might be
performed. Under this pretext they cut away pieces of brain.’ The Institute
of Neurosurgery in Kiev goes even further: there, brain tissue of aborted
embryos is implanted in the brains of mentally disabled people. ‘They say
they can cure disabled people that way. Of course nothing happens or their
situation even worsens, but they ask thousands of dollars for it.’ “In
Ukrainian psychiatry insulin is being used as a tranquillizer, i.e. it is
administered in such doses, that the patient lapses into a coma. ‘A kill or
cure remedy. It is being applied in high doses, while diabetics are dying
because there is not enough insulin. Nonsense, absolute nonsense.’ He
continues: ‘Electroshocks, on large scale.’
In the Central Psychiatric Institution in Kiev
they are given a dozen a time, without anesthesia or muscle-relaxant drugs.
Once patients have been given a clean bill of health, they can get another
dozen of shocks on the day of departure: ‘something like a severance pay.
And all of this is happening now’, concludes Van Voren, ‘it is happening
today, at this very moment.’
“In Russian newspapers one can freely write about the political abuse of
psychiatry. But officially the doctrine of Snezhnevsky was never revoked.
Most psychiatrists in Moscow still even believe in it. ‘As a consequence, no
structural change is possible in Moscow. Even now people who hold a position
at one of those institutes and who want to talk in public about the abuse of
psychiatry are being told that they should better shut up or find themselves
a job elsewhere. This way much of the old power is maintained.’ “Under the
pretext of ‘progressing schizophrenia’ dissidents are still being locked up
in the former Soviet Union, but mainly in the provinces and it is not so
‘easy’ to do anymore, says Van Voren.
People who are unwelcome to the local authorities might land in an
institution, but nowadays there are organizations for human rights and media
who can get them out. In Turkmenistan it still happens officially. ‘That is
a museum of the old Stalinist Soviet Union and there the theory has been
restored.’” “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren,
General Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch
newspaper De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997.[Editor’s note.]
Since they are undereducated, these psychologists then prove helpless in the
face of many human problems, especially in cases where detailed knowledge is
needed. Such knowledge must then be acquired on one’s own, a feat not
everyone is able to manage.
Such behavior carries in its wake a good deal of damage and human injustice
in areas of life which have nothing whatsoever to do with politics.
Unfortunately, however, such behavior is necessary from the pathocrat’s
point of view in order to prevent these dangerous sciences from jeopardizing
the existence of a system they consider the best of all possible worlds.
Specialists in the areas of psychology and psychopathology would find an
analysis of this system of prohibitions and recommendations to be highly
interesting. This makes it possible to realize that this may be one of the
roads via which we can reach the crux of the matter or the nature of this
macrosocial phenomenon. The prohibitions engulf depth psychology, the
analysis of the human instinctive substratum, together with analysis of
dreams.
As already pointed out in the chapter introducing some indispensable
concepts, an understanding of human instinct is a key to understanding man;
however, a knowledge of said instinct’s anomalies also represents a key to
understanding pathocracy.
Although used ever more rarely in psychological practice, dream analysis
shall always remain the best school of psychological thought; that makes it
dangerous by nature. Consequently, even research on the psychology of mate
selection is frowned upon, at best.
The essence of psychopathy may not, of course, be researched or elucidated.
Darkness is cast upon this matter by means of an intentionally devised
definition of psychopathy which includes various kinds of character
disorders, together with those caused by completely different and known
causes.115 This definition
must be memorized not only by every lecturer in psychopathology,
psychiatrist, and psychologist, but also by some political functionaries
with no education in that area.
115 This is also
the case in the U.S. as noted in several articles by Robert Hare. [Editor’s
note.]
This definition must be used in all public appearances whenever it is for
some reason impossible to avoid the subject. However, it is preferable for a
lecturer in such areas to be someone who always believes whatever is most
convenient in his situation, and whose intelligence does not predestine him
to delve into subtle differentiations of a psychological nature.
It is also worth pointing out here that the chief doctrine of said system
reads “Existence defines consciousness”.
As such, it belongs to psychology
rather than to any political doctrine. This doctrine actually contradicts a
good deal of empirical data indicating the role of hereditary factors in the
development of man’s personality and fate. Lecturers may refer to research
on identical twins, but only in a brief, cautious, and formal fashion.
Considerations on this subject may, however, not be published in print.
We return once more to this system’s peculiar psychological “genius” and its
self-knowledge. One might admire how the above mentioned definitions of
psychopathy effectively blocks the ability to comprehend phenomena covered
therein. We may investigate the relationships between these prohibitions and
the essence of the macrosocial phenomenon they in fact mirror. We may also
observe the limits of these skills and the errors committed by those who
execute this strategy.
These shortcomings are skillfully taken
advantage of for purposes of smuggling through some proper knowledge on the
part of the more talented specialists, or by elderly people no longer
fearful for their careers or even their lives.
The “ideological” battle is thus being waged on territory completely
unperceived by scientists living under governments of normal human
structures and attempting to imagine that other reality. This applies to all
people denouncing “Communism”, as well as those for whom this ideology has
become their faith.
Shortly after arriving in the U.S.A. , I was handed a newspaper by a young
black man on some street in Queens, N.Y. I reached for my purse, but he
waved me off; the paper was free.
The front page showed a picture of a young and handsome Brezhnev decorated
with all the medals he did not in fact receive until much later. On the last
page, however, I found a quite well-worked-out summary of investigations
performed at the University of Massachusetts on identical twins raised
separately.
These investigations furnished empirical
indications for the important role of heredity, and the description
contained a literary illustration of the similarity of the fates of twin
pairs. How far “ideologically disorientated” the editors of this paper must
have been to publish something which could never have appeared in the area
subjected to a supposedly Communist system.116
116 The
freedom that Lobaczewski noted in the U.S. in the 1980 is fast being
replaced by an almost total pathocracy. It won’t be long before such
articles are censored in U.S. newspapers as well, unless, of course, the
study is “designed” to prove the superiority of psychopathy. [Editor’s
note.]
In that other reality, the battlefront crosses every study of psychology and
psychiatry, every psychiatric hospital, every mental health consultation
center, and the personality of everyone working in these areas.
What takes
place there: hidden thrust-and-parry duels, a smuggling through of true
scientific information and accomplishments, and harassment.
Some people become morally derailed under these conditions, whereas others
create a solid foundation for their convictions and are prepared to
undertake difficulty and risk in order to obtain honest knowledge so as to
serve the sick and needy. The initial motivation of this latter group is
thus not political in character, since it derives from their good will and
professional decency. Their consciousness of the political causes of the
limitations and the political meaning of this battle is raised later, in
conjunction with experience and professional maturity, especially if their
experience and skills must be used in order to save persecuted people.
In the meantime, however, the necessary scientific data and papers must be
obtained somehow, taking difficulties and other people’s lack of
understanding into account. Students and beginning specialists not yet aware
of what was removed from the educational curricula attempt to gain access to
the scientific data stolen from them. Science starts to be degraded at a
worrisome rate once such awareness is missing.
We need to understand the nature of the macrosocial phenomenon as well as
that basic relationship and controversy between the pathological system and
those areas of science which describe psychological and psychopathological
phenomena. Otherwise, we cannot become fully conscious of the reasons for
such a government’s long published behavior.
A normal person’s actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, all
too often strike abnormal individuals as abnormal.
For if a person with some
psychological deviations considers himself normal, which is of course
significantly easier if he possesses authority, then he would consider a
normal person different and therefore abnormal, whether in reality or as a
result of conversive thinking. That explains why such people’s government
shall always have the tendency to treat any dissidents as “mentally
abnormal”.
Operations such as driving a normal person into psychological illness and
the use of psychiatric institutions for this purpose take place in many
countries in which such institutions exist. Contemporary legislation binding
upon normal man’s countries is not based upon an adequate understanding of
the psychology of such behavior, and thus does not constitute a sufficient
preventive measure against it.
Within the categories of a normal psychological world view, the motivations
for such behavior were variously understood and described: personal and
family accounts, property matters, intent to discredit a witness’ testimony,
and even political motivations. Such defamatory suggestions are used
particularly often by individuals who are themselves not entirely normal,
whose behavior has driven someone to a nervous breakdown or to violent
protest.
Among hysterics, such behavior tends to be a projection onto other
people of one’s own self-critical associations. A normal person strikes a
psychopath as a naive, smart-alecky believer in barely comprehensible
theories; calling him “crazy” is not all that far away.
Therefore, when we set up a sufficient number of examples of this kind or
collect sufficient experience in this area, another more essential
motivational level for such behavior becomes apparent. What happens as a
rule is that the idea of driving someone into mental illness issues from
minds with various aberrations and psychological defects.
Only rarely does the component of pathological
factors take part in the ponerogenesis of such behavior from outside its
agents. Well thought out and carefully framed legislation should therefore
require testing of individuals whose suggestions that someone else is
psychologically abnormal are too insistent or too doubtfully founded.
On the other hand, any system in which the abuse of psychiatry for allegedly
political reasons has become a common phenomenon should be examined in the
light of similar psychological criteria extrapolated onto the macrosocial
scale.
Any person rebelling internally against a governmental system, which
shall always strike him as foreign and difficult to understand, and who is
unable to hide this well enough, shall thus easily be designated by the
representatives of said government as “mentally abnormal”, someone who
should submit to psychiatric treatment.
A scientifically and morally
degenerate psychiatrist becomes a tool easily used for this purpose. Thus is
born the sole method of terror and human torture unfamiliar even to the
secret police of Czar Alexander II.
The abuse of psychiatry for purposes we already know thus derives from the
very nature of pathocracy as a macrosocial psychopathological phenomenon.
After all, that very area of knowledge and treatment must first be degraded
to prevent it from jeopardizing the system itself by pronouncing a dramatic
diagnosis, and must then be used as an expedient tool in the hands of the
authorities. In every country, however, one meets with people who notice
this and act astutely against it.
The pathocracy feels increasingly threatened by this area whenever the
medical and psychological sciences make progress. After all, not only can
these sciences knock the weapon of psychological conquest right out of its
hands; they can even strike at its very nature, and from inside the empire,
at that.
A specific perception of these matters therefore bids the pathocracy to be
“ideationally alert” in this area.
This also explains why anyone who is both too
knowledgeable in this area and too far outside the immediate reach of such
authorities should be accused of anything that can be trumped up, including
psychological abnormality.