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

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 corre-

spondence with these gaps.

Our natural world of concepts – based upon species in-

stincts as described in an earlier chapter - strikes the psycho-

path as a nearly incomprehensible convention with no justifica-

tion 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 contempo-

rary 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 ac-

count, individuals of this type indicate a deficit disproportion-

ate 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

53 What’s missing in psychopaths are the qualities that people depend on for

living in social harmony. [Editor’s note.]

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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 lan-

guage 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 ef-

forts 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 knowl-

edge” that the psychopath acquires regarding normal people,

would be the psychopaths’ brilliant mind or psychological gen-

ius; some of them actually believe in this and attempt to insinu-

ate 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:

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Let us remember that his typical behavior defeats what ap-

pear to be his own aims. Is it not he himself who is most

deeply deceived by his apparent normality? Although he de-

liberately 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 ma-

jor value himself, can he be said to realize adequately the na-

ture and quality of the outrages his conduct inflicts upon oth-

ers? 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 Sam-

ple: 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 per-

sonality 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

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A neurotic patient is generally taciturn and has trouble ex-

plaining what hurts him most. A psychologist must know how

to overcome these obstacles with the help of non-painful inter-

actions. Neurotics are also prone to excessive guilt about ac-

tions which are easily forgiven. Such patients are capable of

decent and enduring love, although they have difficulty ex-

pressing 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 impor-

tant 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 de-

liberately deceptive, in which case he will use many “feeling”

words which careful scrutiny will reveal that he does not un-

derstand those words the same way normal people do. We then

also feel we are dealing with an imitation of the thought pat-

terns 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

Individuals with the psychopathy referred to herein are vir-

tually unfamiliar with the enduring emotions of love for an-

... 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 pre-

scribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insig-

nificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psy-

chopathy 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.]

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

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other person, particularly the marriage partner; it constitutes a

fairytale from that “other” human world. Love, for the psycho-

path, 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 incom-

prehensible 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.

In their book Psychopathy and Delinquency, W. and J.

McCord say the following about them:

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.”

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)

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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 re-

lationships, when they exist, are meager, fleeting, and de-

signed to satisfy his own desires. These last two traits, guilt-

lessness and lovelessness, conspicuously mark the psychopath

as different from other men. 58

The problem of a psychopath’s moral and legal responsibil-

ity thus remains open and subject to various solutions, fre-

quently summary or emotional, in various countries and cir-

cumstances. It remains a subject of discussion whose solution

does not appear possible within the framework of the presently

accepted principles of legal thought.