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

ues has become common knowledge after years of rebounding

as though from rubber bands. The powerful military weapons

that jeopardize all humanity can, on the other hand, be consid-

ered as indispensable as a strait-jacket, something whose use

diminishes in proportion to the improved skills governing the

behavior of those persons entrusted with the healing arts. We

need measures which can reach all people and all nations and

which can operate upon the recognized causes of great diseases

Such therapeutic measures cannot be limited to the phe-

nomenon of pathocracy. Pathocracy will always find a positive

response if some independent country is infected with an ad-

vanced state of hysterization, or if a small privileged caste op-

presses and exploits other citizens, keeping them backward and

in the dark; anyone willing to treat the world can then be

hounded, and his moral right to act be questioned. Evil in the

world, in fact, constitutes a continuum: one kind opens the door

to another, irrespective of its qualitative essence or the ideo-

logical slogans cloaking it.

It also becomes impossible to find effective means of thera-

peutic operation if the minds of people undertaking such tasks

are affected by a tendency to conversive thinking like subcon-

scious selection and substitution of data, or if some doctrine

preventing an objective perception of reality becomes manda-

tory. In particular, a political doctrine, for which a macrosocial

pathological phenomenon, in accordance with its famous ide-

ology, has become a dogma, blocks an understanding of its real

nature so well that purposeful action becomes impossible.

Anyone administering such action should undergo an appropri-

ate prior examination, or even a kind of psychotherapy, in or-

der to eliminate any tendencies toward even slightly sloppy

thinking.

Like every well-managed treatment, therapy of the world

must contain two basic demands: strengthening the overall

defensive powers of the human community and attacking its

most dangerous disease, etiotropically if possible. Taking into

account all the aspects referred to in the theoretical chapter on

ponerology, therapeutic efforts should be directed at subjecting

the operations of the known factors of the genesis of evil, as

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well as the processes of ponerogenesis itself, to the controls of

scientific and societal consciousness.

Present attempts at trusting moral data alone, no matter how

sincerely perceived, also prove inadequate as would trying to

operate solely on the basis of the data contained within this

book, ignoring the essential support of moral values. A pone-

rologist’s attitude underscores primarily the naturalistic aspects

of phenomena; nevertheless, this does not mean that the tradi-

tional ones have diminished in value. Efforts aimed at endow-

ing the life of nations with the necessary moral order should

therefore constitute a second wing, working in parallel and

rationally supported by naturalistic principles.

Contemporary societies were pushed into a state of moral

recession during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-

ries; leading them back out is the general duty of this genera-

tion and should remain an overall backdrop to activity as a

whole. The basic position should be the intent to fulfill the

commandment of loving one’s neighbor, including even those

who have committed substantial evil, and even if this love indi-

cates taking proplylactic action to protect others from that evil.

A great therapeutic endeavor can only be affected once we do

this with the honest control of moral consciousness, moderation

of words and thoughtfulness of action. At that point, ponerol-

ogy will prove its practical usefulness in fulfilling this task.

People and values mature in action. Thus, a synthesis of tradi-

tional moral teachings and this new naturalistic approach can

only occur with reasoned behavior.

Truth is a Healer

It would be difficult to summarize here the statements of the

many famous authors on the subject of the psychotherapeutic

role of making a person aware of what has crowded his sub-

conscious, stifled within by constant painful effort, because he

feared to look an unpleasant truth in the eye, lacked the objec-

tive data to derive correct conclusions, or was too proud to

permit the awareness that he had behaved in a preposterous

fashion. In addition to being quite well understood by special-

ists, these matters have also become common knowledge to an

adequate degree.

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THERAPY OF THE WORLD

In any method or technique of analytical psychotherapy, or

autonomous psychotherapy, as T. Szasz119 called it, the guiding

operational motivation is exposing to the light of consciousness

whatever material has been suppressed by means of subcon-

scious selection of data, or given up in the face of intellectual

problems. This is accompanied by a disillusionment of substi-

tutions and rationalizations, whose creation is usually in pro-

portion to the amount of repressed material.

In many cases, it turns out that the material fearfully elimi-

nated from the field of consciousness, and frequently substi-

tuted by ostensibly more comfortable associations, would never

have had such dangerous results if we had initially mustered

the courage to perceive it consciously. We would then have

been in the position to find an independent and often creative

way out of the situation.

In some cases, however, especially when dealing with phe-

nomena which are hard to understand within the categories of

our natural world view, leading the patient out of his problems

demands furnishing him with crucial objective data, usually

from the areas of biology, psychology, and psychopathology,

and indicating specific dependencies which he was unable to

comprehend before. Instructional activity begins to dominate in

psychotherapeutic work at this point. After all, the patient

needs this additional data in order to reconstruct his disinte-

grated personality and form a new world view more appropri-

ate to reality. Only then can we go on to the more traditional

methods. If our activities are to be for the benefit of the people

who remained under the influence of pathocratic system, this

last pattern of behavior is the most appropriate; the objective

data furnished to the patients must derive from an understand-

ing of the nature of the phenomenon.

As already adduced, the author has been able to observe the

workings of such a process of making someone consciously

aware of the essence and properties of the macrosocial phe-

nomenon, on the basis of individual patients rendered neurotic

by the influence of pathocratic social conditions. In countries

119 Thomas Szasz, an American psychiatrist who has argued since the 1950s

that compulsory psychiatry is incompatible with a free society. [Editor’s

note.]

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ruled by such governments, almost every normal person carries

within him some neurotic response of varying intensity. After

all, neurosis is human nature’s normal response to being sub-

jugated to a pathological system.

In spite of the anxiety which such courageous psychothera-

peutic operations necessarily engendered on both sides, my

patients quickly assimilated the objective data they were fur-

nished, complemented them with their own experiences, and

required additional information and verification of their appli-

cations of this information. Spontaneous and creative reintegra-

tion of their personalities took place soon thereafter, accompa-

nied by a similar reconstruction of their world view. Subse-

quent psychotherapy merely continued assistance in this ever

more autonomous process and in resolving individual prob-

lems, i.e. a more traditional approach. These people lost their

chronic tensions; their perceptive view of this deviant reality

became increasingly realistic and laced with humor. Rein-

forcement of their capacity to maintain their own psychological

hygiene, self-therapy, and self-pedagogy was much better than

expected. They became more resourceful in practical life mat-

ters and were able to offer others good advice. Unfortunately,

the number of persons whom a psychotherapist could trust

adequately was very limited.

A similar effect should be attained on a macrosocial scale,

something technically feasible under present conditions. At

such an operational scale, it will liberate spontaneous interac-

tion among such enlightened individuals and the social multi-

plication of therapeutic phenomena. The latter will then create

a qualitatively new and most probably rather stormy social

reaction; we should be prepared for this in order to calm it

down. Finally, this will bring an overall feeling of relaxation

and a triumph of proper science over evil; this cannot be ne-

gated by any verbalistic means, and physical force also be-

comes meaningless. Using measures so different from anything

utilized before will engender an “end of an era” feeling during

which this macrosocial phenomenon was able to emerge and

develop, but is now dying. That would be accompanied by a

sensation of well-being on the part of normal people.

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THERAPY OF THE WORLD

Within this suggested global psychotherapy, additional ob-

jectified material in the form of a naturalistic understanding of

the phenomenon constitutes the keystone material; this book

has therefore collected the most essential data the author was

able to obtain and to present here in a partially simplified ap-

proach. This no doubt does not represent the entirety of the

knowledge needed; further supplementation will be necessary.

On the other hand, I have devoted less attention to methods,

since this would constitute a manifold duplication of those

kinds of therapies many specialists already know and use in

their practice.

The purpose of this activity will be letting the world regain

its capacity to make use of healthy common sense and to rein-

tegrate world views based on scientifically objectified and ap-

propriately popularized data. The consciousness thus created

would be far more appropriate to the reality which was misun-

derstood until recently; as a result, man will become more sen-

sible in practical activity, more independent and resourceful in

solving life’s problems, and he will feel safer. This task is noth-

ing new; it constitutes a good psychotherapist’s daily bread.

The problem is technical rather than theoretical, namely how to

disseminate such sorely needed influences throughout the

globe.

~~~

Every psychotherapist must be prepared for difficulties

caused by the psychological resistance derived from persistent

attitudes and convictions whose lack of foundation becomes

revealed in the course of work. Particularly in the case of a

numerous group of people, these resistances become more

demonstratively manifest; however, among the members of

such a group we also find allies who help us break down these

resistances. In order to visualize this, let us revert once more to

the N. family example, wherein a dozen or so persons collabo-

rated in abusing a pleasant and intelligent thirteen-year-old

scapegoat.

When I explained to the uncles and aunts that they had been

under the influence of a psychologically abnormal person for

years, accepting her delusional world as real and participating

(with perceived honor) in her vindictiveness to the boy who

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285

was allegedly to blame for her failures, including those which

occurred years before his birth, the shock temporarily stifled

their indignation. There was no subsequent attack, probably

because this took place in my office of the public health service

and I was protected by the white coat I would usually don

whenever I did not feel completely safe. I thus suffered only

verbal threats. A week later, however, they started returning

one by one, pale and rueful; albeit with difficulty, they did

offer their cooperation in helping to repair the family situation

and the future of this unfortunate boy.

Many people suffer an inevitable shock and react with op-

position, protest, and disintegration of their human personality

when informed of such a state of affairs, namely that they have

been under the spellbinding and traumatizing influence of a

macrosocial pathological phenomenon, regardless of whether

they were followers or opponents thereof. Many people are

awakened to anxious protest by the fact that the ideology they

either condemned or somehow accepted, but considered a guid-

ing factor, is now being treated as something secondary in im-

portance.

The noisiest protests will come from those who consider

themselves fair because they condemned this macrosocial phe-

nomenon with literary talent and raised voices, utilizing the

name derived from its most current ideology, as well as making

excessive use of moralizing interpretations with regard to

pathological phenomena. Forcing them to an apperception of a

correct understanding of the pathocracy will be quite a Sisy-

phean labor, since they would have to become conscious of the

fact that their efforts largely served goals which were the oppo-

site of their intentions. Especially if they engaged in such ac-