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

tion 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 patho-

logical 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 diffi-

culties. This percentage increases with age. Modern medical

care has contributed to a quantitative decrease in such phenom-

ena, 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 vegeta-

tive 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

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evaluation of great interest. In most cases, however, epilepsy is

an evident ailment, which limits its role as a ponerogenic fac-

tor.

In a much larger segment of the bearers of brain tissue dam-

age, the negative deformation of their characters grows in the

course of time. It takes on variegated mental pictures, depend-

ing 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 men-

tal anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in

practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species’ natural

psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinc-

tive 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 think-

ing, 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 en-

gender 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

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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 knowl-

edge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body

were handicapped. As a boy, he had difficulty learning gram-

mar, geometry, and drawing, which constitute the typical triad

of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He de-

veloped 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 impor-

tant issues in the process of dodging problems.

Militaristic poses and a general’s uniform overcompensated

for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his short-

comings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and

factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chan-

cellor 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 psy-

chological deviations. Negative selection took place.

Since the common people are prone to identify with the em-

peror, and through the emperor, with a system of government,

the characteropathic material emanating from the Kaiser re-

sulted 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 under-

standing moral, psychological, social and political realities. It is

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 im-

bued 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 pos-

sessed with grandiose notions of divine right rule, his personality traits paral-

leled those of the new Germany: strong, but off balance; vain, but insecure;

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

note.]

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extremely typical that in many German families having a

member who was psychologically not quite normal, it became

a matter of honor (even excusing nefarious conduct) to hide

this fact from public opinion, and even from the awareness of

close friends and relatives. Large portions of German society

ingested psychopathological material, together with that unreal-

istic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of

arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selec-

tion.

This occurred during a time when a wave of hysteria was

growing throughout Europe, including a tendency for emotions

to dominate and for human behavior to contain an element of

histrionics. How individual sober thought can be terrorized by

a behavior colored with such material was evidenced particu-

larly by women. This progressively took over three empires

and other countries on the mainland.

To what extent did Wilhelm II contribute to this, along with

two other emperors whose minds also were incapable of taking

in the actual facts of history and government? To what extent

were they themselves influenced by an intensification of hys-

teria during their reigns? That would make an interesting topic

of discussion among historians and ponerologists.

International tensions increased; Archduke Ferdinand was

assassinated in Sarajevo. Unfortunately, neither the Kaiser nor

any other governmental authority in his country were in pos-

session of their reason. What dominated the subsequent events

was Wilhelm’s emotional attitude and the stereotypes of

thought and action inherited from the past. War broke out.

General war plans that had been prepared earlier, and which

had lost their relevance under the new conditions, unfolded

more like military maneuvers. Even those historians familiar

with the genesis and character of the Prussian state, including

its ideological subjugation of individuals to the authority of

king and emperor, and its tradition of bloody expansionism,

intuit that these situations contained some activity of an un-

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comprehended fatality which eludes an analysis in terms of

historical causality.36

Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious

question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fue-

hrer a clownish psychopath who made no bones about his

pathological vision of superman rule? Under his leadership,

Germany then unleashed a second criminal and politically ab-

surd war. During the second half of this war, highly-trained

army officers honorably performed inhuman orders, senseless

from the political and military point of view, issued by a man

whose psychological state corresponded to the routine criteria

for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the

first half of our century by means of categories generally ac-

cepted in historical thought leaves behind a nagging feeling of

inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for

this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role

of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every

social level.

The German nation, fed for a generation on pathologically

altered psychological material, fell into a state comparable to

what we see in certain individuals raised by persons who are

both characteropathic and hysterical. Psychologists know from

experience how often such people then let themselves commit

acts which seriously hurt others. A psychotherapist needs a

good deal of persistent work, skill, and prudence in order to

enable such a person to regain his ability to comprehend psy-

chological problems with more naturalistic realism and to util-

ize his healthy critical faculties in relation to his own behavior.

The Germans inflicted and suffered enormous damage and

pain during the first World War; they thus felt no substantial

guilt and even thought that they were the ones who had been

wronged. This is not surprising as they were behaving in ac-

cordance with their customary habit, without being aware of its

pathological causes. The need for this pathological state to be

concealed in heroic garb after a war in order to avoid bitter

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

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

Germany. [Editor’s note.]

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disintegration became all too common. A mysterious craving

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

dicted to some drug. The hunger was for more pathologically

modified psychological material, a phenomenon known to psy-

chotherapeutic experience. This hunger could only be satisfied

by another similarly pathological personality and system of

government. A characteropathic personality opened the door

for leadership by a psychopathic individual. We shall return

later in our deliberations to this pathological personality se-

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

esses.

A ponerological approach facilitates our understanding of a

person who succumbs to the influence of a characteropathic

personality, as well as comprehension of macrosocial phenom-

ena caused by the contribution of such factors. Unfortunately,

relatively few such individuals can be served by appropriate

psychotherapy. Such behavior cannot be ascribed to nations

proudly defending their sovereignty without extreme reactions.

However, we may consider the solution of such problems by

means of the proper knowledge as a vision for the future.

~~~

Paranoid character disorders: It is characteristic of para-

noid behavior for people to be capable of relatively correct

reasoning and discussion as long as the conversation involves

minor differences of opinion. This stops abruptly when the

partner’s arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas,

crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or forces them

to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before.

Such a stimulus unleashes upon the partner a torrent of pseudo-

logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which

always contain some degree of suggestion.

Utterances like these inspire aversion among cultivated and