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

stand this macrosocial phenomenon but think in the categories

of the countries of normal man. Attempts to understand this

language produce a certain feeling of helplessness which gives

rise to the tendency of creating one’s own doctrines, built from

the concepts of one’s own world and a certain amount of ap-

propriately co-opted pathocratic propaganda material. Such a

doctrine, for example, would be the American anti-Communist

propaganda. Such twisted and distorted concepts makes it even

more difficult to understand that other reality. May the objec-

tive description adduced herein enable them to overcome the

impasse thus engendered.

In countries subjected to pathocratic rule, this knowledge

and language, especially human experience, create a mediating

concatenation in such a way that most people could assimilate

this objective description of the phenomenon without major

difficulties with the help of active apperception. Difficulties

will only be encountered by the oldest generation and a certain

proportion of young people raised in the system from child-

hood, and these are psychologically understandable.

I was once referred a patient who had been an inmate in a

Nazi concentration camp. She came back from that hell in such

exceptionally good condition that she was able to marry and

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bear three children. However, her child rearing methods were

so extremely iron-fisted as to be reminiscent of the concentra-

tion camp life so stubbornly persevering in former prisoners.

The children’s reaction was neurotic protest and aggressiveness

against other children.

During the mother’s psychotherapy, we recalled the figures

of male and female SS officers to her mind, pointing out their

psychopathic characteristics (such people were primary re-

cruits). In order to help her eliminate their pathological mate-

rial from her person, I furnished her with the approximate sta-

tistical data regarding the appearance of such individuals

within the population as a whole. This helped her reach a more

objective view of that reality and re-establish trust in the soci-

ety of normal people.

During the next visit, the patient showed to me a little card

on which she had written the names of local pathocratic nota-

bles and added her own diagnoses, which were largely correct.

So I made a hushing gesture with my finger and admonished

her with emphasis that we were dealing only with her prob-

lems. The patient understood and, I am sure, she did not make

her reflections on the matter known in the wrong places.

Parallel to the development of practical knowledge and a

language of insider communication, other psychological phe-

nomena take form; they are truly significant in the transforma-

tion of social life under pathocratic rule, and discerning them is

essential if one wishes to understand individuals and nations

fated to live under such conditions and to evaluate the situation

in the political sphere. They include people’s psychological

immunization and their adaptation to life under such deviant

conditions.

The methods of psychological terror (that specific

pathocratic art), the techniques of pathological arrogance, and

the striding roughshod into other people’s souls initially have

such traumatic effects that people are deprived of their capacity

for purposeful reaction; I have already adduced the psycho-

physiological aspects of such states. Ten or twenty years later,

analogous behavior is already recognized as well known buf-

foonery and does not deprive the victim of his ability to think

and react purposefully. His answers are usually well-thought-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

245

out strategies, issued from the position of a normal person’s

superiority and often laced with ridicule. When Man can look

suffering and even death in the eye with the required calm, a

dangerous weapon falls out of the ruler’s hands.

We have to understand that this process of immunization is

not merely a result of the above-described increase in practical

knowledge of the macrosocial phenomenon. It is the effect of a

many-layered, gradual process of growth in knowledge, famili-

arization with the phenomenon, creation of the appropriate

reactive habits , and self-control , with an overall conception,

and moral principles, being worked out in the meantime. After

several years, the same stimuli which formerly caused chilly

spiritual impotence or mental paralysis now provoke the desire

to gargle with something strong so as to get rid of this filth.

There was a time when many people dreamed of finding

some pill which would make it easier to endure dealing with

the authorities or attending the forced indoctrination sessions

generally chaired by a psychopathic character. Some antide-

pressants did in fact prove to have the desired effect. Twenty

years later, this had been forgotten entirely.

~~~

When I was arrested for the first time in 1951, force, arro-

gance, and psychopathic methods of forcible confession de-

prived me almost entirely of my self-defense capabilities. My

brain stopped functioning after only a few days without water,

to such a point that I couldn’t even properly remember the

incident which resulted in my sudden arrest. I was not even

aware that it had been purposely provoked and that conditions

permitting self-defense did in fact exist. They did almost any-

thing they wanted to me.

When I was arrested for last time in 1968, I was interro-

gated by five fierce-looking security functionaries. At one par-

ticular moment, after thinking through their predicted reac-

tions, I let my gaze take in each face sequentially with great

attentiveness. The most important one asked me, “What’s on

your mind, buster, staring at us like that?” I answered without

any fear of consequences: “I’m just wondering why so many of

the gentlemen in your line of work end up in a psychiatric hos-

pital.” They were taken aback for a while, whereupon the same

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man exclaimed, “Because it’s such damned horrible work!” “I

am of the opinion that it’s the other way round”, I calmly re-

sponded. Then I was taken back to my cell.

Three days later, I had the opportunity to talk to him again,

but this time he was much more respectful. Then he ordered me

to be taken away - outside, as it turned out. I rode the streetcar

home past a large park, still unable to believe my eyes. Once in

my room, I lay down on the bed; the world was not quite real

yet, but exhausted people fall asleep quickly. When I awoke, I

spoke out loud: “Dear God, aren’t you supposed to be in

charge here in this world?!”

~~~

At that time, I knew not only that up to 1/5 of all secret po-

lice officials wind up in psychiatric hospitals, I also knew that

their “occupational disease” is the congestive dementia for-

merly encountered only among old prostitutes. Man cannot

violate the natural human feelings inside him with impunity, no