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

nature and their responses to this basically deviant reality, their

dreams, their methods of comprehending such a reality (includ-

ing all the difficulties along the road), and their need to adapt

and become resistant (including the side-effects) is a sine qua

non precondition for learning the behavior that would effec-

tively assist them in their efforts to achieve a normal man’s

system. It would be psychologically impossible for a politician

in a free country to incorporate the practical knowledge such

people acquired over many years of day to day experience.

This knowledge cannot be transmitted; no journalistic or liter-

ary efforts will ever achieve anything in this area. However, an

analogous science formulated in objective naturalistic language

can be communicated in both directions. It can be assimilated

by people who have no such specific experiences; it can also be

back transmitted over there where a great need for this science

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

253

exists as do the minds which are already prepared to receive it.

Such a science would actually act upon their battered personali-

ties in much the same way as the best of medicines. Mere

awareness that one was subject to the influence of a mental

deviant is in and of itself a crucial part of treatment.

Whoever wants to maintain the freedom of his country and

of the world already threatened by this macrosocial pathologi-

cal phenomenon, whoever would like to heal this sick planet of

ours, should not only understand the nature of this great dis-

ease, but should also be conscious of potentially regenerative

healing powers.

Every country within the scope of this macrosocial phe-

nomenon contains a large majority of normal people living and

suffering there who will never accept pathocracy; their protest

against it derives from the depths of their own souls and their

human nature as conditioned by properties transmitted by

means of biological heredity. The forms of this protest and the

ideologies by which they would like to realize their natural

wishes may nevertheless change.

The ideology or societal structure via which they would like

to regain their human right to live in a normal man’s system

are, however, of secondary importance to these people. There

are of course differences of opinion in this area, but they are

not likely to lead to overly violent conflict among persons who

see before them a goal worthy of sacrifice.

Those whose attitudes are more penetrating and balanced

see the original ideology as it was before its caricaturization by

the ponerization process, as the most practical basis for effect-

ing society’s aims. Certain modifications would endow this

ideology with a more mature form more in keeping with the

demands of present times; it could thereupon serve as the foun-

dation for a process of evolution, or rather transformation, into

an socio-economic system capable of adequate functioning.

The author’s convictions are somewhat different. Grave dif-

ficulties could be caused by outside pressure aiming at the in-

troduction of an economic system which has lost its historically

conditioned roots in such a country.

People who have long had to live in the strange world of

this divergence are therefore hard to understand for someone

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NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

who has fortunately avoided that fate. Let us refrain from im-

posing imaginings upon them which are only meaningful

within the world of normal man’s governments; let us not pi-

geonhole them into any political doctrines which are often

quite unlike the reality they are familiar with. Let us welcome

them with feelings of human solidarity, reciprocal respect, and

a greater trust in their normal human nature and their reason.

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

If there were ever such a thing as a country with a commu-

nist 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 hu-

manistic thought, the contemporary social, bio-humanistic, and

medical sciences would be considered valuable and be appro-

priately developed and used for the good of the working peo-

ple. Psychological advice for youth and for persons with vari-

ous 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 cer-

tain 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

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PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

isn’t it like that?” What can politics have to do with psychiatry?

111

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 psychia-

try. 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 inadver-

tently allowed to freely develop these sciences, enabling a

normal influx of scientific literature and contacts with scientists

in other countries. Psychology, psychopathology, and psychia-

try would flourish abundantly and produce outstanding repre-

sentatives.

What would the result be?

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 ‘pro-

gress’. ...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 assis-

tants 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