CHAPTER IV

PONEROLOGY

Ever since ancient times, philosophers and religious thinkers representing various attitudes in different cultures have been searching for the truth regarding moral values, attempting to find criteria for what is right, and what constitutes good advice. They have described the virtues of human character at length and suggested these be acquired. They have created a heritage containing centuries of experience and reflection.

 

In spite of the obvious differences of originating cultures and attitudes, even though they worked in widely divergent times and places, the similarity, or complementary nature, of the conclusions reached by famous ancient philosophers are striking. It demonstrates that whatever is valuable is conditioned and caused by the laws of nature acting upon the personalities of both individual human beings and collective societies.

It is equally thought-provoking to see how relatively little has been said about the opposite side of the coin; the nature, causes, and genesis of evil. These matters are usually cloaked behind the above generalized conclusions with a certain amount of secrecy. Such a state of affairs can be partially ascribed to the social conditions and historical circumstances under which these thinkers worked; their modus operandi may have been dictated at least in part by personal fate, inherited traditions, or even prudishness.

 

After all, justice and virtue are the opposites of force and perversity; the same applies to truthfulness vs. mendacity, similarly like health is the opposite of an illness. It is also possible that whatever they thought or said about the true nature of evil was later expunged and hidden by those very forces they sought to expose.

The character and genesis of evil thus remained hidden in discreet shadows, leaving it to literature to deal with the subject in highly expressive language. But, expressive though the literary language might be, it has never reached the primeval source of the phenomena. A certain cognitive space remained as an uninvestigated thicket of moral questions which resist understanding and philosophical generalizations.

Present-day philosophers developing meta-ethics are trying to push on along the elastic space leading to an analysis of the language of ethics, contributing bits and pieces toward eliminating the imperfections and habits of natural conceptual language. Penetrating this ever-mysterious nucleus is highly tempting to a scientist.

At the same time, active practitioners in social life and normal people searching for their way are significantly conditioned by their trust in certain authorities. Eternal temptations such as trivializing insufficiently-proven moral values or disloyally taking advantage of naive human respect for them, find no adequate counterweight within a rational understanding of reality.

If physicians behaved like ethicists, i.e. relegated to the shadow of their personal experience relatively un-esthetic disease phenomena because they were primarily interested in studying questions of physical and mental hygiene, there would be no such thing as modern medicine. Even the roots of this health-maintenance science would be hidden in similar shadows. In spite of the fact that the theory of hygiene has been linked to medicine since its ancient beginnings, physicians were correct in their emphasis upon studying disease above all.

 

They risked their own health and made sacrifices in order to discover the causes and biological properties of illnesses and, afterwards, to understand the patho-dynamics of the courses of these illnesses. A comprehension of the nature of a disease, and the course it runs, after all, enables the proper curative means to be elaborated.

While studying an organisms’ ability to fight off disease, scientists invented vaccination, which allows organisms to become resistant to an illness without passing through it in its full-blown manifestation. Thanks to this, medicine conquers and prevents phenomena which, in its scope of activity, are considered a type of evil.

The question thus arises: could some analogous modus operandi not be used to study the causes and genesis of other kinds of evil scourging human individuals, families, and societies, in spite of the fact that they appear even more insulting to our moral feelings than do diseases? Experience has taught the author that evil is similar to disease in nature, although possibly more complex and elusive to our understanding. Its genesis reveals many factors, pathological, especially psychopathological, in character, whose essence medicine and psychology have already studied, or whose understanding demands further investigation in these realms.

Parallel to the traditional approach, problems commonly perceived to be moral may also be treated on the basis of data provided by biology, medicine, and psychology, as factors of this kind are simultaneously present in the question as a whole. Experience teaches us that a comprehension of the essence and genesis of evil generally makes use of data from these areas.

 

Philosophical reflection alone is insufficient. Philosophical thought may have engendered all the scientific disciplines, but the other scientific disciplines did not mature until they became independent, based on detailed data and a relationship to other disciplines supplying such data.

Encouraged by the often “coincidental” discovery of these naturalistic aspects of evil, the author has imitated the methodology of medicine; a clinical psychologist and medical co-worker by profession, he had such tendencies anyway. As is the case with physicians and disease, he took the risks of close contact with evil and suffered the consequences. His purpose was to ascertain the possibilities of understanding the nature of evil, its etiological factors and to track its pathodynamics.

The developments of biology, medicine, and psychology opened so many avenues that the above mentioned behavior turned out to be not only feasible, but exceptionally fertile.

Personal experience and refined methods in clinical psychology permitted reaching ever more accurate conclusions.

There was a major difficulty: insufficient data, especially in the area of the science of psychopathies. This problem had to be overcome based on my own investigations. This insufficiency was caused by neglect of these areas, theoretical difficulties facing researchers, and the unpopular nature of these problems.

 

This work in general, and this chapter in particular, contain references to research conclusions the author was either prevented from publishing or unwilling to publish for reasons of personal safety. Sadly, it is lost now and age prevents any attempts at recovery. It is hoped that my descriptions, observations, and experience, here condensed from memory, will provide a platform for a new effort to produce the data needed to confirm again what was confirmed then.

Nevertheless, based on the work of myself and others in that past tragic time, a new discipline arose that became our beacon; two Greek philologists - monks baptized it “PONEROLOGY” from the Greek poneros = evil.

 

The process of the genesis of evil was called, correspondingly, “ponerogenesis”. I hope that these modest beginnings will grow so as to enable us to overcome evil through an understanding of its nature, causes, and development.

From among 5000 psychotic, neurotic, and healthy patients, the author selected 384 adults who behaved in a manner which had seriously hurt others. They came from all circles of Polish society, but mostly from a large industrial center characterized by poor working conditions and substantial air pollution. They represented various moral, social, and political attitudes. Some 30 of them had been subjected to penal measures which were often excessively harsh. Once freed from jail or other penalty, these people attempted to readapt to social life, which made them tend to be sincere in speaking to me - the psychologist.

 

Others had escaped punishment; still others had hurt their fellows in a manner which does not qualify for judicial treatment under legal theory or practice. Some were protected by a political system which is in itself a ponerogenic derivate. The author had the further advantage of speaking to persons whose neuroses were caused by some abuse they had experienced.

All the above-mentioned people were given psychological tests and subjected to detailed anamnesis³³ so as to determine their overall mental skills, thereby either excluding or detecting possible brain tissue lesions and evaluating them in relation to one another.³⁴ Other methods were also used in accordance with the patient’s actual needs in order to create a sufficiently accurate picture of the psychological condition. In most of these cases the author had access to the results of medical examinations and laboratory tests performed in medical facilities.

 

33 Medical history: the case history of a medical patient as recalled by the patient. [Editor’s note.]
34 My basic test battery resembled more those used in Great Britain as opposed to the American versions. I used in addition two tests: one was an old British performance test re-standarized for clinical purposes. The other was completely elaborated by myself. Unfortunately, when I was expelled from Poland, it made it impossible for me to transferring any of my many results to other psychologists because I was deprived of all my research papers in addition to almost everything else.

A psychologist can glean many valuable observations, such as those used in this work, when he himself is subjected to abuse, as long as cognitive interest overcomes his natural human emotional reactions. If not, he must utilize his professional skills to rescue himself first. The author never lacked for such opportunities since his unhappy country is replete with examples of human injustice to which he was, himself, subjected on numerous occasions.

Analysis of their personalities and the genesis of their behavior revealed that only 14 to 16 per cent of the 384 persons who hurt others failed to exhibit any psychopathological factors which would have influenced their behavior. Regarding this statistic, it should be pointed out that a psychologist’s non-discovery of such factors does not prove their non-existence. In a significant part of this group of cases, the lack of proof was rather the result of insufficient interview possibilities, imperfection of testing methods, and deficiency of skills on the part of the tester.

Thus, natural reality appeared different in principle from everyday attitudes, which interpret evil in a moralizing way, and from juridical practices, which only in a small part of the cases adjudicate a commutation of a sentence by taking the criminal’s pathological characteristics into account.

We may often reason by means of the exclusionary hypothesis, e.g. pondering what would happen if the genesis of a particular wrongdoing did not have some pathological component. We then usually reach the conclusion that the deed would not have taken place either since the pathological factor sealed its occurrence or became an indispensable component in its origin.

The hypothesis thus suggests itself that such factors are commonly active in the genesis of evil. The conviction that pathological factors generally participate in ponerogenic processes appears even more likely if we also take into account the conviction of many scholars in ethics that evil in this world represents a kind of web or continuum of mutual conditioning.

 

Within this interlocking structure, one kind of evil feeds and opens doors for others regardless of any individual or doctrinal motivations. It does not respect the boundaries of individual cases, social groups, and nations. Since pathological factors are present within the synthesis of most instances of evil, they are also present in this continuum.

Further deliberations on the observations thus obtained considered only a part of the above-mentioned variegated cases, especially those which did not generate doubt by colliding with natural moral attitudes, and those which did not reveal practical difficulties for further analysis (such as absence of further contact with the patient). The statistical approach furnished only general guidelines. Intuitive penetration into each individual problem, and a similar synthesis of the whole, proved the most productive method in this area.

The role of pathological factors in a process of the origin of evil can be played by any known, or not yet sufficiently researched, psychopathological phenomenon, and also by some pathological matters medical practice does not include within psychopathology. However, their activity in a ponerogenic process is dependent on features other than the obviousness or intensity of the condition. Quite the contrary, the greatest ponerogenic activity is reached by pathological factors at an intensity which generally permits detection with the help of clinical methods, although they are not yet considered pathological by the opinion of the social environment.

 

Such a factor can then covertly limit the bearer’s ability to control his conduct, or have an effect upon other persons, traumatizing their psyches, fascinating them, causing their personalities to develop improperly, or inciting vindictive emotions or a lust for punishing. A moralistic interpretation of such agents and their legacy works against humankind’s ability to see the causes of evil and to utilize common sense to combat it. This is why identifying such pathological factors and revealing their activities can so often stifle their ponerogenic functions.

In the process of the origin of evil, pathological factors can act from within an individual who has committed a hurtful act; such activity is relatively easily acknowledged by public opinion and the courts. Consideration is given much less frequently to how outside influences emitted by their carriers act upon individuals or groups. Such influences, however, play a substantial role in the overall genesis of evil. In order for such influence to be active, the pathological characteristic in question must be interpreted in a moralistic manner, i.e. differently from its true nature. There are many possibilities for such activities. For the moment, let us indicate the most damaging.

Every person in the span of his life, and particularly during childhood and youth, assimilates psychological material from others through mental resonance, identification, imitation, and other communicative means, thereupon transforming it to build his own personality and world view. If such material is contaminated by pathological factors and deformities, personality development shall also be deformed. The product will be a person unable to understand correctly either himself and others, normal human relations and morals; he develops into a person who commits evil acts with a poor feeling of being faulty. Is he really at fault?
 

Man’s age-old, familiar moral weaknesses and intelligence deficiencies, proper reasoning, and knowledge combine with the activity of various pathological factors to create a complex network of causation which frequently contains feedback relationships or closed causal structures. Practically speaking, cause and effect are often widely separated in time, which makes it more difficult to track the links.

 

If our scope of observation is expansive enough, the ponerogenic processes are reminiscent of complex chemical synthesis, wherein modifying a single factor causes the entire process to change. Botanists are aware of the law of the minimum, wherein plant growth is limited by contents of the component which is in deficiency in the soil. Similarly, eliminating (or at least limiting) the activity of one of the above-mentioned factors or deficiencies should cause a corresponding reduction in the entire process of the genesis of evil.

For centuries, moralists have been advising us to develop ethics and human values; they have been searching for the proper intellectual criteria. They have also respected correctness of reasoning, whose value in this area is unquestionable. In spite of all their efforts, however, they have been unable to overcome the many kinds of evil that have scourged humanity for ages and that are presently taking on unheard-of proportions.

By no means does a ponerologist wish to belittle the role of moral values and knowledge in this area; rather, he wants to buttress it with hitherto-underrated scientific knowledge in order to round out the picture as a whole and adapt it better to reality, thereby making more effective action possible in moral, psychological, social, and political practice.

This new discipline is thus primarily interested in the role of pathological factors in the origin of evil, especially since conscious control and monitoring of them on the scientific, social, and individual levels could effectively stifle or disarm these processes. Something which has been impossible for centuries is now feasible in practice thanks to progress in naturalistic cognizance. Methodological refinements are dependent upon further progress in detailed data and upon the conviction that such behavior is valuable.

For instance, in the course of psychotherapy, we may inform a patient that in the genesis of his personality and behavior we find the results of influences from some person who revealed psychopathological characteristics.

 

We thereby carry out an intervention that is painful for the patient, which demands we proceed with tact and skill. As a result of this interaction, however, the patient develops a kind of self-analysis which will liberate him from the results of these influences and enable him to develop some critical distance in dealing with other factors of a similar nature. Rehabilitation will depend on improving his ability to understand himself and others.

 

Thanks to this, he will be able to overcome his internal and interpersonal difficulties more easily and to avoid mistakes which hurt him and his immediate environment.

 

Pathological Factors

Let us now attempt a concise description of some examples of those pathological factors which have proved to be the most active in ponerogenic processes. Selection of these examples resulted from the author’s own experience, instead of exhaustive statistical tallies, and may thus differ from other specialists’ evaluations. Much depends on particular situation.

 

A small amount of statistical data concerning these phenomena has been borrowed from other works or are approximate evaluations elaborated under conditions which did not allow the entire front of research to be developed. Again, may the reader please consider the conditions under which the author worked, and the time and place.

Mention should also be made of some historical figures, people whose pathological characteristics contributed to the process of the genesis of evil on a large social scale, imprinting their mark upon the fate of nations. It is not an easy task to establish diagnosis for people whose psychological anomalies and diseases died together with them.

 

The results of such clinical analyses are open to question even by persons lacking knowledge or experience in this area, only because recognizing such a state of mind does not correspond to their historical or literary way of thought. While this is done on the basis of the legacy of natural and often moralizing language, I can only assert that I always based my findings on comparisons of data acquired through numerous observations I made by studying many similar patients with the help of the objective methods of contemporary clinical psychology. I took the critical approach herein as far as possible.

 

The opinions of specialists elaborated in a similar way nevertheless remain valuable.
 

Acquired Deviations

Brain tissue is very limited in its regenerative ability. If it is damaged and the change subsequently heals, a process of rehabilitation can take place wherein the neighboring healthy tissue takes over the function of the damaged portion. This substitution 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 pathological 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 difficulties. This percentage increases with age. Modern medical care has contributed to a quantitative decrease in such phenomena, 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 vegetative 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 evaluation of great interest. In most cases, however, epilepsy is an evident ailment, which limits its role as a ponerogenic factor.

In a much larger segment of the bearers of brain tissue damage, the negative deformation of their characters grows in the course of time. It takes on variegated mental pictures, depending 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 mental anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species’ natural psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinctive 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 thinking, 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 engender 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 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 knowledge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body were handicapped.

 

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 imbued 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 possessed with grandiose notions of divine right rule, his personality traits paralleled those of the new Germany: strong, but off balance; vain, but insecure; intelligent, but narrow; self-centered yet longing for acceptance. [Editor’s note.]

 

As a boy, he had difficulty learning grammar, geometry, and drawing, which constitute the typical triad of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He developed 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 important issues in the process of dodging problems.

Militaristic poses and a general’s uniform overcompensated for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his shortcomings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chancellor 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 psychological deviations. Negative selection took place.

Since the common people are prone to identify with the emperor, and through the emperor, with a system of government, the characteropathic material emanating from the Kaiser resulted 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 understanding moral, psychological, social and political realities.

It is 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 unrealistic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selection.

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 particularly 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 hysteria 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 possession 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 uncomprehended fatality which eludes an analysis in terms of historical causality.³⁶

 

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.]

Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fuehrer 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 absurd 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 accepted 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 psychological problems with more naturalistic realism and to utilize 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 accordance 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 disintegration became all too common. A mysterious craving arose, as if the social organism had managed to become addicted to some drug. The hunger was for more pathologically modified psychological material, a phenomenon known to psychotherapeutic 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 sequence, as it appears a general regularity in ponerogenic processes.

A ponerological approach facilitates our understanding of a person who succumbs to the influence of a characteropathic personality, as well as comprehension of macrosocial phenomena 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 paranoid 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 logical people, who then tend to avoid the paranoid types. However, the power of the paranoid lies in the fact that they easily enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, who have been victims of the egotistical influence of individuals with character disorders, and, in particular, a large segment of young people.

A proletarian may perceive this power to enslave to be a kind of victory over higher-class people and thus take the paranoid person’s side. However, this is not the normal reaction among the common people, where perception of psychological reality occurs no less often than among intellectuals.

In sum then, the response of accepting paranoid argumentation is qualitatively more frequent in reverse proportion to the civilization level of the community in question, although it never approaches the majority. Nevertheless, paranoid individuals become aware of their enslaving influence through experience and attempt to take advantage of it in a pathologically egotistic manner.

We know today that the psychological mechanism of paranoid phenomena is twofold: one is caused by damage to the brain tissue, the other is functional or behavioral. Within the above-mentioned process of rehabilitation, any brain-tissue lesion causes a certain slackening of accurate thinking and, as a consequence, of the personality structure.

 

Most typical are those cases caused by an aggression in the diencephalon³⁷ by various pathological factors, resulting in its permanently decreased tonal ability, and similarly of the tonus of inhibition in the brain cortex. Particularly during sleepless nights, runaway thoughts give rise to a paranoid changed view of human reality, as well as to ideas which can be either gently naive or violently revolutionary. Let us call this kind paranoid characteropathy.

 

37 The posterior division of the forebrain; connects the cerebral hemispheres with the mesencephalon; the region of the brain that includes the epithalamus, thalamus, and hypothalamus. [Editor’s note.]

In persons free of brain tissue lesions, such phenomena most frequently occur as a result of being reared by people with paranoid characteropathia, along with the psychological terror of their childhood. Such psychological material is then assimilated creating the rigid stereotypes of abnormal experiencing.

 

This makes it difficult for thought and world view to develop normally, and the terror-blocked contents become transformed into permanent, functional, congestive centers.

Ivan Pavlov comprehended all kinds of paranoid states in a manner similar to this functional model without being aware of this basic and primary cause. He nevertheless provided a vivid description of paranoid characters and the above-mentioned ease with which paranoid individuals suddenly tear away from factual discipline and proper thought-processes.

 

Those readers of his work on the subject who are sufficiently familiar with Soviet conditions glean yet another historical meaning from his little book. Its intent appears obvious. The author dedicated his work, with no word of inscription, of course, to the chief model of a paranoid personality: the revolutionary leader Lenin, whom the scientist knew well. As a good psychologist, Pavlov could predict that he would not be the object of revenge, since the paranoid mind will block out the egocentric associations. He was thus able to die a natural death.

Lenin should nevertheless be included with the first and most characteristic kind of paranoid personality, i.e. most probably due to diencephalic brain damage.

 

Vassily Grossman ³⁸ describes him more or less as follows:

Symptom:

Lenin was always tactful, gentle, and polite, but simultaneously characterized Asthenization, by an excessively sharp, ruthless, and fixation and stereotypia brutal attitude to political opponents. He never allowed any possibility that they might be even minimally right, nor that he might be even minimally wrong. He would often call his opponents hucksters, lackeys, servant-boys, mercenaries, agents, or Judases bribed for thirty pieces of silver. He made no attempt to persuade his opponents during a dispute. He communicated not with them, but rather with those witnessing the dispute, in order to ridicule and compromise his adversaries. Sometimes such witnesses were just a few people, sometimes thousands of delegates to a congress, sometimes millions worth throngs of newspaper readers.

38 Vassily Grossman was a Soviet citizen, a Ukrainian Jew born in 1905. A Communist, he became a war correspondent, working for the army paper Red Star - a job which took him to the front lines of Stalingrad and ultimately to Berlin. He was among the first to see the results of the death camps, and published the first account of a death camp - Treblinka - in any language. After the war, he seems to have lost his faith. He wrote his immense novel, Life and Fate (Zhizn i Sudba) in the 1950s and - in the period of the Khrushchev thaw, which had seen Alexander Solzhenitsyn allowed to publish A Day on the Life of Ivan Denisovich - he submitted the manuscript to a literary journal in 1960 for publication.

 

But Solzhenitsyn was one thing, Grossman another: his manuscript was confiscated, as were the sheets of carbon paper and typewriter ribbons he had used to write it. Suslov, the Politbureau member in charge of ideology, is reported as having said it could not be published for 200 years. However, it was smuggled out on microfilm to the west by Vladimir Voinovich, and published, first in France in 1980, then in English in 1985.

Why the 200 year ban? Because Life and Fate commits what was still, in a ‘liberal’ environment, the unthinkable sin of arguing for the moral equivalence of Nazism and Soviet communism. [Editor’s note.]

 

 

Frontal characteropathy

 

The frontal areas of the cerebral cortex (10A and B acc. to the Brodmann division) are virtually present in no creature except man; they are composed of the phylogenetically youngest nervous tissue. Their cyto-architecture is similar to the much older visual projection areas on the opposite pole of the brain. This suggests some functional similarity.

 

The author has found a relatively easy way to test this psychological function, which enables us to grasp a certain number of imaginary elements in our field of consciousness and subject them to internal contemplation. The capacity of this act of internal projection varies greatly from one person to another, manifesting a statistical correlation with similar variegation in the anatomical extent of such areas. The correlation between this capacity and general intelligence is much lower.

 

As described by researchers (Luria et al.), the functions of these areas, thought-process acceleration and coordination, seem to result from this basic function.

 

Damage to this area occurred rather frequently: at or near birth, especially for premature infants, and later in life as a result of various causes. The number of such perinatal brain tissue lesions has been significantly reduced due to improved medical care for pregnant women and newborns. The spectacular ponerogenic role which results from character disorders caused by this can thus be considered somewhat characteristic of past generations and primitive cultures.

Brain cortex damage in these areas selectively impairs the above mentioned function without impairing memory, associative capacity, or, in particular, such instinct-based feelings and functions as, for instance, the ability to intuit a psychological situation. The general intelligence of an individual is thus not greatly reduced. Children with such a defect are almost normal students; difficulties emerge suddenly in upper grades and affect principally these parts of the curriculum which place burden on the above function.

The pathological character of such people, generally containing a component of hysteria, develops through the years. The non-damaged psychological functions become overdeveloped to compensate, which means that instinctive and affective reactions predominate. Relatively vital people become belligerent, risk-happy, and brutal in both word and deed.

Persons with an innate talent for intuiting psychological situations tend to take advantage of this gift in an egotistical and ruthless fashion. In the thought process of such people, a short cut way develops which bypasses the handicapped function, thus leading from associations directly to words, deeds, and decisions which are not subject to any dissuasion. Such individuals interpret their talent for intuiting situations and making split-second oversimplified decisions as a sign of their superiority compared to normal people, who need to think for long time, experiencing self-doubt and conflicting motivations. The fate of such creatures does not deserve to be pondered long.

Such “Stalinistic characters” traumatize and actively spellbind others, and their influence finds it exceptionally easy to bypass the controls of common sense. A large proportion of people tend to credit such individuals with special powers, thereby succumbing to their egotistic beliefs. If a parent manifests such a defect, no matter how minimal, all the children in the family evidence anomalies in personality development.

The author studied an entire generation of older, educated, people wherein the source of such influence was the eldest sister who suffered perinatal damage of the frontal centers.
 

From early childhood, her four younger brothers exposed to and assimilated pathologically altered psychological material, including their sister’s growing component of hysteria. They retained well into their sixties the deformities of personality and world view, as well as the hysterical features thus caused, whose intensity diminished in proportion to the greater difference in age.

Subconscious selection of information made it impossible for these men to apprehend any critical comments regarding their sister’s character; also, any such comments were considered to be an offense to the family honor.

The brothers accepted as real their sister’s pathological delusions and complaints about her “bad” husband (who was actually a decent person) and her son, in whom she found a scapegoat to avenge her failures. They thereby participated in a world of vengeful emotions, considering their sister a completely normal person whom they were prepared to defend by the most unsavory methods, if need be, against any suggestion of her abnormality. They thought normal woman were insipid and naive, good for nothing but sexual conquest. Not one among the brothers ever created a healthy family or developed even average wisdom of life.

The character development of these people also included many other factors that were dependent upon the time and place in which they were reared: the turn of the century, with a patriotic Polish father and German mother who obeyed contemporary custom by formally accepting her husband’s nationality, but who still remained an advocate of the militarism, and customary acceptance of the intensified hysteria which covered Europe at the time.

 

That was the Europe of the three Emperors: the splendor of three people with limited intelligence, two of whom revealed pathological traits. The concept of “honor” sanctified triumph. Staring at someone too long was sufficient pretext for a duel. These brothers were thus raised to be valiant duelists covered with saber-scars; however, the slashes they inflicted upon their opponents were more frequent and much worse.

When people with a humanistic education pondered the personalities of this family, they concluded that the causes for this formation should be sought in contemporary time and customs. If, however, the sister had not suffered brain damage and the pathological factor had not existed (exclusionary hypothesis), their personalities would have developed more normally even during those times. They would have become more critical and more amenable to the values of healthy reasoning and humanistic contents. They would have founded better families and received more sensible advice from wives more wisely chosen. As for the evil they sowed too liberally during their lives, it would either not have existed at all, or else would have been reduced to a scope conditioned by more remote pathological factors.

Comparative considerations also led the author to conclude that Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, also known as Stalin, should be included in the list of this particular ponerogenic characteropathy, which developed against the backdrop of perinatal damage to his brain’s prefrontal fields. Literature and news about him abounds in indications: brutal, charismatic, snake-charming; issuing of irrevocable decisions; inhuman ruthlessness, pathologic revengefulness directed at anyone who got in his way; and egotistical belief in his own genius on the part of a person whose mind was, in fact, only average. This state explains as well his psychological dependence on a psychopath like Beria ³⁹.

 

Some photographs reveal the typical deformation of his forehead which appears in people who suffered very early damage to the areas mentioned above.

 

39 L.P. Beria (1899–1953), Soviet Communist leader, b. Georgia. He rose to prominence in the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia and the Transcaucasus, became party secretary in these areas, and in 1938 became head of the secret police. As commissar (later minister) of internal affairs, Beria wielded great power, and he was the first in this post to become (1946) a member of the politburo. After Stalin’s death (Mar., 1953), Beria was made first deputy premier under Premier Malenkov, but the alliance was shaky; in the ensuing struggle for power Beria was arrested (July) on charges of conspiracy. He and six alleged accomplices were tried secretly and shot in Dec., 1953. [Editor’s note.]

 

His typical irrevocable decisions his daughter describes as follows:

~~~ Whenever he threw out of his heart someone whom he had known for a long time, classifying him among his “enemies” in his soul, it was impossible to talk to him about that person. The reverse process became impossible for him, namely persuasion that he was not his enemy, and any attempts in that direction made him fly into a rage. Redens, Uncle Pavlusha, and A.S. Svanidze were incapable of doing anything about it; all they accomplished was to have my father break off contacts and withdraw his trust. After seeing any of them for the last time, he said goodbye as if to a potential foe, one of his “enemies”…⁴⁰
 

~~~ We know the effect of being “thrown out of his heart”, as it is documented by the history of those times.
When we contemplate the scope of the evil Stalin helped to bring about, we should always take this most ponerogenic characteropathy into account and attribute the proper portion of the “blame” to it; unfortunately, it has not yet been sufficiently studied. We have to consider many other pathologic deviations as they played essential roles in this macrosocial phenomenon. Disregarding the pathologic aspects of those occurrences and limiting interpretation thereof by historiographic and moral considerations opens the door to an activity of further ponero-genic factors; such reasoning should be thus regarded as not only scientifically insufficient but immoral as well.
 

~~~ Drug-induced characteropathies: During the last few decades, medicine has begun using a series of drugs with serious side effects: they attack the nervous system, leaving permanent damage behind. These generally discreet handicaps sometimes give rise to personality changes which are often very harmful socially. Streptomycin⁴¹ proved a very dangerous drug; as a result, some countries have limited its use, whereas others have taken it off the list of drugs whose use is permitted.

40 Svetlana Alliluieva - Twenty Letters to a Friend.
41 Streptomycin acts by inhibiting protein synthesis and damaging cell membranes in susceptible microorganisms. Possible side effects include injury to
the kidneys and nerve damage that can result in dizziness and deafness. [Editor’s note.]

The cytostatic drugs⁴² used in treating neoplastic⁴³ diseases often attack the phylogenetically oldest brain tissue, the primary carrier of our instinctive substratum and basic feelings.⁴⁴ Persons treated with such drugs progressively tend to lose their emotional color and their ability to intuit a psychological situation.

 

42 Most drugs that are used to treat cancer kill the cancer cells. The word cytotoxic means toxic to cells, or cell-killing. Chemotherapy is properly called “cytotoxic therapy”. There are other treatments that do not kill cancer cells. They work by stopping the cancer cells from multiplying. These treatments are called “cytostatic”. The hormone therapies used to treat breast cancer could be called cytostatic therapy. [Editor’s note.]
43 Neoplasia (literally: new growth) is abnormal, disorganized growth in a tissue or organ, usually forming a distinct mass. Such a growth is called a neoplasm, also known as a tumor. Neoplasia refers to both benign and malignant growths, while “cancer” refers specifically to malignant neoplasia. [Editor’s note.]
44 Chemo Head is the name given by cancer patients to one of the side-effects of chemotherapy. It has been described as an inability to concentrate, reduced memory, or finding it difficult to think clearly. This could be simply attributed to general fatigue, however it seems that there are some very specific triggers and results. Some people get flustered by loud noises and activity around them. Others find that they cannot find the right words to express themselves. One patient described the feeling as “everything seems distant ... it takes me a few seconds longer to think or answer questions. The mental process slows down tremendously.” The symptoms are similar to those of Attention Deficit Disorder. New research concludes “chemo head” continued in up to 50% of survivors as long as 10 years following the end of systemic chemotherapy treatment. [Editor’s note.]

 

They retain their intellectual functions but become praise-craving egocentrics, easily ruled by people who know how to take advantage of this. They become indifferent to other people’s feelings and the harm they are inflicting upon them; any criticism of their own person or behavior is repaid with a vengeance. Such a change of character in a person who until recently enjoyed respect on the part of his environment or community, which perseveres in human minds, becomes a pathological phenomenon causing often tragic results.

Could this have been a factor in the case of the Shah of Iran?

 

Again, diagnosing dead people is problematic, and the author lacks detailed data. However, this possibility should be accepted as a probability. The genesis of that county’s present tragedy also doubtless contains pathological factors which play ponerologically active roles.⁴⁵

Results similar to the above in the psychological picture may be caused by endogenous toxins⁴⁶ or viruses. When, on occasion, the mumps proceeds with a brain reaction, it leaves in its wake a discrete pallor or dullness of feelings and a slight decrease in mental efficiency. Similar phenomena are witnessed after a difficult bout with diphtheria.

 

45 Editor’s reminder that this book was written in 1985.
46 Current Western medical opinion states: Endogenous toxins include heavy metals, pesticides, food additives, and industrial and household chemicals. These can damage the liver and kidneys; they can also cross the blood-brainbarrier and damage brain cells. Workers exposed to high levels of inhaled manganese showed concentrated levels in the basal ganglia, and exhibited Parkinson’s-like syndrome. Observational studies have also shown increased levels of aluminum, mercury, copper, and iron in the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) of Parkinson’s patients. It is not fully determined whether these minerals found in the brain have any clinical significance. (Mitchell J. Ghen, D.O., Ph.D., and Maureen Melindrez, N.D.) [Editor’s note.]
 

Finally, polio attacks the brain, more often the higher part of the anterior horns, which was affected by the process. People with leg paresis rarely manifest these effects, but those with paresis of the neck and/or shoulders must count themselves lucky if they do not. In addition to affective pallor, persons manifesting these effects usually evidence naiveté and an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter.

We rather doubt that President F.D. Roosevelt manifested some of this latter features, since the polio virus which attacked him when he was forty caused paresis to his legs. After overcoming this, years of creative activity followed. However, it is possible that his naive attitude toward Soviet policy during his last term of office had a pathological component related to his deteriorating health.

Character anomalies developing as a result of brain-tissue damage behave like insidious ponerogenic factors. As a result of the above-described features, especially the above-mentioned naiveté and an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter, their influence easily anchors in human minds, traumatizing our psyches, impoverishing and deforming our thoughts and feelings, and limiting individuals’ and societies’ ability to use common sense and to read a psychological or moral situation accurately.

 

This opens the door to the influence of other pathological characters who most frequently carry some inherited psychological deviations; they then push the charac-teropathic individuals into the shadows and proceed with their ponerogenic work. That is why various types of characteropathy participate during the initial periods of the genesis of evil, both on the macrosocial scale and on the individual scale of human families.

An improved social system of the future should thus protect individuals and societies by preventing persons with the above deviations, or certain characteristics to be discussed below, from any societal functions wherein the fate of other people would depend upon their behavior. This of course applies primarily to top governmental positions. Such questions should be dealt with by an appropriate institution composed of people with a reputation for wisdom and with medical and psychological training.

The features of brain-tissue lesions and their character disorder results are much easier to detect than certain inherited anomalies. Thus, stifling ponerogenic processes by removing these factors from the process of the synthesis of evil is effective during the early phases of such genesis, and much easier in practice.
Inherited Deviations

Science already protects societies from the results of some physiological anomalies which are accompanied by certain psychological weaknesses. The tragic role played by hereditary hemophilia among European royalty is well known. Responsible people in countries where the system of monarchy still survives, are anxious not to allow a carrier of such a gene to become queen.

 

Any society exercising so much concern over individuals with blood-coagulation insufficiency or other serious and life-threatening pathology would protest if a man afflicted with such a condition were appointed to a high office bearing responsibility for many people. This behavior model should be extended to many pathologies, including inherited psychological anomalies.

Daltonists, men with an impaired ability to distinguish red and green colors from grey, are now barred from professions in which this could cause a catastrophe. We also know that this anomaly is often accompanied by a decrease in esthetic experience, emotions, and the feeling of linkage to people who can see colors normally. Industrial psychologists are thus cautious whether such a person should be entrusted with work requiring dependence upon an autonomic sense of responsibility, as workers safety is contingent upon this sense.

It was discovered long ago that these two above-mentioned anomalies – hemophilia and color blindness - are inherited by means of a gene located in the X chromosome, and tracking their transmission through many generations is not difficult. Geneticists have similarly studied the inheritance of many other features of human organisms, but they have paid scant attention to the anomalies interesting us here. Many features of human character have a hereditary bases in genes located in the same X chromosome; although it is not a rule. Something similar could apply to the majority of the psychological anomalies to be discussed below.

Significant progress has recently been made in cognition of a series of chromosomal anomalies resulting from defective division of the reproductive cells and their phenotypic psychological symptoms. This state of affairs enables us to initiate studies on their ponerogenetic role and to introduce conclusions which are theoretically valuable, something which is in effect already being done. In practice, however, the majority of chromosomal anomalies are not transferred to the next generation; furthermore, their carriers constitute a very small proportion of the population at large, and their general intelligence is lower than the social average, so their ponerological role is even smaller than their statistical distribution.

 

Most problems are caused by the XYY karyotype⁴⁷ which produces men who are tall, strong, and emotionally violent, with an inclination to collide with the law. These engendered tests and discussions, but their role at the level studied herein is also very small.

47 Sandberg, A. A.; Koepf, G. F.; Ishihara, T.; Hauschka, T. S. (August 26, 1961) “An XYY human male”. Lancet 2, 488-9.

Much more numerous are those psychological deviations which play a correspondingly greater role as pathological factors in the ponerological processes; they are most probably transmitted through normal heredity. However, this realm of genetics in particular is faced with manifold biological and psychological difficulties as far as recognizing these phenomena. People studying their psychopathology lack biological isolation criteria. Biologists lack clear psychological differentiation of such phenomena which would permit studies of heredity mechanics and some other properties.

At the time most of the observations on which this book is based were being done, the works of many researchers who have since shed light upon many aspects of the matters discussed herein, during the latter half of the sixties, were either nonexistent or unavailable. Scientists studying the phenomena described below were hacking their way through a thicket of symptoms based on previous works and on their own efforts.

 

An understanding of the essence of some of these hereditary anomalies and their ponerogenic role proved a necessary precondition for reaching the primary goal. Results were gleaned which served as a basis for further reasoning. For the sake of the overall picture, and because the manner elaborated also brings in certain theoretical values, I decided to retain the methodology of description for such anomalies which emerged from my own work and from that of others at the time.

Numerous scientists during the above-mentioned fertile era, and some subsequent scientists, such as R. Jenkins, H. Cleckley, S.K. Ehrlich, K.C. Gray, H.C. Hutchison, F. Kraupl Taylor, and others did cast more stereoscopic light upon the matter.

 

They were clinicians, concentrating their attention upon the more demonstrative cases which play a lesser role in the processes of the genesis of evil, in accordance with the above-mentioned general rule of ponerology. We therefore need to differentiate those analogic states which are less intense or contain less of a psychological deficit.

 

Equally valuable for ponerology are inquiries concerning the nature of the phenomena under discussion, which facilitate differentiation of their essence and analysis of their role as pathological factors in the genesis of evil.
 

Schizoidia

 

Schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy, was isolated by the very first of the famous creators of modern psy-chiatry.⁴⁸ From the beginning, it was treated as a lighter form of the same hereditary taint which is the cause of susceptibility to schizophrenia.

 

However, this latter connection could neither be confirmed nor denied with the help of statistical analysis, and no biological test was then found which would have been able to solve this dilemma. For practical reasons, we shall discuss schizoidia with no further reference to this traditional relationship.

 

48 Emil Kraepelin (1856- 1926): German psychiatrist who attempted to create a synthesis of the hundreds of mental disorders, grouping diseases together based on classification of common patterns of symptoms, rather than by simple similarity of major symptoms in the manner of his predecessors. In fact, it was precisely because of the demonstrated inadequacy of the older methods that Kraepelin developed his new diagnostic system. Kraepelin also demonstrated specific patterns in the genetics of these disorders and specific and characteristic patterns in their course and outcome.

 

Generally speaking, there tend to be more schizophrenics among the relatives of schizophrenic patients than in the general population, while manic-depression is more frequent in the relatives of manic-depressives. Kraepelin should be credited with being the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics, according to the eminent psychologist H. J. Eysenck in his Encyclopedia of Psychology. Kraepelin postulated that psychiatric diseases are principally caused by biological and genetic disorders. His psychiatric theories dominated the field of psychiatry at the beginning of the twentieth century. He vigorously opposed the approach of Freud who regarded and treated psychiatric disorders as caused by psychological factors. (Wikipedia)

Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species’ common features.

Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.

 

Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: “Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea.” Let us call this typical expression the “schizoid declaration”.

Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when the schizoids embitter other people’s lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.

The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people.

The quantitative frequency of this anomaly varies among races and nations: low among Blacks, the highest among Jews. Estimates of this frequency range from negligible up to 3 %. In Poland it may be estimated as 0.7 % of population. My observations suggest this anomaly is autosomally hereditary.⁴⁹

A schizoid’s ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children.

 

49 Autosomal: the disease is due to a DNA error in one of the 22 pairs that are not sex chromosomes. Both boys and girls can then inherit this error. If the error is in a sex chromosome, the inheritance is said to be sex-linked. [Editor’s note.]

Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider “proper” – i.e. “black or white” - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.

In spite of their typical deficits, or even an openly schizoi-dal declaration, their readers do not realize what the authors’ characters are really like. Ignorant of the true condition of the author, such uninformed readers thed to interpret such works in a manner corresponding to their own nature. The minds of normal people tend toward corrective interpretation due to the participation of their own richer, psychological world view.

At the same time, many other readers critically reject such works with moral disgust but without being aware of the specific cause.

An analysis of the role played by Karl Marx’s works easily reveals all the above-mentioned types of apperception and the social reactions which engendered animosity between large groups of people.

When reading any of those disturbingly divisive works, we should examine them carefully for any of these characteristic deficits, or even an openly formulated schizoid declaration. Such a process will enable us to gain a proper critical distance from the contents and make it easier to dig the potentially valuable elements out of the doctrinaire material. If this is done by two or more people who represent greatly divergent interpretations, their methods of perception will come closer together, and the causes of dissent will dissipate.

 

Such a project might be attempted as a psychological experiment and for purposes of proper mental hygiene.

 

Essential psychopathy

 

Within the framework of the above assumptions, let us characterize another heredity-transmitted anomaly whose role in ponerogenic processes on any social scale appears exceptionally great. We should also underscore that the need to isolate this phenomenon and examine it in detail became quickly and profoundly evident to those researchers – including the author - who were interested in the macrosocial scale of the genesis of evil, because they witnessed it. I acknowledge my debt to Kazimierz Dabrowski ⁵⁰ in doing this and calling this anomaly an “essential psychopathy”.

Biologically speaking, the phenomenon is similar to colorblindness but occurs with about ten times lower frequency (slightly above ½%),⁵¹ except that, unlike color blindness, it affects both sexes. Its intensity also varies in scope from a level barely perceptive to an experienced observer to an obvious pathological deficiency.

Like color blindness, this anomaly also appears to represent a deficit in stimulus transformation, albeit occurring not on the sensory but on the instinctive level.⁵² Psychiatrist of the old school used to call such individuals “Daltonists of human feelings and socio-moral values”.

The psychological picture shows clear deficits among men only; among women it is generally toned down, as by the effect of a second normal allele. This suggests that the anomaly is also inherited via the X chromosome, but through a semi-dominating gene. However, the author was unable to confirm this by excluding inheritance from father to son.

50 Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980):Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, and poet. Dabrowski developed the theory of Positive Disintegration, a novel approach to personality development, over his lifetime of clinical and academic work. [Editor’s note.]
51 Recent research by Robert Hare, then Martha Stout, and finally Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, have tended to increase the probably rate of occurrence in a given population. The latter researchers, in “Construct Validity of Psycho pathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach”, Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5), 425-441, 2001), suggest the prevalence of psychopathy to be perhaps 5% or more, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100 females). [Editor’s note.]
52 Current day research suggests that many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths are closely associated with a profound lack of ability to construct an empathic mental and emotional “facsimile” of another person. They seem completely unable to “get into the skin” of others, except in a purely intellectual sense. [Editor’s note.]

Analysis of the different experiential manner demonstrated by these individuals caused us to conclude that their instinctive substratum is also defective, containing certain gaps and lacking the natural syntonic responses commonly evidenced by members of the species Homo Sapiens.⁵³

 

Our species instinct is 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 correspondence with these gaps.

 

53 What’s missing in psychopaths are the qualities that people depend on for living in social harmony. [Editor’s note.]

Our natural world of concepts – based upon species instincts as described in an earlier chapter - strikes the psychopath as a nearly incomprehensible convention with no justification 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 contemporary 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 account, individuals of this type indicate a deficit disproportionate 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 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 language 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 efforts 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 knowledge” that the psychopath acquires regarding normal people, would be the psychopaths’ brilliant mind or psychological genius; some of them actually believe in this and attempt to insinuate 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:

Let us remember that his typical behavior defeats what appear to be his own aims. Is it not he himself who is most deeply deceived by his apparent normality? Although he deliberately 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 major value himself, can he be said to realize adequately the nature and quality of the outrages his conduct inflicts upon others? 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 Sample: 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 personality 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 ... 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 prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy 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.]

A neurotic patient is generally taciturn and has trouble explaining what hurts him most. A psychologist must know how to overcome these obstacles with the help of non-painful interactions. Neurotics are also prone to excessive guilt about actions which are easily forgiven. Such patients are capable of decent and enduring love, although they have difficulty expressing 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 important 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 deliberately deceptive, in which case he will use many “feeling” words which careful scrutiny will reveal that he does not understand those words the same way normal people do. We then also feel we are dealing with an imitation of the thought patterns 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

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

Individuals with the psychopathy referred to herein are virtually unfamiliar with the enduring emotions of love for another person, particularly the marriage partner; it constitutes a fairytale from that “other” human world. Love, for the psychopath, 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 incomprehensible 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.

 

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.”

In their book Psychopathy and Delinquency, W. and J. McCord say the following about them:

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)

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 relationships, when they exist, are meager, fleeting, and designed to satisfy his own desires. These last two traits, guiltlessness and lovelessness, conspicuously mark the psychopath as different from other men.⁵⁸

 

58 McCord, W. & McCord, J. Psychopathy and Delinquency. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1956.

The problem of a psychopath’s moral and legal responsibility thus remains open and subject to various solutions, frequently summary or emotional, in various countries and circumstances.