extracted from "Political Ponerology - A Science on The Nature of Evil"

 

If there were ever such a thing as a country with a communist 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 humanistic thought, the contemporary social, bio-humanistic, and medical sciences would be considered valuable and be appropriately developed and used for the good of the working people.

 

Psychological advice for youth and for persons with various 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 certain 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 isn’t it like that?” What can politics have to do with psychiatry? 111

 

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 ‘progress’. ...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 assistants 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 they were used as a means of repression, is that psychiatry in the former Soviet Union “is confronted with a gap of about fifty years”. Western literature on psychiatry was forbidden in the Soviet Union, psychiatrists who stood up against the political abuse of their science ended up behind bars or were themselves declared to be “insidiously schizophrenic”. “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren, General Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997 [Editor’s note.]


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 psychiatry. 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 inadvertently allowed to freely develop these sciences, enabling a normal influx of scientific literature and contacts with scientists in other countries. Psychology, psychopathology, and psychiatry would flourish abundantly and produce outstanding representatives.


What would the result be?


This accumulation of proper knowledge would, within a very short time, enable the undertaking of investigations whose meaning we already understand. Missing elements and insufficiently investigated questions would be complemented and deepened by means of the appropriate detailed research. The diagnosis of the pathocratic state of affairs would then be elaborated within the first dozen or so years of the formation of the pathocracy, especially if the latter is imposed.

 

The basis of the deductive rationale would be significantly wider than anything the author can present here, and would be illustrated by means of a rich body of analytical and statistical material.


Once transmitted to world opinion, such a diagnosis would quickly become incorporated into it that opinion, forcing naive political and propaganda doctrines out of societal consciousness. It would reach the nations that were the objects of the pathocratic empire’s expansionist intentions. This would render the usefulness of any such propagandized ideology as a pathocratic Trojan horse doubtful at best.


In spite of differences among them, other countries with normal human systems would be united by characteristic solidarity in the defense of an understood danger, similar to the solidarity linking normal people living under pathocratic rule.


This consciousness, popularized in the countries affected by this phenomenon, would simultaneously reinforce psychological resistance on the part of normal human societies and furnish them with new measures of self defense.


Can any pathocratic empire risk permitting such a possibility?


In times when the above-mentioned disciplines are developing swiftly in many countries, the problem of preventing such a psychiatric threat becomes a matter of “to be or not to be” for pathocracy. Any possibility of such a situation emerging must thus be staved off prophylactically and skillfully, both within and without the empire.

 

At the same time, the empire is able to find effective preventive measures thanks to its consciousness of being different as well as that specific psychological knowledge of psychopaths with which we are already familiar, partially reinforced by academic knowledge.

Both inside and outside the boundaries of countries affected by the above-mentioned phenomenon, a purposeful and conscious system of control, terror, and diversion is thus set to work.


Any scientific papers published under such governments or imported from abroad must be monitored to ascertain that they do not contain any data which could be harmful to the pathocracy. Specialists with superior talent become the objects of blackmail and malicious control. This of course causes the results to become inferior with reference to these areas of science.


The entire operation must of course be managed in such a way as to avoid attracting the attention of public opinion in countries with normal human structures. The effects of such a “bad break” could be too far-reaching. This explains why people caught doing investigative work in this area are destroyed without a sound and suspicious persons are forced abroad to become the objects of appropriately organized harassment campaigns there.112

 

112 This is also why Lobaczewski was deprived of the data he had assembled over so many years that would have supported the information presented in this book. [Editor’s note.]


Battles are thus being fought on secret fronts which may be reminiscent of the Second World War. The soldiers and leaders fighting in various theaters were not aware that their fate depended on the outcome of that other war, waged by scientists and other soldiers, whose goal was preventing the Germans from producing the atom bomb.

 

The Allies won that battle, and the United States became the first to possess this lethal weapon. For the present, however, the West keeps losing scientific and political battles on this new secret front. Lone fighters are looked upon as odd, denied assistance, or forced to work hard for their bread. Meanwhile, the ideological Trojan horse keeps invading new countries.


An examination of the methodology of such battles, both on the internal and the external fronts, points to that specific pathocratic knowledge so difficult to comprehend in the light of the natural language of concepts. In order to be able to control people and those relatively non-popularized areas of science, one must know, or be able to sense, what is going on and which fragments of psychopathology are most dangerous.

 

The examiner of this methodology thus also becomes aware of the boundaries and imperfections of this self-knowledge and practice, i.e. the other side’s weaknesses, errors, and gaffes, and may manage to take advantage of them.


In nations with pathocratic systems, supervision over scientific and cultural organizations is assigned to a special department of especially trusted people, a “Nameless Office” composed almost entirely of relatively intelligent persons who betray characteristic psychopathic traits. These people must be capable of completing their academic studies, albeit sometimes by forcing examiners to issue generous evaluations.

 

Their talents are usually inferior to those of average students, especially regarding psychological science. In spite of that, they are rewarded for their services by obtaining academic degrees and positions and are allowed to represent their country’s scientific community abroad. As especially trusted individuals, they are allowed to not participate in local meetings of the party, and even to avoid joining it entirely.

 

In case of need, they might then pass for non-party. In spite of that, these scientific and cultural superintendents are well known to the society of normal people, who learn the art of differentiation rather quickly. They are not always properly distinguished from agents of the political police; although they consider themselves to be in a better class than the latter, they must nevertheless cooperate with them.


We often meet with such people abroad, in the countries of normal people, where various foundations and institutes give them scientific grants with the conviction that they are thereby assisting the development of proper knowledge in countries under “communist” governments. These benefactors do not realize that they are rendering a disservice to such science and to real scientists by allowing the supervisors to attain a certain semi-authentic authority, and by allowing them to become more familiar with whatever they shall later deem to be dangerous.


After all, those people shall later have the power to permit someone to take a doctorate, embark upon a scientific career, achieve academic tenure, and become promoted.

 

Very mediocre scientists themselves, they attempt to knock down more talented persons, governed both by self-interest and that typical jealousy which characterizes a pathocrat’s attitude toward normal people. They will be the ones monitoring scientific papers for their “proper ideology” and attempting to ensure that a good specialist will be denied the scientific literature he needs.113


Controls are exceptionally malicious and treacherous in the psychological sciences in particular, for reasons now understandable to us. Written and unwritten lists are compiled for subjects that may not be taught, and corresponding directives are issued to appropriately distort other subjects. This list is so vast in the area of psychology that nothing remains of this science except a skeleton picked bare of anything that might be subtle or penetrating.


A psychiatrist’s required curriculum contains neither the minimal knowledge from the areas of general, developmental, and clinical psychology, nor the basic skills in psychotherapy.

 

Due to such a state of affairs, the most mediocre or privileged of physicians become a psychiatrist after a course of study lasting only weeks. This opens the door of psychiatric careers to individuals who are by nature inclined to serving the pathocratic authority, and it has fateful repercussions upon the level of the treatment.

 

It later permits psychiatry to be abused for purposes for which it should never be used.114


113 Based on many reports of the past 5 years, it seems that the United States is well on its way to having a similar system. In fact, careful analysis indicates that such a system has been in place for some time now. [Editor’s note.]
114 In Ukraine brain surgery is being performed on schizophrenics. “Ukraine is confronted with a lack of money, which means no money to buy medicines, so they look for alternative methods of treatment. Then there are psychiatrists in Dnepropetrovsk who think: suppose we cut away a piece of brain, then we can get rid of schizophrenia cheaply.’ Van Voren imagines what they might think: ‘Maybe we’ll even get the Nobel prize! One can never know!.’


“ ‘On the other hand’, he continues, ‘they know just as well that this kind of operation is not really accepted. So these schizophrenics become supposedly epileptic, since in extreme cases of epilepsy surgery might be performed. Under this pretext they cut away pieces of brain.’ The Institute of Neurosurgery in Kiev goes even further: there, brain tissue of aborted embryos is implanted in the brains of mentally disabled people. ‘They say they can cure disabled people that way. Of course nothing happens or their situation even worsens, but they ask thousands of dollars for it.’ “In Ukrainian psychiatry insulin is being used as a tranquillizer, i.e. it is administered in such doses, that the patient lapses into a coma. ‘A kill or cure remedy. It is being applied in high doses, while diabetics are dying because there is not enough insulin. Nonsense, absolute nonsense.’ He continues: ‘Electroshocks, on large scale.’

 

In the Central Psychiatric Institution in Kiev they are given a dozen a time, without anesthesia or muscle-relaxant drugs. Once patients have been given a clean bill of health, they can get another dozen of shocks on the day of departure: ‘something like a severance pay. And all of this is happening now’, concludes Van Voren, ‘it is happening today, at this very moment.’


“In Russian newspapers one can freely write about the political abuse of psychiatry. But officially the doctrine of Snezhnevsky was never revoked. Most psychiatrists in Moscow still even believe in it. ‘As a consequence, no structural change is possible in Moscow. Even now people who hold a position at one of those institutes and who want to talk in public about the abuse of psychiatry are being told that they should better shut up or find themselves a job elsewhere. This way much of the old power is maintained.’ “Under the pretext of ‘progressing schizophrenia’ dissidents are still being locked up in the former Soviet Union, but mainly in the provinces and it is not so ‘easy’ to do anymore, says Van Voren.


People who are unwelcome to the local authorities might land in an institution, but nowadays there are organizations for human rights and media who can get them out. In Turkmenistan it still happens officially. ‘That is a museum of the old Stalinist Soviet Union and there the theory has been restored.’” “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren, General Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997.[Editor’s note.]


Since they are undereducated, these psychologists then prove helpless in the face of many human problems, especially in cases where detailed knowledge is needed. Such knowledge must then be acquired on one’s own, a feat not everyone is able to manage.


Such behavior carries in its wake a good deal of damage and human injustice in areas of life which have nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Unfortunately, however, such behavior is necessary from the pathocrat’s point of view in order to prevent these dangerous sciences from jeopardizing the existence of a system they consider the best of all possible worlds.


Specialists in the areas of psychology and psychopathology would find an analysis of this system of prohibitions and recommendations to be highly interesting. This makes it possible to realize that this may be one of the roads via which we can reach the crux of the matter or the nature of this macrosocial phenomenon. The prohibitions engulf depth psychology, the analysis of the human instinctive substratum, together with analysis of dreams.


As already pointed out in the chapter introducing some indispensable concepts, an understanding of human instinct is a key to understanding man; however, a knowledge of said instinct’s anomalies also represents a key to understanding pathocracy.


Although used ever more rarely in psychological practice, dream analysis shall always remain the best school of psychological thought; that makes it dangerous by nature. Consequently, even research on the psychology of mate selection is frowned upon, at best.


The essence of psychopathy may not, of course, be researched or elucidated. Darkness is cast upon this matter by means of an intentionally devised definition of psychopathy which includes various kinds of character disorders, together with those caused by completely different and known causes.115 This definition must be memorized not only by every lecturer in psychopathology, psychiatrist, and psychologist, but also by some political functionaries with no education in that area.

 

115 This is also the case in the U.S. as noted in several articles by Robert Hare. [Editor’s note.]


This definition must be used in all public appearances whenever it is for some reason impossible to avoid the subject. However, it is preferable for a lecturer in such areas to be someone who always believes whatever is most convenient in his situation, and whose intelligence does not predestine him to delve into subtle differentiations of a psychological nature.


It is also worth pointing out here that the chief doctrine of said system reads “Existence defines consciousness”.

 

As such, it belongs to psychology rather than to any political doctrine. This doctrine actually contradicts a good deal of empirical data indicating the role of hereditary factors in the development of man’s personality and fate. Lecturers may refer to research on identical twins, but only in a brief, cautious, and formal fashion. Considerations on this subject may, however, not be published in print.


We return once more to this system’s peculiar psychological “genius” and its self-knowledge. One might admire how the above mentioned definitions of psychopathy effectively blocks the ability to comprehend phenomena covered therein. We may investigate the relationships between these prohibitions and the essence of the macrosocial phenomenon they in fact mirror. We may also observe the limits of these skills and the errors committed by those who execute this strategy.

 

These shortcomings are skillfully taken advantage of for purposes of smuggling through some proper knowledge on the part of the more talented specialists, or by elderly people no longer fearful for their careers or even their lives.


The “ideological” battle is thus being waged on territory completely unperceived by scientists living under governments of normal human structures and attempting to imagine that other reality. This applies to all people denouncing “Communism”, as well as those for whom this ideology has become their faith.
Shortly after arriving in the U.S.A. , I was handed a newspaper by a young black man on some street in Queens, N.Y. I reached for my purse, but he waved me off; the paper was free.


The front page showed a picture of a young and handsome Brezhnev decorated with all the medals he did not in fact receive until much later. On the last page, however, I found a quite well-worked-out summary of investigations performed at the University of Massachusetts on identical twins raised separately.

 

These investigations furnished empirical indications for the important role of heredity, and the description contained a literary illustration of the similarity of the fates of twin pairs. How far “ideologically disorientated” the editors of this paper must have been to publish something which could never have appeared in the area subjected to a supposedly Communist system.116


116 The freedom that Lobaczewski noted in the U.S. in the 1980 is fast being replaced by an almost total pathocracy. It won’t be long before such articles are censored in U.S. newspapers as well, unless, of course, the study is “designed” to prove the superiority of psychopathy. [Editor’s note.]

In that other reality, the battlefront crosses every study of psychology and psychiatry, every psychiatric hospital, every mental health consultation center, and the personality of everyone working in these areas.

 

What takes place there: hidden thrust-and-parry duels, a smuggling through of true scientific information and accomplishments, and harassment.


Some people become morally derailed under these conditions, whereas others create a solid foundation for their convictions and are prepared to undertake difficulty and risk in order to obtain honest knowledge so as to serve the sick and needy. The initial motivation of this latter group is thus not political in character, since it derives from their good will and professional decency. Their consciousness of the political causes of the limitations and the political meaning of this battle is raised later, in conjunction with experience and professional maturity, especially if their experience and skills must be used in order to save persecuted people.


In the meantime, however, the necessary scientific data and papers must be obtained somehow, taking difficulties and other people’s lack of understanding into account. Students and beginning specialists not yet aware of what was removed from the educational curricula attempt to gain access to the scientific data stolen from them. Science starts to be degraded at a worrisome rate once such awareness is missing.


We need to understand the nature of the macrosocial phenomenon as well as that basic relationship and controversy between the pathological system and those areas of science which describe psychological and psychopathological phenomena. Otherwise, we cannot become fully conscious of the reasons for such a government’s long published behavior.


A normal person’s actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, all too often strike abnormal individuals as abnormal.

 

For if a person with some psychological deviations considers himself normal, which is of course significantly easier if he possesses authority, then he would consider a normal person different and therefore abnormal, whether in reality or as a result of conversive thinking. That explains why such people’s government shall always have the tendency to treat any dissidents as “mentally abnormal”.


Operations such as driving a normal person into psychological illness and the use of psychiatric institutions for this purpose take place in many countries in which such institutions exist. Contemporary legislation binding upon normal man’s countries is not based upon an adequate understanding of the psychology of such behavior, and thus does not constitute a sufficient preventive measure against it.


Within the categories of a normal psychological world view, the motivations for such behavior were variously understood and described: personal and family accounts, property matters, intent to discredit a witness’ testimony, and even political motivations. Such defamatory suggestions are used particularly often by individuals who are themselves not entirely normal, whose behavior has driven someone to a nervous breakdown or to violent protest.

 

Among hysterics, such behavior tends to be a projection onto other people of one’s own self-critical associations. A normal person strikes a psychopath as a naive, smart-alecky believer in barely comprehensible theories; calling him “crazy” is not all that far away.


Therefore, when we set up a sufficient number of examples of this kind or collect sufficient experience in this area, another more essential motivational level for such behavior becomes apparent. What happens as a rule is that the idea of driving someone into mental illness issues from minds with various aberrations and psychological defects.

 

Only rarely does the component of pathological factors take part in the ponerogenesis of such behavior from outside its agents. Well thought out and carefully framed legislation should therefore require testing of individuals whose suggestions that someone else is psychologically abnormal are too insistent or too doubtfully founded.


On the other hand, any system in which the abuse of psychiatry for allegedly political reasons has become a common phenomenon should be examined in the light of similar psychological criteria extrapolated onto the macrosocial scale.

 

Any person rebelling internally against a governmental system, which shall always strike him as foreign and difficult to understand, and who is unable to hide this well enough, shall thus easily be designated by the representatives of said government as “mentally abnormal”, someone who should submit to psychiatric treatment.

 

A scientifically and morally degenerate psychiatrist becomes a tool easily used for this purpose. Thus is born the sole method of terror and human torture unfamiliar even to the secret police of Czar Alexander II.


The abuse of psychiatry for purposes we already know thus derives from the very nature of pathocracy as a macrosocial psychopathological phenomenon. After all, that very area of knowledge and treatment must first be degraded to prevent it from jeopardizing the system itself by pronouncing a dramatic diagnosis, and must then be used as an expedient tool in the hands of the authorities. In every country, however, one meets with people who notice this and act astutely against it.


The pathocracy feels increasingly threatened by this area whenever the medical and psychological sciences make progress. After all, not only can these sciences knock the weapon of psychological conquest right out of its hands; they can even strike at its very nature, and from inside the empire, at that.
 

A specific perception of these matters therefore bids the pathocracy to be “ideationally alert” in this area.

 

This also explains why anyone who is both too knowledgeable in this area and too far outside the immediate reach of such authorities should be accused of anything that can be trumped up, including psychological abnormality.

 

Return to Ponerology - The Science of Evil