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

printed upon the subjugated country than one imposed by

force. At the same time, however, it maintains certain charac-

teristics of its divergent content, sometimes referred to as

“ideological” although it is in fact a derivate of the different

ethnological substratum upon which its scion was grafted.

Should conditions such as a nation’s numerical plentitude, wide

extension, or geographic isolation permit independence from

the primary pathocratic nation, more measured factors and the

society of normal people will thus find some way of influenc-

ing the governmental system, taking advantage of the opportu-

nities afforded by the dissimulative phase. In the presence of

advantageous conditions and skillful outside assistance, this

could lead to progressive depathologization of the system.

General Considerations

The path to comprehending the true contents of the phe-

nomenon and its internal causality can only be opened by over-

coming natural reflexes and emotions, and the tendency toward

moralizing interpretations, followed by assembling data elabo-

rated in difficult everyday clinical work and subsequent gener-

alizations in the form of theoretical ponerology. Such compre-

hension naturally also encompasses those who would create

such an inhuman system.

222

PATHOCRACY

The problem of biological determination of the behavior of

deviants is thus sketched in all its expressiveness, showing

primarily how their capacity for moral judgments and their

field of behavior selection is narrowed well below the levels

available to a normal person. The attitude of understanding

even one’s enemies is the most difficult for us humans. Moral

condemnation proves to be an obstacle along the path toward

curing the world of this disease.

A result of the character of the phenomenon described in

this chapter is that no attempt to understand its nature or to

track its internal causative links and diachronic transformations

would be possible if all we had at our disposal were the natural

language of psychological, social, and moral concepts even in

that partially perfected form used by the social sciences. It

would also be impossible to predict subsequent phases in the

development of this phenomenon or to distinguish its weak

times and weak spots for purposes of counteraction.

Elaboration of an appropriate and sufficiently comprehen-

sive conceptual language was thus indicated as essential; it

required more time and effort than studying the phenomenon

itself. It has therefore become necessary to bore readers some-

what by introducing this conceptual language in a manner both

parsimonious and adequate, which would at the same time be

comprehensible to those readers not trained in the area of psy-

chopathology.

Anyone who wants to repair television sets instead of mak-

ing them worse must first familiarize himself with electronics,

which is also beyond the ambit of our natural conceptual lan-

guage. However, upon learning to understand this macrosocial

phenomenon in the corresponding reference system, a scientist

stands in wonder as though before the open tomb of Tutank-

hamen for a while before he is able to understand the living

laws of the phenomenon with ever greater speed and skill,

thereupon complementing this comprehension with a huge

array of detailed data.

The first conclusion which suggested itself soon after meet-

ing with the “professor” introduced at the beginning of this

volume, was that the phenomenon’s development is limited by

nature in terms of the participation of susceptible individuals

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

223

within a given society. The initial evaluation of approximately

6% amenable individuals proved realistic; progressively col-

lected detailed statistical data assembled later were unable to

refute it. This value varies from country to country in the mag-

nitude of about one percentage point upward or downward.

Quantitatively speaking, this number is broken down into 0.6%

essential psychopaths, i.e. about 1/10 of this 6 %. However,

this anomaly plays a disproportionate role compared to the

numbers by saturating the phenomenon as a whole with its own

quality of thought and experience.

Other psychopathies, known as asthenic, schizoidal,

anankastic, hysterical, et al., definitely play second fiddle al-

though, in sum, they are much more numerous. Relatively

primitive skirtoidal individuals become fellow-travelers,

goaded by their lust for life, but their activities are limited by

considerations of their own advantage. In non-semitic nations,

schizoidia are somewhat more numerous than essential psy-

chopaths; although highly active in the early phases of the

genesis of the phenomenon, they betray an attraction to pathoc-

racy as well as the rational distance of efficient thinking; Thus