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

Every country within the scope of this macrosocial phe-

nomenon contains a large majority of normal people living and

suffering there who will never accept pathocracy; their protest

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

human nature as conditioned by properties transmitted by

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

ideologies by which they would like to realize their natural

wishes may nevertheless change.

The ideology or societal structure via which they would like

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

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

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

not likely to lead to overly violent conflict among persons who

see before them a goal worthy of sacrifice.

Those whose attitudes are more penetrating and balanced

see the original ideology as it was before its caricaturization by

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

ing society’s aims. Certain modifications would endow this

ideology with a more mature form more in keeping with the

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

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

an socio-economic system capable of adequate functioning.

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

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

troduction of an economic system which has lost its historically

conditioned roots in such a country.

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

this divergence are therefore hard to understand for someone

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NORMAL PEOPLE UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

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

posing imaginings upon them which are only meaningful

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

geonhole them into any political doctrines which are often

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

them with feelings of human solidarity, reciprocal respect, and

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

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

UNDER PATHOCRATIC RULE

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

nist structure as envisaged by Karl Marx, wherein the working

people’s leftist ideology would be the basis for government,

which, I believe, would be stern, but not bereft of healthy hu-

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

medical sciences would be considered valuable and be appro-

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

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

ous personal problems would naturally be the concern of the

authorities and of society as a whole. Seriously ill patients

would have the advantage of correspondingly skillful care.

However, quite the opposite is the case within a pathocratic

structure.

When I came to the West, I met people with leftist views

who unquestioningly believed that communist countries existed

in more or less the form expounded by American versions of

communist political doctrines. These persons were almost cer-

tain that psychology and psychiatry must enjoy freedom in

those countries referred to as communist, and that matters were

similar to what was mentioned above. When I contradicted

them, they refused to believe me and kept asking why, “why

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PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY

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

111

My attempts to explain what that other reality looks like met

with the difficulties we are already familiar with, although

some people had previously heard about the abuse of psychia-

try. However, such “whys” kept cropping up in conversation,

and remained unanswered.

The situation in these scientific areas, of social and curative

activities, and of the people occupied in these matters, can only

be comprehended once we have perceived the true nature of

pathocracy in the light of the ponerological approach.

Let us thus imagine something which is only possible in

theory, namely, that a country under pathocratic rule is inadver-

tently allowed to freely develop these sciences, enabling a

normal influx of scientific literature and contacts with scientists

in other countries. Psychology, psychopathology, and psychia-

try would flourish abundantly and produce outstanding repre-

sentatives.

What would the result be?

111 In 1950, the Russian Academy of Sciences determined everyone would

follow the theory of the Moscow professor Andrei Snezhnevsky, which held

that “anybody could suffer from ‘slowly progressing schizophrenia’. One

could suffer from it without knowing, but once Snezhnevsky or one of his