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

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 ma-

jor value himself, can he be said to realize adequately the na-

ture and quality of the outrages his conduct inflicts upon oth-

ers? 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 Sam-

ple: 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 per-

sonality 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

130

PONEROLOGY

A neurotic patient is generally taciturn and has trouble ex-

plaining what hurts him most. A psychologist must know how

to overcome these obstacles with the help of non-painful inter-

actions. Neurotics are also prone to excessive guilt about ac-

tions which are easily forgiven. Such patients are capable of

decent and enduring love, although they have difficulty ex-

pressing 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 impor-

tant 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 de-

liberately deceptive, in which case he will use many “feeling”

words which careful scrutiny will reveal that he does not un-

derstand those words the same way normal people do. We then

also feel we are dealing with an imitation of the thought pat-

terns 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

Individuals with the psychopathy referred to herein are vir-

tually unfamiliar with the enduring emotions of love for an-

... 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 pre-

scribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insig-

nificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psy-

chopathy 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.]

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

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

131

other person, particularly the marriage partner; it constitutes a

fairytale from that “other” human world. Love, for the psycho-

path, is an ephemeral phenomenon aimed at sexual adventure.