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

formal or legal thought and psychological reality. In a civiliza-

tion deficient in psychological cognition, hyperactive individu-

als driven by their internal doubts caused by a feelings of being

different easily find a ready echo in other people’s insuffi-

ciently developed consciousness. Such individuals dream of

imposing their power and their different experiential manner

upon their environment and their society.Unfortunately, in a

psychologically ignorant society, their dreams have a good

chance of becoming reality for them and a nightmare for oth-

ers.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

49

Psychology

In the 1870s, a tempestuous event occurred: a search for the

hidden truth about human nature was initiated as a secular

movement based on biological and medical progress, thus its

cognition originated in the material sphere. From the very out-

set, many researchers had a vision of the great future role of

this science for the good of peace and order. However, since it

relegated prior knowledge to the spiritual sphere, any such

approach to the human personality was necessarily one-sided.

People like Ivan Pavlov, C.G. Jung, and others soon noticed

this one-sidedness and attempted to reach a synthesis. Pavlov,

however, was not allowed to state his convictions in public.

Psychology is the only science wherein the observer and the

observed belong to the same species, even to the same person

in an act of introspection. It is thus easy for subjective error to

steal into the reasoning process of the thinking person’s com-

monly used imaginings and individual habits. Error then often

bites its own tail in a vicious circle, thus giving rise to prob-

lems due to the lack of distance between observer and ob-

served, a difficulty unknown in other disciplines.

Some people, such as the behaviorists, attempted to avoid

the above error at all costs. In the process, they impoverished

the cognitive contents to such an extent that there was very

little matter left. However, they produced a very profitable

discipline of thought. Progress was very often elaborated by

persons simultaneously driven by internal anxieties and search-

ing for a method of ordering their own personalities via the

road of knowledge and self-knowledge. If these anxieties were

caused by a defective upbringing, then overcoming these diffi-

culties gave rise to excellent discoveries. However, if the cause

for such anxieties rested within human nature, it resulted in a

permanent tendency to deform the understanding of psycho-

logical phenomena. Within this science, progress is unfortu-

nately very contingent upon the individual values and nature of

its practitioners. It is also dependent upon the social climate.

Wherever a society has become enslaved to others or to the rule

of an overly-privileged native class, psychology is the first

discipline to suffer from censorship and incursions on the part

50

SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS

of an administrative body which starts claiming the last word

as to what represents scientific truth.

Thanks to the work of outstanding pathfinders, however, the

scientific discipline exists and continues to develop in spite of

all these difficulties; it is useful for the life of society. Many

researchers fill in the gaps of this science with detailed data

which function as a corrective to the subjectivity and vagueness

of famous pioneers. The childhood ailments of any new disci-

pline persist, including a lack of general order and synthesis, as

does the tendency to splinter into individual schools, expound-

ing upon certain theoretical and practical achievements, at the

cost of limiting themselves in other areas.

At the same time, however, findings of a practical nature are

gleaned for the good of people who need help. The direct ob-

servations furnished by everyday work of therapists in the field

are more instrumental in forming scientific comprehension and

developing the language of contemporary psychology than any

academic experiments or deliberations undertaken in a labora-

tory. After all, life itself provides variegated conditions,

whether comfortable or tragic, which subject human individu-

als to experiments no scientist in any laboratory would ever

undertake. This very volume exists because of studies, in the

field, of inhuman experimentation upon entire nations.

Experience teaches a psychologist’s mind how to track an-

other person’s life quickly and effectively, discovering the

causes that conditioned the development of his personality and

behavior. Our minds can thus also reconstruct those factors

which influenced him, although he himself may be unaware of

them. In doing this, we do not, as a rule, use the natural struc-

ture of concepts, often referred to as “common sense” relied