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

ity to understand or evaluate that ideology and its original con-

tents or to effect proper classification of the phenomenon, per

se. This error is not semantic; it is the keystone of all other

comprehension errors regarding such phenomena, rendering us

intellectually helpless, and depriving us of our capacity for

purposeful, practical action.

This error is based upon compatible propaganda elements of

incompatible social systems. This has, unfortunately, become

much too common and is reminiscent of the very first clumsy

attempts to classify mental diseases according to the systems of

delusions manifested by the patients. Even today, people who

202

PATHOCRACY

have not received training in this field will consider a sick per-

son who manifests sexual delusions to be crazy in this area, or

someone with religious delusions to be a “religious maniac”.

The author has even encountered a patient who insisted that he

had become the object of cold and hot rays (paresthesia) on the

basis of a special agreement concluded by the U.S.A. and the

U.S.S.R.

As early as the end of the nineteenth century, famous pio-

neers of contemporary psychiatry correctly distinguished be-

tween the disease and the patient’s system of delusions. A dis-

ease has its own etiological causes, whether determined or not,

and its own pathodynamics and symptomatics which distin-

guish its nature. Various delusional systems can become mani-

fest within the same disease, and similar systems can appear in

various diseases. The delusions, which have sometimes become

so systemic that they convey the impression of an actual story,

originate in the patient’s nature and intelligence, especially in

the imaginations of the environment within which he grew up.

These can be disease-induced caricaturizations of his former

political and social convictions. After all, every mental illness

has its particular style of deforming human minds, producing

nuanced but characteristic differences known for some time to

psychiatrists, and which help them render a diagnosis.

Thus deformed, the world of former fantasies is put to work

for a different purpose: concealing the dramatic state of the

disease from one’s own consciousness and from public opinion

for as long as possible. An experienced psychiatrist does not

attempt premature disillusionment of such a delusional system;

that would provoke the patient’s suicidal tendencies. The doc-

tor’s main object of interest remains the disease he is trying to

cure. There is usually insufficient time to discuss a patient’s

delusions with him unless it becomes necessary for reasons of

the safety of said patient and other people. Once the disease has

been cured, however, psychotherapeutic assistance in reinte-

grating the patient into the world of normal thought is defi-

nitely indicated.

If we effect a sufficiently penetrating analysis of the phe-

nomenon of pathocracy and its relationship to its ideology, we

are faced with a clear analogy to the above described relation-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

203

ship now familiar to all psychiatrists. Some differences will

appear later in the form of details and statistical data, which

can be interpreted both as a function of the above-mentioned

characteristic style of caricaturizing an ideology, pathocracy

effects, and as a result of the macrosocial character of the phe-

nomenon.

As a counterpart of disease, pathocracy has its own etiologi-

cal factors which make it potentially present in every society,

no matter how healthy. It also has its own pathodynamic proc-

esses which are differentiated as a function of whether the

pathocracy in question was born in that particular country

(primary pathocracy), was artificially infected in the country by

some other system of the kind, or was imposed by force.

We have already sketched above the ponerogenesis and

course of such a macrosocial phenomenon in its primary form,

intentionally refraining from mentioning any particular ideol-

ogy. We shall soon address the other two courses mentioned

above.

The ideology of pathocracy is created by caricaturizing the

original ideology of a social movement in a manner character-

istic of that particular pathological phenomenon. The above-

mentioned hysteroidal states of societies also deform the con-

temporary ideologies of the times in question, using a style

characteristic for them. Just as doctors are interested in disease,

the author has become primarily interested in the pathocratic

phenomenon and the analysis thereof. In a similar manner, the

primary concern of those people who have assumed responsi-

bility for the fate of nations should be curing the world of this

heretofore mysterious disease. The proper time will come for

critical and analytical attitudes toward ideologies which have

become the “delusional systems” of such phenomena during