Political ponerology is a concept popularized by

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

psychiatrist Andrzej Łobaczewski.Łobaczewski, Andrzej, ''Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes'' (Grande Prairie: Red Pill Press, 2006, ), p. 22. Łobaczewski advocated using the fields of psychology, sociology, philosophy, and history to account for such phenomena as

aggressive war A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. Wars without international legality (i.e. not out of self-defense nor sanc ...

, ethnic cleansing,

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

, and despotism.

Andrzej Łobaczewski and early research group

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Łobaczewski worked for the Polish

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...

, an underground Polish resistance organization. After the war, he studied at Jagiellonian University under professor of psychiatry Edward Brzezicki.Łobaczewski (2006), p. 96. Łobaczewski's class was the last to receive an education uninfluenced by Soviet ideology and censorship, after which psychiatry was restricted to

Pavlovian Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learn ...

concepts. The study of

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

and

psychopathy Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have bee ...

was forbidden.

Psychopathology and politics

Łobaczewski adopted the term " ponerology", which is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word ''poneros'', from the branch of

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

dealing with the study of

evil Evil, in a general sense, is defined as the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is general ...

. According to Łobaczewski, all societies fluctuate between "happy times" and "unhappy times". During happy times the privileged classes enjoy prosperity and suppress advanced psychological knowledge of psychopathological influence in the corridors of power. Though happy, these times are not necessarily morally advanced as the privileged classes' prosperity or happiness may be premised on the oppression or exploitation of others. To block out such inconvenient truths (the voice of conscience) the privileged use 'conversive thinking', which means changing the outcome of the reasoning process to a more convenient outcome. This is accompanied by a rise in egotism and emotionalism. This growing 'hysteria' of the privileged classes ( emotionalism,

egotism Egotism is defined as the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself and generally features an inflated opinion of one's personal features and importance distinguished by a person's amplified vision of one's self and self-importanc ...

and conversive thinking) spreads across society over several generations. National hysteria is a natural cycle and forms a sine-wave almost 200 years long. Hysteria causes people to lose the ability to differentiate between psychologically healthy and pathological individuals. In this environment the behavior of 'characteropaths', or individuals with slight brain tissue damage (e.g. from toxic substances, viruses, difficult births, pathological parenting) is accepted as normal and this acts as a gateway to normalizing the behavior of those with genetic deviations, including psychopathy. Finally, near the point of maximum hysteria society becomes polarized and paralyzed and the most pathologically egotistical of all 'spellbinders' can come to power. The spellbinder worsens the psychological health of those under his or her influence. This may be the beginning of a ' pathocracy' (though it's not inevitable) in which individuals with biologically based psychopathology, including

personality disorders Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the individual's culture ...

(especially

) occupy positions of power and influence. The spellbinder hides behind an 'ideological mask', a belief system that he uses to gain power. ''Any'' belief system can be used as an ideological mask including religion. Psychopaths have no problems wearing personal masks or ideological masks and are accepted as normal within the spellbinder's movement. A network of psychopaths gradually begins to dominate, and they begin to eliminate the brain-tissue damaged and those who genuinely believe in the ideology. At a certain point the minority block of psychopaths has a showdown with all those they've usurped. A full blown-pathocracy is known as a

totalitarian Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...

state and characterized by a government turned against its own people. A pathocracy may emerge when a society is insufficiently guarded against the typical and inevitable minority of such abnormal pathology, which Łobaczewski asserts is caused by biology or genetics. He argues that in such cases these individuals infiltrate an institution or state, prevailing moral values are perverted into their opposite, and a coded language like Orwell's

doublethink Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy. ...

circulates into the mainstream, using paralogic and paramoralism in place of genuine logic and morality. There are various identifiable stages of pathocracy described by Łobaczewski. Ultimately pathocracy dies because the pathological are promoted to positions of power, even though they have little or no talent or abilities. The root of healthy social morality, according to Łobaczewski, is contained in the congenital instinctive infrastructure in the vast majority of the population, and while some in the normal population are more susceptible to pathocratic influence and become its lackeys, the majority instinctively resist. During unhappy times the intelligentsia and society at large can recover real values to resolve the new social order along mentally healthier lines.

References and notes

External links

Political Ponerology: Andrew M. Lobaczewski - Ponerology.com
Majority–minority relations Political theories Psychopathology Sociological terminology {{sociology-stub

Andrzej Łobaczewski and early research group

Psychopathology and politics

See also

References and notes

External links