Political ponerology is a concept popularized by

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

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 Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, and

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

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, in contrast with the concept of a just war. Wars without international le ...

ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

, and

despotism In political science, despotism () is a government, form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute Power (social and political), power. Normally, that entity is an individual, the despot (as in an autocracy), but societies whi ...

Andrzej Łobaczewski and early research group

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Łobaczewski worked for the Polish

Home Army The Home Army (, ; 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) established in the ...

, an underground Polish resistance organization. After the war, he studied at

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...

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 respondent conditioning and Pavlovian conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food, a puff of air on the eye, a potential rival) is paired with a neutral stimulus (e.g. ...

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 Augustinians, Augustinian ...

and

psychopathy Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality, is a personality construct characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, along with bold, disinhibited, and egocentric traits. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity ...

was forbidden.

Psychopathology and politics

Łobaczewski adopted the term "

ponerology In theology, ponerology (from Greek πονηρός ''ponērós'', "evil") is the study of evil. Major subdivisions of the study are the nature of evil, the origin of evil, and evil in relation to the Divine Government. Karl Immanuel Nitzsch ou ...

", which is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

word ''poneros'', from the branch of

theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...

dealing with the study of

evil Evil, as a concept, is usually defined as profoundly immoral behavior, and it is related to acts that cause unnecessary pain and suffering to others. Evil is commonly seen as the opposite, or sometimes absence, of good. It can be an extreme ...

. 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#Value of importance and desire to be important, importance distinguished by a ...

and conversive thinking) spreads across society over several generations. National

hysteria Hysteria is a term used to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, female hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that the bas ...

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 not inevitable) in which individuals with biologically based psychopathology, including

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

(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 political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sph ...

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, hypocris ...

circulates into the mainstream, using

paralogic A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophisti ...

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 A birth defect is an abnormal condition that is present at childbirth, birth, regardless of its cause. Birth defects may result in disability, disabilities that may be physical disability, physical, intellectual disability, intellectual, or dev ...

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 {{Politics-stub

Andrzej Łobaczewski and early research group

Psychopathology and politics

See also

References and notes

External links