Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
our first teacher; it stays with us everywhere throughout our
lives. Upon this defective instinctive substratum, the deficits of
higher feelings and the deformities and impoverishments in
psychological, moral, and social concepts develop in corre-
spondence with these gaps.
Our natural world of concepts – based upon species in-
stincts as described in an earlier chapter - strikes the psycho-
path as a nearly incomprehensible convention with no justifica-
tion in their own psychological experience. They think that
customs and principles of decency are a foreign convention
invented and imposed by someone else, (“probably by priests”)
silly, onerous, sometimes even ridiculous. At the same time,
however, they easily perceive the deficiencies and weaknesses
of our natural language of psychological and moral concepts in
a manner somewhat reminiscent of the attitude of a contempo-
rary psychologist—except in caricature.
The average intelligence of the psychopath, especially if
measured via commonly used tests, is somewhat lower than
that of normal people, albeit similarly variegated. Despite the
wide variety of intelligence and interests, this group does not
contain examples of the highest intelligence, nor do we find
technical or craftsmanship talents among them. The most gifted
members of this kind may thus achieve accomplishments in
those sciences which do not require a correct humanistic world
view or practical skills. (Academic decency is another matter,
however.) Whenever we attempt to construct special tests to
measure “life wisdom” or “socio-moral imagination”, even if
the difficulties of psychometric evaluation are taken into ac-
count, individuals of this type indicate a deficit disproportion-
ate to their personal IQ.
In spite of their deficiencies in normal psychological and
moral knowledge, they develop and then have at their disposal
a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a
natural world view. They learn to recognize each other in a
crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of
the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also
53 What’s missing in psychopaths are the qualities that people depend on for
living in social harmony. [Editor’s note.]
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become conscious of being different from the world of those
other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain
distance, like a para-specific variety. Natural human reactions -
which often fail to elicit interest to normal people because they
are considered self-evident - strike the psychopath as strange
and, interesting, and even comical. They therefore observe us,
deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts.
They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect
heartless experiments. The suffering and injustice they cause
inspire no guilt within them, since such reactions from others
are simply a result of their being different and apply only to
“those other” people they perceive to be not quite conspecific.
Neither a normal person nor our natural world view can fully
conceive nor properly evaluate the existence of this world of
different concepts.
A researcher into such phenomena can glimpse the deviant
knowledge of the psychopath through long-term studies of the
personalities of such people, using it with some difficulty, like
a foreign language. As we shall see below, such practical skill
becomes rather widespread in nations afflicted by that macro-
social pathological phenomenon wherein this anomaly plays
the inspiring role.
A normal person can learn to speak their conceptual lan-
guage even somewhat proficiently, but the psychopath is never
able to incorporate the world view of a normal person, although
they often try to do so all their lives. The product of their ef-
forts is only a role and a mask behind which they hide their
deviant reality.
Another myth and role they often play, albeit containing a
grain of truth in relation to the “special psychological knowl-
edge” that the psychopath acquires regarding normal people,
would be the psychopaths’ brilliant mind or psychological gen-
ius; some of them actually believe in this and attempt to insinu-
ate this belief to others.
In speaking of the mask of psychological normality worn by
such individuals (and by similar deviants to a lesser extent), we
should mention the book The Mask of Sanity; by Hervey
Cleckley, who made this very phenomenon the crux of his
reflections. A fragment:
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Let us remember that his typical behavior defeats what ap-
pear to be his own aims. Is it not he himself who is most
deeply deceived by his apparent normality? Although he de-
liberately cheats others and is quite conscious of his lies, he
appears unable to distinguish adequately between his own
pseudointentions, pseudoremorse, pseudolove, etc., and the
genuine responses of a normal person. His monumental lack
of insight indicates how little he appreciates the nature of his
disorder. When others fail to accept immediately his “word of
honor as a gentleman”, his amazement, I believe, is often
genuine. His subjective experience is so bleached of deep
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
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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.]
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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.
Many psychopathic Don Juans are able to play the lover’s role
well enough for their partners to accept it in good faith. After
the wedding, feelings which really never existed are replaced
by egoism, egotism, and hedonism. Religion, which teaches
love for one’s neighbor, also strikes them as a similar fairytale
good only for children and those different “others”.
One would expect them to feel guilty as a consequence of
their many antisocial acts, however their lack of guilt is the
result of all their deficits, which we have been discussing
here.57 The world of normal people whom they hurt is incom-
prehensible and hostile to them, and life for the psychopath is
the pursuit of its immediate attractions, moments of pleasure,
and temporary feelings of power. They often meet with failure
along this road, along with force and moral condemnation from
the society of those other incomprehensible people.
In their book Psychopathy and Delinquency, W. and J.
McCord say the following about them:
57 Robert Hare says, “What I thought was most interesting was that for the
first time ever, as far as I know, we found that there was no activation of the
appropriate areas for emotional arousal, but there was over-activation in other
parts of the brain, including parts of the brain that are ordinarily devoted to
language. Those parts were active, as if they were saying, ‘Hey, isn’t that
interesting.’ So they seem to be analyzing emotional material in terms of its
linguistic or dictionary meaning. There are anomalies in the way psychopaths
process information. It may be more general than just emotional information.
In another functional MRI study, we looked at the parts of the brain that are
used to process concrete and abstract words. Non-psychopathic individuals
showed increased activation of the right anterior/superior temporal cortex.
For the psychopaths, that didn't happen.”
Hare and his colleagues then conducted an fMRI study using pictures of
neutral scenes and unpleasant homicide scenes. “Non-psychopathic offenders
show lots of activation in the amygdala [to unpleasant scenes], compared
with neutral pictures,” he points out. “In the psychopath, there was nothing.
No difference. But there was overactivation in the same regions of the brain
that were overactive during the presentation of emotional words. It’s like
they're analyzing emotional material in extra-limbic regions.” ( Psychopathy
vs. Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy: A Discussion by Robert
Hare; crimelibrary.com)
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The psychopath feels little, if any, guilt. He can commit
the most appalling acts, yet view them without remorse. The
Psychopath has a warped capacity for love. His emotional re-
lationships, when they exist, are meager, fleeting, and de-
signed to satisfy his own desires. These last two traits, guilt-
lessness and lovelessness, conspicuously mark the psychopath
as different from other men. 58
The problem of a psychopath’s moral and legal responsibil-
ity thus remains open and subject to various solutions, fre-
quently summary or emotional, in various countries and cir-
cumstances. It remains a subject of discussion whose solution
does not appear possible within the framework of the presently
accepted principles of legal thought.
