Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
tion is never quite perfect; thus some deficits in skill and proper
psychological processes can be detected in even cases of very
small damage by using the appropriate tests. Specialists are
aware of the variegated causes for the origin of such damage,
including trauma and infections. We should point out here that
the psychological results of such changes, as we can observe
many years later, are more heavily dependent upon the location
of the damage itself in the brain mass, whether on the surface
or within, than they are upon the cause which brought them
about. The quality of these consequences also depends upon
when they occurred in the person’s lifetime. Regarding patho-
logical factors of ponerogenic processes, perinatal or early
infant damages have more active results than damages which
occurred later.
In societies with highly developed medical care, we find
among the lower grades of elementary school (when tests can
be applied), that 5 to 7 per cent of children have suffered brain
tissue lesions which cause certain academic or behavioral diffi-
culties. This percentage increases with age. Modern medical
care has contributed to a quantitative decrease in such phenom-
ena, but in certain relatively uncivilized countries and during
historical times, indications of difficulties caused by such
changes are and have been more frequent.
Epilepsy and its many variations constitute the oldest
known results of such lesions; it is observed in a relatively
small number of persons suffering such damage. Researchers in
these matters are more or less unanimous in believing that
Julius Caesar, and then later Napoleon Bonaparte, had epileptic
seizures. Those were probably instances of vegetative epilepsy
caused by lesions lying deep within the brain, near the vegeta-
tive centers. This variety does not cause subsequent dementia.
The extent to which these hidden ailments had negative effects
upon their characters and historical decision-making, or played
a ponerogenic role, can be the subject of a separate study and
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evaluation of great interest. In most cases, however, epilepsy is
an evident ailment, which limits its role as a ponerogenic fac-
tor.
In a much larger segment of the bearers of brain tissue dam-
age, the negative deformation of their characters grows in the
course of time. It takes on variegated mental pictures, depend-
ing upon the properties and localization of these changes, their
time of origin, and also the life conditions of the individual
after their occurrence. We will call such character disorders –
characteropathies. Some characteropathies play an outstanding
role as pathological agents in the processes of the genesis of
evil. Let us thus characterize these most active ones.
Characteropathies reveal a certain similar quality, if the
clinical picture is not dimmed by the coexistence of other men-
tal anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in
practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species’ natural
psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinc-
tive and affective responses, which are natural, albeit often
insufficiently controlled. The experience of people with such
anomalies grows in the medium of the normal human world to
which they belong by nature. Thus their different way of think-
ing, their emotional violence, and their egotism find relatively
easy entry into other people’s minds and are perceived within
the categories of the everyday world. Such behavior on the part
of persons with such character disorders traumatizes the minds
and feelings of normal people, gradually diminishing the ability
of the normal person to use their common sense. In spite of
their resistance, victims of the characteropath become used to
the rigid habits of pathological thinking and experiencing. If
the victims are young people, the result is that the personality
suffers abnormal development leading to its malformation.
Characteropaths and their victims thus represent pathological,
ponerogenic factors which, by their covert activity, easily en-
gender new phases in the eternal genesis of evil, opening the
door to a later activation of other factors which thereupon take
over the main role.
A relatively well-documented example of such an influence
of a characteropathic personality on a macrosocial scale is the
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last German emperor, Wilhelm II.35 He was subjected to brain
trauma at birth. During and after his entire reign, his physical
and psychological handicap was hidden from public knowl-
edge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body
were handicapped. As a boy, he had difficulty learning gram-
mar, geometry, and drawing, which constitute the typical triad
of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He de-
veloped a personality with infantile features and insufficient
control over his emotions, and also a somewhat paranoid way
of thinking which easily sidestepped the heart of some impor-
tant issues in the process of dodging problems.
Militaristic poses and a general’s uniform overcompensated
for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his short-
comings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and
factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chan-
cellor had to go, that cunning and ruthless politician who had
been loyal to the monarchy and had built up Prussian power.
After all, he was too knowledgeable about the prince’s defects
and had worked against his coronation. A similar fate met other
overly critical people, who were replaced by persons with
lesser brains, more subservience, and, sometimes, discreet psy-
chological deviations. Negative selection took place.
Since the common people are prone to identify with the em-
peror, and through the emperor, with a system of government,
the characteropathic material emanating from the Kaiser re-
sulted in many Germans being progressively deprived of their
ability to use their common sense. An entire generation grew
up with psychological deformities regarding feeling and under-
standing moral, psychological, social and political realities. It is
35 The eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, Wilhelm symbolized his era and
the nouveaux riche aspects of the German empire. The kaiser suffered from a
birth defect that left his left arm withered and useless. It was claimed that he
overcame this handicap, but the effort to do so left its mark, and despite
efforts of his parents to give him a liberal education, the prince became im-
bued with religious mysticism, militarism, anti-semitism, the glorification of
power politics. Some have claimed that his personality displayed elements of
a narcissistic personality disorder. Bombastic, vain, insensitive, and pos-
sessed with grandiose notions of divine right rule, his personality traits paral-
leled those of the new Germany: strong, but off balance; vain, but insecure;
intelligent, but narrow; self-centered yet longing for acceptance. [Editor’s
note.]
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extremely typical that in many German families having a
member who was psychologically not quite normal, it became
a matter of honor (even excusing nefarious conduct) to hide
this fact from public opinion, and even from the awareness of
close friends and relatives. Large portions of German society
ingested psychopathological material, together with that unreal-
istic way of thinking wherein slogans take on the power of
arguments and real data are subjected to subconscious selec-
tion.
This occurred during a time when a wave of hysteria was
growing throughout Europe, including a tendency for emotions
to dominate and for human behavior to contain an element of
histrionics. How individual sober thought can be terrorized by
a behavior colored with such material was evidenced particu-
larly by women. This progressively took over three empires
and other countries on the mainland.
To what extent did Wilhelm II contribute to this, along with
two other emperors whose minds also were incapable of taking
in the actual facts of history and government? To what extent
were they themselves influenced by an intensification of hys-
teria during their reigns? That would make an interesting topic
of discussion among historians and ponerologists.
International tensions increased; Archduke Ferdinand was
assassinated in Sarajevo. Unfortunately, neither the Kaiser nor
any other governmental authority in his country were in pos-
session of their reason. What dominated the subsequent events
was Wilhelm’s emotional attitude and the stereotypes of
thought and action inherited from the past. War broke out.
General war plans that had been prepared earlier, and which
had lost their relevance under the new conditions, unfolded
more like military maneuvers. Even those historians familiar
with the genesis and character of the Prussian state, including
its ideological subjugation of individuals to the authority of
king and emperor, and its tradition of bloody expansionism,
intuit that these situations contained some activity of an un-
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comprehended fatality which eludes an analysis in terms of
historical causality.36
Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious
question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fue-
hrer a clownish psychopath who made no bones about his
pathological vision of superman rule? Under his leadership,
Germany then unleashed a second criminal and politically ab-
surd war. During the second half of this war, highly-trained
army officers honorably performed inhuman orders, senseless
from the political and military point of view, issued by a man
whose psychological state corresponded to the routine criteria
for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Any attempt to explain the things that occurred during the
first half of our century by means of categories generally ac-
cepted in historical thought leaves behind a nagging feeling of
inadequacy. Only a ponerological approach can compensate for
this deficit in our comprehension, as it does justice to the role
of various pathological factors in the genesis of evil at every
social level.
The German nation, fed for a generation on pathologically
altered psychological material, fell into a state comparable to
what we see in certain individuals raised by persons who are
both characteropathic and hysterical. Psychologists know from
experience how often such people then let themselves commit
acts which seriously hurt others. A psychotherapist needs a
good deal of persistent work, skill, and prudence in order to
enable such a person to regain his ability to comprehend psy-
chological problems with more naturalistic realism and to util-
ize his healthy critical faculties in relation to his own behavior.
The Germans inflicted and suffered enormous damage and
pain during the first World War; they thus felt no substantial
guilt and even thought that they were the ones who had been
wronged. This is not surprising as they were behaving in ac-
cordance with their customary habit, without being aware of its
pathological causes. The need for this pathological state to be
concealed in heroic garb after a war in order to avoid bitter
36 An interesting comparison is the regime of George W. Bush and the Neo-
conservatives. It follows, almost point by point, the history of the Kaiser in
Germany. [Editor’s note.]
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disintegration became all too common. A mysterious craving
arose, as if the social organism had managed to become ad-
dicted to some drug. The hunger was for more pathologically
modified psychological material, a phenomenon known to psy-
chotherapeutic experience. This hunger could only be satisfied
by another similarly pathological personality and system of
government. A characteropathic personality opened the door
for leadership by a psychopathic individual. We shall return
later in our deliberations to this pathological personality se-
quence, as it appears a general regularity in ponerogenic proc-
esses.
A ponerological approach facilitates our understanding of a
person who succumbs to the influence of a characteropathic
personality, as well as comprehension of macrosocial phenom-
ena caused by the contribution of such factors. Unfortunately,
relatively few such individuals can be served by appropriate
psychotherapy. Such behavior cannot be ascribed to nations
proudly defending their sovereignty without extreme reactions.
However, we may consider the solution of such problems by
means of the proper knowledge as a vision for the future.
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Paranoid character disorders: It is characteristic of para-
noid behavior for people to be capable of relatively correct
reasoning and discussion as long as the conversation involves
minor differences of opinion. This stops abruptly when the
partner’s arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas,
crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or forces them
to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before.
Such a stimulus unleashes upon the partner a torrent of pseudo-
logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which
always contain some degree of suggestion.
Utterances like these inspire aversion among cultivated and
