Introduction to Psychopaths and Ponerology

A video collaboration with Notes From The Past

Notes From The Past created this image of Dr. Lobaczewski based on one of the few photographs of him.

This article is a transcript of a new video by Notes From The Past. We collaborated on the text (which is largely adapted from my interview with Unbekoming), but the video is all Notes From The Past. I think they did a great job, so head on over to their Substack to check it out:

Introduction to Psychopaths and Ponerology

And don’t forget to subscribe to Notes From The Past. They have videos on a range of topics, including a handful on communist history you won’t learn in school. Now, on to the transcript:

Psychopaths & Political Ponerology

What in the world is going on today? You could be forgiven for thinking the inmates have taken over the asylum! For this, it seems, is exactly what’s happening. As inexplicable as today’s events may be, an obscure book written by a Polish scientist during the Cold War reveals what’s really going on.

We know them by many names: psychopaths, sociopaths, malignant narcissists, sadists, Machiavellians, pathological liars, human predators. At least once in your life you’re bound to encounter one. And too often we are caught unawares of these malicious chameleons!

Psychopaths are so skilled at manipulating that you are unlikely to realize you're being controlled, and those around you may even be convinced that you're the problem. The psychopath will engineer situations to make you appear suspicious. They will provoke you into having outbursts making you look crazy or unstable. They might even convince you that you are the crazy one. After all, no one believes you, and you’re not even sure what’s happening or why. Meanwhile, the psychopath in this scenario gets precisely what he wants. Perhaps it's a job advancement, your life savings, or simply seeing you fall apart. Perhaps it is all three.

Doctor Andrew Lobaczewski, a Polish psychiatrist, wrote the ground-breaking book Political Ponerology, exposing the psychopathic personality that is so common in the political, institutional and media spheres. In his book he breaks down some of the techniques used by psychopaths, such as ‘reversive blockades’ (big lies), ‘projection’ (ascribing one’s own negative qualities, actions, or intentions to others), ‘paralogisms’ (logical-sounding but wrong statements), ‘paramoralisms’ (inversions of common morality meant to appeal to our innate moral sensibilities), ‘eliciting maladaptive responses’, and using ‘pathological egotism’ to terrorize and coerce. These all share something in common: they are designed to deceive and to influence others to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do.

Psychopaths can be motivated by a handful of values (which have been summarized in the extensive research by Dr. Karen Mitchell): wealth, attention, status, to be seen as reliable, to achieve a legacy. Whether or not any given psychopath has one or more of these values, they will serve two key psychopathic traits: the “drive for control, power, dominance” and a sense of superiority, specialness or entitlement. They feel they deserve what you will give them, and they will shamelessly manipulate you to get it.

In this regard, Dr. Mitchell lists 25 tactics employed by the psychopath (most of which can be considered examples of the more general techniques Lobaczewski describes). Some of these tactics are:

• ‘pathological egotism’: using force, coercion and bullying to intimidate with an intent to create fear; this can also involve blackmail and bribes.

• ‘paralogisms’: dismissing, denying, and minimising to justify their actions or make excuses; they can use convoluted discussions; blocking, evading, and deflecting anything that may expose their real intentions and motivations.

• ‘paramoralisms’: this is the attack on the process, qualifications, experience and integrity of professionals who challenge them; by attempts at diminishing, degrading, disempowering, and discrediting those individuals.

• ‘projection’: the psychopath accuses a victim of their own nefarious deeds (otherwise known as ‘reverse attribution’), attributing their own evil to the hapless victim.

Some of the above are also ‘reversive blockades’, such as when a psychopath will deny doing something, blame another for something he has done, or lie about a perceived enemy. Regardless of the social scale, the same tactics are used: at the workplace, in the home, in the media, in big corporations, local councils or school boards, and so on.

Most of these manipulation tactics are designed to elicit maladaptive responses. The human dynamic at play here is this: we all have natural tendencies that, in ordinary circumstances, are useful. We give people the benefit of the doubt; it’s hard to believe that everyone is lying all the time, and life would be impossibly complex if that were the case. We also respond to certain threats with fear or violence—also essential to our personal and collective survival. However, each of these natural reactions can be elicited by deception. We can be made to trust untrustworthy people, or to fear or attack trustworthy ones.

Psychopaths are experts in human behavior and are masters at such manipulation. Without any internal constraint they can freely and deliberately create confusion and chaos; create a contrived sense of deep connection; elicit sympathy by pretending to be the victim; weaponize the justice system; ingratiate themselves to people in power; create and capitalize on divisiveness; manufacture public and private provocation; elicit a sense of obligation by doing things to secure leverage – all with unabashed virtuosity.

These are all exploitations of normal human responses that are otherwise harmless or helpful. You could say that psychopaths turn human nature against itself.

Psychopaths may be rapists, serial killers, paedophiles, abusive partners, and the like. But not all of them are lawbreakers. The intelligent ones, with a good degree of self-control, may be politicians, lawyers, doctors, priests, or professors. They cunningly cultivate a likable persona for the world, while making the lives of their targets miserable. What they all have in common are certain personality traits, and a set of manipulative, predatory tactics that they use to get what they want.

Politics

The study of such individuals and the situations they create is called ‘ponerology’ – the study of evil. When such individuals enter the political realm, which they often do, we are then talking about ‘political’ ponerology, and this was the pioneering work of the Polish psychiatrist, Andrew Lobaczewski.

Just as people are confused and caught off guard when they encounter a psychopath in their everyday lives, entire populations are similarly manipulated when a gang of psychopaths take over their nation. Different disciplines will try to explain this phenomenon in terms of ideologies, economics, or religion and morality. But the root cause is the same: psychopathy.

Back in the early 1950s, Lobaczewski met a group of older scientists engaged in a secret research project to understand the nature of communism as they were experiencing it. A retired professor acted as a go-between for the group, passing on their anonymous research summaries to other members. But when all these contacts dried up—some probably quit under pressure, others may have been “liquidated” by the security services—Lobaczewski decided to take on the job. After a series of close calls with the authorities, and several arrests, Lobaczewski emigrated to New York, where he finished writing his book.

Alarmingly, Eastern Europeans living in the West today will say that the political atmosphere of their Soviet past is now happening in the West. Our nations are becoming pathocracies.

The true nature of totalitarianism isn’t the ideology that cloaks it. Such political policies are analogous to a psychopath's 'persona of normality'. The thing that made communism so evil wasn’t simply that its policies don’t work. It was the type of people who made it to the top (a process that may take decades or generations). It was the psychopaths who made communism the most violent and anti-human system of the twentieth century.

Psychopaths inherently believe they are superior and smarter than everyone else, whom they regard as suckers. This manifests as extreme grandiosity and an absolute refusal to accept personal responsibility. However, as they gain authority, they come to realize that they depend on others to accomplish things for them. “Who’s going to keep the electricity running and the income flowing? Who’s going to give us medical care when we need it?” In politics this means that even in a full-fledged pathocracy, leadership will attempt to structure the economy so that the masses achieve some minimum level of prosperity.

In the workplace, however, unless a corporate psychopath is identified and removed, the organization will fail. The incompetent will ascend, while the competent will either be fired, quit, or live completely demoralized lives, putting in the least amount of effort, thus diminishing the company's efficiency and profits. A single psychopath has the capacity to undermine an entire organization's morale. Imagine what a group of them can do to a country.

The Process

How do psychopaths transform a society? Psychopaths typically prefer to target weak victims. If they’re naive and ignorant about the nature of psychopathy, even better. In the same way, groups of organized psychopaths latch on to nations in a crisis – spiritual, economic, political, geopolitical. During times like this people become more emotionally unstable, suggestible, distrustful, and combative. If a psychopathic political group can exploit this condition to come to power legally or through a revolution, dark times are ahead. The system will transform from whatever it used to be into a totalitarian pathocracy.

Ponerization refers to the process by which a group becomes increasingly saturated with individuals suffering from various personality disorders. First, relatively normal but volatile individuals gain influence in the group. These are the fanatics who need an ideology to make their life meaningful and to convince the world that they are normal. They gravitate toward ideologies that have already been subtly (or not so subtly) distorted by a similar pathological worldview. Schizoids are often responsible for the development of such ideologies, which are highly idealistic and abstract but overly simplistic and lacking in a realistic perception and understanding of human nature. These ideologies are then weaponized as a means of gaining social dominance and forcing societies to accept the fanatics’ own distorted ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

From the outside looking in, this ideological transformation may be perceived as a progressive radicalization and caricaturization of the original ideals and values of a political or social movement. This is what occurred within the so-called social justice movement. The movement became increasingly emotionally unhinged, further removed from common sense, and pathologically egotistical, attempting to force its ideas onto others. Such movements succeed by gaining some measure of popular support, then further transforming and turning on those who initially supported the movement. Once that happens, the group is firmly under the control of the psychopaths who have wormed their way in and steered it in a direction conducive to their aims.

The key ingredients that facilitate the emergence and consolidation of pathocracy in a society are a primitive psychological worldview, the three egos (egoism, egotism, egocentrism), and low socio-occupational adaptation. But the most important is what Lobaczewski calls the first criterion of ponerogenesis. This is the inability to recognize pathological behavior as pathological. When we turn a blind eye, or make excuses, we allow such behavior to continue and to become pervasive, thus further facilitating the ponerization process. Lobaczewski also writes this:

Pathocracy will always find a positive response if some independent country is infected with an advanced state of hystericization, or if a small, privileged caste oppresses and exploits other citizens, keeping them backward and in the dark; anyone willing to treat the world can then be hounded, and his moral right to act be questioned.

As for the consolidation of pathocracy in a society, Lobaczewski only provided one option: violent negative selection. Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’, Mao’s ‘Red Terror’, Kim Il Sung’s purges. It is, however, an open question whether this type of violence is necessary to achieve the levels of pathocratic “purity” reached in the communist pathocracies of the 20th century, or if other means can achieve similar results.

Pathocracy in the West

The best examples of this in the 20th century were the communist revolutions and takeovers. Today, Western democracies seem to be undergoing the same “ponerization” process, insomuch as key institutions are becoming increasingly influenced and controlled by people with personality disorders.

One of Western democracy's major flaws is that it allows covert rule by minority cliques and lobbyists, potentially resulting in a type of "pathocracy by proxy" without the full societal transformation characteristics of the Soviet Union or China. Western society is experiencing a psychopathological degeneration of its governing classes, enabling the establishment of a psychopathic minority/proxy group. Simultaneously, a sort of "revolution from below" is taking place as "Woke" social justice ideologues sweep through education, corporations, and the media.

Already in the 1980s, Lobaczewski observed that America had a very low socio-occupational adjustment. This means that its “human capital” is not well exploited for the good of the nation. Incompetent people were elevated above their abilities, and the highly talented found themselves in positions below where they would otherwise naturally fit. This trend has worsened over the past 40 years, especially with the introduction of diversity, equity, and inclusion. America is also at the tail end of a “secular cycle,” with a high political stress index, becoming more gerontocratic, and confronting numerous crises - an ideal climate for advanced ponerization to take hold.

All pathological social movements have three central features: “the motivations of an aggrieved group, radical redress of the grievance, and the higher value of the individuals who have joined the organization.” Ann Krispenz and Alex Bertrams, in their study on dark personality traits, found the same features in their analysis of left-wing authoritarianism. As for right-wing authoritarianism, it’s probably the case that the core personality features are the same. When these people are railing against an existing system, they are considered ‘left-wing’. When they’re in power, they’re considered ‘right-wing’.

Normal People’s Reaction

The initial response to the imposition of pathocracy in the last century was shock, trauma, and distrust. But over the decades normal people became increasingly immune to the physical and emotional assault and fear of reprisals, learning to navigate the new reality. Normal people collectively developed a kind of secret language, rich in subtext and hidden meanings, that mirrors the pathocrat’s own double-speak. Peppered with bits of reappropriated propaganda and references to important historical events, it allows normal people to communicate in a manner below the sensitivity threshold of the censors, and with a good dose of humor. Pathocrats may be brutal psychopaths, but people eventually learn to laugh at them.

Adaptations may be seen as forms of compromise with the system. People learn how to be resourceful given the limitations imposed from above. This may include law-breaking: forging documents, buying and selling goods on the black market, bribing officials, illegal gatherings and publishing endeavours. They gain practical knowledge about how to deal with the authorities: what to say, who to say it to, how to say it without incurring their wrath, and who to turn to for help. All these features allow people to re-establish the social links that were broken by the imposition of pathocracy and create a “society of normal people” parallel to the pathocratic society.

Psychological immunity, if it could be administered on a mass scale, would have the effect of potentially correcting or at least mitigating some of the impact of a pathocratic regime. The type of psychological knowledge that produces such immunity naturally improves our psychological worldview and reduces egotism, because we have a better understanding of ourselves and others. It would also allow for a more natural understanding of competence and who should and shouldn’t be given positions of authority at all levels of the social structure.

The twentieth century proved, quite impressively, how pathocratic regimes can take over societies, disempowering, manipulating, controlling, and even eliminating ordinary people. By recognizing the traits, tactics, and processes employed by psychopaths, whether in personal relationships or political spheres, we empower ourselves to resist their influence and insidious reach into our lives. Armed with knowledge, we can foster a society that values genuine competence, empathy, and shared responsibility over egotism and manipulation. The path to preventing or reversing ponerization may be difficult, but by staying vigilant and informed, we may work to establish a world that rejects the chaos and control of psychopathic leadership in favour of the principles of humanity, integrity, and genuine community.