A book about psychopathy and politics entitled Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil as adapted for political purposes is soon to be published. The author, Andrew M. Lobaczewski, is a Polish psychologist. Now 84, he was part of a secret research project in Eastern Europe under communist rule collecting data from his clinical work.
He noticed a high correlation between acts we would classify as "evil" and pathologies that were able to be clinically diagnosed in the perpetrators.
One of the points that Lobaczewski makes is that psychopaths are aware of their difference from normal people. They have a certain special knowledge that comes from their study of us, and they are experts in manipulation. Moreover, the smarter ones work together to orient social movements and whole societies when they come to power in the direction of pathological values.
Different pathological types play different roles at different moments in the development of a social movement, until, at the end, the essential psychopaths have taken over control. Lobaczewski looks at how these different types work together. His analysis suggests that the dominant ideology that brings the pathocracy to power is less important than the pathological underpinnings, which is why fascism, communism, and, more and more, democracies, share the same dynamic.
The present version contains only such statistical data which had been memorized due to frequent use, or which could be reconstructed with satisfactory precision. […] I also nurse the hope that this work may reach a wider audience and make available some useful scientific data which may serve as a basis for comprehension of the contemporary world and its history. It may also make it easier for readers to understand themselves, their neighbors, and other nations.
Who produced the knowledge and performed the work summarized within the pages of this book? It is a joint endeavor containing not only my efforts, but also representing the work of many researchers…
The author worked in Poland far away from active political and cultural centers for many years. That is where I undertook a series of detailed tests and observations which were to be combined within the resulting generalisations in order to produce an overall introduction for an understanding of the macro-social phenomenon surrounding us. The name of the person expected to effect this synthesis was a secret, as was understandable and necessary given the time and the situation. I would very occasionally receive anonymous summaries of the results of tests from Poland and Hungary. A few data were published, as it raised no suspicions that a specialized work was being compiled, and these data could still be located today.
The expected synthesis of this work did not occur. All my contacts became inoperative as a result of the secret arrests of researchers in the early sixties. The remaining scientific data in my possession were very incomplete, albeit priceless in value. It took many years of lonely work to weld these fragments into a coherent whole, filling the lacunae with my own experience and research.
My research on essential psychopathy and its exceptional role in the macro-social phenomenon was conducted concurrently with or shortly after that of others. Their conclusions reached me later and confirmed my own. The most characteristic item in my work is the general concept for a new scientific discipline named “ponerology.”[…]
You may read some more excerpts here:
http://ponerology.blogspot.com/...