As adduced above, the anomaly distinguished as essential psychopathy inspires the overall phenomenon in a well-developed pathocracy and betrays biological analogies to the well known phenomenon called Daltonism, color-blindness or near-blindness as regard to red and green. For the purpose of an intellectual exercise, let us thus imagine that Daltonists have managed to take over power in some country and have forbidden the citizens from distinguishing these colors, thus eliminating the distinction between green (unripe) and ripe tomatoes. Special vegetable patch inspectors armed with pistols and pickets would patrol the areas to make sure the citizens picked not only the ripe tomatoes. Such inspectors could not, of course, be totally color-blind themselves (otherwise they could not exercise this extremely important function), They could not suffer more than near-blindness as regards these colors. However, they would have to belong to the clan of people made nervous by any discussion about colors.
With such authorities around, the citizens might even be willing to eat a green tomato and affirm quite convincingly that it was ripe. But once the severe inspectors left for some other garden far away enough, there would be the shower of comments it does not behoove me to adduce in a scientific work. The citizens would than pick nicely vine-ripened tomatoes, make a salad with cream, and add a few drops of rum for flavor.
May I suggest that all normal people whom fate has forced to live under pathocratic rule make the serving of a salad according to the above recipe into a symbolic custom. Any guest recognizing the symbol by its color and aroma will refrain from making any comments. Such a custom might hasten the reinstallation of a normal man’s system.
The pathological authorities are convinced that the appropriate pedagogical, indoctrinational, propaganda, and terrorist means can teach a person with a normal instinctive substratum, range of feelings, and basic intelligence to think and feel according to their own different fashion. This conviction is only slightly less unrealistic, psychologically speaking, than the belief that people able to see colors normally can be broken of this habit.
Actually, normal people cannot get rid of the characteristics with which the Homo sapiens species was endowed by its phylogenetic past. Such people will thus never stop feeling and perceiving psychological and socio-moral phenomena in much the same way their ancestors had been doing for hundreds of generations. Any attempt to make a society subjugated to the above phenomenon “learn” this different experiential manner imposed by pathological egotism is, in principle, fated for failure regardless of how many generations it might last. It does, however, call forth a series of improper psychological results which may give the pathocrats the appearance of success. However, it also provokes society to elaborate pinpointed, well-thought-out self-defense measures based on its cognitive and creative efforts.
Pathocratic leadership believes that it can achieve a state wherein those “other” people’s minds become dependent by means of the effects of their personality, perfidious pedagogical means, the means of mass-information, and psychological terror; such faith has a basic meaning for them. In their conceptual world, pathocrats consider it virtually self-evident that the “others” should accept their obvious, realistic, and simple way of apprehending reality. For some mysterious reason, though, the “others” wriggle out, slither away, and tell each other jokes. Someone must be responsible for this, pre-revolutionary oldsters, or some radio stations abroad. It thus becomes necessary to improve the methodology of action, find better “soul engineers” with a certain literary talent, and isolate society from improper literature and any foreign influence. Those experiences and intuitions whispering that this is a Sisyphean labor must be repressed from the field of consciousness.
The conflict is thus dramatic for both sides. The first feels insulted in its humanity, rendered obtuse, and forced to think in a manner contrary to healthy common sense. The other stifles the premonition that if this goal cannot be reached, sooner or later things will revert to normal man’s rule, including their vengeful lack of understanding of the pathocrats’ personalities. So if it does not work, it is best not to think about the future, just prolong the status quo by means of the above-mentioned efforts. Toward the end of this book, it will behoove us to consider the possibilities for untying this Gordian knot.
However, such a pedagogical system, rife with pathological egotisation and limitations, produces serious negative results, especially in those generations unfamiliar with any other conditions of life. Personality development is impoverished, particularly regarding the more subtle values widely accepted in societies. We observe the characteristic lack of respect for one’s own organism and the voice of nature and instinct, accompanied by brutalization of feelings and customs, to be explained away by a sense of injustice. The tendency to be morally judgmental in interpreting the behavior of those who caused one’s suffering sometimes leads to a demonological world view. At the same time, adaptation and resourcefulness within these different conditions become the object of recognition.
A person who has been the object of the effects of the egotistic behavior of pathological individuals for a long time becomes saturated with their characteristic psychological material to such an extent that we can thereupon frequently discern the kind of psychological anomalies which affected him. The personalities of former concentration-camp inmates have become saturated with generally psychopathic material ingested from camp commanders and tormentors, creating a phenomenon so widespread that it later becomes a primary motive of psychotherapy. Becoming aware of this makes it easier for them to throw off this burden and re-establish contact with the normal human world. In particular, being shown appropriate statistical data concerning the appearance of psychopathy in a given population facilitates their search for a calmer view of their nightmare years and a rebuilding of trust in their fellow man.
This kind of psychotherapy would be extremely useful for those people who need it most, but it has unfortunately proved too risky for a psychotherapist. Patients easily make connective transfers, unfortunately all too often correct, between the information learned during such therapy (particularly in the area of psychopathy) and the reality surrounding them under the rule of “popular democracy”. Former camp inmates are unhappily unable to hold their tongues in check, which causes intervention on the part of political authorities.
When American soldiers returned from North Vietnamese prison camps, many of them proved to have been subjected to indoctrination and other methods of influencing by pathological material. A certain degree of transpersonification appeared in many of these. In the U.S.A. this was called “programming” and outstanding psychotherapists proceeded to effect therapy for the purpose of deprogramming them. It turned out that they met with opposition and critical commentary concerning their skills, among other things. When I heard about this, I breathed a deep sigh and thought: Dear God, what interesting work that would make for a psychotherapist who understands such matters well.
The pathocratic world, the world of pathological egotism and terror, is so difficult to understand for people raised outside the scope of this phenomenon that they often manifest childlike naiveté, even if they studied psychopathology and are psychologists by profession. There are no real data in their behavior, advice, rebukes, and psychotherapy. That explains why their efforts are boring and hurtful and frequently come to naught. Their egotism transforms their good will into ill results.
If someone has personally experienced that reality, he considers people who have not progressed in understanding it within the same time frame to be simply presumptuous, sometimes even malicious. In the course of his experience and contact with this macro-social phenomenon, he has collected a certain amount of practical knowledge about the phenomenon and its psychology and learned to protect his own personality. This experience, unceremoniously rejected by “people who don’t understand anything”, becomes a psychological burden for him, forcing him to live within a narrow circle of persons whose experiences have been similar. Such a person should rather be treated as the bearer of valuable scientific data; understanding would constitute at least partial psychotherapy for him, and would simultaneously open the door to a comprehension of reality.
I would here like to remind psychologists that these kinds of experiences and their destructive effects upon the human personality are not unknown to scientific practice and experience. We often meet with patients requiring appropriate assistance: individuals raised under the influence of pathological, especially psychopathic, personalities who were forced with a pathological egotism to accept an abnormal way of thinking. Even an approximate determination of the type of pathological factors which operated upon him allow us to pinpoint psychotherapeutic measures. In practice we most frequently meet cases wherein such a pathological situation operated upon a patient’s personality in early childhood, as a result of which we must utilize long term measures and work very carefully, using various techniques, in order to help him develop his true personality.
Children under pathocratic rule are protected until school age. Then they meet with decent people who attempt to limit the destructive influences as much as possible. The most intense effects occur during adolescence and the ensuing time frame of intellectual maturation. This rescues the society of normal people from deeper deformations in personality development and widespread neurosis. This period remains within persistent memory and is thus amenable to insight, reflection, and disillusion. Such people’s psychotherapy would consist almost exclusively of utilizing the correct knowledge of the essence of the phenomenon.
Regardless of the social scale within which human individuals were forcibly reared by pathological persons, whether individual, group, societal, or macrosocial, the principles of psychotherapeutic action will thus be similar, and should be based upon data known to us, and an understanding of the psychological situation. Making a patient aware of the kind of pathological factors which affected him, and jointly understanding the results of such effects, is basic to such therapy. We do not utilize this method if, in an individual case, we have indications that the patient has inherited this factor. However, such limitations should not be consistent with regard to macrosocial phenomena affecting the welfare of entire nations.
Monkeys can't understand the basic fact that "destruction is easy and construction is extremely difficult".
