foofighter said:
In other words, more threats and paramoralistic nonsense.
I'm sure he doesn't think of what he is writing as "threats" or even "paramoralistic." I think that he is actually "sincere" in the sense that he "means well." The problem is, his thinking processes are so twisted that he can't ever reach truth and this can be due to several problems.
First of all, we note that Lobaczewski describes the schzoidal psychopath as having "good intentions." Here is the relevant excerpt:
Lobaczewski said:
Schizoidia: Schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy, [...]
Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species’ common features.
Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.
[...]
When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.
The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary� people. [...]
A schizoid’s ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children. Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider “proper� – i.e. “black or white� - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.
In spite of their typical deficits, or even an openly schizoidal declaration, their readers do not realize what the authors’ characters are really like. Ignorant of the true condition of the author, such uninformed readers tend to interpret such works in a manner corresponding to their own nature. The minds of normal people tend toward corrective interpretation due to the participation of their own richer, psychological world view.
At the same time, many other readers critically reject such works with moral disgust but without being aware of the specific cause. [...]
During stable times which are ostensibly happy, albeit dependent upon injustice to other individuals and nations, doctrinaire people believe they have found a simple solution to fix the world. Such a historical period is always characterized by an impoverished psychological world view, so that a schizoidally impoverished psychological world view does not stand out as odd during such times and is accepted as legal tender.
These doctrinaire individuals characteristically manifest a certain contempt with regard to moralists then preaching the need to rediscover lost human values and to develop a richer, more appropriate psychological world view.
Schizoid characters aim to impose their own conceptual world upon other people or social groups, using relatively controlled pathological egotism and the exceptional tenacity derived from their persistent nature. They are thus eventually able to overpower another individual’s personality, which causes the latter’s behavior to turn desperately illogical.
They may also exert a similar influence upon the group of people they have joined. They are psychological loners who then begin to feel better in some human organization, wherein they become zealots for some ideology, religious bigots, materialists, or adherents of an ideology with satanic features. If their activities consist of direct contact on a small social scale, their acquaintances generally just consider them to be eccentric, which limits their ponerogenic role. However, if they manage to hide their own personality behind the written word, their influence may poison the minds of society on a wide scale and for a long time. [...]
In spite of the fact that the writings of schizoidal authors contain the above described deficiency, or even an openly formulated schizoidal declaration which constitutes sufficient warning to specialists, the average reader accepts them not as a view of reality warped by this anomaly, but rather as an idea to which he should consider seriously based on his convictions and his reason. That is the first mistake.
The oversimplified pattern of ideas, devoid of psychological color and based on easily available data, tends to exert an intense attracting influence on individuals who are insufficiently critical, frequently frustrated as result of downward social adjustment, culturally neglected, or characterized by some psychological deficiencies of their own.
Such writings are particularly attractive to a hystericized society. Others who may read such writings will be immediately provoked to criticism based on their healthy common sense, though they also they fail to grasp the essential cause of the error: that it emerges from a biologically deviant mind.
Societal interpretation of such writings and doctrinaire declarations breaks down into main trifurcations, engendering divisiveness and conflict.
The first branch is the path of aversion, based on rejection of the contents of the work due to personal motivations, differing convictions, or moral revulsion. These reactions contain the component of a moralistic interpretation of pathological phenomena.
The second and third branches relate to two distinctly different apperception types among those persons who accept the contents of such works: the critically-corrective and the pathological.
The critically-corrective approach is taken by people whose feel for psychological reality is normal and they tend to incorporate the more valuable elements of the work. They then trivialize the obvious errors and fill in the missing elements of the schizoid deficiencies by means of their own richer world view. This gives rise to a more sensible, measured, and thus creative interpretation, but is cannot be completely free from the influence of the error frequently adduced above.
Pathological acceptance is manifested by individuals with psychological deficiencies of their own: diversiform deviations, whether inherited or acquired, as well as by many people bearing personality malformations or who have been injured by social injustice. That explains why this scope is wider than the circle drawn by direct action of pathological factors. Pathological acceptance of schizoidal writings or declarations by other deviants often brutalizes the authors’ concepts and promotes ideas of force and revolutionary means.
Now, note that I am not diagnosing Leif, though the description above sure is beginning to look like the "right shoe."
Note Leif's "relatively controlled pathological egotism" as well as his "exceptional tenacity." Then, of course, there is his contempt toward our attempts to "rediscover lost human values and to develop a richer, more appropriate psychological world view." Like I said, this description of Leif is firing on all cylinders!
Anyway, that is Lobaczewski's take on this type of individual. Let's look at a couple of other things.
Mouravieff makes a few remarks about two particular types of lies and liars:
Mouravieff said:
- Hypocrisy: the pretence of virtue, of praiseworthy sentiments, with the intent to deceive persons of good faith;
- The integral lie: this characterizes that person who, from a habit of lying and cheating on every occasion, ends by believing his own lies and thus loses all sense of truth.
These two last cases are the hardest to cure: hypocrisy, in fact, must be deeply rooted in the Personality of the human being to become in element of his behaviour. To overcome this tendency within oneself requires considerable and painful efforts. No fruitful esoteric work can be undertaken by anyone who has not first rid himself of this vice. It is dangerous for a hypocrite even to start searching for the Way, as he is condemned to fall in advance. It is the same for him who has become a prey to integral lying. Nevertheless, if these lies are not soiled with hypocrisy, meaning that if the intentional mythomaniac element is entirely lacking, this case is easier to cure than the preceding one.
It is anyway rather rare for persons suffering from these defects to become interested in esoteric teaching. Oriented towards the truth, this teaching exercises a strong repulsion on those who suffer from these mental anomalies.
Notice the exception he makes for the integral lie: the individual who has lied so long to himself that he believes his own lies - that this person CAN be helped, but the hypocrite, the deliberate liar, cannot.
Alice Miller talks about something that I think is similar. In her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (highly recommended), she writes:
One can only remember what has been consciously experienced. But the emotional world of a child with a narcissistic disturbance is itself the result of a selection, which has eliminated the most important elements. These early feelings, joined with the pain of not being able to understand what is going on that is part of the earliest period of childhood, are then consciously experienced for the first time during analysis.
The true self has been in "a state of noncommunication," as Winnicott said, because it had to be protected. The patient never needs to hide anything else so thoroughly, so deeply, and for so long a time as he has hidden his true self. ...
It would be wrong to understand Winnicott's words to mean that there is a fully developed true self hidden behind the false self. If that were so, there would be no narcissistic disturbance but a conscious self-protection. The important point is that the child does not know what he is hiding. ...People with narcissistic disturbances do not have an affectionate and empathic self-object. Therefore they are never overtaken by unexpected emotions, and will only admit those feelings that are accepted and approved by their inner censor, which is their parents' heir. ... The true self cannot communicate because it has remained unconscious and therefore undeveloped.
I think that the problem here is that Leif is totally unconscious of what he is doing. Whether this unconsciousness is a genetic condition that cannot be fixed, or whether it is due to the damage he suffered as a child, no one can tell. He can only find this out in therapy. The bottom line is: he is a manipulator of the first water whether he acknowledges it or not.
Miller gives a very good example of unconscious manipulation that is "well-meaning."
Alice Miller said:
A father, who as a child had often been frightened by the anxiety attacks of his periodically schizophrenic mother, without ever receiving an explanation, enjoyed telling his beloved small daughter gruesome stories. He laughed at her fears and afterward always comforted her with the words: "But it is only a made-up story,. You don't need to be scared, you are here with me." In this way he could manipulate his child's fear and have the feeling of being strong. His conscious wish was to give the child something valuable that he himself had been deprived of, namely protection, comfort, and explanations. But what he unconsciously handed on was his own childhood fear, the expectation of disaster, and the unanswered question (also from his childhood): Why does the person whom I love and who loves me frighten me so much? [...]
Heinrich Pestalozzi - who was fatherless from his sixth year onward and emotionally neglected despite the presence of his mother and of a nurse - had the idea of bringing up his only son according to Rousseau's methods... as a ten-year-old his son was considered to be mentally defective, caused Pestalozzi much pain and guilt feelings, and then died at the age of thirty. [...]
The more insight one gains into the unintentional and unconscious manipulation of children by their parents, the fewer illusions one has about the possibility of changing the world or of prophylaxis against neurosis.
It seems to me that, assuming his behavior is not genetic, that Leif has repressed a great deal of un-mastered aspects of his childhood suffering.
In examining this latest missive, we notice first of all that Leif fails to notice that is was not just Foofighter who felt threatened by his emails or that assessed them as psychologically intimidating. But then, of course, perhaps he did notice this and that is part of his reason for labeling any group that does not allow him to take over as a "cult." Remember that it is the schizoidal psychopath's intent to
impose their own conceptual world upon other people or social groups.
Going in still another direction, I shared this whole "drama" with a well-known psychologist and author with whom I correspond, who can certainly be said to be qualified to make an assessment, and received an interesting reply, from which I excerpt the following entertaining remarks:
I had to laugh (sympathetically) about your problem on your forum. That is
always the first sign of an Axis II disorder---the worldview of everything
normal is wrong. That's my red flag.
I have been LUCKY and have had very little problems with things like that.
I had a hate letter recently about my discussion of Bill Clinton as pathological
and had his picture next to other pathologicals (Scott Peterson, Woody
Allen, Bobby Brown) that the woman objected to. She didn't want a
'president' lumped together with other 'bad' people.
And I have had people threaten to turn me in to NAMI for suggesting
in my books that women should not date mentally ill persons. So I always tell
them to prove to me that their daughter or granddaughter has been encouraged
BY THEM to date and marry, lets say, a schizophrenic or a psychopath and I
will gladly remove my books from the shelves, but I want them to be the first
person to role model this open marriage of mental illness. I never hear back
from them after that!
Re: Leif's missive quoted above:
Leif Erlingsson said:
If you have an
ounce of reason left, talk to a third party - preferably one with law
skills - who does NOT have ties to SOTT - and ask this person to read
through everrything I have written to you and your friends, and what
you have written, and get a "second opinion" about your judgment of
me.
There's that red flag: he fails to take one "ounce" of responsibility.
That's the kicker. HE did NOTHING wrong!!! He didn't arrive on our forum and begin to defame us. He didn't accuse Foofighter and everyone here of being brainwashed, etc. He is, of course, "right," regardless of the discussion that has taken place on this thread. "because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary� people. " Also interesting that he suggests a LEGAL person, i.e. he doesn't seem to have a clue that what we are talking about is psychological intimidation and not a LEGAL issue though, certainly, a good legal eagle could read a definite threat in what he writes. This is an example of his "poor sense of psychological situation and reality".
Then, there is this:
Leif Erlingsson said:
Respect means respecting one another. I show you respect for example
by not telling the whole world your name, as you want to be anonymous.
You show me respect by not publishing private correspondence. But
wait, that correspondence has been published.
In other words, another subtle threat that is really more a paramoralistic twist that is highly suggestive.
All in all, an interesting online case study. I think it is time to close the thread.
