From: Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sent: Thu 4/13/2006 3:07 PM
To: English Feedback; Ahmed Khalil Janabi
Subject: Feedback on: "SOS over Iraqi scientists" from Laura Knight-Jadczyk, France
Dear Mr. Janabi,
As I read your excellent essay this morning, I couldn't help but think that
you would be one of the few who might find the book "Political Ponerology:
The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes" to be a useful
source.
This book is by by Andrzej M. Lobaczewski, an elderly Polish psychologist
who contacted me about six months ago in an effort to get this work
published in the U.S. It has taken us that long to prepare the MS. The
blurb we have put on the back states accurately:
"The first manuscript of this book went into the fire five minutes before
the arrival of the secret police in Communist Poland. The second copy,
reassembled painfully by scientists working under impossible conditions of
repression, was sent via a courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never
acknowledged, no word was ever heard from the courier - the manuscript and
all the valuable data was lost. The third copy was produced after one of the
scientists working on the project escaped to America in the 1980s. Zbigniew
Brzezinski suppressed it.
"Political Ponerology: The scientific study of Evil adjusted for Political
Purposes was forged in the crucible of the very subject it studies.
Scientists living under an oppressive regime decide to study it clinically,
to study the founders and supporters of an evil regime to determine what
common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to
man.
"Shocking in its clinically spare descriptions of the true nature of evil,
poignant in the more literary passages where the author reveals the
suffering experienced by the researchers who were contaminated or destroyed
by the disease they were studying, this is a book that should be required
reading by every citizen of every country that claims a moral or humanistic
foundation. For it is a certainty that morality and humanism cannot long
withstand the predations of Evil. Knowledge of its nature, how it creates
its networks and spreads, how insidious is its guileful approach, is the
only antidote."
I would like to offer here some excerpts from the book that relate directly
to the subject of your essay:
Begin excerpts:
As already pointed out in the chapter introducing some indispensable
concepts, an understanding of human instinct is a key to understanding man;
however, a knowledge of said instinct's anomalies also represents a key to
understanding pathocracy. [...]
The essence of psychopathy may not, of course, be researched or elucidated.
Darkness is cast upon this matter by means of an intentionally devised
definition of psychopathy which includes various kinds of character
disorders, together with those caused by completely different and known
causes. [...]
We return once more to this system's peculiar psychological "genius" and its
self-knowledge. One might admire how the above mentioned definitions of
psychopathy effectively blocks the ability to comprehend phenomena covered
therein. [...]
We need to understand the nature of the macrosocial phenomenon as well as
that basic relationship and controversy between the pathological system and
those areas of science which describe psychological and psychopathological
phenomena. Otherwise, we cannot become fully conscious of the reasons for
such a government's long published behavior.
A normal person's actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, all
too often strike abnormal individuals as abnormal. For if a person with some
psychological deviations considers himself normal, which is of course
significantly easier if he possesses authority, then he would consider a
normal person different and therefore abnormal, whether in reality or as a
result of conversive thinking. That explains why such people's government
shall always have the tendency to treat any dissidents as "mentally
abnormal".
Operations such as driving a normal person into psychological illness and
the use of psychiatric institutions for this purpose take place in many
countries in which such institutions exist. Contemporary legislation binding
upon normal man's countries is not based upon an adequate understanding of
the psychology of such behavior, and thus does not constitute a sufficient
preventive measure against it.
Within the categories of a normal psychological world view, the motivations
for such behavior were variously understood and described: personal and
family accounts, property matters, intent to discredit a witness' testimony,
and even political motivations. Such defamatory suggestions are used
particularly often by individuals who are themselves not entirely normal,
whose behavior has driven someone to a nervous breakdown or to violent
protest. Among hysterics, such behavior tends to be a projection onto other
people of one's own self-critical associations. A normal person strikes a
psychopath as a naive, smart-alecky believer in barely comprehensible
theories; calling him "crazy" is not all that far away. [...]
The abuse of psychiatry for purposes we already know thus derives from the
very nature of pathocracy as a macrosocial psychopathological phenomenon.
After all, that very area of knowledge and treatment must first be degraded
to prevent it from jeopardizing the system itself by pronouncing a dramatic
diagnosis, and must then be used as an expedient tool in the hands of the
authorities. In every country, however, one meets with people who notice
this and act astutely against it. [...]
The pathocracy feels increasingly threatened by this area whenever the
medical and psychological sciences make progress. After all, not only can
these sciences knock the weapon of psychological conquest right out of its
hands; they can even strike at its very nature, and from inside the empire,
at that.
A specific perception of these matters therefore bids the pathocracy to be
"ideationally alert" in this area. This also explains why anyone who is both
too knowledgeable in this area and too far outside the immediate reach of
such authorities should be accused of anything that can be trumped up,
including psychological abnormality. [...]
Psychopaths are conscious of being different from normal people. That is why
the "political system" inspired by their nature is able to conceal this
awareness of being different. They wear a personal mask of sanity and know
how to create a macrosocial mask of the same dissimulating nature. When we
observe the role of ideology in this macrosocial phenomenon, quite conscious
of the existence of this specific awareness of the psychopath, we can then
understand why ideology is relegated to a tool-like role: something useful
in dealing with those other naive people and nations. [...]
Pathocrats know that their real ideology is derived from their deviant
natures, and treat the "other" - the masking ideology - with barely
concealed contempt. [...]
The main ideology succumbs to symptomatic deformation, in keeping with the
characteristic style of this very disease and with what has already been
stated about the matter.
The names and official contents are kept, but another, completely different
content is insinuated underneath, thus giving rise to the well known double
talk phenomenon within which the same names have two meanings: one for
initiates, one for everyone else. The latter is derived from the original
ideology; the former has a specifically pathocratic meaning, something which
is known not only to the pathocrats themselves, but also is learned by
those people living under long-term subjection to their rule.
Doubletalk is only one of many symptoms. Others are the specific facility
for producing new names which have suggestive effects and are accepted
virtually uncritically, in particular outside the immediate scope of such a
system's rule. We must thus point out the paramoralistic character and
paranoidal qualities frequently contained within these names. The action of
paralogisms and paramoralisms in this deformed ideology becomes
comprehensible to us based on the information presented in Chapter IV.
Anything which threatens pathocratic rule becomes deeply immoral. [...]
This privileged class of deviants feels permanently threatened by the
"others", i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats
entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return
to the system of normal man. ...
If the laws of normal man were to be reinstated, they and theirs could be
subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their
psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and
life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable
of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for
them becomes a moral imperative. Such a threat must be battled by means of
any and all psychological and political cunning implemented with a lack of
scruples with regard to those other "inferior-quality" people that can be
shocking in its depravity. ...
Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society
of normal people, as well as by other countries wherein various forms of
the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is
therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be". ....
Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of the
majority of normal people becomes, for the pathocrats, a "biological"
necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and
including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and
debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power
jeopardizing pathocrats rule: the sons of normal man sent out to fight for
an illusionary "noble cause." Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be
decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation
faithful to the pathocracy and ever willing to go to their deaths to
protect it. ...
Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the
use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the
systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority
a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the
country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the
normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop
watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention
and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses
must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist
strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what
is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be
endured. The latter factor - creating conditions of poverty and hardship -
effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part
of the society of normal people.
The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this
alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly
elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not
from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology.1 Whenever this
phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most
demonstrative quality.
End quoted excerpts.
The value of the clinical observations of someone who has been there, done
that, can't be overestimated, I think.
I will be happy to send you a review copy upon request.
Best Regards,
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
