This brings to mind “Political Ponerology” by Andrew Lobaczewski. Lobaczewski worked as a psychologist in Soviet-dominated Poland. He and a few of his colleagues secretly—and dangerously—psychoanalyzed their society and concluded that their rulers were essential psychopaths. Essential psychopaths—like Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush—completely miss the ability to empathize with fellow human beings, due to their genetic inheritance. Most are male. Their natural vocation is to be predators, and their prey is the human society. As young children, their extremely egocentric and systematically evil behavior earns them punishments and admonishments. They quickly learn to don the so-called “Cleckley mask” of sanity, pretending to be psychologically normal. At the same time, they develop—understandably—an extreme frustration against what they perceive as the implacable tyranny of the psychologically normal majority. Not unlike gays and lesbians, they also develop a cunning ability to identify and recognize each other without being detected by normal people. If and when they band together, they can wreak extreme havoc, especially if they develop goals of ruling over the normal people and imposing “their” system of justice. Their “special knowledge” of their difference gives them an edge over the normal majority.

Essential psychopaths, once in power, use doublespeak to recruit their kin. One recent example is Lieberman’s call to strip some possible criminals from their U.S. citizenship. Normal people tend to interpret this using morality: “Lieberman suffers from a distorted vision of reality or fear of voters.” They will reject his idea or propose that it be modified, based on rational arguments. Essential psychopaths understand Lieberman’s doublespeak and react differently: “Lieberman is one of us; he’s got power; if we want power over these bad ‘normal’ people, let’s join him.”

Corporations that preach unbridled ambition—with unrealistic yet catchy slogans such as “anybody can reach the top through enough determination”—may very well be inviting essential psychopaths to join them and may have discrete human resources tools in place to make them go up the ranks.

According to Lobaczewski, one important goal of the Soviet propaganda—understood by neither the normal Soviet people nor by Westerners—was to “fish” essential psychopaths out of the general public, so they could be invited to join the ruling class.

Lobaczewski’s editor also wonders if the official terminology of psychology in the USA has been deliberately muddled so as to make it difficult to identify essential psychopaths. Oh well…

Love,