If a person with a normal instinctive substratum and basic intelligence has already heard and read about such a system of ruthless autocratic rule “based on a fanatical ideology”, he feels he has already formed an opinion on the subject. However, direct confrontation with the phenomenon causes him to feel intellectually helpless. All his prior imaginings prove to be virtually useless; they explain next to nothing. This provokes a nagging sensation that he and the society in which he was educated were quite naive.
Anyone capable of accepting this bitter void with an awareness of his own nescience, which would do a philosopher proud, can also find an orientation path within this deviant world. However, egotistically protecting his world-view habits from disintegrative disillusionment and attempting to combine them with observations from this new divergent reality only reaps mental chaos. The latter has produced unnecessary conflicts and disillusionment with the new rulership in some people; others have subordinated themselves to the pathological reality.
One of the differences observed between a normally resistant person and somebody who has undergone a transpersonification is that the former is better able to survive this disintegrating cognitive void, whereas the latter fills the void with the pathologic propaganda material, and without sufficient controls.
When the human mind comes into contact with this new reality so different from any experiences encountered by a person raised in a society dominated by normal people, it releases psychophysiological shock symptoms in the human brain with a higher tonus of cortex inhibition and a stifling of feelings, which then sometimes gush forth uncontrollably. Human minds work more slowly and less keenly because the associative mechanisms have become inefficient. Especially when a person has direct contact with psychopathic representatives of the new rule, who use their specific experience so as to traumatize the minds of the “others” with their own personalities, his mind succumbs to a state of short-term catatonia. Their humiliating and arrogant techniques, brutal para-moralizations, and so forth deaden his thought processes and his self-defense capabilities, and their divergent experiential method anchors in his mind. In the presence of this kind of phenomenon, any moralizing evaluation of a person’s behavior in such a situation thus becomes inaccurate at best.
Only once these unbelievably unpleasant psychological states have passed, thanks to rest in benevolent company, is it possible to reflect, always a difficult and painful process, or to become aware that one’s mind and common sense have been fooled by something which cannot fit into the normal human imagination. Man and society stands at the beginning of a long road of unknown experiences which, after much trial and error, finally leads to a certain hermetic knowledge of what the qualities of the phenomenon are and how best to build up psychological resistance thereto. Especially during the dissimulative phase, this makes it possible to adapt to life in this different world and thus arrange more tolerable living conditions.
We shall thereupon observe psychological phenomena, knowledge, immunization, and adaptation such as could not have been predicted before and which cannot be understood in the world remaining under the rule of normal man’s systems. A normal person, however, can never completely adapt to a pathological system; it is easy to be pessimistic about the final results of this.
Such experiences are exchanged during evening discussions among a circle of friends, thereby creating within people’s minds a kind of cognitive conglomeration which is initially incoherent and contains factual deficiencies. The participation of moral categories in such a comprehension of the macro-social phenomenon, and the manner in which particular individuals behave, is proportionally much greater within such a new world-view than the above adduced scientific knowledge would dictate.
The ideology officially preached by the pathocracy continues to retain its ever-diminishing suggestive powers until such time as human reason manages to localize it as something subordinate, which is not descriptive of the essence of phenomenon.
Moral and religious values, as well as a nation’s centuries-old cultural heritage, furnish most societies with support for the long road of both individual and collective searching through the jungle of strange phenomena. This apperceptive capacity possessed by people within the framework of the natural world-view contains a deficiency which hides the nucleus of the phenomenon for many years. Under such conditions, both instinct and feelings, and the resulting basic intelligence, play instrumental roles, stimulating man to make selections which are to a great extent subconscious.
Under the conditions created by imposed pathocratic rule in particular, where the just described psychological deficiencies are decisive in joining the activities of such a system, our natural human instinctive substratum is an instrumental factor in joining the opposition. Similarly, the environmental, economic, and ideological motivations which influenced the formation of an individual personality, including those political attitudes which were assumed earlier, play the role of modifying factors which are not as enduring in time. The activity of these latter factors, albeit relatively clear with relation to individuals, disappear within the statistical approach and diminish through the years of pathocratic rule. The decisions and the way selections made for the side of the society of normal people are once again finally decided by factors usually inherited by biological means, and thus not the product of the person’s option, and predominantly in subconscious processes.
Man’s general intelligence, especially its intellectual level, play a relatively limited role in this process of selecting a path of action, as expressed by statistically significant but low correlation (-0.16). The higher a person’s general level of talent, the harder it usually is for him to reconcile himself with this different reality and to find a modus vivendi within it.
At the same time, gifted and talented people join the pathocracy, and harsh words of contempt for the system can be heard on the part of simple, uneducated people. Only those people with the highest degree of intelligence, which, as mentioned, does not accompany psychopathies, are unable to find the meaning of life within such a system. They are sometimes able to take advantage of their superior mentality in order to find exceptional ways in which to be useful to others. Wasting the best talents spells eventual catastrophe for any social system.
Since those factors subject to the laws of genetics have proven decisive, society becomes divided by means of criteria not known before into the adherents of the new rule, the new middle class mentioned twice above, and the majority opposition. Since the properties which cause this new division appear in more or less equal proportions within any old social group or level, this new division cuts right through these traditional layers of society.
If we treat the former stratification, whose formation was decisively influenced by the talent factor, as horizontal, the new one should be referred to as vertical. The most instrumental factor in the latter is good basic intelligence which, as we already know, is widely distributed throughout all social groups.
Even those people who were the object of social injustice in the former system and then bestowed with another system, which allegedly protected them, slowly start criticizing the latter. [...]
From the point of view of economics and reality, any system wherein most of the property and workplaces are state owned de jure and de facto is state capitalism. Such a system contains the traits of a primitive nineteenth-century capitalist exploiter who still has an insufficient grasp of his role in society and of how his interests were linked to workers’ welfare. Workers are very much aware of these traits, especially if they have collected a certain amount of knowledge in connection with their political activities.
A reasonable socialist aiming to replace capitalism with some system in conformity with his idea, which would be based on worker participation in the administration of the work place and the profits, will reject such a system as the “worst variety of capitalism”. After all, concentrating capital and rulership in one place always leads to degeneration. Capital must feel subject to the authority of fairness. Eliminating such a degenerate form of capitalism should thus be a priority task for any socialist. Nonetheless, such reasoning by means of social and economic categories obviously misses the crux of the matter. [...]
One of the first discoveries made by a society of normal people is that it is superior to the new rulers in intelligence and practical skills, no matter what geniuses they appear to be. The knots stultifying reason are gradually loosened, and fascination with the new rulership’s secret knowledge and plan of action begins to diminish, followed by familiarization with the knowledge about this new reality.
The world of normal people is always superior to the other one whenever constructive activity is needed, whether it be the reconstruction of a devastated country, the area of technology, the organization of economic life, or scientific and medical work. “They want to build things, but they can’t get much done without us.”
Qualified experts are even more frequently able to make certain demands; unfortunately, they are just as often only considered qualified until the job has been done. Once the factory has started up, the experts can leave; management will be taken over by someone else, incapable of further progress, under whose leadership much of the effort expended will be wasted.
As we have already pointed out, every psychological anomaly is in fact a kind of deficiency. Psychopathies are based primarily upon deficiencies in the instinctive substratum; however, their influence exerted upon mental development also leads to deficiencies in general intelligence, as discussed above. This deficiency is not compensated by the creation of the special psychological knowledge we observe among some psychopaths. Such knowledge loses its mesmerizing power when normal people learn to understand these phenomena as well. The psychopathologist was thus not surprised by the fact that the world of normal people is dominant regarding skill and talent. For that society, however, this represented a discovery which engendered hope and psychological relaxation.
Since our intelligence is superior to theirs, we can recognize them and understand how they think and act. This is what a person learns in such a system on his own initiative, forced by everyday needs. He learns it while working in his office, school, or factory, when he needs to deal with the authorities, and when he is arrested, something only a few people manage to avoid.
The author and many others learned a good deal about the psychology of this macrosocial phenomenon during compulsory indoctrinational schooling. The organizers and lecturers cannot have intended such a result. Practical knowledge of this new reality thus grows, thanks to which the society gains a resourcefulness of action which enables it to take ever better advantage of the weak spots of the rulership system. This permits gradual reorganization of societal links, which bears fruit with time.[...]
The development of this familiarity with the phenomenon is accompanied by development of communicative language, by means of which society can stay informed and issue warnings of danger. A third language thus appears alongside the ideological doubletalk described above; in part, it borrows names used by the official ideology in their transformed modified meanings. In part, this language operates with words borrowed from still more lively circulating jokes. In spite of its strangeness, this language becomes a useful means of communication and plays a part in regenerating societal links. Lo and behold, this language can be translated and communicated in relations with residents of other countries with analogous governmental systems, even if the other country’s official ideology is different. However, in spite of efforts on the part of literati and journalists, this language remains only communicative inside; it becomes hermetic outside the scope of the phenomenon, uncomprehended by people lacking the appropriate personal experience.
The specific role of certain individuals during such times is worth pointing out; they participate in the discovery of the nature of this new reality and help others find the right path. They have a normal nature but an unfortunate childhood, being subjected very early to the domination of individuals with various psychological deviations, including pathological egotism and methods of terrorizing others. The new rulership system struck such people as a large scale societal multiplication of what they knew from individual experience. From the very outset, they therefore saw this reality much more prosaically, immediately treating the ideology in accordance with the paralogistic stories well known to them, whose purpose was to cloak the bitter reality of their youthful experiences. They soon reach the truth, since the genesis and nature of evil are analogous irrespective of the social scale in which it appears.
Such people are rarely understood in happy societies, but there they became useful; their explanations and advice proved accurate and were transmitted to others joining the network of this apperceptive heritage. However, their own suffering was doubled, since this was too much of a similar kind of abuse for one life to handle. They therefore nursed dreams of escaping into the freedom still existing in the outside world.
Finally, society sees the appearance of individuals who have collected exceptional intuitive perception and practical knowledge in the area of how pathocrats think and how such a system of rule operates. Some of them become so proficient in their deviant language and its idiomatics that they are able to use it, much like a foreign language they have learned well. Since they are able to decipher the rulership’s intentions, such people then offer advice to people who are having trouble with the authorities. These usually disinterested advocates of the society of normal people play a irreplaceable role in the life of society. The pathocrats, however, can never learn to think in normal human categories. At the same time, the ability to predict the ways of reaction of such an authority also leads to the conclusion that the system is rigidly causative and lacking in the natural freedom of choice.
This new science, expressed in language derived from a deviant reality, is something foreign to people who wish to understand this macrosocial phenomenon but think in the categories of the countries of normal man. Attempts to understand this language produce a certain feeling of helplessness which gives rise to the tendency of creating ones own doctrines, built from the concepts of one’s own world and a certain amount of appropriately co-opted pathocratic propaganda material. Such a doctrine, an example would be the American anti-Communist doctrine, makes it even more difficult to understand that other reality. May the objective description adduced herein enable them to overcome the impasse thus engendered.
In countries subjected to pathocratic rule, this knowledge and language, especially human experience, create a mediating concatenation in such a way that most people could assimilate this objective description of the phenomenon without major difficulties with the help of active apperception. Difficulties will only be encountered by the oldest generation and a certain proportion of young people raised in the system since childhood, and these are psychologically understandable.
I was once referred a patient who had been an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp. She came back from that hell in such exceptionally good condition that she was still able to marry and bear three children. However, her child rearing methods were so extremely iron-fisted as to be much too reminiscent of the concentration camp life so stubbornly persevering in former prisoners. The children’s reaction was neurotic protest and aggressiveness against other children.
During the mother’s psychotherapy, we recalled the figures of male and female SS officers to her mind, pointing out their psychopathic characteristics (such people were primary recruits). In order to help her eliminate their pathological material from her person, I furnished her with approximate statistical data regarding the appearance of such individuals within the population as whole.This helped her reach a more objective view of that reality and re-establish trust in the society of normal people.
During the next visit, the patient showed to me a little card on which she had written the names of local pathocratic notables and added her own diagnoses, which were largely correct. So I made a hushing gesture with my finger and admonished her with emphasis that we were dealing only with her problems. The patient understood, and I am sure, she did not make her reflections on the matter known in the wrong places.
Parallel to the development of practical knowledge and a language of insider communication, other psychological phenomena take form; they are truly significant in the transformation of social life under pathocratic rule, and discerning them is essential if one wishes to understand individuals and nations fated to live under such conditions and to evaluate the situation in the political sphere. They include people’s psychological immunization and their adaptation to life under such deviant conditions.
The methods of psychological terror (that specific pathocratic art), the techniques of pathological arrogance, and the striding roughshod into other people’s souls initially have such traumatic effects that people are deprived of their capacity for purposeful reaction; I have already adduced the psychophysiological aspects of such states. Ten or twenty years later, analogous behavior is already recognized as well-known buffoonery and does not deprive the victim of his ability to think and react purposefully. His answers are usually well-thought-out strategies, issued from the position of a normal person’s superiority and often laced with ridicule. Man can look suffering and even death in the eye with the required calm. A dangerous weapon falls out of ruler’s hands.
We have to understand that this process of immunization is not merely a result of the above-described increase in practical knowledge of the macrosocial phenomenon. It is the effect of a many-layered, gradual process of growth in knowledge, familiarization with the phenomenon, creation of the appropriate reactive habits, and self-control, with an overall conception, and moral principles, being worked out in the meantime. After several years, the same stimuli which formerly caused chilly spiritual impotence or mental paralysis now provoke the desire to gargle with something strong so as to get rid of this filth.
This was a time, when many people dreamed of finding some pill which would make it easier to endure dealing with the authorities or attending the forced indoctrination sessions generally chaired by a psychopathic character. Some antidepressants did in fact prove to have the desired effect. Twenty years later, this had been forgotten entirely.
When I was arrested for the first time in 1951, force, arrogance, and psychopathic methods of forcible confession deprived me almost entirely of my self-defense capabilities. My brain stopped functioning after only a few days’ arrest without water, to such a point that I couldn’t even properly remember the incident which resulted in my sudden arrest. I was not even aware that it had been purposely provoked and that conditions permitting self-defense did in fact exist. They did almost anything they wanted to me.
When I was arrested for last time in 1968, I was interrogated by five fierce-looking security functionaries. At one particular moment, after thinking through their predicted reactions, I let my gaze take in each face sequentially with great attentiveness. The most important one asked me, “What’s on your mind, buster, staring at us like that?” I answered without any fear of consequences: “I’m just wondering why so many of you gentleman’s careers end up in a psychiatric hospital.” They were taken aback for a while, whereupon the same man exclaimed, “Because it’s such damned horrible work!” “I am of the opinion that it’s the other way round”, I calmly responded. Then I was taken back to my cell.
Three days later, I had the opportunity to talk to him again, but this time he was much more respectful. Then he ordered me to be taken away--outside, as it turned out. I rode the streetcar home past a large park, still unable to believe my eyes. Once in my room, I lay down on the bed; the world was not quite real yet, but exhausted people fall asleep quickly. When I awoke, I spoke out loud: “Dear God, aren’t you supposed to be in charge here in this world!”
At that time, I knew not only that up to 1/4 of all secret police officials wind up in psychiatric hospitals. I also knew that their “occupational disease” is the congestive dementia formerly encountered only among old prostitutes. Man cannot violate the natural human feelings inside him with impunity, no matter what kind of profession he performs. From that view-point, Comrade Captain was partially right. At the same time, however, my reactions had become resistant, a far cry from what they had been seventeen years earlier.
All these transformations of human consciousness and unconsciousness result in individual and collective adaptation to living under such a system. Under altered conditions of both material and moral limitations, an existential resourcefulness emerges which is prepared to overcome many difficulties. A new network of the society of normal people is also created for self-help and mutual assistance.
This society acts in concert and is aware of the true state of affairs; it begins to develop ways of influencing various elements of authority and achieving goals which are socially useful. Patiently instructing and convincing the rulership’s mediocre representatives takes considerable time and requires pedagogical skills. Therefore, the most even-tempered people are selected for this job, people with sufficient familiarity with their psychology and a specific talent for influencing pathocrats. The opinion that society is totally deprived of any influence upon government in such a country is thus inaccurate. In reality, society does co-govern to a certain extent, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing in its attempt to create more tolerable living conditions. This, however, occurs in a manner totally different from what happens in democratic countries.
These cognitive processes, psychological immunization, and adaptation permit the creation of new interpersonal and societal links, which operate within the scope of the large majority we have already called the “society of normal people”. These links extend discretely into the world of the regime’s middle class, among people who can be trusted to a certain extent. In time, the social links created are significantly more effective than those active in societies governed by normal human systems. Exchange of information, warnings, and assistance encompass the entire society. Whoever is able to do so offers aid to anyone who finds himself in trouble, often in such a way that the person helped does not know who rendered the assistance. However, if he caused his misfortune by his own lack of circumspect caution with regard to the authorities, he meets with reproach, but not the withholding of assistance.
It is possible to create such links because this new division of society gives only limited consideration to factors such as the level of talent, education or traditions attached to the former social layers. Neither do reduced prosperity differences dissolve these links. One side of this division contains those of the highest mental culture, simple ordinary people, intellectuals, headwork specialists, factory workers, and peasants joined by the common protest of their human nature against the domination of para-human experiential and governmental methods. These links engender interpersonal understanding and fellow-feeling among people and social groups formerly divided by economic differences and social traditions. The thought processes serving these links are of a more psychological character, able to comprehend someone else’s motivations. At the same time, the ordinary folk retain respect for people who have been educated and represent intellectual values. Certain social and moral values also appear and may prove to be permanent.
The genesis, however, of this great interpersonal solidarity only becomes comprehensible once we already know the nature of the pathological macrosocial phenomenon which brought about the liberation of such attitudes, complete with recognition of one’s own humanity and that of others. Another reflection suggests itself, namely how very different these great links are from America’s “competitive society”, for whom the former represents something which is operational even though it crosses the boundaries of the imagination.
One would think that a nation’s cultural and intellectual life would quickly degenerate when subjected to the country’s isolation from the cultural and scientific links with other nations, pathocratic limitations upon the development of one’s thought, a censorship system, the mental level of the executives, and all those other attributes of such rule. Reality nevertheless does not validate such pessimistic predictions. The necessity for constant mental effort so crucial for finding some tolerable way of life, not totally bereft of moral sense within such a deviant reality, cause the development of realistic perception, especially in the area of socio-psychological phenomena. Protecting one’s mind from the effects of paralogistic propaganda, as well as one’s personality from the influence of para-moralisms and the other techniques already described, sharpens controlled thinking processes and the ability to discern these phenomena. Such training is also a special kind of common man’s university.
During such times, society reaches for historical sources in searching for the ancient causes of its misfortunes and for ways to improve its fate in the future. Scientific and societal minds laboriously review the national history in quest of interpretations of the facts which would be more profound from the point of view of psychological and moral realism. We soberly discern what happened years and centuries ago, perceiving the errors of former generations and the results of intolerance or emotionally weighted decision-making. Such a great review of individual, social, and historical world-views in this search for meaning of life and history is a product of unhappy times and will help along the way back to happy ones.
Another object of consideration became: moral problems applicable in individual life as well as in history and politics. The mind starts reaching ever deeper in this area, achieving ever more subtle understanding of the matter, because it is precisely in this world that the old oversimplifications proved to be unsatisfactory. An understanding of other people, including those who commit errors and crimes, appears a problem-solving way which was formerly underrated. Forgiveness is only one step beyond comprehension. As Mme. de Stael wrote: “Tout comprendere, c’est tout pardoner” . [...]
Thus, during brutal times of confrontation with evil, human capabilities of discriminating phenomena become subtler; apperceptive and moral sensibility develops. Critical faculties sometimes border with cynicism.[...]
Thanks to all these transformations, including the de-egotization of thought and attitude connected thereto, society becomes capable of a mental creativity which goes beyond normal conditions. This effort could be useful in any cultural, technical, or economic area if the authorities did not oppose and stifle it because they feel threatened by such activity. Human genius is not born of lazy prosperity and among genteel camaraderie, but rather stands in perpetual confrontation with a recalcitrant reality which is different from ordinary human imaginations. Under such conditions, wide-scale theoretical approaches are found to have practical existential value. The old system of thought which remains in use in free countries starts to look backward, naive, and bereft of feeling of hierarchical values.
If nations which arrived at such a state were to regain their freedom, many valuable accomplishments of human thought would mature within a short time. No excessive fears would be in order as to whether such a nation would then be capable of elaborating a workable socio-economic system. Quite the contrary: the absence of egoistical pressure groups, the conciliatory nature of a society which has years of bitter experience behind it, and the penetrating, morally profound thought processes would permit the way out to be found relatively rapidly. Danger and difficulty would rather come from outside pressures on the part of nations which do not adequately understand the conditions in such a country. But unfortunately, the pathocracy cannot be dosed as a bitter medicine!
The older generation, raised in a normal man’s country, generally reacts by developing the above-mentioned skills, i.e. by enrichment; the younger generation, however, was raised under pathocratic rule and thus succumbs to a greater world-view impoverishment, reflex rigidification of personality, and domination by habitual structures, those typical results of the operation of pathological personalities. Paralogistic propaganda and its corresponding indoctrination are consciously rejected; however, this process demands time and effort which could better be used for active apperception of valuable contents. The latter are accessible only with difficulty, due both to limitations and to apperceptive problems. There arises the feeling of a certain void which is hard to fill. In spite of human good will, certain paralogisms and para-moralisms, as well as cognitive materialism, anchor and persevere in brains. The human mind is not able to disprove every single falsity which has been suggested to it.
The emotional life of people raised within such a deviant psychological reality is also fraught with difficulties. In spite of critical reason, a certain saturation of a youngster’s personality with pathological psychological material is unavoidable, as is a degree of primitivization and rigidity of feelings. The constant efforts to control one’s emotions, so as to avoid having some stormy reaction provoke repression on the part of a vindictive and retentive regime, cause feelings to be repressed into a role of something rather problematic, something which should not be given a natural outlet. Suppressed emotional reactions surface later, when the person can afford to express them; they are delayed and inappropriate to the situation at hand. Worries about the future awaken egotism among people thus adapted to life in a pathological social structure.
Neurosis is a natural response of human nature if a normal person is subordinated to domination of pathological people. The same applies to the subordination of a society and its members to a pathological system of authority. In a pathocratic state, every person with a normal nature thus exhibits a certain chronic neurotic state, controlled by the efforts of reason. The intensity of these states varies among individuals, depending upon different circumstances, usually more serious in direct proportion to the individual’s intelligence. Psychotherapy upon such people is only possible and effective if we can rely on adequate familiarity with the causes of these states. Western educated psychologists thus prove completely impractical with regard to such patients.
A psychologist working in such a country must develop special operational techniques unknown and even unfathomable to specialists practicing in the free world. They have the purpose of partially liberating the voice of instinct and feeling from this abnormal over control, and of rediscovering the voice of nature’s wisdom within, but this must be done in such a way as to avoid exposing the patient to the unfortunate results of excessive freedom of reaction in the conditions under which he must live. A psychotherapist must operate carefully, with the help of allusions, because only rarely may he openly inform the patient of the system’s pathological nature. However, even under such conditions, we can achieve a greater experiential freedom, more appropriate thought processes, and better decision making capabilities. As a result of all this, the patient subsequently behaves with greater caution and feels much safer. [...]
Whoever wants to maintain the freedom of his country and of the world already threatened by this macrosocial pathological phenomenon, whoever would like to heal this sick planet of ours, should not only understand the nature of this great disease, but should also be conscious of potentially regenerative healing powers. Every country within the scope of this macrosocial phenomenon contains a large majority of normal people living and suffering there who will never accept pathocracy; their protest against it derives from the depths of their own souls and their human nature as conditioned by properties transmitted by means of biological heredity. The forms of this protest and the ideologies by which they would like to realize their natural wishes may nevertheless change.
