Part 8 of a 10-part Series:

The Toxic Combination of Psychopathic Elites

and Hysteroidal Masses

“When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified…until everything reverts to ‘bad times.’”

Dr. Andrew Lobaszewsky

We understand the motivation of the oligarchs: Justification of privilege, protection of wealth over the well-being of workers, keeping the plebes divided and working harder for less without protest. But what happened on January 6^th was not entirely the work of oligarchs (although some of them were happy to fund it). Yes, at least one insurrectionist flew into DC on a private jet, but a snapshot of insurrectionist demographics (94% white and 86% male) indicates that—while 85% of them were employed–only 13% were “business owners” and 28% held white-collar jobs, suggesting that nearly half of them (44%) were working class folks.

Before we segue from the motivations of the American oligarchy to the inner psychological world of the American working class, we will first visit the research of Dr. Andrew Lobaszewsky. Lobaszewsky was a trained in Poland as a psychiatrist during the time Poland was invaded by Hitler and then dominated by Soviet Russia. Instead of focusing on military and political leadership, Lobaszewsky wanted to know what was going on the psyches of ordinary people who were subjected to oppressive, authoritarian regimes. When Lobaszewsky left Poland and came to the U.S. in the early 1980s, he compiled his research to describe what he termed “ponerology,” or the science of macrosocial evil.

While completing his studies in psychiatry, Lobaszewsky began to observe changes in the thought patterns and worldview of his friends and colleagues. Distinguished academics were suddenly disavowing their own prior research in order to accommodate the new “party line.” As Lobaszewsky and his colleagues witnessed what they called “personality disintegration” or “transpersonification” among themselves, they wanted to use their training to help them understand what was happening to them (and most everyone else). Lobaszewsky reports that he and his colleagues had to keep “abhorrence and fear under control,” as well as the “natural moralizing reflexes of revulsion” as they delved into the dark side of humanity.

Similar to the operation of modern terrorist “cells,” Lobaszewsky and his fellow researchers conducted their work in secret and did not even know the identity of others, communicating through an underground messaging system. At one point, Lobaszewsky tossed the collected manuscript into a furnace after receiving a warning about an impending search by authorities only moments before. A second copy was given to an American tourist to be delivered to the Vatican, but its whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Only decades later was he able to compile the findings of the underground research from memory and have it translated from Polish.

According to Lobaszewsky, somewhere between one and six percent of the human population is psychopathic. Lobaszewsky follows the “disease model” of mental illness and does not blame these individuals for what he asserts is a genetic anomaly. Psychopaths don’t always turn into serial killers, but psychopaths who are born with access to wealth or special talent can cause a huge amount of suffering and even death without committing any overt acts themselves. The main identifier of a psychopath is a complete lack of conscience.

At some point, a psychopath will realize he (it is usually a “he,” but sometimes a “she”) is different from other people. The psychopath tends to deal with this self-realization of difference in one of two ways. The psychopath may attempt to fit into normal society, and can become quite skilled at mimicking “appropriate” human emotions that they do not themselves experience. Alternatively (and more dangerously), they will attempt to re-make everyone else in their own image. Feelings like guilt or concern about the welfare of others are reframed as “abnormal” or signs of “weakness.” One can readily intuit how either of these approaches could serve the psychopath in a rise to power in a modern, capitalist society.

In modern times, Dr. Robert Hare has refined the concept of psychopathy, which now includes (in addition to lack of conscience) lack of empathy; egocentricity; pathological lying; disregard for the law and social convention; shallow emotion; and a history of victimizing others. Dr. Hare has developed a psychopathy checklist (which has been determined to be reliable by others in the mental health professions) as a diagnostic tool, which is mostly used on adult males in the U.S. prison system.

Lobaszewsky’s research found that about another 12 percent of the human population is “characteropathic.” These folks are not fully psychopathic, but have hereditary (and sometimes latent) personality defects that can be triggered by exposure/interaction with “deviant” individuals or unhealthy environments.  Lobaszewsky argues that characteropathy can be triggered when an individual lives in a society that does not allow them to fully express their talents and skills (e.g., underemployment). The question that Lobaszewsky attempts to answer is how an entire society or culture can become mentally sick and dangerous when less than 20% of the population exhibit either psychopathic or characterological traits.

Psychopathic personalities tend to thrive in modern, materialistic, success-oriented cultures. Positions atop hierarchies are always attractive to psychopaths, and as organizations become ever more immense, the rewards of ascendance within them become larger as well (not only more money to be made, but more power to control others). Psychopaths often seek such positions in either commerce or politics (where money and power can be traded) or large, impersonal organizations, where they can manipulate others to assist them in seizing power. Moreover, psychopaths are driven to impose their values on others, promoting ideals of greed, selfishness, and opportunism as “normal,” while values like empathy are considered “abnormal” or only for “losers.”

However, societal ponerization (when a society itself becomes evil) does not happen simply when psychopaths ascend to positions of power. According to Lobaszewsky, societies experience what he calls a “hysteroidal cycle.” Lobaszewsky’s cycle begins with so-called “good times,” or a period of apparent prosperity. But the visible and publicly celebrated prosperity is almost always rooted in injustice to one or more out-groups. Here in the U.S., the Gilded age (1870 to 1900) and the Roaring Twenties (1920-1929) were such times. New ideologies may arise which attempt to address the injustice, but the ideologies themselves become perverted by psychopathic individuals in pursuit of power. Psychopaths themselves have no specific ideology (having been identified among Nazis, Communists, capitalists, and even religious leaders), but will adopt a locally popular ideology to suit their own purposes.

During these “good times,” the majority of people lose the ability to think critically. So long as most people have enough and those who are inferiorized can be scapegoated, protest is minimized. Lobaszewsky describes the process of ponerization as incremental—“one evil opens the door to another”—which may be undiscernible in its early stages. As pathological thinking becomes normalized (usually by persons in positions of power and influence), it spreads and becomes ever more pathological. Characteropathic leaders are replaced with psychopathic ones. Under the new leadership, group members are subjected to increasing scrutiny and tests for ideological purity. When psychopathic leaders have gained control over a society—both through their own machinations in addition to the acquiescence (and even support) of the hysteroidal masses—the society has become a full-blown pathocracy.  

How would we recognize a pathocracy? Taking lessons from Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, one sure sign is when a government engages in a campaign to exterminate large numbers of its own people. How could a pathocracy be installed when we live in a democracy?  It is here we have to understand the process whereby the masses become “hystericized.” Shortly after January 6^th, the New Zealand Herald suggested that those who stormed the Capitol “could have had a mass psychosis.” The greater concern was that this process of “radicalization” was not confined to the United States. The “conspiracy information ecosystem is highly international,” with the same tactics being deployed by ISIS, white nationalists and Christian crusaders. It is being driven by AI algorithms that target the darkest human impulses because this is what drives the growth of social media platforms.

Lobaszewsky asserts that these processes are always cyclical. An established pathocracy will not last forever because all pathocracies contain the seeds of their own destruction. The sheer level of suffering among the majority of psychologically normal people will eventually wake them from their hysteroidal stupor. A resistance will arise, but it will not come about as a great counter-revolution, but rather a “stormy process of regeneration.” As ordinary people struggle to survive in a pathocracy, they begin to see the things they have in common where they may have formerly focused on their differences.