even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advan-
tageous to the person.
The most complex process of this type is substitution of
premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly
more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly
elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one
leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the
most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious.
Such substitutions are often effected collectively, in certain
groups of people, through the use of verbal communication.
That is why they best qualify for the moralizing epithet “hy-
pocrisy” than either of the above-mentioned processes.
The above examples of conversive phenomena do not ex-
haust a problem richly illustrated in psychoanalytical works.
Our subconscious may carry the roots of human genius within,
but its operation is not perfect; sometimes it is reminiscent of a
blind computer, especially whenever we allow it to be cluttered
with anxiously rejected material. This explains why conscious
monitoring, even at the price of courageously accepting disin-
tegrative states, is likewise necessary to our nature, not to men-
tion our individual and social good.
There is no such thing as a person whose perfect self-
knowledge allows him to eliminate all tendencies toward con-
versive thinking, but some people are relatively close to this
state, while others remain slaves to these processes. Those
people who use conversive operations too often for the purpose
of finding convenient conclusions, or constructing some cun-
ning paralogistic or paramoralistic statements, eventually begin
to undertake such behavior for ever more trivial reasons, losing
the capacity for conscious control over their thought process
altogether. This necessarily leads to behavior errors which must
be paid for by others as well as themselves.
People who have lost their psychological hygiene and ca-
pacity of proper thought along this road also lose their natural
critical faculties with regard to the statements and behavior of
individuals whose abnormal thought processes were formed on
a substratum of pathological anomalies, whether inherited or
acquired. Hypocrites stop differentiating between pathological
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and normal individuals, thus opening an “infection entry” for
the ponerologic role of pathological factors.
Generally, each community contains people in whom simi-
lar methods of thinking were developed on a large scale, with
their various deviations as a backdrop. We find this both in
characteropathic and psychopathic personalities. Some have
even been influenced by others to grow accustomed to such
“reasoning”, since conversion thinking is highly contagious
and can spread throughout an entire society. In “happy times”
especially, the tendency for conversion thinking generally in-
tensifies. It appears accompanied by a rising wave of hysteria
in said society. Those who try to maintain common sense and
proper reasoning finally wind up in the minority, feeling
wronged because their human right to maintain psychological
hygiene is violated by pressure from all sides. This means that
unhappy times are not far away.
We should point out that the erroneous thought processes
described herein also, as a rule, violate the laws of logic with
characteristic treachery. Educating people in the art of proper
reasoning can thus serve to counteract such tendencies; it has a
hallowed age-old tradition which seems to have been insuffi-
ciently effective for centuries. As an example: according to the
laws of logic, a question containing an erroneous or uncon-
firmed suggestion has no answer. Nevertheless, not only does
operating with such questions become epidemic among people
with a tendency to conversion thinking, and a source of terror
when used by psychopathical individuals; it also occurs among
people who think normally, or even those who have studied
logic.
This decreasing tendency in a society’s capacity for proper
thought should be counteracted, since it also lowers its immu-
nity to ponerogenic processes. An effective measure would be
teaching both proper thought and skillful detection of errors in
thought. The front of such education should be expanded, in-
cluding psychology, psychopathology, and the science de-
scribed herein, for the purpose of raising people who can easily
detect any paralogism.
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
155
Spellbinders
In order to comprehend ponerogenic pathways of contagion,
especially those acting in a wider social context, let us observe
the roles and personalities of individuals we shall call “spell-
binders”, who are highly active in this area in spite of their
statistically negligible number.
Spellbinders are generally the carriers of various pathologi-
cal factors, some characteropathies, and some inherited anoma-
lies. Individuals with malformations of their personalities fre-
quently play similar roles, although the social scale of influ-
ence remains small (family or neighborhood) and does not
cross certain boundaries of decency.
Spellbinders are characterized by pathological egotism.
Such a person is forced by some internal causes to make an
early choice between two possibilities: the first is forcing other
people to think and experience things in a manner similar to his
own; the second is a feeling of being lonely and different, a
pathological misfit in social life. Sometimes the choice is either
snake-charming or suicide.
Triumphant repression of self-critical or unpleasant con-
cepts from the field of consciousness gradually gives rise to the
phenomena of conversion thinking, or paralogistics, paramoral-
isms, and the use of reversion blockades. They stream so pro-
fusely from the mind and mouth of the spellbinder that they
flood the average person’s mind. Everything becomes subordi-
nated to the spellbinder’s over-compensatory conviction that
they are exceptional, sometimes even messianic. An ideology
emerges from this conviction, true in part, whose value is sup-
posedly superior. However, if we analyze the exact functions of
such an ideology in the spellbinder’s personality, we perceive
that it is a nothing other than a means of self-charming, useful
for repressing those tormenting self-critical associations into
the subconscious. The ideology’s instrumental role in influenc-
ing other people also serves the spellbinder’s needs.
The spellbinder believes that he will always find converts to
his ideology, and most often, they are right. However, they feel
shock (or even paramoral indignation) when it turns out that
their influence extends to only a limited minority, while most
people’s attitude to their activities remains critical, pained and
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disturbed. The spellbinder is thus confronted with a choice:
either withdraw back into his void or strengthen his position by
improving the effectiveness of his activities.