even in their original form, not to mention their pathologically
deformed versions. The foreground should nevertheless be
occupied by an identification of their role within the macroso-
cial phenomenon; analysis, criticism, and even, more particu-
larly, combating them can be placed in the background. Any
discussions regarding directions needed to change social struc-
tures may be held concurrently as long as they take this basic
separation of phenomena into account. Thus corrected, social
consciousness can effect a solution to these problems more
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
297
easily, and social groups which are intransigent today will be-
come more amenable to compromise.
Once a mentally ill person has been successfully cured of
his illness, we often try to restore the former patient to the
world of his more real convictions. The psychotherapist then
searches the delusionally caricaturized world for the primeval
and always more sensible contents, thereupon building a bridge
right over the period of madness to a now healthy reality. Such
an operation of course requires the necessary skills in the do-
main of psychopathology, since every disease has its own style
of deforming the patient’s original world of experiences and
convictions. The deformed ideological system created by
pathocracy should be subjected to analogous analysis, fishing
out the primeval and certainly more sensible values. This must
utilize knowledge of the specific style whereby a pathocracy
caricaturizes the ideology of a movement upon which it feeds
parasitically.
This great disease of Pathocracy accommodates various so-
cial ideologies to its own properties and the pathocrats’ inten-
tions, thereby depriving them of any possibility of natural de-
velopment and maturation in the light of man’s healthy com-
mon sense and scientific reflection. This process also trans-
forms these ideologies into destructive factors, preventing them
from participating in the constructive evolution of social struc-
tures and condemning their adherents to frustration. Along with
its degenerate growth, such an ideology is rejected by all those
social groups governed by healthy common sense. The activi-
ties of such an ideology thus induce nations to stick to their old
tried-and-true basics in terms of structural forms, providing
hard-line conservatives with the best weapon possible. This
causes stagnation of the evolutionary processes, which is con-
trary to the overall laws of social life, and brings about a po-
larization of attitudes among various social groups, resulting in
revolutionary moods. The operations of the pathologically al-
tered ideology thus facilitate the pathocracy’s penetration and
expansion.
Only by means of retrospective psychological analysis upon
the ideology, reverting to the time which preceded ponerogenic
infection, and taking into account the pathological quality and
298
THERAPY OF THE WORLD
the causes for its deformation, can the original creative values
be discovered and bridges built right over the time frame of
morbid phenomena.
Such skillful unhusking of the original ideology, including
some reasonable elements which emerged after the ponero-
genic infection appeared, may be enriched by values elaborated
in the meantime and become capable of further creative evolu-
tion. It will thus be in the position to activate transformations in
accordance with the evolutionary nature of social structures,
which will in turn render these societies more resistant to pene-
tration by pathocratic influences.
Such analysis presents us with problems which must be
skillfully overcome, namely finding the proper semantic desig-
nates. Thanks to characteristic creativity in this area, pathoc-
racy produces a mass of suggestive names prepared in such a
way as to divert attention from a phenomenon’s essential quali-
ties. Whoever has been ensnared in this semantic trap even
once loses not only the capacity for objective analysis of that
type of phenomenon; he also partially loses his ability to use
his common sense. Producing such effects within human minds
is the specific purpose of this patho-semantics; one must first
protect one’s own person against them and then proceed to
protect social consciousness.
The only names we can accept are those with a historical
tradition contemporary to the facts and reaching back to pre-
infection times. For instance, if we call pre-Marxist socialism
“Utopian socialism”, it will be difficult for us to understand
that it was much more realistic and socially creative than the
later movements already laced with pathological material.
However, such caution does not suffice when we are deal-
ing with phenomena which cannot be measured within the
natural structure of concepts because they were produced by a
macrosocial pathological process. We must thus again under-
score that the light of natural healthy common sense is insuffi-
cient for effecting such retrospective refinement of ideological
values later deformed by such a process. Psychological objec-
tivity, adequate knowledge in the area of psychopathology, and
the data contained in the prior chapters of this book are indis-
pensable for this purpose.
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
299
Thus equipped, we also become qualified to create indis-
pensable new names which would elucidate the actual proper-
ties of phenomena, providing we pay sufficient attention to
precepts of semantics with all the probity and economy, as
would demand William of Ockham. After all, these names will
spread throughout the earth and help many people correct their
world view and social attitude. Such activity, albeit legalistic,
actually aims at depriving pathocratic circles of their name
controlling monopoly; their predicable protests will merely
prove that we are on the right track.
Ideology thus regenerated regains the natural life and evolu-
tionary capacity which pathologization has stifled. At the same
time, however, it loses its ability to fulfill imposed functions
such as feeding a pathocracy and cloaking it from both healthy
common sense criticism and something even more dangerous,
namely a feel for psychological reality and its humorous as-
pects.
Condemning an ideology because of its errors, whether con-
tained from the outset or absorbed later, will never deprive it of
this imputed function, especially not in the minds of people
who failed to condemn it for similar reasons. If we further at-
tempt to analyze such a condemned ideology, we will never
achieve the effect which has a curative influence upon the hu-
man personality; we will simply miss the truly important fac-
tors and be unable to fill a certain space with contents. Our
thoughts will then be forced to evade whatever blocks their
freedom, thereby erring among ostensible truths. Once some-
thing succumbs to psychopathological factors, it cannot be
understood unless the proper categories are utilized.