derived from the various influences of pathological factors,
whether mentioned above or not, which are often obscured
from minds untrained in this area. We thereby also permit these
factors to continue their ponerogenic activities, both within
ourselves and others. Nothing poisons the human soul and de-
prives us of our capacity to understand reality more objectively
than this very obedience to that common human tendency to
take a moralistic view of human behavior.
Practically speaking, to say the least, each instance of be-
havior that seriously hurts some other person contains within
its psychological genesis the influence of some pathological
factors, among other things, of course. Therefore, any interpre-
tation of the causes of evil which would limit itself to moral
categories is an inappropriate perception of reality. This can
lead, generally speaking, to erroneous behavior, limiting our
capacity for counteraction of the causative factors of evil and
opening the door for lust for revenge. This frequently starts a
new fire in the ponerogenic processes. We shall therefore con-
sider a unilaterally moral interpretation of the origins of evil to
be wrong and immoral at all times. The idea of overcoming this
common human inclination and its results can be considered a
moral motive intertwined throughout ponerology.
If we analyze the reasons why some people frequently
overuse such emotionally-loaded interpretations, often indig-
nantly rejecting a more correct interpretation, we shall of
course also discover pathological factors acting within them.
Intensification of this tendency in such cases is caused by re-
pressing from the field of consciousness any self-critical con-
cepts concerning their own behavior and its internal reasons.
The influence of such people causes this tendency to intensify
in others.
~~~
Paramoralisms: The conviction that moral values exist and
that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient
a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man’s
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instinctive endowment level (although it is certainly not totally
adequate for moral truth), and that it does not only represent
centuries’ of experience, culture, religion, and socialization.
Thus, any insinuation framed in moral slogans is always sug-
gestive, even if the “moral” criteria used are just an “ad hoc”
invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or moral
by means of such paramoralisms utilized as active suggestion,
and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can
always be found.
In searching for an example of an evil act whose negative
value would not elicit doubt in any social situation, ethics
scholars frequently mention child abuse. However, psycholo-
gists often meet with paramoral affirmations of such behavior
in their practice, such as in the above-mentioned family with
the prefrontal field damage in the eldest sister. Her younger
brothers emphatically insisted that their sister’s sadistic treat-
ment of her son was due to her exceptionally high moral quali-
fications, and they believed this by auto-suggestion. Paramoral-
ism somehow cunningly evades the control of our common
sense, sometimes leading to acceptance or approval of behavior
that is openly pathological.73
Paramoralistic statements and suggestions so often accom-
pany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable.
Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for indi-
viduals, oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent
ever-new moral criteria for someone’s convenience. Such sug-
gestions often partially deprive people of their moral reasoning
and deform its development in youngsters. Paramoralism facto-
ries have been founded worldwide, and a ponerologist finds it
hard to believe that they are managed by psychologically nor-
mal people.
73 Many examples of recent years include children beaten to death by their
parents for “religious reasons”. The parents may claim that the child is demon
possessed, or that they have behaved so loosely that only beating them will
“straighten them out”. Another example is circumcision, both for boys and
girls by certain ethnic groups. The Indian custom of suttee, where the wife
climbs on the funeral pyre of her husband; or in Muslim cultures where, if a
woman is raped, it is the duty of her male family members to kill her to wipe
away the shame from the family name. All of these acts are claimed to be
“moral”, but they are not, they are pathological and criminal. [Editor’s note.]
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151
The conversive74 features in the genesis of paramoralisms
seem to prove they are derived from mostly subconscious re-
jection (and repression from the field of consciousness) of
something completely different, which we call the voice of
conscience.
A ponerologist can nevertheless indicate many observations
supporting the opinion that various pathological factors partici-
pate in the tendency to use paramoralisms. This was the case in
the above-mentioned family. When it occurs with a moralizing
interpretation, this tendency intensifies in egotists and hyster-
ics, and its causes are similar. Like all conversive phenomena,
the tendency to use paramoralisms is psychologically conta-
gious. That explains why we observe it among people raised by
individuals in whom it was developed alongside pathological
factors.
This may be a good place to reflect that true moral law is
born and exists independently of our judgments in this regard,
and even of our ability to recognize it. Thus, the attitude re-
quired for such understanding is scientific, not creative: we
must humbly subordinate our mind to the apprehended reality.
That is when we discover the truth about man, both his weak-
nesses and values, which shows us what is decent and proper
with respect to other people and other societies.
~~~
Reversive blockade: Emphatically insisting upon something
which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person’s
mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates
of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in
the “golden mean” between the truth and its opposite, winding
up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like
this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the
person who subjects them to this method. If the counterfeit of
the truth is the opposite of a moral truth, at the same time, it
simultaneously represents an extreme paramoralism, and bears
its peculiar suggestiveness.
We rarely see this method being used by normal people;
even if raised by the people who abused it; they usually only
indicate its results in their characteristic difficulties in appre-
74 See note p. 46.
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hending reality properly. Use of this method can be included
within the above-mentioned special psychological knowledge
developed by psychopaths concerning the weaknesses of hu-
man nature and the art of leading others into error. Where they
are in rule, this method is used with virtuosity, and to an extent
conterminous with their power.
~~~
Information selection and substitution: The existence of
psychological phenomena known to pre-Freudian philosophical
students of the subconscious bears repeating. Unconscious
psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in
time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenom-
ena possible: including those generally described as conver-
sive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the
selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable
premises.
We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential
process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a
conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal
projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from
the subconscious, which considers it inexpedient or disturbing.
This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration,
which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all
the advantages which could be derived from consciously elabo-
rated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected
remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way
causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be
extremely harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own
subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension
and bitterness.
We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback
goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database
thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece
of information which was responsible for arriving at the un-
comfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further
logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in
direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed
data. An ever-greater number of such repressed information is
collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit
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153
seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way
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
