respect for a feeling of nescience11 truly worthy of a philoso-
pher. Every science is born in an area uninhabited by popular
imaginings that must be overcome and left behind. In this case,
however, the procedure had to be exceptionally radical; we had
to venture into any area indicated by systematic analysis of the
facts we observed and experienced from within a full-blown
condition of macrosocial evil, guided by the light of the re-
quirements of scientific methodology. This had to be upheld in
spite of the difficulties caused by extraordinary outside condi-
tions and by our own human personalities.
Very few of the many people who started out on this road
were able to arrive at the end, since they withdrew for various
reasons connected to this period of frustration. Some of them
11 Literally, the absence of knowledge. [Editor’s note.]
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
57
concentrated on a single question; succumbing to a kind of
fascination regarding its scientific value; they delved into de-
tailed inquiries. Their achievements may be present in this
work, since they understood the general mining of their work.
Others gave up in the face of scientific problems, personal
difficulties, or the fear of being discovered by the authorities,
who are highly vigilant in such matters.
Perusing this book will therefore confront the reader with
similar problems, albeit on a much smaller scale. A certain
impression of injustice may be conveyed due to the need to
leave behind a significant portion of our prior conceptualiza-
tions, the feeling that our natural world view is inapplicable,
and the expendability of some emotional entanglements. I
therefore ask my readers to accept these disturbing feelings in
the spirit of the love of knowledge and its redeeming values.
The above explanations were crucial in order to render the
language of this work more easily comprehensible to the read-
ers. The author has attempted to approach the matters described
herein in such a way as to avoid both losing touch with the
world of objective concepts and becoming incomprehensible to
anyone outside a narrow circle of specialists. We must thus beg
the reader to pardon any slips along the tightrope between the
two methods of thought. However, the author would not be an
experienced psychologist if he could not predict that some
readers will reject the scientific data adduced within this work,
feeling that they constitute an attack upon the natural wisdom
of their life-experience.
The Human Individual
When Auguste Comte12 attempted to found the new science
of sociology during the early nineteenth century, i.e. well be-
12 Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) was a French positivist thinker who invented
the term “sociology” to name the new science made by Saint-Simon. Comte
saw a “universal law” at work in all sciences which he called the “law of
three phases”. It is for this law that he is best known in the English-speaking
world; namely, that society has gone through three phases: Theological,
Metaphysical, and Scientific. He also gave the name “Positive” to the last of
these. The other universal law he called the “encyclopedic law”. By combin-
ing these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification
of all sciences, including inorganic physics (astronomy, earth science and
58
SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS
fore modern psychology was born, he was immediately con-
fronted with the problem of man, a mystery he could not solve.
If he rejected the Catholic Church’s oversimplifications of
human nature, then nothing remained except traditional
schemes for comprehending the personality, derived from well
known social conditions. He thus had to avoid this problem,
among others, if he wanted to create his new scientific branch
under such conditions.
Therefore, he accepted that the basic cell of society is the
family, something much easier to characterize and treat like an
elementary model of societal relations. This could also be ef-
fected by means of a language of comprehensible concepts,
without confronting problems which could truly not have been
overcome at the time. Slightly later, J. S. Mill13 pointed out the
resulting deficiencies of psychological cognition and the role of
the individuals.
chemistry) and organic physics (biology and for the first time, physique
sociale, later renamed sociologie). Comte saw this new science, sociology, as
the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences,
and which would integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole.
(Wikipedia)
13 John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873), an English philosopher and political
economist, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an
advocate of utilitarianism, the ethical theory first proposed by his godfather
Jeremy Bentham. During his time as an MP, Mill advocated easing the bur-
dens on Ireland, and became the first person in parliament to call for women
to be given the right to vote. In “Considerations on Representative Govern-
ment”, Mill called for various reforms of Parliament and voting, especially
proportional representation, the Single Transferable Vote, and the extension
of suffrage. He was godfather to Bertrand Russell. Mill argued that it is
Government’s role only to remove the barriers, such as laws, to behaviors
that do not harm others. Crucially, he felt that offense did not constitute
harm, and therefore supported almost total freedom of speech; only in cases
where free speech would lead to direct harm did Mill wish to limit it. For
example, whipping up an angry mob to go and attack people would not be
defended in Mill’s system. Mill argued that free discourse was vital to ensure
progress. He argued that we could never be sure if a silenced opinion did not
hold some portion of the truth. Ingeniously, he also argued that even false
opinions have worth, in that in refuting false opinions the holders of true
opinions have their beliefs reaffirmed. Without having to defend one’s be-
liefs, Mill argued, the beliefs would become dead and we would forget why
we held them at all. [Editor’s note.]
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
59
Only now is sociology successfully dealing with the diffi-
culties which resulted, laboriously reinforcing the existing
foundations of science by the achievements of psychology, a
science which by its very nature treats the individual as the
basic object of observation. This restructuring and acceptance
of an objective psychological language will in time permit
sociology to become a scientific discipline which can mirror
the social reality with sufficient objectivity and attention to
detail in order to render it a basis for practical action. After all,
it is man who is the basic unit of society, including the entire
complexity of his human personality.
In order to understand the functioning of an organism,
medicine begins with cytology, which studies the variegated
structures and functions of cells. If we want to understand the
laws governing social life, we must similarly first understand
the individual human being, his physiological and psychologi-
cal nature, and fully accept the quality and scope of differences
(particularly psychological ones) among the individuals who
constitute two sexes, different families, associations, and social
groups, as well as the complex structure of society itself.
The doctrinaire and propaganda-based Soviet system con-
tains a characteristic built-in contradiction whose causes will
be readily understandable toward the end of this book. Man’s
descent from the animals, bereft of any extraordinary occur-
rences, is accepted there as the obvious basis for the materialis-
tic world view. At the same time, however, they suppress the
fact that man has an instinctive endowment, i.e. something in
common with the rest of the animal world. If faced with espe-
cially troublesome questions, they sometimes admit that man
contains an insignificant survival of such phylogenetic heri-
tage, however, they prevent the publication of any work study-
ing this basic phenomenon of psychology.14
14 See: “A Mess in Psychiatry”, an interview with Robert van Voren, General
Secretary of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, published in the Dutch newspa-
per De Volkskrant on August 9, 1997 where he says: “Since 1950 Soviet
psychiatry has not just been standing still, but has gone downhill. Absolutely
nothing has changed. The bulk of the [Russian] psychiatrists could never find
a job as a psychiatrist in the West. There, methods of treatment are customary
about which you cannot even talk anymore in the West. ” [Editor’s note.]
60
SOME INDESPENSIBLE CONCEPTS
In order to understand humanity, however, we must gain a
primary understanding of mankind’s instinctive substratum and
appreciate its salient role in the life of individuals and socie-
ties. This role easily escapes our notice, since our human spe-
cies’ instinctive responses seem so self-evident and are so
much taken for granted that it arouses insufficient interest. A
psychologist, schooled in the observation of human beings,
does not fully appreciate the role of this eternal phenomenon of
nature until he has years of professional experience.
Man’s instinctive substratum has a slightly different bio-
logical structure than that of animals. Energetically speaking, it
has become less dynamic and become more plastic, thereby
giving up its job as the main dictator of behavior. It has become
more receptive to the controls of reasoning, without, however,
losing much of the rich specific contents of the human kind.
It is precisely this phylogenetically developed basis for our
experience, and its emotional dynamism, that allow individuals
to develop their feelings and social bounds, enabling us to in-
tuit other people’s psychological state and individual or social
psychological reality. It is thus possible to perceive and under-
stand human customs and moral values. From infancy, this
substratum stimulates various activities aiming at the develop-
ment of the mind’s higher functions. In other words, our in-
stinct is our first tutor, whom we carry inside all our lives.
Proper child-rearing is thus not limited to teaching a young
person to control the overly violent reactions of his instinctual
emotionalism; it also ought to teach him to appreciate the wis-
dom of nature contained and speaking through his instinctive
endowment
This substratum contains millions of years’ worth of bio-
psychological development that was the product of species’ life
conditions, so it neither is nor can be a perfect creation. Our
well known weaknesses of human nature and errors in the natu-
ral perception and comprehension of reality have thus been
conditioned on that phylogenetic level for millennia.15
15 Konrad Lorenz: Evolution and Modification of Behavior (1965); On Ag-
gression (1966); Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume I (1970);
Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, Volume II (1971); Behind the Mirror
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
61
The common substratum of psychology has made it possi-
ble for peoples throughout the centuries and civilizations to
create concepts regarding human, social, and moral matters
which share significant similarities. Inter-epochal and interra-
cial variations in this area are less striking than those differen-
tiating persons whose instinctual human substratum is normal
from those who are carriers of an instinctual bio-psychological
defect, though they are members of the same race and civiliza-
tion. It shall behoove us to return to this latter question repeat-
edly, since it has taken on a crucial importance for the prob-
lems dealt with in this book.
Man has lived in groups throughout his prehistory, so our
species’ instinctual substratum was shaped in this tie, thus con-
ditioning our emotions as regards the mining of existence. The
need for an appropriate internal structure of commonality, and
a striving to achieve a worthy role within that structure, are
encoded at this very level. In the final analysis, our self-
preservation instinct is rivaled by another feeling: the good of
society demands that we make sacrifices, sometimes even the
supreme sacrifice. At the same time, however, it is worth point-
ing out that if we love a man, we love his human instinct above
all.
Our zeal to control anyone harmful to ourselves or our
group is so primal in its near-reflex necessity as to leave no
doubt that it is also encoded at the instinctual level. Our in-
stinct, however, does not differentiate between behavior moti-
vated by simple human failure and behavior performed by indi-
viduals with pathological aberrations. Quite the contrary: we
(1973); The Natural Science of the Human Species: An Introduction to Com-
parative Behavioral Research - The Russian Manuscript (1944-1948)(1995).
