our personal lives, we normally do not recognize it immedi-
ately. But here’s how it works.
Human beings have been accustomed to assume that other
human beings are - at the very least - trying to “do right” and
“be good” and fair and honest. And so, very often, we do not
take the time to use due diligence in order to determine if a
person who has entered our life is, in fact, a “good person”.
When a conflict ensues, we automatically fall into the legal
argument assumption that in any conflict, one side is partly
right one way, and the other is partly right the other, and that
we can form opinions about which side is mostly right or
wrong. Because of our exposure to the “legal argument” norms,
when any dispute arises, we automatically think that the truth
will lie somewhere between two extremes. In this case, applica-
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
21
tion of a little mathematical logic to the problem of the legal
argument might be helpful.
Let us assume that in a dispute, one side is innocent, honest,
and tells the truth. It is obvious that lying does an innocent
person no good; what lie can he tell? If he is innocent, the only
lie he can tell is to falsely confess “I did it”. But lying is noth-
ing but good for the liar. He can declare that “I didn’t do it”,
and accuse another of doing it, all the while the innocent per-
son he has accused is saying “I didn’t do it” and is actually
telling the truth.
The truth, when twisted by good liars, can always make an
innocent person look bad, especially if the innocent person is
honest and admits his mistakes.
The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testi-
mony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying
side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most cir-
cumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is
going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to
the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in
the hands of liars - psychopaths. Even the simple act of giving
testimony under oath is a useless farce. If a person is a liar,
swearing an oath means nothing to that person. However,
swearing an oath acts strongly on a serious, truthful witness.
Again, the advantage is placed on the side of the liar.
It has often been noted that psychopaths have a distinct ad-
vantage over human beings with conscience and feelings be-
cause the psychopath does not have conscience and feelings.
What seems to be so is that conscience and feelings are related
to the abstract concepts of “future” and “others”. It is “spatio-
temporal”. We can feel fear, sympathy, empathy, sadness, and
so on because we can imagine in an abstract way, the future
based on our own experiences in the past, or even just “con-
cepts of experiences” in myriad variations. We can “see our-
selves” in them even though they are “out there” and this
evokes feelings in us. We can’t do something hurtful because
we can imagine it being done to us and how it would feel. In
other words, we can not only identify with others spatially - so
to say - but also temporally - in time.
The psychopath does not seem to have this capacity.
22
EDITOR’S PREFACE
They are unable to “imagine” in the sense of being able to
really connect to images in a direct “self connecting to another
self” sort of way.
Oh, indeed, they can imitate feelings, but the only real feel-
ings they seem to have - the thing that drives them and causes
them to act out different dramas for the effect - is a sort of
“predatorial hunger” for what they want. That is to say, they
“feel” need/want as love, and not having their needs/wants met
is described by them as “not being loved”. What is more, this
“need/want” perspective posits that only the “hunger” of the
psychopath is valid, and anything, and everything “out there”,
outside of the psychopath, is not real except insofar as it has the
capability of being assimilated to the psychopath as a sort of
“food”. “Can it be used or can it provide something?” is the
only issue about which the psychopath seems to be concerned.
All else - all activity - is subsumed to this drive.
In short, the psychopath is a predator. If we think about the
interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom,
we can come to some idea of what is behind the “mask of san-
ity” of the psychopath. Just as an animal predator will adopt all
kinds of stealthy functions in order to stalk their prey, cut them
out of the herd, get close to them, and reduce their resistance,
so does the psychopath construct all kinds of elaborate camou-
flage composed of words and appearances - lies and manipula-
tions - in order to “assimilate” their prey.
This leads us to an important question: what does the psy-
chopath really get from their victims? It’s easy to see what they
are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material
goods or power. But in many instances, such as love relation-
ships or faked friendships, it is not so easy to see what the psy-
chopath is after. Without wandering too far afield into spiritual
speculations - a problem Cleckley also faced - we can only say
that it seems to be that the psychopath enjoys making others
suffer. Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people happy,
or doing things that make other people smile, the psychopath
enjoys the exact opposite.
Anyone who has ever observed a cat playing with a mouse
before killing and eating it has probably explained to them-
selves that the cat is just “entertained” by the antics of the
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
23
mouse and is unable to conceive of the terror and pain being
experienced by the mouse. The cat, therefore, is innocent of
any evil intent. The mouse dies, the cat is fed, and that is na-
ture. Psychopaths don’t generally eat their victims.
Yes, in extreme cases of psychopathy, the entire cat and
mouse dynamic is carried out. Cannibalism has a long history
wherein it was assumed that certain powers of the victim could
be assimilated by eating some particular part of them. But in
ordinary life, psychopaths don’t normally go all the way, so to
say. This causes us to look at the cat and mouse scenario again
with different eyes. Now we ask: is it too simplistic to think
that the innocent cat is merely entertained by the mouse run-
ning about and frantically trying to escape? Is there something
more to this dynamic than meets the eye? Is there something
more than being “entertained” by the antics of the mouse trying
to flee? After all, in terms of evolution, why would such behav-
ior be hard-wired into the cat? Is the mouse tastier because of
the chemicals of fear that flood his little body? Is a mouse fro-
zen with terror more of a “gourmet” meal?
This suggests that we ought to revisit our ideas about psy-
chopaths with a slightly different perspective. One thing we do