know is this: many people who experience interactions with
psychopaths and narcissists report feeling “drained” and con-
fused and often subsequently experience deteriorating health.
Does this mean that part of the dynamic, part of the explanation
for why psychopaths will pursue “love relationships” and
“friendships” that ostensibly can result in no observable mate-
rial gain, is because there is an actual energy consumption?
We do not know the answer to this question. We observe,
we theorize, we speculate and hypothesize. But in the end, only
the individual victim can determine what they have lost in the
dynamic - and it is often far more than material goods. In a
certain sense, it seems that psychopaths are soul eaters or “Psy-
chophagic”.
In the past several years, there are many more psychologists
and psychiatrists and other mental health workers beginning to
look at these issues in new ways in response to the questions
about the state of our world and the possibility that there is
24
EDITOR’S PREFACE
some essential difference between such individuals as George
W. Bush and many so-called Neocons, and the rest of us.
Dr. Stout’s book has one of the longest explanations as to
why none of her examples resemble any actual persons that I
have ever read. And then, in a very early chapter, she describes
a “composite” case where the subject spent his childhood blow-
ing up frogs with fire-crackers. It is widely known that George
W. Bush did this, so one naturally wonders...
In any event, even without Dr. Stout’s work, at the time we
were studying the matter, we realized that what we were learn-
ing was very important to everyone because as the data was
assembled, we saw that the clues, the profiles, revealed that the
issues we were facing were faced by everyone at one time or
another, to one extent or another. We also began to realize that
the profiles that emerged also describe rather accurately many
individuals who seek positions of power in fields of authority,
most particularly politics and commerce. That’s really not so
surprising an idea, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to us until
we saw the patterns and recognized them in the behaviors of
numerous historical figures and, lately, including George W.
Bush and members of his administration.
Current day statistics tell us that there are more psychologi-
cally sick people than healthy ones. If you take a sampling of
individuals in any given field, you are likely to find that a sig-
nificant number of them display pathological symptoms to one
extent or another. Politics is no exception, and, by its very na-
ture, would tend to attract more of the pathological “dominator
types” than other fields. That is only logical, and we began to
realize that it was not only logical, it was horrifyingly accurate;
horrifying because pathology among people in power can have
disastrous effects on all of the people under the control of such
pathological individuals. And so, we decided to write about this
subject and publish it on the Internet.
As the material went up, letters from our readers began to
come in thanking us for putting a name to what was happening
to them in their personal lives as well as helping them to under-
stand what was happening in a world that seems to have gone
completely mad. We began to think that it was an epidemic,
and, in a certain sense, we were right. If an individual with a
POLITICAL PONEROLOGY
25
highly contagious illness works in a job that puts them in con-
tact with the public, an epidemic is the result. In the same way,
if an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath,
he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people
who are not, essentially, psychopathic. Our ideas along this line
were soon to receive confirmation from an unexpected source:
Andrew !obaczewski, the author of the book you are about to
read. I received an email as follows:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.
I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy
by my computer. You are doing a most important and valu-
able work for the future of nations.[…]
I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I
took part in a secret investigation of the real nature and psy-
chopathology of the macro-social phenomenon called “Com-
munism”. The other researchers were the scientists of the pre-
vious generation who are now passed away.
The profound study of the nature of psychopathy, which
played the essential and inspirational part in this macro-social
psychopathologic phenomenon, and distinguishing it from
other mental anomalies, appeared to be the necessary prepara-
tion for understanding the entire nature of the phenomenon.
The large part of the work, you are doing now, was done in
those times. …
I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific
document, useful for your purposes. It is my book “Political
Ponerology – A science on the nature of evil adjusted for po-
litical purposes”. You may also find copy of this book in the
Library of Congress and in some university and public librar-
ies in the USA.
Be so kind and contact me so that I may mail a copy to
you.
Very truly yours!
Andrew M. !obaczewski
I promptly wrote a reply saying yes, I would very much like
to read his book. A couple of weeks later the manuscript ar-
rived in the mail.
26
EDITOR’S PREFACE
As I read, I realized that what I was holding in my hand was
essentially a chronicle of a descent into hell, transformation,
and triumphant return to the world with knowledge of that hell
that was priceless for the rest of us, particularly in this day and
time when it seems evident that a similar hell is enveloping the
planet. The risks that were taken by the group of scientists that
did the research on which this book is based are beyond the
comprehension of most of us.
Many of them were young, just starting in their careers
when the Nazis began to stride in their hundred league jack-
boots across Europe. These researchers lived through that, and
then when the Nazis were driven out and replaced by the
Communists under the heel of Stalin, they faced years of op-
pression the likes of which those of us today who are choosing
to take a stand against the Bush Reich cannot even imagine.
But, based on the syndrome that describes the onset of the dis-
ease, it seems that the United States, in particular, and perhaps
the entire world, will soon enter into “bad times” of such horror
and despair that the Holocaust of World War II will seem like
just a practice run.
And so, since they were there, and they lived through it and
brought back information to the rest of us, it may well save our
lives to have a map to guide us in the falling darkness.
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
In presenting my honored readers with this volume, which I
generally worked on during the early hours before leaving to
make a difficult living, I would first like to apologize for the
defects which are the result of anomalous circumstances. I