Author Govert SchullerPosted on Categories Psychology
Last summer I read many contributions to the anthology The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, written by 27 professional mental health care workers.[1]
One paper caught my attention, which was “Who Goes Trump?” by Elizabeth Mika. She is a psychologist with a Polish background and the only contributor referring to the very important study of collective psycho-pathologies by another Polish psychologist, Andrew Lobaczewski.
I found his book, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, very useful to understand the very disturbing rise of the psychologically defective Trump and his enabling followers [2][3].
I just found another article by her, “National Character Counts Week: Welcome to Pathocracy”, in which she elaborates Lobaczewski’s work and applies it to Trump and his enablers.[4]
This is an extremely important article to get an in-depth psycho-social understanding of what is happening in the US. If you read it together with her more psychological assessment of Trump, ” ‘Now More Than Ever:’ On Straitjacketing Trump”, you will get a realistic picture of the danger the US and the world is in.[5]
Excerpt:
“Pathocracies — pathological human systems run by conscience-deficient people — establish themselves so easily (yes) mostly because normal people remain either uneducated or in denial, and perhaps both, about the character pathology that gives rise to them.
Usually, pathocracies develop around a charismatic leader with a narcissistically psychopathic (malignantly narcissistic) character disorder. Lobaczewski called such charismatic narcissistic psychopaths “spellbinders.”
Narcissistic psychopaths are both malevolent and incompetent, as people without a conscience are incapable of building and supporting anything that expresses higher and lasting human values, no matter their IQ or expertise. Their intelligence, typically narrow and one-sided, bereft of broad abstract thinking abilities, is subsumed under primitive drives for power and adulation.”
Sources
[1]. Lee, Bandy (Ed.). 2017. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
[2]. Lobaczewski, Andrew. 2006 [1998]. Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. Grande Prairie, Canada: Red Pill Press.
[3]. “On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat“. Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017.
[4]. Mika, Elizabeth. 2017. “National Character Counts Week: Welcome to Pathocracy“. Medium. 19 Oct 2017.
[5]. Mika, Elizabeth. 2017. ” ‘Now More Than Ever:’ On Straitjacketing Trump“. Medium. 23 Aug 2017.
Yes indeed, I think in order to to get an in-depth psycho-social understanding of what is happening in the US one must understand the psycho-social consequences of a money system based on the abuse of monetary authority for personal gain. I have said before, this is usury and creates more than just an Economics of Greed. As Dante’ noted it is “an extraordinarily efficient form of violence by which one can do the most damage with the least effort.” Economist Herman Daly notes that such upheaval and violence is the result of the positive feedback loop caused by compound interest. He says; “Conventional wisdom considers the consequences pathological but accepts compound interest as normal.” The nature of a societies money may be the single largest influence on the behavior of a society. I think implementing a public money system that originates all money, not as a debt, but as an asset for public purpose as its first use will create an Economics of Care that we will need if we are to restore planetary balance.