This is a quick blog on Andrew Lobaczewski’s notion of ‘pathocracy’ and draws liberally on Steve Taylor’s summary account in Psychology Today (2019). Arising out of his own experience of suffering under the Nazi occupation of Poland, he was motivated to develop a field of study he termed ‘ponerology’, or the investigation of human evil. Although I’m not drawn to the idea of evil, his thinking has contemporary relevance. He wanted to understand why ‘evil’ people seem to prosper, while many ‘good’ people seem to struggle. Why do people with ‘psychological disorders’ rise with apparent ease to positions of power, often heading governments.
The concept of pathocracy has purchase when individuals with personality disorders – notably psychopathy – occupy positions of power. He contended that a small minority of people suffer from personality disorders like narcissism and psychopathy. Those with these disorders can feel an insatiable lust for power. People with narcissistic personality disorder desire constant attention and affirmation, having a sense of superiority to others and a right to dominate them. They also lack empathy, leaving them free to exploit and abuse others in pursuit of power.
Psychopaths feel a similar sense of superiority and also lack empathy, but the main difference between them and narcissists is that they don’t feel the same impulse for attention and adoration. There is a sense in which the impulse to be adored can act as a check on the behaviour of narcissists, because they may be reluctant to do anything that might make them unpopular. Psychopaths have no such qualms.
Democratic institutions can protect against the rise of pathological individuals. One consequence, Hughes argues in his Disordered Minds (2018), is that pathological leaders detest democracy and, once in power, act to contain or abolish it. The press is quickly constrained (witness Hitler, Putin, Orban, Erdogan). They regard themselves as superior beings who have risen to the top via competitive struggle and deserve to dominate others.
Lobaczewski also writes of ‘collective pathocracy’. Over time, pathological leaders attract like-minded people and pathocracies can become entrenched and more extreme. This is not of course to say that all who participate in pathocratic governments have personality disorders: some ambitious people have their own – largely compatible – agendas.
The other side of the coin is the attraction many people feel towards charismatic demagogues. The Trump phenomenon illustrates this. His appeal transcended the obvious flaws of his personality, like his extreme narcissism, lack of empathy and ‘distorted, delusory view of reality’. Taylor suggests that psychologically this bears a strong resemblance to the attraction of spiritual gurus. Gurus and demagogues alike offer a deep-rooted impulse to return to a childhood state of abandonment to the comforting will of others. Simultaneously, the paranoia of pathological leaders results in their demonisation of other groups and creates ‘an intoxicating sense of group identity with a common purpose’.
Taylor ends by claiming the USA under Trump became a pathocracy.
Lobaczewski’s work strikes me as interesting. If, as critical realists contend, society is an open system with both upwards and downwards causality, then it behoves us sociologists to pay attention to psychological inputs into the social world.