Real Time Philosophy Journal

Real Time Philosophy October 2018, Issue 1

About Real Time Philosophy Freud Institute publishes the Real Time Philosophy journal each month. Take the existential leap by being a part of our philosophy journal that creates a real connection in today’s world. We are committed to a paperless exchange of ideas -- the virtues of the virtual expression of modern-day philosophy. Contribute your journal articles about current events and philosophy and real-world applications of philosophy.

The Freud Institute was founded by Dr. J.-M. Kuczynski. Dr. Kuczynski developed a novel psychoanalysis technique called "Structural Analysis," the basic principle of which is that mental illness is about withdrawing from the world and that mental health is about engaging it. Dr. Kuczynski received his doctoral degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. His publications include Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind (John Benjamins 2007) and Empiricism and the Foundations of Psychology (John Benjamins 2012).

To contribute to Real Time Philosophy, contact Dr. Kuczynski at support@freudinstitute.com.

The “Bureaupath” Issue

“Bureaucratism as a Late-Onset Psychopathy”

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. --Franz Kafka

Table of Contents Three Kinds of Psychopaths The Intellectual Configuration of the Bureaucrat Do Bureaucrats Have Morality?

Psychopath-as-Misanthropy vs. Psychopath as Lack of Integrity Who Does Psychoanalysis Help?

Two Kinds of Bureaucracies Why the Parsons Character in 1984 was Executed

Three Kinds of Psychopaths

By J.-M. Kuczynski Bureaucratism is late-onset psychopathy. First of all, psychopathy is simply a complete lack of integrity.

In some cases, this lack of integrity sets in very early in life. When this happens, the person in question never even develops the character-architecture of a normal person, and so far as he ever appears to have one, it is simply because he is faking it. These people are con-artists, grifters, drifters, cult-leaders, and altogether plastic and obviously phony people.

A vastly more common kind of psychopathy is the bureaupath, this being someone who forfeits his integrity into order to fit into some bureaucratic institution or pseudo-legitimate area of professional endeavor, such as academia or the law. This sort of person parted with his integrity late in life, and therefore did develop the characterological properties of a normal person and still, even after psychopathizing, retains the formal properties of such a person. In this sort of person, psychopathizing is the same as bureaucratizing—becoming a bureaucratic husk of a person, somebody for whom the magic is gone and in whom the spark is gone. In any case, contrary to what people are likely to presume, such people are indeed bona fide psychopaths.

The reason they seem not to be psychopaths is that,

People who say these things don’t understand Freud.

unlike the early onset psychopath—who becomes an

Which is not in and of itself a crime, let alone

obvious conman or some such—the bureaupath is a

psychopathic, and which in most contexts is no

late onset psychopath, who psychopathized in an

consequence. What is psychopathic is the

institutional context and in order to submit, in the

hypocritical, projective stalling that they are doing.

most complete way possible, to institution-internal,

They simply don’t understand Freud. One option

purely political mandates.

under such circumstances is to say: I don’t

But there is a third kind of psychopath, also a late-onset psychopath. Academia, specifically the humanities, are replete with this sort of psychopath.

Some background will help. A lot of people, instead of saying that they agree with Freud or that they disagree with him, wil make statements long the lines of “he had a model”, or “the Freudian critique is compelling, but should be tempered by the Marxist critique”, or “Freud’s narrative was informed by such and such…” The most invidious such dodge is: “Freud is interesting, but it should be treated as literature…”

understand Freud. No comment.’ Another option is to say: ‘I half-understand him, but I half-don’t understand him. And I do, or do not, agree with the half that I understand.’ What is not an option is to project one’s own failure to understand onto the object of one’s non-understanding: it is to slime up that object by saying that it is ‘literature’ or a ‘narrative’ or a ‘critique’, etc.

These terms are used by phonies: by people who don’t understand but want to seem authoritative. So they are scumming up the truth and the categories in terms of which the truth is to be grasped with spongiform pseudo-cognitive categories, like ‘narrative’, ‘critique’, and ‘literature.’ That is psychopathic. It is driven by narcissism, hate, and psychopathic, infinite disregard for the truth. There is a heavy element of sheer stupidity in there as well, since someone with half a brain wouldn’t diminish themselves by so alienating themselves from the truth. But stupidity is perfectly compatible with psychopathy, which is nothing other than a total lack of integrity.

A magnet for psychopaths of this particular variety is the whole concept of the ‘paradigm’, in the sense in which Kuhn uses that term in his absurdly over-valued book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

There are certain topics and conceits that psychopaths of this variety swarm all over—time travel, quantum theory, relativism, post-modernism.

The first two of these topics obviously have inherent legitimacy, but they are used illegitimately by the psychopath. The latter two have legitimacy as objects of analysis but not otherwise. In any case, these topics, and the conceits popularly associated with them, are magnets for the spongiform, truth-concealing humanities professor psychopath.

I must stress that when I describe such people as psychopaths, I am speaking literally. These people are systematically dismantling life- and thought-critical epistemic instruments, and they are putting nothing in their place, and they are even going so far as to spurn the idea of putting something in their place.

And that is heavy-duty psychopathy: no one is drawn to such positions because they believe them, since it is biologically impossible to believe such positions.

Such people are perpetrating fraud, for reasons of convenience and ego and hate.

When people hand-wave and hem and haw with jabber about deconstructionism and narratives and critiques, know that you are a feather-head twig who is wasting your time—that you are dealing with someone who himself has no integrity and whose career is an attempt to undermine the very notion of integrity—and be on your way.

I trust the individual over the bureaucracy. --Scott Garrett

“The Intellectual Configuration of the Bureaucrat,� By J.-M. Kuczyinski, PhD. When I was a graduate student, I noticed that my so-called professors had curious gaps in their knowledge, even within their supposed areas of expertise.

What was striking was how lacking in any

So far as they had any knowledge at all, it was not well organized.

was that there was nothing there, that they knew

And so far as it was organized, it was not organized in a way that corresponded to the structures of the corresponding disciplines.

knowledge in the sense that someone to whom they

Rather, it seemed to be organized in such a way as to safeguard the positions of those same professors within the philosophical community.

less a reflection of the structure of the corresponding

understanding of foundational issues these so-called professors: the more one drilled, the more apparent it

nothing. And so far as they did have knowledge, it was

were trying curry favor had said such and such. And even this knowledge was organized in a way that was

subdiscipline than it was of the social structure of the philosophical community.

All this has been obvious to me for almost twenty years. But it was not until a few days ago that the significance of it became clear.

A few days ago I wrote a short piece with the title: “Psychopaths are Rogue Bureaucrats and Bureaucrats are Non-rogue Psychopaths� the point being that bureaucrats are a kind of psychopath.

After writing that piece, I remembered the following passage of a work on psychopathy

by Robert Lindner.

In the literature on [psychopathy] frequent mention is made of the "high" intelligence of psychopaths ... However derived, these notions are misleading or at least insufficient to serve as diagnostic aids or explanatory propositions ...

So far as intelligence per se is concerned ... what is outstanding about psychopathy is not its arithmetic proportions, but its peculiar variety and design ... The intelligence of the psychopath can be described only adjectivally and in terms of the [psychopath’s] whole personality. Perfectly adapted to his needs in the same way that protective coloring is suited for the preservation of an animal's life, all those psychological functions (thinking, understanding, imagining, remembering, etc.) that are considered components of "intelligence" have in the psychopath superimposed on them an aura of shrewdness and secretive cunning, of calculating canniness. These elements not only serve psychopathic purposes but also distort and divert all known measurement instruments, the rigid designs of which prevent their divinatory use with such individuals ...

A further striking feature of the intelligence of the psychopath, and one which appears only after a long time acquaintance with such individuals, is concerned with the amazing excess cargo of uncoordinated and useless information that they possess.

Frequently one is misled by his typically encyclopedic range when considering them people of high intellect, even of culture.

Penetration of time, however, reveals that, like the veneer of mahogany applied to inferior wood, this mass of "knowledge" is superficial and not digested; that it is free floating, lacking the necessary elements of cohesiveness and relativity. The intellects of my professors were configured in the exact way in which the psychopath’s intellect is configured. In the case of both my professors and that of the psychopath, knowledge is not organized properly.

There are no real organizing principles. And the positions are not extended or modified in a principled way.

They are always modified ad hoc, so as to deal with immediate threats and exigencies.

They are not modified in a way that grows organically out of the logic of the previous positions.

And when positions are modified or jettisoned, it is never for reasons of a purely logical nature; it is for reasons that are at least partly and sometimes completely social in nature.

In other words, the positions are adopted or modified not in accordance with considerations of truth or logic, but in accordance with the subject’s personal, social and professional needs.

The intellects of these

And the same is presumably true of the

bureaucrats-professors were configured in a

intellectual configurations of bureaucrats in

way that gave them a veneer of intelligence

general, the intellectual configuration of the

but embodied no true intelligence.

bureaucrat being identical with that of the psychopath.

Their intellect "superimposed upon them an aura of cunning and secret cunning, of calculated canniness", but lacked "the necessary elements of cohesiveness and relativity". All in all, the intellects of these bureaucrat-professors were shaped in the same way as that of the psychopath: they were configured in a way that embodied short-range cunning but no genuine sapience.

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it's getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.--Donald Trump

Do Bureaucrats Have Morality? By J.-M. Kuczynski

Do bureaucrats have morality? The obvious thing to say is: ‘Yes—they have a kind of morality. A rigid and blinkered kind of morality, perhaps, but a morality no less.’ A slightly more credible position is that they have a kind of ossified morality---a vestige of morality, the skeleton of what was once a living, vibrant morality.

Both of these positions are false. Bureaucrats don’t have a

The first thing to point out is that bureaucrats are utterly, inconceivably selective about how they apply their so-called moral code. When it is even minimally expedient for them to do so, they chuck it, lock, stock and barrel. And when it is even minimally expedient to use it, in order to obstruct someone, they will do so, without limit, without hesitation no matter how just the cause of the person they are obstructing.

rigid morality. They don’t have ossified morality. They have no morality. They hold themselves out as having narrow, procedure-based morality. But in doing so, they are merely lying.

Somebody who actually had the morality—the narrow, procedure-based morality—that the bureaucrat falsely holds himself out as having would not be a bureaucrat.

He would be an obsessive-compulsive, with strong morality and equally strong anti-social urges, the vector sum of which forces would be the aggressively proceduralistic morality in question. But this sort of obsessive-compulsive morality is indeed compulsive morality; it is not expediency-based. It is principle-based. And it is not optional for the person who has it: on the contrary, it is compulsory. The bureaucrat’s supposed morality is utterly optional and utterly non-compulsive: there is nothing he is happier to do than jettison it at a nanosecond’s notice, so long as he has even the most meager practical reason to do so.

The bureaucrat will indeed make heavy weather of the importance of procedure and of ‘codified norms’ of ethics, and the like. But so far as he is not simply lying, he is saying these things because they have a deadening, dispiriting effect on people; he is saying them because, when people give them credence, which

they do, it saps their strengths, as moralizing that isn’t seen through always does. So when the bureaucrat says these things, he says them to kill. Or to deceive, to make others believe that he has morality. Which he doesn’t.

There is a kind of person who is sometimes referred to as a bureaucrat who is an actual stickler for procedure and who is not a bad person. This is the legitimate civil servant, an example of which is the kindly librarian who gets nervous when rules are flouted but whose intention is to do good. This is a misuse of the term ‘bureaucrat’. The true bureaucrat is the slimy fake ‘educator’—the brain-dead professor---the ‘edu-crat’—who knows that he’s out of a job if any progress is made in his field. Or the obstreperous government employee who knows that he’s out of a job if anything actually gets done.

And these people go to great lengths to rationalize their conduct, sometimes even going so far as to write books to this end, books that are supposedly about ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’, but are really about proceduralizing civilization to death.

These people don’t abide by their own supposed moral codes; but they use those codes to thwart progress. And they must be seen for what they are and accordingly given no credence.

Halloween and the Bureaucrat

Psychopathy-as-Misanthrophy vs.

Psychopathy-as-Lack-of-Integrity By J.-M. Kuczynski, PhD. Psychologists use term ‘psychopath’ to refer to two very

The latter two completely lack integrity, and they say

different kinds of people. Sometimes they use it to refer to

and do whatever is expedient: psychopaths of this

people who are deeply misanthropic but may despite that

kind are frauds and path-of-least-resistance people.

fact—or even because of it—have a certain, possibly a high

Psychopaths of the other kind—the backwoodsman kind—are not path-of-least-resistance people and they are not phony. On the contrary, they are decidedly ‘real.’ At the same time, they may be anti-social to the point of being criminal and even violent. But ‘violent’ is perfectly compatibly with ‘real.’As for the concept of ‘integrity’, this is easily enough defined: one has integrity to the extent that one lives according to ideals and lacks it to the extent that one lives in purely expediency-based manner.

degree of, integrity. And sometimes they use it to refer to people who have absolutely no integrity.

The ill-willed back-woodsman who lives by a strict, if bizarre, moral code is an example of the first kind of psychopath.

And the slick, phony con-man is an example of the second, as is the utterly hollow bureaucrat.

As for my classifying bureaucrats as psychopaths---that is what they are; and is that what they are because they always go where the wind blows. They are without principle. This is not to say that they are cool, daring criminals: that sort of criminality—the ‘cool’ kind—actually requires a certain moral fiber, a certain integrity of character. The bureaucrat—to be distinguished from the narrow but principled functionary---has no integrity of any kind, no grit, no moral fiber. As for his supposed morality, it is a sham: it doesn’t exist. He uses it to obstruct others when it suits him, but he drops when it is even minimally convenient to do so.

And he is never internally conflicted about it. Internal conflict is about principle, and the bureaucrat, like all psychopaths, is without principle. When he appears to be internally conflicted, he is just afraid: the absence of internal conflict is evidenced by the fact that, 100% of the time, he takes the path of least resistance.

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“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Who Does Psychoanalysis Help? Not the Psychopath and Therefore Not the Bureaucrat By J.-M. Kuczynski, PhD. Psychoanalysis works for bona fide individuals. It works for

Most people derive strength from their membership

people who are autonomous. Most people are not

in collectives. For them, being part of the army, or

individuals.

the academy, the corporation, or the clergy is not an

Most people are cogs in a wheel; they are part of a

imposition. Where most people are concerned, there

collective. It is the collective that is the veritable agent.

is no well-defined entity to be imposed upon until the person in question belongs to this or that collective.

Look at any given university or corporation. With rare and

When most people go into therapy, they do so not to

doubtful exceptions, any given person in their employ is

become better individuals, but to re-integrate

utterly replaceable. This is because that individual does not

themselves back into some collective, membership in

himself do anything. The institution in question acts through

which they lost because some emotional disturbance

him.

of their flared up and alienated them from said collective.

When most people go into therapy, they do so not to

Psychoanalysis is about re-articulating one’s own

become better individuals, but to re-integrate themselves

relationship to a punitive conscience, or

back into some collective, membership in which they lost

‘superego’, and one’s superego is about

because some emotional disturbance of their flared up and

pressuring one to make allowances for others.

alienated them from said collective. So when most people

Making allowances for others us healthy up to a

go into therapy, they do so not to become better individuals

point, but it can become unhealthy. It becomes

at all. Quite the contrary. They go into therapy to stamp out

unhealthy when it stamps out one’s own identity,

some flicker of individualism within themselves that

one’s own individuality. And the purpose of

estranged them from some plurality on which their identity

psychoanalysis is to restore one’s individuality by

depends.

so modulating one’s superego that, while

Psychoanalysis does the opposite. Psychoanalysis helps

continuing to exist and function, it no longer

people who are individuals. Or rather, it helps people who

stamps out one’s individuality.

want to be and can be bona fide individuals but who are

But if one has no individuality to stamp out—if

held back in this by their continuing to give too much

one’s identity is about being part of a team---then

credence to collectives to which they believe they should

psychoanalysis cannot help on.

belong.

Also, if a person’s is fundamentally a team-player, if he is

People who are fundamentally team-players have

fundamentally part of a collective, then that collective

externalized superegos. They have consciences,

functions as his superego; and he is therefore not capable

but those consciences reside in the organization

of coming into conflict with his superego in the way in

that hosts them. And that is why such people

which a veritable individual can do so.

cannot come into conflict with those organizations.

Psychoanalysis has proven effective with certain types of

By contrast, people who are fundamentally

people and ineffective with others. And the people on

individuals have internalized superegos. And that is

whom it doesn’t work are people who are defined by their

why, even their consciences make heavy

associations with organizations and don’t want those ties

allowances for institutional norms, they can come

to be threatened.

into conflict with those institutions. Their values

Garden-variety ‘therapy’ is about easing people back into

may at certain junctures be coincident with those of

warm embrace of the institutions that define them.

some institution. But if that institution’s values

Psychoanalysis is about easing people out of the confining

change, their own values won’t necessarily follow

embrace of institutions that don’t define them.

suit. When this happens, there is a conflict between

Here is another way of looking at the matter.

that person and that institution. ’.

But in most cases, the person is initially unwilling to completely write off the institution in question, so that this conflict between himself and this institution is mirrored by a conflict between a part of him that wants to be independent of that institution and a part of him that doesn’t. If the part of him that wants to be independent of that institution is the stronger part, then psychoanalysis can help. It can help by him by seeing to it that the process of self-individuation is carried out completely.

But if the part him that wants to be a part of the institution is the stronger part, then psychoanalysis cannot help, and that person is candidate for garden-variety ‘therapy’.

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” ― Oscar Wilde

Two Kinds of Bureaucracies By J.-M. Kuczynski, PhD. There are two kinds of bureaucracies.

There are bureaucracies that serve some non-bureaucratic purpose, albeit in a bureaucratic way.

And then there are bureaucracies that are ends unto themselves---bureaucracies whose sole purpose is to create more bureaucracy.

An example of the first kind of bureaucracy is the World Bank. The World Bank actually serves a non-bureaucratic purpose, this being to help countries develop.

An example of the second kind of bureaucracy is the United Nations.

Another example is any given philosophy department. If somebody has philosophical talent and he wants to be a professor of philosophy, he has to get a PhD in philosophy, which means that he has to go through some philosophy department. Those departments inflate the non-existent merits of mediocrities and they try their level best to undermine people of actual ability. The result is that any such department, and indeed the totality of such department, produces nothing.

Nothing except recycled and inferior versions of old material—recycled, old, and irrelevant, since unlike their prototypes, these recycled papers and books are no longer relevant.

And the material from which these recycling jobs are

And the differences between the paradigm-sociopath

derived are taken from work produced by people who are on

and the bureaupath reflect the fact that becoming a

the edges of the discipline or altogether outside it, that being

bureaupath is about sociopathizing in order to fit into

why they aren’t dead inside and that being in turn by why

a bureaucracy, whereas becoming a text-book

they can produce.

sociopath is about sociopathizing for some other

In any case, Type-1 bureaucracies—bureaucracies of the

reason.

World Bank Kind—are not staffed by sociopaths. They are staffed by civil servants. These civil servants may be

One last point: the legal professional is usually taken

pointy-headed, blinkered and even incompetent. But they

to be a type-1 bureaucracy, but it is really a Type-2

are not entirely without principle.

bureaucracy posing as a Type-1 bureaucracy.

Type-2 bureaucracies---bureaucracies of the university-department kind---are staffed by sociopaths: by bureaupaths, as I call the, a bureaupath being someone who sociopathized within the confines of, and in order to ingratiate himself to, some type-2 bureaucracy.

“The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.” ― Sigmund Freud, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love

Why the Parsons Character in 1984 was Executed By J.-M. Kuzynski, PhD. Orwell’s 1984 is about a society that is a giant bureaucracy

Precisely because he was not a bureaucrat. A

in which nothing other than compete submission to said

bureaucracy doesn’t just want conformity. It wasn’t

bureaucracy is tolerated. It’s no surprise that the main

submission.

character, Winston Smith, is vaporized; he was a rebel: he

Bureaucrats are dead. Non-bureaucrats are not,

saw through all of the state’s lies. But why was Parsons

even if, like Parsons, they happen to buy the party

executed? Parsons was an oafish, amiable dufus who

line.

actually believed all of the states lies and actively supported

In fact, the very fact that it is an option for someone

the state from the bottom of his heart, believing that

to believe the party line means that that person is not

everything the state did was right.

a bureaucrat and is therefore on that bureaucracy’s

So why was he executed? Precisely because he had a heart. Precisely because he was psychologically sufficiently intact to have beliefs, even politically correct one.

hit list. He is probably not on the short hit list.

But he is definitely on the long list.

Bureaucrats are not people who believe the party line. Bureaucrats are people who don’t believe anything.

The reason that bureaucrats shift their beliefs so quickly and totally is that they don’t have beliefs.

A dufus, like Parsons, who happens to believe party propaganda is, to borrow a physics metaphor, kinematically but not dynamically in alignment with the party line and is therefore an enemy of that bureaucracy.

“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut” ― Albert Einstein

Freud’s Insights Gain a hearing The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

Blind faith Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.

Liberty of the individual The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.

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