Andrew M. Lobaczewski (Andrzej M. Łobaczewski; 1921 – 2007), was a Polish clinical psychologist, known for his work Political Ponerology.
Born in 1921, Łobaczewski grew up on a rural estate in the piedmont vicinity of Poland. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he worked on the family farm, was an apiarist, and then a soldier of the Home Army (an underground Polish resistance organization). After the Soviet invasion of Poland, the family estate was confiscated and the Łobaczewski family was driven from their ancient home.
Łobaczewski studied psychology at Yagiellonian University in Cracow while working to support himself and his studies. The conditions under Communist rule turned his attention to matters of psychopathology, and in particular to the role of psychopaths in such a governmental system. He was not the first researcher to follow a similar path, as he soon learned. Similar research was already underway, having been begun under secret agreement by scientists of the older generation, but was soon destroyed by the Communist Secret Police. Łobaczewski was left with the task of completing the work and putting it in writing.
Working in a mental hospital, then a general hospital, and in the open mental health service, the author improved his skills in clinical diagnosis and psychotherapy. Finally, when suspected by the political authorities of knowing too much in the matter of the pathological nature of the system, he was forced to burn the manuscript of the collected research only a few minutes ahead of a search by the Communist Secret Police. A second version of this manuscript was assembled and sent to the Vatican in care of a tourist acting as courier. No word was ever received about the fate of this document. Deprived of his material, he was forced to emigrate in 1977.
In the USA, his efforts to bring the results of his research (and the research of others) were stymied by the activities of communism in the United States both in academia and in the publishing industry. In spite of very difficult opposition, he re-wrote the book from memory in New York in 1984. All attempts to publish this book at this time failed.
His health broken, Łobaczewski returned to Poland in 1990. Under the care of old friends in the medical profession, his health was restored and he became able to work again and to publish another of his works in matters of psychotherapy and socio-psychology as well as preparing a new manuscript of his research into psychopathy and other psychopathologies and how they dominate totalitarian government systems: [Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes](Political Ponerology). He passed away in late November of 2007 in Poland.