This book attempts to depict the strange transformation of the free human mind into an automatically responding machine a transformation which can be bought about by some
of the cultural undercurrents in our present day society as well as by deliberate experiments in the service of a political ideology.
The rape of the mind and stealthy mental coercion are among the oldest crimes of mankind. They probably began back in pre historic days when man first discovered that he
could exploit human qualities of empathy and understanding in order to exert power over his fellow men. The word "rape" is derived from the Latin word rapere, to
snatch, but also is related to the words to rave and raven. It means to overwhelm and to enrapture, to invade, to usurp, to pillage and to steal.
The modern words "brainwashing", "thought control", and "menticide" serve to provide a clearer conception of the actual methods by which man's integrity can be violated.
When a concept is given its right name, it can be more easily recognized and it is with this recognition that the opportunity for systematic correction begins.
In this book the reader will find a discussion of some of the imminent dangers which threaten free cultural interplay. It emphasizes the tremendous cultural implication of
the subject of enforced mental intrusion. Not only the artificial techniques of coercion are important but even more the unobtrusive intrusion into our feeling and
thinking. The danger of destruction of the spirit may be compared to the threat of total physical destruction through atomic warfare. Indeed, the two are related and
intertwined.
My approach to this subject is based on the belief that it is only by looking at any problem from several angles that we are able to get at its heart.
According to Bohr's principle of complementarity, the rather simple phenomena of physics can be looked at from diverse viewpoints; different and seemingly contrasting
concepts are needed to describe physical phenomena. For instance, for explanation of the behavior of electrons, both the concept of particle and the concept of wave are
useful. The same is true for the even more complicated psychological and social interactions. We cannot look at brainwashing merely from a simple Pavlovian viewpoint. This
book tries to do it also from the clinical descriptive view and from the concept of psychology; it tries to look at brainwashing from the standpoint that general mental
coercion may belong to every human interaction.
Communication of any sort can almost be compared with trying to knock down a row of dolls in a throwing game. The more balls we throw, the greater is the probability that
we may hit all the dolls. The more approaches we make to any problem, the greater chance we have of finding and grasping its essential core. Such detailed treatment will
be impossible without some repetition in the text.
In this book we shall move from the specific subject of planned and deliberate mental coercion to the more general question of the influences in the modern world that tend
to robotize and automatize man. The last chapters are devoted to the problem of inner backbone, as a first step in the direction of learning to maintain OUR MENTAL
FREEDOM.
One of the great Dutch authors, Multatuli, wrote a letter to his friend excusing himself because the letter was so long: he had not had time enough to write a shorter one.
In this paradox he expressed part of the problem of all search for expression and communication. It takes a long time to express an idea in a precise and communicable way.
Yet being short and simple in one's descriptions is not always appreciated. Especially modern psychology is loaded with superlearnedness with the secret intention of
leaving the reading public awe stricken. The man who tries to express himself in simple words, bypassing jargon, risks being called popular and unscientific. Nevertheless,
I am aware of the fact that I have been so much steeped in psychological terminology that I cannot completely forego psychological language. The real test of psychological
clarity is the way the layman absorbs and understands the ideas communicated. My aim has been to write for the general public, not to popularize but to bring some order to
the chaos of our particular epoch.
Every word man speaks is a plagiarism. The task of an author is to absorb, incorporate, and transform the knowledge and emotional currents of his own epoch and to present
them in his own personal way, enriched by his own experiences. I am grateful, indeed, to all those whose ideas I have been able to borrow, and especially to all those who
inspired me to write down my own thoughts on this controversial subject.
Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo January, 1956
THE RAPE OF THE MIND - PART ONE
The Techniques of Individual Submission
The first part of this book is devoted to various techniques used to make man a meek conformist. In addition to actual political occurrences, attention is called to some
ideas born in the laboratory and to the drug techniques that facilitate brainwashing. The last chapter deals with the subtle psychological mechanisms of mental submission.
I. YOU TOO WOULD CONFESS
A fantastic thing is happening in our world. Today a man is no longer punished only for the crimes he has in fact committed. Now he may be compelled to confess to crimes
that have been conjured up by his judges, who use his confession for political purposes. It is not enough for us to damn as evil those who sit in judgment. We must
understand what impels the false admission of guilt; we must take another look at the human mind in all its frailty and vulnerability.
The Enforced Confession
During the Korean War, an officer of the United States Marine Corps, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, was taken prisoner by the Chinese Communists. After months of intense
psychological pressure and physical degradation, he signed a well documented "confession" that the United States was carrying on bacteriological warfare against the enemy.
The confession named names, cited missions, described meetings and strategy conferences. This was a tremendously valuable propaganda tool for the totalitarians. They
cabled the news all over the world: "The United States of America is fighting the peace loving people of China by dropping bombs loaded with disease spreading bacteria, in
violation of international law."
After his repatriation, Colonel Schwable issued a sworn statement repudiating his confession, and describing his long months of imprisonment. Later, he was brought before
a military court of inquiry. He testified in his own defense before that court: "I was never convinced in my own mind that we in the First Marine Air Wing had used bug
warfare. I knew we hadn't, but the rest of it was real to me the conferences, the planes, and how they would go about their missions."
"The words were mine", the Colonel continued, "but the thoughts were theirs. That is the hardest thing I have to explain: how a man can sit down and write something he
knows is false, and yet, to sense it, to feel it, to make it seem real."
This is the way Dr. Charles W. Mayo, a leading American physician and government representative, explained brainwashing in an official statement before the United Nations:
"... the tortures used... although they include many brutal physical injuries, are not like the medieval torture of the rack and the thumb screw. They are subtler, more
prolonged, and intended to be more terrible in their effect. They are calculated to disintegrate the mind of an intelligent victim, to distort his sense of values, to a
point where he will not simply cry out 'I did it!' but will become a seemingly willing accomplice to the complete disintegration of his integrity and the production of an
elaborate fiction."
The Schwable case is but one example of a defenseless prisoner being compelled to tell a big lie. If we are to survive as free men, we must face up to this problem of
politically inspired mental coercion, with all its ramifications.
It is more than twenty years [in 1956] since psychologists first began to suspect that the human mind can easily fall prey to dictatorial powers. In 1933, the German
Reichstag building was burned to the ground. The Nazis arrested a Dutchman, Marinus Van der Lubbe, and accused him of the crime. Van der Lubbe was known by Dutch
psychiatrists to be mentally unstable. He had been a patient in a mental institution in Holland. And his weakness and lack of mental balance became apparent to the world
when he appeared before the court. Wherever news of the trial reached, men wondered: "Can that foolish little fellow be a heroic revolutionary, a man who is willing to
sacrifice his life to an ideal?"
During the court sessions Van der Lubbe was evasive, dull, and apathetic. Yet the reports of the Dutch psychiatrists described him as a gay, alert, unstable character, a
man whose moods changed rapidly, who liked to vagabond around, and who had all kinds of fantasies about changing the world.
On the forty second day of the trial, Van der Lubbe's behavior changed dramatically. His apathy disappeared. It became apparent that he had been quite aware of everything
that had gone on during the previous sessions. He criticized the slow course of the procedure. He demanded punishment either by imprisonment or death. He spoke about his
"inner voices". He insisted that he had his moods in check. Then he fell back into apathy. We now recognize these symptoms as a combination of behavior forms which we can
call a confession syndrome. In 1933 this type of behavior was unknown to psychiatrists. Unfortunately, it is very familiar today and is frequently met in cases of extreme
mental coercion.
Van der Lubbe was subsequently convicted and executed. When the trial was over, the world began to realize that he had merely been a scapegoat. The Nazis themselves had
burned down the Reichstag building and had staged the crime and the trial so that they could take over Germany. Still later we realized that Van der Lubbe was the victim
of a diabolically clever misuse of medical knowledge and psychologic technique, through which he had been transformed into a useful, passive, meek automaton, who replied
merely yes or no to his interrogators during most of the court sessions. In a few moments he threatened to jump out of his enforced role. Even at that time there were
rumors that the man had been drugged into submission, though we never became sure of that.
[NOTE: The psychiatric report about the case of Van der Lubbe is published by Bonhoeffer and Zutt. Though they were unfamiliar with the "menticide syndrome", and not
briefed by their political Fuhrers, they give a good description about the pathologic, apathetic behavior, and his tremendous change of moods. They deny the use of
drugs.]
Between 1936 and 1938 the world became more conscious of the very real danger of systematized mental coercion in the field of politics. This was the period of the well
remembered Moscow purge trials. It was almost impossible to believe that dedicated old Bolsheviks, who had given their lives to a revolutionary movement, had suddenly
turned into dastardly traitors. When, one after another, everyone of the accused confessed and beat his breast, the general reaction was that this was a great show of
deception, intended only as a propaganda move for the non Communist world. Then it became apparent that a much worse tragedy was being enacted. The men on trial had once
been human beings. Now they were being systematically changed into puppets. Their puppeteers called the tune, manipulated their actions. When, from time to time, news came
through showing how hard, rigid revolutionaries could be changed into meek, self accusing sheep, all over the world the last remnants of the belief in the free community
presumably being built in Soviet Russia began to crumble.
In recent years, the spectacle of confession to uncommitted crimes has become more and more common. The list ranges from Communist through non Communist to anti Communist,
and includes men of such different types as the Czech Bolshevik Rudolf Slansky and the Hungarian cardinal, Joseph Mindszenty.
Mental Coercion and Enemy Occupation
Those of us who lived in the Nazi occupied countries during the Second World War learned to understand only too well how people could be forced into false confessions, and
into betrayals of those they loved. I myself was born in the Netherlands and lived there until the Nazi occupation forced me to flee. In the early days of the occupation,
when we heard the first eyewitness descriptions of what happened during Nazi interrogations of captured resistance workers, we were frightened and alarmed.
The first aim of the Gestapo was to force prisoners under torture to betray their friends and to report new victims for further torture. The Brown Shirts demanded names
and more names, not bothering to ascertain whether or not they were given falsely under the stress of terror. I remember very clearly one meeting held by a small group of
resisters to discuss the growing fear and insecurity. Everybody at that meeting could expect to be mentioned and picked up by the Gestapo at some time. Should we be able
to stand the Nazi treatment, or would we also be forced to become informers? This question was being asked by anti Nazis in all the occupied countries.
During the second year of the occupation we realized that it was better not to be in touch with one another. More than two contacts were unsafe. We tried to find medical
and psychiatric preventives to harden us against the Nazi torture we expected. As a matter of fact, I myself conducted some experiments to determine whether or not
narcotics would harden us against pain. However, the results were paradoxical. Narcotics can create pain insensitivity, but their dulling action at the same time makes
people more vulnerable to mental pressure. Even at that time we knew, as did the Nazis themselves, that it was not the direct physical pain that broke people, but the
continuous humiliation and mental torture. One of my patients, who was subjected to such an interrogation, managed to remain silent. He refused to answer a single
question, and finally the Nazis dismissed him. But he never recovered from this terrifying experience. He hardly spoken even when he returned home. He simply sat bitter,
full of indignation and in a few weeks he died. It was not his physical wounds that had killed him; it was the combination of fear and wounded pride.
We held many discussions about ways of strengthening our captured underground workers or preventing them from final self betrayal. Should some of our people be given
suicide capsules? That could only be a last resort. Narcotics like morphine give only a temporary anesthesia and relief; moreover, the enemy would certainly find the
capsules and take them away.
We had heard about German attempts to give cocaine and amphetamine to their air pilots for use in combat exhaustion, but neither medicament was reliable. Those drugs might
revive the body by making it less sensitive to pain, but at the same time they dulled the mind. If captured members of the underground were to take them, as experiments
had shown, their bodies might not feel the effects of physical torture, but their hazy minds might turn them into easier dupes of the Nazis.
We also tried systematic exercises in mental relaxation and auto hypnosis (comparable with Yogi exercises) in order to make the body more insensitive to hunger and pain.
If an individual's attention is fixed on the development of conscious awareness of automatic body functions, such a breathing, the alert functioning of the brain cortex
can be reduced, and awareness of pain will diminish. This state of pain insensitivity can sometimes be achieved through autohypnotic exercises. But very few of our people
were able to bring themselves into such anesthesia.
Finally we evolved this simple psychological trick: when you can no longer outwit the enemy or resist talking, the best thing to do is to talk too much. This was the idea:
keep yourself sullen and act the fool; play the coward and confess more than there is to confess. Later we were able to verify that this method was successful in several
cases. Scatterbrained simpletons confused the enemy much more than silent heroes whose stamina was finally undermined in spite of everything.
I had to flee Holland after a policeman warned me that my name had been mentioned in an interrogation. I had twice been questioned by the Nazis on minor matters and
without bodily torture. When they later caught up with me in Belgium, probably as the result of a betrayal, I had to undergo a long initial examination in which I was
beaten, fortunately not too seriously. The interview had started pleasantly enough. Apparently, the Nazi officer in charge thought he would be able to get information out
of me through friendly methods. Indeed, we even had a discussion (since I am a psychiatrist) about the methods used in interrogation. But the officer's mood changed, and
he behaved with all the sadistic characteristics we had come to expect from his type. Happily, I managed to escape from Belgium that very night before a more systematic
and more torturous investigation could begin.
Arriving at the London headquarters after an adventurous trip through France and Spain, I became Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces in
England. In this official position I was able to gather data on what was happening to the millions of victims of Nazi terror and torture. Later on I questioned and treated
several escapees from internment and concentration camps. These people had become real experts in suffering. The variety of human reactions under those infernal
circumstances taught us an ugly truth: the spirit of most men can be broken, men can be reduced to the level of animal behavior. Both torturer and victim finally lose all
human dignity.
My government gave me the power to investigate a group of traitors and I also interrogated imprisoned Nazis. When I review all these wartime experiences, all the confusion
about courage and cowardice, treason, morale, and mental fortitude, I must confess that my eyes were only really opened after a study of the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi
leaders. These trials gave us the real story of the systematic coercive methods used by the Nazis. At about the same time we began to learn more about the perverted
psychological strategy Russia and her satellites were using.
Witchcraft and Torture
The specific techniques used in the modern world to break man's mind and will to extort confessions for political propaganda purposes are relatively new [in 1956] and
highly refined. Yet enforced confession itself is nothing new. From time immemorial tyrants and dictators have needed these "voluntary" confessions to justify their own
evil deeds. The knowledge that the human mind can be influenced, tamed, and broken down into servility is far older than the modern dictatorial concept of enforced
indoctrination. The primitive shaman used awe inspiring ritual to bring his victim into such a state of fright hypnosis that he yielded to all suggestions. The native on
whom a spell of doom has been cast by the medicine man may become so hypnotized by his own fear that he simply sits down, accepts his fate, and dies (Malinowski).
Throughout history men have had an intuitive understanding that the mind can be manipulated. Elaborate strategies have been worked out to achieve this end. Ecstasy
rituals, frightening masks, loud noises, eerie chants all have been used to compel the crowd to accept the beliefs of their leaders. Even if an ordinary man at first
resists a cruel shaman or medicine man, the hypnotizing ritual gradually breaks his will.
More painful methods are not new either. When we study the old reports of the Inquisition, or of the many witch trials, both in Europe and America, we learn a great deal
about these methods. The floating test is one example. Those accused of witchcraft were thrown into the river, their feet and hands tied together. If the body did not
sink, the victim was immediately pulled out of the water and burned at the stake. The fact that he did not sink was proof positive of his guilt. If, on the other hand, the
accused obeyed the law of gravity and sank to the bottom of the river, the drowned body was ceremoniously removed from the river and proclaimed innocent. Not much choice
was left to the victim!
Man has been tremendously inventive in developing means for inflicting suffering on his fellow man. With refined passion he has devised techniques which provoke the most
exquisite pain in the most vulnerable parts of the human body. The rack and the thumbscrew are age old instruments and have been used not only by primitive judges but also
by so called civilized dictators and tyrants.
In order better to understand modern mental torture, we must constantly keep in mind the fact that from the earliest days bodily anguish and the rack were never meant
merely to inflict pain on the victim. They may not have expressed their understanding in sophisticated terms, but the medieval judge and hangman were nevertheless aware
that there is a peculiar spiritual relationship and mental interplay between the victim and the rest of the community. Much painful torture and hanging had to be done as
public demonstrations. After suffering the most intense pain, the witch would not only confess to shocking sexual debaucheries with the devil, but would herself gradually
come to believe the stories she had invented and would die convinced of her guilt. The whole ritual of interrogation and torture finally compelled her to yield to the
fantasies of her judges and accusers. In the end she even yearned for death. She wanted to be burned at the stake in order to exorcise the devil and expiate her sins.
These same judges and hangman realized, too, that their witch trials were intended not only to torture the witches, but even more to torture the bystanders, who, albeit
unconsciously, identified themselves with the victims. This is, of course, one of the reasons burning and hangings were held in public and became the occasion for great
pageants. Terror thus became widespread, and many judges spoke euphemistically of the preventive action of such torture. Psychologically, we can see this entire device as
a blackmailing of human sympathy and the general tendency to identify with others.
As far back as 1563 the courageous Dutch physician Johannes Wier published his masterwork, "De Praestigiis Daemonum" (On the Delusions About Demons) in which he states that the collective and voluntary self accusation of
older women through which they exposed themselves to torture and death by their inquisitors was in itself an act inspired by the devil, a trick of demons, whose aim it was
to doom not only the innocent women but also their reckless judges. Wier was the first medical man to introduce what became the psychiatric concept of DELUSION and MENTAL
BLINDNESS. Wherever his book had influence, the persecution of witches ceased, in some countries more than one hundred and fifty years before it was finally brought to an
end throughout the civilized world. His work and his insights became one of the main instruments for fighting the witch delusion and physical torture (Baschwitz). Wier
realized even then that witches were scapegoats for the inner confusion and desperation of their judges and of the "Zeitgeist" in general.
The Refinement of the Rack
All knowledge can be used either for good or for evil, and psychology is not immune to this general law. Psychology has delivered up to man new means of torture and
intrusion into the mind. We must be more and more aware of what these methods and techniques are if we are successfully to fight them. They can often be more painful and
mentally more paralyzing than the rack. Strong personalities can tolerate physical agony; often it serves to increase stubborn resistance. No matter what the constitution
of the victim, physical torture finally leads to a protective loss of consciousness. But to withstand mental torture leading to creeping mental breakdown demands an even
stronger personality.
What we call brainwashing (a word derived from the Chinese "Hsi Nao") is an elaborate ritual of systematic indoctrination, conversion, and self accusation used to
change non Communists into submissive followers of the party (Hunter). "Menticide" is a word coined by me and derived from "mens", the mind, and "caedere",
to kill.
[NOTE: Here I followed the etymology used by the United Nations to form the word "genocide", meaning the systematic destruction of racial groups.]
Both words indicate the same perverted refinement of the rack, putting it on what appears to be a more acceptable level. But it is a thousand times worse and a thousand
times more useful to the inquisitor.
Menticide is an old crime against the human mind and spirit but systematized anew. It is an organized system of psychological intervention and judicial perversion through
which a powerful dictator can imprint his own opportunistic thoughts upon the minds of those he plans to use and destroy. The terrorized victims finally find themselves
compelled to express complete conformity to the tyrant's wishes. Through court procedures, at which the victim mechanically reels off an inner record which has been
prepared by his inquisitors during a preceding period, public opinion is lulled and thrown off guard. "A real traitor has been punished", people think. "The man has
confessed!" His confession can be used for propaganda, for the cold war, to instill fear and terror, to accuse the enemy falsely, or to exercise a constant mental pressure
upon others.
One important result of this procedure is the great confusion it creates in the mind of every observer, friend or foe. In the end no one knows how to distinguish truth
from falsehood. The totalitarian potentate, in order to break down the minds of men, first needs widespread mental chaos and verbal confusion, because both paralyze his
opposition and cause the morale of the enemy to deteriorate unless his adversaries are aware of the dictator's real aim. From then on he can start to build up his system
of conformity.
In both the Mindszenty and the Schwable cases, we have documented reports of the techniques of menticide as it has been used to break the minds and wills of courageous
men.
Let us look first at the case of Cardinal Mindszenty, accused of misleading the Hungarian people and collaboration with the enemies, the United States. In his expose' on
Cardinal Mindszenty's imprisonment, Stephen K. Swift graphically describes three typical phases in the psychological "processing" of political prisoners. The first phase
is directed toward extorting confession. The victim is bombarded with questions day and night. He is inadequately and irregularly fed. He is allowed almost no rest and
remains in the interrogation chamber for hours on end while his inquisitors take turns with him. Hungry, exhausted, his eyes blurred and aching under unshaded lamps, the
prisoner becomes little more than a hounded animal.
... when the Cardinal had been standing for sixty six hours [Swift reports], he closed his eyes and remained silent. He did not even reply to questions with
denials. The colonel in charge of the shift tapped the Cardinal's shoulder and asked why he did not respond. The Cardinal answered: 'End it all. Kill me! I am
ready to die!' He was told that no harm would come to him; that he could end it all simply by answering certain questions.
... By Saturday forenoon he could hardly be recognized. He asked for another drink and this time it was refused. His feet and legs had swollen to such proportions
that they caused him intense pain; he fell down several times.
To the horrors the accused victim suffers from without must be added the horrors from within. He is pursued by the unsteadiness of his own mind, which cannot always
produce the same answer to a repeated question. As a human being with a conscience he is pursued by possible hidden guilt feelings, however pious he may have been, that
undermine his rational awareness of innocence. The panic of the "brainwashee" is the total confusion he suffers about all concepts. His evaluations and norms are
undermined. He cannot believe in anything objective any more except in the dictated and indoctrinated logic of those who are more powerful than he. The enemy knows that,
far below the surface, human life is built up of inner contradictions. He uses this knowledge to defeat and confuse the brainwashee. The continual shift of interrogators
makes it ever more impossible to believe in consecutive thinking. Hardly has the victim adjusted himself to one inquisitor when he has to change his focus of alertness to
another one.
Yet, this inner clash of norms and concepts, this inner contradiction of ideologies and beliefs is part of the philosophical sickness of our time!
As a social being the Cardinal is pursued by the need for good human relationships and companionship. The constantly reiterated suggestion of his guilt urges him toward
confession. As a suffering individual he is blackmailed by an inner need to be left alone and undisturbed, if only for a few minutes. From within and without he is
inexorably driven toward signing the confession prepared by his persecutors. Why should he resist any longer? There are no visible witnesses to his heroism. He cannot
prove his moral courage and rectitude after his death. The core of the strategy of menticide is the taking away of all hope, all anticipation, all belief in a future. It
destroys the very elements which keep the mind alive. The victim is utterly alone.
[NOTE: This continual attack on human conscience and guilt by unconscious self accusations is brilliantly depicted by Franz Kafka in "The Trial". In this novel the
victim never knows of what he is accused but his inner guilt leads him to conviction. Kafka anticipated the age of blackmailing into confession. His novel was written
before the 1930s. The same theme has been treated from a psychological point of view by Theodor Reik in his "Confession Compulsion and the Need for Punishment".]
If the prisoner's mind proves too resistant, narcotics are given to confuse it: mescaline, marijuana, morphine, barbiturates, alcohol. If his body collapses before his
mind capitulates, he receives stimulants: benzedrine, caffein, coramine, all of which help to preserve his consciousness until he confesses. Many of the narcotics and
stimuli which ultimately help to induce mental dependency and enforced confusion can also create an amnesia, often a complete forgetting of the torture itself. The torture
techniques achieve the desired effect, but the victim forgets what has actually happened during the interrogation. The clinicians who do therapeutic work with amphetamine
derivatives, which when injected into the blood stream help patients to remember long forgotten experiences, are familiar with the drug's ability to bring soothing
forgetfulness of the period during which the patient was drugged and questioned.
Next the victim is trained to accept his own confession, much as an animal is trained to perform tricks. False admissions are reread, repeated, hammered into his brain. He
is forced to reproduce in his memory again and again the fantasied offenses, fictitious details which ultimately convince him of his criminality. In the first stage he is
forced into mental submissiveness by others. In the second stage he has entered a state of autohypnosis, convincing himself of fabricated crimes. According to Swift: "The
questions during the interrogation now dealt with details of the Cardinal's 'confession.' First his own statements were read to him; then statements of other prisoners
accused of complicity with him; then elaborations of those statements. Sometimes the Cardinal was morose, sometimes greatly disturbed and excited. But he answered all
questions willingly, repeated all sentences once, twice, or even three times when he was told to do so." (Lassio)
In the third and final phase of interrogation and menticide the accused, now completely conditioned and accepting his own imposed guilt, is trained to bear false witness
against himself and others. He doesn't have to convince himself any more through autohypnosis; he only speaks "his master's voice". He is prepared for trial, softened
completely; he becomes remorseful and willing to be sentenced. He is a baby in the hands of his inquisitors, fed as a baby and soothed by words as a baby.
Now let us take a look at the Schwable case. In its general outline it is similar to the Mindszenty story; it differs only in details. As an officer of the United States
Marine Corps, fighting with the United Nations in Korea, he is taken prisoner by the enemy. The colonel expects to be protected by international law and by the regulations
regarding officer prisoners of war, which have been accepted by all countries. However, it slowly dawns on him that he is being subjected to a kind of treatment very
different from what he expected. The enemy looks on him not as a prisoner of war, but as a victim who can be used for propaganda purposes.
He is subjected to slow but constant pressures devised to break him down mentally. Humiliation, rough, inhuman treatment, degradation, intimidation, hunger, exposure to
extreme cold all have been used to crumble his will and to soften him. They need to wangle military secrets out of him and to use him as a tool in their propaganda
machine. He feels completely alone. He is surrounded by filth and vermin. For hours on end he has to stand up and answer the questions his interrogators hurl at him. He
develops arthritic backache and diarrhea. He is not allowed to wash or shave. He doesn't know what will happen to him next. This treatment goes on for weeks.
Then the hours of systematic and repetitious interrogation and oppression increase. He no longer dares to trust his own memory. There are new teams of investigators every
day, and each new team points out his increasing errors and mistakes. He cannot sleep any more. Daily his interrogators tell him they have plenty of time, and he realizes
that in this respect at least they are telling the truth. He beings to doubt whether he can resist their seductive propositions. If he will just unburden himself of his
guilt, they tell him, he will be better treated.
The inquisitor is treacherously kind and knows exactly what he wants. He wants the victim captured by the influence of a slowly induced hypnosis. He wants a well
documented confession that the American army used bacteriological warfare, that the captive himself took part in such germ warfare. The inquisitor wants this confession in
writing because it will make a convincing impression and will shock the world. China is plagued by hunger and epidemics; such a confession will explain the high disease
rate and exculpate the Chinese government, whose popularity is at a low ebb. So the colonel has to be prepared for a systematic confession, made before an international
group of Communist experts. Mentally and physically he is weakened, and every day the Communist "truths" are imprinted on his mind.
The colonel has in fact become hypnotized; he is now able to reproduce for his jailers bits and pieces of the confession they want from him. It is a well known scientific
fact that the passive memory often remembers facts learned under hypnosis better than those learned in a state of alert consciousness. He is even able to write some of it
down. Eventually, all the little pieces fit, like a jigsaw puzzle, into a complete, well organized whole; they form part of a document which was in fact prepared
beforehand by his captors. This document is placed in the colonel's hands, and he is even allowed to make some minor changes in the phrasing before he signs it.
By now, the colonel has been completely broken. He has given in. All sense of reality is gone; identification with the enemy is complete. For weeks after signing the
confession he is in a state of depression. His only wish is to sleep, to have rest from it all.
A man will often try to hold out beyond the limits of his endurance because he continues to believe that his tormentors have some basic morality, that they will finally
realize the enormity of their crimes and will leave him alone. This is a delusion. The only way to strengthen one's defenses against an organized attack on the mind and
will is to understand better what the enemy is trying to do and to outwit him. Of course, one can vow to hold out until death, but even the relief of death is in the hands
of the inquisitor. People can be brought to the threshold of death and then be stimulated into life again so that the torments can be renewed. Attempts at suicide are
foreseen and can be forestalled.
In my opinion hardly anyone can resist such treatment. It all depends on the ego strength of the person and the exhaustive technique of the inquisitor. Each man has his
own limit of endurance, but that this limit can nearly always be reached and even surpassed is supported by clinical evidence. Nobody can predict for himself how he will
handle a situation when he is called to the test. The official United States report on brainwashing [See the "New York Times", August 18, 1955.] admits that
"virtually all American POWs collaborated at one time or another in one degree or another, lost their identity as Americans... thousands lost their will to live" and so
forth. The British report [See the "New York Times", February 27, 1955.] gives a statistical survey about the abuse of the POWs. According to this report one third
of the soldiers absorbed enough indoctrination to be classified as Communist sympathizers.
This same report describes in a more extended way some of the sadistic means used by the enemy:
If a prisoner accepted Communist doctrines, his life became easier, according to the men's stories. But if a prisoner resisted Communist doctrines, the Chinese considered
him a criminal and reactionary deserving of any brutalities. the tortures applied to the 'reactionaries' included:
Making a prisoner stand at attention or sit with legs outstretched in complete silence from 4:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and constantly waking him during the few hours
allowed for sleep.
Keeping prisoners in solitary confinement in boxes about five by three by two feet. A private of the Gloucester Regiment spent more than six months in one of
these.
Withholding liquids for days 'to help self reflection'.
Binding a prisoner with a rope passed over a beam, one end fixed as a hangman's noose round his neck and the other end tied to his ankles. He was then told that if
he slipped or bent his knees he would be committing suicide.
Forcing a prisoner to kneel on jagged rocks and hold a large rock over his head with arms extended. It took a man who had undergone this treatment days to recover
the ability to walk.
At one camp North Korean jailers pushed a pencil like piece of wood or metal through a hole in the cell door and made the prisoner hold the inner end in his teeth.
Without warning a sentry would knock the outer end sidewise, breaking the man's teeth or splitting the sides of his mouth. Sometimes the rod was rammed inward
against the back of the mouth or down the throat.
Prisoners were marched barefooted to the frozen Yalu River, water was poured over their feet and they were kept for hours with their feet frozen to the ice to
'reflect' on their 'crimes.'
Time, fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The
brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him ind by somebody else. Fortunately, this, too, is known: as soon as the victim returns to normal
circumstances, the panicky and hypnotic spell evaporates, and he again awakens into reality.
This is what happened to Colonel Schwable. True, he confessed to crimes he did not commit, but he repudiated his confession as soon as he was returned to a familiar
environment.
When, during the military inquiry into the Schwable case, I was called upon to testify as an expert on menticide, I told the court of my deep conviction that nearly
anybody subjected to the treatment meted out to Colonel Schwable could be forced to write and sign a similar confession.
"Anyone in this room, for instance?" the colonel's attorney asked me, looking in turn at each of the officers sitting in judgment on this new and difficult case.
And in good conscience I could reply, firmly: "Anyone in this room."
It is now technically possible to bring the human mind into a condition of enslavement and submission. The Schwable case and the cases of other prisoners of war are tragic
examples of this, made even more tragic by our lack of understanding of the limits of heroism. We are just beginning to understand what these limits are, and how they are
used, both politically and psychologically, by the totalitarians. We have long since come to recognize the breast beating confession and the public recantation as
propaganda tricks; now we are beginning to see ever more clearly how the totalitarians use menticide: deliberately, openly, unashamedly, as part of their official policy,
as a means of consolidating and maintaining their power, though, of course, they give a different explanation to the whole procedure it's all confessions of real and
treacherous crimes.
This brutal totalitarian technique has at least one virtue, however. It is obvious and unmistakable, and we are learning to be on our guard against it, but as we shall see
later, there are other subtler forms of mental intervention. They can be just as dangerous as the direct assault, precisely because they are more subtle and hence more
difficult to detect. Often we are not aware of their action at all. They influence the mind so slowly and indirectly that we may not even realize what they have done to
us.
Like totalitarian menticide, some of these less obvious forms of mental manipulation are political in purpose. Others are not. Even if they differ in intent, they can have
the same consequences.
These subtle menticidal forces operate both within the mind and outside it. They have been strengthened in their effect by the growth in complexity of our civilization.
The modern means of mass communication bring the entire world daily into each man's home; the techniques of propaganda and salesmanship have been refined and systematized;
there is scarcely any hiding place from the constant visual and verbal assault on the mind. The pressures of daily life impel more and more people to seek an easy escape
from responsibility and maturity. Indeed, it is difficult to withstand these pressures; to many the offer of a political panacea is very tempting, to others the offer of
escape through alcohol, drugs, or other artificial pleasures is irresistible.
Free men in a free society must learn not only to recognize this stealthy attack on mental integrity and fight it, but must learn also what there is in side man's mind
that makes him vulnerable to this attack, what it is that makes him, in many cases, actually long for a way out of the responsibilities that republican democracy and
maturity place on him.
II. PAVLOV'S STUDENTS AS CIRCUS TAMERS
Before asking ourselves what the deeper mental mechanisms are of brainwashing, false confession, and conversion into a collaborator, let us try to see things from the
standpoint of the totalitarian potentates. What is their aim? What terms do they use to describe the behavior of their prisoners? What do they want from the Schwables and
the Midszentys?
The totalitarian jailers don't speak of hypnosis or suggestion; they even deny the fact of imposed confession. They think about human behavior and human government in a
much more mechanical way. In order to understand them we have to give more attention to their adoration of simplified Pavlovian concepts.
The Salivating Dog
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Russian Nobel price winner Ivan Petrovich Pavlov conducted his famous experiments with a bell and a dog. He knew that
salivation is associated with eating, and that if a dog was hungry, its mouth would water each time it saw food. Pavlov took advantage of this useful inborn reflex, which
serves the digestive process, to develop in his experimental animal the salivating response in answer to a stimulus which would not ordinarily create it. Each time Pavlov
fed the dog, he rang a bell, and at each feeding the dog's mouth watered. Then after many repetitions of the combined food bell stimulus, Pavlov rang the bell but did not
feed the dog. The animal reacted to the bell alone just as it had previously reacted to the sight of food its mouth watered. Thus the scientist had found out that the dog
could be induced to salivate involuntarily in response to an arbitrary signal. It had been "conditioned" to respond to the ringing of the bell as if that sound were the
smell and taste of food.
From this and other experiments, Pavlov developed his theory of the conditioned reflex, which explains learning and training as the building up of a mosaic of conditioned
reflexes, each one based on the establishment of an association between different stimuli. The greater the number of learned complex responses also called patterns the
greater the number of conditioned reflexes developed. Because man, of all the animals, has the greatest capacity for learning, he is the animal with the greatest capacity
for such complicated conditioning.
Pavlov's experiments were of great value in the study of animal and human behavior, and in the study of the development of neurotic symptoms. However, this knowledge of
some of the mechanisms of the human mind can be used as we have seen already, like any other knowledge, either for good or for evil. And unfortunately, the totalitarians
have used their knowledge of how the mind works for their own purposes. They have applied some of the Pavlovian findings, in a subtle and complicated way and sometimes in
a grotesque way, to try to produce the reflex of mental and political conditioning and of submission in the human guinea pigs under their control.
Even though the Nazis employed these methods before the Second World War, they can be said to have reached their full flower in Soviet Russia. Through a continued
repetition of indoctrination, bell ringing and feeding, the Soviet man is expected to become a conditioned reflex machine, reacting according to a prearranged pattern, as
did the laboratory dogs. At least, such a simplified concept is roaming around in the minds of some of the Soviet leaders and scientists (Dobrogaev).
In accordance with one of Stalin's directives, Moscow maintains a special "Pavlovian Front" (Dobrogaev) and a "Scientific Council on Problems of Physiological Theory of
the Academician I. P. Pavlov" (London). These institutions, part of the Academy of Science, are dedicated to the political application of the Pavlovian theory. They are
under orders to emphasize the purely mechanical aspects of Pavlov's findings. Such a theoretical view can reduce all human emotions to a simple, mechanistic system of
conditioned reflexes. Both organizations are control agencies dealing in research problems, and the scientists who work on them explore the ways in which man can
theoretically be conditioned and trained as animals are. Since Pavlovian theory is proclaimed by the obdurate totalitarian theoreticians as the gospel of animal and human
behavior, we have to grapple with the facts they adduce to prove their point, and with their methods and theoretical explanations.
What the Pavlovian council tries to achieve is the result of an oversimplification of psychology. Their political task is to condition and mold man's mind so that its
comprehension is confined to a narrow totalitarian concept of the world. It is the idea that such a limitation of thinking to Lenin Marxist theoretical thinking must be
possible for two reasons: first, if one repeats often enough its simplification, and second, if one withholds any other form of interpretation of reality.
This concept is based on the naive belief that one can permanently suppress any critical function and verification in human thinking. Yet, through taming and conditioning
of people, during which period errors and deviations must continually be corrected, unwittingly a critical sense is built up. True, at the same time the danger of using
this critical sense is brought home to the students. They know the dangers of any dissent, but even this promotes the development of a secondary and more refined critical
sense. In the end, human rebellion and dissent cannot be suppressed; they await only one breath of freedom in order to awake once more. The idea that there exist other
ways to truth than those he sees close at hand lives somewhere in everybody. One can narrow his pathways of research and expression, but a man's belief in adventurous new
roads elsewhere is ever present in the back of his mind.
The inquisitive human mind is never satisfied with a simple recital of facts. As soon as it observes a set of data, it jumps into the area of theory and offers
explanations, but the way a man sees a set of facts, and the way he juggles them to build them into a theory is largely determined by his own biases and prejudices.
Let me be the first to confess that I am affected by my own subjectivities. Even the words we use are loaded with implications and suggestions. The word "reflex", for
example, so important in Pavlovian theory, is a perfect instance of this. It was first used by the seventeenth century philosopher Descartes, in whose philosophical system
a parallel was made between the actions of the human body and those of a machine. For example, in the Caresian view, the automatic reaction of the body to certain painful
stimuli (e.g., withdrawing the hand after it has come into contact with fire) is compared with the automatic physical reflection of light from a mirror. The nervous
system, according to Descartes, reflects its response just as the mirror does. Such a simple explanation of behavior, and the very words used to describe it, immediately
denies the whole organism taking part in that response.
Yet man is not only a mirror, but a thinking mirror. According to the old mechanical view, actions are associated only with the part of the body which performs them, and
they have no relationship whatsoever to the purposeful behavior of the organism as a whole. But man is not a machine composed of independently functioning parts. He is a
whole. His mind and body interact; he acts on the outside world and the outside world acts on him. The innate reflexes, of which this hand withdrawal is one example, are
part of a whole system of adaptive responses which serve to help the individual, as an entity, to adjust to changed circumstances. They can be described as the result of
an inborn adaptation tendency. The only real difference between the innate reflexes and the conditioned reflexes is that the former supposedly have developed in the entire
race over the millions of years of the evolutionary process, while the latter are developed during the life span of the individual as a result of the gradual
automatization of acquired responses.
If you analyze any one of the complicated actions you may perform during the course of a single day (driving an automobile, for example), you will see that it occurs
outside your conscious management. And yet, before the process could be automatized, the actions, purposefully directed toward the satisfaction of some goal, had to be
consciously learned and managed. You were not born with the innate reflex of jamming on the brake to stop a car quickly in an emergency. You had to learn to do it, and in
the process of learning and driving, this response became automatic. If, after you have learned to drive, you see a child running across the path of your car, you put the
brake on immediately, by reflex, without thinking.
The Conditioning of Man
Pavlov's research on the machinery of the mind taught us how all the animals including man learn adjustment to existing limitations through linking the signs and signals
of life to body reactions. The mind creates a relationship between repeated simultaneous occurrences, and the body reacts to the connections the mind forms. Thus the bell,
rung each time the dog was fed, became a signal to the animal to prepare for digestion, and the animal began to salivate.
Recent experiments conducted by Dr. Gregory Razran of Queens College show how men may develop these same kinds of responses. Dr. Razran treated a group of twenty college
students to a series of free luncheons at which music was played or pictures shown. After the final luncheon, these twenty students were brought together with another
group who had not been luncheon guests. At this meeting, as at the luncheons, music was played and pictures shown, and all the students were asked to tell what the music
and pictures made them think of. The music and the pictures generally reminded the first group of something related to eating, but had no such associations for the second
group. There was obviously a temporary connection in the minds of the luncheon guests between the music and the pictures on the one hand and eating on the other.
The Chinese did their mass conditioning in an even simpler way. After having taught the prisoners for days to write down all possible nonsense and political lies in an
atmosphere of utter confusion and stress they were ripe to sign collectively the lie of having taken part in germ warfare (Winokur).
All conditioned reflexes are involuntary temporary adjustments to pressures which create an apparent connection between stimuli which may be in fact totally unrelated. For
this reason, the conditioned reflex is not necessarily permanently imprinted on the individual, but can gradually disappear. If, after the dog's conditioned reflex to the
bell has been developed, the bell is rung over and over again and no food is presented to the animal, the salivating reflex disappears. Doubtless Dr. Razran's students
will not always think of food when they hear music.
We could describe the conditioned reflex another way: it is a selected response of the mind body unit to a given stimulus. The ways in which the stimulus and the response
are connected vary considerably they may have been associated in time, in place, or by coincidence, or by a common aim and thus they may form a special conditioned complex
in our mental and physical attitude. Some of these complex responses, or patterns are more autonomous than others, and will act like the innate patterns. Some are flexible
and are continually changing. Analysis of some of the psychosomatic diseases, for example, shows us how our inner emotional attitudes can intensify or even change a
conditional response. Stomach ulcers are considered an example of such a psychosomatic disease. The mother who puts her child on a too rigid feeding schedule may change
the child's favorable response to hunger into a stubborn reaction against feeding.
For our purpose we have to be aware that conditioning takes place throughout all our lives in the most subtle and in the most obvious ways. We discover that the molding of
our personalities may occur in a thousand-fold ways through such matters as these: the meal training given in early childhood; the harshness or the musical tone of the
words spoken to us; the sense of haste in our surroundings; the steadiness of family habits or the chaos of neurotic parents; the noises of our machines; the reservedness
of our friends; the discipline of our schools and the competitiveness of our clubs. We are even conditioned by such things as the frailty of our toys and the cosines of
our houses, the steadiness of traditions or the chaos of a revolution. The artist and the engineer, the teacher and the friend, the uncle or aunt they all give shape to
our behavior.
Isolation and Other Factors in Conditioning
Pavlov made another significant discovery: the conditioned reflex could be developed most easily in a quiet laboratory with a minimum of disturbing stimuli. Every trainer
of animals knows this from his own experience; isolation and the patient repetition of stimuli are required to tame wild animals. Pavlov formulated his findings into a
general rule in which the speed of learning is positively correlated with quiet and isolation. The totalitarians have followed this rule. They know that they can condition
their political victims most quickly if they are kept in isolation. In the totalitarian technique of thought control, the same isolation applied to the individual is
applied also to groups of people. This is the reason the civilian populations of the totalitarian countries are not permitted to travel freely and are kept away from
mental and political contamination. It is the reason, to, for the solitary confinement cell and the prison camp.
Another of Pavlov's findings was that some animals learn more quickly if they were rewarded (by affection, by food, by stroking) each time they showed the right response,
while others learned more quickly when the penalty for not learning was a painful stimulus. In human terms, the latter animals could be described as learning in order to
avoid punishment. These different reactions in animals may perhaps be related to an earlier conditioning by the parents, and they find their counterparts among human
beings. In some people the strategy of reward and flattery is a stimulus to learning, while pain evokes all their resistance and rebellion; in others retribution and
punishment for failure can be a means of training them into the desired pattern. Before he can do his job effectively, the brainwasher has to find out to which category
his victim belongs. There are people more amenable to brainwashing than others. Part of the response may be innate or related to earlier conditioning to conformity.
Pavlov also distinguished between the weaker type of involuntary learning, in which the learned response was lost as soon as some disturbance occurred, and the stronger
type, in which training was retained through all kinds of changed conditions. As a matter of fact, Pavlov described more types of learning than this, but for our purposes
it is only important to know that there are some types of people who lose their conditioned learning easily, while others, the so called "stronger" types, retain it. This,
by the way, is another example of how our choice of words reflects our bias. The descriptions "strong" and "weak" depend completely on the aim of the experimenter.
For the totalitarian, the "weak" POW is the man who stubbornly refuses to accept the new conditioning. His "weakness" may be, in fact, a resistance, the result of a
previous strong conditioning to loyalty to anti totalitarian principles. We never know how strongly conditioning and initial learning are impressed on the personality.
Rigid dogmatic behavior has its roots in early conditioning and so may submissiveness based on ignorance rather than knowledge.
Pavlov showed, too, how internal and external factors interact in the conditioning process. If, for example, a new laboratory assistant was brought in to work with the
animals, all of their newly acquired patterns could easily be inhibited because of the animals' emotional reactions to the newcomer. Pavlov explained this as a disruptive
reaction caused by the animals' investigatory reflexes, which led them to sniff around the stranger. Current psychology tends to interpret it as the result of the changed
emotional rapport between the animal and its trainers. We can easily expand the implications of this more modern view into the field of human relations. It points up the
fact that there are some persons who can create such immediate rapport with others that the latter will soon give up many old habits and ways of life to conform with new
demands. There are inquisitors and investigators whose personalities so deeply affect their victims that the victims speedily yield their secrets and accept entirely new
ways of thinking.
We can see the same thing in psychotherapy, where the development of an emotional rapport between doctor and patient is the most important factor leading to cure. In some
cases rapport can be established immediately, in others rapport cannot be built up at all, in most cases it develops gradually during the course of the therapy. It is not
difficult for a psychologist to test a man's "softness" and willingness to be conditioned, and as a matter of fact the Pavlovians have developed simple questionnaires
through which they can easily determine a given individual's instability and adaptability to suggestion and brainwashing.
Pavlov found that all conditioning, no matter how strong it had been, became inhibited through boredom or through the repetition of too weak signals. The bell could no
longer arouse salivation in the experimental dogs if it was repeated too often or its tone was too soft. A process of unlearning took place. The result of such internal
inhibition of conditioning and the loss of conditioned reflex action is sleep. The inhibition spreads over the entire activity of the brain cortex; the organism falls into
a hypnotic state. This explanation of the process of inhibition was one of the first acceptable theories of sleep. An interesting psychological question is whether too
much official conditioning causes boredom and inhibition, and whether that is the reason why the Stakhanovite movement in Russia was necessary to counteract the loss of
productivity of the people.
We can make a comparison with what happened to our prisoners of war in Korea. Under the daily signal of dulling routine questions for every word can act as a Pavlovian
signal their minds went into a state of inhibition and diminished alertness. This made it possible for them to give up temporarily their former democratic conditioning and
training. When they had unlearned and suppressed the democratic way, their inquisitors could start teaching them the totalitarian philosophy. First the old patterns have
to be broken down in order to build up new conditioned reflexes. We can imagine that boredom and repetition arouse the need to give in and to yield to the provoking words
of the enemy. Later I shall come back to the system of negative stimuli used in conditioning for brainwashing.
Mass Conditioning Through Speech
According to official Pavlovian psychology, human speech is also a conditioned reflex activity. Pavlov distinguished between stimuli of the first order, which condition
men and animals directly, and stimuli of the second order, with weaker and more complicated conditioning qualities. In this so called second signal system, verbal cues
replace the original physical sound stimuli. Pavlov himself did not give much attention to this second signal system. It was especially after Stalin's publication in 1950
on the significance of linguistics for mass indoctrination (as quoted by Dobrogaev) that the Russian psychologists began to do work in this area. In his letter, Stalin
followed Engel's theory that language is the characteristic human bit of adaptive equipment. That tone and sound in speech have a conditioning quality is something we can
verify from our own experience in listening to or in giving commands, or in dealing with our pets. Even the symbolic and semantic meaning of words can acquire a
conditioning quality. The word "traitor", for example, provokes direct feelings and reactions in the minds of those who hear it spoken, even if this discriminatory label
is being applied dishonestly.
Through an elaborate study on speech reflexes written by one of the leading Russian psychologists, Dobrogaev, we get a fairly good insight into the ways in which speech
patterns and word signals are used in the service of mass conditioning, by means of propaganda and indoctrination. The basic problems for the man tamer are rather simple:
Can man resist a government bent on conditioning him? What can the individual do to protect his mental integrity against the power of a forceful collectivity? Is it
possible to do away with every vestige of inner resistance?
Pavlov had already explained that man's relation to the external world, and to his fellow men, is dominated by secondary stimuli, the speech symbols. Man learns to think
in words and in the speech figures given him, and these gradually condition his entire outlook on life and on the world. As Dobrogaev says, "Language is the means of man's
adaptation to his environment." We could rephrase that statement in this way: man's need for communication with his fellow men interferes with his relation to the outside
world, because language and speech itself the verbal tools we use are variable and not objective. Dobrogaev continues: "Speech manifestations represent conditioned
reflex functions of the human brain." In a simpler way we may say: he who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is
master of the mind.
In the Pavlovian strategy, terrorizing force can finally be replaced by a new organization of the means of communication. Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day
through press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern of thought in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion
is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian
machinations on the mind. Yet, the polls may only count what people pretend to think and believe, because it is dangerous for them to do otherwise.
Such is the Pavlovian device: repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the
simple formula for political conditioning of the masses. This is also the actual ideal of some of our public relation machines, who thus hope to manipulate the public into
buying a special soap or voting for a special party.
The Pavlovian strategy in public relations has people conditioned more and more to ask themselves, "What do other people think?" As a result, a common delusion is created:
people are incited to think what other people think, and thus public opinion may mushroom out into a mass prejudice.
Expressed in psychoanalytic terms, through daily propagandistic noise backed up by forceful verbal cues, people can more and more be forced to identify with the powerful
noisemaker. Big Brother's voice resounds in all the little brothers.
News from Red China, as reported by neutral Indian journalists [See the "New York Times", November 27, 1954.] tells us that the Chinese leaders are using this vocal
conditioning of the public to strengthen their regime. Throughout the country, radios and loud speakers are broadcasting the official "truths". The sugary voices take
possession of people, the cultural tyranny traps their ears with loud speakers, telling them what they may and may not do. This microphone regimentation was foreseen by
the French philosopher La Rochefoucauld, who, in the eighteenth century, said: "A man is like a rabbit, you catch him by the ears."
During the Second World War the Nazis showed that they too were very much aware of this conditioning power of the word. I saw their strategy at work in Holland. The radio
constantly spread political suggestions and propaganda, and people were obliged to listen because the simple act of turning off one's radio was in itself suspicious. I
remember one day during the occupation when I was taking a bicycle trip with some friends. We stopped off to rest at a cafe that, we later realized, was a true Nazi nest.
When the radio, which had been on ever since we arrived, announced a speech by Hitler, everyone stood up in awe, and it was a must to take in the verbal conditioning by
the Fuhrer. My friends and I had to stand up too, and were forced to listen to that raucous voice crackling in our ears and to summon all our resistance against that long,
boring, repetitive attack on our eardrums and minds.
Throughout the occupation, the Nazis printed tons of propaganda, Big Lies, and distortions. They even went so far as to paint their slogans on the stoops of the houses and
in the streets. Every week newly fabricated stereotypes ogled at us as if to convince us of the splendor of the Third Reich. But the Nazis did not know the correct
Pavlovian strategy. By satisfying their own need to discuss and to vary their arguments in order to make them seem more logical, they only increased the resistance of the
Dutch people. This resistance was additionally fortified by the London radio, on which the Dutch could hear the sane voice of their own legal government. Had the Nazis not
argued and justified so much, and had they been able to prevent all written, printed, or spoken communication, the long period of boredom would have inhibited our
democratic conditioning, and we might well have been more seduced by the Nazi oversimplifications and slogans.
Political Conditioning
Political conditioning should not be confused with training or persuasion or even indoctrination. It is more than that. It is tampering. It is taking possession of both
the simplest and the most complicated nervous patterns of man. It is the battle for the possession of the nerve cells. It is coercion and enforced conversion. Instead of
conditioning man to an unbiased facing of reality, the seducer conditions him to catchwords, verbal stereotypes, slogans, formulas, symbols. Pavlovian strategy in the
totalitarian sense means imprinting prescribed reflexes on a mind that has been broken down. The totalitarian wants first the required response from the nerve cells, then
control of the individual, and finally control of the masses. The system starts with verbal conditioning and training by combining the required stereotypes with negative
or positive stimuli: pain, or reward. In the POW camps in Korea where there was individual and mass brainwashing, the negative and positive conditioning stimuli were
usually hunger and food. The moment the soldier conformed to the party line his food ration was improved: say yes, and I'll give you a piece of candy!
The whole gamut of negative stimuli, as we saw them in the Schwable case, consists of physical pressure, moral pressure, fatigue, hunger, boring repetition, confusion by
seemingly logical syllogisms. Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews that the most upsetting experience they faced in the concentration camps was the
feeling of loss of logic, the state of confusion into which they had been brought the state in which nothing had any validity. They had arrived at the Pavlovian state of
inhibition, which psychiatrists call mental disintegration or depersonalization. It seemed as if they had unlearned all their former responses and had not yet adopted new
ones. But in reality they simply did not know what was what.
The Pavlovian theory translated into a political method, as a way of leveling the mind (the Nazis called it "Gleichschaltung") is the stock in trade of totalitarian
countries. Some psychiatric points are of interest because we see that Pavlovian training can be used successfully only when special mental conditions prevail. In order to
tame people into the desired pattern, victims must be brought to a point where they have lost their alert consciousness and mental awareness. Freedom of discussion and
free intellectual exchange hinder conditioning. Feelings of terror, feelings of fear and hopelessness, of being alone, of standing with one's back to the wall, must be
instilled.
The treatment of American prisoners of war in the Korean POW camps followed just such a pattern. They were compelled to listen to lectures and other forms of daily word
barrage. The very fact that they did not understand the lectures and were bored by the long sessions inhibited their democratic training, and conditioned them to swallow
passively the bitter doctrinal diet, for the prisoners were subjected not only to a political training program, but also to an involuntary taming program. To some degree
the Communist propaganda lectures were directed toward retraining the prisoners' minds. This training our soldiers could reject, but the endless repetitions and the
constant sloganizing, together with the physical hardships and deprivations the prisoners suffered, caused an UNCONSCIOUS TAMING and conditioning, against which only
previously built up inner strength and awareness could help.
There is still another reason why our soldiers were sometimes trapped by the Communist conditioning. Experiments with animals and experiences with human beings have taught
us that threat, tension, and anxiety, in general, may accelerate the establishment of conditioned responses, particularly when those responses tend to diminish fear and
panic (Spence and Farber). The emergency of prison camp life and mental torture provide ideal circumstances for such conditioning. The responses can develop even when the
victim is completely unaware that he is being influenced. Thus, many of our soldiers developed automatic responses of which they remained completely unconscious (Segal).
But this is only one side of the coin, for experience has also shown that people who know what to expect under conditions of mental pressure can develop a so called
perceptual defense, which protects them from being influenced. This means that the more familiar people are with the concepts of thought control and menticide, the more
they understand the nature of the propaganda barrage directed against them, the more inner resistance they can put up, even though inevitably some of the inquisitor's
suggestions will leak through the barrier of conscious mental defense.
Our understanding of the conditioning process leads us also to an understanding of some of the paradoxical reactions found among victims of concentration camps and other
prisoners. Often those with a rigid, simple belief were better able to withstand the continual barrage against their minds than were the flexible, sophisticated ones, full
of doubt and inner conflicts. The simple man with deep rooted, freely absorbed religious faith could exert a much greater inner resistance than could the complex,
questioning intellectualist. The refined intellectual is much more handicapped by the internal pros and cons.
In totalitarian countries, where belief in Pavlovian strategy has assumed grotesque proportions, the self thinking, subjective man has disappeared. There is an utter
rejection of any attempt at persuasion or discussion. Individual self expression is taboo. Private affection is taboo.
Peaceful exchange of free thoughts in free conversation will disturb the conditioned reflexes and is therefore taboo. No longer are there any brains, only conditioned
patterns and educated muscles. In such a taming system neurotic compulsion is looked upon as a positive asset instead of something pathological. The mental automaton
becomes the ideal of education.
Yet the Soviet theoreticians themselves are often unaware of this, and many of them do not realize the dire consequences of subjecting man to a completely mechanistic
conditioning. They themselves are often just as frightened as we are by the picture of the perfectly functioning human robot. This is what one of their psychologists says:
"The entire reactionary nature of this approach to man is completely clear. Man is an automaton who can be caused to act as one wills! This is the ideal of capitalism!
Behold the dream of capitalism the world over a working class without consciousness, which cannot think for itself, whose actions can be trained according to the whim of
the exploiter! This is the reason why it is in America, the bulwark of present day capitalism, that the theory of man as a robot has been so vigorously developed and so
stubbornly held to." (Bauer)
Western psychology and psychiatry, although acknowledging its debt to Pavlov as a great pioneer who made important contributions to our understanding of behavior, takes a
much less mechanical view of man than do the Soviet Pavlovians. It is apparent to us that their simple explanation of training ignores and rejects the concept of
purposeful adaptation and the question of the goals to which this training is directed. Western experimental psychologists tend to see the conditioned reflex as developing
fully only in the service of gratifying basic instinctual needs or of avoiding pain, that is, only when the whole organism is concerned in the activity. In that
complicated process of response to the world, conscious, and especially unconscious, drives and motivations play a role.
All training, of which the conditioned response is only one example, is an automatization of actions which were originally consciously learned and thought over. The ideal
of Western democratic psychology is to train men into independence and maturity by enlisting their conscious aid, awareness, and volition in the learning process. The
ideal of the totalitarian psychology, on the other hand, is to tame men, to make them willing tools in the hands of their leaders. Like training, taming has the
purpose of making actions automatic; unlike training, it does not require the conscious participation of the learner. Both training and taming are energy and timesaving
devices, and in both the mystery of the psyche is hidden in the purposefulness of the responses. The automatization of functions in man saves him expenditure of energy but
can make him weaker when encountering new unexpected challenges.
Cultural routinization and habit formation by local rules and myths make of everybody a partial automaton. National and racial prejudices are acted out unwittingly. Group
hatred often bursts out almost automatically when triggered by slogans and catchwords. In a totalitarian world, this narrow disciplinarian conditioning is done more
"perfectly" and more "ad absurdum".
The Urge to Be Conditioned
One suggestion this chapter is not intended to convey is that Pavlovian conditioning as such is something wrong. This kind of conditioning occurs everywhere where people
are together in common interaction. The speaker influences the listener, but the listener also the speaker. Through the process of conditioning people often learn to like
and to do what they are allowed to like and do. The more isolated the group, the stricter the conditioning that takes place in those belonging to the group. In some groups
one finds people more capable than others of conveying suggestion and bringing about conditioning. Gradually one can discern the stronger ones, the better adjusted ones,
the more experienced ones, and those noisier ones, whose ability to condition others is strongest. Every group, every club, every society has its leading Pavlovian Bell.
This kind of person imprints his inner bell ringing on others. He can even develop a system of monolithic bell ringing: no other influential bell is allowed to compete
with him.
Another subtler question belongs to these problems. Why is there in us so great an urge to be conditioned, the urge to learn, to imitate, to conform, and to follow the
pattern of family and group? This urge to be conditioned, to submit to the communal pattern and the family pattern must be related to man's dependency on parents and
fellow men. Animals are not so dependent on one another. In the whole animal kingdom man is one of the most helpless and naked beings. But among the animals man has,
relatively, the longest youth and time for learning.
Puzzlement and doubt, which inevitably arise in the training process, are the beginnings of mental freedom. Of course, the initial puzzlement and doubt is not enough.
Behind that there has to be faith in our democratic freedoms and the will to fight for it. I hope to come back to this central problem of faith in moral freedom as
differentiated from conditioned loyalty and servitude in the last chapter. Puzzlement and doubt are, however, already crimes in the totalitarian state. The mind that is
open for questions is open for dissent. In the totalitarian regime the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only
allowed to memorize, to salivate when the bell rings.
It is not my task here to elaborate on the subject of the biased use of Pavlovian rules by totalitarians, but without doubt part of the interpretation of any psychology is
determined by the ways we think about our fellow human beings and man's place in nature. If our ideal is to make conditioned zombies out of people, the current misuse of
Pavlovianism will serve our purpose. But once we become even vaguely aware that in the totalitarian picture of man the characteristic human note is missing, and when see
that in such a scheme man sacrifices his instinctual desires, his pleasures, his aims, his goals, his creativity, his instinct for freedom, his paradoxicality, we
immediately turn against this political perversion of science. Such use of Pavlovian technique is aimed only at developing the automaton in man, not his free alert mind
that is aware of moral goals and aims in life.
Even in laboratory animals we have found that affective goal directedness can spoil the Pavlovian experiment. When, during a bell food training session, the dog's beloved
master entered the room, the animal lost all its previous conditioning and began to bark excitedly. Here is a simple example of an age old truth: love and laughter break
through all rigid conditioning. The rigid automaton cannot exist without spontaneous self expression. Apparently, the fact that the dog's spontaneous affection for his
master could ruin all the mechanical calculations and manipulations never occurred to Pavlov's totalitarian students.
III. MEDICATION INTO SUBMISSION
As we have already seen in the preceding chapters, it is not only the political and Pavlovian pressure that may drag down man's mind into servile submissiveness. There are
many other human habits and actions which have a coercive influence.
All kinds of rumors have been circulated telling how brainwashees, before surrendering to their inquisitor, have been poisoned with mysterious drugs. This chapter aims to
describe what medical techniques -- not only drugs -- can do to reach behind man's inner secrets. Actually the thought-control police no longer need drugs, though
occasionally they have been used.
I will touch upon another side to this problem as well, namely, our dangerous social dependence on various drugs, the problem of addiction, making it easier for us to slip
into the pattern of submissiveness. The alcoholic has no mental backbone any more when you give him his drink. The same is true for the chronic user of sedatives or other
pills. The use of alcohol or drugs may result in a chemical dependency, weakening our stamina under exceptional circumstances.
In the field of practical medicine, magic thinking is still rampant. Though we flatter ourselves that we are rational and logical in our choice of therapy, somewhere we
know that hidden feelings and unconscious motivations direct the prescribing hand. In spite of the therapeutic triumphs of the last fifty years [since 1900], the era of
chemotherapy and antibiotics, let us not forget that the same means of medical victory can be used to defeat our purposes.
No day passes that the mail does not flood the doctor's office with suggestions about what to use in his clinical practice. My desk overflows with gadgets and multicolored
pills telling me that without them mankind cannot be happy. The propaganda campaign reaching our medical eyes and ears is often so laden with suggestions that we can be
persuaded to distribute sedatives and stimulants where straight critical thinking would deter us and we would seek the deeper causes of the difficulties. This is true not
only for modern pharmacotherapy; the same tendencies can also be shown in psychotherapeutic methods.
This chapter aims to approach the problem of mental coercion with the question: How compulsive can the use of medical drugs and medical and psychological methods become?
In the former chapters on menticide I was able to describe political attempts to bring the human mind into submission and servility. Drugs and their psychological
equivalents are also able to enslave people.
The Search for Ecstasy Through Drugs
Among drug addicts of all sorts we repeatedly encounter the yearning for a special ecstatic and euphoric mood, a feeling of living beyond everyday trouble. "Thou has the
keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!" Thomas De Quincey says, in his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." Although the ecstatic state is different for
each person who experiences it, the addict always tells us that the drug takes him to the lost paradise he is looking for; it brings him a feeling of eternal euphoria and
free elation that takes him past the restrictions of life and time.
In the ecstatic state, man arranges the universe according to his own desires and, at the same time, seeks communion with the Higher Order of things. But the ecstatic
state has its negative as well as its positive aspects. It may represent the Yogi's mystic feeling of unity with the universe, but it may also mean the chronic intoxicated
state of the drunkard or the passion of some manic psychotic states. The feeling may express the intensified spiritual experience of a dedicated study group, but, on the
other hand, it may be encountered in the lynch mob and the riot. There are many kinds of ecstasy -- esthetic ecstasy, mystic ecstasy, and sick, toxic ecstasy.
The search for ecstatic experience is not only an individual search, it often reaches out to encompass whole groups. When moral controls become too burdensome, whole
civilizations may give themselves up to uncontrolled orgies such as we saw in the Greek Bacchanalia and the contagious dance-fury of the Middle Ages. In these mass orgies,
artificial stimulants are not necessarily used. The hypnotic influence of being part of the crowd can induce the same loss of control and sense of union with the outside
world that we associate with drugs. In the mass orgy the individual loses his conscience and self-control. His sexual inhibitions may disappear; he is temporarily relieved
of his deep frustrations and the burden of unconscious guilt. He endeavors to experience the blissful sensations of utter yielding to his own body needs and desires.
The ecstatic participation in mass elation is the oldest psychodrama in the world. Taking part in some common action results in a tremendous emotional relief and catharsis
for every individual in the group. This feeling of participation in the magic omnipotent group, of reunion and communion with the all-embracing forces in the world brings
euphoria to the normal person and feelings of pseudo-strength to the weak. The demagogue who is able to provide such ecstatic release in the masses can be sure of their
yielding to his influence and power. Dictators love to organize such mass rituals in the service of their dictatorial aims.
Ever since man has been a conscious being, he has tried from time to time to break down the inevitable tension between himself and the outside world. When mental alertness
cannot be relaxed now and then, when the world is too much and too constantly with him, man may try to lose himself in the deep waters of oblivion. Ecstasy, drugged sleep,
and its fantasies and swoons of mental exaltation temporarily take him beyond the burdensome effort of keeping his senses and ego alert and intact. Drugs can bring him to
this state, and any addiction may be explained as a continuing need to escape. The body cooperates with the mind in this search for an evasion of life, and drugs gradually
become a body need as well as an emotional necessity.
In criminal circles addicting drugs like cocaine and heroin are often given to members of the gang in order to make them more submissive to the leader who distributes
them. The man who provides the drug becomes almost a god to the members of the gang. They will go through hell in order to acquire the drug they so desperately need.
In the hands of a powerful tyrant, this medication into dependency can become extremely dangerous. It is not unthinkable that a diabolical dictator might want to use
addiction as a means of bringing a rebellious people into submission. In May, 1954, during a discussion in the World Health Organization, the fact was disclosed that
Communist China, while forbidding the use of opium in her own country, was smuggling and exporting it in great quantities to her neighbors, who have consequently been
compelled to carry on a constant struggle against opium addiction among their own people and against the passivity which results from use of the drug.
At the same time, according to officials of Thailand who made the charge and requested U.N. aid, Communist China has been sending all kinds of subversive propagandists
into Thailand. Thailand charged that the Chinese were using every device they know to infect the Siamese people with their ideology: brainweakening opium addiction,
leaflets, radio, whispering campaigns, and so on.
The Nazis followed a similar strategy. During the occupation of Western Europe, they created an artificial shortage of normal medicaments by halting their usual export of
healing drugs to the "inferior" countries. However, they made an exception in the case of barbiturates. In Holland, for example, these drugs were made readily available in
many drugstores without doctors' prescriptions, a situation which was against customary Dutch law. Although the right therapeutic drugs were not made available for medical
work, the drugs which created passivity, dependence, and lethargy were widely distributed.
The totalitarian dictator knows that drugs can be his helpers. It was Hitler's intention, in his so-called biological warfare, to weaken and subdue the countries that
surrounded the Third Reich, and to break their backbones for good. Hunger and addiction were among his most valuable tools.
What has all this to do with the growing addiction and alcoholism in our own country? I have already mentioned the alarming increases in death from barbiturates. But I
would like to emphasize even more the psychological and political consequences. Democracy and freedom end where slavery and submission to drugs and alcohol begin.
Democracy involves free, self-chosen activity and understanding; it means mature self-control and independence. Any man who escapes from reality through the use of alcohol
and drugs is no longer a free agent; he is no longer able to exert any voluntary control over his mind and his actions. He is no longer a self-responsible individual.
Alcoholism and drug addiction prepare the pattern of mental submission so beloved by the totalitarian brainwasher.
Hypnotism and Mental Coercion
From time immemorial those who wanted to know the inner workings of the other fellow's mind in order to exert pressure on him have used artificial means to find the hidden
pathways to his most private thoughts. Modern brainwashers, too, have tried all kinds of drugs to arrive at their devious objectives. The primitive medicine man had
several methods of compelling his victim to lose his self-control and reserve. Alcoholic drinks, toxic ointments, or permeating holy smoke which had a narcotizing effect,
as used by the Mayas, for example, were used to bring people into such a state of rapture that they lost their self-awareness and restraint. The victims, murmuring sacred
words, often revealed their self-accusing fantasies or even their deepest secrets.
In the Middle Ages, so-called witch ointments were used either voluntarily or under pressure. These ointments were supposed to bring the anointed into touch with the
devil. Since they contained opiates and belladonna in large quantities, which could have been absorbed by the skin, modern science can explain the ecstatic visions they
evoked as the typical hallucination-provoking effect of these drugs.
One of the first useful techniques medicine delivered into the hands of the prier-into-souls was the knowledge of hypnosis, that intensified mental suggestion that makes
people give up their own will and brings them into a strange dependency on the hypnotizer. The Egyptian doctors of three thousand years ago knew the technique of hypnosis,
and ancient records tell us that they practiced it.
There are many quacks who practice hypnosis, not to cure their victims but to force them into submission, using the victim's unconscious ties and dependency needs in a
criminal, profitable way. One of the most absorbing aspects of this whole problem of hypnosis is the question of whether people can be forced to commit crimes, such as
murder or treason, while under a hypnotic spell. Many psychologists would deny that such a thing could happen and would insist that no person can be compelled to do under
hypnosis what he would refuse to do in a state of alert consciousness. But actually what a person can be compelled to do depends on the degree of dependency that hypnosis
causes and the frequency of repetition of the so-called posthypnotic suggestions.
Actual psychoanalysis teaches that there even exist several other devices to live other people's lives. True, no hypnotizer can take away a man's conscience and inner
resistance immediately, but he can arouse the latent murderous wishes which may become active in his victim's unconscious by continual suggestion and continual playing
upon those deeply repressed desires. Actual knowledge of methods used in brainwashing and menticide proves that all this can be done.
If the hypnotizer persists long enough and cleverly enough, he can be successful in his aim. There are many antisocial desires lying hidden in all people. The hypnotic
technique, if cleverly enough applied, can bring them to the surface and cause them to be acted out in life. The mass criminality of the guards in concentration camps
finds part of its explanation in the hypnotizing influence of the totalitarian state and its criminal dictator. Psychological study of criminals shows that their first
violation of moral and legal codes often takes place under the strong influence and suggestion of other criminals. This we may look upon as an initial form of hypnosis,
which is a more intensified form of suggestion.
True, the incitement to crime in a hypnotic state demands specially favorable conditions, but unfortunately these conditions can be found in the real and actual world.
Recently there has been much judicial discussion of the problem of the psychiatrist who uses his special knowledge of suggestion to force a confession from a defendant.
Such a psychiatrist is going beyond the commonly accepted concepts of the limitations of psychiatry and beyond psychiatric ethics. He is misusing the patient's trust in
the medical confidant and therapist in order to provoke a confession, which will then be used against the patient temporarily in his care. In so doing, the doctor not only
acts against his Hippocratic oath, in which he promised only to work for the good of his patients and never to disclose his professional secrets, he also violates the
constitutional safeguards accorded a defendant by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects a man against self-incrimination.
What a defendant will reveal under hypnosis depends on his conscious and unconscious attitudes toward the entire question of magic influence and mental intrusion by
another person. People are usually less likely to stand on their legal rights in dealing with a doctor than in dealing with a lawyer or a policeman. They have a yielding
attitude because they expect magic help.
An interesting example of this can be seen in a case that was recently decided by the Supreme Court. In 1950, Camilio Weston Leyra, a man in his fifties, was arrested and
accused by the police of the brutal hammer murder of his aged parents in their Brooklyn flat ("People v. Leyra"). At first, under prolonged questioning by the police,
Leyra denied any knowledge of the crime and stated that he had not even been at his parents' home on the day of the murder. Later, after further interrogation by the
police, he said he had been at their home that day, but he remained firm in his denial of the murder. He was detained in jail, and a psychiatrist was brought in to talk to
him. Their conversation was recorded on tape. The psychiatrist told Leyra that he was "his doctor", although in fact he was not. Under slight hypnosis and after continued
suggestion that Leyra would be better off if he admitted to having committed the murder in a fit of passion, Leyra agreed to confess to the crime. The police were called
back in, and the confession was taken down.
During his trial, Leyra repudiated the confession, insisting that he had been under hypnosis. He was convicted, but the conviction was set aside on the grounds that the
confession had been wrested from him involuntarily, and that his constitutional safeguards had been denied him. Later, Leyra was brought to trial and convicted a second
time. Finally his case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the conviction in June, 1954, on the grounds that mental pressure and coercive psychiatric
techniques had been used to induce the confession. The Supreme Court gave its opinion here, indirectly, of the responsibility of the brainwashed POW
For us, the question of Leyra's guilt or innocence is less important than the fact that under mental pressure he was induced to do what he would ordinarily have resisted
doing, and that his confidence in the doctor, which led him to relax the defenses he would doubtless have put up against other investigators, was used to break him down.
Suggestion and hypnosis are considered by some to be a psychological blessing, but they can also be the beginning of terror. Mass hypnosis, for example, can have a
dangerous influence on the individual. Psychiatrists have found several times that public demonstrations of mass hypnosis may provoke an increased hypnotic dependency and
submissiveness in many members of the audience that can last for years. Largely for this reason Great Britain has passed a law making seances and mass hypnotism illegal.
Hypnosis may act as a trigger mechanism for a repressed dependency need in the victim and turn him temporarily into a kind of waking sleep-walker and mental slave. The
hypnotic command relieves him of his personal responsibility, and he surrenders much of his conscience to his hypnotizer. As we mentioned before, our own times have
provided us with far too many examples of how political hypnosis, mob hypnosis, and even war hypnosis can turn civilized men into criminals.
Some personalities are more amenable to hypnosis than others. Strong egos can defend themselves for a long time against mental intrusion, but they too may have a point of
surrender. There are overtly critical persons who are much less sensitive to suggestion from the outside than to images from within themselves. We can distinguish
between heterosuggestive and autosuggestive personalities, although quite a variety of reactions to hypnosis and suggestion can be distinguished. But even these
autosuggestive types, if subjected to enough pressure, will gradually build up internal justification for giving in to mental coercion.
Those "charming" characters who are easily able to influence others are often extremely susceptible to suggestion themselves. Some personalities with a tremendous gift for
empathy and identification provoke in others the desire to yield up all their secrets; they seem somehow to be the Father Confessor by the grace of God. Other emphatic
types, by reflecting their own deceitful inner world, can more easily provoke the hidden lies and fantasies in their victims. Still others make us close up completely. Why
one man should inspire the desire to give in and another the desire to resist is one of the mysteries of human relationships and contact. Why do certain personalities
complement and reinforce one another while others clash and destroy one another? Psychoanalysis has given new insight into those strange human relations and involvements.
Needling for the Truth
During the Second World war, the technique of the so-called truth serum (the popular name for narco-analysis) was developed to help soldiers who had broken down under the
strain of battle. Through narco-analysis by means of injections of sedatives, they could be brought to remember and reveal the hyper-emotional and traumatic moments of
their war experiences that had driven them into acute anxiety neurosis. Gradually a useful mental first-aid technique was developed which helped the unconscious to reveal
its secrets while the patient was under the influence of the narcotic.
How does the truth serum work? The principle is simple: after an injection, the mind in a kind of half-sleep is unable to control its secrets, and it may let them slip
from the hidden reservoirs of frustration and repression into the half-conscious mind. In certain acute anxiety cases, such enforced provocation may alleviate the
anxieties and pressures that have led to breakdown. But narco-analysis often does not work. Sometimes the patient's mind resents this chemical intrusion and enforced
intervention, and such a situation often obstructs the way for deeper and more useful psychotherapy.
The fear of unexpected mental intrusion and coercion may be pathological in character. When I first published my concept of menticide and brainwashing, I received dozens
of letters and phone calls from people who were convinced that some outside person was trying to influence them and direct their thoughts. This form of "mental intrusion
delusion" may be the early stage of a serious psychosis in which the victim has already regressed to primitive magic feelings. In this state the whole outside world is
seen and felt as participating in what is going on in the victim's mind. There is, as it were, no real awareness of the frontiers between "I", the person, and the world.
Such fear-ridden persons are in constant agony because they feel themselves the victims of many mysterious influences which they cannot check or cope with; they feel
continually endangered. Psychologically, their fear of intrusion from the outside can be partially explained as a fear of the intrusion of their own fantasies from the
inside, from the unconscious. They are frightened by their own hidden, unconscious thoughts which they can no longer check.
It would be a vast oversimplification to stick an easy psychiatric label on all such feelings of mental persecution, for there are many real, outside mental pressures in
our world, and there are many perfectly normal people who are continually aware of and disturbed by the barrage of stimuli directed at their minds through propaganda,
advertising, radio, television, the movies, the newspapers -- all the gibbering maniacs whose voices never stop. These people suffer because a cold, mechanical, shouting
world is knocking continually at the doors of their minds and disturbing their feelings of privacy and personal integrity.
There is the further question of whether or not the drugs used in the truth serum always produce the desired effect of compelling the patient to tell the inner truth.
Experiments conducted at Yale University in 1951 (J. M. MacDonald) on nine persons who received intravenous injections of sodium amytal -- the so-called truth serum --
showed interesting results, tending to weaken our faith in this drug.
Each of the patients, prior to the injection, had been suggested a false story related to a historical period about which he was going to be questioned. The experimenters
knew both the true and the false story. Let me quote from the report: "It is of interest that the three subjects diagnosed as normal maintained their [suggested] stories.
Of the six subjects diagnosed as neurotic, two promptly revealed the true story; two made partial admissions, consisting of a complex pattern of fantasy and truth; one
communicated what most likely was a fantasy as truth; and the one obsessive-compulsive individual maintained his cover story except for one parapraxia [faulty or
blundering action]."
In several cases, American law courts have refused to admit as evidence the results of truth serum tests, largely on the basis of psychiatric conviction that the truth
serum treatment is misnamed; that, in fact, narco-analysis is no guarantee of getting at the truth. It may even be used as a coercive threat in cases where victims are not
aware of it limited action.
Still another danger, more closely related to our subject, is that a criminal investigator can induce and communicate his own thoughts and feelings to his victim. Thus the
truth serum may cause the patient with a weak ego to yield to the interventionist's synthetically injected thoughts and interpretations in exactly the same way the victim
of hypnosis may take over the suggestions implanted by the hypnotist.
Additionally, this method of inquisition by drugs contains some physical danger. I myself have seen cases of thrombosis develop as a result of intravenous medication of
barbiturates.
Experiments with mescaline, which started thirty years ago [in the 1920s], are suddenly fashionable again. Aldous Huxley in his recent book THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
described the artificial chemical paradise which he experienced after taking the drug (also known as peyote). It can stimulate all kinds of pleasant, subjective symptoms,
but these are, nevertheless, delusive in character. I do not want to start a clinical argument with another author, yet his own euphoric ecstatic reactions to mescaline
are not necessarily the same as those other people experience. Mescaline is dangerous stuff when not used under medical control. And, anyway, why does Mr. Huxley want to
sell artificial heavens?
There is a very serious social danger in all these methods of chemical intrusion into the mind. True, they can be used as a careful aid to psychotherapy, but they can also
be frightening instruments of control in the hands of men with an overwhelming drive to power.
In addition, they fortify more than ever in our "aspirin age" the fiction that we have to use miracle drugs in order to become free-acting agents. The propaganda for
chemical elation, for artificial ecstasy and pseudo-nirvanic experience contains an invitation to men to become chemical dependents, and chemical dependents are weak
people who can be made use of by any tyrannical political potentate. The actual propaganda carried on among general practitioners using treatment with all kinds of
anxieties and mental disturbances with new drugs has the same kind of dangerous implications.
The Lie-Detector
Hypnotism and narco-analysis are only two of the current devices that can be misused as instruments of enforced intrusion into the mind. The lie-detector, which has
already been used as a tool for mental intimidation, is another. This apparatus, useful for psychobiological experimentation, can indicate -- through writing down
meticulously the changes in the psychogalvanic reflex -- that the human guinea pig under investigation reacts more emotionally to certain questions than to others. True,
this overreaction may be the reaction to having told a lie, but it may also be an innocent person's reaction to an emotion-laden situation or even to an increased fear of
unjust accusation.
The interpersonal processes between interrogator and testee have just as much influence on the emotional reactions and the changes in the galvanic reflex as feelings of
inner guilt and confusion. This experiment only indicates inner turmoil and hidden repressions, with all their doubts and ambiguities.
It is not in fact a lie-detector, although it is used as such (D. MacDonald). As a matter of fact, the pathological liar and the psychopathic, conscienceless personality
may show less reaction to this experiment than do normal people. The lie-detector is more likely to become a tool of coercion in the hands of men who look more for a
powerful magic in every instrument than a means of getting at the truth. As a result, even the innocent can be fooled into false confession.
The Therapist as an Instrument of Coercion
Medical therapy and psychotherapy are the subtle sciences of human guidance in periods of physical and emotional stress. Just as training requires the alert, well planned
participation of both student and teacher, so successful psychotherapy requires the alert, well-planned participation of both patient and doctor. And just as educational
training, under special conditions, can degenerate into coercive taming, so therapy can degenerate into the imposition of the doctor's will on his patient. The doctor
himself need not even be conscious that this is happening. The misuse of therapy may show itself in the patient's submission to the doctor's point of view or in the
patient's development of excessive dependency on his therapist. Such a dependency, and even increased dependency need, may extend not only far beyond the usual limits, but
may continue even after the therapy has run its course.
I have seen quacks whose only knowledge was where to buy their couches. By calling themselves psychoanalysts they were able to gratify their own need to live other
people's lives. Eventually the law will have to establish standards which can keep these dangerous intruders from psychotherapeutic practice. But even the honest,
conscientious therapist has a serious moral problem to face. His profession itself continually encourages him, indeed obliges him, to make his patients temporarily
dependent on him, and this may appeal to his own need for a sense of importance and power. He must be continually aware of the impact his statements and deductions have on
his patients who often listen in awe to the doctor who is for them the omniscient magician. The therapist must not encourage this submissive attitude in his patients --
though in some phases of treatment it will help the therapy -- for good psychotherapy aims toward educating man for freedom and maturity not for conforming submission.
The practitioners of psychology and psychiatry are now much more aware of the responsibility their profession imposes on them than they have ever been heretofore. The
tools of psychology are dangerous in the hands of the wrong men.
Modern educational methods can be applied in therapy to streamline man's brain and change his opinions so that his thinking conforms with certain ideological systems.
Medicine and psychiatry may become more and more involved in political strategy as we have seen in the strategy of brainwashing, and for this reason psychologists and
psychiatrists must become more aware of the nature of the scientific tools they use.
The emphasis on therapeutic techniques, on students knowing all the facts and the tricks, the overemphasis on psychotherapeutic diplomas and labels lead actual therapy
toward conformism and rationalization of principles that are in contrast to the personal sensitivity needed. Our critical and rational faculty can be a destructive one,
destroying or disguising our basic doubts and ambivalences born out of tragic despair, that creator of human sensitivity.
The danger of modern psychotherapy (and psychiatry) is the tendency toward formalizing human intuition and empathy, and toward making an abstraction of emotion and
spontaneity. It is a contradiction to attempt to mechanize love and beauty. If this were possible, we would find ourselves in a world where there is no inspiration and
ecstasy but only cold understanding.
Every human relationship can be used for the wrong or the right aims, and this is especially true of the relationship of subtle unconscious ties which exist between
psychotherapist and patient. This statement is equally true for medicine in general; the surgeon, too, thrives on strong ties with his patients and their willing
submission to his surgical techniques. Experiences in therapy have taught us that faulty technique can give the patient feelings of being bogged down. Sometimes patients
feel as if they have to remain living in servile submission to the doctor. I have seen whole families and sects swear by such modern witch doctors.
No wonder that sound psychoanalytic instruction requires the therapist to admit himself for years of technique he is about to apply to others, so that, armed with
knowledge of his own unsound unconscious needs, he will not try to use his profession to mastermind other people's lives.
Various psychological agencies, with their different psychological concepts and techniques, such as family counseling, religious guidance, management counseling, and so
forth, can easily be misused as tools of power. The good will that people invest in their leaders, doctors, and administrators is tremendous and can be used as a weapon
against them. Even modern brain surgery for healing the mind could be misused by modern dictators to make zombies out of their competitors. Psychology itself may tend to
standardize the mind, and the tendency among different schools of psychology to emphasize orthodoxy increases unwittingly the chance for mental coercion. ("If you don't
talk my magic gobbledygook, I have to condition you to it.") It is easier to manipulate the minds of others than to avoid doing so.
A free society gives its citizens the right to act as free agents. At the same time, it imposes on them the responsibility for maintaining their freedom, mental as well as
political. If, through the use of modern medical, chemical, and mechanical techniques of mental intrusion, we reduce man's capacity to act on his own initiative, we
subvert our own beliefs and weaken our free system. Just as there is a deliberate political brainwashing, so there can be a suggestive intrusion masquerading under the
name of justice or therapy. This may be less obtrusive than the deliberate totalitarian attack, but it is no less dangerous.
Medication into submission is an existing fact. Man can use his knowledge of the mind of a fellow being not to help him, but to hurt him and bog him down. The magician can
increase his power by increasing the anxieties and fears of his victim, by exploiting his dependency needs, and by provoking his feelings of guilt and inferiority.
Drugs and medical techniques can be used to make man a submissive and conforming being. This we have to keep in mind in order to be able to make him really healthy and
free.
IV. WHY DO THEY YIELD? - The Psychodynamics
of False Confession
Is there a bridge from the concept of Pavlovian conditioning to deeper psychological understanding? Only in those Pavlovian theoreticians who deny modern depth psychology
does there exist a conflict between concepts. Pavlov himself acknowledged the presence of deeper, hidden motivations in man and the limitations of his study of animal
behavior.
Our task is to go back to the brainwashee, asking ourselves: How can we better convey an understanding of what happened to him? What were the Pavlovian circumstances, and
what were the inner motivations to yield to enforced political manipulation of the mind? Was it cowardice, was it a prison psychosis, was it the general loss of mental
stamina in our world?
In the following observations and experiences I hope to make use of the clinical insight actually provided by modern depth psychology.
The Upset Philosopher
One day in 1672, the lonely philosopher of reason, Spinoza, had to be forcibly restrained by his friends and neighbors. He wanted to rush out into the streets and shout
his indignation at the mob which had murdered his good friend Jan De Witt, noble statesman of the Dutch Republic, who had been falsely accused of treason. But presently he
calmed down and retreated to his room where, as usual, he ground optical lenses according to a daily and hitherto unbroken routine.
As he worked, he thought back to his own behavior, which had been no more rational or sensible than the behavior of the rioting crowd which had killed De Witt. It was
then that Spinoza realized the existence of the emotional beast hidden beneath human reason, which, when aroused, can act in a wanton and destructive fashion, and can
conjure up thousands of justifications and excuses for its behavior.
For, as Spinoza sensed, and as was later discovered, people are not the rational creatures they think they are. In the unconscious, that vast storehouse of deeply
buried memories, emotions, and strivings, lie many irrational yearnings, which constantly influence the conscious acts. All of us are governed to some degree by this
hidden tyrant, and by the conflict between our reason and our emotions.
To the extent that we are the victims of unchecked unconscious drives, to that extent we may be vulnerable to mental manipulation. And although there is a horrifying
fascination in the idea that our mental resistance is relatively weak, that the very quality which distinguishes one man from another -- the individual "I" can be
profoundly altered by psychological pressures, such transformations are merely extremes of a process we find operating in normal life.
Through systematized suggestion, subtle propaganda, and more overt mass hypnosis, the human mind in its expressions is changed daily in any society. Advertising seduces
the democratic citizen into using quackeries or one special brand of soap instead of another. Our wish to buy things is continually stimulated. Campaigning politicians
seek to influence us by their glamour as well as by their programs. Fashion experts hypnotize us into periodic changes of our standards of beauty and good taste.
In cases of menticide, however, this assault on the integrity of the human mind is more direct and premeditated. By playing on the irrational child lying hidden in the
unconscious and by sharpening the internal conflict between reason and emotion, the inquisitor can bring his victims to abject surrender.
All of the victims of deliberate menticide -- the POWs in Korea, the imprisoned "traitors" to the dictatorial regimes of the Iron Curtain countries, the victims of the
Nazi terror during the Second World War -- are people whose ways of life had been suddenly and dramatically altered. They had been torn from their homes, their families,
their friends, and thrown into a frightening, abnormal atmosphere. The very strangeness of their surroundings made them more vulnerable to any attack on their values and
attitudes. When the dictator exploits his victim's psychological needs in a threatening, hostile, and unfamiliar world, breakdown is almost sure to follow.
The Barbed-Wire Disease
Already during the First World War, peculiar mental reactions, mixtures of apathy and rage, could be discerned in prisoners of war as a defensive adjustment against the
hardships of prison life, the boredom, the hunger, the lack of privacy, the continual insecurity. The Korean War added to this situation the greater cruelty of the enemy,
the prolonged fear of death, malnutrition, diseases, systematic attacks on the prisoner's mind, the lack of sanitation, and the lack of all human dignity.
Often improvement could be secured through acceptance of the totalitarian ideology. The psychological pressure not only led to an involvement with the enemy but caused
mutual suspicion among the prisoners.
As I have already described, the barbed-wire disease begins with the initial apathy and despair of all prisoners. There is passive surrender to fate. In fact, people can
die out of such despair; it is as if all resistance was gone. Being anything but aloof and apathetic was even dangerous in a camp where the enemy wanted to debate and
argue with you in order to tear down your mental resistance. Consequently a vicious circle was built up of apathy, not thinking, letting things go -- a surrender to a
complete zombie-like existence of mechanical dependency on the circumstances. Every sign of anger and alertness could be brutally punished by the enemy; that is why we do
not find those sudden attacks of rage that were observed in the earlier prisoner-of-war camps during World Wars I and II.
Results of psychological testing of the liberated soldiers from the Korean POW camps could indicate that this defensive apathy and retreat into secluded dependency was
likely to be found in nearly all of them. Yet, after being brought back into normal surroundings, alertness and activity returned rather soon, even in two or three days.
Those few who remained anxious, apathetic, and zombielike belong to the long chapter of war and battle neuroses (Strassman).
What are some of the factors which can turn a man into a traitor to his own convictions, an informer, a confessor to heinous crimes, or an apparent collaborator?
The Moment of Sudden Surrender
Several victims of the Nazi inquisition have told me that the moment of surrender occurred suddenly and against their will. For days they had faced the fury of their
interrogators, and then suddenly they fell apart. "All right, all right, you can have anything you want."
And then came hours of remorse, of resolution, of a desperate wish to return to their previous position of firm resistance. They wanted to cry out: "Don't ask me anything
else. I won't answer." And yet something in them, that conforming, complying being hidden deep in all of us, was on the move.
This sudden surrender often happened after an unexpected accusation, a shock, a humiliation that particularly hurt, a punishment that burned, a surprising logic in the
inquisitor's question that could not be counter-argued. I remember an experience of my own that illustrated the effect of such surprise.
After my escape from a Nazi prison in occupied Holland, I was able to reach neutral Switzerland via Vichy France. When I arrived, I was put in a jail where, at first, I
was treated rather kindly. After three days, however, I was denied an officer's right to asylum and was told that I would be deported back to Vichy France. To this
information, my jailers sneeringly added the comment that I should be happy I was not going to be deported back to the Germans.
When I left to be transported to the border, I was asked to sign a paper stating that all my possessions (which had been taken from me on my imprisonment) had been
returned. I refused to sign because a few things -- unimportant in themselves, but of great emotional value to me -- were not included in the package my jailers handed me.
One of the guards looked at me with contempt, the second tapped his foot impatiently and repeatedly demanded that I sign the paper, the third scolded and chattered in a
French that was completely unintelligible to me. I continued firm in my refusal.
Suddenly one of my officers started to slap me around the face and to beat me. Overwhelmed by surprise that they should display such fury over a bagatelle, I surrendered
and signed the paper. (From the Vichy prison to which I was sent, I was permitted to write a letter of protest to the Swiss government. I still carry the official apology
I received.)
This sudden change of mood of defiant resistance to one of submission must be explained by the unconscious action of contrasting feelings. Consciously we tell ourselves to
be strong, but from deep within us the desire to give in and to comply beings to disturb us and to affect our behavior. In psychology this is described as the innate
ambivalence of all feelings.
The Need to Collapse
The vocabulary of psychopathology contains many sophisticated terms for the wish to succumb to mental pressure, such as "wish to regress", "dependency need", "mental
masochism", "unconscious death wish", and many others. For our purposes, however, it is enough to state that every individual has two opposing needs which operate
simultaneously: the need to be independent to be oneself; and the need NOT to be oneself, NOT to be anybody at all, NOT to resist mental pressure.
The need to be inconspicuous, to disappear, and to be swallowed up by society is a common one. In its simplest form we can see it all around us as a tendency to conform.
Under ordinary circumstances the need for anonymity is balanced by the need for individuality, and the mentally healthy person is one who can walk the fine line between
them. But in the frightening, lonely situations in which the victims of menticidal terror find themselves -- situations which have a nightmare quality, which are crammed
with dangers so tremendous they cannot be grasped or understood because there is nobody to explain or reassure -- the wish to collapse, to let go, to be not there, becomes
almost irresistible.
This experience was reported by many concentration-camp victims. They had come into camp with one unanswered question burning in their minds: "Why has all this happened to
me?" Their need for a sense of direction, for a feeling of purpose and meaning was unsatisfied, and hence they could not maintain their personalities. They let themselves
go in what psychopathology calls a depersonalization syndrome, a general feeing of having lost complete control of themselves and their own existence. What Pavlovian
conditioning can do in applying artificial confusion, can be done too by one shocking experience. "For what?" they asked themselves. "What is the meaning of all this
suffering?" And gradually they sank dully into that paralyzed state of semi-oblivion we call depression: the self-destructive needs take over.
The Nazis were clever and unscrupulous in taking advantage of this need to collapse. The humiliation of concentration-camp life, the repeated suggestion that the Allies
were as good as beaten -- they conspired to convince the inmates that there would be no end to this pointless suffering, no victorious conclusion to the war, no future to
their lives. The desire to break down, to give in, becomes almost insurmountable when a man feels that this horrible marginal existence is something permanent, that he
cannot look toward a more personal goal, that he has to adjust to this dulling, degrading life forever.
At the moment faith and hope disappear, man breaks down. There are tragic stories of concentration-camp victims who fixed all their expectations on the idea that
liberation would come on Christmas, 1944, and aimed their entire existence toward that date. When it passed and they were still incarcerated, many of them simply collapsed
and died.
This tendency to collapse also serves as a protective device against danger. The victim seems to think, "If my torturer doesn't notice me, he will leave me alone." And yet
this very feeling of anonymity, this sense of losing one's personality, of being useless, unnoticed and unwanted, also results in depression and apathy. Man's need to be
an individual can never be completely killed.
The Need for Companionship
Not enough attention has been given to the psychology of loneliness, especially to the implications of enforced isolation of prisoners. When the sensory stimuli of
everyday life are removed, man's entire personality may change. Social intercourse, our continual contact with our colleagues, our work, the newspapers, voices, traffic,
our loved ones and even those we don't like -- all are daily nourishment for our senses and minds. We select what we find interesting, reject what we do not want to
absorb. Every day, every citizen lives in many small worlds of exchange of gratifications, little hatreds, pleasant experiences, irritations, delights. And he needs these
stimuli to keep him on the alert. Hour by hour, reality, in cooperation with our memory, integrates the millions of facts in our lives by repeating them over and over.
As soon as man is alone, closed off from the world and from the news of what is going on, his mental activity is replaced by quite different processes. Long forgotten
anxieties come to the surface, long-repressed memories knock on his mind from inside. His fantasy life begins to develop and assume gigantic proportions. He cannot
evaluate or check his fantasies against the events of his ordinary days, and very soon they may take possession of them.
I remember very clearly my own fantasies during the time I was in a Nazi prison. It was almost impossible for me to control my depressive thoughts of hopelessness. I had
to tell myself over and over again: "Think, think. Keep your senses alert; don't give in." I tried to use all my psychiatric knowledge to keep my mind in a state of
relaxed mobilization, and on many days I felt it was a losing battle.
Some experiments have shown that people who are deprived, for even a very short time, of ALL sensory stimuli (no touch, no hearing, no smell, no sight) quickly fall into a
kind of hallucinatory hypnotic state. Isolation from the multitude of impressions that normally bombard us from the outside world creates strange and frightening symptoms.
According to Heron, who performed experiments on a group of students at McGill University by placing each student in his own pitch-black, soundproof room, ventilated with
filtered air, and encasing his hands in heavy leather mittens and his feet in heavy boots, "little by little their brains go dead or slip out of control". Even in
twenty-four hours of such extreme sensual isolation, all the horror phantoms of childhood are awakened, and various pathological symptoms appear. Our instinct of curiosity
demands continual feeding; if it is not satisfied, the internal hounds of hell are aroused.
The prisoner kept in isolation, although his isolation is by no means as extreme as in the laboratory test, also undergoes a severe mental change. His guards and
inquisitors become more and more his only source of contact with reality, with those stimuli he needs even more than bread. No wonder that he gradually develops a peculiar
submissive relationship to them. He is affected not only by his isolation from social contacts, but by sexual starvation as well. The latent dependency needs that lie deep
in all men make him willing to accept his guard as a substitute father figure. The inquisitor may be cruel and bestial, but the very fact that he acknowledges his victim's
existence gives the prisoner a feeling that he has received some little bit of affection. What a conflict may thus arise between a man's traditional loyalties and these
new ones! There are only a few personalities which are so completely self-sufficient that they can resist the need to yield, to find some human companionship, to overcome
the unbearable loneliness.
During the World Wars, prisoners at first suffered from a peculiar, burning homesickness already called barbed-wire disease. Memories of mother, home, and family made the
soldiers identify with babyhood again, but as they became more used to prison-camp life, thoughts of home and family also created positive values and helped make the
prison-camp life less harrowing.
Even the prisoner who is not kept in isolation can feel lonely in the unorganized mass of prisoners. His fellow prisoners can become his enemies as easily as they can
become his friends. His hatred of his guards can be displaced and turned against those imprisoned with him. Instead of suspecting the enemy, the victim may become
suspicious of his companions in misery.
In the Nazi concentration camps and the Korean POW camps, a kind of mass paranoia often developed. Loneliness was increased because the prisoners cut themselves off from
one another through suspicion and hatred. This distrust was encouraged by the guards. They constantly suggested to their victims that nobody cared for them and nobody was
concerned about what was happening to them. "You are alone. Your friends on the outside don't know whether you're alive or dead. Your fellow prisoners don't even care."
Thus all expectation of a future was killed, and the resulting uncertainty and hopelessness became unbearable. Then the guards sowed suspicion and spread terrifying
rumors: "You are here because those people you call your friends betrayed you." "Your buddies here have squealed on you." "Your friends on the outside have deserted you."
Playing on a man's old loyalties, making him feel deserted and alone, force him into submission and collapse.
The times that I myself wavered and entertained thoughts about joining the opposite forces always occurred after periods of extreme loneliness and deep-seated yearnings
for companionship. At such moments the jailer or enemy may become a substitute friend.
Blackmailing Through Overburdening Guilt Feelings
Deep within all of us lie hidden feelings of guilt, unconscious guilt, which can be brought to the surface under extreme stress. The strategy of arousing guilt is the
mother's oldest tool for gaining dominance over her children's souls. Her warning and accusing finger give her a magic power over them and help to create deep-seated guilt
feelings which may continue all through their adult lives. When we are children, we depend on our parents and resent them for just this reason. We may harbor hidden
destructive wishes against those closest to us, and feelings of guilt about these wishes. Buried deep in man's unconscious is the knowledge that he has had hostile
fantasies, and that in his hostile fantasies he has felt himself capable of committing many crimes. Theodore Reik has drawn our attention to the unknown primitive murderer
believed to be in all of us, whose compulsion to confess and to be punished may be easily provoked under circumstances of terror and depression.
This concept of concealed hostility and destructiveness is often difficult for the layman to accept. But consider for a moment the popularity of the detective story. We
may tell ourselves that we enjoy reading these tales because we identify with the keen and clever sleuth, but, as is clear from psychoanalytic experience, the repressed
criminal in all of us is also at work and we also identify with the conscienceless killer. As a matter of fact, our repressed hostilities make the reading of hostile acts
attractive to us.
In the political sphere, the systematic exploitation of unconscious guilt to create submission is a utilization of the unconscious confession compulsion and the need for
punishment. Continual purges and confessions, as we encounter them in the totalitarian countries, arouse deeply hidden guilt feelings. The lesser sin of rebellion or
subversion has to be admitted to cover personal thoughts of crime which are more deeply imbedded. The personal reactions of those who are continually interrogated and
investigated give us a clue as to what happens.
The very fact of prolonged interrogation can re-arouse the hidden and unconscious guilt in the victim. At a time of extreme emotion, after constant accusation and day-long
interrogation, when he has been deprived of sleep and reduced to a state of utter despair, the victim may lose the capacity to distinguish between the real criminal act of
which he is accused and his own fantasied unconscious guilt. If his upbringing burdened him with an almost pathological sense of guilt under normal circumstances, he will
be completely unable to resist the menticidal attack.
Even normal people may be brought to surrender under such miserable conditions, and not only through the action of the inquisition, but also because of all the other
weakening factors. Lack of sleep, hunger, and illness can create utter confusion and make any man vulnerable to hypnotic influence. All of us have experienced the mental
fuzziness which comes with being overtired. Concentration-camp victims know how hunger, especially, induces a loss of mental control. In the fantastic world of the
totalitarian prison or camp, these effects are heightened and exaggerated.
[NOTE: The conversation in concentration camps usually revolved around food and memories of glorious gluttony. The mind could not work: it was fixed on eating and
fantasies about food. A word grew up to express that constant possession by the idea of eating well again: stomach masturbation ("Magenonanie"). This kind of talk often
took the place of all intellectual exchange.]
The Nazis, through clever exploitation of their victims' unconscious guilt after poking into the back corners of their minds, were often able to convert courageous
resistance fighters into meek collaborators. That they were not uniformly successful can be explained by two factors. The first is that MOST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE
UNDERGROUND WERE INWARDLY PREPARED FOR THE BRUTALITY WITH WHICH THEY WERE TREATED. The second is that, clever as the Nazi techniques were, they were not as irresistible as
the methodical tricks of the Communist brainwashers are.
When the victims of Nazi brutality did break down, it was not torture but often the threat of reprisal against family which made them give in. Sudden acute confrontation
with a long-buried childhood problem creates confusion and doubt. All of a sudden the enemy puts before you a clash of loyalties: your father or your friends, your brother
or your fatherland, your wife or your honor. This is a brutal choice to have to make, and when the inquisitor makes use of your additional inner conflicts, he can easily
force you into surrender.
A clash between loyalties makes either choice a betrayal, and this arouses paralyzing doubt. This calculated but subtle attack on the weakest spots in man's mind, on a
man's conscience, and on the moral system he has learned from the Judaeo-Christian ethics, paralyzes the reason and leads the victim more easily into betrayal. The
inquisitor subtly tests his victim's archaic guilt feelings toward paternal figures, his friends, his children. He cleverly exploits the victim's early ambivalent ties
with his parents. The sudden outbreak of hidden moral flaws and guilt can bring a man to tears and complete breakdown. He regresses to the dependency and submissiveness of
the baby.
A very husky former hero of the Dutch resistance, known as King Kong because of his size and strength, became the treacherous instrument of the Nazis soon after his
brother had been taken with him and the Nazis threatened to kill the youth. King Kong's final surrender to the enemy and his becoming their treacherous tool was
psychiatrically recognizable as a defense mechanism against his deep guilt, arising from hidden feelings of aggression against his brother (Boeree).
Another example of breakdown is seen in the story of one young resistance fighter who, after the Nazis had threatened to torture his father, who was imprisoned with him,
finally broke into childish tears and promised to tell them everything they wanted to know. After that he was taken back to his cell in order to be softened up after the
following day. This was the routine of his interrogator. The inquisitors understood only too well the effectiveness of patient pursuit at repeated moments while intruding
into a man's guilt feelings. Although both prisoners were liberated that night as a consequence of the Allied sweep through Belgium and the southwest part of Holland, the
boy remained in his depression for a long time, tortured by his knowledge that he had nearly betrayed his best friends in the underground in order to save his father -- in
spite of knowing, at the same time, that the promises of the enemy would not have protected his father.
The Law of Survival Versus the Law of Loyalty
The prisoners of war in Korea who gradually gave in to the systematic mental pressure of the enemy and collaborated in the production of materials that could be used for
Communist propaganda -- albeit tentatively and for only as long as they were in the orbit of the enemy -- followed a peculiar psychological law of passive inner defense
and inner deceit that when one cannot fight and defeat the enemy, one must join him. Later, a few of them were so taken in by totalitarian propaganda that they elected to
remain in China and the totalitarian orbit. Some did it to escape punishment for having betrayed their comrades.
Man cannot become a turncoat without justifying his actions to himself. When Holland surrendered to the German army in 1940, I saw this general mechanism of mental
surrender operating in several people who had been staunch anti-Nazis. "Maybe there is something good in Nazism", they told themselves as they saw the tremendous show of
German strength. Those who were the victims of their own initial mental surrender and need to justify things, who could not stop and say to themselves "Hold on here; think
this out", became the traitors and collaborators. They were completely taken in by the enemy's show of strength. The same process of self-justification and justifying the
enemy started in the POW camps. Experiences from the concentration camps give us some indication of how far this passive submission to the enemy can go. Because of the
deep-seated human need for affection, many prisoners lived only for one thing: a friendly word from their guards. Each time it came, it fortified the delusion of grace and
acceptance. Once these prisoners, mostly those who had been in the camps a long time, were accepted by the guards, they easily became the trusted tools of the Nazis. They
started to behave like their cruel jailers and became torturers of their fellow campers. These collaborating prisoners, called "Kapos", were even more cruel and vengeful
than the official overseers. Because of misunderstood inner needs, the brainwasher and sadistic camp leader are direly in need of collaborators. They serve not only for
the propaganda machine but also to exonerate their jailers from guilt.
When a man has to choose either hunger, death marches, and torture or a temporary yielding to the illusions of the enemy, his self-preservation mechanisms act in many ways
like reflexes. They help him to find a thousand justifications and exculpations for giving in to the psychological pressure.
One of the officers court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy in a Korean POW camp justified his conduct by saying that he followed this course of action in order
to keep himself and his men alive. Is that not a perfectly valid, though not necessarily true, argument?
The use of it serves to point up the fact that self-protective mechanisms are usually much stronger than ideological loyalty. No one who has not faced this same bitter
problem can have an objective opinion as to what he himself would do under the circumstances. As a psychiatrist, I suggest that most people would yield and
compromise when threat and mental pressure became strong enough.
Among the anti-Nazi undergrounds in the Second World War were physically strong boys who thought they could resist all pressure and would never betray their comrades.
However, they could not even begin to imagine the perfidious technique of menticide. Repeated pestering, itself, is more destructive than physical torture. The pain of
physical torture, as we have said, brings temporary unconsciousness and, consequently, forgetfulness, but when the victim wakes up, the play of anticipation begins. "Will
it happen again? Can I stand it any more?" Anticipation paralyzes the will. Suicidal thoughts and identifications with death do not help. The foe doesn't let you die but
drags you back from the very edge of oblivion. The anticipation of renewed torture increases internal anxieties. "Who am I to stand all this?" "Why must I be a hero?"
Gradually resistance breaks down.
The surrender of the mind to its new master does not take place immediately under the impact of duress and exhaustion. The inquisitor knows that in the period of temporary
relaxation of pressure, during which the victim will rehearse and repeat the torture experience in himself, the final surrender is prepared. During that tension of
rumination and anticipation, the deeply hidden wish to give in grows. The action of continual repetition of stupid questions, reiterated for days and days, exhausts the
mind till it gives the answers the inquisitor wants to have.
In addition to the weapon of mental exhaustion, he plays on the physical exhaustion of the senses. He may use penetrating, excruciating noises or a constant strong
flashlight that blinds the eyes. The need to close the eyes or to get away from the noises confuses the mental orientation of the victim. He loses his balance and feelings
of self-confidence. He yearns for sleep and can do nothing else but surrender. The infantile desire to become part of the threatening giant machine, to become one with the
forces that are so much stronger than the prisoner has won.
It is an unequivocal surrender: "Do with me what you want. From now on I am you."
That only deprivation from sleep is able to produce various abnormal reactions of the mind was confirmed by Tyler in an experiment with 350 male volunteers. He deprived
them of sleep for 102 hours. Forty-four men dropped out almost at once because they felt too anxious and irritated. After forty hours without sleep, 70 percent of all
subjects had already had illusions, delusions, hallucinations, and similar experiences. Those who had true hallucinations were dropped from the experiment. After the
second night, sporadic disturbances of thinking were common to all subjects. The participants were embarrassed when they were informed later of their behavior.
The changes in emotional response had been noticeable -- euphoria followed by depression; dejection and restlessness; indifference to unusual behavior shown by other
subjects. The experiment gave the impression that prolonged wakefulness causes some toxic substance to affect brain and mind.
Only the few strong, independent, and self-sufficient personalities, who have conquered their dependency needs, can stand such pressure or are willing to die under it.
The ritual of self-accusation and breast-beating and unconditional surrender to the rules of the elders is part of age-old religious rites. It was based on a more or less
unconscious belief in a supreme and omnipotent power. This power may be the monolithic party state or a mysterious deity. It follows the old inner device of "Credo
quia absurdum" ("I believe because it is absurd"), of faithful submission to a super-world stronger than the reality which confronts our senses.
Why the totalitarian and orthodox dogmatic ideology sticks to such a rigid attitude, with prohibition of investigation of basic premises, is a complicated psychological
question. Somewhere the reason is related to the fear of change, the fear of the risk of change of habits, the fear of freedom, which may be psychologically related to the
fear of the finality of death.
The denial of human freedom and equality lifts the authoritarian man beyond his mortal fellows. His temporary power and omnipotence give him the illusion of eternity. In
his totalitarianism he denies death and ephemeral existence and borrows power from the future. He has to invent and formulate a final Truth and protective dogma to justify
his battle against mortality and temporariness. From then on, the new fundamental certainty must be hammered into the minds of adepts and slaves.
What happens inside the human psyche under severe circumstances of mental and physical attack is clarified for us in the studies of the general mental defenses available
to man; earlier, I myself tried in several publications to analyze the various ways people defend themselves against fear and pressure.
In the last phases of brainwashing and menticide, the self-humiliating submission of the victims serves as an inner defensive device annihilating the prosecuting
inquisitor in a magic way. The more they accuse themselves, the less logical reason there is for HIS existence. Giving in and being even more cruel toward oneself makes
the inquisitor and judge, as it were, impotent and shows the futility of the accusing regime.
We may say that brainwashing and menticide provoke the same inner defensive mechanism that we observe in melancholic patients. Through their mental self-beatings, they try
to get rid of fear and to avoid a more deeply seated guilt. They punish themselves in advance in order to overcome the idea of final punishment for some hidden, unknown,
and worse crime. The victim of menticide conquers his tormentor by becoming even more cruel toward himself than the inquisitor. In this passive way, he annihilates his
enemy.
The Mysterious Masochistic Pact
In Arthur Koestler's masterpiece, DARKNESS AT NOON, he describes all the subtle intricacies, reasonings, and dialectics between the inquisitor and his victim. The old
Bolshevik, Rubashov, preconditioned by his former party adherence, confesses to plotting against the party and the party line. He is partly motivated by the wish to render
a last service: his confession is a final sacrifice to the party. I would explain the confession rather as part of that mysterious masochistic pact between the inquisitor
and his victim which we encounter, too, in other processes of brainwashing.
[NOTE: The term "masochism" originally referred to sexual gratification received from pain and punishment, and later became every gratification acquired through pain
and abjection.]
It is the last gift and trick the tortured gives to his torturer. It is as if he were to call out: "Be good to me. I confess. I submit. Be good to me and love me." After
having suffered all manner of brutality, hypnotism, despair, and panic, there is a final quest for human companionship, but it is ambivalent, mixed with deep despising,
hatred, and bitterness.
Tortured and torturer gradually form a peculiar community in which the one influences the other. Just as in therapeutic sessions where the patient identifies with the
psychiatrist, the daily sessions of interrogation and conversation create an unconscious transfer of feelings in which the prisoner identifies with his inquisitors, and
his inquisitors with him. The prisoner, encaptured in a strange, harsh, and unfamiliar world, identifies much more with the enemy than does the enemy with him. Unwittingly
he may take over all the enemy's norms, evaluations, and attitudes toward life. Such passive surrender to the enemy's ideology is determined by unconscious processes. The
danger of communion of this kind is that at the end all moral evaluations disappear. We saw it happen in Germany. The very victims of Nazism came to accept the idea of
concentration camps.
In menticide we are faced with a ritual like that found in witch hunting during the Middle Ages, except that today the ritual has taken a more refined form. Accuser and
accused -- each affords the other assistance, and both belong together as collaborating members of a ritual of confession and self-denigration. Through their cooperation,
they attack the minds of bystanders who identify with them and who consequently feel guilty, weak, and submissive. The Moscow purge trials made many Russians feel guilty;
listening to the confessions, they must have said to themselves, "I could have done the same thing. I could have been in that man's place." When their heroes become
traitors, their own hidden treasonable wishes made them feel weak and frightened.
This explanation may seem overly complicated and involved and perhaps even self-contradictory, but, in fact, it helps us to understand what happens in cases of menticide.
Both torturer and tortured are the victims of their own unconscious guilt. The torturer projects his guilt onto some outside scapegoat and tries to expiate it by attacking
his victim. The victim, too, has a sense of guilt which arises from deeply repressed hostilities. Under normal circumstances, this sense is kept under control, but in the
menticidal atmosphere of relentless interrogation and inquisition, his repressed hostilities are aroused and loom up as frightening phantasmagorias from a forgotten past,
which the victim senses but cannot grasp or understand. It is easier to confess to the accusation of treason and sabotage than to accept the frightening sense of
criminality with which his long-forgotten aggressive impulses now burden him. The victim's overt self-accusation serves as a trick to annihilate the inner accuser and the
persecuting inquisitor. The more I accuse myself, the less reason there is for the inquisitor's existence. The victim's going to the gallows kills, as it were, the
inquisitor too, because there existed a mutual identification: the accuser is made impotent the moment the victim begins to accuse himself and tomorrow the accuser himself
may be accused and brought to the gallows.
Out of our understanding of this strange masochistic pact between accuser and accused comes a rather simple answer to the questions, WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO CONTROL THE
MINDS OF OTHERS, AND WHY DO THE OTHERS CONFESS AND YIELD? It is because there is no essential difference between the victim and the inquisitor. They are alike. Neither,
under these circumstances, has any control over his deeply hidden criminal and hostile thoughts and feelings.
It is obviously easier to be the inquisitor than the victim, not only because the inquisitor may be temporarily safe from mental and physical destruction, but also because
it is simpler to punish others for what we feel as criminal in ourselves than it is to face up to our own hidden sense of guilt. Committing menticide is the lesser crime
of aggression, which covers up the deeper crime of unresolved hidden hatred and destruction.
A Survey of Psychological Processes Involved in Brainwashing and Menticide
At the end of this chapter describing the various influences that lead to yielding and surrender to the enemy's strategy, it is useful to give a short survey of the
psychological processes involved.
PHASE I. ARTIFICIAL BREAKDOWN AND DECONDITIONING
The inquisitor tries to weaken the ego of his prisoner. Though originally physical torture was used -- hunger and cold are still very effective -- physical torture may
often increase a person's stubbornness. Torture is intended to a much greater extent to act as a threat to the bystanders' (the people's) imagination. Their wild
anticipation of torture leads more easily to THEIR breakdown when the enemy has need of their weakness. (Of course, occasionally a sadistic enemy may find individual
pleasure in torture.)
The many devices the enemy makes use of include: intimidating suggestion, dramatic persuasion, mass suggestion, humiliation, embarrassment, loneliness and isolation,
continued interrogation, over-burdening the unsteady mind, arousing more and more self-pity. Patience and time help the inquisitor to soften a stubborn soul.
Just as in many old religions the victims were humbled and humiliated in order to prepare for the new religion, so, in this case, they are prepared to accept the
totalitarian ideology. In this phase, out of mere intellectual opportunism, the victim may consciously give in.
PHASE II. SUBMISSION TO AND POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION WITH THE ENEMY
As has already been mentioned, the moment of surrender may often arrive suddenly. It is as if the stubborn negative suggestibility changed critically into a surrender and
affirmation. What the inquisitor calls the sudden inner illumination and conversion is a total reversal of inner strategy in the victim. From this time on, in
psychoanalytic terms, a parasitic superego lives in man's conscience, and he will speak his new master's voice. In my experience such sudden surrender often occurred
together with hysterical outbursts into crying and laughing, like a baby surrendering after obstinate temper tantrums. The inquisitor can attain this phase more easily by
assuming a paternal attitude. As a matter of fact, many a POW was courted by a form of paternal kindness -- gifts, sweets at birthdays, and the promise of more cheerful
things to come.
Maloney compares this sudden yielding with the theophany or kenosis (internal conversion) as described by some theological rites. For our understanding, it is important
to stress that yielding is an unconscious and purely emotional process, no longer under the conscious intellectual control of the brainwashee. We may also call this
phase the phase of autohypnosis.
PHASE III. THE RECONDITIONING TO THE NEW ORDER
Through both continual training and taming, the new phonograph record has to be grooved. We may compare this process with an active hypnosis into conversion. Incidental
relapses to the old form of thinking have to be corrected as in Phase I. The victim is daily helped to rationalize and justify his new ideology. The inquisitor delivers to
him the new arguments and reasonings.
This systematic indoctrination of those who long avoided intensive indoctrination constitutes the actual political aspect of brainwashing and symbolizes the ideological
cold war going on at this very moment.
PHASE IV. LIBERATION FROM THE TOTALITARIAN SPELL
As soon as the brainwashee returns to a free atmosphere, the hypnotic spell is broken. Temporary nervous repercussions take place, like crying spells, feelings of guilt
and depression. The expectation of a hostile homeland, in view of his having yielded to enemy indoctrination, may fortify this reaction. The period of brainwashing becomes
a nightmare. Only those who were staunch members of the resistance before may stick to it. But here, too, I have seen the enemy impose its mental pressure too well and
convert their former prisoners into eternal haters of freedom.
THE RAPE OF THE MIND - PART TWO
The Techniques of Mass Submission
The purpose of the second part of this book is to show various aspects of political and non-political strategy used to change the feelings and thoughts of the masses,
starting with simple advertising and propaganda, then surveying psychological warfare and actual cold war, and going on to examine the means used for internal streamlining
of man's thoughts and behavior. Part Two ends with an intricate examination of how one of the tools of emotional fascination and attack -- the weapon of fear -- is used
and what reactions it arouses in men.
V. THE COLD WAR AGAINST THE MIND
Only blind wishful thinking can permit us to believe that our own society is free from the insidious influences mentioned in Part One. The fact is that they exist all
around us, both on a political and a nonpolitical level and they become as dangerous to the free way of life as are the aggressive totalitarian governments themselves.
Every culture institutionalizes certain forms of behavior that communicate and encourage certain forms of thinking and acting, thus molding the character of its citizens.
To the degree that the individual is made an object of constant mental manipulation, to the degree that cultural institutions may tend to weaken intellectual and spiritual
strength, to the degree that knowledge of the mind is used to tame and condition people instead of educating them, to that degree does the culture itself produce men and
women who are predisposed to accept an authoritarian way of life. The man who has no mind of his own can easily become the pawn of a would-be dictator.
It is often disturbing to see how even intelligent people do not have straight thinking minds of their own. The pattern of the mind, whether toward conformity and
compliance or otherwise, is conditioned rather early in life.
In his important social psychological experiments with students, Asch found out in simple tests that there was a yielding toward an ERRING MAJORITY opinion in more than a
third of his test persons, and 75 percent of subjects experimented upon agreed with the majority in varying degrees. In many persons the weight of authority is more
important than the quality of the authority.
If we are to learn to protect our mental integrity on all levels, we must examine not only those aspects of contemporary culture which have to do directly with the
struggle for power, but also those developments in our culture which, by dulling the edge of our mental awareness or by taking advantage of our suggestibility, can lead us
into the mental death -- or boredom -- of totalitarianism. Continual suggestion and slow hypnosis in the wake of mechanical mass communication promotes uniformity of the
mind and may lure the public into the "happy era" of adjustment, integration, and equalization, in which individual opinion is completely stereotyped.
When I get up in the morning, I turn on my radio to hear the news and the weather forecast. Then comes the pontifical voice telling me to take aspirin for my headache. I
have "headaches" occasionally (so does the world), and my headaches, like everyone else's, come from the many conflicts that life imposes on me. My radio tells me not to
think about either the conflicts or the headaches. It suggests, instead, that I should retreat into that old magic action of swallowing a pill. Although I laugh as I
listen to this long-distance prescription by a broadcaster who does not know anything about me or my headaches and though I meditate for a moment on man's servility to the
magic of chemistry, my hand has already begun to reach out for the aspirin bottle. After all, I do have a headache.
It is extremely difficult to escape the mechanically repeated suggestions of everyday life. Even when our critical mind rejects them, they seduce us into doing what our
intellect tells us is stupid.
The mechanization of modern life has already influenced man to become more passive and to adjust himself to ready-made conformity. No longer does man think in personal
values, following more his own conscience and ethical evaluations; he thinks more and more in the values brought to him by mass media. Headlines in the morning paper give
him his temporary political outlook, the radio blasts suggestions into his ears, television keeps him in continual awe and passive fixation. Consciously he may protest
against these anonymous voices, but nevertheless their suggestions ooze into his system.
What is perhaps most shocking about these influences is that many of them have developed not out of man's destructiveness, but out of his hope to improve his world and to
make life richer and deeper. The very institutions man has created to help himself, the very tools he has invented to enhance his life, the very progress he has made
toward mastery of himself and his environment -- all can become weapons of destruction.
The Public-Opinion Engineers
The conviction is steadily growing in our country that an elaborate propaganda campaign for either a political idea or a deep-freeze can be successful in selling the
public any idea or object one wants them to buy, any political figure one wants them to elect. Recently, some of our election campaigns have been masterminded by the
so-called public-opinion engineers, who have used all the techniques of modern mass communication and all the contemporary knowledge of the human mind to persuade
Americans to vote for the candidate who is paying the public-relation men's salaries. The danger of such high-pressure advertising is that the man or the party who can pay
the most can become, temporarily at least, the one who can influence the people to buy or to vote for what may not be in their real interest.
The specialists in the art of persuasion and the molding of public sentiment may try to knead man's mental dough with all the tools of communication available to them:
pamphlets, speeches, posters, billboards, radio programs, and T.V. shows. They may water down the spontaneity and creativity of thoughts and ideas into sterile and
streamlined clichés that direct our thoughts even although we still have the illusion of being original and individual.
What we call the will of the people, or the will of the masses, we only get to know after such collective action is put on the move, after the will of the people has been
expressed either at the polls or in fury and rebellion. This indicates again how important it is who directs the tools and machines of public opinion.
In the wake of such advertising and engineering of consent, the citizen's trust in his leaders may become shaken and the populace may gradually grow more and more
accustomed to official deceit. Finally, when people no longer have confidence in any program, any position, and when they are unable to form intelligent judgments any
more, they can be more easily influenced by any demagogue or would-be dictator, whose strength appeals to their confusion and their growing sense of dissatisfaction.
Perhaps the worst aspect of this slick merchandising of ideas is that too often even those who buy the experts, and even the opinion experts themselves, are unaware of
what they are doing. They too are swayed by the current catchword "management of public opinion", and they cannot judge any more the tools they have hired.
The end never justifies the means; enough steps on this road can lead us gradually to Totalitaria.
At this very moment in our country, an elaborate research into motivation is going on, whose object is to find out why and what the buyer likes to buy. What makes him
tick? The aim is to bypass the resistance barriers of the buying public. It is part of our paradoxical cultural philosophy to stimulate human needs and to stimulate the
wants of the people. Commercialized psychological understanding wants to sell to the public, to the potential buyer, many more products than he really wants to buy. In
order to do this, rather infantile impulses have to be awakened, such as sibling rivalry and neighbor envy, the need to have more and more sweets, the glamour of colors,
and the need for more and more luxuries.
The commercial psychologist teaches the seller how to avoid unpleasant associations in his advertising, how to stimulate, unobtrusively, sex associations, how to make
everything look simple and happy and successful and secure! He teaches the shops how to boost the buyer's ego, how to flatter the customer.
The marketing engineers have discovered that our public wants the suggestion of strength and virility in their product. A car must have more horse-power in order to
balance feelings of inner weakness in the owner. A car must represent one's social status and reputation, because without such a flag man feels empty. Advertising agencies
dream of "universitas advertensis", the world of glittering sham ideas, the glorification of "munus vult decipi", the intensification of snob appeal, the
expression of vulgar conspicuousness, and all this in order to push more sales into the greedy mouths of buying babies. In our world of advertising, artificial needs are
invented by sedulous sellers and buyers. Here lies the threat of building up a sham world that can have a dangerous influence on our world of ideas.
This situation emphasizes the neurotic greed of the public, the need to indulge in private fancies at the cost of an awareness of real values. The public becomes
conditioned to meretricious values. Of course, a free public gradually finds its defenses against slogans, but dishonesty and mistrust slip through the barriers of our
consciousness and leave behind a gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction. After all, advertising symbolizes the art of making people dissatisfied with what they have. In the
meantime it is evident man sustains a continual sneak attack on his better judgment.
In our epoch of too many noises and many frustrations, many "free" minds have given up the struggle for decency and individuality. They surrender to the "Zeitgeist", often
without being aware of it. Public opinion molds our critical thoughts every day. Unknowingly, we may become opinionated robots. The slow coercion of hypocrisy, of
traditions in our culture that have a leveling effect -- these things change us. We crave excitement, hair-raising stories, sensation. We search for situations that create
superficial fear to cover up inner anxieties. We like to escape into the irrational because we dislike the challenge of self-study and self-thinking. Our leisure time is
occupied increasingly by automatized activities in which we take no part: listening to piped-in words and viewing television screens. We hurry along with cars and go to
bed with a sleeping pill. This pattern of living in turn may open the way for renewed sneak attacks on our mind. Our boredom may welcome any seductive suggestion.
Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror
Every human communication can be either a report of straight facts or an attempt to suggest things and situations as they do not exist. Such distortion and perversion of
facts strike at the core of human communication. The verbal battle against man's concept of truth and against his mind seems to be ceaseless. For example, if I can instill
in eventual future enemies fear and terror and the suggestion of impending defeat, even before they are willing to fight, my battle is already half won.
The strategy of man to use a frightening mask and a loud voice to utter lies in order to manipulate friend and foe is as old as mankind. Primitive people used
terror-provoking masks, magic fascination, or self-deceit as much as we use loudly spoken words to convince others or ourselves. They use their magic paints and we our
ideologies. Truly, we live in an age of ads, propaganda, and publicity. But only under dictatorial and totalitarian regimes have such human habit formations mushroomed
into systematic psychological assault on mankind.
The weapons the dictator uses against his own people, he may use against the outside world as well. For example, the false confessions that divert the minds of dictator's
subjects from their own real problems have still another effect: they are meant (and sometimes they succeed in their aim) to terrorize the world's public. By strengthening
the myth of the dictator's omnipotence, such confessions weaken man's will to resist him. If a period of peace can be used to soften up a future enemy, the totalitarian
armies may be able in time of war to win a cheap and easy victory. Totalitarian psychological warfare is directed largely toward this end. It is an effort to propagandize
and hypnotize the world into submission.
As far back as the early nineteenth century, Napoleon organized his Bureau de l'Opinion Publique in order to influence the thinking of the French people. But it fell to
the Germans to develop the manipulation of public opinion into a huge, well organized machine. Their psychological warfare became aggressive strategy in peacetime, the
so-called war between wars. It was as a result of the Nazi attack on European morale and the Nazi war of nerves against their neighbors that the other nations of the world
began to organize their own psychological forces, but it was only in the second half of the war that they were able to achieve some measure of success. The Germans had a
long head start.
Hitler's psychological artillery was composed primarily of the weapon of fear. He had, for example, a network of fifth columnists whose main job was to sow rumors and
suspicions among the citizens of the countries against which he eventually planned to fight. The people were upset not only by the spy system itself, but by the very rumor
of spies. These fifth columnists spread slogans of defeat and political confusion: "Why should France die for England?" Fear began to direct people's actions. Instead of
facing the real threat of German invasion, instead of preparing for it, all of Europe shuddered at spy stories, discussed irrelevant problems, argued endlessly about
scapegoats and minorities. Thus Hitler used the rampant, vague fears to becloud the real issues, and by attacking his enemies' will to fight, weakened them.
Not content with this strategic attack on the will to defend oneself, Hitler tried to paralyze Europe with the threat of terror, not only the threat of bombing,
destruction, and occupation, but also the psychological threat implicit in his own boast of ruthlessness. The fear of an implacable foe makes man more willing to submit
even before he has begun to fight. Hitler's criminal acts at home -- the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the mass murders, the atmosphere of terror throughout
Germany -- were as useful in the service of his fear-instilling propaganda machinery as they were a part of his delusions.
There is another important weapon the totalitarians use in their campaign to frighten the world into submission. This is the weapon of psychological shock. Hitler kept his
enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval. They never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he
knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot -- it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously
repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie,
the totalitarians can assault him with another.
Strategical mental shocks were the instruments the Nazis used when they entered the Rhineland in 1936 and when they concluded their nonaggression pact with Russia in 1939.
Stalin used the same strategy at the time of the Korean invasion in 1950 (which he directed), as did the Chinese and the North Koreans when they accused the United States
of bacteriological warfare. By acting in this apparently irrational way, the totalitarians throw their logic-minded enemies into confusion. The enemy feels compelled to
deny the propagandistic lies or to explain things as they really are, and these actions immediately put him in the weaker defensive position. For the galloping lie can
never be overtaken, it can only be overthrown.
The technique of psychological shock has still another effect. It may so confuse the mind of the individual citizen that he ceases to make his own evaluations and begins
to lean passively on the opinions of others. Hitler's destruction of Warsaw and Rotterdam -- after the armistice in 1940, a complete violation of international law --
immobilized France and shook the other democratic nations. Being in a paralysis of moral indignation, they became psychologically ill-equipped to deal with the Nazi
horrors.
Just as the technological advances of the modern world have refined and perfected the weapons of physical warfare, so the advance in man's understanding of the
manipulation of public opinion have enabled him to refine and perfect the weapons of psychological warfare.
The Indoctrination Barrage
The continual intrusion into our minds of the hammering noises of arguments and propaganda can lead to two kinds of reactions. It may lead to apathy and indifference,
the I-don't-care reaction, or to a more intensified desire to study and to understand. Unfortunately, the first reaction is the more popular one. The flight from study
and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism,
we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and consciences.
We cannot be enough aware of the continual coercion of our senses and minds, the continual suggestive attacks which may pass through the intellectual barriers of insight.
Repetition and Pavlovian conditioning exhaust the individual and may seduce him ultimately to accept a truth he himself initially defied and scorned.
The totalitarians are very ingenious in arousing latent guilt in us by repeating over and over again how criminally the Western world has acted toward innocent and
peaceful people. The totalitarians may attack our identification with our leaders by ridiculing them, making use of every man's latent critical attitude toward all
leaders. Sometimes they use the strategy of boredom to lull the people to sleep. They would like the entire Western world to fall into a hypnotic sleep under the illusion
of peaceful coexistence. In a more refined strategy, they would like to have us cut all our ties of loyalty with the past, away from relatives and parents. The more you
have forsaken them and their so-called outmoded concepts, the better you will cooperate with those who want to take mental possession of you. Every political strategy that
aims toward arousing fear and suspicion tends to isolate the insecure individual until he surrenders to those forces that seem to him stronger than his former friends.
And last but not least, let us not forget that in the battle of arguments those with the best and most forceful strategy tend to win. The totalitarians organize intensive
dialectical training for their subjects lest their doubts get the better of them. They try to do the same thing to the rest of the world in a less obtrusive way.
We have to learn to encounter the totalitarians' exhausting barrage of words with better training and better understanding. If we try to escape from these problems of
mental defense or deny their complications, the cold war will gradually be lost to the slow encroachment of words -- and more words.
The Enigma of Coexistence
Is it possible to coexist with a totalitarian system that never ceases to use its psychological artillery? Can a free democracy be strong enough to tolerate the parasitic
intrusion of totalitarianism into its rights and freedoms? History tells us that many opposing and clashing ideologies have been able to coexist under a common law that
assured tolerance and justice. The church no longer burns its apostates.
Before the opposites of totalitarianism and free democracy can coexist under the umbrella of supervising law and mutual good will, a great deal more of mutual
understanding and tolerance will have to be built up. The actual cold war and psychological warfare certainly do not yet help toward this end.
To the totalitarian, the word "coexistence" has a different meaning than it has to us. The totalitarian may use it merely as a catch-word or an appeaser. The danger is
that the concept of peaceful coexistence may become a disguise, dulling the awareness of inevitable interactions and so profiting the psychologically stronger party. Lenin
spoke about the strategic breathing spell (peredyshka) that has to weaken the enemy. Too enthusiastic a peace movement may mean a superficial appeasement of problems. Such
an appeal has to be studied and restudied, lest it result in a dangerous letdown of defenses which have to remain mobilized to face a ruthless enemy.
Coexistence may mean a suffocating subordination much like that of prisoners coexisting with their jailers. At its best, it may imitate the intensive symbiotic or
ever-parasitic relationship we can see among animals which need each other, or as we see it in the infant in its years of dependency upon its mother.
In order to coexist and to cooperate, one must have notions and comparable images of interaction, of a sameness of ideas, of a belonging-together, of an interdependence of
the whole human race, in spite of the existence of racial and cultural differences. Otherwise the ideology backed by the greater military strength will strangle the weaker
one.
Peaceful coexistence presupposes on BOTH sides a high understanding of the problems and complications of simple coexistence, of mutual agreement and limitations, of the
diversity of personalities, and especially of the coexistence of contrasting and irreconcilable thoughts and feelings in every individual of the innate ambivalence of man.
It demands an understanding of the rights of both the individual and the collectivity. Using coexistence as a catch-word, we may obscure the problems involved, and we may
find that we use the word as a flag that covers gradual surrender to the stronger strategist.
VI. TOTALITARIA AND ITS DICTATORSHIP
There actually exists such a thing as a technique of mass brainwashing. This technique can take root in a country if an inquisitor is strong and shrewd enough. He can make
most of us his victims, albeit temporarily.
What in the structure of society has made man so vulnerable to these mass manipulations of the mind? This is a problem with tremendous implications, just as brainwashing
is. In recent years we have grown more and more aware of human interdependence with all its difficulties and complications.
I am aware of the fact that investigation of the subject of mental coercion and thought control becomes less pleasant as time goes on. This is so because it may become
more of a threat to us here and now, and our concern for China and Korea must yield to the more immediate needs at our own door. Can totalitarian tendencies take over
here, and what social symptoms may lead to such phenomena? Stern reality confronts us with the universal mental battle between thought control (and its corollaries) and
our standards of decency, personal strength, personal ideas, and a personal conscience with autonomy and dignity.
Future social scientists will be better able to describe the causes of the advent of totalitarian thinking and acting in man. We know that after wars and revolutions this
mental deterioration more easily finds an opportunity to develop, helped by special psychopathic personalities who flourish on man's misery and confusion. It is also true
that the next generation spontaneously begins to correct the misdeeds of the previous one because the ruthless system has become too threatening to them.
My task, however, is to describe some symptoms of the totalitarian process (which implies deterioration of thinking and acting) as I have observed them in our own epoch,
keeping in mind that the system is one of the most violent distortions of man's consistent mental growth. No brainwashing is possible without totalitarian thinking.
The tragic facts of political experiences in our age make it all too clear that applied psychological technique can brainwash entire nations and reduce their citizens
to a kind of mindless robotism which becomes for them a normal way of living. Perhaps we can best understand how this frightening thing comes about by examining a
mythical country, which, for the sake of convenience, we shall call Totalitaria.
The Robotization of Man
First, let me utter a word of caution. We must not make the mistake of thinking that there is any one particular nation that can be completely identified with this
hypothetical land. The characteristics to be discussed can come into existence here. Some of Totalitaria's characteristics were, of course, present in Nazi Germany, and
they can today be found behind the Iron Curtain, but they exist to some extent in other parts of the world as well. Totalitaria is any country in which political ideas
degenerate into senseless formulations made only for propaganda purposes. It is any country in which a single group -- left or right -- acquires absolute power and becomes
omniscient and omnipotent, any country in which disagreement and differences of opinion are crimes, in which utter conformity is the price of life.
Totalitaria -- the Leviathan state -- is the home of the political system we call, euphemistically, totalitarianism, of which systematized tyranny is a part. This system
does not derive from any honest political philosophy, either socialist or capitalist. Totalitaria's leaders may mouth ideologies, but these are in fact mainly catch-words
used to justify the regime. If necessary, totalitarianism can change its slogans and its behavior overnight. For totalitarianism embodies, to me, the quest for total
power, the quest of a dictator to rule the world. The words and concepts of "socialism" and "communism" may serve, like "democracy", as a disguise for the megalomaniac
intention of the tyrant.
Since totalitarianism is essentially the social manifestation of a psychological phenomenon belonging to every personality, it can best be understood in terms of the human
forces that create, foster, and perpetuate it. Man has two faces; he wants to grow toward maturity and freedom, and yet the primitive child in his unconscious yearns for
more complete protection and irresponsibility. His mature self learns how to cope with the restrictions and frustrations of daily life, but at the same time, the child in
him longs to hit out against them, to beat them down, to destroy them -- whether they be objects or people.
Totalitarianism appeals to this confused infant in all of us; it seems to offer a solution to the problems man's double yearning creates. Our mythical Totalitaria is a
monolithic and absolute state in which doubt, confusion, and conflict are not permitted to be shown, for the dictator purports to solve all his subjects' problems for
them. In addition, Totalitaria can provide official sanction for the expression of man's most antisocial impulses. The uncivilized child hidden in us may welcome this
liberation from ethical frustration.
On the other hand, our free, mature, social selves cannot be happy in Totalitaria; they revolt against the restriction of individual impulses.
The psychological roots of totalitarianism are usually irrational, destructive, and primitive, though disguised behind some ideology, and for this reason there is
something fantastic, unbelievable, even nightmarish about the system itself. There is, of course, a difference in the psychic experience of the elite, who can live out
their needs for power, and the masses, who have to submit; yet the two groups influence each other.
When a dictator's deep neurotic needs for power also satisfy some profound emotional need in the population of his country, especially in times of misery or after a
revolution, he is more easily able to assume the power for which he longs. If a nation has suffered defeat in war, for example, its citizens feel shame and resentment.
Loss of face is not simply a political abstraction, it is a very real and personal thing to a conquered people. Every man, consciously or unconsciously, identifies with
his native land. If a country suffers from prolonged famine or severe depression, its citizens become bitter, depressed, and resentful, and will more willingly accept the
visions and promises of the aspiring dictator.
If the complexity of a country's political and economic apparatus makes the individual citizen feel powerless, confused, and useless, if he has no sense of participation
in the forces that govern his daily life, or if he feels these forces to be so vast and confusing that he can no longer understand them, he will grasp at the totalitarian
opportunity for belonging, for participation, for a simple formula that explains and rationalizes what is beyond his comprehension. And when the dictator has taken over
finally, he transfers his own abnormal fantasies, his rage and anger, easily to his subjects. Their resentments feed his; his pseudo-strength encourages them. A mutual
fortification of illusions takes place.
Totalitarianism as a social manifestation is a disease of inter-human relations, and, like any other disease, man can best resist its corroding effects if, through
knowledge and training, he is well immunized against it. If, however, he is unfortunate enough to catch the totalitarian bug, he has to muster all the positive forces in
his mind to defeat it. The raging internal struggle between the irresponsible child and the mature adult in him continues until one or the other is finally destroyed
completely. As long as a single spark of either remains, the battle goes on. And for as long as man is alive, the quest for maturity keeps on.
Cultural Predilection for Totalitarianism
In the battle against this dread disease, social factors as well as personal ones play an important role. We can see this more clearly if we analyze the ways in which the
ideals of a culture as a whole affect its citizens' vulnerability to totalitarianism. The ethics of our own Western civilization are our strongest defenses against the
disease, for the ideal of these ethics is to produce a breed of men and women who are strongly individualistic and who evaluate situations primarily in terms of their own
consciences.
We aim to develop in our citizens a sense of self-responsibility, a willingness to confront the world as it is, and an ability to distinguish between right and wrong
through their own feelings and thoughts. Such men and women are impelled to action by their personal moral standards rather than by what some outside group sets up as
correct. They are unwilling to accept group evaluations immediately unless these coincide with their own personal convictions, or unless they have been able to discuss
them in a democratic way. People like this are responsible to their communities because they are first responsible to themselves. If they disagree, they will form a "loyal
minority", using their rights of convincing other people at appropriate times.
There are other cultures which emphasize attitudes and values that are different from these. The Eastern ideal of man, as we find it in China and some of the other
Oriental countries, is in the first place that one "oneness", of being one with the family, one with the fatherland, one with the cosmos -- nirvana. The Oriental psyche
looks for a direct esthetic contact with reality through an indefinable empathy and intuition. Eternal truth is behind reality, behind the veil of Maya. Man is part of the
universe; his ideal is passive servility and non-irritability. His ideal of peace lies in rest and relaxation, in meditation, in being without manual and mental travail.
The happiness of the Oriental psyche lies in the ecstasy of feeling united with the universal cosmos. Ascesis, self-redemption, and poverty are better realized ideals in
Oriental culture than in our Western society.
The classic Oriental culture pattern can best be described as a pattern of participation. In it the individual is looked upon as an integral part of the group, the family,
the caste, the nation. He is not a separate, independent entity. In this culture, greater conformity to and acceptance of the collective rules are the ideals. An Oriental
child may be trained from infancy into a pattern of submission to authority and to rules of the group. Many primitive cultures also display this pattern. To a person
raised in these cultures, the most acceptable standards, the best conceivable thoughts and actions, are those sanctioned by the group. The totalitarian world of mass
actions and mass thoughts is far more comprehensible to the members of a participation-patterned and less individual-minded culture than it is to Western individualists.
What is to us unbearable regimentation and authoritarianism may be to them comforting order and regularity.
An example of an intensified pattern of participation and thought control and mutual spying has been given by the anthropologist E. P. Dozier. [See the "New York
Times", December 11, 1955; and "Science News Letter", December 3, 1955.] The Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande area believe that wrongdoing or wrong thinking of one man
in the tribe affects all members. He may upset the cosmic balance by ill feeling toward any one of his fellow men. The moral code of the village is group-centered. The
individual who transgresses this jeopardizes the well-being of all. Epidemics, crop failures, droughts are interpreted as a result of "deviationism" of one member of the
group. Village members are closely watched and spied on in order to discover the culprit or "witch". Gossip and accusations of witchcraft are rampant, and the Pueblo
Indian is constantly searching in his own conscience for harmful thoughts and attitudes. It is as if we watch the ritual of the purge in the totalitarian state.
Such forms of "creeping collectivism" and participation we may see in every group formation where tolerance for nonconformism ceases to exist. Wherever dogmatic
partisanship dominates, the mind is coerced. We may even detect such encroaching tendencies in some scientific circles where there exists an overemphasis on group
research, teamwork, membership cards, and a disdain for individual opinion.
The culture into which a man is born and his own psychological constitution interact to produce his personality in much the same way as his body and mind interact to
produce his behavior. Our culture of individual freedom may offer us a partial immunity to the disease of totalitarianism, but at the same time our personal immaturities
and repressed savageries can make us vulnerable to it. The participation type of culture may make men more susceptible in general to totalitarianism, although personal
strivings toward maturity and individuality can offer them, too, some measure of protection against it.
Because of the interaction between these social and personal forces, no culture is completely safe from internal attack by totalitarianism and from the mental destruction
it may create. As I said before, our Totalitaria is a mythical country, but the brutal truth is that any country can be turned into Totalitaria.
The aims of the rulers of our fictitious country are simply formulated: despotism, the total domination of man and mankind, and the unity of the entire world under one
dictatorial authority. At first glance, this idea of unity can be most attractive -- the idea, oversimplified, of a brotherhood unity of nations under a central powerful
agency. When the world is one, it would seem, there will be no more war, the tensions that face us will be eliminated, earth will become a paradise. But the simplified
conception of a universal dictatorship is false and reflects the danger inherent in the totalitarian goal: all men are different, and it is the difference between them
that creates the greatness, the variety, and the creative inspirations of life, as well as the tensions of social intercourse. The totalitarian conception of equalization
can be realized only in death, when the chemical and physical laws that govern all of us take over completely. Death is indeed the great equalizer.
In life, all of us are different. Our bodies and minds interact with one another and with the outside world in different ways. Each man's personality is unique. True, all
of us share certain basic human qualities with all the other members of the human race, but the differences in personality are also so many and so varied that no two men
anywhere in the world or ever in all of human history can be said to be exactly alike. This uniqueness is as true of the citizen of Totalitaria as it is of anyone else. As
a human being, he is not only different from us, he is different from his compatriots. However, to create man in the totalitarian image through leveling and equalization
means to suppress what is essentially personal and human in him, the uniqueness and the variety, and to create a society of robots, not men.
The noted social scientist, J. S. Brunner, in his introduction to Bauer's book on Soviet psychology has expressed this thought in a different way: "Man's image of the
nature of man is not only a matter for objective inquiry; it is and has always been a prime instrument of social and political control. He who molds that image does so
with enormous consequences for the society in which he lives."
Totalitaria fosters the illusion that everyone is part of the government, a voter; no one can be a non-voter or anti-voter. His inner pros and cons and doubts are not
private problems of the individual himself any more; his thoughts belong to the state, the dictator, the ruling circle, the Party. His inner thoughts have to be
controlled. Only those in power know what really lies behind national policy. The ordinary citizen becomes as dependent and obedient as a child. In exchange for giving up
his individuality, he obtains some special gratifications: the feeling of belonging and of being protected, the sense of relief over losing his personal boundaries and
responsibilities, the ecstasy of being taken up and absorbed in wild, uncontrolled collective feelings, the safety of being anonymous, of being merely a cog in the wheel
of the all-powerful state.
The despotism of modern Totalitaria is very different from the lush, exotic personal tyrannies of ancient times. It is an ascetic, cold, mechanical force, aiming at what
Hanna Ahrendt calls the "transformation of human nature itself". In our theoretical country, man has no individual ego any longer, no personality, no self. A leveling
system is at work, and everything above the common level is trampled on and beaten down.
The Totalitarian Leader
The leaders of Totalitaria are the strangest men in the state. These men are, like all other men, unique in their mental structure, and consequently we cannot make any
blanket psychiatric diagnosis of the mental illness which motivates their behavior. But we can make some generalizations which will help us toward some understanding of
the totalitarian leader. Obviously, for example, he suffers from an overwhelming need to control other human beings and to exert unlimited power, and this in itself is a
psychological aberration, often rooted in deep-seated feelings of anxiety, humiliation, and inferiority. The ideologies such men propound are only used as tactical and
strategical devices through which they hope to reach their final goal of complete domination over other men. This domination may help them compensate for pathological
fears and feelings of unworthiness, as we can conclude from the psychological study of some modern dictators.
Fortunately, we do not have to rely on a purely hypothetical picture of the psychopathology of the totalitarian dictator. Dr. G. M. Gilbert, who studied some of the
leaders of Nazi Germany during the Nuremberg trials, has given us a useful insight into their twisted minds, useful especially because it reveals to us something about the
mutual interaction between the totalitarian leader and those who want to be led by him.
Hitler's suicide made a clinical investigation of his character structure impossible, but Dr. Gilbert heard many eyewitness reports of Hitler's behavior from his friends
and collaborators, and these present a fantastic picture of Nazism's prime mover. Hitler was known among his intimates as the carpet-eater, because he often threw himself
on the floor in a kicking and screaming fit like an epileptic rage. From such reports, Dr. Gilbert was able to deduce something about the roots of the pathological
behavior displayed by this morbid "genius".
Hitler's paranoid hostility against the Jew was partly related to his unresolved parental conflicts; the Jews probably symbolized for him the hated drunken father who
mistreated Hitler and his mother when the future Fuhrer was still a child. Hitler's obsessive thinking, his furious fanaticism, his insistence on maintaining the purity of
"Aryan blood", and his ultimate mania to destroy himself and the world were obviously the results of a sick psyche.
As early as 1923, nearly ten years before he seized power, Hitler was convinced that he would one day rule the world, and he spent time designing monuments of victory,
eternalizing his glory, to be erected all over the European continent when the day of victory arrived. This delusional preoccupation continued until the end of his life;
in the midst of the war he created, which led him to defeat and death, Hitler continued revising and improving his architectural plans.
Nazi dictator Number Two, Hermann Goering, who committed suicide to escape the hangman, had a different psychological structure. His pathologically aggressive drivers were
encouraged by the archaic military tradition of the German Junker class, to which his family belonged. From early childhood he had been compulsively and overtly
aggressive. He was an autocratic and a corrupt cynic, grasping the Nazi-created opportunity to achieve purely personal gain. His contempt for the "common people" was
unbounded; this was a man who had literally no sense of moral values.
Quite different again was Rudolf Hess, the man of passive yet fanatical dog like devotion, living, as it were, by proxy through the mind of his Fuhrer. His inner mental
weakness made it easier for him to live through means of a proxy than through his own personality, and drove him to become the shadow of a seemingly strong man, from whom
he could borrow strength. The Nazi ideology have this frustrated boy the illusion of blood identification with the glorious German race. After his wild flight to England,
Hess showed obvious psychotic traits; his delusions of persecution, hysterical attacks, and periods of amnesia are among the well-known clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.
Still another type was Hans Frank, the devil's advocate, the prototype of the overambitious latent homosexual, easily seduced into political adventure, even when this was
in conflict with the remnants of his conscience. For unlike Goering, Frank was capable of distinguishing between right and wrong.
Dr. Gilbert also tells us something about General Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler's Chief of Staff, who became the submissive, automatic mouthpiece of the Fuhrer, mixing military
honor and personal ambition in the service of his own unimportance.
Of a different quality is the S.S. Colonel, Hoess, the murderer of millions in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. A pathological character structure is obvious in this
case. All his life, Hoess had been a lonely, withdrawn, schizoid personality, without any conscience, wallowing in his own hostile and destructive fantasies. Alone and
bereft of human attachments, he was intuitively sought out by Himmler for this most savage of all the Nazi jobs. He was a useful instrument for the committing of the most
bestial deeds.
Unfortunately, we have no clear psychiatric picture yet of the Russian dictator Stalin. There have been several reports that during the last years of his life he had a
tremendous persecution phobia and lived in constant terror that he would become the victim of his own purges.
Psychological analysis of these men shows clearly that a pathological culture -- a mad world -- can be built by certain impressive psychoneurotic types. The venal
political figures need not even comprehend the social and political consequences of their behavior. They are compelled not by ideological belief, no matter how much they
may rationalize to convince themselves they are, but by the distortions of their own personalities. They are not motivated by their advertised urge to serve their country
or mankind, but rather by an overwhelming need and compulsion to satisfy the cravings of their own pathological character structures.
The ideologies they spout are not real goals; they are the cynical devices by which these sick men hope to achieve some personal sense of worth and power. Subtle inner
lies seduce them into going from bad to worse. Defensive self-deception, arrested insight, evasion of emotional identification with others, degradation of empathy -- the
mind has many defense mechanisms with which to blind the conscience.
A clear example of this can be seen in the way the Nazi leaders defended themselves through continuous self-justification and exculpation when they were brought before the
bar at the Nuremberg trials. These murderers were aggrieved and hurt by the accusations brought against them; they were the very picture of injured innocence.
Any form of leadership, if unchecked by controls, may gradually turn into dictatorship. Being a leader, carrying great power and responsibility for other people's lives,
is a monumental test for the human psyche. The weak leader is the man who cannot meet it, who simply abdicates his responsibility. The dictator is the man who replaces the
existing standards of justice and morality by more and more private prestige, by more and more power, and eventually isolates himself more and more from the rest of
humanity. His suspicion grows, his isolation grows, and the vicious circle leading to a paranoid attitude begins to develop.
The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He is
suspicious and dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any means he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some
self-justification. Without such a soothing device for his own conscience, he cannot live.
His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests. He rejects the conception of doubt, of internal
contradictions, of man's inborn ambivalence. He denies the psychological fact that man grows to maturity through groping, through trial and error, through the interplay of
contrasting feelings. Because he will not permit himself to grope, to learn through trial and error, the dictator can never become a mature person. But whether he
acknowledges them or not, he has internal conflicts, he suffers somewhere from internal confusion. These inner "weaknesses" he tries to repress sternly; if they were to
come to the surface, they might interfere with the achievement of his goals. Yet, in the attacks of rage his weakening strength is evident.
It is because the dictator is afraid, albeit unconsciously, of his own internal contradictions, that he is afraid of the same internal contradictions of his fellow men. He
must purge and purge, terrorize and terrorize in order to still his own raging inner drives. He must kill every doubter, destroy every person who makes a mistake, imprison
everyone who cannot be proved to be utterly single-minded. In Totalitaria, the latent aggression and savagery in man are cultivate by the dictator to such a degree that
they can explode into mass criminal actions shown by Hitler's persecution of minorities. Ultimately, the country shows a real pathology, an utter dominance of destructive
and self-destructive tendencies.
The Final Surrender of the Robot Man
What happens to the common man in such a culture? How can we describe the citizen of Totalitaria? Perhaps the simplest answer to this question lies in the statement that
he is reduced to the mechanical precision of an insect-like state. He cannot develop any warm friendships, loyalties, or allegiances because they may be too dangerous for
him. Today's friend may be, after all, tomorrow's enemy. Living in an atmosphere of constant suspicion -- not only of strangers, but even of his own family -- he is afraid
to express himself lest concentration camp or prison swallow him up.
The citizens of Totalitaria do not really converse with one another. When they speak, they whisper, first looking furtively over their shoulders for the inevitable spy.
Their inner silence is in sharp contrast to the official verbal bombardment. The citizens of Totalitaria may make noise, and utter polite banalities, or they may repeat
slogans to one another, but they say nothing. Existing literature reveals that leading authors, among them H.G. Wells, Huxley, and Orwell, grow more and more concerned
about the ghastly future of the robotized man, trained as a machine on a standard of conformity. They translate for us the common fear of a mechanized civilization.
In Totalitaria, the citizen no longer knows the real core of his mind. He no longer feels himself an "I", an ego, a person. He is only the object of official barrage and
mental coercion. Having no personality of his own, he has no individual conscience, no personal morality, no capacity to think clearly and honestly. He learns by rote, he
learns thousands of indoctrinated facts and inhales dogma and slogans with every breath he draws. He becomes an obedient pedant, and pedantry makes people into something
resembling pots filled with information instead of individuals with free, growing personalities.
Becoming wiser and freer implies selective forgetting and changes of mind. This we accept, this we leave behind. Alert adjustment requires a change of patterns, the
capacity to be de-conditioned, to undo and unlearn in order to become ripe for new patterns. The citizen of Totalitaria has no chance for such learning through unlearning,
for growth through individual experience. Official oversimplifications induce the captive audience into acceptance and indoctrination. Mass ecstasy and mass fanaticism are
substituted for quiet individual thought and consideration.
Hitler taught his people to march and to do battle, and at the end they did not know wherefore they marched and battled. People become herds -- indoctrinated and obsessed
herds -- intoxicated first with enthusiasm and happy expectations, then with terror and panic. the individual personality cannot grow in Totalitaria. The huge mass of
citizens is tamed into personal and political somnambulism.
It may be scientifically questionable to compare experiences gained from individual pathological states with social phenomena and to analyze the partial collapse of the
ego under totalitarianism by analogy with actual cases of madness. But there is in fact much that is comparable between the strange reactions of the citizens of
Totalitaria and their culture as a whole on the one hand and the reactions of the introverted, sick schizophrenic on the other. Even though the problem of schizophrenic
behavior in individuals and groups is extremely complicated and cannot be fully handled within the scope of this book, the comparison can be helpful in our search for an
understanding of the nature and effects of totalitarianism.
The Common Retreat from Reality
This excursion into the world of pathology is not a description of a merely coincidental resemblance between a disease and a political system. It should serve to point up
the fact that totalitarian withdrawal behind official justifications and individual fantasy is something that can occur either in social life or inside the individual
mind. And many scholars believe in a relationship between cultural deterioration and schizophrenic withdrawal.
Let us briefly explain the individual schizophrenic's reaction of complete inner automatization and mental withdrawal as a personal failure to adjust to a world
experienced as insecure and dangerous. Often rather simple emotional incidents may lead to such schizophrenic retreat -- for instance, the intrusion of schedules and
habits forced on the mind during infancy or a sly hypersensitivity to our over-active and over-verbose culture. Many a child is forced into schizophrenic withdrawal by an
over-compulsive parent. Sometimes lack of external contact may drive a man into a state of utter loneliness and isolation, sometimes his own preference for solitude. A
certain tendency to so-called schizophrenic withdrawal has been proved to be inborn. Yet it can be provoked in everybody.
Whatever the cause, the schizophrenic patient becomes a desocialized being, lost in loneliness. Conscious and unconscious fantasy life begins to become dominant over alert
confrontation of reality. In the end his weird fantasies become more real for the schizophrenic than the actual world. He hides more and more behind his own iron curtain,
in the imaginary dreamland and retreat he has built for himself. This is his nirvana, in which all his dream wishes are fulfilled. Inertia and fanaticism alternate. The
patient regresses to an infantile, vegetative form of behavior and rejects everything that society has taught him. In his fantasy, he lives in a world which always obeys
his commands. He is omnipotent. The world turns around according to his divine inclinations.
Reality, requiring as it does, continual and renewed adjustment and verification, becomes a persecutor, attacking his illusion of divine might. Every disturbing intrusion
into his delusional world is encountered by the schizophrenic either with tremendous aggression or with the formation of secondary delusion to protect the first delusion,
or with a combination of both. The schizophrenic displays tremendous hostility toward the real world and its representatives; reality robs him both of his delusions of
omnipotence and his hallucinatory sense of being utterly protected, as he was in the womb.
Clinical experience has shown that the disease of schizophrenia often begins with negativism -- a defense against the influence of others, a continual fight against mental
intrusion, against what is felt as the rape of the oversensitive mind. Gradually, this defensive attitude toward the world becomes a hostile attitude toward everything,
not only toward influences from the outside, but also toward thoughts and feelings from the inside. Finally, the victim becomes paralyzed by his own hostility and
negativisms. He behaves literally as though he were dead. He sits, unmoving, for hours. He may have to be force-fed, force-dressed. The schizophrenic moves like a puppet
on a string, only when someone compels him to. Clinically, we call this catatonia -- the death attitude.
The Retreat to Automatization
Introverted schizophrenics prefer the automatic routine life of the asylum to life in the outside world, on the condition that they be allowed to indulge their private
fantasies. They surrender utterly in self-defeatism. They never congregate in groups, they seldom talk with one another; even when they do, they never have any real mutual
contact. Each one lives in his own retreat.
In the totalitarian myth -- think, for instance, of "das Dritte Reich" -- in the psychological folklore of our mythical state, the vague fantasy of the technically
perfected womb, the ideal nirvana, plays a tremendous role. In a world full of insecurities, a world requiring continual alert adjustment and readjustment, Totalitaria
creates the delusion of the omnipotent, miraculous ideal state -- a state where, in its final form, every material need will be satisfied. Everything will be regulated,
just as it was for the fetus in the womb, the land of bliss and equanimity, just as it is for the schizophrenic in the mental hospital.
There is no social struggle, no mental struggle; the world moves like clockwork. There is no real interplay between people, no clash of opinions or beliefs, there is no
emotional relationship between these womb-fellows; each exists as a separate number-bearing entity in the same filing system.
In Totalitaria, there is no faith in fellow men, no "caritas", no love, because real relationships between men do not exist, just as they do not exist between
schizophrenics. There is only faith in and subjection to the feeding system, and there is in every citizen a tremendous fear of being expelled from that system, a fear
of being totally lost, comparable with the schizophrenic's feeling of rejection and fear of reality. In the midst of spiritual loneliness and isolation, there is the fear
of still greater loneliness, of more painful isolation. Without protective regulations from the outside, internal hell may break lose. Strong mechanical external order
must be used to cover the internal chaos and approaching breakdown.
We have had experience in postwar years with several refugees from the totalitarian world who broke down when they had to cope with a world of freedom where personal
initiative was required. The fear of freedom brought them to a state of panic. They no longer had strong enough egos to build and maintain their defenses against the
competitive demands of free democratic reality.
As in schizophrenia, a maneuverable and individual ego cannot exist in Totalitaria. In schizophrenia the ego shrinks as a result of withdrawal; in Totalitaria, as a result
of constant merging in mass feelings. If such a shrunken ego should grow up, with its own critical attitude, its needs for verification of facts and for understanding, it
would then be beaten down as being treacherous and non-conforming.
Totalitaria requires of its citizens complete subjection to and identification with the leader. It is this leader-dominance that makes people nearly ego-less, as they are
in schizophrenia. This again may result in loss of control of hostile and destructive drives. Psychologists have seen this time and time again in what we call the
concentration-camp psyche. When the victims first came to the camp -- dedicated to their gradual extermination -- most of them displayed a complete loss of self, an utter
depersonalization, combined with apathy and loss of awareness. The same observations have been made among our POWs in Korea. Some concentration-camp victims got better
immediately after their return to a normal society; in others, this schizophrenic reaction of lost ego remained and, as we mentioned above, sometimes developed into a real
psychosis.
The Womb State
Totalitarianism is man's escape from the fearful realities of life into the virtual womb of the leader. The individual's actions are directed from this womb -- from the
inner sanctum. The mystic center is in control of everything; man need no longer assume responsibility for his own life. The order and logic of the prenatal world reign.
There is peace and silence, the peace of utter submission. The members of the womb state do not really communicate; between them there is silence, the silence of possible
betrayal, not the mature silence of reticence and reservedness.
Totalitaria increases the gap between the things one shows and communicates and the things one secretly dreams and thinks deep within oneself. It develops the artificial
split-mindedness of political silence. Whatever little remains of individual feeling and opinion is kept carefully enclosed. In the schizophrenic world of Totalitaria,
there is no free mutual exchange, no conversation, no exclamation, no release from emotional tension. It is a world of silent conspirators. Indeed, the atmosphere of
suspicion is the big attacker of mental freedom because it makes people cling together, conspiring against mysterious enemies -- first from outside, then among themselves.
In Totalitaria, each citizen is continually watched. The mythical state molds the individual's conscience. He has hardly any of his own. His neighbors watch him, his
postman, his children, and they all represent the punishing state, just as he himself must represent the state and watch others. Not betraying them is a crime.
The need to find conspiracies, to discover persecutors and criminals is another schizophrenic manifestation. It is psychologically related to an infantile need for a
feeling of omnipotence. Megalomaniac feelings grow better in an atmosphere of mysterious secrecy. Secrecy and conspiracy increase the delusion of power. That is why so
many people like to pry into other people's lives and to play the spy.
This feeling of conspiracy also lies behind the pathological struggle with imaginary persecutors, a struggle we find both in mentally ill individuals and in our mythical
Totalitaria. "It is there!" "It is chasing us!" All the inner fears of losing the nirvanic womb-illusion become rampant. Mysterious ghosts and vultures chase people out of
nirvana and paradise.
In these fantasies, the patriarch, the dictator, the idol, becomes both the universal danger and the omnipotent savior at the same time. Not even the citizens of
Totalitaria really love this cruel giant. Suspicion against the breast that feeds and the hand that guides and forbids is often found in the fantasy of schizophrenic
children, who experience the nourisher as the enemy, the dominating ogre, bribing the growing mind into submission.
The deep hate the sick individual feels toward the parental figure cannot be expressed directly, and so it is displaced onto the self or onto scapegoats. Scapegoatism is
also part of the totalitarian strategy. As we pointed out before, the scapegoat temporarily absorbs all the individual's inner fury and rage. Kulaks, Negroes, Jews,
Communists, capitalists, profiteers, and warmongers -- any or all of them can play that role. Perhaps the greatest dangers, to the totalitarian mind, is the use of
intellect and awareness and the "egg-head's" demand for free, verifying thinking. Aberration and perversion are chosen by the citizens of Totalitaria, as they are by the
inhabitants of madhouses, over the tiring, intellectual control.
In the center of the totalitarian fears and fantasies stands the man-eating god and idol. He is unconquerable. He uses man's great gift of adjustment to bring him to
slavery. Every man's inner core of feelings and thoughts has to belong to the leader.
Is the citizen of Totalitaria consciously aware of this? Probably not. Modern psychology has taught us how strongly the mental mechanism of denial of reality works. The
eye bypasses external occurrences when the mind does not want them to happen. Secondary justifications and fantasies are formed to support and explain these denials. In
Totalitaria we find the same despising of reality facts as we do in schizophrenia. How else are we to explain the fact that Hitler was still moving his armies on paper
after they were already defeated?
Totalitarian strategy covers inner chaos and conflict by the strict order of the police state. So does the compulsive schizophrenic patient, by his inner routine and
schedules. These routines and schedules are a defense against painful occurrences in external reality. This internal robotization may lead to denial of internal realities
and internal needs as well. The citizen of Totalitaria, repressing and rejecting his inner need for freedom, may even experience slavery as liberation. He may go even one
step further -- yearn for an escape from life itself, a delusion that he could become omnipotent through utter destruction.
The SS soldiers called this the magic action of the "Blutkitt", the tie of bloody crime binding them together and preparing them for Valhalla. With this magic unification,
they could die with courage and equanimity. Anarchic despair and need for greatness alternated in them as they do in the psychotic patient. In the same way, the citizens
of Totalitaria search for a "heroic" place in history even though the price be doom an annihilation.
Many soldiers -- tired by the rigidities of normal life -- look back at violent moments of their war experiences, despite the hunger and terror, as the monumental
culminating experiences of their lives. There, in the "Bruderbund" of fighters, they felt happy for the first and only times in their lives.
This all sounds like a bitter comedy, but the fantasy of schizophrenics has taught us how the mind can retreat into delusion when there is a fear of daily existence. Under
these circumstances, fantasy begins to prevail over reality, and soon assumes a validity which reality never had. The totalitarian mind is like the schizophrenic mind; it
has a contempt for reality. Think for a moment of Lysenko's theory and its denial of the influence of heredity. The totalitarian mind does not observe and verify its
impressions of reality; it dictates to reality how it shall behave, it compels reality to conform to its fantasies.
The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental. Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious
backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a
new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand,
retreats into the brute's fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the
masses they oppress.
What else can man do when he is caught in that tremendous machine called Totalitaria? Thinking -- and the brain itself -- has become superfluous, that is, only reserved
for the elite. Man has to renounce his uniqueness, his individual personality, and must surrender to the equalizing and homogenizing patterns of so-called integration and
standardization. This arouses in him that great inner emptiness of the savage child, the emptiness of the robot that unwittingly years for the great destruction.
VII. THE INTRUSION BY TOTALITARIAN THINKING
In order to investigate the social forces at work undermining the free individual development of man's mind, we have to look at manifold aspects of political life. As a
clinician and poly-pragmatist, I don't want to bind myself to one political state or current, but want to describe what can be experienced in social life everywhere. Where
human thinking and human habits are in the process of being remolded, they are under the influence of tremendous political upheaval. In one country this may happen
overnight, in others more slowly. The psychologists' task is to observe and describe the impact of these processes on the human mind.
When once a nation is under the yoke of totalitarianism, when once its people have succumbed to the oversimplifications and blandishments of the would-be dictator, how
does the leader maintain his power? What techniques does he use to make his countrymen docile followers of his bloody regime?
Because man's mature self resists totalitarianism, the dictator must work and scheme constantly to keep his subjects in line and to immobilize their need for individual
development, rebellion, and healthy growth. As we examine his techniques, we will come to a better understanding of totalitarianism and of the interaction between the
dictator's methods and the personalities of his subjects. We need this understanding desperately, for we have to recognize that the forces in Totalitaria that make
humorless robots out of living men can also develop, albeit unwittingly, in the so-called free, democratic societies.
The Strategy of Terror
The weapon of terror has been used by tyrants from time immemorial to make a meek instrument of man. In Totalitaria, the use of this weapon is refined to a science which
can wipe out all opposition and dissent. The leaders of Totalitaria rule by intimidation; they prefer loyalty through fear to loyalty through faith. Fear and terror
freeze the mind and will; they may create a general psychic paralysis. In the panic caused by totalitarian terror, men feel separated from one another, as by an impassable
vacuum, and each man becomes a lonely, frightened soul. Even panicky hovering together could be suspected of being conspiracy against the state. Separated from any real
emotional contact with his fellow men by his own inner isolation, the citizen of Totalitaria becomes increasingly unable to fight against its dehumanizing influences.
Totalitaria is constantly on the alert for social sinners, the critics of the system, and accusation of dissent is equivalent to conviction in the public eye. Insinuation,
calumny, and denunciation are staples of the totalitarian strategy. The entire nation is dedicated to the proposition that every man is a potential enemy of the regime. No
one is excluded from the terror. Any man may be subjected to it no matter how high his rank.
The secret police create awe and panic inside the country, while the army serves to create awe and panic outside. Just the thought of an outbreak of terror -- of even a
possible future terror -- makes men unwilling to express their opinions and expose themselves. Both the citizens of Totalitaria and those of her neighbors are affected by
this general fear. A clear example of how this fear paralysis operates in reality may be seen in the fact that as far back as 1948 western Europeans, who felt the shadow
of anticipated totalitarian occupation, thought it safer to criticize and attack their American friends than to find fault with a totalitarian enemy who might sweep in
suddenly and without warning.
In Totalitaria, jails and concentration camps by the score are built in order to provoke fear and awe among the population. They may be called "punishment" or "correction"
camps, but this is only a cheap justification for the truth. In these centers of fear, nobody is really corrected; he is, as it were, expelled from humanity, wasted,
killed -- but not too quickly, lest the terrorizing influence be diminished.
The truth of the matter is that these jails are built not for real criminals, but rather for their terrorizing effect on the bystanders, the citizens of Totalitaria. Jails
represent a permanent menace, a continual threat. They may put an almost insupportable strain on the empathy and imagination of those citizens who are, temporarily at
least, on the outside of the barbed wire. In addition to the fear of undergoing the same cruel treatment, the fear of abasement, humiliation, and death, the very concept
of the concentration camp rouses every man's deep-seated fear of being himself expelled from the community, of being alone, a wanderer in the desert, unloved and unwanted.
There exist several milder forms of mass terror, for instance, THE STRATEGY OF NO POLITICAL REST. In Totalitaria man is always caught by some form of official planning. He
is always conscious of control and surveillance, of spying, leering powers lying in wait to chase him and to punish him. Even leisure time and holidays are occupied by
some official program, some facts to be learned, some political meeting, some parade. Quiet and solitude no longer exist. There is no time for meditation, for pondering,
for reminiscing. The mind is caught in a web of official thinking and planning. Even the delights of self-chosen silence are forbidden. Every citizen of Totalitaria must
join in the singing and the slogan shouting. And he becomes so caught in the constant activity that he loses the capacity to realize what is happening to him.
The emphasis on more production by individuals, factories, and agricultural enterprises also can become a weapon of increased control and terror. The Stakhanovite movement
in Russia, urging a constant increase in production norms, became a threat for many. The workers had to increase the pace of their labor and production, or they would be
severely punished. The emphasis on pace and speed makes man more and more a soulless cog in the totalitarian wheel.
Terror can almost never stop itself; it thrives on compliance and grows in a vacuum. Terror as a tool means a gradual transfer into terror as a goal -- but terror is
actually a self-defeating strategy. Man will ultimately revolt even under an absolute dictatorship. When men have been reduced to puppet-hood by Totalitaria, they will
finally have become immune to all threats. The magic spell of terror will finally lose its force. First the citizens of Totalitaria will become dulled to the terror and
will no longer consider even death a danger. Then a few will initiate a final revolt, for Totalitaria's government by fear and terror fosters internal rebellion, in the
few who cannot be broken down. Even in "gleichgeschaltet" Nazi Germany a resistance movement was active.
The Purging Rituals
Cleaning out the higher echelons of government is an old historic habit. The struggle between fathers and sons, between the older and the younger generation, became
ritualized far back in prehistoric times. Frazer's classic, "The Golden Bough", has told us a great deal about this. The ancient priest of the heathens acquired his high
post by killing his predecessor. Later in history, the newly proclaimed king offered criminals instead as sacrifices to the gods on the day of his anointment.
In Totalitaria, the killing and purging ritual is part of the mechanism of government, and it serves not only a symbolic but also a very real function for the dictator. He
must eliminate all those he has bypassed and double-crossed in his ruthless climb to power, lest their resentments and frustrated rage break out, endangering his position
or even his life.
The purge reflects another characteristic of life in Totalitaria. It dramatizes the fiction that the party is always on the alert to keep itself pure and clean. Psychiatry
has demonstrated that the cleanliness compulsion in neurotic individuals is actually a displaced defense against their own inner rage and hostility. It plays the same sort
of role in communities, and when it is elevated to the level of an officially sanctioned ritual, it reduces the citizenry to infancy. It makes the inhabitants of
Totalitaria feel like babies -- still struggling to learn their first cleanliness habits, still listening to their parent's reiterated commands to be clean, be clean, be
clean, be good, be good, be good, be loyal, be loyal, be loyal. The constant repetition of these commands reinforces each citizen's sense of guilt, of childishness, and of
shame.
The totalitarian purge is always accompanied by an elaborate confession ceremonial, in which the accused publicly repents his sins, much as did the witches of the Middle
Ages. This is the general formula: "I confess my doubts. Thanks to the criticism of the comrades, I have been able to purify my thinking. I bow in humility to the opinion
of my comrades and the Party and am thankful for the opportunity to correct my errors. You enabled me to repudiate my deviational questions. I acknowledge my debt to the
selfless leader and the government of the people."
The strategy of public expression of shame has two effects: it serves, like the purging rituals themselves, to provoke feelings of childish submissiveness among the
people, and, at the same time, it offers each citizen a defense against his own deep-seated psychological problems and feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Somewhere deep
inside him, the citizen of Totalitaria knows that he has abdicated his maturity and his responsibility; public purgings relieve his sense of shame. "It is the others who
are guilty and dirty, not I", he thinks. "It is they who are constantly plotting and conniving." But the very things of which he suspects others are also true of himself.
He is afraid others will betray him because he cannot be sure in his own mind that he will not betray them. Thus his inner tensions increase, and the purge provides a
periodic blood offering to his own fear and to the god of threat.
The very fact that this ritual of coercive confession and purge must be repeated again and again indicates that man develops an inner mental defense against it and that
the more it is used, the less effective it becomes as a means of arousing guilt and terror. Just as the citizen of Totalitaria becomes hardened or dulled to the terror of
constant official intrusion into his private life, so he becomes almost immune to the cries of treason and sabotage.
In the same way, as the purge becomes less effective as a taming tool, the tyrant uses it more frequently to soothe his own fears. History provides us with many examples
of revolutions which eventually drowned in a bloody reign of terror and purge. Some of the most devoted heroes and leaders of the French Revolution met their death on the
guillotine of the republic they helped to create.
Wild Accusation and Black Magic
Wild accusation and black magic, like all the other taming tools of Totalitaria, are nothing new, but in primitive civilizations and in prehistoric times the craft of
black magic was rather simple. The shaman had merely to destroy or mutilate a small statuette of the accused criminal, to point or thrust a special stick at the man
himself, or to curse and berate him with furious words and gestures in order to bring his victim to collapse and death. In his blind acceptance of the magic ritual, the
victim was possessed by fear, and often he gave himself up to the spell and just died (Malinowski).
This magic slaying of the foe has plural psychological implications. The victim of the magic spell was often looked upon as the representative of the tribal god, the
internalized authority and father. He must be killed because his very existence aroused guilt and remorse among his people. His death may silence the inner voices in every
man which warn against impending downfall. Sometimes the victim comes from a different tribe than that of his accusers. In this situation, the stranger is an easier
scapegoat, and punishing him serves to still the clash of ambivalent feelings in the members of the killing tribe. Hate for an outsider checks and deflects the hate and
aggression each man feels toward his own group and toward himself. The more fear there is in a society, the more guilt each individual member of the society feels, the
more need there is for internal scapegoats and external enemies. INTERNAL CONFUSION LOOKS FOR DISCHARGE IN OUTSIDE WARS.
In Totalitaria, the air is full of gossip, calumny, and rumor. Any accusation, even if it is false, has a greater influence on the citizenry than subsequent vindication.
Bills of particulars, made out of whole cloth are manufactured against innocents, especially against former leaders, who have been able to develop some personal esteem and
loyalty among their friends and followers. Trumped-up charges made against us always revive unconscious feelings of guilt and induce us to tremble.
In our analysis of the psychological forces that lead prisoners of war and other political victims to confession and betrayal, we saw how strongly the sense of hidden
guilt and doubt in each man impels him under strain to surrender to the demands and ideologies of the enemy. This same mechanism is at work constantly among the citizens
of Totalitaria. Accusations against others remind him of his own inner rebellions and hostilities, which he does not dare to bring out into the open, and so the accused,
even when he is innocent, becomes the scapegoat for his private sense of guilt. Cowardice makes the other citizens of our mythical country turn away from the victim lest
they be accused themselves.
The very fact that character assassination is possible reveals the frailty and sensitivity of human sympathy and empathy. Even in free, democratic societies, political
campaigns are often conducted in an atmosphere of extravagant accusation and even wilder counter accusation. The moment the strategy of wild accusation, with all its
disagreeable noises of vituperation and calumny, begins, we forget the strategic intention behind the words and find ourselves influenced by the shouting and name calling.
"Maybe", we say to ourselves, "there is something in this story". This, of course, is just what the slanderer wants. In the minds of the politicians the illusion still
persists that the end justifies the means. But campaigns of slander produce paradoxical results because the very fact that an unfounded accusation has been made weakens
the moral sense of both listener and accuser.
Spy Mania
In Totalitaria this vicious circle of vituperation reaches its fullest flowering. Drowned in a reign of suspicion, the citizen of Totalitaria suffers from a terrible
delusion of persecution -- "spyonoia", the spy mania. He is continually on the alert, watching his fellow men. His good neighbor may at any moment become a saboteur or a
traitor. The citizen of Totalitaria hardly ever looks for confusion or flaws in his own soul, but projects them onto scapegoats -- until he himself finally becomes the
victim of someone else's spyonoia. Every citizen is constantly trying to search out everyone else's innermost thoughts. Because one's own hidden thoughts are projected on
one's neighbors, thinking in itself becomes the enemy. This great fear of the inner thoughts of our fellow men is related to a general process of paranoiac re-evaluation
of the world as a result of fear and totalitarian thinking. In the denial of human loyalty and in the constant delusion of treason and sabotage are expressed the whole
infantile mythology of Totalitaria and its repudiation of mature human relationships.
Through interrogation, character assassination, humiliation, mental terror, and demoralization -- such as happens in individual and collective brainwashing -- man can be
so utterly demoralized that he accepts any political system. He is nothing any more; why should he oppose matters? In Totalitaria there is no open policy, no free
discussion, no honest difference of opinion; there is only intrigue and denunciation, with their frightening action on the masses.
The strategy of wild accusation is used not only against Totalitaria's citizenry, but also against the rest of the world. Totalitaria needs the images of outside enemies
-- imaginary cruel monsters who spread plague and disease -- to justify its own internal troubles. The remnants of the individual citizen's conscience are calmed and held
in check by a paranoiac attack on the rest of the world. "The enemy is poisoning our food, throwing beetles and bacteria into our crops." This myth of an imaginary world
conspiracy aims at bringing the fearful citizens of Totalitaria into a concerted defense against nonexistent dangers. It conceals, at the same time, internal failures
leading to diminishing crops and lack of food.
Projecting blame onto others reinforces each citizen's sense of participation in the totalitarian community and stills the nagging internal voice demanding that he act as
a self-responsible individual. The myth of external plotting also increases the individual citizen's feeling of dependence and immaturity. Now only his dictatorial leader
can protect him from the evil world outside -- a world which is described to him as a vast zoo, inhabited by atomic dragons and hydrogen monsters.
The Strategy of Criminalization
As we said before, the citizen of Totalitaria may be able to fulfill some of his irrational, instinctual needs in return for his submission to totalitarian slavery. Hitler
Germany taught us the accepted pattern. The citizen (and party member) is encouraged to betray his friends and parents, something the angry, frustrated baby in him has
often wanted to do. He may live out in action his deeply repressed aggressions and desires for revenge. He no longer has to suppress or reject some of his own primitive
impulses. The system assumes the full burden of his guilt and hands him a ready-made list of thousands of justifications and exculpations for the release of his sadistic
impulses. Flowery catchwords, such as "historical necessity", help the individual to rationalize immorality and evil into morality and good. We see here the great
corruption of civilized standards.
In his strategy of criminalization, the totalitarian dictator destroys the conscience of his followers, just as he has destroyed his own. Think of the highly learned
and polished Nazi doctors who started their professional life with the Hippocratic oath, promising to be the helping healer of man, but who later in cold blood inflicted
the most horrible tortures on their concentration-camp victims (Mitscherlich). They slaughtered innocents by the thousands in order to discover the statistical limits of
human endurance. They infected other thousands as guinea pigs because the Fuhrer wanted it so. They had lost their personal standards and ethics completely and justified
all their crimes through the Fuhrer's will. Political catchwords encouraged them to yield their consciences completely to the dictator. The process of systematic
criminalization requires a "deculturation" of the people. As one of Hitler's gangmen said, "When I hear the word 'civilization,' I prepare my gun." This is done to
consistently arouse the instinct of cruelty. People are told not to believe in intellect and objective truth, but to listen only to the subjective dictates of the Moloch
State, to Hitler, to Mussolini, to Stalin.
Criminalization is conditioning people to rebellion against civilized frustrations. Show them blood and bloody scapegoats, and a thousand years of acculturation fall away
from them. This implies imbuing the people with hysteria, arousing the masses, homogenizing the emotions. All this tends to awaken the brute Neanderthal psyche in man.
Justify crime with the glamorous doctrine of race superiority, and then you make sure the people will follow you.
Hitler knew very well what he was doing when he turned the German concentration camps over to the unleashed lusts of his storm troopers. "Let them kill and murder", was
the device. "Once they have gone so far with me, they must go on to the end." The strategy of criminalization is not only directed toward crushing the victims of the
totalitarian regime, but also toward giving the elite hangmen -- the governing gang -- that poisonous feeling of power that drags them farther and farther away from every
human feeling; their victims become people without human identity, merely speaking masks and ego-less robots. The strategy of criminalization is the systematic
organization of the lower passions in man, in particular in those the dictator must trust as his direct helpers.
Under the pressure of totalitarian thinking, nearly every citizen identifies with the ruling gang, and many must prove their loyalty by murder and killing, or at least
expressing their approval of murder and killing. The boredom of Totalitaria's automatic patterns of living leads the deluded citizens to welcome the adventure of war and
crime and self-destruction. Each new act of torture and crime makes new bonds of fidelity and unscrupulous obedience, especially within the leading gang. In the end,
driven by crime and guilt, the ruling members have to stick it out together because the downfall of the system would bring about the downfall of the entire gang, both
leaders and followers. The same thing holds true in the criminal world. Once a man has taken the first step and rejected the laws of society and joined the criminal
gang, he is at war with the outside world and its moral evaluations. From that point on, the gang can blackmail him and subdue him.
In Totalitaria, the vicious circle of criminalization of the citizenry, in which the means become ends in themselves, grows into a cynical conspiracy covered with the
cynical flag of decent idealism. The country's leaders use such simple words as "the universal campaign of peace", and the citizens rejoice and take pride in these words.
Only a few among them know what deceptive deeds lie behind the flowery phrases.
These perversions are also incorporated into a great nationalistic myth -- the Third Reich, the New Empire, the People's Republic -- and the citizen's desire to do
something heroic becomes identified with doing something violent and criminal. Blood becomes a magic fluid, and shedding someone else's blood becomes a virtuous and
life-giving deed.
Unlimited killing, as it is practiced in totalitarian systems, is related to deep, unconscious fears. The weak and emotionally sick in any society kill out of fear, in
order to borrow, in a magic way, their dead victims' strength and happiness -- as well as, of course, their material possessions. The killing of millions in the Nazi gas
ovens was part of this ancient mythology of murder. Perhaps the members of the master race thought that slaughtering the Jews would ensure that the Germans would endure
pain for as many centuries as had their victims! It is part of an old primitive myth that through killing one fortifies and prolongs one's own life. Let us not forget that
forces of reason and understanding in man are rather weak. It is difficult to control the fire of explosive drives, once they are lighted.
Totalitarianism must kill, slaughter, make war. Totalitaria preaches hatred, and the totalitarian mouthpiece is a lonely, deluded, tough "superman", calling for hatred and
injustice and arousing intensified fanaticism unhampered by any moral feeling or remorse. His battle cry reinforces the dictator's hold on his subjects, because each
citizen, in and through his guilty deeds, learns to hate his victim, whose very suffering arouses even more the criminal's deeply buried sense of guilt.
Verbocracy and Semantic Fog -- Talking the People into Submission
After the First World War, we became more conscious of our attitude toward words. This attitude was gradually changing. Our trust in official catchwords and clichés and in
idealistic labels had diminished. We became more and more aware of the fact that the important questions were what groups and powers stood behind the words, and what their
secret intentions were. But in our easygoing way we often forget to ask this question, and we are all more or less susceptible to noisy, oft-repeated words.
The formulation of big propagandistic lies and fraudulent catchwords has a very well-defined purpose in Totalitaria, and words themselves have acquired a special function
in the service of power, which we may call verbocracy. The Big Lie and the phony slogan at first confuse and then dull the hearers, making them willing to accept every
suggested myth of happiness. The task of the totalitarian propagandist is to build special pictures in the minds of the citizenry so that finally they will no longer see
and hear with their own eyes and ears but will look at the world through the fog of official catchwords and will develop the automatic responses appropriate to
totalitarian mythology.
The multiform use of words in DOUBLE TALK serves as an attack on our logic, that is, an attack on our understanding of what monolithic dictatorship really is. Hear, hear
the nonsense: "Peace is war and war is peace! Democracy is tyranny and freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength! Virtue is vice and truth is a lie." So says the Ministry
of Truth in George Orwell's grim novel, "1984". And we saw this nightmare fantasy come true when our soldiers who had spent long years in North Korean prison camps
returned home talking of totalitarian China with the deceiving cliché of "the people's democracy". Pavlovian conditioning to special words forces people into an
AUTOMATIC THINKING that is tied to those words. The words we use influence our behavior in daily life; they determine the thoughts we have.
In Totalitaria, facts are replaced by fantasy and distortion. People are taught systematically and intentionally to lie (Winokur). History is reconstructed, new myths are
built up whose purpose is twofold: to strengthen and flatter the totalitarian leader, and to confuse the luckless citizens of the country. The whole vocabulary is a
dictated set of slowly hypnotizing slogans. In the semantic fog that permeates the atmosphere, words lose their direct communicative function. They become merrily
commanding signs, triggering off reactions of fear and terror. They are battles cries and Pavlovian signals, and no longer represent free thinking. THE WORD, ONCE
CONSIDERED A FIRST TOKEN OF FREE HUMAN CREATION, IS TRANSFORMED INTO A MECHANICAL TOOL. In Totalitaria, words may have a seductive action, soothing or charming their
hearers, but they are not allowed to have intrinsic meaning. They are conditioners, emotional triggers, serving to imprint the desired reaction patterns on their hearers.
Man's mental laziness, his resistance to the hard labor of thinking, makes it relatively easy for Totalitaria's dictator to bring his subjects into acceptance of the
Big Lie. At first the citizen may say to himself, "All this is just nonsense -- pure double talk", but in the very act of trying to shrug it off, he has become subject
to the power of the inherent suggestion. That is the trick of double talk; once a man neglects to analyze and verify it, he becomes lost in it and can no longer see the
difference between rationale and rationalization. In the end, he can no longer believe anything, and he retreats into sullen dullness. Once the citizen of Totalitaria has
accepted the "logic" of his leaders, he is no longer open to discussion or argument. Alas, in our Western world, we often meet this evasion of semantic clarity. Let us not
forget that the battle for words is part of the ideological cold war in our world.
Something has crept into our mechanized system of communication that has made our modes of thinking deteriorate. People too casually acquire ideas and concepts. They no
longer struggle for a clear understanding. The popularized picture replaces the battle of the pros and cons of concepts. Instead of aiming at true understanding, people
listen to thoughtless repetition, which gives them THE DELUSION OF UNDERSTANDING.
Communication has an even more infantile, magic character for the citizen of Totalitaria. Words no longer represent intelligible meanings or ideas. They bind the citizen
of Totalitaria to utter dependence on his commander, much as the infant is bound to the word pictures of his parents.
Logocide
Byfield points out in his pamphlet on logocide that words are commonly used as instruments of social revolution. Politicians seeking power must coin new labels and new
words with emotional appeal, "while allowing the same old practices and institutions to continue as before ... The trick is to replace a disagreeable image though the
substance remains the same. The totalitarians consequently have to fabric a hate language in order to stir up the mass emotions. We have all experience how the word
'peace' doesn't mean peace any more, it has become a propagandistic device to APPEASE the masses and to disguise aggression."
The VERBOCRACY in totalitarian thinking and the official verbosity of demagogues serve to disturb and suffocate the free minds of citizens. We can say that verbocracy
turns them into what psychology calls symbol agnostics, people capable only of imitation, incapable of inquisitive sense of objectivity and perspective that leads to
questioning and understanding and to the formation of individual ideas and ideals. In other words, the individual citizen becomes a parrot, repeating ready-made slogans
and propaganda catchwords without understanding what they really mean, or what forces stand behind them.
This parrotism may give the citizen of Totalitaria a certain infantile emotional pleasure, however. "Heil, heil! -- Duce, Duce!" -- these rhythmic chants afford him the
same kind of sound-enjoyment children achieve through babbling, shrieking, and yelling.
The abuse of the word and the enshrinement of propaganda are more obvious in Totalitaria than in any other part of the world. But this evil exists all over. We can find
all too many examples of it in actual conversation. Many speakers use verbal showing off to cover an emptiness of thought, to stir up emotions and to create admiration and
adoration of what is essentially empty and valueless. Loud-mouthed phoniness threatens to become the ideal of our time.
The semantic fog in Totalitaria is thickened by the regimentation of information. The citizens of our mythical country have no access to sources of facts and opinions.
They are not free to verify what they hear or read. They are the victims of their leader's "labelomania" -- their judgments are determined by the official labels
everything and everybody bears.
Labelomania
The urge to attach too much meaning to the label of an object or institution and to look only casually at its intrinsic value is characteristic of our times and seems to
be growing. I call this condition labelomania; it is the exaggerated respect for the scientific-sounding name -- the label, the school, the degree, the diploma -- with
a surprising disregard for underlying value. All about us we see people chasing after fixed formulas, credits, marks, ranks, and labels because they believe that if
one is to have prestige or recognition these distinguishing marks are necessary. In order to obtain acceptance, people are prepared to undergo most impractical and
stylized training and conditioning -- not to mention expense -- in special schools and institutions which promote certain labels, diplomas, and sophisticated facades.
Not long ago a psychiatric colleague worked in a clinic where a different terminology was used, and the ideas of his former teachers, because they were expressed in terms
other than those of the clinic, were criticized and even vilified. My colleague was a good practical therapist; yet he came to need psychotherapy himself, to counteract
the utter confusion resulting from daily contacts with aggressive adepts of a different terminology, just as much as some of our soldiers released from the Korean prison
camps.
There is something essentially unpleasant in the need to express and judge all opinions and evaluations in accepted clichés and labels. It implies a devaluation of the
work or of the idea involved, and it denies the subtle human differences between people and the phenomena their words describe. In Totalitaria, man is so anxiety-ridden,
so fearful of any deviation from the prescribed opinions and ways of thinking that he only allows himself to express himself in the terms his dictators provide. To the
citizen of Totalitaria, the acknowledged label becomes more important than the eternal variation that is life.
As words lose their communicative function, they acquire more and more of a frightening, regulatory, and conditioning function. Official words must be believed and must be
obeyed. Dissension and disagreement become both a physical and an emotional luxury. Vituperation, and the power that lies behind it, is the only sanctioned logic. Facts
contrary to the official line are distorted and suppressed; any form of mental compromise is treason. In Totalitaria, there is no search for truth, only the enforced
acceptance of the totalitarian dogmas and clichés. The most frightening thing of all is that parallel to the increase in our means of communication, our mutual
understanding has decreased. A Babel-like confusion has taken hold of political and nonpolitical minds as a result of semantic disorder and too much verbal noise.
The Apostatic Crime in Totalitaria
Totalitaria makes the thinking man a criminal, for in our mythical country the citizen can be punished as much for wrong thinking as for wrongdoing. Because the
watchful eyes of the secret police are everywhere, the critic of the regime is driven to conspiratorial methods if he wants to have even a safe conversation with those he
wants to trust. What we used to call the "Nazi gesture" was a careful looking around before starting to talk to a friend.
The criminal in Totalitaria can be an accidental scapegoat used for release of official hostility, and there is often need for a scapegoat. From one day to the next, a
citizen can become a hero or a villain, depending on strategic party needs.
Nearly all of the mature ideals of mankind are crimes in Totalitaria. Freedom and independence, compromise and objectivity -- all of these are treasonable. In Totalitaria
there is a new crime, the apostatic crime, which may be described as the obstinate refusal to admit imputed guilt. On the other hand, the hero in Totalitaria is the
converted sinner, the breast-beating, recanting traitor, the self-denouncing criminal, the informer, and the stool pigeon.
The ordinary, law-abiding citizen of Totalitaria, far from being a hero, is potentially guilty of hundreds of crimes. He is a criminal if he is stubborn in defense of his
own point of view. He is a criminal if he refuses to become confused. He is a criminal if he does not loudly and vigorously participate in all official acts; reserve,
silence, and ideological withdrawal are treasonable. He is a criminal if he doesn't LOOK happy, for then he is guilty of what the Nazis called physiognomic
insubordination. He can be a criminal by association or disassociation, by scapegoatism, or by projection, by intention or by anticipation. He is a criminal if he refuses
to become an informer. He can be tried and found guilty by every conceivable "ism" -- cosmopolitanism, provincialism; deviationalism, mechanism; imperialism, nationalism;
pacifism, militarism; objectivism, subjectivism; chauvinism, equalitarianism; practicalism, idealism. He is guilty every time he IS something.
The only safe conduct pass for the citizen of Totalitaria lies in the complete abdication of his mental integrity.
VIII. TRIAL BY TRIAL
For the Special Marine Corps Court of Inquiry in Washington that had to judge one of the cases of brainwashing, I was asked, as an expert witness, if I could explain why
some of the American officers yielded rather easily to mental pressure exerted by the enemy.
It was in the days when Congressional investigations in our country were in full swing. In all honesty I had to answer that sometimes coercive suggestions underlying such
investigations could exert conforming pressure on susceptible minds. People are conditioned by numerous psychological processes in our daily political atmosphere.
Though we have been forewarned of what totalitarian techniques may do to the mind, there is reason to be alarmed by the possible disruption of values brought about by some
of our own troubles.
The totalitarian dictator succeeded in transforming his apparatus of "justice" into an instrument of threat and domination. Where once a balanced feeling of justice had
been recognized as the noblest ideal of civilized man, this ideal was now scoffed at by cynics -- like Hitler and Goebbels -- and called a synthetic emotion useful only to
impress or appease people. Thus, in the hands of totalitarian inquisitors and judges justice has become a farce, a piece of propaganda to soothe the people's conscience.
Investigative power is misused -- to arouse prejudices and animosities in those bystanders who have become too confused to distinguish between right and wrong.
The totalitarian has taught us that the courts and the judiciary can be used as tools of thought control. That is why we have to study how our own institutions,
intentionally or unobtrusively, may be used to distort our concepts of democratic freedom.
The Downfall of Justice
To a psychologist, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Moscow purge trials between 1936 and 1938 was the deep sense of moral shock felt by people all over the
world, whose trust in the judicial process was shaken to its foundations by these perversions of justice. Discussions about the trials always concerned themselves less
with the question of guilt or innocence of the accused than with the horrifying travesty of justice the trials presented. Somewhere deep in the soul of men lies the
conviction that a judge is, by definition, a righteous, impartial man, that an appeal to the courts is the road to truth, that the law stands above corruption,
degradation, and perversion. Of course, we recognize that judges are human beings like ourselves, that they can make mistakes, as the rest of us do, and we are even
willing to accept temporary injustice because we believe that there will be eventual vindication and that the rule of law and justice will remain triumphant. The moment
the judicial process becomes a farce, a show to intimidate the people, something in man's soul is profoundly affected. When justice is no longer blind, but has her eye on
the main chance, we become frightened and alarmed. To whom shall a man turn if he cannot find justice in the courts?
During the course of psychotherapy, one of my patients was called to jury duty. The experience disturbed him deeply, for apparently the prosecutor in this case was more
interested in getting a conviction than in finding out the truth. Although the jury had the last word, and, by its verdict, condemned the prosecutor's strategy, our juror
was greatly upset. "What happens", he asked me, "in other cases? Suppose the jurors cannot see through the lawyer's sophisms? Suppose they are taken in by his constant
suggestion and insistence?"
Indeed, any trial can be used as a weapon of intimidation; it can, in a subtle way, intimidate the jurors, the witnesses, the entire public. In Totalitaria, some higher
courts exist only to carry out this function of intimidation; their purpose is to prove to their own citizens and to the world at large that there is a punishing and
threatening force controlling the government and that this force can use the judiciary for its own purposes.
An apparent objective official investigation may become a weapon of political control simply through the suggestions that inevitably accompany it. The man who is under
investigation is almost automatically stigmatized and blamed because our suspicions are thrust on him. The very fact that he is under scrutiny makes him suspect. Thus,
even the so-called "democratic power to investigate" may become the power to destroy. We must beware of this danger! Already the approving or disapproving way of
interrogation changes man's thinking about facts.
Any judicial action, whether legal or investigative, which receives widespread publicity, exerts some mental pressure on the entire public. It is not only the participants
in the action who have a stake in its eventual outcome, the citizens as a whole may well become emotionally involved in the proceedings. Any official investigation can be
either a mere show of power or an act of truth. As a show of power, by a totalitarian government or by an unscrupulous demagogue, it can have frightening consequences. The
German Reichstag fire case, the Moscow purge trials, and the court actions against our POWs in China are prime examples of "legal" action which served to consolidate the
political power of ruthless men and had for their object confusion of a helpless citizenry. An additional intention was to shock the public opinion of the world.
If we look at legal inquiry from the point of view of each of its participants, we will see even more clearly the dangers we must guard against.
The Demagogue as Prosecutor and Hypnotist
Recent happenings in our own country indicate clearly that the methods used to satisfy a question for power show a universal pattern. The ancient magic masks used to
frighten the people may have been replaced by an overconfident show of physical strength by a "hero" artificially shaped as an object of admiration and identification for
infantile minds, but the loud noises of propaganda are still with us, magnified a thousand-fold by the radio and television, and serving to intimidate and hypnotize our
less alert contemporaries. A worldwide audience, watching and listening to the demagogue playing all his different roles -- the righteous accuser, the martyred victim, the
voice of conscience -- is temporarily thrown into a semi-frightened, trancelike state of exhausted inattentiveness through the monotonous repetition of threats,
accusations, and clichés.
The demagogue, like the totalitarian dictator, knows well how to lay a mental spell on the people, how to create a kind of mass suggestion and mass hypnosis. There is no
intrinsic difference between individual and mass hypnosis. In hypnosis -- the most intensified form of suggestion -- the individual becomes temporarily automatized, both
physically and mentally. Such a clinical state of utter mental submission can be brought about quite easily in children and in primitive people, but it can be created in
civilized adults, too. Some of the American POWs in Korean prison camps were reduced to precisely this condition.
The more the individual feels himself to be part of the group, the more easily can he become the victim of mass suggestion. This is why primitive communities, which have a
high degree of social integration and identification, are so sensitive to suggestions. Sorcerers and magicians can often keep an entire tribe under their spell.
Most crowds are rather easy to influence and hypnotize because common longings and yearnings increase the suggestibility of each member of the group. Each person has a
tendency to identify with the rest of the group and with the leader as well, and this makes it easy for the leader to hold the people in his grip. As Hitler said in "Mein
Kampf", the leader can count on increasing submissiveness from the masses.
Sudden fright, fear, and terror were the old-fashioned methods used to induce hypnosis, and they are still used by dictators and demagogues. Threats, unexpected
accusations, even long speeches and boredom may overwhelm the mind and reduce it to a hypnotic state.
Another easy technique is to work with specially suggestive words, repeating them monotonously. Arouse self-pity! Tell the people that they have been "betrayed" and that
their leaders have deserted them. From time to time, the demagogue has to add a few jokes. People like to laugh. They also like to be horrified, and the macabre,
especially, attracts them. Tell them gory tales and let them huddle together in sensational tension. They will probably develop an enormous awe for the man who frightens
them and will be willing to give him the chance to lead them out of their emotional terror. In the yearning to be freed from one fear, they may be willing to surrender
completely to another.
Radio and television have enhanced the hypnotizing power of sounds, images, and words. Most Americans remember very clearly that frightening day in 1938 when Orson
Welles's broadcast of the invasion from Mars sent hundreds of people scurrying for shelter, running from their homes like panicky animals trying to escape a forest fire.
The Welles' broadcast is one of the clearest examples of the enormous hypnosuggestive power of the various means of mass communication, and the tremendous impact that
authoritatively broadcast nonsense can have on intelligent, normal people.
It is not only the suggestive power of these media that gives them their hypnotizing effect. Our technical means of communication make of the people one huge participating
mass. Even when I am alone with my radio, I am technically united with the huge mass of other listeners. I see them in my mind, I unconsciously identify with them, and
while I am listening I am one with them. Yet I have no direct emotional contact with them. It is partly for this reason that radio and television tend to take away active
affectionate relationships between men and to destroy the capacity for personal thought, evaluation, and reflection. They catch the mind directly, giving people no time
for calm, dialectical conversation with their own minds, with their friends, or with their books. The voices from the ether don't permit the freedom-arousing mutuality of
free conversation and discussion, and thus provoke greater passive acceptance -- as in hypnosis.
Many people are hypnophiles, anxious to daydream and day-sleep throughout their lives; these people easily fall prey to mass suggestion. The lengthy oration or the boring
sermon either weakens the listeners and makes them more ripe for the mass spell, or makes them more resentful and rebellious. Long speeches are a staple of totalitarian
indoctrination because finally the boredom breaks through our defenses. We give in. Hitler used this technique of mass hypnosis through monotony to enormous advantage.
He spoke endlessly and included long, dull recitals of statistics in his speeches.
The din of constant verbal intimidation of the public is a recognized tool of totalitarian strategy. The demagogue uses this suggestive technique, too, as well as the more
tricky maneuver of attacking opponents who are usually considered to be beyond suspicion. This maneuver is often combined with a renewed appeal to self-pity. "Fourteen
years of disgrace and shame", was the slogan Hitler used to slander the very creative period between the Armistice in 1918 and the year he seized the helm. "Twenty years
of treason", a slogan used in our country not too long ago, sounds suspiciously like it, and is all too familiar to anyone who watched Hitler's rise and fall.
The stab-in-the-back myth reduces everyone who is taken in by it to the level of suspicious childhood. This inflammatory oratory aims toward arousing chaotic and
aggressive responses in others. The demagogue doesn't mind temporary verbal attacks on himself -- even slander can delight him -- because these attacks keep him in the
headlines and in the public eye and may help increase people's fear of him. Better to be hated and feared than forgotten! The demagogue grows fat on prolonged and confused
discussion of his behavior; it serves to paralyze the people's minds and to obscure completely the real issues behind his red herrings. If this continues long enough,
people become fed up, they give in, they want to sleep, they are willing to let the big "hero" take over. And the sequel can be totalitarianism. As a matter of fact,
Nazism and Fascism both gambled on the fear of Communism as a means of seizing power for themselves. What we have recently experienced in this country is frighteningly
similar to the first phase of the deliberate totalitarian attack on the mind by slogans and suspicions. Violent, raucous noise provokes violent emotional reactions and
destroys mental control. When the demagogue starts to rant and rave, his outbursts tend to be interpreted by the general public as proof of his sincerity and dedication.
But for the most part such declarations are proof of just the opposite and are merely part of the demagogue's power-seeking energy.
There is in existence a totalitarian "Document of Terror" which discusses in detail the use of well-planned, repeated successive WAVES OF TERROR to bring the people into
submission. Each wave of terrorizing cold war creates its effect more easily -- after a breathing spell -- than the one that preceded it because people are still disturbed
by their previous experience. Morale becomes lower and lower, and the psychological effect of each new propaganda campaign becomes stronger; it reaches a public already
softened up. Every dissenter becomes more and more frightened that he may be found out. Gradually people are no longer willing to participate in any sort of political
discussion or to express their opinions. Inwardly they have already surrendered to the terrorizing dictatorial forces.
We must learn to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictator in our midst just as we should treat our external enemies in a cold war -- with the weapon of ridicule. The
demagogue himself is almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat him with humor, he will begin to collapse. Humor is, after all, related to a sense of
perspective. If we can see how things should be, we can see how askew they can get, and we can recognize distortion when we are confronted with it. Put the demagogue's
statements in perspective, and you will see how utterly distorted they are. How can we possibly take them seriously or answer them seriously? We have important business to
attend to -- matters of life and death both for ourselves as individuals and for our nation as a whole. The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people
will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes; will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his
accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves.
The fact is that the demagogue is not appealing to what is rational and mature in man; he is appealing to what is most irrational and most immature. To attempt to answer
his ravings with logic is to attempt the impossible. First of all, by so doing we accept his battling premises, and we find ourselves trapped in an argument on terms he
has chosen. It is always easier to defeat an enemy on your own ground, and by choosing your own terms. In addition, the demagogue either is, or pretends to be, incapable
of the kind of logic that makes discussion and clarification possible. He is a master at changing the subject. It is worse than criminal for us to get ourselves involved
in endless, pointless, and inevitably vituperative arguments with men who are less concerned with truth, social good, and real problems than they are with gaining
unlimited attention and power for themselves.
In their defense against psychological attacks on their freedom, the people need humor and good sense first. Consistent approval or silent acceptance of any
terror-provoking strategy will result only in the downfall of our democratic system. Confusion undermines confidence. In a country like ours, where it is up to the voting
public to discern the truth, a universal knowledge of the methods used by the demagogue to deceive or to lull the public is absolutely necessary.
The Trial as an Instrument of Intimidation
Man's suggestibility can be a severe liability to him and to his democratic freedom in still another important respect. Even when there is no deliberate attempt to
manipulate public opinion, the uncontrolled discussion of legal actions, such as political or criminal trials, in newspaper headlines and in partisan columns helps to
create a collective emotional atmosphere. This makes it difficult for those directly involved to maintain their much-needed objectivity and to render a verdict according
to facts rather than suggestions and subjective experiences.
In addition, any judicial process which receives widespread publicity exerts mental pressure on the public at large. Thus, not only the participants but the entire
citizenry can become emotionally involved in the proceedings. Any trial can be either an act of power or an act of truth. An apparently objective examination may become a
weapon of control simply by the action of the suggestions that inevitably accompany it. As an act of power by a totalitarian government, the trial can have frightening
consequences. The Moscow purge trials and the German Reichstag fire case are prime examples.
We do not, of course, have such horrifying travesties on justice in this country, but our tendency to turn legal actions into a field day for the newspapers, the radio,
and television weakens our capacity to arrive at justice and truth. It would be better if we postponed discussion of the merits of any legal case until after the verdict
was in.
As we have already seen, any man can be harassed into a confession. The cruel process of menticide is not the only way to arrive at this goal; a man can be held guilty
merely by accusation, especially when he is too weak to oppose the impact of collective ire and public opinion.
In circumstances of abnormal fear and prejudice, men feel the need for a scapegoat more strongly than at other times. Consequently, people can be easily duped by false
accusations which satisfy their need to have someone to blame. Victims of lynch mobs in our own country have been thus sacrificed to mass passion and so have some
so-called traitors and collaborators. In public opinion, the trial itself becomes the verdict of "guilty".
The Congressional Investigation
Let me first state that I firmly believe that the right of the Congress to investigate and to propose legislation on the basis of such investigation is one of the most
important of our democratic safeguards. But like any other human institution, the Congressional right to investigate can be abused and misused. The power to investigate
may become the power to destroy -- not only the man under attack, but also the mental integrity of those who, in one way or another, are witnesses to the investigation. In
a subtle way, the current wave of Congressional investigations may have a coercive effect on our citizenry. Some dictatorial personalities are obsessed with a morbid need
to investigate, and Congressional investigations are made to order for them. Everybody who does not agree with them, who does not bow low and submit, is suspect, and is
subjected to a flow of vilification and vituperation. The tendency on the part of the public is to disbelieve everything that the demagogue's opponents say and to swallow
uncritically the statements made by those who either surrender to his browbeating or go along with it because they believe in the aims he pretends to stand for.
PSYCHOLOGICALLY, IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE SIMPLE FACT OF BEING INTERVIEWED AND INVESTIGATED HAS A COERCIVE INFLUENCE. As soon as a man is under
cross-examination, he may become paralyzed by the procedure and find himself confessing to deeds he never did. In a country where the urge to investigate spreads,
suspicion and insecurity grow. Everybody becomes infected with the feelings of the omnipotence of the inquisitor. Wire tapping, for instance, has the same power; it is
grasping the secrets of others.
In psychological circles a good deal of attention is now being given to the impact of interviews and interrogations on people. The psychological interviewer himself must
be aware of the various interpersonal processes involved in this kind of communication; if he is not, he will not be able to find out where the truth lies. Instead he will
get answers which are implicit in his own questions, answers which may have little relation to the real truth. This does not happen only in cases where both the
interviewer and the man he is interviewing show bad faith. It can happen despite their best intentions. For everybody brings to an interview the sum total of all his
earlier interpersonal relationships. In the initial verbal trial and error, during what we could call the smelling-out period, each party mobilizes himself to find
out what the other party expects and where his weaknesses are and, at the same time, tries to hide his own weaknesses and emphasize his own strengths. The man in the
street who is suddenly interviewed tends to give the answer he thinks his questioner expects.
Every conversation, every verbal relationship repeats, at least to some degree, the pattern of the early verbal relationships between the child and its parents. To a man
or woman under investigation, the interrogator becomes the parent, good or bad, an object of suspicion or of submission. Since the interrogator himself is often unaware of
this unconscious process, the result can be a confusing battle of unconscious or half-conscious tendencies, in which the spoken words are often merely a cover for
suspicion-laden conversation between deeper layers of both personalities.
All people who are systematically interrogated, whether in a court, during a Congressional inquiry, or even when applying for a job or having a medical examination, feel
themselves exposed. This very fact in itself provokes peculiar defensive mental attitudes. These attitudes may be useful and protective, but at times they may be harmful
to the individual. When a man is looking for a job, for example, he may become overeager, and in his zeal to "make a good impression" to "put his best foot forward", he
may make a bad impression and arouse suspicion. For it is not only what we say but the way we say it that can indicate our honesty and poise. Nervous sounds, gestures,
pauses, moments of silence or stuttering may give us away. Aggressive zeal may seduce us into saying too much. Inhibition may prevent us from saying enough.
The defendant in a court action or in an inquiry is defensive not only about the accusations leveled against him or the questions he has to answer, he is even more
defensive about his own unconscious guilt and about his doubts about his own capabilities. Many of my colleagues in medicine and psychiatry who have been called as expert
witnesses in legal actions have told me that the very moment they were under cross-examination, they felt themselves on trial and nearly convicted. Cross- examination
seemed to them often less a way of getting at the truth than a form of emotional coercion, which did a great disservice to both the facts and the truth. This is the reason
that every kind of investigative power can so easily become a coercive power. Making witnesses and defendants suffer from acute stage fright can be a nasty weapon of
totalitarianism.
Because psychologists and psychiatrist appreciate these facts, there is now a strong tendency in these circles to use what we might call a passive technique in
interviewing. When the interviewer's questions are not directed toward any specific answer, the man being questioned will be encouraged to answer on his own initiative,
out of his own desire to communicate. The neutral question, "What did you do afterwards?" provokes a freer and more honest response than the question "Did you go home
after that?"
The Witness and His Subjective Testimony
We have seen in recent years a long parade of recanting Communists, who have testified freely and openly about their pasts. Currently, we have still another kind of
parade: the recanting recanters. How are we to know the truth from falsehood in all this morass of conflicting testimony? How are we to prevent ourselves from becoming
confused by the contradictory testimony of men and women whose words can influence the course of our nation's actions? How are we to learn to evaluate what they say?
Psychologically, how reliable is their testimony, whether friendly or unfriendly?
In general, we can say that those who are most vituperative in their statements are usually the least reliable. Many of them are men and women who in the past adopted a
totalitarian ideology out of their own deep sense of inner insecurity. Later there came the moment when they felt that their chosen ideology had failed them. Though it had
held their minds relentlessly imprisoned for a long time, at that point they were able to throw off the system completely. This they did through a process of inner
rearrangement of old observations and convictions. However, what they shed was merely a particular set of rigid ideological rules. Most of them did not shed, along with
these rules, their hidden hatreds and early insecurity. They may have given up the political ideology which offered them defenses and justifications, but they retained
their resentments.
It is extremely common to find such people seeking immediate sanctuary in some other strictly organized institution. Because they now see things in a different light, old
facts and concepts acquire a different significance. Yet, all the while, the ever-present urge toward self-justification and self-exculpation, which operates in all men
and which in these cases motivated the former allegiance to Communism, is at work. Now they must prove their guiltlessness and their loyalty to their newly adopted ideas.
Their emotions, now in new garb, are still directed toward the goal of self-justification.
In the eyes of the convert, the fresh outlook -- this new arrangement of inner demands and of ways of satisfying them -- is just as logical and rational as were his former
set of expectations and satisfactions. Now he rediscovers several experiences long since past. His former friends become his enemies; some of them are seen as
conspirators, whether they were or not. He himself is unable to distinguish between truth and fantasy, between fact and subjective demand. Consequently, a complete
distortion of perceptions and memories may take place. He may misquote his own memories, and this process is for the most part one of which the convert himself is not
aware. I remember vividly one example of such behavior during the Second World War. A former Nazi became a courageous member of the anti-Nazi underground. He sought to
rectify his past behavior not only by fighting the Nazis, but also by spreading all kinds of anxiety-provoking rumors about his former friends. By making them appear more
cruel, he thought he could show himself more loyal.
Similarly, the denials and misstatements that may be made by the convert before the courts or the Congressional committees are often not so much conscious falsehoods as
they are products of the new inner arrangements. Every accusation about the convert's past may be twisted by him into a new tool for use in the process of
self-justification. Only a few such men have the moral courage to admit that they have made real mistakes in the past. The distance between a white lie and selective
forgetting and repressing is often very short. I discovered this for myself while carrying on investigations of resistance members who had been in Nazi hands. I found that
it was almost impossible to obtain objective information from them about what they had revealed to the enemy after torture. Reporting upon their enforced betrayal, they
immediately colored their stories by white lies and secondary distortions. Depending on their guilt feelings, they either accused themselves too much or found no flaw at
all in their behavior.
The Right to Be Silent
Out of the action of Congressional investigating committees has recently come a serious legal attack on the right to be silent when the giving of information clashes with
the conscience of the one on the stand. This attack can become a serious invasion of human privacy and reserve. Undermining the value of the personality and of private
conscience is as dangerous to the preservation of democracy as is the threat of totalitarian aggression.
We have to realize that it is often difficult for witnesses to make a choice between contempt of Congress and contempt of human qualities. Administrators may conceivably
discover a few alleged "traitors" by compelling witnesses to betray their former friends, but at the same time they compel people to betray friendships. Friendship is one
of our most precious human possessions. Any government or agency that, under the guise of "contempt of Congress", can force confessions, and information can also force the
betrayal of former loyalties. Is this not comparable with what the coercive totalitarians do? And at what cost?
We obtain a pseudo-purge resulting from weakness of character and anxiety in the victim. In addition we violate one of democracy's basic tenets -- respect for the strength
of man's character. We have always believed that it is better to let ten guilty men go free than to hang one innocent -- in direct opposition to the totalitarian concept
that it is better to hang ten innocent men than to let one guilty man go free. We may punish the guilty with this strategy of compelling a man to speak when his conscience
urges him to be silent, but just as surely we break down the innocent by destroying their conscience. Supreme Court Justices Douglas and Black in their dissenting opinion
about the constitutionality of the Immunity Act of 1954 [See "The New York Times", March 27, 1956.] emphasize the right to be silent as a Constitutional right given
by the Fifth Amendment -- a safeguard of personal conscience and personal dignity and freedom of expression as well. It is beyond the power of Congress to compel anyone to
confess his crimes even when immunity is assured.
The individual's need NOT to betray his former allegiances -- even when he has made a mistake in political judgment at an age of less understanding -- is morally just as
important as the need to help the state locate subversives. Let us not forget that betrayal of the community is rooted in self-betrayal. By forcing a man to betray his
inner feelings and himself, we actually make it easier for him to betray the larger community at some future date. If the law forces people to betray their inner moral
feelings of friendship, even if these feelings are based on juvenile loyalties, then that very law undermines the integrity of the person, and coercion and menticide
begin. The conscience of the individual plays an enormous role in the choice between loyal opposition and passive conformity. The law has to protect the individual also
against the violation of his personal moral standards; otherwise, human conscience will lose in the battle between individual conscience and legal power. Moral evaluation
starts with the individual and not with the state.
Mental Blackmail
The concept of brainwashing has already led to some legal implications, and these have led to new facets of imagined crime. Because the reports about Communist
brainwashing of the prisoners of war in Korea and China were published widely in newspapers, they aroused anxieties among lay people. As mentioned in Chapter III, several
schizophrenics and borderline patients seized upon this rather new concept of brainwashing, using it as an explanation for a peculiar kind of delusion that beset them --
the delusion of being influenced. Some of these persons had, as it were, the feeling that their minds had been laid open, as if from the outside, through radio waves or
some other mystic communication, thoughts were being directed.
During recent years, I received several letters from such patients complaining about their feelings of continual brainwashing. The new concept of political mental coercion
fitted into their system of delusions. Several lawyers consulted me for information about clients who wanted to sue their imaginary brainwashers.
The same concept, used above to account for pathological suspicions, could be used maliciously to accuse and sue anybody who professionally gave advice to people or tried
to influence them. At this very moment (fall, 1955) several court procedures are going on wherein the defendants are being sued for the crime of brainwashing by a third
party. They are accused of having advised, in their professional capacity, somebody to do something against the plaintiff's interests. The shyster lawyer is now able to
attack subtle human relationships and turn them into a corrupt matter. This is the age-old evil of using empathy not for sympathy but for antipathy and attack. In so
doing, the accuser may misuse a man's hesitation to bring these human relationships into the open; the accuser also makes use of the strange situation in the United States
that even the innocent winner of a court procedure has to pay the cost of his legal help. Practically, this means that in a difficult judicial question, he has to pay at
least thirty thousand dollars before he can reach the Supreme Court -- if it is a Supreme Court case -- and appeal to the highest form of justice in our country.
Because of this new angle, which has developed during the past few years, of the brainwashing situation, the psychiatric profession has been made more vulnerable to
unreasonable attack. In one case, a third party felt hurt by a psychological treatment that made the patient more independent in an unpleasant commercial situation in
which he had formerly been rather submissive. In another case, the doctor was sued because he was able to free his patient from a submissive love affair and an ambiguous
promise of marriage. In a third case, the patient during treatment changed from a commercial agency that had treated him badly. In all those cases, the disappointed party
could bring suit on the basis of so-called brainwashing, and malicious influence. In several cases of this form of blackmail, an expensive settlement was made out of court
because the court procedure would have become far more costly.
The practicing psychiatrist who is attacked in this way experiences not only financial pressure imposed on him by the dissatisfied party and a malicious lawyer, but in
several states the court does not even recognize his professional oath of secrecy. The Hippocratic oath says:
Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I may see or hear in the lives of men which ought not to be spoken abroad, I will not
divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
Some courts hold that the only physical investigation and treatment are valid as medical treatment not to be divulged; personal conversation -- the quintessence of
psychiatric treatment -- is not looked upon as a medical action. Hiding behind professional secrecy is regarded as contempt of court. An additional difficulty is that this
accusation of malpractice by a third party -- not by the patient himself -- is not covered by the usual malpractice insurance.
The importance of such perfidious attack on psychological relationships -- however rare the number of cases may be at this moment -- is that it opens the road for many
other forms of mental blackmail. It means that subtle personal relationships can be attacked and prosecuted in court, merely because a third party feels excluded or
neglected or financially damaged. I cannot sue my broker because he gave me wrong financial advice, but I can sue a psychological counselor for malpractice because he
"brainwashed" my client.
What new possibilities for mental blackmail and sly accusation are open! Gradually we can make punishable wrong intention and anticipation, nonconformist advice and
guidance, and, in the end, simple honest human influence and originality -- things that are already considered criminal in totalitarian countries.
The word "blackmail" was originally used in the border warfare between England and Scotland. Blackmail was the agreement made by freebooters not to plunder or molest the
farmer -- in exchange for money or cattle. The word comes from the Middle English "maille" meaning speech or rent or tax.
The French equivalent "chantage" brings us even nearer to the concept of mental coercion. It means forcing the other fellow "to sing", to confess things against his
will by means of threatening physical punishment or threatening to reveal a secret. It is, in the last analysis, mental coercion.
We may call mental blackmail the growing tendency to overstep human reserve and dignity. It is the tendency to misuse the intimate knowledge of what is going on in the
crevices of the soul, to injure and embarrass one's fellow man. MENTAL BLACKMAIL STARTS WHEREVER THE PRESUMPTION OF GUILT TAKES THE PLACE OF PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE. The
hunting up of dirt and sensation in order to embarrass a victim we see very often carried on by the yellow press. It is not only playing up indecency, but at the same time
it undermines human judgment and opinion. And by its sensationalism is precludes and prejudices justice in the courts.
What a weak baby accomplishes with its tears and pouting can be done by the whining, querulous accuser with his fantasies about malicious influence and brainwashing. The
suicidal patient may exert the same kind of pressure.
I am convinced that in the future the Supreme Court has to make rules which will control these new forms of indictment; yet the core of the problem is the growing
suspicion within man in our era of transition. We blackmail men's minds with too many security measures, with secret files; we blackmail with gossip, with subtle pressures
within political pressure groups, with lobbies within lobbies, and even by withholding our friendship.
The Judge and the Jury
What about the people who are called upon to sift truth from falsehood, to arrive at just and impartial verdicts? The judge and the jury are themselves influenced and
affected by the external facts and inner needs that lie behind the behavior of the other principals in the case. Yet they are supposed to rise above their background,
their personal needs and desires and to render a verdict strictly on the evidence, unswayed by any prejudice or subjective desires. And let us bear in mind that it is not
only those officially connected with a case who make a decision about it, it is everyone who knows about it. You and I, the public, are judge and jury too.
Judge and jury face the difficult task of finding and asking on the basis of the facts alone, and yet even in them, under the influence of strong group emotions, an
emotional rearrangement of remembered facts may take place.
Judge and jurors are affected by the collective emotional atmosphere surrounding controversial issues, and it is difficult for them to maintain their much-needed
objectivity. The average juror already submits to the popular emotional demand before the trial is started, as several trials about racial persecution proved.
Lately two authorities on law attacked the system of trial by jury, one because of its delaying action on the process of justice (Peck) and the other because he considered
it an outmoded means of administering justice (Newman). Trial by jury is a relic of the thirteenth century intended to replace the magic trial by ordeal -- the gods and
coincidence decided the guilt -- and to replace the trial by battle -- physical skill and power decided which of two parties was guilty. The trial by a jury of peers, by
all those who knew the accused and the circumstances of the alleged crime, served its purpose in rather simple organized communities for a long time. But in our
complicated society, where people know less about each other and where a thousand-fold communications intrude the mind, things have changed. "The average juror is swayed
by the emotion and prejudice of his heredity and background training." (Newman) Our juries are not always able to follow the intricacies of pros and cons, of
interpretation of facts. In addition, many a trial lawyer knows how to fascinate a jury, how to catch their minds and influence their judgment. Beyond this, the selection
of jurors delays more and more the process of justice.
As a simple example of how individual, personal, and social conditioning can affect a juror's current reactions, let us look at the inner confusion usually caused by the
word "traitor". Here we have an emotionally loaded trigger-word. If somebody is accused of being a traitor or a subversive, on the basis of undeniable facts, any attempt
at a scientific, psychological explanation of this person's behavior is already considered a treacherous intellectualism. The consensus is that the traitor should be
punished; he belongs to the scum of society, better let him die. Even the lawyer who defends him before the court may be accused of collaboration in treason.
All of us know many other trigger words which immediately provoke confusion in our objective perception and judgment because they touch unsolved, unconscious feelings.
Words like "communist" and "homosexual", for instance, can become confusing trigger words which bring a reservoir of dark feelings into action. Demagogues like to use such
words in order to stir up mass feelings, which they cannot control but which they believe are very suitable for the strategy of the moment. This can become, however, like
playing with dynamite. Any one of us may be swayed by allusive clichés such as "Where there's smoke, there's fire" or "Once a thief, always a thief". I once saw this most
interestingly in a hot debate where someone had once been scolded for being a "dirty monogamist". As soon as the accusation was made, public opinion turned against him.
Even a judge can be swayed by his own emotional difficulties, especially by slanted testimony of witnesses who may be attempting to mislead. In Great Britain the courts
are more aware of the effect of a prejudicial attitude on the part of jurors. There the trial process is extensively protected, mostly through prevention of pretrial
discussion and deliberation, regardless of the unpopularity of the accused.
Televised Interrogation
An open official interrogation affects those who watch it -- and the fact that they are affected may influence its outcome. Various crime hearings in this country, for
instance, were brought before the people by means of television. Citizens sitting comfortably at home far from the scene could see how defense lawyers maneuvered facts or
instructed their clients (among whom were well-known crime bosses) so that they would appear in a favorable light. Even though their actions may have been transparent
tricks with the appearance of a fixed wrestling match, the result was that some of the not-so-jovial-looking victims of the criminals were made ridiculous, while the
criminals, calm, assured, self-possessed, seemed more admirable. The victims often couldn't stand being in the limelight; it made them feel ill at east and embarrassed.
The criminals, on the other hand, either denied every accusation in tones of righteous indignation or made confessions which degenerated into hysterical quests for pity.
The magic effect of all the anonymous onlookers -- because the witness or defendant imagined their approval or disapproval -- influenced the outcome of the hearings. All
of us who watched them brought our own subjective expectations to bear on these hearings.
Television makes a mass trial of such a hearing, and unwittingly not justice but the variable feelings of the public become part of the courtroom atmosphere. Every piece
of evidence in such a hearing is colored by rumor and emotion, and the shocked onlookers are left with feelings of suspicion and deep misgivings that the hearing has not
really gotten down to the condemning facts.
The Quest for Detachment
Man's feeling for justice has very subtle implications. As soon as "Justitia" flirts with powerful friends or becomes completely submissive, people feel insecure and
their anxiety increases. But man's feeling for justice needs more than mere security for its satisfaction and gratification. The sense of justice is an inner attitude
aiming at the realization of ideal rules of law that can inspire the community and raise it to a higher moral level. It requires not merely that minimum of decent behavior
that is enforced by law, but more than that a maximum of personal initiative and mutual fair play. It asks for personal and social justice, for mutual limitation of
demands in the service of the mutuality of relations between men, and between men and their government. Any ideal feeling of justice requires sacrifice and implies
self-limitation. Emotionalism is its enemy. This ideal of justice is not only valid for individuals but should also rule communities and countries. Only in such an
atmosphere of free mutual sacrifice of power on behalf of growing justice can democracy grow.
Can people learn to see objectively and in a manner detached from their personal feelings? Yes, they can. Preconceived ways of seeing and witnessing can be changed. Many
people realize the damage men do to themselves and others when they submit to collective passion and prejudice. These people then learn through astute investigation and
observation how to be less prejudiced, how to see events with constant readaptation of mind and eye and with a search for reality.
Prisoners in concentration camps or POW camps are so constantly bombarded with rumors and suggestions, their observations are so distorted by their necessary
self-defenses, that they are hardly able to give an objective report regarding the actions of their fellows. The mass attitude of the day directs their opinions. The
fellow who has become a scapegoat, whose function it is to alleviate for his fellow prisoners their common anger, will never be able to neutralize all later reports about
him, simply because the number of so-called objective witnesses is against him. It is very difficult to separate the rumors from the facts and to neutralize ingrown mental
toenails. There is in man an instinctual need to take sides with the majority, to conform to the opinion of the strong. This need is rooted in a biological urge for
safety. That is why a strong feeling of participation grew among soldiers in a POW camp. The result was complete unconscious falsification of what happened. The individual
observation got lost in the strong impact of mass opinion.
In the future age of psychology, when insight into man's behavior is more generally understood and applied, we will be more aware of the importance of dependable
witnesses. Every report and every piece of testimony pro or con will be examined and weighed in the light of its psychological and historical background. The citizen of
the future will laugh as he looks back at the time once lost during trials because obvious facts on one side were not brought out to challenge equally obvious facts on the
opposing side. These future citizens will understand that we only revealed our mutual hostilities and feelings of fear and insecurity by our behavior, feelings which moved
us compulsively and subtly to make subjective rearrangements of our memories and impressions. He will point out that objective thinking was in its infancy in those days.
IX. FEAR AS A TOOL OF TERROR
The Fear of Living
In our era the fear aroused by human relationships is so strong that inertia and mental death often seem more attractive than mental alertness and life. Classical
psychology often spoke of the fear of death and the great unknown as the cause of many anxieties, but modern psychological studies have shown us that the fear of living is
a much greater, deeper, and more frightening one.
Living often seems beyond our power. Stepping out of a relatively safe childish dependence into freedom and responsibility is both hazardous and dangerous. Living demands
activity and spontaneity, trial and error, sleeping and reawakening, competition and cooperation, adaptation and reorientation. Living involves manifold relationships,
each of which has thousands of implications and complications. Living takes us away from the dream of being protected and demands that we expose our weaknesses and
strengths daily to our fellow men, with all their hostilities as well as their affections. It requires us to build up useful defenses and then to replace them with others
because we have to change our goals and our relationships. It expects us to be lonely in order to cooperate in freedom. It asks us to submit and to conquer, to adjust and
to rebel. It robs us of our childhood slumber of satisfaction, and of the magic, omnipotent fantasies of our infancy. Living requires mutuality of giving and taking. Above
all, to live is to love. And many people are afraid to take the responsibility of loving, of having an emotional investment in their fellow beings. They want only to be
loved and to be protected; they are afraid of being hurt and rejected. We can see this clearly in the fact that so many people embrace so fervently all the limitations and
frustrations of life that are offered them -- the neurotic limitations of the usual prejudices or the totalitarian limitations imposed by power politics. In his book
Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm describes clearly how the pressures of freedom, when they are not balanced by responsibility and understanding, can drive men into the
totalitarian frame of mind and into surrender of their hard-won liberties. Such surrender is nothing less than a slow mental death.
Totalitarian leaders, whether of the right or of the left, know better than anyone else how to make use of this fear of living. They thrive on chaos and bewilderment.
During unrest in international politics, they are most at ease. The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics. The growing complications of our civilization
and its administration make the impact of power politics felt more than ever before. When the totalitarians add to their tactics all the clever tricks that we have already
discussed Pavlovian conditioning, repeated suggestion, reconditioning through boredom and physical degradation -- they can win their battle for the control of man's mind.
In the earlier chapters of this book we described in some detail the techniques by which man could be turned into a robot in the service of totalitarianism and some of the
tendencies that operate, even in the free countries, to rob man of his mental integrity. It is important for us to realize that emphasis on conformity and the fear of
spontaneous living can have an effect almost as devastating as the totalitarian's deliberate assault on the mind. Conformity and the fear of living rob the free way of
life of its greatest asset in the struggle against totalitarianism.
Our human strength lies in our diversity and independence of thought, in our acceptance of nonconformity, in our willingness to discuss and to evaluate various conflicting
points of view. In denying the diversities of life and the complexity and individuality of the human mind, in preaching rigid dogmas and self-righteousness, we begin
gradually to adopt the totalitarian attitude we deplore. Delusion has never been the exclusive property of any one country, class, or group, and the totalitarian delusion,
which in itself promotes menticide, can invade us from many fronts, from the right as well as the left, from the rich or from the underprivileged, from the conservatives
and from the rebels.
Fear and intimidation have not only been the result but also the tools of mental coercion. Although there is as yet no unified theory of fear and anxiety, and we therefore
do not know precisely why and how the development of these feelings leads to such dire consequences, it is important for us to understand what useful tools fear and panic
are, and to see, through description, what these overwhelming emotions are able to do to people.
Most people think of fear reactions as hysterical expressions of desperation. But, as this chapter should make clear, fear and panic also have their paradoxical
expressions in indifference and apathy, reactions which, just because they are less commonly recognized as fear-created, can be much more dangerous to the individual than
a good hysterical cry. It is the hidden, silent fears that have such an impact on our social and political behavior. Fear and panic are reactions not only to overt danger
and threat, they are also reactions to the slow, seeping intrusion of disquieting propaganda and the constant wave of suggestion to which we are all exposed. Fear is at
work all around us, and often it throws its shadows where we least expect to find them. We may be acting out of fear without even knowing it; we may consider that our
behavior is perfectly normal and rational when, in fact, psychology tells us that creeping fear may already have begun to work on us.
Fear and catastrophe fortify the need to identify with a strong leader. They lead to herding together of people, who shy away from wanting to be individual cells any
longer; they prefer to be part of a huge mystic social organization that protects against threat and distress, in oneness with the leader. This protection-seeking
instinctual reaction is also directed against dissent and individualism, against the individual ego. We see in this a regression toward a more primitive state of mass
participation. True, this process of ego-shrinking is the negative side of the back-to-mass reaction. Yet it stimulates a recognition of greater need for cooperation and
mutual help. During the last war and the generally experienced emergencies many people became for the first time aware of the affective ties they had with their neighbors.
At the same time, anxiety can inspire suspicion and the need for seeking scapegoats. It is the paradox of fear that it propagates warm feelings of immature ties and cold
suspicion at the same time.
Although there is throughout the world a conscious trend toward overcoming fear and feelings of insecurity, there is also a less conscious countercurrent provoking new
fears and anxieties and insecurities. Whether he is aware of it or not, modern man lives in an atmosphere of fear -- fear of war, fear of the H-bomb, fear of
totalitarianism, fear of nonconformism, fear of dissent. Fear has already begun to influence our behavior by the time we are aware of it. Once fear has penetrated the mind
and stimulated fantasy, it begins to direct our actions, whether we want it to or not. We cannot eliminate all the thousands of stresses and fear-provoking situations in
the modern world, but we can learn to recognize and understand some of the most common forms of fear reactions. In this way we can find a partial release from the tensions
they create and can learn how to cope with them more effectively.
Our Fantasies About Danger
I remember vividly one sunny afternoon during the Second World War while I was still in Holland. I was playing tennis with some friends. We were all enjoying the
satisfying exertion of our sport, but our enjoyment was somewhat marred by the players on the next court. They spoke the language of the hated occupier, and although
attired in the same white sports clothes as we, they were obviously Nazi officers who were temporarily forgetting their delusion of conquering the world and were trying to
relax like normal human beings. Suddenly we all heard the drone of planes and the sound of antiaircraft off in the distance. Then a group of low flying Spitfires, our
friends from England, came zooming by. My friends and I stopped playing, waved our rackets in greeting, and watched the planes maneuvering. Our neighbors reacted quite
differently. They became panicky; one of them flung his racket from him and ran off, the others threw themselves, face down, into a ditch bordering the court. Objectively,
we were all faced with the same danger of strafing from the English planes, but for the Germans these were enemy planes, while for us they were friends.
I'm sure it isn't necessary for me to add that after this occurrence my fellow Dutch citizens were forbidden to play tennis on that court. When, a year later, I had
arrived by good chance in London, I found that every time German planes came over during the night, I had that same suspicious feeling the German officers on the tennis
court must have had. It seemed as though every bullet and every bomb was meant for me. So great is the role of fantasy in fear that an enemy bomb may have a different
meaning for us than a friendly bomb.
Fear may be defined very simply as an inner reaction to danger. This definition is deceptively simple, for as soon as we offer it, we are faced with a new problem: What
shall we define as danger? Bombs, fires, earthquakes, and epidemics are easily recognizable as dangers. So are physical torture, direct totalitarian attack, and sudden
economic collapse. But there are many subtle emotional dangers, too, arousing fearful fantasies and anticipations often combined with inner visions of doom and disaster.
As our examples will show, these dangers are faced differently by different people. It is our personal attitude toward life and toward mankind that determines whether we
consider a situation a welcome challenge or an unconquerable danger. Some people enjoy strict control and mechanical conditioning of their lives. For them, totalitarianism
and thought control are not danger; they bring a kind of eternal day-sleep without responsibility. To these people, freedom is a danger, while dependence is a pleasurable
safety. Others loathe any intrusion into their personal freedom and integrity and are continually on the alert to defend themselves against any external pressure -- real
or fancied.
Paradoxical Fear
Even when people are well prepared and trained to meet an anticipated disaster, such as imprisonment and brainwashing, the actual impact of the danger may provoke all
kinds of defensive behavior. Overtraining may even weaken the person because the long anticipation allows all kinds of hidden fantasies to run rampant. In a minority of
persons this may be expressed in such pathological fear reactions as complete nervous breakdown or utter paralysis. Every person shows a different mental threshold of
resistance to danger, and this threshold may change day by day, depending on our physical and mental fortitude. As a rule, inexperienced troops do not immediately show
pathological fear in combat; such behavior takes some time to develop. Paradoxically enough, fear reactions and moments of weakness often develop after the real danger has
passed. When the tension of battle or the daily stress of life in the prison camp is over, and there is no longer any need to hide one's fears and to control one's
behavior, many people let go completely and give free vent to all their anxieties.
In Dover, England, in 1944, the population suffered a kind of collective nervous breakdown when after the tension of four years of continual shelling by the Germans they
heard only silence. The shelling suddenly stopped completely after the Allied troops swept victoriously across the Belgian coast. At that moment, many of the people of
Dover broke down. It was as if the unexpected silence had brought them into a state of shock.
This paradoxical fear reaction after danger has passed is important for us to understand. The totalitarian strategists know that during a period of temporary quiet and
relaxation of tension, people lose their alertness and thus can be more easily caught in the totalitarian mental grip. In their strategy of terror they consciously make
use of the psychological action of the breathing spell. As soon as we let go and drop the defenses we have built up against danger, we can be brought to swallow any strong
suggestions. The totalitarians also, in their "Document on Terror," call the technique of taking advantage of such relief the "strategy of fractionalized fear:" In a quiet
period between acute tensions, they can easily condition their victims' minds. Hitler used the Munich period of appeasement in precisely this way. During this time, his
propaganda barrage was doubly effective.
Whether the reaction to fear and danger is immediate or delayed, most people show, under stress, behavior that can be said to fall into one of the following patterns:
Regression -- loss of learned behavior.
Camouflage and disguise -- the so-called "feign or faint" reactions.
The explosive panic-defense through "fight or flight"
Our psychosomatic conditioning -- the body takes over.
1. Regression
Although most people are more or less acquainted with the concept of regression, of setting the cultural clock back, they are surprised, nevertheless, to see staid men and
women lose their acquired habits of civilization in times of catastrophe and panic. I once treated an engineer who had been the victim of an earthquake in a foreign
country. After the earthquake, he behaved completely like a baby. All kinds of treatments were tried, but none were successful; we were never able to change his childish
behavior. He never found his way back to normal, adequate behavior. From that fateful day, he remained barricaded in his cave of escape. It was as if with one blow he had
forgotten everything he had ever learned. He was no longer a grown man, a professional scientist. He was an infant. He babbled like an infant, he had to be fed like an
infant. Another earthquake victim of whom I know, a professor of mathematics, was found in his garden after the quake was over, half-naked and playing with his child's
toys. He completely rejected any recognition of the real emergency situation in which he found himself and regressed to a period of infantile irresponsibility. Such
regressive behavior as a form of defense is encountered everywhere in the animal kingdom. When an organism is in danger, it drops its complexity and retreats to a simpler
form of existence. When circumstances of living become too dangerous, some easily exposed multicellular organisms turn into well-protected, simple monocellular beings.
This regressive process, called encystication may, for instance, take place when the organism is exposed to abnormal temperatures or abnormal dryness.
Man is subject to the same biological rule of defense. When life is too complex for him, he often turns the clock of civilization back and becomes primitive again. A
sudden disintegration and breakdown of functions may occur. This form of regressive behavior is common in children. When they are frightened, they often revert to baby
talk or to bed-wetting. In the bombed areas during the Second World War, many girls in their late teens started to play with their dolls again. Even seemingly mature,
hypersophisticated men and women may display thousands of symptoms of this return to infantilism when fear attacks them. Their symptoms are not always as dramatic as the
examples above; nevertheless, they are symptoms of fear. When grown people begin to stutter and to lose their daily decorum, when they take to carrying around special
protective charms, when they invent stories about their magic invulnerability, when they boast more, eat more cake and candy, whistle more, talk more, cry more, and lose
their formal stiff and staid behavior, they are acting out of fear.
During the Second World War, in the prison camps and the air-raid shelters, people really got to know each other, as do children in the playpen who have the simple
intuitive gift of knowing whom they can trust. In our age of anxiety, we feel possessed by the same frightening shadows that once haunted the stone-age man, and we may
react to them by acting more like our simpler ancestors.
2. Camouflage and Disguise
A different pattern is that of camouflage and disguise playing hide-and-seek with fate. This useful protective trickery is often seen in lower animals who temporarily
acquire the form or color of their environment. It is just like military camouflage. Everybody is acquainted with the color changes of the chameleon, and there are many
other animals which are able to change their skin or body form in times of danger. Yet many people are not aware that human skin, too, shows rudimentary attempts at
camouflage. The phenomenon of goose flesh resembles the reaction of a frightened, bristling cat; sudden graying of the hair or discoloration of the skin, which is known
technically as fear melanosis, changes our outer color.
During the Second World War, I went with a first-aid team to Rotterdam after the city had been heavily bombed. As we looked at the people, our first impression was that
they were all wearing masks. Their skin was wrinkled and showed a typical camouflage reaction. They were all still badly frightened. It was as if they were in hiding from
the tremendous hell of fire that had been thrown down on them.
There is a psychological parallel to these physical reactions; it is called the "feign or faint" pattern. Actual psychology looks at both reactions, feigning and fainting,
as a passive retreat from reality. This reaction is comparable to shell-shock or battle neurosis, the study of which is one of the most absorbing chapters of medicine.
Soldier and civilian alike can go into a state of mental paralysis. In such a state the victim becomes apathetic; he is unable to talk or to move. No dangerous reality
exists for him anymore. He looks dead; only his frightened, burning eyes seem alive. This death attitude or cataleptic reaction often has a completely terrifying effect on
bystanders. There is nothing so contagious as fainting in any crowded place.
It is of the utmost importance to realize how passive, paralyzed, indifferent, and submissive people can become under circumstances which should demand the utmost
activity. The totalitarians are making use of man's passive reaction to terror when they put their prisoners into huge concentration camps with only a few guards; they are
gambling that the reaction of passivity will keep the victim from rebelling or trying to escape. Like the bird which stands stock-still when the snake approaches, man may
surrender passively to what he dreads and fears in order to get rid of the tension of anticipation. The thief who surrenders to the police because he cannot stand the
tension and insecurity of not knowing when he will be found out is an obvious example.
A psychological camouflage reaction lies behind emotional shock and silent panic -- the mental paralysis that overcomes some people when they can no longer cope with the
circumstances in which they find themselves. Passive surrender to what he fears is one of man's most common reactions to sudden danger; it is not limited to pathological
personalities. It occurs much more frequently than wild and overt panic, and displays itself in numerous subtle behavior mechanisms. People may escape into complaints
about physical disease. They may take refuge in "very important" pseudo-tasks and hobbies. They may deny real danger in a seemingly self-securing complacency. They become
obstinate and disobedient; nothing can activate them. They are not interested in politics, they say. Some will try to sell to themselves and others the paralyzing theory
of hopelessness and the inevitability of doom. But don't talk about the nuclear bomb! Others will throw themselves into the oblivion of excessive drinking or hide
themselves in long, pointless conferences. Every man has his own psychological Maginot line -- a mental fortress that he believes inviolable. We used to call this the
ostrich policy -- and the ostrich policy is one of the most dangerous strategies in the world. Beware the totalitarian who preaches peace; his intention may be to push the
world into passive surrender to that which it fears.
The cult of passivity and so-called relaxation is one of the most dangerous developments of our times. Essentially, it too may represent a camouflage pattern, the double
wish not to see the dangers and challenges of life and not to be seen. We cannot escape all the tensions that surround us; they are part of life, and we have to learn to
cope with them adequately and to use our leisure time for more creative and gratifying activities. Silent, lonely relaxation with alcohol, sweets, the television screen,
or a murder mystery may soothe the mind into a passivity that may gradually make it vulnerable to the seductive ideology of some feared enemy. Denying the danger of
totalitarianism through passivity, may gradually surrender to its blandishments those who were initially afraid of it.
3. Explosive Panics
Most people are far more familiar with the explosive motor reactions we call panic and stampede than they are with the other fear reactions. This is what we call mass
hysteria, the chacun pour soi reaction. The baby has its temper tantrums, and older people have their uncontrolled fury and "fight or flight" reactions. Although we
usually think of the word "panic" as describing such phenomena as the hysterical stampede out of a burning theater or the flight of whole populations in terror, there are
many subtle steps that lead from the first symptoms of unrest we all feel when something is threatening, to the great outbursts of crying and running and fighting we see
in severe panics. Man shows many forms of panicky, frenzied behavior -- epileptic fits (as in trench or war epilepsy), fury, rage, self-destruction, criminal aggression,
running amok, deserting from the army, rioting, uncontrolled impulsiveness, breakneck speed in driving. A soldier in a state of panic may behave like an angry child. He
may attack his friends or shoot at the members of his own troop. In panic, civilians may begin to cry, shout, walk aimlessly about wringing their hands. Or they may shout
and scold or cry for help. The panicky person spreads panic; every time he shouts, he incites others to run. Panic is never a question of crude strength or failing energy,
but rather of lack of inner structure, of a failing capacity to organize. The panicky leader hesitates to use the powers entrusted to him.
The child with temper tantrums lies deep within all of us. The more mysterious and unaccountable the danger, the more primitive our reactions may be.
Riots, furious mass movement, and outbreaks of criminality serve to increase fear and panic, and thus can be used to deepen man's sense of insecurity and further his
passive surrender to the totalitarian environment. Any terroristic regime compels its victims to repress their reactions of rebellion and anger. The more these reactions
are repressed, the more the victims develop tremendous inner rage, which must bide its time and wait until it is permitted some socially sanctioned form of explosion. War
is often such a universal panic, a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage. Here, too, the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction.
4. The Body Takes Over
The great group of psychosomatic reactions, although they are no mystery, are more difficult to explain. Let us look at an example which may make this phenomenon more
clear. In my home town in Holland, after a few bombardments during the Second World War, an epidemic of bladder disease broke out -- at least that was the first
explanation. People suffered from the need to urinate so often that their sleep was disturbed; almost no one had a full night's rest. For a short time, there was a boom in
the practice of urologists. Then psychiatrists were able to explain that this urge to urinate was one of the first reactions to fear. The victims had only to think back to
their childhood and to recall their bodily reactions before taking examinations at school to see what was happening. Increased urination may be described as one of the
tension-reducing devices of the body. The body may react to danger and panic with a variety of physical symptoms. Perspiration, frequent urination, heart palpitations,
diarrhea, high blood pressure are only a few. We know that many of these reactions are related to the body's mobilization of specific defenses against threatening dangers.
The specific ways in which bodily diseases related to fear and anxiety develop are conditioned largely by the individual's personal life history, especially his
development during childhood. The infant whose early tensions and yearnings were drowned in milk and pabulum will grow up into an adult who tries to fill his mouth again
as soon as something threatening occurs. Overeating has become for him a fear-allaying device. In the process of rearing the child, the parent unwittingly train certain of
the child's organs to react to the tensions of life.
Because man has many bodily organs, he can show a tremendous variety in his physical and emotional responses to threats, both from without and within. Psychosomatic
medicine distinguishes between different character types in terms of the different organs which respond to outside stress or danger. There is the ulcer type, the asthma
type, the colitis type, the heart failure type. Each of these types shows a different reaction to the same battle -- the battle against fear. Feelings of social tension
may be expressed in various organic diseases. In acute fright, however, certain organs of the body more commonly react than others. As we saw in our earlier example, the
need for frequent urination is a nearly universal reaction to fright. The "upset stomach" is another almost universal fear reaction.
During the Second World War, a medical team looked in vain for the bug causing an unknown intestinal disease among American soldiers who were preparing to land on one of
the enemy islands in the Pacific. The doctors and biologists searched and searched; they found nothing. The mysterious disease vanished, as suddenly as it had appeared,
after the invasion began and the soldiers were able to discharge in action the tension of waiting f or the invasion. These men were not strange or abnormal in any way.
Even when one consciously accepts the challenge of danger and is prepared to face it, counterforces in the body may defeat the mental effort. The mind wants to be brave,
but the body escapes into disease. Consistency of child-rearing, emotional security at home, and lifelong conditioning to acceptance of the various challenges of life --
all these are the factors that determine how we will react when we are put to the test.
In their treatment of panicky soldiers during the last war, psychiatrists gave some of their time to an explanation of these various danger reactions. As the victims began
to understand their reactions and saw how common they were, they took the first and most important step toward cure. No longer were they so afraid of their fears; no
longer were they in such dread of cowardice. It was important for them to know that what had reduced them to the level of helpless childhood was part of a universal
pattern of defensive behavior. As they understood this, they became less afraid and ashamed of their own private fears. They knew that their bodies were reacting like many
others, and they became able once more to accept their duties quietly and with better control. Stamina and resourcefulness depend as much on self-knowledge as they do on
the help and support we get from others.
In times of stress and calamity, people begin to probe for the vulnerable spots and weaknesses in both their friends and their enemies. This testing goes on constantly
during a hot war, but it happens during a cold war as well. The cold war exerts a continual pressure on human imagination and mental fortitude and is the cause of many
peculiar escape reactions or bodily reactions.
Whenever fear and danger confront him, man has to make a choice: Shall he indulge in unchecked fury? Shall he concentrate upon self-protection? Or shall he accept his
responsibilities? The fear reactions we have described show how the primordial impulse to self-protection (misguided though it may be) can break through all our civilized
defenses. Only training and conscious preparation for danger, both inner and outer, can give a man strength to hold these reactions in check. This training starts within
the nucleus of the family and is supported by the example of a peaceful, free community. These are the first teachers in the constant battle between inner fear and outer
danger.
Those who are in danger of being brainwashed can be helped simply by making them familiar with the facts. Foreknowledge has a partial protective function, and this belongs
to the best security we can give to them. It takes away the weakening influence of anxious and mysterious anticipation. With this aid, their mental vulnerability is then
furthered by innate inner strength, by the example of good rearing, and by the challenge and opportunity their society gives to them.
THE RAPE OF THE MIND - PART THREE
Unobtrusive Coercion
In the course of our investigations concerning thought control, menticide, and brainwashing, it has become clearer that more attention must be given to the means by which
inner preparedness for mental submission is brought about. Unobtrusively, personal development and various cultural influences can make man more vulnerable to suggestion
and ideological attack. In part three I call to the reader's attention the creeping intrusion into our minds by technology and bureaucracy, and how special forms of
prejudice and mass delusion can take possession of our minds before we are aware of it. The final chapter, an inquiry on treason and loyalty again calls to our attention
the tremendous influence of mass thinking on our personal concepts of loyalty.
X. THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN
The time has come to ask ourselves if it is possible that there is something in our own growth and development that may make us more vulnerable to mental intrusion and
ultimate brainwashing. Are there, for instance, special coercive needs in us? What is communicated and taught to the child that may keep him a spiritual prisoner of his
environment?
These are important questions and would require a thorough philosophic and pedagogic investigation. Nevertheless, for practical purposes, we may limit our attention to two
different spheres of development: the influence of parents and the influence of certain social habits. The latter has already been investigated in the second part of this
book. Indeed, I must repeat that in my experience all those who are educated under rules of too strict obedience and conformity break down more easily under pressure.
During World War II when the so-called tough S.S. officers were interrogated after they had become prisoners, they readily surrendered their military secrets. Having lived
for years under totalitarian command, they were just as obedient to the new commanding voices. Sometimes we only had to imitate the shouting voices of their masters and
they would exchange their former boss for the new one. For them every command had become the automatic trigger for new conforming obedience.
In dealing with members of the Communist Party in this country, we had a comparable experience: the members were politically submissive and changed their obstructive
party-strategy to an opposite set of tactics the moment Moscow ordered them to do so.
How Some Totalitarians May Develop
Increasing attention has been given to the various psychological motivations leading to political extremism and a totalitarian mentality in men and women who have been
brought up in a democratic atmosphere, but who have voluntarily chosen to associate themselves with some totalitarian ideology. Psychologists who have come into contact
with the totalitarian attitude and have studied those who are easily influenced by it agree, by and large, that in the free, democratic countries the option for
totalitarianism is nearly always determined by an inner personality factor -- frustration, if you will. It is usually neither poverty nor social idealism that makes a man
a totalitarian, but mostly internal factors such as extreme submissiveness and masochism on the one hand or a lust for power on the other. Unsolved sibling rivalry plays a
role too; I have treated several Nazi collaborators whose political behavior was motivated to some extent by the fact that they were older sons and could not stand the
competition with their younger brothers. All these factors help to explain why the totalitarians everywhere can use their propaganda of violence to exploit resentment,
hatred, racism, and political fury. They know that they have only to play on these immature feelings of deprivation and dissatisfaction to bring people under a spell.
In my own experience, I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political option in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any
particular political party democratic or totalitarian -- through study and comparison of principles. Too often man's choice of his political affiliations is determined by
apathy, by family tradition, by hope for financial gain, or by other irrelevant factors. It is this lack of rational motivation that can make men more susceptible to
totalitarian blandishments, even in a democratic community. I remember very clearly, for example, a Dutch physician with whom I went to medical school. He fell in love
with the daughter of a Communist and eventually married her. At first he was disturbed by the conflict between his principles and his adoration, but gradually his
principles gave in and he started to justify the party line. Later on I met him from time to time. He was an excellent doctor and a jovial fellow, and he took our
half-serious quips about his politics in good part. But the moment we began a really serious discussion, he crouched in his official defensive corner and became a
different man -- sour, mechanical, handing out ready-made arguments. During the war I met him frequently in the course of our common underground work. He had been
completely dazed by Stalin's pact with the Nazis, but the moment Russia was invaded and became an ally, he started his aggressive robotism again. Not only was he a staunch
fighter against the Nazis, but he insisted that his was the only way to fight. He lost his life on a dangerous mission for the underground, and I always had the feeling
that it was in a way welcome to his latent suicidal feelings.
In other Nazis and Communists, both, I have seen dramatic examples of how personal resentments, outside the suffering of real injustice, can lead a man to the side of the
rebels. Some of these people were the type who simply submitted passively to a movement stronger than themselves -- men and women whose ideology was a reflection of
whichever side had caught them first; others were motivated by the need to vent their own personal anger and resentment in some direction and used political action to
satisfy this need. But if we are to come to any real understanding of the internal factors that lead a man to adopt a totalitarian ideology, we must dig a little deeper
than this and must give our attention to some basic roots of this problem.
The Molding Nursery
One of the important things we have learned from modern psychology is that the roots of many of our adult attitudes and problems lie far back in the seeming quiet of the
nursery and childhood years. The infant's life may appear to be placid and uneventful, but from the moment he is born he hears thousands of rumblings both from inside his
own mind and from the world outside. In his mother's womb he knew neither warmth nor cold, now his skin transmits these sensations to him. As he lay protected in his
mother's body, he did not have to breathe, eat, or excrete; now he must do all these things himself. He needs help in doing them, he needs protection, and for this
protection and help he must rely on those grown-up giants, Mother and Father. He is utterly and completely dependent, unable by himself to find adequate responses to his
needs. There he is, with his pitifully limited means of adaptation, with his minimum of innate patterns of action. Warmth, food, and love, things which he needs to sustain
his life, come to him when he does the "right" thing -- and the right thing is the learned, civilized thing, not the instinctual, primitive thing. The giants, his parents,
make demands on him -- they begin to mold him according to their own habits, and the infant must submit to all these external demands in order to get what he wants and
needs. He must follow the hundreds of subtle, incomprehensible educational rules in order to be paid back with the affection and protection on which he is so dependent.
All of this transforms him into a more or less conforming being. His parents' morality is, as it were, sucked in and becomes an ever-present force inside him. He is
imprinted with all kinds of habits which serve to condition him into the particular form of adaptation his parents and his society think good for him. The forms his adult
behavior will take are foreshadowed by the forms his parents' behavior take. The patient mother imprints patience on her child; the anxious, compulsive mother imprints
tensions on hers.
The child who is brought up in a loving environment will develop inner pictures of love and affection and will be better able to accept all the restrictions his parents
impose on his freedom, all the rules they lay down. He will accept timetables, toilet training, parental confusion, without too much inner protest even when his needs run
contrary to these social demands. He may want to be fed at a time when, according to his schedule, he should not be hungry. He may want to sleep when his parents want him
to be awake. Society demands of him that he learn to postpone his own gratifications, and he will react to this demand in a manner contingent on his own sense of security
in his parents' affection. Having to wait for food, not being allowed to suck any more, having to control his need to excrete -- all of these require the child to make new
and difficult adaptations. His urge for immediate and unconditional satisfaction of his needs has to be transformed into something much more complicated -- a whole pattern
of learned responses.
It is not important for us to describe here the different ways in which these early cultural obligations are met by the child. But it is important to understand that the
cradle and the nursery change and recondition the innate natural responses of the unsocial, primitive child to mold him into an adult, who may be left from his childhood a
legacy of frustrations stemming from this molding process. Individual problems are caused by individual patterns of child-rearing; these very patterns are themselves to
some degree the product of the cultural traditions in which they are rooted and the mores of the community into which the child is born. To the degree that our society
imposes on children frustrations and restrictions for which they are neither biologically nor emotionally ready, to that degree our culture paves the way for adult
behavior problems and for neurotic attitudes of submission or aggression, which may find expression in allegiance to some totalitarian group.
Conditioning a child into a servile and submissive attitude, for example, may start when parents rigidly imprint automatic rules of conduct on the infant. They may make a
time maniac out of him or a cleaning automaton. They may compel him to speak too early or to be silent when his voice itches to burst out of his throat or to sleep when
his body is throbbing with the energy of wakefulness. Such parents impose on their child a constant feeling of guilt -- he feels disturbed and unhappy every time he does
not comply with their demands. And at the same time they force him to love them even when they are disagreeable. They may compel him to apologize for behavior which seems
to him to be perfectly acceptable; they may demand that he confess to crimes which do not exist as crimes for him at his age. Some techniques of brainwashing can be seen
at the cradle; the parents may cross-examine him, tie him to their apron strings, or keep him constantly under their eyes. With their solicitous attention they never leave
him alone to enjoy feeling of being secure with himself. The helpless child in such an environment becomes emotionally insecure; in exchange for more borrowed security, he
becomes more conforming and submissive, although this conforming behavior covers up tremendous inner protest and hostility.
When parents do not permit a child to express his instinctual needs openly and directly, they force him to look for other ways to express them. If during his early
training -- which may start on the day of his birth -- the infant encounters endless restrictions to the direct expression of his needs, he will try to communicate these
needs in indirect ways -- through tension, restlessness, and crying. Instead of being able to use natural outlets for his instinctual drives, the child is permitted and
conditioned to act only through suppression and control of the drive. In his struggle to bring the drive under control in order to please his parents, the child's natural
means of expression may become inverted. Instead of expression, he acquires repression. This is where the roots of such adult behavior as abject submissiveness and the
urge for conformity lie. The groundwork for this masochistic pattern of giving in is formed in infancy. Submission and confession are the only strategies possible for the
child in a world that is too overpowering for him to handle. Inner rebellion, hostility, and hatred must be expressed in a paradoxical way. The child's rigid silence is
proof that he wants to cry and yell. He may reproach and attack the hostile world indirectly, through magic gestures, clownish behavior, or even epileptic fits. Compelled
to suppress his instinctual needs and his means of achieving their gratification, he may conceal their existence even from himself. Surface conformity becomes his only
means of communication, and when this happens words and gestures acquire a concealing function. He never says what he means, and gradually he doesn't even know what he
means.
The carry-overs into adult life of this kind of child-rearing are obvious. Trained into conformity, the child may well grow up into an adult who welcomes with relief the
authoritarian demands of a totalitarian leader. It is the welcome repetition of an old pattern that can be followed without investment of new emotional energy. Trained
previously to divert his aggression to scapegoats, he may now displace his hidden resentments against his parents' rules and regulations toward society as a whole. Or he
may find release for them in the wild explosion of pent-up aggression which is exemplified by the lynch mob or by Hitler's storm troopers.
Other forms of parental behavior also have their effect on the child. If the child is trained precociously in habits that would otherwise develop spontaneously at a later
age, he may show all kinds of distortions in his natural behavior. The example of the effect of precocious toilet training is common, but there are many other parental
commands that can have the same effect on the child. The way the child is clothed or the parents' constant demand that he always be quiet, asleep, and motionless are
equally valid examples. When any command is too strictly applied before the child is able to cope with it, it exerts an enormous frustrating influence. What was enforced
on the child by some outside power becomes an inner, automatic rule, a compulsion. Let us return to the toilet training example for a moment, though it is only one single
part of the whole pattern of training. The child who is trained to control his need to excrete at too early an age learns to keep himself clean and constipated under all
circumstances. His body learns how to control itself automatically, but somewhere inside him the child feels contempt for those who have forced him into this behavior. He
may grow up to be a chronically hostile adult, ripe for the appeal of some hostile ideology. In less severe cases, the conflict between outside prohibitions and the inner
need to let go may create a continuing pattern of inner insecurity. Or it may lead to constant querulous resentment, which can be easily utilized by any would-be dictator.
What we have to emphasize is this: the earliest web of communication between parents and child takes place on what psychology calls a pre-verbal and unconscious level.
There is contact without words. The mother transfers her moods directly to the child; he senses and catches her feelings. The child also transfers his moods to her; she
feels his pains and joys almost as soon as he does. This sensitivity of the infant makes him react with great intensity -- he is profoundly aware of his parents' feelings.
Such negative parental factors as anxiety, insecurity, infantilism, mutual disharmony, neurotic love, poverty, the struggle for existence, and compulsive tyranny have an
enormous effect on the child. Not long ago I treated an infant who refused any offer of handling or feeding by its mother. The infant "knew" that the mother had a
deep-seated hostility against it; it felt her aversion and rejection. But the infant accepted food and affection from everyone else. The interplay between parental
attitudes and child development starts at birth.
Perhaps one of the clearest examples of a distorted growing-up may be seen in one case I treated during the Second World War when I was asked to do a psychological study
of an alleged collaborator with the Nazis. This man, who was in England when I saw him, said that he had left Holland, which was then occupied, because he no longer agreed
with the German conquerors. When he arrived in England he was, as a matter of careful routine, put in a home for people under investigation as suspected spies. From here,
he was very soon taken to a mental institution because of his strange behavior. He was not actually psychotic, but he did have great difficulty in relating to other
people. When I went to interview him, it became apparent to me that he was completely confused. He babbled so much that it was almost impossible to understand him. I asked
him about his childhood. It was not easy for him to speak about it, but he finally told me something of his background. He was an only child. His mother had been the
dominant member of the family, actively working in scientific research. His father, a weak, nebulous figure, had seldom been at home; in his job as the manager of a large
firm, he had traveled a great deal. On the rare occasions when the father was at home, the patient remembered long silences between his parents, his father only
occasionally protesting against his mother's constant stream of directives. Sometimes the boy joined with his mother in criticizing his father's detachment and lack of
interest, sometimes he turned to his father for love and help against his mother's smothering behavior. But he was mostly lost and alone at home. In his late teens, the
boy developed some homosexual attachments, in which he played the passive, submissive role. But he only came alive mentally after one of his friends made him attend a
fascist rally. The show of strength and aggression excited the boy enormously and even aroused sexual sensations in him. He joined the fascist group, to the great dismay
of his parents, but he was never very active in party work because the party did not provide him with the guidance and love for which he yearned.
After the Nazi invasion and occupation, the party demanded that he be more active as a collaborator with the Germans. Now his conscience bothered him, and he became ill
and developed all kinds of stomach ailments which were, to a psychiatrist, obviously emotional in origin. He was not, however, strong enough to withdraw from the party
completely. He felt caught between two opposing dangers -- the party and treason. The childhood struggle began all over again; he felt himself unsafe with either father or
mother. So he decided to flee the country because he had a vague feeling that this would help him get away from his conflicts.
Once in England, in the asylum, he felt completely contented. He simply did not understand the serious nature of the accusations that had been made against him. When I
spoke to him about world affairs and his political activity, he fell into silence. He did not remember any of the details of his political behavior. It was as if he had
lived in a dream since the moment he ran away from Holland. It is entirely possible that the enemy had used him as a tool, but at the time I saw him he was only a
near-psychotic, fear-ridden young man. He remained in the institution for the duration of the war.
One thing stands out clearly in this case (aside from its complexity as a pathological phenomenon) and that is the young man's continual search for male authority. This
search for spiritual backbone is very common among people who develop totalitarian attachments.
The Father Cuts the Cord
Psychological studies have shown us over and over again that the child's attitude toward the parental authority, with all its subtle internal complications, plays a
primary role in determining how he will handle his hostilities -- whether he will learn to cope with them or whether he will direct them toward destructive aims. As we
said earlier, parents and family form almost the whole environment of the child during the first years of its life. They condition the foundations of his future character.
And in the family it is the influence of the father that determines whether the child will stick to its strong natural ties with its mother, to its dependency needs and
its needs for protection, or will step out of this maternal realm and will form new ties with new people. The father is the first one who cuts into the essentially
biological relation between mother and child. He is what the psychoanalyst calls the first transference figure, the first new prototype to whom the child can transfer its
expectations of gratification, its feelings of relatedness, of satisfaction, of fear. This first new trial relationship with the father giant may become the conditioning
prototype for every subsequent social relationship.
The child's initial relationship with its mother is purely biological and symbiotic. The womb is replaced by the crib. The mother is the know-all and do-all.
Psychoanalysis describes the child's relationship with its mother as one of oral dependency because the helpless infant is completely dependent on the food, care, and
warmth the mother provides. The little human being's dependency need lasts longer than that of the other animals. It is this fact that makes man gregarious, dependent on
cooperation with others.
The father brings a third person, who has no part in this relationship of biological dependency, into the life of the child. When he cuts into the child's relationship
with its mother, he is cutting the psychological umbilical cord just as the doctor cuts the physical one when the infant is delivered. First, he gives the child the
opportunity to transfer feelings and expectations to him; later, he brings the child more actively outside the maternal realm and teaches him more and more about social
relationships. The specific role of the father as a transference prototype is not so simple as it seems to many fathers. Father is not merely a toy with whom the child can
occasionally play. The child needs to identify with this giant who lives with him and with Mother; he wants to become familiar with the giant, he wants the giant to become
part of his world. The child wants more than this -- he wants to be gratified by Father so that he can love Father as much as he does Mother. But the child will transfer
some of its love and emotional investment to Father only if it sees something of Mother in him. Father can do the same things Mother does -- he can feed the child, can
solace him, can take care of him -- and thus the child can maintain a feeling of gratitude and affection toward this third person. This transference of feelings can only
take place, however, when the relationship between the parents themselves is tranquil. How can the child identify with and love his parents when they are in constant
conflict with each other?
This picture is, of course, something of an oversimplification. There are mothers who behave like cold, distant fathers, and fathers who behave like warm, cuddling
mothers. There are grandparents or adoptive parents who can take over. There are many mother or father substitutes. But this is not my point. My point is that in every
situation there must be some individual who can become the conditioning prototype for the child's relationships with new beings. This first person is most likely to be the
father, and it is he who changes the child's biological dependency into a psychological relationship. When there is no father figure, or if the father is too weak or too
busy or is denying and tyrannical toward the child, the result is that the child's relationship with and dependence on the mother remains strong and lasts too long.
Consequently, the child's need for social participation and for gregarious ties with others may become to him a consuming need. As an adult he may be willing to join with
any social group which promises him support and reassurance. Or his unconscious resentment against the father who did not help him to grow up and become independent may be
diverted into a resentment against other symbols of authority, such as society itself. Either way the child may be headed for maladjustment and for difficulties. Either
way the child may grow up into an immature adult.
In a study on living by proxy, I described the arrested emotional development that results when the father does not play his proper role or is not present. A child brought
up in such an emotionally defective atmosphere searches continually for strong figures who may serve as a proxy for the normal relationships the child would otherwise have
had in life. I have treated several cases of homosexuality and other forms of arrested development, both in men and women, which were almost directly attributable to the
too strongly tied, symbiotic life with the mother which results from such an environment.
In the building up of man's awareness of an independent self and the establishment of his ability to have easy, relaxed relationships with his fellow men, the father, as
the natural chief and protector of the family, plays an important role. He cuts the cord. He may condition the later pattern of dependence and independence. His potential
psychological dominance can become a blessing or a curse, for the child's emotional attitude toward its father becomes the prototype for its attitudes toward future
leaders and toward society itself.
We saw this clearly in the case of our "spy" who had never had a strong male guide in his life. Many of the people I investigated, who had chosen to identify themselves
with aggressive totalitarian groups, had this problem. For such people, the totalitarian party became both the good father who accepted them and the proxy which gave
expression to all their hidden and frustrated hate. The party solves, as it were, their inner problems. Parental conflict in early childhood, inconsistency, and a
threatening, unloving attitude toward the child pave the way for rebellion and submission, and a repetition of this pattern later in life. The wish to break away from the
family pattern may lead to rebellion, but the particular form the rebellion takes depends on what political movements can modify and channelize the person's resentment.
This does not mean, of course, that there is not a hard core of totalitarian-minded people, nourished in the cradle by the dogmas of their totalitarian parents, who give
themselves to their party tasks because they have never known a different world. According to Almond, these types are found particularly in our Western world among
high-echelon extremists. They take in the totalitarian form of socialism with their mother's milk; they are members of an increasing group of hereditary totalitarian
conformists. Here, no father rebellion is needed to become an extreme revolutionary.
But the bulk of the totalitarian-minded in the democratic societies are men and women who are attracted to this destructive way of life for inner emotional reasons unknown
to themselves. My own experiences with both Communists and Nazis during the Second World War has shown me this truth over and over again. In Holland, as in the other
Nazi-occupied countries, the Communists and their sympathizers fought bravely with us in the underground as our temporary companions. Even during that time of national
crisis and terror, they were never free from bitter reproach and resentment toward us. They insisted that their ideology was the only correct one and showed, sometimes
openly, sometimes covertly, that when the Nazis were defeated, they would renew their struggle against the social order. Let me give just one example to illustrate this
point. One of the Communists was a very brave physician (not the same man about whom I spoke earlier). He had killed a Nazi leader, and later he himself died a horrible
death. Here was a grown man who had never been able to overcome a certain adolescent self-righteousness and aggressiveness. On the very night when, in deadly peril, he
sought refuge in my home, he felt compelled to engage me in a long theoretical political discussion with him, full of bitterness. He disdainfully reproached the other
resistance groups because they did not share his political views. His views and ideals, I must say in all justice to him, seemed sincere to me, but he was filled with so
much unresolved hostility toward the government of his fatherland that he was ready at all times to overthrow it. The core of his fallacious reasoning I found was the
confusion about ends and means in the struggle for social justice. For him, tactics and strategy had become more important than the final aim of peaceful coexistence
between men on earth. His violent death -- after murdering an S.S. officer -- was partly the result of the fact that he pursued tactics beyond the strategic needs of the
moment. True, in the end he gave his life for his ideals and for his native land, but up to the end he carried a bitter grudge against all those who were not in complete
agreement with everything he thought and felt. It was that personal grudge and hostility which led him to bad planning and his ultimate fate. Most of us are not clearly
and completely aware that alongside our wish to be good, adjusted citizens, we also have hidden wishes to violate our allegiances to the social formation of which we are
members. These wishes are not based on reason and intelligence; they are purely emotional. They are founded by the ways we have been brought up, by our relationships with
our parents, by our educational system, by our attitudes toward ourselves and toward authority. But all men who adhere rigidly to any set of political convictions, and
especially those who have embraced some totalitarian ideology, believe that their attitudes emerge from rational conviction and are the result of normal intellectual
development. They insist that those who do not agree with them are committed to a stuffy, outmoded way of thinking. They cannot see their own vengeful and disloyal
attitudes as something asocial and abnormal.
To the psychologist, it is eminently clear that these attitudes have their roots not in intellectual conviction but in some deep-seated emotional need. I have often seen
cases where this blind, rigid allegiance to a totalitarian ideology was actually a defiant rebellion against a compelling inner need to grow and to change and to become
mature. In these people, the selection of a special political party was only a substitute for their need for dependency. Ideologic stubbornness is often tragic because it
may cover up basic neurotic reactions that may lead to self-destruction. One of my patients was a young woman whose ultra-left beliefs were a defense against her hidden
incestuous feelings toward a reactionary father. It took protracted therapy to bring her to an understanding of the real nature of her difficulty and to get her to see
that there was nothing shameful or disgusting about the infantile love and resentment she was trying to conceal through her political behavior. The need for authority,
when it is not understood, and the confused resistance to authority are the roots from which the totalitarian attitude may grow. Whenever the father-leader fails, he sets
up a pattern of future trouble with authority. Instead of a mature relationship with his fellow men, the child becomes an adult who is forced to choose the tyrannical
totalitarian tie to keep his inner tensions in check.
Whenever there is parental conflict, the child grows into an adult burdened with conflicts who may be eager to accept the simple solutions totalitarianism offers. Whenever
there is parental compulsion, which gives the child no chance to develop its own attitudes and evaluations, the child grows up into a conforming adult, whose entire life
may be spent in a search for outside authority, for someone to tell him what to do.
XI. MENTAL CONTAGION AND MASS DELUSION
During disturbed times such as these, the thoughts of everyone follow the diplomatic play going on at the various political conferences. It would be worth while to
investigate whether it is possible for leaders of nations to arrive at a common understanding as a result of mutual exchange of words, ideas, and the negotiating of
treaties. Yet, the various cultures in the world and the different ideologies not only speak different languages, but even their ways of thinking are different.
Unobtrusively, our personal past and our cultural environment creep into our thinking habits. Our feelings and thoughts are conditioned and coerced by various social
influences.
It is already possible to bring to the surface some of the illusions and prejudices people have about one another. We may say that the special environments in which people
develop and the habits they build up foster subtle illusions and delusions in persons, of which they are, for the most part, unaware. Through research in the field,
anthropology and psychology have been able to compare different ideologies in people by observing the growth of the wholesome and the unwholesome -- in the child, in
groups, in tribes, and, lastly, in nations. The findings call to our attention the difficult art of argument in situations where there is scarcely any common ground of
communication and understanding.
In a study on mental coercion we have to trace some of these mass psychological influences which condition our attitude in life.
The Affirmation of My Own Errors
The lie I tell ten times gradually becomes a half truth to me. And as I continue to tell my half-truth to others, it becomes my cherished delusion.
We rediscover this phenomenon every day in that huge laboratory of human relations we call psychological counseling and psychotherapy. Let us look at just one simple
example, the case of a perfectly healthy child who decides one day that she doesn't want to go to school because schoolwork seems so very difficult. So she tells her
mother that she has a headache, and mother agrees to let her stay at home. Thus the girl avoids the schoolwork she dreads and gets the additional gratification of her
mother's solicitous and tender nursing.
The next time our little girl wants to stay home it is easier to pretend she has a headache -- and the third time it is easier still. Gradually the girl herself begins to
believe in her recurrent illness. Her conscience bothered her the first time she lied, but by now her initial lie has become an ingenuous truth to her. By the time our
heroine becomes a grown woman she will have to consult with a doctor about her constantly recurring headaches. Doctor and patient will have to spend many hours untangling
the web of halflies, innuendoes, and self-pitying complaints until the patient rediscovers that her headaches all began on that one day she didn't want to go to school.
Delusional headaches afflict the world itself. Political demagoguery is, to some extent, a problem in our country. The particular form this demagoguery takes is only a
passing phase, and when our current dragons and inner phantoms have been laid to rest, the eternal demagogue may arise anew. He will accuse others of conspiracy in order
to prove his own importance. He will try to intimidate those who are neither so iron-fisted nor so hotheaded as he, and temporarily he will drag some people into the web
of his delusions. Perhaps he will wear a mantle of martyrdom to arouse the tears of the weak-hearted. With his emotionalism and suspicion, he will shatter the trust of
citizens in one another. His delusions of grandeur will infect those insecure souls who hope that some of his dictatorial glamour will rub off on them.
Unfortunately the problem of delusion has been studied almost exclusively in terms of its pathological manifestations. The psychiatrist who has encountered delusions of
grandeur in his patients has in the past lacked the philosophical and sociological background necessary to enable him to form comparisons between his patients' delusional
systems and mass delusion in the world. In dealing with patients suffering from megalomania or persecution mania, he has tended to rely too much on hypotheses which
explain pathological delusions as the product of anatomical changes in the individual brain; he has not given enough attention to the question of whether or not these
phenomena are in any way related to an abnormal way of thinking in a physically normal person.
Since the growth of anthropology and the social sciences in the last decades, new light has been thrown on the subject of mass feelings and mass delusion. Obviously these
are not phenomena which a pathologist can examine under a microscope. They demand a knowledge of history and social psychology and of all the studies which concern
interhuman relations and man's collective thinking.
To arrive at a clinical stage of study of this subject, it is necessary to divest oneself of various fixed philosophical ideas which have dominated scientific thought
since Aristotle. There is, for example, the doctrine of the identity of all thinking processes and the possible universality of human understanding. This is essentially
founded on the belief that all human beings think in the same way. But against this hypothesis is the observable truth that philosophers themselves have the utmost
difficulty in reaching mutual understanding. This may be largely due to the fact that different men have different methods and standards of thinking. For centuries,
science has adopted the Aristotelian dictum that most thought is carried on according to the established rules of logic, which apply in the same way as the laws of nature.
It was the philosopher Francis Bacon who first pointed out, in his theory of idols, that although the laws of logic and clear thinking certainly exist, men may or may not
make use of them; depending on the emotional circumstances, "thoughts are often the theatrical curtains to conceal personal passions and reactions." In this statement the
philosopher who lived during Shakespeare's time might almost be attacking the seeming logic of modern demagoguery. Since the Renaissance, therefore, it has been
acknowledged that human feelings and personal inclinations mold and direct thought, and this point of view rather early found its most moving expression in the works of
Spinoza and Pascal. When we come into contact with the phenomena of collective passion and mass delusion, it is impossible to keep modern psychology out of the picture
whether we look at it philosophically or politically. For, when examining this problem, we are immediately confronted with the question, Do these disquieting phenomena in
group life, which lead to so much mutual misunderstanding, arise from the fact that the group is in a particular, immature, and adolescent phase of psychological and
political development?
It will be illuminating and may help us answer the question if we study briefly the history of the growth of consciousness and awareness in the individual mind as it
passes through successive stages from infancy to maturity, since we can, in fact, find a parallel between such stages of growth in the individual and the human group.
Stages of Thinking and Delusion*
[NOTE: Here I follow in part the classification of S. Ferenczi and that of my own book on DELUSION and MASS DELUSION.]
The psyche is constantly confronted with and communicating with the outside world, and at every phase of an individual's development that world and its events are
experienced differently.
Although different scientists have drawn different conclusions about the various phases and their implications, the very recognition of change and growth of personal
outlook is one of the most important scientific findings in psychology and is agreed on by all psychologists. Let me briefly explain here the developmental approach to
human psychology. It is not the only one, but it will serve to illustrate the tremendous impact of immature and delusional thinking on our final opinions.
Developmental psychology -- as studied in children and primitives -- posits at the origin of thinking, in both the individual and the race, a hallucinatory stage of the
mind, in which there is no experience of difference between the inside and the outside world; the mental separation and distantiation between the self and the world has
not yet taken place. The psyche is felt to be omnipotent -- all that is experienced inside the self is attributed to the universe as well and is imagined to be part of
that universe.
According to developmental psychology, the infant experiences the world in this way, and in certain types of insanity the adult will revert to this hallucinatory stage.
Yet, even mature man does not succeed completely in separating internal fantasy from outside reality, and often he thinks that his private and subjective moods are caused
by some external actuality. In the next stage, that of animistic thinking, there is still a partial sense of oneness between the ego and the world. The individual's inner
experience, his fears, his feelings, are projected onto seeming causative agents in the outside world. The outside world is a continual demonic threat to him. The child
who bumps against the table projects onto that table a hostile living power, and hits back. The primitive tribesman, hunted by beasts of prey, attributes to the animal he
feared a divine power, that of a hostile god. The entire outside world may in fact be peopled with the fears of men. In times of panic and fear, we all may populate our
neighborhood with nonexistent traitors or fifth columnists. Our animistic thinking is continually busy accusing others of what actually occurs inside our own minds.
Nowadays there are no devils and ghosts in trees and in wild animals; they have made their homes in the various scapegoats created by dictators and demagogues.
The third stage is that of magical thinking in which there is still a sense of intimate connection between man and his outside world. However, man places himself more in
opposition to the world than in union with it. He wants to negotiate with the mysterious powers around him. Magic is in fact the simplest strategy of man. He has
discovered that he can manipulate the world with signs and gestures or sometimes with real actions or changes. He erects totem poles and sacrificial blocks; he makes
talismans and strange medicines. He uses words as powerful signs to change the world. He develops a ritual to satisfy his need for coming to terms with the outside world.
Which of us has not felt a sudden desire to count cobblestones or is not the jealous possessor of an amulet or some other secret token whose power would be lost if its
existence were known to others?
Immature as they are, these tokens serve to build up happiness and a good life. We all still live in the world of magic and are caught in the delusion of happy
manipulation of nature. The modern tribe drives around in mechanized cars and becomes a megalomaniac sorcerer of the wheel. Millions of victims are brought to the altar of
the god Speed because of our hidden delusion that frenzied rapidity prolongs life. The engine and the gadget have replaced the more mysterious amulet of earlier days.
Knowledge is still in the service of power instead of in the service of understanding.
In the last phase of mental development, man makes a complete separation between himself and the outside world. He not only lives with things and tries to manipulate them,
but he also lives in opposition to them. In this phase of mature reality confrontation, man becomes an observer of his own life. He recognizes the abyss of his own being.
He sees his body and mind as separate from the world. With hands, ears, eyes, and his controlling mind, he confronts reality. He steps back from the world and observes it.
He is, in fact, the only animal that walks erect, straightforwardly facing the world. He is the only animal that uses his hands and his senses as verifying instruments.
Gradually his own mind-body becomes an instrument whose drives he may accept or reject. Only man is able to see his drives and instincts as either dangerous or useful. Man
not only knows an externally imposed fear, but he knows an inner fear, fear of losing the inner controls he has acquired at so high a price. With arms and hands man
reaches out not only toward the outside which he once hoped to conquer with magic gestures as a baby does, but also he knowingly reaches out toward an inside world. Mature
man lives between an inner and an outer world.
There is something tragic about this laborious process of becoming conscious of a separate inner and outer reality. In becoming mature, man awakens from a sweet primitive
dream in which he was part of an individual whole, part of a nirvanic world of equanimity. The sense of lost unity with the universe lingers on, and in moments of mass
tension, or in times of crisis, he reaches toward that ancient experience of impersonal, irresponsible bliss.
Utter passivity or self-destruction, artificial ecstasy obtained by means of drugs, the suicidal wish for eternal sleep -- all are devices by which man hopes to fulfill
that eternal yearning. At what stage in connection with these developments of human experience may we speak of delusion? When the member of a primitive tribe placates the
mysterious and hostile world by prayer to his totem animal, we do not call this delusion; but if a man who has attained to a more advanced stage of thinking relapses into
such a primitive habit of thought, then it is possible to call this falling back (retrogression) a delusion.
The Loss of Verifiable Reality
Delusion we may thus tentatively define as the loss of an independent, verifiable reality, with a consequent relapse into a more primitive stage of awareness. Just as the
young woman we spoke about earlier began to believe in and suffer from her headaches, so the man who sells his private fantasy first as a rumor and then as a factual truth
gradually loses his awareness that his initial statements were in fact deceits, and his delusion becomes a kind of permanent petrification of his original primitive
wishful thinking.
There are several factors which promote deluded thinking. Retrogression and primitivization may occur as a result of physical disease, particularly diseases of the brain,
and it is with this type of delusions that psychiatrists deal. Many brain diseases put out of operation the brain cortex, the organ which developed last in the
evolutionary process and which makes us aware and controls our thinking. When this disturbance of function happens, genetically older types of brain functioning have to
take over.
Most of the causes of delusions are not purely organic, however. The same effect of regression may be produced by hypnosis and mass hypnosis, which, by dislocating the
higher forms of alert consciousness, reduce the subject to the primitive stage of collective participation and of oneness experience. If awareness and reality
confrontation become rigid and automatic, if man does not look for alert and repeated verifications of what he finds in the world, he may develop delusions -- ideas not
adapted to the reality situation. Apparently the human being requires constant confrontation and verification with various aspects of reality if he is to remain alive and
alert. When experience is petrified into dogma, the dogma itself stands in the way of new verification and of new truth. The delusion of a nation that calls itself the
"chosen" country makes it harder for that nation to collaborate with other nations.
How deeply involved the process of thought control is with the general formation of ideas in our time can be shown by the following experience. After the First World War,
I made the acquaintance of a German philosopher dedicated to the idealistic philosophy of his country. Germany went through a creative phase, new ideas arose of fraternity
and world peace. Germany, the defeated country, would show its spiritual power. During our vacations we walked together through the sunny mountains of Ticino and devoted
our philosophical conversation to the eternal yearnings of mankind for harmony and friendship. We became friends and wrote to each other about our mutual work, till the
shadow of totalitarianism came over his country. At first he was skeptical and even critical about Nazism. Our correspondence diminished, and when he gradually became
gleichgeschaltet and a member of the party, the final mental cleavage followed. I never heard about him any more.
So many philosophers surrender their theoretical thinking under the impact of powerful mass emotions. The reason lies not only in anxiety and submissiveness. It is a much
deeper emotional process. People want to speak the language of their country and fatherland. In order to breathe, they have to identify with the ideological clichés of
their surroundings. Spiritually they cannot stand alone. Stefan Zweig wrote during the First World War that this inner process of speaking along with the chauvinistic
voices around him was experienced by him as a deep inner conflict. "Ich hatte den Willen nicht mehr gerecht zu sein. (I did not have the will any more to be just to the
others.)"
Mass Delusion
It is interesting to note that the phenomenon of institutionalized mass delusion has so far received little scientific treatment, although the term is bandied about
wherever the problems of political propaganda are discussed. But science has shied away from scrutinizing the collective mental aberration we call mass delusion when it is
connected with present-day affairs; it is the historical examples, such as witchcraft and certain forms of mass hysteria, that have been examined in great detail.
In our era of warring ideologies, in a time of battle for man's mind, this question demands attention. What is mass delusion? How does it arise? What can we do to combat
it? The fact that I have made an analogy between the totalitarian frame of mind and the disease of mental withdrawal known as schizophrenia indicates that I consider the
totalitarian ideology delusional and the totalitarian frame of mind a pathological distortion that may occur in anyone. When we tentatively define delusion as the loss of
an independent, verifiable reality, with a consequent relapse into a more primitive state of awareness, we can see how the phenomenon of totalitarianism itself can be
considered delusional.
For it is delusional (unadapted to reality) to think of man as an obedient machine. It is delusional to deny his dynamic nature and to try to arrest all his thinking and
acting at the infantile stage of submission to authority. It is delusional to believe that there is any one simple answer to the many problems with which life confronts
us, and it is delusional to believe that man is so rigid, so unyielding in his structure that he has no ambivalences, no doubts, no conflicts, no warring drives within
him.
Where thinking is isolated without free exchange with other minds and can no longer expand, delusion may follow. Whenever ideas are compartmentalized, behind and between
curtains, the process of continual alert confrontation of facts and reality is hampered. The system freezes, becomes rigid, and dies of delusion.
Examples of this can be found in very small communities cut off from the world. On fishing vessels which have been at sea a long time, contagious religious mania coupled
with ritual murder has been known to break out. In small village communities there are instances of collective delusion, often under the influence of one obsessed person.
The same thing happens in the more gigantic totalitarian communities, cut off from contact with the rest of the world. Is this not what happened in Hitler Germany, where
free verification and self-correction were forbidden? Indeed, we can show that historically this is the case with every secluded civilization. If there is not interchange
with other people, the civilization degenerates, becomes the victim of its own delusions, and dies.
We can phrase the concept of delusion in a different way. It is a more primitive, distorted form of thinking found in groups or individuals, looked at only from their
limited viewpoint. Delusional thinking doesn't know the concept of delusional thinking. The fakir lying on his bed of nails would be called a deluded man if he exhibited
his devotion on Fifth Avenue, but among his own people his behavior is considered saintly and eminently sane. A member of a primitive tribe will not see in the ceremony of
devil exorcism or a revival meeting an instance of mass delusion. But a man who has passed through this stage of mental development to a level of greater perspective and
awareness will recognize that delusional notions lie behind such ceremonies.
Whether or not we are able to detect delusion when it appears depends entirely on circumstances, upon the state of civilization in which we live, upon the groups and the
social class to which we belong. For delusion and retrogression are terms which imply a special social and intellectual level of awareness. That is why it is so difficult
to detect the delusions and primitive rituals in our own midst. Our present-day civilization is full of mass delusions, prejudices, and collective errors which can be
recognized easily if viewed from above, but which cannot be detected if they are seen from within. While the delusion of witchcraft has been banished, we have never freed
ourselves from the delusion of cultural or racial inferiority and superiority. Medieval mass obsessions such as tarantism and St. Vitus's dance are little known now among
Western nations; in their place we have mass meetings with shouting crowds expressing in delusional ecstasy their affiliation to some political delusion. Instead of the
dance fury, we have the raving frenzy of the motor, or the passive peeping contagion of the television screen.
As we saw in the chapter on Totalitaria, mass delusion can be induced. It is simply a question of organizing and manipulating collective feelings in the proper way. If one
can isolate the mass, allow no free thinking, no free exchange, no outside corrective, and can hypnotize the group daily with noises, with press and radio and television,
with fear and pseudo-enthusiasms, any delusion can be instilled. People will begin to accept the most primitive and inappropriate acts. Outside occurrences are usually the
triggers that unleash hidden hysterical and delusional complexes in people. Collective madness justifies the repressed personal madness in each individual. That is why it
is so easy to sloganize people into the mass hysteria of war. The outside enemy who is attacked by vituperative slogans is merely the scapegoat and substitute for all the
anger and anxiety that lives inside the harassed people.
Delusions, carefully implanted, are difficult to correct. Reasoning no longer has value; for the lower, more animal type of thinking becomes deaf to any thought on a
higher level. If one reasons with a totalitarian who has been impregnated with official clichés, he will sooner or later withdraw into his fortress of collective
totalitarian thinking. The mass delusion that gives him his feelings of belonging, of greatness, of omnipotence, is dearer to him than his personal awareness and
understanding.
The lonely prisoner in a totalitarian prison camp is the more easily compelled to surrender gradually to the collective thinking of his guardians when part of his own
infantile thinking has been conditioned to give in to strong suggestive power. He has to communicate with his guardians lest he be delivered to his own private delusions.
Only a few remain their true selves in that heroic battle.
The situation of our prisoners of war in Korea, who lived there for months and years, cannot be studied without taking into account the atmosphere of mass delusion. In a
sphere filled with rumors without an opportunity to verify the facts, the mind is ever on the alert, but its observations are distorted. The process of mass brainwashing,
with continual propaganda, made it very difficult for the individual to observe his comrades objectively. In such surroundings, it is easy to make an innocent scapegoat
for all the suffering of the group -- and facts can easily be hallucinated in such an atmosphere of mass contagion.
In one of the prison camps, I had to make a report about a man who was exorcized and even attacked by the others because of his brute homosexual behavior. During the
investigation, no fact, no victim, could be reported. Rumors there were plenty, expressing hatred toward a lonely, sarcastic, unsocial being, who had aroused the latent
homosexual feelings of the other campers, thereby attacking their manliness. No P.O.W. accused of collaboration with the enemy should be convicted without a study having
been made of the rumors rampant in his camp.
In totalitarian surroundings, hardly anyone keeps his thinking free of contagion, and nearly everyone becomes, albeit temporarily, the victim of delusion.
The Danger of Mental Contagion
Indeed, there is a continual danger of mental contagion. People are in constant psychic exchange with one another. As a country, we have to ask what dangerous mental
pollution may come to us from the other side of the border.
Let me make it crystal clear that I am far from insensitive to the danger of totalitarian subversion and aggression with which we are now faced. My own experiences with
the Nazis made it painfully obvious to me that these dangers must not be minimized. As a psychologist, too, I am deeply aware of the contagious nature of totalitarian
propaganda and of the fact that free citizens in a free country must be on their guard to protect themselves. But we must learn to fight these dangers in democratic ways;
and I am afraid that too often in our fight against them we may take a leaf from the totalitarian book. Let me cite but one example of this.
The Feinberg Law in New York State, enacted in order to protect children against the dissemination of dangerous political propaganda, is partly based on this concept of
mental contagion. It aims. to protect the schools against the subtle infiltration of subversive ideas. It seems at first sight like a simple solution: you just stop,
subversion before it can affect the impressionable minds of our children.
But the fact remains that it presents all kinds of psychological, difficulties. In our fear of being polluted, we create norms and, schemes against which we measure the
acceptability of unorthodox ideas, and we forget that the presence of minority ideas, acceptable or not, is one of the ways in which we protect ourselves against the
creeping growth of conformist majority thinking in us. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in his dissenting opinion on the Feinberg Law* made this point:
This is another of those rapidly multiplying legislative enactments which make it dangerous ... to think or say anything except what a transient majority happens to
approve at the moment. Basically these laws rest on the belief that Government should supervise and limit the flow of ideas into the minds of men. The tendency of such
governmental policy is to mold people into a common intellectual pattern. Quite a different governmental policy rests on the belief that Government should leave the mind
and spirit of man absolutely free. Such a governmental policy encourages varied intellectual outlooks in the belief that the best views will prevail. This policy of
freedom is in my judgment embodied in the First Amendment and made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth.
Because of this policy, public officials cannot be constitutionally vested with powers to select the ideas people can think about, censor the public views they can
express, or choose the persons or groups people can associate with. Public officials with such powers are not public servants; they are public masters.
We cannot prevent one mental contagion through enforcing another. The only way we can give man the strength to withstand mental infection is through giving him the utmost
freedom in the exchange of ideas. People have to learn to ask questions without demanding that they be answered immediately. The free man is the man who learns to live
with problems in the hope that they will be solved sometime -- either in his own generation or the next. Man's curiosity and inquisitiveness have to be stimulated. We have
to fight man's growing fear of thinking for himself, of being original, and of being willing to fight for what he believes in. On the other hand, we also have to learn to
resist ideas. Governments may be overthrown not only by physical violence, but also by mental violence, by suggestive and menticidal penetration of young minds, by rigid
conditioning, regimentation, and prohibition of dissent.
The Explanation Delusion
One of the most coercive delusions is the explanation delusion, the need to explain and interpret everything because the person has a simple ideology in his pocket.
Unwittingly the victim of this delusion wraps the magic cloak of omniscience around himself, and this provokes awe and submission in those men who have a strong need for
rational explanation of phenomena they do not understand. The quack, for instance, with his gesture of omniscience pushes his victim into a kind of nothingness so that he
feels himself become smaller and smaller in relation to the great mysteries of the world. It is this compulsive need to be the wise guy and the magician who knows all the
answers that we so often find in the totalitarian world, and nobody, your author included, is completely free from seizing on these premature answers.
It is among the intelligentsia, and especially among those who like to play with thoughts and concepts without really taking part in the cultural endeavors of their epoch,
that we often find the glib compulsion to explain everything and to understand nothing. Their retreat into intellectual isolation and ivory -- tower philosophy is a source
of much hostility and suspicion from those who receive the stones of intellectualism instead of the bread of understanding. The intelligentsia has a special role in our
democratic world as teachers of ideas, but every teaching is an emotional relation, a matter of loving your students. It is a moving among them and taking part in their
doubts in order to share together the adventure of common exploration of the unknown.
Paradoxically, we may say that we need the experience with the totalitarians if only to discover a reflection of their rigidities in our own democratic system.
The Liberation from Magic Thinking
In our Western civilization, the growth of the mass media of communication has increased the influence of collective pressure on both our prejudices and our unbiased
thinking. We live in a world of constant noise which captures our minds even when we are not aware of it.
Already we have in our society the problem of the lonely, unheard voices. I am convinced that there are many wise men among us whose voices and learning would help us to
correct that part of our thinking which is delusional. But their wise words are shouted down by an excess of noise from elsewhere. In our society a man can not simply
communicate his wisdom and insight any more; in order to be heard, he has to advertise and fortify it with megacyclic power and official labels. An organization must stand
behind him and must make sure that he will be rightly timed so that there will be listeners to receive his message. He must have an acknowledged label and official
diploma; otherwise his voice is lost. To correct mass delusion is one of the most difficult tasks of democracy. Democracy pleads for freedom of thought, and this means
that it demands the right of all men to test all forms of collective emotion and collective thinking. This testing is possible only if constant personal and collective
self-criticism is encouraged.
Democracy must face this task of preserving mobility of thought in order to free itself from blind fears and magic. The clash and mutual impact of a variety of opinions
which are characteristic of democracy may not directly produce truth, but they prepare the way. At this very moment the whole world dances around a delusion, around the
magic idea that the material and military power behind an argument will bring us nearer to the truth, and nearer to safety. Yet, one push of the button and the atomic
missiles may lead us all to mutual suicide.
In a world of warring and contrasting thoughts and delusions, the solution lies in the delineation of frontiers, of awareness of mutual limits. This agreement on what it
is we disagree about is the first step to understanding.
XII. TECHNOLOGY INVADES OUR MINDS
It is rather difficult to describe the onslaught on our minds made by the intrusion of technical thinking. This is so because technology has such contrasting influences.
The influence can be a blessing, making us more independent of threatening forces of nature; but at the same time the tool and the machine can dominate us. This inner
antinomy of technization we must master-will we not otherwise be dragged down into the maelstrom of ever-increasing technical development to final atomic catastrophe! The
peculiar paradox of technology lies in this: gradually the well-being of the machine (autocar, factory) assumes greater importance and value than the wellbeing of man and
mankind.
The growth of technology, of the manifold mechanical instruments in the services of our fantasies, has thrown mankind back to an infantile dream of unlimited power. There
he sits, the little man, in his room with various gadgets around him. Just pushing a button changes the world for him. What might! And what still further power he
envisions! Yet what mental danger.
The growth of technology may confuse man's struggle for mental maturity. The practical application of science and tools originally were meant to give man more security
against outside physical forces. It safeguarded his inner world; it freed time and energy for meditation, concentration, play, and creative thinking. Gradually the very
tools man made took possession of him and pushed him back into serfdom instead of toward liberation. Man became drunk with technical skill; he became a technology addict.
Technology calls forth from people, unknown to themselves, an infantile, servile attitude. We have nearly all become slaves of our cars. Technical security paradoxically
may increase cowardice. There is almost no challenge any more to face the forces of nature outside us and the forces of instinct within us. Because the very technical
world has become for us that magical challenge which nature originally afforded.
It is the very subservience to technology that constitutes an attack on thinking. The child that is confronted from early youth with all modern devices and gadgets of
technology-the radio, the motor, the television set, the film-is unwittingly conditioned to millions of associations, sounds, pictures, movements, in which he takes no
part. He has no need to think about them. They are too directly connected with his senses. Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he
takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation-the
senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. The child doesn't learn to question his world any more; the screen offers him answers-ready-made. Even his books offer him
no human encounter-nobody reads to him; the screen people tell him their story in their way.
Technical knowledge forced upon him in this way makes no demand that he think about what he sees and hears. Conversation is becoming a lost art. The machine age rushes on,
leaving no time for quiet reading and encounter with the creative arts. We do see a counter-current, however, in the do-it-yourself movement. Here we probably see a
resurgence of the creative spirit and a challenge to the engineer who creates the robot.
In an over-technical world, body and mind no longer exist. Life becomes only a part of a greater technical and chemical thought process. Mathematical equations intrude
into human relations. We learn, for example, through the doctrine of guilt by association, the simple equation that the enemies of our enemies have to be our friends and
that the friends of our enemies have to be our enemies-as if only simple addition of positive and negative signs exist by which to evaluate human beings.
The Creeping Coercion by Technology
Radio and television catch the mind directly, leaving children no time for calm, dialectic conversation with their books. The view from the screen doesn't allow for the
freedom-arousing mutuality of communication and discussion. Conversation is the lost art. These inventions steal time and steal self-awareness. What technology gives with
one hand-easiness and physical security-it takes away with the other. It has taken away affectionate relationships between men. The depersonalized Christmas card with its
printed signature, the form letter, the very typewriter are examples of mechanical proxies. Technical intrusion usurps human relationships, as if people no longer had to
give one another attention and love any more. The bottle replaces Mother's breast, the nickel in the automat replaces Mother's preparation of sandwiches. The impersonal
machine replaces human gesture and mutuality. Children educated in this way prefer to be alone, with fantasies to escape into and gadgets to play with. Mechanization
pushes them into mental withdrawal.
Technology suggests and creates the feeling of man's omnipotence on the one hand, but on the other, the smallness of man, his weakness and inferiority compared with the
might of machinery. The power of man's creative mind is disguised behind dreams of social machines and world mechanics. Mechanics in political manoeuvrings are
overestimated and go beyond reason. We use intelligence and counterintelligence, trickery and political machines, forgetting the "emotional reasons" which underlie human
brilliance and stupidity. There exists a relationship between naive belief in technology only and a naive belief in human intelligence, logic, and innocence that was part
of the optimistic liberalist feeling prevalent in the nineteenth century. We see in both beliefs the denial of the irrational depths of the mind.
What is the ultimate result of technical progress? Does it drive people more and more to the fear and despair brought on by a love-empty push-button world? Does it create
a megalomaniac happiness won by remote control of other people? Does it deliver people to the unsatisfying emptiness of leisure hours filled with boredom? Is the ultimate
result living by proxy, experiencing the world only from the movie or television screen, instead of living and labouring and creating one's own?
In cases of television addiction, I observed the following points:
The television fascination is a real addiction; that is to say, television can become habit-forming, the influence of which cannot be stopped without active
therapeutic interference.
It arouses precociously sexual and emotional turmoil, seducing children to peep again and again, though at the same time they are confused about what they see.
It continuously provides satisfaction for aggressive fantasies (western scenes, crime scenes) with subsequent guilt feelings since the child unconsciously tends to
identify with the criminal, despite all the heroic avengers.
It is a stealer of time.
Preoccupation with television prevents active inner creativity children and adults merely sit and watch the pseudo-world of the screen instead of confronting their
own difficulties. If there is a conflict with parents who have no time for their youngsters, the children surrender all the more willingly to the screen. The
screen talks to them, plays with them, takes them into a world of magic fantasies. For them, television takes the place of a grownup and is forever patient. This
the child translates into love.
As in all mass media, we have to be aware of the hypnotizing, seductive action of any all-penetrating form of communication. People become fascinated even when they do not
want to look on. We must keep in mind that every step in personal growth needs isolation, needs inner conversation and deliberation and a reviewing with the self.
Television hampers this process and prepares the mind more easily for collectivization and cliché thinking. It persuades onlookers to think in terms of mass values. It
intrudes into family life and cuts off the more subtle interfamilial communication.
The world of tomorrow will witness a tremendous battle between technology and psychology. It will be a fight of technology versus nature, of systematic conditioning versus
creative spontaneity. The veneration of the machine implies the turning of mechanical knowledge into power, into push-button power. Mechanical instruments of destruction
such as the H-bomb have translated the primitive human urge for destruction into large-scale scientific killing. Now, this destructive potential may become an easy tool
for any potentate crazy for power.
Driven by technology, our own world has become more interdependent, and through our dependence on technical knowledge and devices, we ourselves are in danger of delivering
our people to the more brutal totalitarians. This is the actual dilemma of our civilization. The machine that became a tool of human organization and made possible the
conquest of nature, has acquired a dictatorial position. It has forced people into automatic responses, into rigid patterns and destructive habits.
The machine has aroused an ever-increasing yearning for speed, for frenzied accomplishments. There exists a psychological relationship between speedomania (frenzied
swiftness) and ruthlessness. Behind the wheel in a fast car, a driver becomes drunk with power. Here again we see the denial of the concept of natural, steady growth.
Ideas and methods need time to mature. The machine forces results prematurely: evolution is turned into revolution of wheels. The machine is the denial that progress has
to grow within us before it can be realized outside ourselves. Mechanization takes away the belief in mental struggle, the belief that problem-solving needs time and
repeated attempts. Without such beliefs, the platitude will take over, the digest and the hasty memorandum. A mechanized world believes only in condensation of problems
and not in a continuous dialectic struggle between man and the questions he construes.
One of the fallacies of modern technique is its direction toward greater efficiency. With less energy, more has to be produced. This principle may be right for the
machine, but is not true for the human organism. In order to become strong and to remain strong, man has to learn to overcome resistances, to face challenges, and to test
himself again and again. Luxury causes mental and physical atrophy.
The devaluation of the individual human brain, replacing it by mechanical computers, also suggests the totalitarian system for which its citizens are compelled to become
more and more the servile tools. The inhuman "system" becomes the aim, a system that is the product of technocracy and dehumanization and which may result in organized
brutality and the crushing of any personal morality. In a mechanical society a set of values are forcibly imprinted on the unconscious mind, the way Pavlov conditioned his
dogs.
Our brains then no longer need to serve us or develop the thinking process; machines will do this for us. In technocracy, emphasis is on behaviour free of emotions and
creativity. We speak of "electric brains," forgetting that actually creative minds are behind these brains and their frailties. For some engineers, minds have become no
more than electric lamps in a totalitarian laboratory. Between man and his fellow man there has been interposed a tremendous, cold, paper force, a nameless bureaucracy of
rules and tools. Mechanization has brought into being the mysterious "pimp" in human relations, the man in between, the mechanical bureaucrat, who is powerful but
impersonal. He has become a new source of magic fear.
In a technocratic world every moral problem gets repressed and is displaced by a technical or statistical evaluation. The problems of sound and speedy mathematics serve to
overthrow ethics. If, for instance, one investigates the inner life of the guards of the concentration camps and their inner troubles and tribulations, one understands why
those jailers gave so much thought to the technical problem of how to get the murdered corpses of their victims out of the gas chambers as soon as possible. The words
"clean" and "practical" and "pure" acquired for them a different dimension than our usual one. They thought in chemical and statistical terms -and stuck to them-in order
not to be aware of their deeper moral guilt.
The mind regarded as a computing machine is the result of compulsive rationalization and generalization of the world. This has been so since the time of early Greek
thinkers. This concept implies denial or minimization of emotional life and of the value of marginal experiences. In such a philosophy, spontaneity is never understood-nor
creativity and historical coincidence, nor the miracles of human communication as revealed by telepathy. Technology based on this concept is cold and without moral
standards of living, without faith and "feeling at home" in our own world. It continually stimulates new dissatisfaction and the production of new luxury without knowing
why. It stimulates greediness and laziness without emphasizing restraint and the art of living. Indeed, technology as a goal instead of a means gives us the fiction of
simple equality instead of the continual pursuit of freedom, diversity, and human dignity.
Technology disregards the fact that our scientific view of the world is only a gradual correction of our mythical and pre-scientific view. Technology, once a product of
courageous fantasy and vision, threatens to kill that same vision, without which no human progress is possible. The idol, technology, must become a tool again and not the
omnipotent magician per se, who drags us into the abyss.
The industrial development in our Western culture created a new problem, that of making man more distant from the rhythm of nature. First industrial man was tied to
factory and engine, and then technological progress increased leisure time, bringing a new question: leisure for what?
The increased growth of time, and time space, and of the sizes of towns, and the reduction of distance through the increased means of transport affected deeply the roots
of our feelings of belonging and security. The family-the atom of society-often became disrupted, and sometimes even deteriorated. The raving frenzy of the family car on
Sunday replaced the quiet being together of family groups in mutual exchanges of affection and wisdom.
Only when man learns to be mentally independent of technology -that means when he learns to do without-will he also learn not to be overwhelmed and swept away by it.
People have to become lonely Robinson Crusoe's first, before they can really use and appreciate the advantages of technology.
Our education has to learn to present simple, natural challenges and needs to the child in order to immunize him against the paralyzing and lazy-making tendencies of our
technicized epoch.
The Paradox of Technology
Paradoxically enough, technical security may increase cowardice. The technical world we ourselves have created has replaced the very real challenge which nature originally
afforded man's imagination, and man is no longer compelled to face the forces of nature outside himself and the forces of instinct within him. Our luxurious habits and
complicated civilization have a tendency to appeal more to our mental passivity than to our spiritual alertness. Mentally passive people, without basic morals and
philosophy, are easily lured into political adventures which are in conflict with the ethics of a free, democratic society.
The assembly line alienates man from his work, from the product of his own labour. No longer does man produce the things man needs; the machine produces for him. Engineers
and scientists tell us that in the near future automation-running factories without human help-will become a reality, and human labour and the human being himself will
become almost completely superfluous. How can man have self-esteem when he becomes the most expendable part of his world? The ethical and moral values which are the
foundation of the democratic society are based on the view that human life and human welfare are the earth's greatest good. But in a society in which the machine takes
over completely, all our traditional values can be destroyed. In venerating the machine, we denigrate ourselves; we begin to believe that might makes right, that the human
being has no intrinsic worth, and that life itself is only a part of a greater technical and chemical thought process.
Man's progressive retreat toward a mechanized, push-button world is best illustrated by his love for automobiles and other machines. The moment he can retreat to his car
seat and direct the world by remote control, he dreams an old, long-forgotten childhood dream of tremendous omnipotence. Man's servility to his automobile and other
machines takes something away from his individuality. We are hypnotized by the idea of remote control. The wheels and the push-buttons give us a false sense of freedom.
Yet, at the same time, the creative part of man resists the machine's cold, mechanical intrusion into his inner freedom.
As I drive, every time I pass something beautiful along the road, be it an exhilarating view, a museum, a river, a tall tree, at that very moment a kind of tense conflict
is aroused in me. Shall I stop the car and drink in the beauty around me or shall I give in to my machine and keep racing along?
For the psychologist and biologist such behaviour raises important questions. How will it end? Will man's tendency to become more and more an immobile technological embryo
finally get the better of him and his civilization? The Dutch anatomist Bolk - one of my teachers-long ago described the regressive retardation in growth characteristic of
human beings as compared to the rapid development of the higher primates. As a result of the fetalization and anatomical retardation of man, he acquired his erect posture,
the use of his grasping and verifying hands, the possibility of speech. This long youth made it possible for him to learn, and to build up his own thought world.
Since the Renaissance and the advent of modern science, the scientist himself has been forced to retreat more and more to his technological womb-his laboratory, his study,
his armchair. He has done this for the sake of greater intellectual concentration, but as a result he gradually became more isolated from living people - unobtrusively.
Only in the last decades has the scientist begun to come in contact with social problems more and more, partly forced to do so by the growth of social science.
From his magic corner, the scientist has learned how to control the world with his inventions and mental dictates. Increasingly the population has been seduced by the idea
of remote control. The arsenal of buttons and gadgets leads us into the magic dream world of omnipotent power. Our technical civilization gives us greater ease, but it is
challenge and uneasiness that make for character and strength.
The repeated outlet in work, through which we not only sublimate our aggressions but also refine and recondition our instinctual aims, is grossly endangered by technical
automatization. There exists an intimate relation between the rhythm of work and the rhythm of creation. In a world of mere leisure and no work discipline, our unleashed
instincts would gain again. It is the alternating rhythm of work and leisure time that refines our enjoyment of leisure.
A conference in New Haven sponsored by the Society for Applied Anthropology on the effects of automation on the workers* was told that the chief complaint of
the workers was that increasing mental tension supplanted muscular fatigue. The strain of watching and controlling machines makes man jumpy, he develops gradually the
feeling that the machine controls him instead of he. [* The New York Times, December 29, 1955]
Several of my patients looked at machines as something alive, dangerously alive because machines had no love or other feelings for the man who used them.
The dangerous paradox in the boost of living standards is that in promoting ease, it promotes idleness, and laziness. If the mind is not prepared to fill leisure time with
new challenges and new endeavours, new initiative and new activities, the mind falls asleep and becomes an automaton. The god Automation devours its own children. It can
make highly specialized primitives out of us.
Just as we are gradually replacing human labour by machines, so we are gradually replacing the human brain by mechanical computers, and thus increasing man's sense of
unworthiness. We begin to picture the mind itself as a computing machine, as a set of electrochemical impulses and actions. The brain is an organ of the body; its
structure and its actions can be studied and examined. But the mind is a very different thing. It is not merely the sum of the physiological processes in the brain; it is
the unique, creative aspect of the human personality.
Unless we watch ourselves, unless we become more aware of the serious problems our technology has brought us, our entire society could turn into a kind of superautomatized
state. Any breakdown of moral awareness and of the individual's sense of his own worth makes all of us more vulnerable to mental coercion.
Nazi Germany gave us the frightful example of the complete breakdown of all moral evaluations. In the S. S. society, racial persecution and murder became a kind of moral
rule.
All this may sound extreme. But the fact remains that any influence-overt or concealed, well- or ill-intentioned-which reduces our alertness, our capacity to face reality,
our desire to live as active, acting individuals, to assume responsibility and to face up to danger, takes from us some part of our essential human-ness, the quality in us
which strives toward freedom and democratic maturity.
The enforced mental intervention practiced by the totalitarians is deliberate and politically inspired, but mental intervention is a serious danger even when its purpose
is non-political. Any influence which tends to rob man of his free mind can reduce him to robotism.
Any influence which destroys the individual can destroy the whole society.
XIII. INTRUSION BY THE ADMINISTRATIVE MIND
Since social life has become more and more complicated, a new group of mediators between man and his goals has developed. It is no longer the ancient priest who mediates
between man and his gods, between man and the powers beyond him, but a group of administrators have, in part, taken over the job of intervening between man and his
government. There are today mediators between man and his bosses, between artist and public, between farmer and market, mediators between everything. The administrative
mind is born, often dominating man's social behaviour and man's manifold contacts, leading him into complicated actions and compulsions far beyond spontaneous behaviour.
All these ties, the rigid bureaucratic ones and the useful administrative ones, have their influence on human behaviour and often may befog man's free thinking. I have a
special reason for developing this theme in a book on the rape of the mind because this problem of mediation between man and his actions and thoughts exists in our form of
democracy as well as in the totalitarian countries. Both halves of the world are grappling with the involved problem of how to administer themselves. The mere technique of
governing ourselves and our world can become a threat to free human development-and this may be independent of the ideology the administration adheres to. We have not the
same freedom to choose the official men who govern us that we have to select our favourite shop or our doctor. As long as the official man is in charge, we are in his
bureaucratic power.
The Administrative Mind
Administrators today cannot handle their jobs adequately within the limits of the simple knowledge of people and nations that served governments in former years. If our
leaders can not take into account the irrational forces in themselves and in other men and nations, they may easily be swept off into the maelstrom of mass emotions. If
they cannot learn to recognize that their private or official conduct often reflects their prejudices and irrationalities, they will not be able to cope with the often
unexpected prejudices of others. If they are, for instance, not sensitive to the paradoxical strategy hidden behind the misleading Aesopian language of totalitarians, they
will not be able to counter the cold war. Psychological knowledge has become a must in our era of confused human relations.
Do our people in office, for instance, understand fully the provocative totalitarian strategy of slandering and wild accusation, and are they able to handle it adequately?
Do they realize that the mere official denial never has as strong an appeal and impact as the initial accusation, and, in fact, usually fits into the accuser's strategy?
Apparently they do not, for many still use simple official denial as a defense against the totalitarian strategy of accusation, when, in fact, only repeated exposure and
ridicule of the very root of this technique can defeat it.
Do they realize the implications of the strategy of raising sham problems? The totalitarian and the demagogue often use this confusing technique. By launching emotional
inquiries and investigations and asking for attention for quasi problems, they seek to divert attention from their real aims.
Do they understand, for instance, what lies behind the technique of exploiting the chivalry and generosity of the public and blackmailing the pity of the world? The
strategy of complaining and calling for justice is a well-known mental defense used by neurotic individuals to arouse guilt feelings in others and to cover up their own
hidden aggressiveness. The exploitation of pity and the overt declaration of one's own purity and honest innocence is a familiar trick when it is used by individuals, but
we are less likely to recognize it when it is used in international politics.
Do our administrators realize that even the romantic ideals of brotherly love and world peace can be used to cover up aggressive designs? After the First World War, we
heard many inspiring idealistic catchwords from the defeated central European countries. Their press and their leaders described in great detail, for all the world to
know, the "inner purification through suffering" of the defeated peoples. Thus these countries appealed to the conscience and compassion of the whole world. But it was a
questionable conversion. Every therapist knows that those who talk a great deal about their inner change and recovery have for the most part not changed at all. The fine
phrases are so often contradicted by actions. Politicians must recognize that this can be as true for nations as it is for individuals. Let us not forget that nations
don't talk. Official words are made up by representatives with unofficial and mostly unknown inner motivations.
Administrators, diplomats, and politicians form the nerve centres and paths of communication between peoples and nations. The tensions in the diplomatic regions represent
the political tensions in the world. But they represent other things, too. The political profession is subject to special kinds of nervous tensions. The moment the
administrator arrives at a top level, an inner change may take place. From then on, he can identify with those who formerly led him. The very fact of being in office and
being a leader may change a man's mind in many ways. Often he removes himself more and more from human problems and from the people he represents and thinks only in terms
of national strategy, official ideology, and the aims of power politics. Or childhood ambitions, long frustrated, are aroused. He may become the victim of his inflated
personal ambitions and his individual notion of responsibility, and, as a consequence, lose control of his own personality.
Leading statesmen, burdened by responsibilities, have to become more careful; indeed, they often have to express themselves in noncommittal language. Yet, they are not
aware that such language gradually may reform their way of thinking. Finally, they may think they possess a priority on double talk.
Another difficulty is related to a rather general fear of success. Once a high ambition is reached, a long-hidden fear from childhood may awake, a fear related to an early
competition with the father and with the siblings. From this time on, the envy and hostility of those bypassed may start to injure the statesman's life.
The danger of assuming any leadership-even of any form of self-assertion-is that it provokes resistance and hostility, retaliation and punishment. The administrator knows
himself to be in the public eye; he feels exposed to criticism and political attack. If he didn't have it before, from now on he has to develop a defensive facade in order
to court the public and the voters. The result may be that the former meek democrat, the believer in government by the people, suddenly takes on the stature of an
authoritarian personality. He is guided by his frustrated infantile fantasy of leadership.
The administrative "brain-thrusters," with all their inner problems, nevertheless make history for us. Our minds are deeply affected by their minds. At the same time,
wethe great public-influence them, and our civilized impulses may direct them to find the good road, just as our primitive drives and influences may urge them on to push
us all into catastrophe. The intrusion of the administrative mind becomes even more precarious when the authorities in power follow patterns of procedure not controlled by
court and the law. In such cases, prejudice and arbitrariness can easily develop as we have experienced with many of our security regulations. Official secrecy is a token
of magic power; the more hush-hush there is in the world, the less democratic control and the greater the fear of treachery.
It should be, technically, quite simple to administer any group or nation-or even the whole world. Mankind certainly knows enough to do this job. We know a great deal
about history, sociology, and the science of human relations and government, at least enough not to repeat the mistakes from history. We live in a world of technical and
economic abundance. But we have not yet learned to apply what we know or to organize the resources of the world.
Somewhere something has gone wrong, and things have gotten out of hand. The will of nations and people to understand one another seems to be paralyzed, and mutual fear and
suspicion have been built up by the fantasies of mythical ideologies warring against one another. And tomorrow only the tails of the fighting dogs may remain. During the
Second World War, I was sent as an official representative of the Netherlands government to an international meeting on welfare and war relief. Here I became even more
aware of the extent to which private passions can mould the way we handle public problems.
All of us at the conference had cold, expressionless faces which implied a sharp, unbiased form of thinking, but our unconscious minds were touched by other problems.
Welfare is often much more a subject of hate than of love and sympathy. One's pride and prestige can play a much greater role than pity for the poor victim. The displaced
persons and the people of the devastated and underdeveloped countries are very much aware of this fact. They do not like the role in which fate has cast them; they have to
play the double role of the eternal victim who is not only the victim of politics and war, but also of the often arrogant provider of charity. As a matter of fact, the
representative at the receiving end of the deal resented any offer made to his country. Everybody wants to be himself the generous "uncle from America."
The Ailments of Those in Public Office
In the future, as our psychological understanding grows, leading politicians will have to be better educated in the principles of modern psychology. Just as a soldier must
know how to handle his physical weapons, so the politician must know how to face and handle the mental strategy of human relationships and diplomacy. He will have to
become aware of the pitfalls in all human communication and the frailties of his own mind.
Bodily disease and neurotic development can have all kinds of effects on those in office. Under their influence, some men are drawn into a life of continuous resentment,
as if, in their political and official activities, they were fighting out their infantile struggles against devils, anxieties, and inner guilt. Others are purified by
their sufferings and become wiser and more humane than they were.
The modern science of psychosomatic medicine males it clear that constant worrying, continual competition, repressed aggressions, the will to dominate and to govern
others, the fear of responsibility, the burden of one's chosen profession are among the many factors that influence body and mind to form a pattern of bodily reactions.
These reactions may actually hamper our ability to solve our problems by incapacitating us physically. Becoming a chosen statesman in our era of increased human
competition and increased dependence on the masses of voters builds up in officeholders qualities that are nearly psychopathic, that can cripple the body or the mind or
both at a time when we need the healthiest and soundest leaders. The role the latent psychosis or character disorder plays in many a leading personality cannot be
emphasized enough. Not long ago I treated the leader of a huge humanitarian association, who was accorded much esteem by his fellow citizens, but who was a sick,
psychopathic tyrant in his own family circle. His children trembled at the sight of him and developed-of course-a cynical attitude about all idealism and humanitarianism.
I suspect that many times this pathology is influenced by the way we select our leaders. Public preference is often directed toward strong, defensive, overcompensated
qualities of character which show up well at public functions. The outer facade is too much seen; we are not able to judge the inner core.
In 1949, Burnett Hershey wrote an article which posed the question, Is our fate in the hands of sick men? The article was written after the tragic death of James
Forrestal, the American Secretary of Defense, who committed suicide under the influence of despair and delusions of persecution. It describes in some detail the
psychosomatic afflictions of various statesmen. Hershey quotes General George C. Marshall's words to the Overseas Press Club: "Stomach ulcers have a strange effect on the
history of our times. In Washington I had to contend with, among other things, the ulcers of Bedell Smith in Moscow and the ulcers of Bob Lovett and Dean Acheson in
Washington." The author goes on to point out that Stalin, Sir Stafford Cripps, Warren Austin, and Vishinsky also suffered from psychosomatic ailments, as does Clement
Attlee.
All of us have heard of the repeated fainting spells of the Iranian ex-Premier, Mossadegh, the man who might, in a spell of semi-consciousness, have changed the balance of
power in the Middle East. The much-debated and headlined Senator McCarthy is another case in point. At the height of his struggle for headlines, he had a stomach condition
that required an exploratory operation, bursitis, frequent sinus headaches and signs of exhaustion-and all of these are known as psychosomatic involvements resulting from
extreme tension.
We have, too, many cheering examples of how physical disability and neurotic development can mature and strengthen the personality. Perhaps the brightest example of the
relationship between body and profession is the late Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose political career was inconspicuous until he was stricken by poliomyelitis. His years of
physical suffering became years of mental ripening. His conquest of pain and disease changed his attitude toward his own problems and also toward the problems of the
world. His growth of empathy and humility, his increase in strategic intuition, and his superior knowledge of the balance of forces in his country must be partly
attributed to his inner mental growth during his disease. Roosevelt will always be a guiding example of how the mind is able to overcome the physical limitations of the
body, how the mind grows out beyond it when a man is willing to look inside and fight out the conflicts within himself.
The Conference of Unconscious Minds
Let me return for a moment to the wartime conference on welfare I mentioned earlier and tell you something more about it. The conference chairman did not feel well; every
decision was as painful for him as his ulcer. He hemmed and hawed and refused to accept the responsibility the position placed on him. The representative of one of the
eastern European countries was an attractive woman but a misanthrope. Every word she spoke was colored by suspicion, and when a representative from one of the Latin
countries attempted a mild flirtation with her, she showed her confusion by arguing furiously against every one of his constructive proposals.
We also had a hesitant, old-school, professional politician in our midst. Though he couched his speech in gentle, polite words, he spoke only to destroy every proposal
that was not initiated by his faction. When he had to listen-and this he did not like to do at all-he busied himself constantly with his tie or his eyeglasses, always
polishing himself.
In a crowded corner sat an enthusiastic young man who longed to do something important. He wanted to act, he wanted to see something accomplished, and his excitement was
regarded by the others with sophisticated disdain. He did not know the rules of conference play.
The sessions were boring. The delegates spoke endlessly and pointlessly. But one day the entire conference was gripped by a kind of uncontrollable fury. Every delegate
tried to destroy all his colleagues. Someone had unexpectedly used the word "traitor" to designate a certain guerrilla group fighting in Europe, and the smooth discussion
was suddenly transformed into a collision of the insurgent passions that had long smouldered behind suave masks.
What agitation was aroused! What rage, what anger! But it was only temporary. It died down; our sophisticated conference spirit reasserted itself, and we settled down to
do no work. The chairman made a polite summarizing speech, and we disbanded. The charitable work we planned so carefully is still undone, and many years have passed.
With dogged optimism, political leaders still convene to construct a new peace for the world. We know that many of them will suffer again from ulcers of the stomach, but
what do we know of their deeper hidden wishes and resentments?
Although I am afraid that the time is still far away when we shall subject our official representatives and administrators to psychological education and selection, we
must become more aware of the many unconscious factors which influence them and us.
Do political leaders try to understand one another and the groups they represent, or are they only measuring the power of their political machines, their words, and their
votes? Are they guided by private resentments and ambitions or by the honest wish to serve the community and its ideals?
Are our administrators mentally well equipped to do their tasks? If not, how could psychological insight gradually improve their equipment?
How many of them are conscious of the extent of their private frustrations? Are their destructive impulses rationalized away under the guise of political allegiance? How
do illness, disease, and neurosis collide in their deliberations? Watch how, in any debate, polite speeches are interrupted by sudden diatribes.
To what degree do childhood rearing, fixed ideas, or pathological ambitions of administrators influence the destiny of a town or nation?
We recognize that idealistic platitudes may cover inadequate proposals, and we tend to accept this as the well-worn play of political strategy and diplomacy. But far worse
than this overt policy of evasion is the hidden political conference and discussion between the unconscious minds and passions of politicians.
How many politicians and their followers are aware of this lurking undercurrent which often wields a stronger influence than overt action? How does the personal element
between our administrators obstruct our own mental freedom, and what is the role of the psychopathic element in some of our leaders?
It is important for us to ask these questions. For the development of science has taught us that, even when it is impossible to find immediate satisfactory solutions,
posing the right question helps to bring clarity to the future. It prepares the way for a solution.
The Bureaucratic Mind
In a state where terror is used to keep the people in line, the administrative machine may become the exclusive property and tool of the dictator. The development of a
kind of bureaucratic absolutism is not limited, however, to totalitarian countries. A mild form of professional absolutism is evident in every country in the mediating
class of civil servants who bridge the gap between man and his rulers. Such a bureaucracy may be used to help or to harm the citizens it should serve.
It is important to realize that a peculiar, silent form of battle goes on in all of the countries of the world-under every form of government-a battle between the common
man and the government apparatus he himself has created. In many places we can see that this governing tool, which was originally meant to serve and assist man, has
gradually obtained more power than it was intended to have.
Is Saint Bureaucratus a devil who takes possession of a man as soon as he is given governmental responsibility? Are administrators infected with a desire to create a sham
order, to manipulate others from behind their green steel desks? Governmental techniques are no different from any other psychological strategy; the deadening hold of
regimentation can take mental possession of those dedicated to it, if they are not alert. And this is the intrinsic danger of the various agencies that mediate between the
common man and his government. It is a tragic aspect of life that man has to place another fallible man between himself and the attainment of his highest ideals.
Which human failings will manifest themselves most readily in the administrative machine? Lust for power, automatism, and mental rigidity-all these breed suspicion and
intrigue. Being a high civil servant subjects man to a dangerous temptation, simply because he is a part of the ruling apparatus. He finds himself caught in the strategy
complex. The magic of becoming an executive and a strategist provokes long-repressed feelings of omnipotence. A strategist feels like a chess player. He wants to
manipulate the world by remote control. Now he can keep others waiting, as he was forced to wait himself in his salad days, and thus he can feel himself superior. He can
entrench himself behind his official regulations and responsibilities. At the same time he must continually convince others of his indispensability because he is loath to
vacate his seat.
As a defense against his relative unimportance, he has to expand his staff, increasing his bureaucratic apparatus. In order to become a V.I.P. one needs a big office. Each
new staff member requests new secretaries and new typewriters. Everything begins to get out of hand, but everything must be controlled; new and better files must be
installed, new conferences called, and new committees set up. The staff-interaction committee talks for days on end. New supervisors are created to supervise the old
supervisors and to keep the whole group in a state of infantile servility. And what was formerly done by one man is now done by an entire staff. Finally, the bureaucratic
tension becomes too great and the managerial despotic urge looks for rest in a nervous breakdown.
This creeping totalitarianism of the desk and file goes on nearly everywhere in the world. As soon as civil servants can no longer talk humanely and genially but write
down everything in black and white and keep long minutes in overflowing files, the battle for administrative power has begun. Compulsive order, red tape, and regulation
become more important than freedom and justice, and in the meantime suspicion between management, employees, and subjects increases.
Written and printed documents and reports have become dangerous objects in the world. After a conversation, even when there are harsh words, inanities are soon forgotten.
But on paper these words are perpetuated and can become part of a system of growing suspicion.
Many people become administrators in public affairs out of idealistic feelings of service and avocation. Others try to escape the adventure of life by becoming part of the
civil service corps. Such service assures them a settled income, regular promotion, and a sense of job security. It is very alluring, this feeling of security. The smooth
automatism and polished rigidity of the red-tape world is very attractive to certain types of men, but it may devitalize others who still believe in challenge and
spontaneity.
The burning psychological question is whether man will eventually master his institutions so that these will serve him and not rule him. In totalitarian countries one is
not permitted to see the humour of one's own shortcomings. The system, the red tape, and the manifold files become more important than the poor being lost in his chair
behind a huge desk, looking much too important for his mental bearings.
The art of being a leading administrator, of being a genuine representative of the people is a difficult one, requiring multiple empathy and identification with other
people and their motivations.
Diplomats and politicians still believe in verbal persuasion and argumentative tactics. It is a very old and alluring game, this strategy of political manoeuvring with
official slogans and catchwords the subtlety of bypassing the truth in the service of partisanship, of giving faulty emphasis, the skill of dancing around selected
arguments to arrive at personal propagandistic aims or party aims. Sooner or later nearly all politicians become infected with the bug. Under the burden of their
responsibilities, they give in to the desire to play the game of diplomacy. They start to compromise in their thinking, to bend backwards and to be circumspect, lest their
remarks be criticized by the higher echelons. Or they fall back into infantile feelings of magic omnipotence. They want to have their fingers in every pie-to the left and
to the right.
All these are dangerous mental streaks of every human being which can develop more easily in politicians and administrators because of the growing impact of modern
governmental techniques and their threat to free expression. When a man gets entangled in strategical and political talk, something changes in his attitude. He is no
longer straightforward; he doesn't express and communicate what he thinks, but he worries about what others are thinking about him behind their facades.
He becomes too prudent and starts to build all kinds of mental defences and justifications around himself. In short, he learns to assume the strategic attitude. Forget
spontaneity, deny enthusiasm; don't demand inner honesty of yourself or others, never reveal yourself, never expose yourself, play the strategist. Be careful and use more
buts and howevers. Never commit yourself.
I remember a leader of the opposition who became completely confused and nearly collapsed when, after a long time out of office, his party won an election and he had to
assume governmental responsibility. From an aggressive, outspoken critic, he became a hesitating, insinuating neurotic, playing the tactful strategist, having no real
initiative.
Some politicians are puppets, spokesmen of their bosses. Some are the cavalier jugglers of words, who transfer human aggressions into slogans. There are also the
loudmouthed trumpeters of doom, who resort to the argument of panic. Modern politics is carried out with obsolete rules of conversation, communication, and discussion; and
too few politicians are aware of the semantic pitfalls and emotional dishonesties of the word tools they must use to convince others.
Yet mutual understanding can become a basis of political strategy. It is not power politics with verbal deceit and catchwords that is needed but mental probing to find
ways in which proposals and suggestions may cut through the resistance of those with different opinions and motivations.
Politicians too often forget that their fight for administrative power may become a form of psychological warfare against the integrity of the minds of those who are
compelled to listen. The repetitious mutual calumny, so often used during elections, gradually undermines the democratic system and leads to the urge for authoritarian
control. The strategic rumours and suspicions the politicians sow are an attack on human integrity.
When the citizenry no longer has confidence in its leaders, it looks for the man with brute power to be its leader. Where is the politician who is willing to admit that
his opponent is at least as capable as he, and perhaps even more capable than he is? In the free admission of equality of ability and of the wisdom of his opponent lies
the politician's chance for cooperation. For true cooperation can only be brought about by mutual empathy and sympathy and the understanding of human faults.
In April, 1951, a group of psychologists, psychoanalysts, and social scientists affiliated with the United Nations, the World Federation of Mental Health, UNESCO, and the
World Health Organization were guests of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in New York. This was a meeting at which these problems of government, and the impact of
governmental systems, were explored and discussed and published later in a report. These experts have become more and more aware of the need for psychological education
and selection of government administrators.
Should our administrators be psychoanalyzed? This nearly utopian question does not predicate an immediate rush for psychological training for politicians and
administrators, but it does point toward a future period when practical intelligence and sound psychological knowledge will guide man in the various aspects of his life.
Education will be more fully permeated with dependable psychological knowledge. Psychology and psychoanalysis are still young sciences, but many of our present-day
politicians could already profit by them. Through gain in self-insight, they would become more secure in the strategy of world guidance. They would assume more
responsibility-not only for their successes, but also for their failures. And they would take more responsibility, with fewer inner qualms, for the good and welfare of
all.
At this very moment our failure to solve the problems of governmental inefficiency and bureaucratic intrusion into human actions may hamper the citizen's mind in its
development. Man's need to conform is in constant battle with man's need to go out on his own. The tie-up of our spontaneous freethinking with the unadventurous
administrative mind has to be studied and the problem it presents solved by the psychology of the future.
XIV. THE TURNCOAT IN EACH OF US
THE CONFUSING INFLUENCE OF THE PROBLEM OF TREASON AND LOYALTY
As soon as "treason" is mentioned, something in man's soul is stirred. Anger and scorn, suspicion and anxiety are aroused, and people want to avoid the subject. The social
reaction toward a traitor-even before we are certain that the accusation is deserved is very spectacular. Former friends of a man accused as a "traitor" retreat and
withdraw from this token of evil. In every trial of traitors we feel inwardly, personally accused and guilty.
This is one of the reasons that treason trials make such deep impressions and provoke the most confusing discussions. Dictators can use such trials to cast a spell on the
public. In a book on mental coercion and the rape of the mind, an investigation of the problem of treason and loyalty is needed.
The Involuntary Traitor
Self-betrayal comes out of all human pores. SIGMUND FREUD
In my home town in Holland there was a little barbershop quite near the government buildings. It was owned by a small man with a gray French beard. Through the years he
had served many of the country's most important men. Diplomats and cabinet ministers, proud generals and aggressive leaders of the opposition they all wanted his service.
The little barber was always very courteous and agreeable, eager to please his clients. He danced with prim, servile gestures around them while curling their hair and
looking after their moustaches. As he worked, he would ask his distinguished clients polite questions: "What is His Excellency So-and-So going to say about this bill?"
"How does the Minister of State feel about that one?" He was not really interested in politics at all, but the little barber knew that his clients were flattered by such
questions.
And then one day a puffy, beribboned German general walked in and settled himself in the barber's chair-the Netherlands had been invaded and occupied by the Nazi hordes.
Of course, our barber knew this, and he had even managed to hate the invaders for a few days. But he was innately a genteel soul, and he lathered the general's face
himself and took care not to soil his uniform. On succeeding days, others of these strangely uniformed men appeared in the shop, and the little barber served them all
well. The military men were followed by the Brown Shirts and then the Green Shirts of the Gestapo. The leather of the barber's chair was scuffed by the huge black boots.
But the little barber did not complain, and soon the occupiers considered his haircut the most fashionable and best that could be obtained in the entire city.
Our barber was not too conscious of his increasing official importance. He danced attendance on his new clients with as much courtesy as he had showed the diplomats of the
old days. He was sorry that his old acquaintances had gradually disappeared. But in the past his work had been seasonal; when parliament was not in session, his shop had
been empty. Now his business flourished all the time. The Germans and the collaborators liked the little barbershop, the perfume, the barber's skill. Indeed, our amiable
friend was well liked by the uniformed oppressors. They were, after all, thoroughly unused to friendly treatment; the barber's behaviour was a welcome change from the
contempt with which most of the Dutch people-those stupid, stubborn resisters-regarded them.
One day the barber was invited to buy a membership card in a newly formed organization of collaborators. Our friend responded to this request as he would have to any other
appeal for charity. He did not like to give, but he thought of welfare as a special tax on business, and so he resigned himself to paying as a petty, necessary annoyance.
Some of his old acquaintances warned him of the consequences; he would be accused of collaboration and treason. But he pacified them by saying, "I am a barber, and I live
as a barber. I have absolutely no interest in politics. I only want to serve my clients."
When, after the bitter years of struggle and oppression, liberation came, our friend became officially known as a traitor and a collaborator. When the black-booted,
uniformed supermen were thrown out, their collaborating friends were imprisoned, the barber among them. After he had served a part of his sentence, a wise and forgiving
judge sent our barber back to his little shop. The first excitement of liberation had passed, and people were becoming more willing to forgive those who had been
collaborators because they had been weak-hearted.
Our story is by no means finished. The barber came back from prison a beaten man. He had been in jail for three months; he still could not understand what had happened to
him. He brooded constantly over his shameful days in jail. An injustice had been done him. He had served his fellow men as a well-behaved, virtuous citizen should, and he
had been treated like a criminal. He felt self-righteous, abused, insulted, maltreated and misunderstood. After all, he had only wanted to be kind and helpful. He was a
barber-nothing more.
The barber could not rid himself of his bitterness and resentment. None of his former friends came to cheer him up or to sympathize with him. His old clients did not
return. His sadness and depression increased daily and in a few months he took his own life. And so ended the adventures of a little barber who had been completely unaware
of his collaboration and his treachery.
I knew this man. I do not despise him-not at all. I am sure there were many such pitiful collaborators. I wonder, though, why the little barber was so unaware. Was it
stupidity? Had his apparent kindness always covered up a resentment against his fellow men? Was he misled by an insidious wave of suggestion stronger than his mental
capacity to resist? We will never know.
This tragedy, caused perhaps by unawareness, perhaps by the inability to choose between conflicting loyalties, stimulated me to investigate the problem of the traitor. I
had ample opportunity to study this question, both through my experiences with the Dutch underground during the Nazi occupation, and when I was imprisoned in a Vichy
detention camp. My first official analysis was made in 1943, when the Dutch government asked me to prepare a psychological report on disloyal Dutch soldiers and citizens
being held in detention on the Isle of Man.
I arrived at the prison after a hazardous, stormy journey in a small airplane. The prisoners were a sorry lot. I had anticipated hostility, but I had not expected to find
so many weaklings, consumed by bitterness and anger. Some of them were typical of the passive, egotistic, psychopathic personality, whose motto seems to be: "Let the world
go to hell! I will never conform." Others seemed to be the victims of an unbearable inner struggle-a conflict between their desire to belong to the stronger group and
their resistance to this desire, a resistance which only increased their bitterness and antagonism.
This was a situation which proved to me again that there are certain times when logic and discussion are no help at all. We tried over and over again to convince the
semi-collaborators that they should join with us in the fight against the Nazis, but they only retreated further behind their private grudges. They even refused the
cigarettes I offered them.
Bad as the trip to the prison had been, the trip back was even worse. The little plane was pushed off course by strong winds. I was depressed and disgusted by my
experiences, and when we finally arrived in England, both the pilot and I were sick. I had many opportunities thereafter to study spies, traitors, and subversives. My last
official wartime investigation took me to a prison camp in Surinam, Dutch Guinea, where I made a collective report on all the inhabitants of the prison camp. In many of
them, I could discern neurotic and even psychotic traits.
But I have found that perhaps the best understanding of the problem of treason has come to me from my psychiatric work with neurotic patients who have to face a daily
struggle with the little betrayals of everyday life, with their own self-betrayal, and with their ambivalent feelings toward those they should love.
The Concept of Treason
Before looking into the subject further, let us make an enquiry into the meaning of the word "treason." It is, after all, used in a confusing variety of senses. The word
"treason" has many social and political implications, and the customs, habits, and mores of the group in which it is used affect and color its meaning.
The word itself is derived from the Latin tradere or transdare, to deliver wrongfully, to betray, to give something across, to give loyalty and secrets away. But from this
root, the word has acquired a variety of meanings.
In the first place, it has a purely emotional, individual meaning related to feelings of deprivation and injustice. The infant often experiences all that compels him out
of his state of bliss and dependency-which means the very act of growing up-as a betrayal, and sees treason in what he considers rejection by his parents. The person who
retains these infantile feelings in his adult life may react to every fancied slight or rejection as to an act of treason or betrayal.
Lack of solidarity with the family or clan-with the in-group not conforming to its rituals and taboos has often been interpreted by the group as treason, treason through
dissent. In this sense, the word implies a primitive moral evaluation; disgust and contempt are associated with it. Treason indicates something deeply emotional, something
taboo, something different or strange, like allegiance to an alien ideology, a breach of traditions, or the simple fact of being a foreigner. Rejection of the norms and
rules of the community, being one's own judge of morality and ethics, is often considered treasonable.
Utter rejection of the traditions of one's fatherland is an extreme. Often simple nonconformity may be considered treasonable, too. Indeed, in Totalitaria nonconformity
and dissent are the most serious crimes against the system, and totalitarian minds have a tendency to look upon even honest mistakes or differences of opinion as
deliberate treachery.
Because of its deep emotional content, the very word itself can be used as a political tool with which to manipulate people. In Totalitaria it becomes merely a Pavlovian
sign, triggering off reactions of distrust and hatred. After a military defeat or a diplomatic disappointment, or whenever feelings of humiliation and inadequacy run high
among the people, it is useful strategy to get them to project their sense of inferiority onto others. The "traitor" is in such a case an easy scapegoat who satisfies the
collective need to project blame and to relieve unconscious anxiety. In a totalitarian society every citizen is compelled to become a traitor, according to our own Western
sense of decency, because it is his duty to betray to the regime every expression of dissension or rebellion. The child has to report his father, the father his child;
they are even called traitors in the totalitarian sense as soon as they fail to report.
In the common political interpretation, treason is an act of rebellion, sedition, schism, heresy, conspiracy, or subversion. Its technical-juridical meaning is well known
to everybody. Treason is adhering to enemies and giving aid and comfort to them; it is also, in a more modern, modified sense, taking part in an international ideological
conspiracy against the fatherland.
To me, as a psychiatrist, its relation to the general problem of self-betrayal is the key to an understanding of the word. The germ of treason arises first in the
individual's compromises with his own principles and beliefs. After these initial compromises have been made, it becomes easier to go on and on, to make more and more
compromises, until finally the compromiser may become the man who is willing to sell himself and his services to the highest bidder. During the Nazi occupation, we saw
this among those who were seduced to do little services for the enemy. The first step led to the second and then to final collaboration. It is because all of us do doubt
ourselves from time to time, because we are unsure of what we would do if we were put to the test, and because we may see in ourselves a potential traitor, that the word
"treason" has such highly emotional appeal.
But self-doubt is a far cry from actual treason, and the real traitor in the morbid sense of the word, is not merely a self-doubter. He is a man who believes only in his
ultrapersonal rights and who scorns the rights and wishes of the community. He is disloyal even to his own gang. Hitler, for example, was a traitor not only to his own
ideas, handling them as changeable tools to help him gain and maintain power, he was repeatedly a traitor to his closest friends and collaborators, many of whom he
betrayed and murdered in 1934, during what has been called the night of the long knives. The real traitor is a person with egocentric delusions and the conscious
conviction that he alone is right. He is a very different type from an involuntary, pathetic, unaware traitor like our little barber.
The Traitor who Consciously takes Option for the Other Side
In my study of political traitors and collaborators, I found that most of them shared two common characteristics: they were easily influenced by minds stronger than their
own, and none of them would admit his disloyalty as an act of treason. The traitors I interviewed always volunteered innumerable justifications of their behaviour, always
surrounded their treachery with a complicated web of sophisms and rationalizations. Actually, they could not tolerate an objective picture of their actions. If they did,
they would condemn themselves out of their own mouths. Unconsciously, most of them realized the nature of their crimes and were tormented by guilt feelings. These guilt
feelings would have been unbearable if they admitted, even to themselves, the enormity of their deeds.
During the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries, I saw these qualities demonstrated again and again. Many of our native traitors were spineless people, ready to accept
almost any new idea or elaborate theory. Their suggestibility was their greatest liability. Most of these would-be Nazis had never possessed strong personality ties of
their own. They had failed in their ambitions and had been disappointed in life, and they readily transferred their frustrated personal longings to political
will-o'-the-wisps. After the German invasion and occupation, these people confronted their defeated countrymen with triumphant I-told-you-so's. They boasted proudly of
their wisdom in having bet on the right horse. They gained a tremendous feeling of self-importance, and their newly acquired, blown-up self-assurance, backed by the
enemy's armed force, made them hard and contemptuous of their compatriots.
In an effort to justify their own behaviour and their greed for power, they tried to convert others to their new way of life. They were possessed by a compulsion to become
propagandists for the invader. Turncoats always try to soothe their own bad consciences by persuading others to share their crime.
Of course, they had some real grievances. Everybody does. But these traitors were influenced less by them than by fancied injustices. Through acts of treason, they avenged
themselves on society for the private wrongs they had suffered because of their personal failures. Their resentments could be felt in everything they said.
The Nazi strategists were experts in exploiting this sense of dissatisfaction. They seemed to know intuitively whether or not an individual could be ensnared by Nazi
propaganda. One case I knew of in Holland concerned the ex-director of a large concern who had been ousted from his position on ethical grounds. Early in the occupation,
this man received an invitation to join the Nazi ranks, and in a surprisingly short time he became the leader of an important Nazi business. The Nazis gave him the feeling
of having been vindicated.
Among the recruits for the Nazi police force in the occupied territories were turncoats of all sorts and even the inmates of asylums for the criminally insane. The
pathological grudge these people had against society was the foil by which the Nazis turned them into traitors. The Germans themselves despised these men, but they were
cunning enough to put them to the best possible use.
The Nazis also played a strange game with some authors and artists who had not received enough appreciation. The enemy flattered these men by buying and praising their
work. The artists were first told that they could write and create as they pleased, without fear of interference. Gradually, little political services were asked of them,
tiny little concessions like a favourable report of a meeting or a favourable reference to a philosophy with which they did not agree.
It is the impact of that first little concession that starts the inner avalanche of selfjustification that finally leads to self-betrayal. Following the first compromise
and selfjustification comes the second; and this one is met with shrewder self-exculpations. After all, the compromiser has had experience in rationalization by now. The
repeated concessions turn into submission and voluntary cooperation. As I said before, once a man is seduced into a small ideological concession, it is very difficult for
him to stop. From now on his imagination produces enough justifications which help him maintain his self-respect.
The inwardly insecure traitor always feels the urge to identify with the enemy-the hostile invader. He has never "belonged," never had a feeling of identification with his
own group, has never felt the rewards of such cohesion, nor has he won the love, sympathy, and respect of his fellows. Therefore he wants to join the "others." He may even
go so far as to call his former friends traitors. Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce), the British traitor who was executed by his government, considered himself a real "Aryan
German," and in this way justified his fight against England.
In the hectic days immediately following the Nazi invasion of Holland, I myself felt an occasional inner temptation to go over to the enemy, to the stronger party, with
its powerful organizations, all ready to support one, to back one up. I even had a dream about visiting Hitler and convincing him in a childish and friendly way of the
righteousness of our cause. I did not succumb to this dream temptation, but there were a few who fell for such infantile pictures and were unable to withstand their need
to submit. The need to conform, to be accepted, to be safe and respectable, is deeply embedded in man. In our analysis of the inner forces that lead men to surrender their
mental integrity under the pressure of prison and concentration-camp life, we saw how important a role this mechanism plays. Living in a country occupied by the enemy is
by no means as horrifying as living in a P.O.W. or concentration camp, but it is, nevertheless, frightening, and in this frightening situation, the need to conform may
show itself in surrender to the enemy ideology. Those who resisted this need, even though they felt it, usually became even more fervently anti-Nazi as a consequence of
their guilt feelings about this impulse to treachery.
This war experience taught us another truth: traitors can be made by overwhelming collective suggestions. In the ambiguous chaos of shouting ideologies and changing
values, the mind becomes sullen and stubborn, and where there is immaturity and lack of inner control, it may become confused in its loyalties and simply surrender to the
most powerful group.
The Nazis, with their perverted political methods, tried to supply the weak, the ambitious, the disgruntled, and the frustrated with a ready-made set of bogus ideals to
justify surrender to their side.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler says that when the disappointed are given a sense of importance, they will swallow every suggestion with the utmost docility. He knew that human
weakness-even kindness can be used as a starting point for a systematically nurtured conversion. Hitler knew, too, that unlimited political terror could make a traitor of
almost anyone. Spread fear, terror, and hunger, inflict penetrating pain, and finally, as a result of mental coercion and growing confusion, many will succumb and even
betray their own families. In many of the concentration camps, the victims themselves were in charge of the gas chamber killings and kept their gruesome jobs until their
own turns came. Fear and terror had made will-less slaves out of them.
There is still another human characteristic that can lead to treason and betrayal. There are some people who simply do not know where their loyalties belong. The case of
Klaus Fuchs, the man who betrayed atomic secrets to Russia, is a dramatic example of this. Here was a highly intelligent person, an expert on the most difficult
theoretical problems, lost in a sea of conflicting loyalties. Because of the Nazi persecution of his Quaker family, he adopted a new fatherland, England. In the meantime,
he carried a dream of a mystical universal world which he thought to find in the totalitarian ideology. In the midst of his confusion about world problems, he simply did
not know where his loyalty should be.
This was not a case of schizophrenia or a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation, as the newspapers reported, but a case of confusion of loyalties in a hyper-intellectual mind. Fuchs
did not know emotionally where he belonged.
In other cases people were literally pushed into treason and collaboration because nobody in their environment trusted them. This happened, for instance, in Flanders with
the collaborators of the First World War. Several of them were compelled to become collaborators again.
This analysis of the factors that lead men to treason certainly does not imply that every man must remain loyal to the group from which he has originally received his
morals and ideals. Better insight and higher ethics may override our childhood loyalties. It is the fate and the need of human beings to go beyond their teachers and to
correct, if possible, the traditional rules of their schools. The great philosopher Socrates was accused of being a "traitor" because he "corrupted the minds of the youth
of Athens." And yet today we know that Socrates was far from being a corrupter.
Our Treacherous Intellect
Perhaps the most tragic form of unobtrusive treason and self betrayal is caused by the inertia of the human intellect. We are often betrayed by our own minds. We forget
completely what we want to forget. We deny the existence of real problems in order to retreat into wishful thinking. As soon as we do not understand and feel the
implications of a problem or an argument, we tend to submit passively to the most powerful side, just as did the overfriendly barber. The ease with which human beings can
be corrupted is still one of our most serious psychological and moral problems. Inner confusion can make us submissive to almost any strong suggestion from the outside, no
matter how foolish or false.
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
There are other more complicated tricks of the intellect which lead to self-betrayal. The feeling of inferiority often arouses in ignorant people a great desire to grasp
extremely difficult ideas. Such people like to identify themselves with a quasiprofound system of thought. Hitler and his abstruse writings made temporary
pseudo-philosophers and magicians out of the majority of German people. All dictatorial totalitarians buy the services of scholars who can make them such a set of
pseudo-philosophic justifications.
Unfortunately, some scholars are easy to buy. In Holland, for example, there was a not too intelligent philosopher who became converted to Nazism after it had shown its
overpowering strength. Thereafter he felt free to write on the most abstruse philosophical subjects and to expound the most complicated theories, all for the glorification
of his powerful friends from the Third Reich and their myth of conquering the whole world. At the same time, he built a system of inscrutable words around his own deep
feelings of guilt; he isolated himself from the world more and more because no words were convincing enough to justify his treason to himself. In the end he lost all
contact with reality. Then, of course, the Nazis had no use for him either.
Self-Betrayal
As we have seen, there are various inner motivations which may lead to the crime of disloyalty or treason. Sometimes these motivations operate very subtly, in ways unknown
to the subject; sometimes treason is merely a crude selling out to those who pay best. Let us try to arrange and classify some of these motivations, starting with the
unconscious ones and ranging toward deliberate treason.
In the first place, an act of self-betrayal may begin as a defense against the feeling of being lost and rejected. In order to win acceptance in a group, the individual
may hide and not defend his private beliefs and convictions when attacked. In psychology this may be called-if such passive behaviour becomes an unconscious habit-the
passive submission to and identification with the stronger person. If you cannot beat the enemy, join him! (A. Freud)
Although the concept of the inner traitor in us is not so easy to accept, by studying the contrasting inner drives that lead man, one becomes more convinced of that
possibility. The clinical concept of man's inner ambivalence is based on numerous psychological experiences. In studying the deeper motivations of many a traitor, we often
see that his treacherous act happened after an inner turmoil threatened to break him down, to make an uncontrolled nervous wreck out of him. It is as if the future mental
patient preferred to surrender to an outward enemy rather than to the inward enemies of disease and nervous breakdown. Hess was on the verge of a schizophrenic breakdown
when he broke Hitler's rules and flew to England.
Let us consider the British foreign office spies, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.* Both showed several symptoms of imminent mental breakdown. It may be known to
the reader that both these men left England in May, 1951, in order to go via France to Russia. Both deliberately fled the country. Both had Communist leanings during their
student days at Cambridge but later renounced their adolescent affiliations. Both showed abnormal symptoms during their service. Maclean had a breakdown in May, 1950, due
to overwork and excessive drinking; Burgess was reprimanded for reckless driving while in service and for neglect of his work. Reading through the report, one is surprised
by the amount of mental instability which was tolerated at such a sensitive spot of the government. Both the men had homosexual leanings that can be related to a
suppressed hostility for their mothers (and mother country).
Sometimes treason means a one-sided appeal to justice. This is found in the man who demands some sort of private protective justice and who refuses to acknowledge the
subtle relationship between rights and duties. Such persons always feel continually deprived and betrayed. They are what Bergler calls the "injustice collectors:" In their
acts of disloyalty they are seeking to play the role of their own private judges. Many querulous and even paranoiac persons have this kind of character structure.
Then there is the disappointed pseudo-idealist who gradually turns into a cynic, covering his emptiness by many self-justifications and exculpations. Such people betray
their intellectual disappointment in all their debunking remarks.
Conflicts between parents may give rise in the child to the need to betray one or both parents, and this need may be transferred in later life to a need to betray the
fatherland. I have often found that the unsolved ties of hate and love toward the parents play an important role in forming the turncoat personality. As we saw, this
problem often lies at the root of the totalitarian character structure. Although the totalitarian-minded are not by definition overt traitors, some of these people can
easily become traitors to free, democratic ideals-either out of compulsive allegiance to a foreign ideology or out of repetitive non-conformism.
In describing special characteristics of a political group, one has to keep in mind that basic inner contrasts are inherent in all people. The quasi-rational Marxistic
interpretation of the world, which satisfies the need for logical clarification and reasonable organization of social life, covers anxiety created by the irrational inner
forces so easily detected in the totalitarian-minded. The cult of the "masses" often serves as a defense against loneliness. The belief in progress may be born out of
vague despair and insecurity. The fear of deviationism is the fear that the unity of the group will be broken. Suspicion and self-criticism serve to keep, above all, the
in-group together.
There are several forms of inner conceit that can turn man into a traitor. The Dutch philosopher of whom I spoke earlier is an example of this, as are any of the verbose
ideological apologists for totalitarianism.
Lack of confidence or lack of belief in the guiding traditions and aims of one's own society can also lead to hostility, then to treason. Without such traditional beliefs,
suggestibility and receptivity for competing ideologies are increased. The Klaus Fuchs case, which was mentioned earlier, is an example of this.
The personal need to be a pioneer or a martyr, often instilled by the unconscious need to suffer, may lead to a private messianic delusion and cause an attack on the
traditional values of the group. Many groups consider such extremism as treacherous behaviour.
Another form of self-betrayal may be caused by the inability to grasp the complexity of the real world. Many people have been seduced into unstable behaviour and even
disloyalty through lack of comprehension of these complexities and through the need to find a single, all-embracing, easy answer to the problems of human life. Who gives
them the simple myth to believe in? The Nazis seduced nearly all of Germany into a form of ideological treason in this way!
Treason may also be a paradoxical reaction to a deep-seated neurotic sense of guilt. The neurotic strategy of accumulating more guilt coupled with the consequent
development of an inner need for punishment are often the basic causes of criminal action. The treacherous deed is done precisely in order to provoke punishment (Reik).
Treason may also be paid adventure as we find it in international espionage. This kind of life fascinates the immature mind which lives in the world of mystery stories and
fairy tales. Bribes with women or money make such treason even more attractive. The enemy gratifies economic and sexual needs, and the traitor is willing to sell his
integrity to the highest bidder.
Overt fear and panic can also cause treason. The whole psychology of totalitarian interview and interrogation is based on this principle. People can be frightened and
brainwashed into treason.
The Development of Loyalty
From all this we can see that what we call treason takes place more in the emotional than in the intellectual sphere of functioning. In the course of human growth,
everybody passes through periods of inner conflict in which he has to turn his love and allegiance from one person to another-from mother to father, from parents to the
entire family, from the family to the state, and from the state to mankind. The core of the problem of treason and self betrayal is found in the difficulties which arise
in the repression of former loyalties, as each loyalty is in turn superseded by the next.
Many people experience deep confusion in adolescence when, for the first time, they must leave the safe emotional protection of their homes and create new loyalties and
new moral standards for themselves. It is in this period that the critical faculties are developed. In doubting the traditional truths passed on by his parents, each
adolescent might be called a traitor; yet he is actually being true to the self he is shaping. During the crisis of adolescence, with its increased feelings of yearning
for some unknown happiness, many young people want to "betray" their parental home and their parents' standards. At the same time, they do not want to give up the
protection the home offers.
Psychologically, we know, however, that temporary disloyalty is part of normal mental growth. In the process of individual human development, there are stages of progress
which lead from initial submission to open rebellion and nonconformity. Every step toward mental maturity and independence involves the growing out of ties with the past.
This growth can be effected in different ways, with more or less overt hostility and forsaking of the past, with self-betrayal and passive submission, with renewed
submission to pay off feelings of guilt, with sworn conservativism or open rebellion. In this phase of adolescence he is especially vulnerable to totalitarian propaganda.
The youth may retain from the conflict of inner growth a sense of loneliness and guilt. If he puts it to productive use, he may become what we might call a creative
revolutionary. The trail blazer, whose own inner forces drive him on to break with tradition, is such a man. Indeed, many of mankind's great moral and spiritual leaders
have been of this type. They have been leaders precisely because they broke either with rigid remnants of the past or with the ossified or immoral elements of the present.
In my own experience, I have known one such man, a German psychiatrist, whose idealism and moral sense made it impossible for him to go along with the Nazi desecration of
human values and who was hanged as a traitor for his part in the abortive German rebellion against Hitler in 1944.
In Praise of Nonconformity
What can be done in general to combat treason, disloyalty, and self-betrayal? In the first place, the child's normal defensive attitude toward authority and his need to
break away from it should be watched with favourable vigilance at all times on the part of parents and educators. It is all too easy to force a child into denial of the
self. Many times, later disloyalty is a reaction to faulty handling of the problems of childhood. Most traitors are made, not born. Unfortunately, this truth is often
forgotten by educators who may, as a result of their own frustrated aggressions, break down by force the feeling of great loyalty toward their own age group that we find
among youngsters.
Is it possible to decide whether or not a person is dependable? Only when we have some insight into his hidden motives and drives and into the workings of his unconscious.
For complete insight, psychoanalysis is necessary, but the way the unconscious expresses itself in character traits and character defences can give us some very important
indications. A person with excessive dependency needs or a weak ego, a person who is easily suggestible can usually be seduced into disloyalty. So can the boastful,
inconsistent man, full of pride and vanity. Material egotism, desire for power, and continual hostility also lead to denial of moral values, among them loyalty.
As is often true in psychology, it is easier to say what character traits the dependable person must not have than to give a positive picture of what he should be like. In
general, we can say that the person who is honest with himself and shows a minimum of self deceit, the man who exhibits a stable structure of character, the person with
genuine maturity, is most true to himself, and, as a result, most loyal to others.
Nevertheless, the seeds of treason lie in each of us and may be fortified by environmental influences. In a totalitarian world, for example, everybody is educated in
self-denial and self-betrayal; when a person becomes a nonconformist, the label "traitor" will be attached to him. In a world stifled by dogma and tradition, every form of
original thinking may be called sedition and treason. In such cases the environmental, social, and political factors, and not the confusing inner processes, determine what
is treason. In this chapter, however, I have emphasized the personal factors in producing treason-the influence of family and group prejudices, and the inner instability
resulting from complications in the immediate environment. There are so many subtle fantasies of self-betrayal and secret aggression in everyone, and there is so much
desire to revenge secret resentments, that any government may make use of these unhealthy neurotic feelings to stir up the country.
The Loyalty Compulsion
Recently Americans have been looking more critically at the concepts of loyalty and subversion. Deeply conscious of the cynical and ruthless nature of the totalitarian
attack through subversion, we have begun to let our fear of subversion from within paralyze our democratic freedoms.
We have become so concerned over the spectre of a treacherous fifth column in our own land that we have grown both overcautious and over suspicious.
In his well-documented study on The German Fifth Column, the Dutch historian Dr. Louis de Jong could prove that Hitler's dreaded network of treason and betrayal was for
the greatest part an imaginary ogre created by the panic and fear of the people. We require constant reassurance that the intentions of our neighbours and fellow citizens
are acceptable and loyal. The danger in this frantic search for security operates both on the political and psychological levels. Politically, in trying to erect
invulnerable barriers against the spread of totalitarian ideas, we may find that we have given up those very qualities that distinguish democracy from totalitarianism:
freedom and diversity. Psychologically, we may find ourselves the victims of pathological suspicions (which can be clinically termed paranoia), and this suspiciousness may
lead us to reject utterly the most valuable qualities we can have as human beings: tolerance and respect for our fellow men.
The political dangers in this situation have been pointed out time and time again by responsible leaders of the American community. As a psychiatrist, I should like to
devote my attention to the psychological aspect of this problem and to the dangers to the free mind that are inherent in the current situation. For, as we have already
seen, all political behaviour is essentially an extension of individual behaviour and is rooted in the psychology of the individuals who make up the political group.
Much of our collective suspicion can be attributed to a gigantic multiplication of personal feelings of insecurity. In times of fear and calamity arises the myth of a
treacherous aggressor, the myth the totalitarians know so well how to exploit. Our own inner insecurity is displaced and projected onto our neighbours and our environment.
We begin to doubt and distrust everyone. We accuse others because we are afraid of ourselves. We feel weak and cover our weakness by growing suspicion and by being
continually on the lookout for possible traitors and dissenters.
As we have seen earlier, the whole question of loyalty is a complicated one. In our zeal to create guarantees of trustworthiness, we tend to oversimplify the problem, and
thus we may overshoot the mark and become like our totalitarian antagonists, for whom over-simplification is a stock-in-trade. Asking people for a loyalty oath asking them
to perform that magic ritual through which they forswear all past and future political sin-may have a paradoxical effect. Merely taking an oath does not make a man loyal,
although it may later enable a judge to prosecute him for perjury. Our insistence on official expressions of allegiance actually discredits and devalues the basic personal
sense of voluntary and self-chosen identification with the community which is the essence of loyalty; it certainly does not either create or insure loyalty.
The loyalty oath too easily degenerates into an empty formula, and the man who takes it may forget completely the meaning it is supposed to have. To many it has become
simply red tape, another one of those endless, troublesome forms that must be filled out.
The oath compulsion can easily grow into a childish magic strategy, a form of mental blackmail. There are some oriental religions in which devotions are performed through
the use of a prayer wheel. When the wheel is set in motion by a flip of the hand, the worshipper has done his job. He need not recite any prayers; he need not think any
devout thoughts. The practitioners of these religions no longer have any awareness of the content of their prayers. They are blind subscribers to a ritual whose meaning
they have long since forgotten. Signing a loyalty oath can become as empty a gesture as turning the prayer wheel.
True loyalty is not a static thing; as we have already seen, it grows and develops with the personality. It has to be rediscovered and re-experienced every day, since it
is, essentially, as a result of an inner battle of contending values that man finds his own particular values and loyalties. When a man is compelled to swear to his
loyalty, even though he feels it already deeply within him, the compulsion from outside means that he must lay aside his personal right to weigh values and take counsel
with his honest principles. It does not matter whether or not the oath is an expression of his true feelings, the element of enforcement that lies behind it has a
psychologically weakening effect on the man who takes it. This may seem strange at first glance, but a simple analogy will make it clear. The man who truly loves his wife,
for example, does not need repeatedly to swear to his love; he shows it in his actions. But if she insists on his swearing, her very insistence, implying as it does that
she doubts him, may bring questions to her husband's mind-and he begins to grow confused as to what he really thinks.
Both in demanding an oath and in taking it, we perpetuate the ridiculous illusion that enemies can be kept out through this prayer-wheel system. The fact is that
deliberate traitors and subversives are the very ones who are not afraid to disguise their motivations and hide their intentions behind prescribed formulations. Nor are
they afraid of perjury charges. They feel no hesitation in signing an oath if it is opportune for them to do so. For them, words and oaths are only tools which have no
binding moral value. More important than the demand for loyalty should be the demand for integrity, for steadiness of character, for maturity of aims and motivations.
Free man needs loyalty to the self first of all, and this implies the right to be himself. The man who feels that he is nothing, who feels that everyone, himself included,
doubts him, who is inwardly weak, may become an easy prey to all kinds of totalitarian political influences. Loyalty hunts and loyalty oaths may provoke disloyalty to
one's personal integrity and to personal freedom, since they create suspicion in ourselves and in others. Freedom is kept upright by the very presence of opposition-even
at the risk of non-conformism and scattered subversion.
Loyalty comes about as a result of mutual confidence; it cannot be created through compulsion. Any compulsion is, by its very nature, one-sided. Loyalty has to be deserved
and won daily through mutual interaction, and through contact between leaders and citizens. Because it is based on confidence, loyalty is given spontaneously and of free
will. True loyalty cannot be bought or demanded.
In investigating the case of the young American soldiers in Korea who were brainwashed and forgot too easily where their loyalty lay, we usually find in their backgrounds
how disloyally one of their parents had behaved toward them. In nearly all the so-called pro-Communist cases we find a disturbed youth. It is important that the community
investigate its initial loyalty toward these young men.
In a democratic state we should be prepared to adduce convincing facts in support of our own way of life or to develop new approaches which will reveal the weaknesses of
any subversive system.
Prosecution of dissenting ideas, insistence on loyalty according to some prescribed formula-these make it impossible for us to do this and may be the beginning of an
unwillingness to argue and persuade. They may even lead to a new form of betrayal, the subtle treason of intellectual detachment, the unwillingness to take responsibility,
the treason of doubting relativism which leads to inaction. It may degenerate into a dangerous form of mental laziness which can easily be turned into a life of no
commitments or into totalitarian submission. The approaches to truth are multifarious, and it is only where there is a clash of opinion that these approaches can be
discovered and the right road to truth be found.
The danger in the loyalty compulsion is, then, that we may conceal mental apathy behind a rigid formula and thus lose sight of the constant need for psychological
alertness and the real meaning of loyalty and a free way of life. The mechanical formula of a loyalty oath, because it checks moral alertness and a search for ethical
clarification, may be the beginning of the thought control we all fear. True loyalty is a living, dynamic quality.
In the subtle choice between loyalty to people and loyalty to principles (usually a much vaguer feeling) the lawmaker has to leave the individual as free as possible,
because the latter type of loyalty is based on the first. Without personal loyalty there is no national loyalty!
There is still another aspect to this problem. We must learn to distinguish between disloyalty in actions and disloyalty in feelings and thought. Subversion of opinion is
never a crime. The right to dissent is the keystone of democracy. In a free state we must be willing to correct subversion by our better arguments. Persecuting dissenting
ideas is a form of mental laziness. Psychologically speaking, a government cannot concern itself with conscious motivations (and the unconscious motivations which cannot
be separated from them) of people because inwardly everybody has contrasting motivations. The quandary that such a government would provide itself is illustrated by the
following quotation from the Oppenheimer hearing by the Gray board published in 1954.
We believe that it has been demonstrated that the Government can search its own soul and the soul of an individual whose relationship to his government is in question with
full protection of the rights and interests of both. We believe that loyalty and security can be examined within the framework of the traditional and inviolable principles
of American justice.
In these beautiful phrases lie hidden all the ominous beginnings of totalitarian thought control. The government that searches the soul of any thinking individual can
always find a case against him, because doubt, ambivalence, and groping are traits common to all men. We cannot measure anybody's dependability on the basis of his
thoughts and feelings as they appear to us. In the first place, we can never know what lies behind a seemingly loyal facade. In the second place, the man whose search for
truth leads him to explore many heretical points of view can be the most loyal in his actions. His very exploration may well lead him to the considered judgment that
underlies true loyalty. What counts in any man is the consistency and integrity of his behaviour, and his courage in taking a stand, not his conformity to official dogma.
And to state that the government can search its own soul is to state absolutely nothing. A government is, after all, merely a collection of individuals. Under the pressure
of the loyalty compulsion, of the growing suspicion, these individuals themselves may not search their souls as honestly as they would in less hectic times or if they were
acting as private individuals rather than as official representatives of the government. The man caught in official security rules is the prisoner of the anxiety and
insecurity rampant in those who want to establish the delusion of certainty and security-a transgression of values!
As soon as the government starts to search the souls of its citizens, it begins to intrude on their rights and interests. It attacks democracy at home and weakens its
position abroad. We cannot find the road to peace and fellowship with the rest of the world if we adopt dogmatic, intransigent positions and try to impose our orthodoxy on
others. The hallmark of the totalitarian is his insistence that his is the only right way. If we are to maintain our position as the leader of the free world, we must
always keep our minds open. Only in that way will we find new ways to peace.
We have seen now that the problem of treachery has to deal with the failure to understand our inner mental processes. Every betrayal is in the first place a self-betrayal,
a disloyalty toward one's own standards. When people silence their conscience and compromise for the sake of convenience, at that moment they begin to be disloyal to
themselves. Passivity-assumed when our conscience should have forced us to act-is the most common form of self-betrayal. Inwardly a man may be furious because of some
injustice he has witnessed, but outwardly he may do nothing about it-this behaviour he feels inwardly is treason to the self and is often what makes him so touchy toward
other people's flaws. When the pattern of passivity is repeated, the individual continuously piles up more feelings of injustice and grows more and more resentful against
society. Evasiveness and skilful dodging of issues of principle-these are among the most dangerous forms of self-betrayal in our time. They are dangerous because they lead
unwittingly to the hypocrisy that puts power beyond ethical value.
It is dangerous to let personal grudges and discontent solidify into a permanent resentment against the whole of society. Parents and educators can forestall such
difficulties through psychological insight by allowing each individual the freedom to criticize and attack-in a civilized, non-destructive way-the community to which he
belongs. By helping to develop in the child the sense that he is responsible for his own views, subversive though they may temporarily appear, parents provide him with the
opportunity to overcome his feelings of loneliness and ambivalence and his wish to do violence to those who influence him. Again, loyalty is a relationship-loyalty to
family, friends, or country has to be deserved.
Loyalty is possible only when mutual mental aggression and hostility are allowed and tolerated within the limits of the law. This verbalized, sublimated, and civilized
form of aggression presupposes fairness and good sportsmanship. It is the synthesis and conquest of rebellion and subversion. However paradoxical it may sound, democracy
is founded on the mutual loyalty of politically opposed groups! You cannot doubt the good motives and intentions of your opponent without undermining the basis for
cooperation and successful government. It is most undemocratic to impute disloyalty to the opposition party. History shows that only where there is opportunity to confront
and integrate opposing ideas can man eradicate that form of psychological imbalance which gradually turns into a disloyalty to oneself and to the community. Fear of
subversion and opposition is often fear of ideas, fear of being identified with certain unacceptable ideas, the fear of betrayal of the hidden part of oneself. Fear of
treason will exist as long as loyal opposition is a crime.
Democracy is nonconformity; it is mutual loyalty, even when we have to attack one another's ideas-ideas, which, because they are always human, are always incomplete.
THE RAPE OF THE MIND - PART FOUR
In Search of Defenses
THE MOMENT WE BECOME AWARE THAT SPECIAL POLITICAL PHENOMENA ARE A THREAT TO OUR EXISTENCE, CORRESPONDING INNER DEFENSES DEVELOP AUTOMATICALLY. WE FEEL REASSURED AS WE
DISCOVER WAYS TO FACE THE PROBLEMS. THE CLOSING CHAPTERS OF THIS BOOK DEAL FIRST WITH SOME OF THE OFFICIAL ATTITUDES AND WITH THE CODE CREATED TO ENCOUNTER BRAINWASHING, A
DANGER WHICH HAS APPEARED RATHER RECENTLY IN HISTORY. THE FINAL CHAPTER SEARCHES MORE ELABORATELY FOR THE INSPIRING VALUES WHICH CHARACTERIZE FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY. THE
QUESTION OF HOW BEST TO BUILD UP MILITARY AND CIVILIAN MORALE BECOMES MORE COMPELLING BECAUSE OF THE TREMENDOUS MENTAL PRESSURES MODERN CIVILIZATION IMPOSES ON MAN.
XV. TRAINING AGAINST MENTAL TORTURE
THE U. S. CODE FOR RESISTING BRAINWASHING
By executive order of President Eisenhower on August 17, 1955, a new code of chivalry was made up governing conduct of American fighting men in combat and
captivity.* Six precepts of conduct for combatants were enunciated:
I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.
If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor
special favours from the enemy.
If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my
comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me, and will back them up in every way.
When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am bound to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions
to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statement disloyal to my country and its allies, or harmful to their cause.
I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my
God and in the United States of America.
In the additional report about the recommendations by the Secretary of Defense, it is acknowledged that modern warfare has brought the challenge to the doorstep of every
citizen, and that the final front of the cold-war line is in every citizen's mind. At the same time, a clearly defined code is given telling U.S. prisoners of war how to
behave after capture. Although there was a lack of such a code previously, the report states that "American troops have demonstrated through all wars that they do not
surrender easily, they have never surrendered in large bodies, and they have in general performed admirably in their country's cause as prisoners of war."
After describing physical attacks on prisoners-death marches, hunger, squalor, cold, torture, disease, and total degradation-the report gives extended attention to all the
forms of mental coercion intended to extract false confessions or military information from the soldiers, and to infect them with totalitarian thinking. First, the enemy
aimed at the breakdown of the leaders, at confusion of the officers, who so easily influence their soldiers.
Then gradually everybody had to undergo the ordeal by indoctrination. The enemy propaganda barrage started full speed. This suggestive attack reached minds not used to
highly specialized discussion, minds not informed and rather confused about Communism and its tactics. Inner discrepancies in the reasoning of the man could easily be
attacked and reduce him to docile submission.
The report pleads for more extended, skilful training of the soldier (and the citizen) in our basic beliefs and responsibilities, a mental mobilization for the future
clash of "ideas" and "wills."
There was a considerable conflict of opinion in the advisory committee to the Secretary of Defense that drafted the code between the hard Spartan view and the more lenient
let-them-talk view. The first group maintained that every soldier has to resist to the end; the latter believed that in the end anybody could be brought into submission.
Nevertheless, all soldiers have to be trained especially to resist and not to be made disloyal to their country, their services, and their comrades. That was the principal
reason why this final code of high standards was made up, even though it is recognized that coercion is possible beyond the ability to resist. Yet the psychologist here
adds the additional question, Who will judge what is beyond the ability to resist? The report ends by underlining the fact that the total war for the minds of men is
continually going on. The home front is just an extension of the fighting front!
An important point made by the code is that it asks that attention be given to a far more extensive mental battle front. By making it known that the coercive methods of
the Communists are well understood by us, the impact and meaning of their cold-war strategy are partly taken away. Finally nobody in the outside world believes them, even
though their totalitarian methods may be of use to them for internal propaganda in their own countries. However, we cannot fight indoctrination with mere counter
indoctrination.
Letting soldiers sign a declaration that they will never yield to brainwashing has the advantage of at least informing them of what to expect. Yet this knowledge does not
protect them against the subtle conditioning by an inquisitor who knows how to circumvent mental obstacles. Time and subtle suggestive penetration can break men's
resistance.
Psychologically, a loyalty oath compulsion and a signed declaration do not mean anything in themselves. Only a profound education in mental freedom and democratic
awareness can help as a counter toxic. The authorities who ask for signed declarations of loyalty are not enough aware of how much propaganda and persuasive brainwashing
and other forms of mental seduction are going on right here in our own society; they are substituting the social and national responsibility for an individual one. It is
the moral and political atmosphere behind the man in the hinterland that supplies his mental stamina. The nation is responsible for the mental backbone it trains and
transfers to its soldiers in a cold war!
Several P.O.W: s felt misled by their own government. They had been badly informed about the enemy, in too simple terms of black and white. By showing his good side, the
captor could easily arouse suspicion about the honesty of the prisoner's leaders.
From a psychiatric standpoint, it needs to be said again that everybody can be brought to a breaking point regardless of how well-informed and counter indoctrinated he may
be. When the enemy wants to persist in his demoralizing methods, he has the means. Alas, the report did not emphasize enough the difficult dialectic dilemma into which
many a simple soldier is thrown. For years he has been trained in a society or military group where obedience to the law and conformity to community habits were imprinted
on him. Suddenly he has to select and test his own individuality and critical defences. A cold war asks for a high level of political awareness. This brings the problem
back again to the problem of individual mental vulnerability of persons and to the general problem of morale. Mental courage cannot be cultivated by physical training
only. It requires training in mental stamina, in understanding of basic beliefs, and even in nonconformistic thinking. We have to believe deeply in the cause for which we
are fighting in order to resist the standpoint of the enemy. It is the strength of conviction that gives moral power!
Indoctrination Against Indoctrination?
An educational concept exists to the effect that conditioning to physical torture will help soldiers to be more immune to brainwashing. In one of the air force bases,
airmen had to go through a "school of torture," euphemistically called the School of Survival, in which some of the barbarous and cruel Communist methods of handling
prisoners were initiated in order to harden the men against future brutality.*[* Time, September 19, 1955] The trainees could stand the ghoulish
exercises rather well. However, such a training can condition men to take over, unwittingly, the methods of totalitarianism. It may give a semi-official green light to
enemy tactics by implying that we can do the same.
Moreover, such methods may stimulate hidden sadistic tendencies in both trainer and trainee. Under the disguise of an earnest training need, American youth may be educated
in the same sadistic view as their enemies.
The important psychological implication of every form of harsh compulsive training and indoctrination is that it fits into the totalitarian pattern. Moreover, the
totalitarian inquisitors don't need to use physical torture in order to uncover the secrets of man's mind, although they may use these methods for their private pleasure.
On the contrary, the enemy counted just as much on friendly gestures and special privileges to seduce the hungry, weakened P.O.W.s into confession. What the inquisitors
especially require in order to succeed is that the enemy have a weak personality, that he be a dumbbell with a soldier's need to conform, that he be ridden with anxiety
and lacking in patience. The brainwashing inquisitor doesn't need torture. Physical torture will often strengthen resistance against the inquisitor, while isolation alone
can accomplish his objectives. The school that teaches only torture and evasion techniques can even arouse latent anxieties and thus, paradoxically, make it easier for the
soldier-weakened by his fantastic anticipations-to surrender to brainwashing. The hero at school can become a weakling as soon as he is faced with the real challenge.
It is not so important what the trainee accomplishes during his physical training but what he stands for mentally and spiritually. Does he have a mental backbone? Only
this will stand him in good stead during the challenge of prisonership.
The Psychiatric Report About Brainwashing and Menticide In every report on brainwashing of prisoners of war, several factors that may lead to the accusation of
"collaboration with the enemy" have to be taken into account to determine the psychological responsibility of the accused.
Did he surrender mentally under a kind of hypnosis? Can he be made responsible at all; was there a conscious and voluntary collaboration that turned the man into a
traitor? Was there cowardice or only spiritual weakness?
Because these questions are so new in our history and often so subtle in relation to the circumstances, it is well to enumerate the fields of interest to be analyzed:
The Accusation. The psychologist has to study the incriminating facts. We often can see, for instance, in the phrasing of the signed confessions, evidence that the
signature was enforced. Some cliché phrases of the enemy can be looked at as gradually wangled out of the head of the victim. For one of the courts I was able to
make an analysis of a written confession that was composed of such heterogeneous elements that the process of mental wrestling and gradual giving in of the
prisoner could easily be discerned in the papers.
Rumour and mass psychology. Not all the accusations against a prisoner of war made by fellow prisoners-even when the majority constantly repeat them-may be taken
at face value. Under the impact of terror and fear, rumours about special persons are easily communicated. There are personalities who, on the basis of their
special character structure, easily become the focal point of rumours. The withdrawn intellectual, for instance, is often accused of consorting with the enemy.
When he speaks the enemy's language and can communicate with them, accusations against him can become like a huge mass hallucination.
The investigator has to make a survey of group relations in the P.O.W. camp. The brainwashing enemy tries first to attack the leaders, in order to attack the
morale of the remainder of the P.O.W.'s; then he tries to select specially vulnerable personalities for his strategy of mental pressure and ideological conversion.
The personality structure of the accused. Certain persons, on the basis of their weak ego or their underlying neurotic anxieties, are predestined to give in
earlier to mental pressures. To obtain a fair estimate of the individual, intelligence tests and the Rorschach test have to be given, the family background and the
religious and ideological foundations of the person have to be studied.
Was the brainwashee well trained to stand the treatment? What kind of information had been given to the prisoner of war during his training? Did he know enough
about the ideological war and the word barrage he might be exposed to? Was he only prepared for discipline and submission, or also for freedom and nonconforming
discussions? Was he only physically trained or also mentally?
The facts of torture. How long did it take before the prisoner gave in? Did he get drugs? How much isolation? How many hours of interrogation? Were there symptoms
of pain and physical illness? Can these facts be verified?
This is only a short survey of viewpoints to be taken into account. They serve to show that with the phenomenon of systematic brainwashing and thought control something is
brought before the court that is judicially new. The traditional attitudes toward personal competence, responsibility, and accountability cannot be applied. The state (the
totalitarian system of the enemy) has, in the case of successful brainwashing, taken over, even taken possession of, all psychological responsibility for the obedient acts
of persons. Our criminal courts and military courts will have to find new rules of judging those who fell into the hands of such a criminalizing system.
XVI. EDUCATION FOR DISCIPLINE OR HIGHER MORALE
The Role of Education
The child's formative years are spent under the guidance of first parents and then teachers; jointly they influence his future behaviour. The educational system can either
reinforce or correct parental errors and attitudes, either strengthen the child's desire to grow toward freedom and maturity or stifle his need to develop and twist it
into the need to resign himself to permanent childishness and dependence.
Since the Renaissance, the ideal of universal scholastic training has made steady gains. But today we unwittingly tend to mould minds into a prefabricated pattern and to
give our students the illusion that they know or have to know all the answers. The fallacy of such half-education is that the so-called alphabetics in contrast to those
who cannot read-may become better followers and worse thinkers.
The totalitarians, for example, are not against schools; on the contrary, for the more you overburden the mind with facts, the more passive it may become. Intellectual
erudition and book-learning alone do not make strong personalities, and in our passion for factual education and the quiz type of examination there lies hidden a form of
mental pressure. The awe with which we regard the accumulation of school facts may inhibit the mind so that it cannot think for itself. We must become more aware of the
involuntary pressures an educational system can impose on us, and their possibly dangerous effects on the future of our democratic society. The actual strategy of keeping
people as permanent students under prolonged supervision is a help to totalitarian indoctrination. For instance, somewhere along the line in some administrative minds,
there sprang up the idea that repeated, comparative examinations would increase the quality of the corps of administrators. Instead, infantile anxieties developed related
to the fear of this infantile tool of measurement and evaluation: the examination. There is now hardly any administrator who dares to look at reality as the best test of
human capacity and human endurance.
The form of education which sets a premium on dependency, which over-controls the child, which makes a moral appeal through punishment and provoking a sense of guilt,
which overrates mechanical skills and automatic learning, this form of education kneads the brain into a pattern of conformity which can easily be turned into totalitarian
channels. This is even more the case in regard to the disciplinary training of soldiers. Such rigid education glorifies good behaviour far too much; imitation and
conformity are approved at the expense of spontaneous creativity, thinking for oneself, and the free expression and discussion of dissenting ideas. Our examination mania
forces students into mental pathways of automatic thinking. Our intellectual and so-called objective education overrates rationalism and technical know-how under the
delusion that this will keep emotional errors under control.
What it does instead, of course, is to train children into automatic patterns of thinking and acting, which are closer to the pattern of conditioned reflexes, of which
Pavlovian students are so fond, than they are to the free, exploratory, creative pattern toward which democratic education should be oriented.
Totalitarianism is well aware that youth has a sensitive period during which Pavlovian conditioning may be established without difficulty. Early teachings form nearly
indestructible patterns in the child's mind and eventually replace innate instinctual precision. This early Pavlovian automatization of life may itself develop almost the
force of an innate instinct. Indeed this is precisely what happens in Totalitaria. Dictators especially organize youth and press them to join disciplinary youth movements.
The paradox of universal literacy is that it may create a race of men and women who have become (just because of this new intellectual approach to life) much more
receptive to the indoctrination of their teachers or leaders. Do we need conditioned adepts or freethinking students? Beyond this, our technical means of communication
have caught up with our literacy. The eye that can read is immediately caught by advertising and propaganda. This is the tremendous dilemma of our epoch.
In many of our primary schools students are taught in an atmosphere of compulsive regimentation and are imprinted with a sense of dependency and awe of authority which
lasts throughout their lives. They never really learn to think for themselves. The scholastic fact-factories, the schools, keep many pupils too busy to think; they may
instead educate them into progressive immaturity. As long as people can quote one another and the available "expert" opinion, they are considered well-informed and
intellectual. Many schools emphasize what we could call a quotation mania, making; the ability to quote the epitome of all wisdom. Yet anyone with an apparently
unanswerable logic, anyone who can back up his position with authoritative statements and quotations, can have a strong impact on such a mind, for it can readily be caught
and conditioned by emotionally attractive pseudo-intellectual currents. As a matter of fact, in the process of brainwashing the inquisitor makes. use of the feeling of
confusion his victim gets when he is shown that his facts don't fit and that there are flaws in his concepts. The man who doesn't know the tricks of argument will break
down sooner.
I like to distinguish among the intellectuals quantellectuals and. quintellectuals. The former aim for quantity of knowledge and easily yield to any kind of new
conditioning. To the quintellectuals,, on the other hand, intellect is a quality of personal integrity. Facts. are not consumed passively but are weighed and verified.
This kind of intellect has a potentiality independent of school education and often school can spoil it.
One of the most amazing cases I ever treated was a typical quantellectual, a doctor of psychology who had just completed his university education with a dissertation on a
psycho-technical subject. He came to me because he was a complete failure in all his relationships with girls. He wanted this "impotence" to be treated medically, and at
first he rejected any kind of psychotherapy because he "knew all that stuff." In the course of our conversation it became apparent that his entire scholastic education had
bypassed him.
He had gotten A's at school, but the very essence of what he had studied had eluded him. He had grasped literally nothing about psychology. He had memorized everything and
had understood nothing. He could quote from every page of the book but explain none. Every time he had to work out a test or give practical advice, he went into a panic.
It took years of treatment to break through his rigid, compulsive habits, and to bring him to a point where he was able to think and feel as a human being rather than as a
machine. At the end of his treatment he started to learn all over again, reading with greed and fervour what had before been empty facts.
But he was not the only walking fact-collection I have met. Another one of my patients was a young man who was obsessed with the desire to accumulate all the learned
degrees his university could deliver. At the time I met him he was a member of a Nazi organization. (Here is an example of the fact that many a pedant has an affinity with
an authoritarian political system.) Even in this group he provoked hostility because of his search for facts and more facts, facts only for the sake of facts. His
compulsions became too much for even his totalitarian fellows. He had delusions of grandeur and had absolutely no emotional relationships at all; both signs that a
psychotic process was going on. But his intellectual capacity was intact. The son of a scholar, he had lived in constant competition with his father; early in youth he
started to read the encyclopaedia, and later, in grade school and high school, he was cheered because of his phenomenal "knowledge." Indeed, he did know the facts, but he
knew nothing else. He knew neither how to get along with himself nor with anyone else.
These two cases serve to demonstrate how a mechanized educational system, failing to detect even an urgent need for emotional relationships and a sense of belonging, and
placing its emphasis on learning instead of living, can produce adults who are totally unequipped to meet the problems of life, who are themselves only half alive and
completely incapable of meeting the challenges of reality. Such men and women do not make good democratic citizens.
One of the most essential tasks of education for mental freedom is to prepare the child for mature adulthood by teaching him to see the essentials and by teaching him to
think for himself. There are several fields of interest through which the capacity to think for oneself may be developed-for instance, the field of communication and the
science of abstraction. A child's awareness of his own language, of the words he himself uses, as an expressive tool rather than as a set of grammatical rules can lead him
to inquisitiveness about other languages and other ways of thinking, and thus may lead him to the ability to think abstractly and to understand relationships. The child's
period of greatest sensitivity to foreign languages is when he is about ten - much younger than the age at which we normally teach foreign languages. At this age, too, the
child begins to have an active personal interest in words and self expression. This interest can be used to make language an exciting adventurous exploration instead of a
cut-and-dried process of memorization.
Our schools must stimulate inventiveness and self-activity too, through such subjects as carpentry and designing. Creative play with concrete objects also develops the
child's capacity to abstract and to generalize, making it easier for him to absorb the abstractions which underlie all mathematics.
If, instead of throwing the child into the sea of abstractions he finds in the daily arithmetic drill, we brought him to an understanding of the process of abstraction by
carefully graded steps, he would absorb and assimilate what he learned, not merely parrot what he was told. We tend, for instance, to teach mathematical abstractions at
too early an age, just as we wait too long to teach language and verbal expression. History is a subject which is not learned by memorizing facts and dates but through
mutual discussion. It has to start with the concept of personal lifetimes and personal history. It is better to give a child a printed report of the history of yesterday
and ask for his comments and opinions on it, or better to promote individual thought by letting him search for background information in a library or museum, than to ask
him to memorize facts. In this way the learning of history can become an adventure.
We can also revise the system that risks so easily rearing mediocre people who fit into a pattern of mediocrity. Different children must be trained and educated
differently. Each one has his own internal timetable; each one will have his own life adjustments. Why should we compulsively do to our children what we would never do to
the flowers in our gardens? Every plant is allowed to attain its own natural size. Our current scholastic practice stimulates ambition in a few children, but stifles it in
others. Instead of promoting cheating by our rigid examination rules, why do we not allow children to help one another in the solution of common problems? Very often
children can teach each other what the teacher cannot.
Think for a moment of the child especially sensitive to the boredom of some of our contemporary schools. He becomes either a conformist-full of good marks and no original
thoughts - or a rebel-ripe for the child-guidance clinic of today and possibly for the totalitarian state of tomorrow.
Discipline and Morale
While good morale implies inner strength and self-discipline, it may not necessarily imply a set group discipline in a political or military sense. Good personal morale
and backbone were two of the needed qualifications for taking part successfully in the underground during the last war. The partisans, working secretly-now here, now
there-relied, in their lonely combat, on their individual initiative and morale as much as, if not more than, on distant leadership and discipline. This is just the
opposite of a kind of stand-by morale impelled by blind fear and maintained from a distance, the kind which is obtained in jails or concentration camps, or in a tribe with
extreme emphasis on common participation. In the first groups, there was morale without discipline; in the second, discipline without morale. In the same way, there are
some officers who can only develop discipline without morale.
Nevertheless, there is usually an inner relation between discipline and morale. Only when a certain amount of initial disciplinary training is given to youngsters or
soldiers are they well conditioned for that personal inner strength which is based on self-confidence and trust in the group as a whole, together with confidence in the
authorities. Emergency discipline is resorted to during times of stress when there is usually lack of time, with the result that there is not a sufficient period for
self-control and adjustment to the group. Only a self-chosen discipline which develops gradually can lay the basis for inner freedom and morale. This rule has been
forgotten by many educators. Only this basis of initial, conditioned patterns gives us the confidence to stand on our own.
We all start by interjecting and taking over our morale from others-our parents and educators. The basis of our personal morale is what we internalized from them. The
subtle mutual relation between discipline and freedom starts in the cradle under the care of loving and interested and consistent parents. The parents are the first to
build morale. The conflict between discipline and morale in a group usually arises when the members are held together by compulsion or necessity. Here the inner coherence
will be completely different from that of a situation in which there is a spontaneous loyalty to the group. The aim of all discipline is to develop a better adjustment to
the group. In turn, success in identifying with the group develops a stronger ego. From this point on, freedom begins.
A further understanding of these morale-building principles is important for an evaluation of the inner strength or vulnerability of the various cultural groups. We may
expect, according to our experiences in psychotherapy, that where too much discipline, or even slavery, prevails, the inner cohesion of the group will be very different
from that of a group respecting and holding the individual in high esteem. Yet we have found men even in the armies of totalitarian systems who exemplify high morale. I
call to mind those Japanese soldiers who-without any tie with the mother country-stuck to their lonely posts for years after the war, as though the emperor and his
generals were still looking at them. This tells us something about the consistent love, security, and dedication they received in the first six years of life.
Discipline and Brainwashing
When we want to train a soldier to resist brainwashing, we have to give him antidotes against mass suggestion. We have to teach him to make up his own answers and to
criticize his teachers. We must train him in negative suggestibility and emphasize the courage to reject emotionally pleasant reasoning when it does not seem truthful.
Above all, we have to repeat such lessons many times to make a self-confident individual out of a recruit. Against the daily barrage of suggestions, we have to provoke
individual criticism. All this has to be done in addition to making the soldier familiar with the concept and implications of brainwashing.
In so doing, he will learn, unconsciously, to judge what propaganda is or what it is not-as we all partially do when listening to advertising over the radio. Psychological
experience tells us that part of propagandistic suggestions can leak through even alert mental defences and penetrate our opinions. Anti-brainwashing training has to be
done thoroughly and repeatedly. It may appear to be in conflict with rigid discipline; when the teacher and officer knows enough about the subject, however, the student's
self-respect is enhanced through identification with the leading officer. True, we see here a change of disciplinary relations, but it offers the real test of discipline
in a free, democratic community. A man who has been taught self-esteem and knowledge will stand to the end when the hour of challenge comes.
The change of the war of weapons into a mental cold war requires a change of discipline. The soldier has to know not only his rifle, but even more the sense of his mission
and the nonsense of the enemy.
The Quality of the Group and the Influence of the Leader In every group situation, morale refers to the degree of cohesive strength of the members and to the amount of
loyalty toward the group and its goals. Morale may, or may not, imply an understanding of the goals. In Western culture with its subtle pros and cons, a much deeper need
for awareness, understanding, and consideration of goals is implied than is called for in a totalitarian state.
In the totalitarian state with its veneration for the strong leader; the threatening loss of coherence-when the dictator or leading group fails-would have a much more
disintegrating effect than such failure in a democratic society, whose members usually have reached a higher degree of self-determination and governmental skill. A
democracy always finds new leaders ready to take responsibility.
Morale includes the question of how much people can endure physically and mentally, and for how long. Under different kinds of regimentation the limit of endurance will be
different. Stand-by morale, based on fear as in prisons, may disintegrate at the least sign of weakness in leader or guard, or when the individuals have not as yet been
sufficiently disciplined.
The kamikazes, the pilots educated for suicide, were thoroughly indoctrinated with the self-offering ideology; and their morale, as shown in the war with Japan, might be
said to have been high in an Oriental sense.
Here discipline and allegiance had become so automatic that life was of no importance either to the individual or to the group. The only thought was to keep going and beat
the enemy. This kind of morale is often dependent on obtaining a frenzied desperation-a kind of collective suicidal rage-in pursuit of the national goal. We are becoming
more and more aware of how important leadership is in boosting morale. The leader is the embodiment of the valued human relationships for which we are willing to offer our
energy and even, when needed, our lives. Through identification with him we borrow his fortitude. It is not always the official leader who has charge of lifting the
morale. Sometimes a sergeant or a soldier may take over this function.
The official leader himself is in a more difficult position. He must be many things that may seem to contradict one another. He must represent paternal authority as well
as our ego, our conscience, and our ideals. He must relieve us of our sense of guilt and anxiety, and he must be able to absorb our needs for strength, affection, and
dedication-our transference needs, as expressed in psychological terms. He must be able to create group action and motivation and at the same time increase the
individual's self-esteem. His doubts may become our doubts; his loss of confidence makes us lose our self-confidence.
At times we may want him to be a tyrant so that we can be relieved of our personal resentments and responsibilities. Sometimes we want to compete with him as we competed
with our fathers. At other times we want affection from him. The leader must be both a scapegoat and a giant. Our own inner strength will grow, depending on the leader's
inspiring and guiding personality. While we may never love him completely, we will use him to grow or decline in our morale.
Yet the individual not only borrows strength from the group and its leader, he also brings his own spirit to it. Even when he is used as a scapegoat to release group
hostility, the individual-when he takes it with humour and philosophy-may unwittingly boost the morale of the group. He communicates, as it were, his personal tolerance to
others. The black sheep in a platoon is often as much accepted as the beloved sports hero.
In the same way, the group communicates all kinds of feelings to the individual; the process of morale contagion is continually going on. Its quality depends on mutual
acceptance, friendships, the amount of contagious fear in the group, the quality of interpersonal processes, resistance-provoking qualities in the few, and so on.
Let us not forget that the best morale booster for ourselves is to help to lift the morale of others. When inter-human contact is not allowed, morale is soon lacking. For
instance, we heard from several escaped people from behind the iron curtain that their most prominent complaint in the totalitarian system was the feeling of mental
isolation. The individual feels alone and continually on the alert. There is only mutual suspicion. The new gospel for those escapees was the ready humane acceptance and
contact they experienced in the democratic group, because here was spontaneous enthusiasm and mutual acceptance-even when there was disagreement.
Enumeration of Some Factors Influencing Group Morale The following factors resulting mostly from military experience may endanger morale:
Wrong anticipation of danger; myths and rumours about the enemy
Severe stress; battle fatigue
Poor physical and mental health (flu!)
Lack of food, lack of sleep; cold and dirt
Bad leadership
Poor training; lack of skill; overtraining
Poor communication and poor information
Destruction of basic values, lack of faith
Confusion of activities, strife in politics, wrong selection of government
Authoritarian and undemocratic behaviour; humiliation
Tyranny; too rigid discipline, also lack of discipline
Homesickness and feelings of estrangement
Internal hostilities, prejudices, persecution of minorities
Thought control and menticide; no right to be an individual, no justice, no right to appeal
No function in the social setting, no duties
Alcohol and sedatives
The following factors may boost morale:
Sound democratic leadership
Well-planned organization with the freedom of improvisation; minimum of red tape
Democratic self-discipline. Do we have faith in our own institutions?
Information and unhampered communication
Freedom of religion; moral integrity
Mutual loyalty and mature responsibility; team spirit
Mental alertness; the important psychology of awareness of the problems of our own epoch
A sense of belonging and being accepted.
A sense of justice, freedom, and privacy
Confidence in experts ready to give first aid (mental hygiene experts, clergy, Red Cross, Civil Defense, medical first aid)
The Breaking Point and Our Capacity for Frustration
What is the straw that breaks the camel's back? This is a key question in the problem of personal morale. During the Second World War, I treated a fighter pilot who was
unafraid of his dangerous work but who felt unhappy about his personal relationships. Suddenly during an air-raid alert in London, where he was on furlough, he was struck
by utter panic. In normal life he had been a rather shy and withdrawn young man. Unexpectedly he found himself in a shelter with a frightened group about him, and he
became contaminated by the fear of other people. The strange situation found him unprepared and so he broke down. I mention this point to show again how contagious the
atmosphere in a P.O.W. camp can be.
No one can really tell how he will behave in times of great danger until it comes to actually facing the test. The true test of reality is solved in different ways. Many
accept the challenge. Some over-defensive, compulsive individuals even welcome the danger. Still others-who were already unstable-misuse the new situation as an excuse to
break down and let their emotions go. Segal calls the last group frustrated big-dealers, exclusives, dupes, scared kids, praise-starved egotists-all having egos that could
easily be boosted by a flattering inquisitor.
In psychology we are aware of the fact that there are two sets of determinants which bring on mental breakdown: one set consisting of long-term considerations which cause
a gradual breakdown of inner defences, the other consisting of short-term factors, the triggers or provoking factors causing a sudden collapse of the mental and physical
integration. To the first set of factors may belong chronic disease or the many chronic irritations of life. The second operates by means of a sudden symbolic impact on
hidden sensitivities. A mouse appearing in a girls' class doesn't arouse panic because of its objective danger. Modern psychopathology has studied the manifold sensitizing
occurrences, experienced in early life, which make people subject to unknown trigger reactions.
Yet, trauma and frustration are emphasized too much as weakeners of the personality during its development. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. Challenge and
resistance to unfavourable influences make the personality. In order to develop greater inner strength and better ego defences, the individual has to expose and traumatize
himself. What else is "fair" sport and "fair" competition but repeated training in morale? Physical training doesn't have to be "soft." The self-traumatization by trial
and error, to which we unconsciously expose ourselves in encounters during sports, is part of a spontaneous effort toward self-discipline. When the person cannot find
strength within himself, he must borrow it from his neighbour and look for strength by proxy. Too great emphasis on dependence or leadership increases this proxy
mechanism. Leadership is not exclusively the secret of morale. Identification with the leader may sometimes fortify the person's inner strength, but it may also frustrate
his capacity to grapple with his own problems. A frustrating leader may decrease our capacity to tolerate frustration.
Living under too soft circumstances is probably a weakening factor; a recent publication (Richter) on experiences with men under combat stress, and later with rats in the
laboratory, have proven that luxury in general influences negatively man's capacity to endure.
Somewhere along the line, good morale means no longer being afraid to die; it means solving that mythological anxiety about death being something dark and obscure; and it
means the willingness to accept fate. Accepting fate and duty and responsibility is living in a different way: it is living with the moral courage to stand for moral
principles that you have gathered in your life and without which life is not worth living.
The anticipation of bad occurrences can have a paralyzing effect. If one expects people to break down, they may either give in more easily to these false prophets, or, out
of hostility, feel boosted in their morale. The press, the radio, television have to be aware of their subtle responsibility as morale-influencing mediums.
It is important to realize that mental prophets expect more panic in others when they themselves feel jittery and insecure. In the last war, there were many sensational
forecasts of panic that, happily enough, did not materialize, such as Dunkerque. Man is often mentally much stronger than we expect him to be. Of all the animals, he can
suffer most and take danger best-provided he does not weaken himself by his belief in supernatural terror stories nor become unnerved in a cold war.
XVII. FROM OLD TO NEW COURAGE WHO RESISTS LONGER AND WHY?
What then can give a man strength to resist a menticidal assault? What made it possible for so many thousands to survive mentally and physically the horrors of the Nazi
concentration camps and the Communist P.O.W. camps?
The answer is essentially simple. Men yield primarily because at some point they are overwhelmed by their unconscious conflicts. These conflicts, kept under control in
normal circumstances, come to the surface under the strain of menticidal pressure. The stronger the inner conflicts and the greater the pressure, the greater the tendency
to yield. Men withstand pressure when these conflicts cannot be so easily aroused or have been inwardly overcome.
This simple answer itself contains a clinical paradox. One of the characteristics of severe neurosis, and of some cases of pathological character structure, is that
unconscious conflicts are so severe that they are either repressed so deeply that the sufferer is not even vaguely aware of their existence or they are transformed into a
set of overt attitudes which are more acceptable to the individual, and therefore easier to handle. If the severe neurotic permitted himself to feel his real conflicts,
they would dominate his life completely; consequently he exerts tremendous force to hold down this explosive material. The man who is always rebellious, never growing from
healthy rebellion into healthy maturity, may have transformed some basic and profound conflict in his own personality into a chronic resistance against any kind of social
demand. Psychiatric examination of returned P.O.W.s from Korea showed that many of the men who resisted enemy propaganda most strongly were those with a history of
lifelong rebellion against all authority -from parents through teachers to army superiors. They were troublemakers wherever they were, among their friends as well as among
their enemies (Segal.)
This negative side of the coin is only part of the picture. A man with deep self-knowledge, aware of his own inner conflicts and aware, too, of what the enemy is trying to
do to him is prepared to meet and resist the attack. I interrogated many people who went through the tortures of Nazi prison and concentration camps. Some were ordinary
folk with no political affiliations, some were members of the resistance, a few were psychologists and psychoanalysts. Those who understood themselves, who were willing to
accept danger and challenge, and who realized, even faintly, how bestial man can be, were able to stand the harrowing concentration-camp experience. They were not defeated
by their own innocent perplexity and lack of insight into themselves and others, but were protected by their knowledge and inquisitive alertness.
There are other factors which play an important role too. My investigations have made it abundantly clear to me that those who can resist, who can maintain their strength
under marginal circumstances, never feel that they are alone.
As long as they can think of their loved ones at home, as long as they can look forward to seeing them again, as long as they know their families are faithfully waiting
for them, they can maintain their strength and keep the unconscious drive to give in from taking over their lives. The love and affection we get and gather in our hearts
is the greatest stimulus to endurance. Not only does it provide a goal toward which we can direct our lives, it also gives us an inner assurance and a sense of worth that
make it possible for us to keep in check the self-destroying conflicts.
This knowledge of loving and being loved is not limited to love of family or friends. People in whom a religious faith or a political conviction is a deeply rooted, living
thing have this same sense of belonging, of being needed, of being loved. Their allegiance is to a whole group or to a set of ideals rather than to individuals. To such
people, beliefs are real and concrete, as real and concrete as people or objects. They provide a bulwark against loneliness, terror, fantasies conjured up by the
unconscious, and the unleashing of deep-seated conflicts, a bulwark that is as strong as the memory of love. Yet, such mentally strong people form a minority in our
conflict ridden society.
Experience has shown that robust athletes cannot withstand the concentration-camp or the P.O.W. camp experiences any better than can their physically weaker brothers. Nor
is intellect alone any real help in fending off the daily assaults on the will. On the contrary, it can provide useful rationalization for surrender. Mental backbone and
moral courage go deeper than the intellect. Fortitude is not a physical or intellectual quality; it is something we get from the cradle, from the consistency of our
parents' behaviour, and from their beliefs and faith. It has become increasingly rare in a world of changing values and little faith.
The Myth of Courage
There is something in the glorious myth of strength and courage that confuses all of us. Physical strength is too frequently confused with spiritual strength. Bravery and
heroism are, indeed, needed qualities in battle. Yet analysis of soldiers in combat shows that each one of them has to conduct a constant battle against his own fears. The
brave are the ones who can check their fears, who can cope with the paralyzing fantasies that fear creates, and who can control the desire to regress into childish
escapism. A man cannot be forced to become a hero, and it is ridiculous to punish him if he is not. It is as pointless as punishing him for bleeding or fainting.
The hero, the man who offers himself up to death for the sake of others, is found more in mythology than in reality. Psychology and anthropology have shown that the hero
myth is related to eternal dream images. The hero symbolizes the rebellious new generation, the strong son becoming stronger than the father. He symbolizes, too, our wish
to be mature and to take responsibility into our own hands.
We need the myth for the inspiration it offers us. We commemorate with post humour glorification the heroic feats of the few who have, throughout history, offered
themselves up as sacrifices to their comrades or to society. Yet what do we know of their real motives?
During the Second World War, I gave psychiatric treatment to many soldiers. As I spoke and worked with them, I became increasingly conscious of how dangerous it is to
stick the simple label "hero" or "coward" on any man. One of my patients, for example, was a boy who had received a high military decoration because he had stuck to a
lonely place with his machine gun, firing automatically until the enemy was forced to withdraw. In the course of his treatment, the boy confessed that his apparent heroism
was really the result of a paralyzing fear, which had made it impossible for him to follow his commander's order to retreat.
No one can really tell how he will behave in times of danger. Each person will solve the frightening test that reality confronts him with in his own way. Several will
accept the challenge and stand up to it. Some over-defensive, compulsive individuals may even welcome this burden as a test of their strength. Still others whose
instability has deep roots in the past-will unconsciously take advantage of a perilous situation to break down completely and let their tears and emotions go.
Freud has directed our attention to the peculiar interplay between external and internal dangers, between frightening reality and equally frightening fantasy. Objective,
recognizable dangers often stimulate the mind to alertness and encourage it to set up its inner defences. But there are subjective panic-creators too-frustration, feeling
of guilt, infantile horror fantasies-and these can often be so terrorizing in their effects that all our cultural defences collapse. Many men who face the test of reality
with stalwart courage can be brought to collapse by apparent trivia which somehow touch them in a vulnerable spot.
Another of my wartime patients mentioned previously showed such a pattern. The young fighter pilot, who had flown forty combat missions without any sign of fear or panic,
suddenly broke down completely in an air-raid shelter in London. In the course of treatment, it became apparent that this young man was bitterly unhappy about his personal
relationships. He did not get along with his commanding officer; he had had a serious quarrel with his girl friend the night before his breakdown. A shy and withdrawn
person, when he suddenly found himself in the shelter with a frightened group about him, he became contaminated by the fear in the atmosphere. Weakened by recent
unhappiness, he found himself completely unable to put up the inner defences that had served him so well under the frightening experiences of active war.
Are we to say that he was less of a hero than the much-decorated machine-gunner? There still lives in all of us an admiration for bravado, for the theatrical display of
courage, for the devil-may-care invitation to destruction. We are beginning to recognize now that real courage is different; it is at one and the same time an expression
of faith in life and a resignation to death. Courage is not something that can be forced on a man from the outside. It has to come from inside him.
In the reality of modern war - the impersonal Moloch - a man can be easily reduced to a feeling of helplessness and dependency. Personal courage can turn the tide of
battle in a hand-to-hand encounter, but personal courage is no defense against bombs and machine guns. Today, reckless courage, as we have glorified it, is less important
than personal morale, faith, conviction, knowledge, and adequate preparation.
A boy of seventeen years of age is drafted into the army. He has spent his entire life in a small town in Texas. He receives training in the routine of army life and the
use of his weapons. Soon thereafter he is sent to Korea, and almost immediately he is taken prisoner. Now this child has to defend himself against the propaganda barrage
which well-trained Communist theoreticians daily hurl at him. His education is limited, his background narrow, his political training inadequate. He even tries to escape
from his prison camp but is caught. As a result, the enemy's mental hold on him increases. His great disappointment makes him feel trapped. Finally he surrenders and
collaborates. How can a military court hold him responsible, and even punishable, for the fact that he finally gave in to enemy propaganda?
This is part of the story of Corporal Claude Bachelor, recently sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for collaboration with the enemy. I would venture to guess that it
could have been the story of nearly any American boy of similar background.
After the Second World War, several European countries had to face the difficult problem of how to treat those members of the underground who, after torture by the Nazis,
had confessed and betrayed their compatriots. In Holland a Court of Honor was established to judge these special cases. This court reached the following conclusions:
No man can possibly vouch for it that under no circumstances will he `confess,' `cooperate,' or `betray' his country. No man who has not himself gone through the hell
which Communists and Nazis have been so able to organize has any right to judge the conduct of a man who did.
Psychological torture is more effective in many cases than physical torture. This is all the more true of the victim who has above average intellectual background. It
seems that intelligence makes physical torture more easily bearable but at the same time exposes one more to the impact of mental torture. Anyone who `submitted' under
such circumstances to the enemy after having given proof of his loyalty, patriotism and courage will suffer terribly because his condemnation of himself will always be
more severe than that of any judge.
There is, however, not the slightest reason for shame, nor for considering such a person incapacitated for giving leadership. On the contrary, more than outsiders he will
know what superhuman strength is required to resist the subtle methods of mental torture, and more than outsiders he can be helpful to others to prepare themselves for the
ordeal as far as that is at all possible.
The Morale-Boosting Idea
When we look at the varieties of human behaviour under extreme and pressing circumstances, we see how easily man can be subdued, and at the same time we see that certain
factors seem to have a positive effect on his morale, keeping him from despair and collapse. When these factors are operative, the spirit revives and people are enabled to
live with integrity In spite of dangerous circumstances. There are many such morale boosters-religious faith or a political ideology are among them.
Perhaps the most effective is the sense of having some mission and inner goal. This ideal with which a man identifies can be love of the native land, love of freedom or
justice, or even the thought of hate and revenge. Whatever it is, at the moment of calamity a guiding idea is as much needed as mere physical strength and endurance. In
every case where the individual has learned to withstand danger and to maintain at least some of his normal esprit under circumstances of deprivation, want, and brutality,
one or more of the morale-boosting factors must have been present.
I do not believe that the inner search for the morale-boosting regenerative idea is a conscious function of the mind. Such psychological regeneration is comparable with
the physical regenerative processes we see in the body. The body hardly ever gives up its regenerative capacities. Even when a man is dying of cancer, his surgical wounds
still heal, the local regenerating forces are still there. The same thing seems to operate on a mental level; in times of confusion, pressure, and exhaustion, man's
psychological healing and regenerating forces are still in action. This applies as much to large groups of people as it does to the individual, though in the former,
restraining forces remain in action because of intricate interpersonal relationships.
My experiences with people living in the utmost dangerous circumstances showed that very soon after an initial bewilderment the individuals develop an inner need for what
we might call mental budgeting. They all display observable clinical symptoms indicating that this process of regaining their self-assertive resistance is going on. When
they first come to the prison camps, for instance, they show complete passivity, surrender, and depersonalization, but soon a guiding idea begins to grow out of their need
to understand fate, their need for protective intercommunication and adherence to some common faith, for building something for the self. We can detect this favourable
change in mood by the way every prisoner makes his own corner a place of security, even when it is only a dirty wooden bunk. He begins to rearrange the few things he has;
he builds his own nest, and from it he begins to look out into his miserable marginal world.
When the prison-camp inmate finds friends whose faith and strength of character are greater than his, his life becomes more bearable to him. Through mere association with
others he can better face the horrors without. Mutual love and common hate, both may be equally stimulating.
Renewed human contact changes his inherent fear into confidence in at least one other person. When this grows into some identity with an active, working team, the
temporary loss of inner strength is gone. When he does not find such a group or personality to identify with, the prison guard and his foreign ideology may take over.
It must be said that the stimulating morale-boosting idea is nearly always a moral idea, an ethical evaluation-faith in goodness, justice, freedom, peace, and future
harmony. Even the most cynical dictator needs the help of moral ideas to raise the morale of those submissive to his regime. If he cannot give them at least the illusion
of peace and freedom in addition to prospects for future wealth, he reduces them to dull apathetic followers. At the entrance of the Nazi concentration camps were large
signs bearing the cynical slogan: Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes man free"). This may not have fooled the inmates, but it gave the German people outside the camps a way of
justifying their inhuman behaviour. The need for moral justification, which is felt by even the most ruthless tyrants, proves how deeply alive these ideas of morality are
in man. The more a man lives in marginal and torturous situations, the greater is his need for supportive moral values and their stimulating action.
In general we may say that there are three influences under which the unbearable becomes bearable. Again, in the first place, one must have faith; this can be simple faith
in religious or ethical values, or faith in humanity, or faith in the stability of one's own society, or faith in one's own goals. In the second place, the victim must
feel that in spite of the disaster which has overtaken him and turned him into an outcast, he is wanted and needed somewhere on this earth. In the third place, there must
be understanding, not sophisticated book knowledge but simple, even intuitive, psychological understanding of the motivations of the enemy and his deluded drives. Those
who cannot understand and are too perplexed break down first.
Anti-brainwashing training has to be done very thoroughly. It is true that inner defences can be built against thought control and against the daily barrage of
suggestions. With the help of good and repeated instruction, people can be made familiar with the concepts. Perceptual defences are then built up; we learn to detect the
false propaganda and we do not listen to it. Even though part of the propagandistic suggestions leak through these perceptual defences and creep unobtrusively into our
opinions (all advertising is based on this leakage), it cannot be stressed enough that full knowledge of the enemy's methods gives us more strength to resist.
Several psychologists have told me how, under the frightful circumstances of life in the Nazi concentration camps, they felt sustained by their science. It gave them
perspective and made it possible for them to see their own suffering from a greater distance. It was the philosophical attitude of the inquisitive mind that fortified
their inner strength.
Still, there are only a few stories of those who could not be broken down by the process of Communist brainwashing. Such a hard-boiled revolutionary as the Spaniard El
Campesino, for one, was able to stand it (Gonzales and Gorkin). He knew the tricks of the totalitarians. It is also possible that they might not have thought him important
enough to waste too much time and effort on him; after all, he could always be sent to a concentration camp to waste away.
It must be repeated that any kind of illicit group formation in the camps-no matter how dangerous-immediately gave the individual a sense of being protected. Most of those
who resisted cooperation and group membership and worked on their own succumbed to despair and defeat. Those who betrayed their comrades. usually did so after they had
gone through a long period of isolation, not necessarily enforced, but often caused by their own peculiar character structure.
Human contact with a trusted source is needed more than bread to keep the spirit of freedom and belonging alive. During the Second World War the anti-Nazi underground
lived on the daily radio news from free England. Even now there are people in enslavement and distress who live on the few communications we are able to transmit to them.
The Voice of America and Radio Free Europe have a tremendous morale-boosting function in countries where the totalitarian air leads to despair.
In our present-day fight against brainwashing, intelligent preparation for what the prisoner has to expect and simple understanding of the enemy's tactics are the greatest
aid. In the first place, this will undermine the enemy's political strategy; nobody will believe his deceitful accusations. In the second place, victims of brainwashing
will no longer suffer from the paralyzing bewilderment of those who are suddenly caught by an unfamiliar situation. Perhaps, too, we should advise our soldiers under
duress to confess too much, to confuse the inquisitor and to take over the enemy's strategy of confusion, lying, and deceit to bring him to frustration. This suggestion
was also made by Rear Admiral D. V. Gallery of the United States Navy.
In cases where victims of menticide have done this, the inquisitors have often begged their victims to become rational again; the torturer himself was disturbed and upset
by the feigned craziness of his victim. Of the greatest importance is the victim's awareness that other people know and understand what is happening, that there is a home
front that is acquainted with his lonely struggle and torture.
If he does succumb, he should know that others understand that he cannot be held completely responsible for his behaviour. His brain wanted to resist, his mind wanted to
say no, but in the end everything in his body acted against him. It is an eerie and strange experience-awareness of the fact that against one's will, one has lost the
freedom of mental action. It is an experience which enough pressure can make familiar to most men:
Are the effects of brainwashing only temporary? There is a difference between young people whose thoughts are still likely to be moulded into permanent patterns of
thinking and adults whose patterns are already formed by a free education. In mature people, brainwashing is an artificial nightmare they can often shed the moment they
return to free territory. In some, it may leave long-lasting scars of depression and humiliation, but gradually the spell subsides in an atmosphere where freedom reigns.
During and directly after the Second World War, those members of the resistance who had lost their bearings under the influence of the Nazi terror made it necessary for
psychiatrists to face a new problem, that of a temporarily changed personality.
Obviously the terror in prisons and concentration camps had not only made meek collaborators of a certain few, but they came out of their ordeal as lost souls, full of
guilt and remorse and unable to face themselves as valid citizens. Even the honourable official exoneration of responsibility granted to them by a special court was not
always able to repair their self-esteem. Before accepting themselves they had to go through a slow and difficult psychological process of undoing the nightmarish mental
confusion into which they were thrown.
During psychotherapy several of them had to recall and experience once more the terror they had suffered: their initial struggle to resist the mental dinning of their
inquisitors, the gradual paralysis of will, their final surrender. It was a subtle inner battle between their feelings of guilt and the wish to reassert themselves.
Emotional outbursts were followed by thoughts of suicide as a final flight from their shame. After they had vented their pent-up emotions, the therapist was able to
convince them that everybody has his physical and psychological limits of endurance. From this point on, they could express themselves freely as independent human beings
with a mixture of both negative and positive qualities.
In one case of a young man who had spent years in a concentration camp after a thorough brainwashing by the Nazis, the process of rehabilitation lasted nearly two years.
The victim emerged from it without mental scars, and was even strengthened by his bitter experience.
I am convinced that in the case of prisoners who were for years in a totalitarian prison and were consequently politically conditioned, a cathartic, psychotherapeutic
approach will help them to find their old inner selves once more. Threats and aggressive discussions would only be a continuation of the same coercive brainwashing process
their jailors used. The best therapy for them is the daily contact and exchange with the free, democratic world, as we have seen proven in so many cases of ex-prisoners of
the totalitarian machine. Free air is for them the best therapy!
For the millions of children who from the cradle are pressed into the framework of mental automatization, no such option for freedom exists. For them there is no other
world, there are no other beliefs; there is only the all-consuming totalitarian Moloch, in whose service every means and every deed is justified.
Brainwashers are very naive in thinking that the enforced reformation of the mind-the transformation of capitalist prisoners into Communist propagandists-will be
permanent. For the first few weeks after their return to a normal environment, the ex-prisoner will speak the language he has been "taught." He will recite his piece, but
then, and often suddenly and surprisingly, his old self comes back. If the victim has a chance to investigate and examine the Communist propaganda and accusations, the
whole artificial nightmare will fall away. For this reason, the jailers are careful not to dismiss all their converts at once. A few must stay behind as hostages to assure
that those who are released will not expose the whole plot and thus endanger their friends in jail. Those who do tell the truth on their return home feel guilty because
their revelations may expose the hostages to even greater torture.
I have been fascinated by a peculiar character trait that makes for courage and endurance. I called it in my study on the problem of time the sense of continuity, the
awareness that our experiences now are not only chained to our experiences from the past, but also to our image and fantasy of a future. We live in a world where we accept
too much of the actual occurrences, without asking why and for what all this happens. Those who think of planning for the future are sneeringly called utopianists, as if
the idea of Utopia had not always sprung from human yearning. Our ancestors believed in the future, the coming of Christ, the coming of the messiahs, the Kingdom of God.
They anticipated and worked for a better epoch. The people in the concentration camps who believed in a future, who believed in a plan, who could see their actual calamity
as a small chain between past and future, could endure better their temporary suffering.
I had the privilege of knowing people who belonged to the few kernels of strength and who were able to do more than exist passively and borrow strength from others. They
were able to live courageously under the extreme stress of the Nazi concentration camp. They accepted the camp and the persecution as a challenge to their minds. Physical
pain did not touch them. The abnormal circumstances stimulated their spirit; they lived beyond the circumstances. The morale of these people inspired others; they lived by
fortifying and helping others. They accepted the Spinozistic amor fati, the love and acceptance of fate. They are a living proof that the mind can be stronger than the
body.
The New Courage
Philosophy and psychology have made us aware of new challenges and new courage. Socrates, over two thousand years ago, considered bravery a spiritual courage which goes
far beyond the courage of physical battle. A soldier can be aggressive and have contempt for death without being brave. His rashness can be a suicidal foolhardiness
inspired by a collective élan. This may be the panicky courage of the unaware primitive infant in us.
There is also a spiritual bravery, a mental courage that goes beyond the self. It serves an idea. It asks not only what the price of life is, but also for what that price
is being asked. It asks for a hyperconsciousness of the self as a thinking spiritual being.
It is only comparatively recently that spiritual courage has been esteemed. Socrates' notion has taken a long time to seep into our thinking. It was only after the
Reformation that the heroic struggle of the lonely battling personality gained value. To defend your own dissenting opinion courageously, even against the pressure of a
majority opinion, acquired a heroic color-especially where non-conformism and heresy were forbidden. Gandhi's quiet and stubborn campaign of passive resistance is today
considered more courageous than the bravery of the soldier who throws himself into the ecstasy of battle. Spiritual bravery is not found among the conformists or among
those who preach uniformity or among those who plead for smooth social adjustment. It requires continual mental alertness and spiritual strength to resist the dragging
current of conformist thought. Man has to be stronger than the mere will for self-protection and self-assertion; he has to be able to go beyond himself in the service of
an idea and has to be able to acknowledge loyally that he has been wrong when higher values are found. Indeed, there is a spiritual courage that goes beyond all automatic
reflex action.
Man is not only a mass, a piece of kneaded dough; he is also a personality. He dares to confront the human masses as he confronts the entire world-as a thinking human
being. Consciousness, alert awareness are themselves a form of courage, a lonely exploration and a confrontation of values. Such courage dares to break through old
traditions, taboos, prejudices and dares to doubt dogma. The heroes of the mind do not know the fanfare, the pathetic show, the pseudo-courage of exaltation and glory;
these brave heroes fight their inner battle against rigidity, cowardice, and the wish to surrender conviction for the sake of ease. This courage is like remaining awake
when others want to soothe themselves with sleep and oblivion. Totalitarian ideology is able to blackmail man through his inner cowardice. It threatens him into
surrendering his innermost convictions in exchange for glamour and acceptance, for hero worship, for honor and acknowledgment. Yet the true hero is true to his ideals.
Only when people have learned to accept individual responsibility can the world be helped by the combined efforts of many individuals. Don't imitate the master, don't
merely identify with the leader, but if you do conform, accept his lead with the full recognition of your own responsibility. Such heroism of the spirit is only possible
if you are the master of your emotions and in full control of your aggressions.
The new hero will not be recognized because of his muscles or aggressive power, but because of his character, his wisdom, and his mental proportions.
Intimate knowledge of bravery dethrones most of the popular notions about it as an exalted fascination. Psychological knowledge fosters new forms of courage, demanding
exhausting labour, the labour of thought rather than the easy work of recklessness.
I cannot take any other option than for this enduring courage of life, courage that no longer embodies the magic attraction of suicide and decline. Courage should be the
vivid faith in, and the alert awareness and the sound consideration of, all that moves life.
Such courage accepts the great fear behind all the mysteries of life and dares to live with it.
The Nazis were very much aware of the existence of unbendable heroes among their victims, whose faces could not be changed, whose minds could not be coerced. They called
their calmness and stubborn will physiognomic insubordination, and they tried to kill these heroes as soon as they were discovered. Happily, the jailers had many blind
spots when it came to detecting spiritual greatness.
When the war was over, most of these heroes disappeared modestly into the crowd after their mission was fulfilled, leaving leadership to the more sophisticated
politicians.
XVIII. FREEDOM - OUR MENTAL BACKBONE
The totalitarian state is continually driving out man's private opinions and convictions. For the police state, thinking is already acting. The inner preparation for
action as expressed in trial action -thought-is not accepted. Innate doubt and the trials and tribulations of thought adaptation are denied. Inbreeding destructive thought
is one way to undermine the community. Not trusting the liberty of thought and free expression of opinion is even more dangerous; the natural destructive desires are
repressed to that uncontrollable realm of the mind that may explode more easily into action. The verbal expression of a destructive thought however often partly conquers
that thought, and renders it less potent. Here lies the actual paradox! Condemning antisocial thought-thought not yet put into action-provokes a short circuit of explosive
action!
Every piece of logic may have its dangerous implications: inquisitional murder took place in the service of high ideals. If we cannot gamble with the innate good sense of
man, a free and peaceful society are impossible, a democracy is impossible. Moral culture begins and ends with the individual. Only the cult of individual freedom,
individual possession, and individual creativity makes man willing to curb instinctual desires and to repress destructivity. Man is not only a social being. Somewhere away
from the crowd and the noise, he has to come to grips with himself, God and nature. In order to grow, he needs reserve and isolation and silence. In addition to his
mechanical devices and machines, he needs to get back to nature, to camp out-of-doors by himself. Somewhere along the line, he has to be the maker of some of his own
tools, as a shoemaker or a healer or a teacher. Without being thrown on his own and knowing loneliness, man is dwarfed, he is lost among the waves of overpowering human
influence and a sea of coercive probabilities.
The Democratizing Action of Psychology
The deepest conviction of the power of psychological understanding came to me in my protracted mental struggles with a man who held membership in a totalitarian
organization. He came to me for psychological advice during the Nazi occupation of Holland, and I knew that I had to be careful to avoid discussing politics with him; in
those days free expression of opinion could be severely punished, and my patient would have reported me if I had said anything "suspicious."
However, as my therapy of passive listening liberated him from his personal tensions, the patient became more humane. He developed an increasing respect for the individual
personality as such, and sometimes grew very critical of the Nazis' callous treatment of human life and human dignity. As time passed, he dissociated himself more and more
from his totalitarian political friends. This was indeed courageous, for, especially at that time, the turn from collaboration toward non-conformism was usually
interpreted as high treason. In his last visits before we agreed that he was cured, we spoke of our mutual faith in the dignity of the individual and our confidence in the
decisions of the mature adult as to the path of his own interests.
Does psychology really exert a democratizing influence on the authoritarian and totalitarian spirit? The case I have just cited would seem to indicate that it does. On the
other hand, we know that Goebbels's propaganda machine applied psychological principles to hypnotize the German people into submission. Hitler, too, laid down his
psychological artillery barrage to spread panic throughout Europe.
In Nazi Germany, all psychoanalytic treatment was controlled by psychology's own Fuhrer, Goering's brother. Certainly the science of suggestion, hypnosis, and Pavlovian
training can be used to enlist cowardly, submissive followers for a program of despotism. These uses of psychological knowledge are perversions of both the principles and
the purposes of psychology. Intrinsic in the psychological approach, and above all in psychoanalytic treatment, is an important element that fosters an attitude
diametrically opposite to the totalitarian one.
The true purpose of psychology, and especially of its mental health branch, is to free man from his internal tensions by helping him to understand what causes them.
Psychology seeks to liberate the human spirit from its dependency on immature thinking so that each man can realize his own potentialities. It seeks to help man to face
reality with its many problems, and to recognize his own limitations as well as his possibilities for growth. It is dedicated to the development of mature individuals who
are capable of living in freedom and of voluntarily restricting their freedom, when it is indicated, for the larger good. It is based on the premise that when man
understands himself, he can begin to be the master of his own life, rather than merely the puppet either of his own unconscious drives or of a tyrant with a perverted lust
for power.
As we have said earlier, every man passes through a stage in his own development of greater susceptibility to totalitarianism. This usually occurs during adolescence when
the pubescent becomes aware of his own personality-the authority within himself. In not accepting this responsibility, he may look for a strong leader outside the home. At
an earlier age-in infancy-the more unconscious patterns of compulsion and automatic obedience are laid. With the advent of his new sense of selfhood, the youth begins to
oppose the adult authorities who previously directed his life.
Becoming conscious of the entity we call ego or self or I is a painful mental process. It is not a matter of chance that the feeling of endless longing, of Weltschmerz, is
traditionally connected with adolescence. The process of becoming an autonomous and self growing individual involves separation from the security of the family. To achieve
internal democracy, the adolescent must separate himself from his protective environment. In so doing he is not merely intoxicated with his sense of growth and
emancipation, he is also filled with a sense of fear and loneliness. He is entering a new world in which he must henceforth assume mature responsibility for his actions.
At that time he may become an easy prey for totalitarian propaganda. A personal grudge against growing up may lead him to forsake the struggle for personal maturity.
This problem is particularly acute in Western society not only because of the real ideological-political battle we have to face, but also because our ways of raising
children may emphasize this problem. Whereas primitive groups impose some measure of social responsibility upon the child early in life and increase it gradually, our
middle-class culture segregates him completely in the world of childhood, nursery, and schoolroom, and then plunges him precipitously into adulthood to sink or swim. At
this turning point, many young people shrink from such a test. Many do not want a freedom that carries with it so many burdens, so much loneliness. They are willing to
hand back their freedom in return for continued parental protection, or to surrender it to political or economic ideologies which are in fact displaced parental images.
Alas, the youth's surrender of individuality is no guarantee against fear and loneliness. The real outside world is in no way altered by his inner choice. Therefore the
youth who relinquishes his freedom to new parent figures develops a curious, dual feeling of love and hate toward all authority. Docility and rebellion, submission and
hate live side by side within him. Sometimes he bows completely to authority or tyranny; at other times, often unpredictably, everything in him revolts against his chosen
leader. This duality is an endless one, for one side of his nature continually seeks to overstep the limits which his other, submissive side has imposed. The man who fails
to achieve freedom knows only two extremes: unquestioning submission and impulsive rebellion.
Conversely, the individual who is strong enough to embrace mature adulthood enters into a new kind of freedom. True, this freedom is an ambiguous concept since it involves
the responsibility of making new decisions and confronting new uncertainties. The frontiers of freedom are anarchy and caprice on the one side and regimentation and
suffocation by rules on the other.
If only we could find an easy formula for the mature attitude toward life! Even if we call it the democratic spirit, we can still explain more easily what democracy is
not, than what it is. We can say that our individualizing democracy is the enemy of blind authority. If we wish a more detailed, psychological explanation, we must
contrast it with totalitarianism.
Our democracy is against the total regimentation and equalization of its individuals. It does not ask for homogeneous integration and smooth social adjustment. Democracy,
in comparison with these aims, implies a confidence in spontaneity and individual growth. It is able to postulate progress and the correction of evil. It guards the
community against human error without resorting to intimidation. Democracy provides redress for its own errors; totalitarianism considers itself infallible. Whereas
totalitarianism controls by whim and manipulated public opinion, democracy undertakes to regulate society by law, to respect human nature, and to guard its citizens
against the tyranny of a single individual on the one hand and a power-crazy majority on the other. Democracy always fights a dual battle. On the one hand, it must limit
the resurgence of asocial inner impulses in the individual; on the other, it must guard the individual against external forces and ideologies hostile to the democratic way
of life.
The Battle on Two Fronts
The inner harmony between social adaptation and self-assertion has to be re-formed in every new environment. Each individual has to fight over and over again the same
subtle battle that started during infancy and babyhood. The ego, the self, forms itself through confrontation with reality. Compliance battles with originality, dependence
with independence, outer discipline with inner morale. No culture can escape this inner human battle, though there is a difference in emphasis in every culture and society
and in every family.
The combination of internal and external struggle, of a mental conflict on two fronts, renders the Western ideal of an individualized democracy highly vulnerable,
particularly when its adherents are unaware of this inherent contradiction. Democracy, by its very nature will always have to fight against dictatorship from without and
destructiveness from within. Democratic freedom has to battle against both the individual's inner will to power and his urge to submit to other people. It also has to
battle against the contagious drive for power intruding from over the frontiers and so often backed up by armies.
The freedom toward which democracy strives is not the romantic freedom of adolescent dreams; it is one of mature stature. Democracy insists on sacrifices which are
necessary to maintain freedom. It tries to combat the fears that attack men when they are faced with democracy's apparently unlimited freedom. Such lack of limitations can
be misused to satisfy mere instinctual drives. However, because democracy does not exploit man by myth, primitive magic, mass hypnotism, or other psychological means of
seduction, it is less fascinating to the immature individual than is dictatorial control.
Democracy, when it is not involved in a dramatic struggle for survival, may appear quite drab and uninspiring. It simply demands that men shall think and judge for
themselves; that each individual shall exercise his full conscious ability in adapting to a changing world; and that genuine public opinion shall mould the laws that
govern the community. Essentially, democracy means the right to develop yourself and not to be developed by others. Yet this right like every other, has to be balanced by
a duty. The right to develop yourself is impossible without the duty of giving your energy and attention to the development of others. Democracy is rooted not only in the
personal rights of the common man, but even more in the personal interests and responsibilities of the common man. When he loses this interest in politics and government,
he helps to pave the road to power politics. Democracy demands mental activity of a rather high level from the common man.
What the general public digests and assimilates in its mind is, in our new era of mass communication, just as important as the dictates of the experts. If the latter
formulate and communicate ideas beyond the common grasp, they will talk into a vacuum. Thus they may permit a more simple and even an untrue ideology to slip in. It is not
enough that an idea is only formulated and printed; we have to take care that the public can participate in the new concept.
The mystery of freedom is the existence of that great love of freedom! Those who have tasted it will not waver. Man revolts against unfair pressure. While the pressure
accumulates he revolts silently, but at some critical moment it bursts into open revolt. For those who have lived through such an outburst, freedom is life itself. We have
learned this especially in the days of persecution and occupation, in the underground, in the camps, and under the threat of demagoguery. We can even discover it in the
totalitarian countries where nonetheless the terror, the resistance goes on.
Freedom and respect for the individual are rooted in the Old Testament, which convinced man that he makes his own history, that he is responsible for his history. Such
freedom implies that a man throws off his inertia, that he does not cling arbitrarily to tradition, that he strives for knowledge and accepts moral responsibility. The
fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility.
Freedom can never be completely safeguarded by rules and laws. It is as much dependent on the courage, integrity, and responsibility of each of us as it is on these
qualities in those who govern. Every trait in us and our leaders which points to passive submission to mere power betrays democratic freedom. In our American system of
democratic government, three different powerful branches serve to check each other, the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Yet when there is no will to prevent
encroachment of the power of one by any of the others, this system of checks, too, can degenerate.
Like adolescents who try to hide behind the aprons of parental authority rather than face mature adulthood, the individual members of a democratic state may shrink from
the mental activity it imposes. They long to take flight into a condition of thoughtless security. Often they would prefer the government, or some individual
personification of the state, to solve their problems for them. It is this desire that makes totalitarians and conformists. Like an infant the conformist can sleep quietly
and transfer all his worries to Father State. When the intellectuals lose their selfcontrol and courage and are possessed only by their fears and emotions, the power of
those with prejudice and stupidity gains.
Since within each of us lie the seeds of both democracy and totalitarianism, the struggle between the democratic and the totalitarian attitude is fought repeatedly by each
individual during his lifetime. His particular view of himself and of his fellow men will determine his political creed. Coexisting with man's wish for liberty and
maturity are destructiveness, hate, the desire for power, resistance to independence, and the wish to retreat into irresponsible childhood. Democracy appeals only to the
adult side of man; fascism and totalitarianism tempt his infantile desires.
Totalitarianism is based on a mechanized narrow view of mankind. It denies the complexity of the individual, and the struggle between his conscious and unconscious
motivations. It denies doubt, ambivalence, and contradiction of feelings. It simplifies man, making him into a machine that can be put to work by governmental oil.
In every psychoanalytic treatment there comes the moment when the patient has to decide whether or not he will grow up. The knowledge and insight he has gained have to be
translated into action. By this time he knows more about himself; his life has become an open book to him. Although he understands himself better, he finds it difficult to
leave the dreamland of childhood, with its fantasies, hero-worship, and happy endings. But, fortified with a deeper understanding of his inner motivation, he steps over
into the world of self-chosen responsibility and limited freedom. Because his image of the world is no longer distorted by immature longings, he is now able to function in
it as a mature adult.
Systematic education toward freedom is possible. Freedom grows as the control over destructive inner drives become internalized and no longer depend on control from the
outside, on control by parents and authorities.
It is the building up of our personality and our conscience-ego and superego-that is important. Nor can this development be brought about in an enforced and compulsive way
as tyrants and dictators try to do. We must develop it through free acceptance or rejection of existing moral values until the inner moral person in us is so strong that
he is able to go beyond existing values and can stand on his own moral grounds. The choice in favour of freedom lies between self-chosen limitationthe liberation from
chaos-and the pseudo-freedom of unconscious chaos. To many people freedom is an emotional concept of letting themselves go, which really means a dictatorship by dark,
instinctual drives. There is also an intellectual concept of freedom, meaning a limiting of bondage and unfreedom.
In order to become free, certain outside conditions must be prevented from hampering this moral development of self-control. We have to become increasingly aware of the
internal dangers of democracy: laxity, laziness, and unawareness. People have to be aware of the tendency of technology to automatize their minds. They have to become
aware of the fact that mass media and modern communication are able to imprint all kinds of suggestions on our brains. They have to know that education can turn us either
into weak fact-factories or strong personalities. A free democracy has to fight against mediocrity in order not to be smothered by mere numbers of automatic votes.
Democratic freedom requires a highly intelligent appraisal and understanding of the democratic system itself. This very fact makes it difficult for us to advertise or
"promote" it. Furthermore, inculcating democracy is just as dangerous as inculcating totalitarianism. It is the essence of democracy that it must be self-chosen, it cannot
be imposed.
The Paradox of Freedom
Freedom and planning present no essential contrasts. In order to let freedom grow, we have to plan our controls over the forces that limit freedom. Beyond this, we must
have the passion and the inner freedom to prosecute those who abuse freedom. We must have the vitality to attack those who commit mental suicide and psychic murder through
abuse of liberties, dragging down other persons in their wake. Suicidal submission is a kind of subversion from within; it is passive surrender to a mechanized world
without personalities; it is the denial of personality. We must have the fervour to stand firmly for freedom of the individual, for mutual tolerance and dignity, and we
must learn not to tolerate the destruction of these values. We must not tolerate those who make use of worthy ideas and values only to destroy them as soon as they are in
power. We must be intolerant of these abuses as long as the battle for mental life or death goes on.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that liberty is only possible with a strong set of beliefs and moral standards. This means that man has to adhere to self-restrictive
rules-moral rules-in order to keep his freedom. When there is lack of such internal checks, owing to lack of education or to stereotyped education, then external pressure
or even tyranny becomes necessary to check unsocial drives. Then freedom becomes the victim of man's inability to live in freedom and self-control.
Mankind should be guaranteed the right not to hear and not to conform and the right to defense against psychological attack and against intervention in the form of
perverted mass propaganda, totalitarian pressure, and mental torture.
No compromise or appeasement is possible in dealing with such attitudes. We have to watch carefully lest our own mistakes in attacking personal freedom become grist for
the totalitarian's mill. Even our denunciation may have a paradoxical effect. Fear and hysteria further totalitarianism. What we need is careful analysis and understanding
of such phenomena. Democracy is the regime of the dignity of man and his right to think for himself, the right to have his own opinion more than that, the right to assert
his own opinion and to protect himself against mental invasion and coercion.
When the United Nations has devised rules curtailing menticide and psychological intrusion, it will have insured a human right as precious as physical existence, the right
of the nonconforming free individual-the right to dissent, the right to be oneself. Tolerance of criticism and heresy is one of the conditions of freedom.
Here we touch on another crucial point related to the technique of governing people. There is a relationship between over centralization of government, mass participation,
and totalitarianism.
Mass participation in government, without the decentralization that emphasizes the value of variation and individuality and without the possibility of sound selection of
leaders, facilitates the creation of the dictatorial leader. The masses then transfer their desire for power to him. The slave participates in a magic way in the glory of
the master.
Democratic self-government is determined by restraint and self limitations, by sportsmanship and fairness, by voluntary observance of the rules of society and by
cooperation. These qualities come through training. In a democratic government those who have been elected to responsible positions request controls and limitations
against themselves, knowing that no one is without fault. Democracy is not a fight for independence but a mutually regulated interdependence. Democracy means checking
man's tendency to gather unlimited power unto himself. It means checking the faults in each of us. It minimizes the consequences of man's limitations.
The Future Age of Psychology
Let me repeat what I said at the very beginning of this book. The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide-those perversions of psychology-can bring almost any man
into submission and surrender. Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were
broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its
knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself.
Psychological knowledge and psychological treatment may in themselves generate the democratic attitude; for psychology is essentially the science of the just milieu, of
free choice within the framework of man's personal and social limitations. Compared with the million-year span of human existence and evolution, civilization is still in
its infancy. Despite historical reversals, man continues to grow, and psychology-no matter how imperfect now-will become one of man's most powerful tools in his struggle
for freedom and maturity.
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