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VII.
Brainwashing
In the two
preceding chapters I have described the techniques of what may be called
wholesale mind-manipulation, as practiced by the greatest demagogue and the
most successful salesmen in recorded history. But no human problem can be
solved by wholesale methods alone. The shotgun has its place, but so has the
hypodermic syringe. In the chapters that follow I shall describe some of the
more effective techniques for manipulating not crowds, not entire publics, but
isolated individuals.
In the course
of his epoch-making experiments on the conditioned reflex, Ivan Pavlov observed
that, when subjected to prolonged physical or psychic stress, laboratory
animals exhibit all the symptoms of a nervous breakdown. Refusing to cope any
longer with the intolerable situation, their brains go on strike, so to speak,
and either stop working altogether (the dog loses consciousness), or else
resort to slowdowns and sabotage (the dog behaves unrealistically, or develops
the kind of physical symptoms which, in a human being, we would call
hysterical). Some animals are more resistant to stress than others. Dogs
possessing what Pavlov called a "strong excitatory" constitution
break down much more quickly than dogs of a merely "lively" (as
opposed to a choleric or agitated) temperament. Similarly "weak
inhibitory" dogs reach the end of their tether much sooner than do
"calm imperturbable" dogs. But even the most stoical dog is unable to
resist indefinitely. If the stress to which he is subjected is sufficiently
intense or sufficiently prolonged, he will end by breaking down as abjectly
and as completely as the weakest of his kind.
Pavlov's
findings were confirmed in the most distressing manner, and on a very large
scale, during the two World Wars. As the result of a single catastrophic
experience, or of a succession of terrors less appalling but frequently
repeated, soldiers develop a number of disabling psychophysical symptoms.
Temporary unconsciousness, extreme agitation, lethargy, functional blindness or
paralysis, completely unrealistic responses to the challenge of events, strange
reversals of lifelong patterns of behavior -- all the symptoms, which Pavlov
observed in his dogs, reappeared among the victims of what in the First World
War was called "shell shock," in the Second, "battle
fatigue." Every man, like every dog, has his own individual limit of
endurance. Most men reach their limit after about thirty days of more or less
continuous stress under the conditions of modern combat. The more than
averagely susceptible succumb in only fifteen days. The more than averagely
tough can resist for forty-five or even fifty days. Strong or weak, in the long
run all of them break down. All, that is to say, of those who are initially
sane. For, ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely
under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to
the consequences of collective insanity.
The fact that
every individual has his breaking point has been known and, in a crude
unscientific way, exploited from time immemorial. In some cases man's dreadful
inhumanity to man has been inspired by the love of cruelty for its own horrible
and fascinating sake. More often, however, pure sadism was tempered by
utilitarianism, theology or reasons of state. Physical torture and other forms
of stress were inflicted by lawyers in order to loosen the tongues of reluctant
witnesses; by clergymen in order to punish the unorthodox and induce them to
change their opinions; by the secret police to extract confessions from persons
suspected of being hostile to the government. Under Hitler, torture, followed
by mass extermination, was used on those biological heretics, the Jews. For a
young Nazi, a tour of duty in the Extermination Camps was (in Himmler's words)
"the best indoctrination on inferior beings and the subhuman races."
Given the obsessional quality of the anti-Semitism which Hitler had picked up
as a young man in the slums of Vienna, this revival of the methods employed by
the Holy Office against heretics and witches was inevitable. But in the light
of the findings of Pavlov and of the knowledge gained by psychiatrists in the
treatment of war neuroses, it seems a hideous and grotesque anachronism. Stresses
amply sufficient to cause a complete cerebral breakdown can be induced by
methods which, though hatefully inhuman, fall short of physical torture.
Whatever may
have happened in earlier years, it seems fairly certain that torture is not
extensively used by the Communist police today. They draw their inspiration,
not from the Inquisitor or the SS man, but from the physiologist and his
methodically conditioned laboratory animals. For the dictator and his
policemen, Pavlov's findings have important practical implications. If the
central nervous system of dogs can be broken down, so can the central nervous
system of political prisoners. It is simply a matter of applying the right
amount of stress for the right length of time. At the end of the treatment, the
prisoner will be in a state of neurosis or hysteria, and will be ready to
confess whatever his captors want him to confess.
But confession
is not enough. A hopeless neurotic is no use to anyone. What the intelligent
and practical dictator needs is not a patient to be institutionalized, or a
victim to be shot, but a convert who will work for the Cause. Turning once
again to Pavlov, he learns that, on their way to the point of final breakdown,
dogs become more than normally suggestible. New behavior patterns can easily
be installed while the dog is at or near the limit of its cerebral endurance,
and these new behavior patterns seem to be ineradicable. The animal in which
they have been implanted cannot be deconditioned; that which it has learned
under stress will remain an integral part of its make-up.
Psychological
stresses can be produced in many ways. Dogs become disturbed when stimuli are
unusually strong; when the interval between a stimulus and the customary
response is unduly prolonged and the animal is left in a state of suspense;
when the brain is confused by stimuli that run counter to what the dog has
learned to expect; when stimuli make no sense within the victim's established
frame of reference. Furthermore, it has been found that the deliberate
induction of fear, rage or anxiety markedly heightens the dog's suggestibility.
If these emotions are kept at a high pitch of intensity for a long enough time,
the brain goes "on strike." When this happens, new behavior patterns
may be installed with the greatest of ease.
Among the
physical stresses that increase a dog's suggestibility are fatigue, wounds and
every form of sickness.
For the
would-be dictator these findings possess important practical implications. They
prove, for example, that Hitler was quite right in maintaining that mass
meetings at night were more effective than mass meetings in the daytime. During
the day, he wrote, "man's will power revolts with highest energy against
any attempt at being forced under another's will and another's opinion. In the
evening, however, they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a
stronger will."
Pavlov would
have agreed with him; fatigue increases suggestibility. (That is why, among
other reasons, the commercial sponsors of television programs prefer the
evening hours and are ready to back their preference with hard cash.)
Illness is
even more effective than fatigue as an intensifier of suggestibility. In the
past, sickrooms were the scene of countless religious conversions. The
scientifically trained dictator of the future will have all the hospitals in
his dominions wired for sound and equipped with pillow speakers. Canned
persuasion will be on the air twenty-four hours a day, and the more important
patients will be visited by political soul-savers and mind-changers just as, in
the past, their ancestors were visited by priests, nuns and pious laymen.
The fact that
strong negative emotions tend to heighten suggestibility and so facilitate a
change of heart had been observed and exploited long before the days of Pavlov.
As Dr. William Sargant has pointed out in his enlightening book, Battle for the
Mind, John Wesley's enormous success as a preacher was based upon an intuitive understanding
of the central nervous system. He would open his sermon with a long and
detailed description of the torments to which, unless they underwent
conversion, his hearers would undoubtedly be condemned for all eternity. Then,
when terror and an agonizing sense of guilt had brought his audience to the
verge, or in some cases over the verge, of a complete cerebral breakdown, he
would change his tone and promise salvation to those who believed and repented.
By this kind of preaching, Wesley converted thousands of men, women and
children. Intense, prolonged fear broke them down and produced a state of
greatly intensified suggestibility. In this state they were able to accept the
preacher's theological pronouncements without question. After which they were
reintegrated by words of comfort, and emerged from their ordeal with new and
generally better behavior patterns ineradicably implanted in their minds and
nervous systems.
The
effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods
employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false,
wholesome or pernicious -- it makes little or no difference. If the
indoctrination is given in the right way at the proper stage of nervous
exhaustion, it will work. Under favorable conditions, practically everybody
can be converted to practically anything.
We possess
detailed descriptions of the methods used by the Communist police for dealing
with political prisoners. From the moment he is taken into custody, the victim
is subjected systematically to many kinds of physical and psychological stress.
He is badly fed, he is made extremely uncomfortable, he is not allowed to sleep
for more than a few hours each night. And all the time he is kept in a state of
suspense, uncertainty and acute apprehension. Day after day -- or rather night
after night, for these Pavlovian policemen understand the value of fatigue as
an intensifier of suggestibility -- he is questioned, often for many hours at a
stretch, by interrogators who do their best to frighten, confuse and bewilder
him. After a few weeks or months of such treatment, his brain goes on strike
and he confesses whatever it is that his captors want him to confess. Then, if
he is to be converted rather than shot, he is offered the comfort of hope. If
he will but accept the true faith, he can yet be saved -- not, of course, in
the next life (for, officially, there is no next life), but in this.
Similar but
rather less drastic methods were used during the Korean War on military
prisoners. In their Chinese camps the young Western captives were
systematically subjected to stress. Thus, for the most trivial breaches of the
rules, offenders would be summoned to the commandant's office, there to be
questioned, browbeaten and publicly humiliated. And the process would be
repeated, again and again, at any hour of the day or night. This continuous
harassment produced in its victims a sense of bewilderment and chronic anxiety.
To intensify their sense of guilt, prisoners were made to write and rewrite,
in ever more intimate detail, long autobiographical accounts of their
shortcomings. And after having confessed their own sins, they were required to
confess the sins of their companions. The aim was to create within the camp a
nightmarish society, in which everybody was spying on, and informing against,
everyone else. To these mental stresses were added the physical stresses of
malnutrition, discomfort and illness. The increased suggestibility thus induced
was skilfully exploited by the Chinese, who poured into these abnormally
receptive minds large doses of pro-Communist and anti-capitalist literature.
These Pavlovian techniques were remarkably successful. One out of every seven
American prisoners was guilty, we are officially told, of grave collaboration
with the Chinese authorities, one out of three of technical collaboration.
It must not be
supposed that this kind of treatment is reserved by the Communists exclusively
for their enemies. The young field workers, whose business it was, during the
first years of the new regime, to act as Communist missionaries and organizers
in China's innumerable towns and villages were made to take a course of
indoctrination far more intense than that to which any prisoner of war was ever
subjected. In his China under Communism R. L. Walker describes the methods by
which the party leaders are able to fabricate out of ordinary men and women
the thousands of selfless fanatics required for spreading the Communist gospel
and for enforcing Communist policies. Under this system of training, the human
raw material is shipped to special camps, where the trainees are completely
isolated from their friends, families and the outside world in general. In
these camps they are made to perform exhausting physical and mental work; they
are never alone, always in groups; they are encouraged to spy on one another;
they are required to write self-accusatory autobiographies; they live in
chronic fear of the dreadful fate that may befall them on account of what has
been said about them by informers or of what they themselves have confessed.
In this state of heightened suggestibility they are given an intensive course
in theoretical and applied Marxism -- a course in which failure to pass examinations
may mean anything from ignominious expulsion to a term in a forced labor camp
or even liquidation. After about six months of this kind of thing, prolonged
mental and physical stress produces the results which Pavlov's findings would
lead one to expect. One after another, or in whole groups, the trainees break
down. Neurotic and hysterical symptoms make their appearance. Some of the
victims commit suicide, others (as many, we are told, as 20 per cent of the
total) develop a severe mental illness. Those who survive the rigors of the
conversion process emerge with new and ineradicable behavior patterns. All
their ties with the past -- friends, family, traditional decencies and pieties
-- have been severed. They are new men, re-created in the image of their new
god and totally dedicated to his service.
Throughout the
Communist world tens of thousands of these disciplined and devoted young men
are being turned out every year from hundreds of conditioning centers. What the
Jesuits did for the Roman Church of the Counter Reformation, these products of
a more scientific and even harsher training are now doing, and will doubtless
continue to do, for the Communist parties of Europe, Asia and Africa.
In politics
Pavlov seems to have been an old-fashioned liberal. But, by a strange irony of
fate, his researches and the theories he based upon them have called into
existence a great army of fanatics dedicated heart and soul, reflex and
nervous system, to the destruction of old-fashioned liberalism, wherever it can
be found.
Brainwashing,
as it is now practiced, is a hybrid technique, depending for its effectiveness
partly on the systematic use of violence, partly on skilful psychological
manipulation. It represents the tradition of 1984 on its way to becoming the
tradition of Brave New World. Under a long-established and well-regulated
dictatorship our current methods of semiviolent manipulation will seem, no
doubt, absurdly crude. Conditioned from earliest infancy (and perhaps also biologically
predestined), the average middle- or lower-caste individual will never require
conversion or even a refresher course in the true faith. The members of the
highest caste will have to be able to think new thoughts in response to new
situations; consequently their training will be much less rigid than the
training imposed upon those whose business is not to reason why, but merely
to do and die with the minimum of fuss. These upper-caste individuals will be
members, still, of a wild species -- the trainers and guardians, themselves
only slightly conditioned, of a breed of completely domesticated animals. Their
wildness will make it possible for them to become heretical and rebellious.
When this happens, they will have to be either liquidated, or brainwashed back
into orthodoxy, or (as in Brave New World) exiled to some island, where they
can give no further trouble, except of course to one another. But universal
infant conditioning and the other techniques of manipulation and control are
still a few generations away in the future. On the road to the Brave New World
our rulers will have to rely on the transitional and provisional techniques of
brainwashing.
H/T Graham Strouts. @Skepteco
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