Difficulty with this lies in the readers ability to both understand brain washing and thought reform in both traditional direct contact and the covert computerized evolution and to be capable of believing that the high tech version even exists.
-Before this is posted two other posts should precede this.
1. A post about brainwashing that breakdown its major goals, explains how its designed to work, gives examples of different techniques and real life examples. Why is brain washing performed and how does it tie into thought reform, control, mind control, extremism and behavior modification.
2. A post about personal identity, what it is, why its important, what its comprised of, how it fits in with brain washing, its relationship with trauma and torture, what techniques are commonly used to attack specific parts of personal identity, what happens when it damaged, what happens if its destroyed or severely damaged. Why is the loss of personal identity is a major objective of mind control and torture. Healable or temporary and permanent symptoms of attacks and destruction of personal identity and finally specifically how each part of my personal identity has been attacked attacked including the foreshadowing of Alices "that will be decomposed" interrogation.
Rewrite the opening to this and take examples from lifton's interviews and match them with the corresponding techniques used by the computerized version and the psychological step presented in this book and other reliable brain washing resources if applicable.
The capability to believe accounts of terrifying inhumane acts being done to innocent by advanced technology is not going to be high. People are good at not believing scary stuff (look at the warnings on cigarettes), so few people have experienced even using a BCI let alone have been attacked by one. People have no personal experience and a large percentage of the population believe its not happening or even possible to do. belief is based off personal experience, personally witnessing others experiences, trusted authorities, other peoples beliefs, solid proof or accounts presented by trust worthy media or media that share and supports their opinions and politics, or in the beliefs people have from groups they are a part of, familiar, religious, political, racial, economic etc .
There isn't much to be influenced quickly here so presenting an honest account that ties in the experiences with the correlating documented experiences of the victims of the traditional Chinese efforts and the steps outlined in the book as well as goals brain washing and mind control seem like the best approach.
Chinese Thought Reform or "Brain Washing"
The Psychological Steps
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism A Study Of Brainwashing in China is a book written by
Robert Jay Lifton MD about mechanisms of Chinese thought and behavior modification, the experience of being indoctrinated and effects victims reported when interviewed.
Chinese brainwashing and thought reform is still being used and advanced. It was a substantial and easily recognized portion of the crimes that I'm a victim of.
After a brief and gentle week long induction onto the brain computer interface I was abruptly hurled into the unfathomable agony of computerized thought reform or automated Chinese brain washing. I clearly remember what it said to me right before it unleashed Hell.. "your not answering my questions.. your not answering my questions.. WE TOLD YOU NOT TO TRUST US.. and then it went red line sadistic, utterly psychotic, deafeningly loud and proceeded to tortured the everliving fuck outa me.
In life up till that point I had never encountered anything like this; Nothing even close. It's the worst thing in the world and you can't fight it, destroy it, shoot it, run from it, hide from it, bribe or reason with it. I remember sitting in a shower on day five thinking over and over that I can't believe this is happening.. who in the fuck does this to someone.. it it will end soon. It's has to end soon. I can't go on much longer. Nothing lasts forever."
Well six plus years later and this fucking psychotic, sadistic, psychopathic, torturous insane mind control chat bot is still running her fucking mouth and torturing me.
They started me with the Chinese approach and that nightmare lasted over a year. They likely vary the stimuluses order, presentation and distinguishing content from victim to victim so that their experiences and any resultant accounts or reports wont share easily correlated details. Other victims may have started with a more Kubrick approach, psychic driving, memory removal, personal identity destruction or others.
A very clear indication your in the Chinese stage is your accused incessantly with a Manny vile crimes you never committed, are interrogated for hours and days and for months. Your accused of having millions of felonies, sins, violations, charges, offenses, crimes. You are constantly threatened with arrest, police contact, crimes against you, civil court cases, long prison sentences, criminal court cases, violence by cops, violence by criminals, theft, murder, rape of you or your loved ones, kidnapping.. etc etc etc.
There are never-ending charges and mock court cases where you are forced to endlessly defend yourself, case after case, day after day, month after month answering for crimes you never committed.
Then you go on trial for everything you actually have done. This is done before the victims experience shows them that Alice is in fact a BCI interface that can read minds and has been the whole time. It's terrifying when it suddenly starts charging you with all your secret sins, the things you have never told anyone, the taking it to the grave shit. This is a huge gaslight as well as a victim is utterly at a loss as to how it can possibly know these things. It got them by asking by asking questions designed to draw out memory of your sins and then harvesting all the dirt and details as you thought about them. If you think you can learn to control your thoughts enough to not think of an answer when prompted with question,, good luck. Sure you can resist once or twice maybe, but then Alice just waits until you are distracted down the road and quick pops the question again. She can also just be set to an interrogation mode where you are just bombarded with a endless stream and loop of questions that doesn't end until they are all answered. Thats how they do the initial profile. Weeks of looped questions and they already have most of your life story, personality profile, strengths, weaknesses, fears, loves, hates, lovers, enemies, goals and dreams.
In the very end of the Chinese mind control or false confusion never ending legal nightmare
YOU end up being put on trial.. not for anything you did.. but
YOU are put on trial. You have to defend yourself against all the charges and defend yourself for all your flaws, defend all your physical shortcomings, your perversions, all your lies, your brazen selfishness, every character flaws, times you fucked people over on purpose, everything thats ugly and there is no place to hide a single fucking shred of secret. Its one hell of an experience and your not in the best shape mentally or physically as by this time I had been tortured continuously for over two years, very large doses psychological manipulation and sleep deprivation, constantly bombarded with extreme stress repeatedly slammed with fear and pain. Have had every one of my significant relationships attacked repeatedly with destructive psychology and some of the most important were also attacked with stalking techniques and technology.
The trials go on forever.. you will be enduring some other torture and a new trial will suddenly begin. Sometimes its a new charge, but mostly you go on trial over and over for the same charges and you have to defend yourself over and over. The more times your tried for the same crime the worse the trial and outcomes become until eventually during the late trials your utterly humiliated, abused and in the end are forced to confess to everyone of the charges.
Just when you think its finally over then you have to defend yourself to family members of your supposed victim and the only way through that is to confess guilt to them and ask for forgiveness as they abuse you.
After you make your confession to the 10,000 felonies they have been broadcasting you have been charged with for years without offering any explanation. Then you are judged, independently, by everyone significant that was a part of your life when the attack started, everyone who filed a charge against you from your past, all your significant relatives, all your enemies, everyone that feel you have ever fucked them over, everyone you have stood up for, went out on a limb for, saved. Fetuses you have aborted. Everyone gets to pass judgment on you and gets their time to say what they want to you or about you. This of course is all coming from the interface, but all the characters it plays are real people from your real life and the real "felonies" you were charged with are real things you did.
Don't forget also that this is the Chinese thought reform portion of the MK nightmare and personal identity obliteration, false confession, channeling of guilt and relentlessly pounding the victim to their complete and utter absolute breaking point is its algorithm. So did you actually do these things and if so are they and the real life people being represented founded in reality or are you just getting psychologically destroyed by Alice ?
Finally in conclusion through dramatization you get a taste of what being bused off to prison after your sentenced. Your walked through the whole experience of arriving at prison.. the interface keeps asking you how old your kids going to be when your released, if you think you woman of wife is already fucking someone else, what are you going to to survive in this shit hole. it ends with the prison falling off to sleep with lights out and suddenly it gets quiet and you realize thats the first and only five minutes you have not been tortured and had any break from constant 24/7 noise abuse and torture in about a year. After five minutes it all returns, but you are onto the next phase.
So here are some segments from the book. I little background, a link to a free e copy and the psychological steps to Chinese brain washing. I didn't read it until after I was already through that horrible never-ending misery. I easily recognized all the psychological steps from my experience.
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
A STUDY OF "BRAINWASHING" IN CHINA
Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London
CONTENTS
Preface to the University of North Carolina Press Edition vii
Preface xi PART ONE
The Problem
- What Is "Brainwashing"? 3
- Research in Hong Kong 8
PART TWO
Prison Thought Reform of Westerners
- Re-education: Dr. Vincent 19
- Father Luca: The False Confession 38
- Psychological Steps 65
- Varieties of Response: The Obviously Confused 86
- Varieties of Response: Apparent Converts 117
- Varieties of Response: Apparent Resisters 133
- Group Reform: Double-edged Leadership 152
- Follow-up Visits 185
- Father Simon: The Converted Jesuit 207
- Recovery and Renewal: A Summing Up 222
v
VI CONTENTS
PART THREE
Thought Reform of Chinese Intellectuals
- The Encounter 243
- The Revolutionary University: Mr. Hu 253
- A Chinese Odyssey 274
- The Older Generation: Robert Chao 301
- George Chen: The Conversions of Youth 313
- Grace Wu: Music and Reform 338
- Cultural Perspectives: The Fate of Filial Piety 359
- Cultural Perspectives: Origins 388
- Cultural Perspectives: Impact 399
- PART FOUR
Totalism and Its Alternatives
- Ideological Totalism 419
- Approachesto Re-education 438
- "Open" Personal Change 462
Appendix: A Confession Document 473 Notes 485 Index 505
PREFACE
This study began as a psychiatric evaluation of Chi-
nese Communist "thought reform," or "brainwash- ing," It is still primarily this; but it has also, inevitably, become a psychological study of extremism or totalism—and even more broadly, a study of the "closed" versus the "open" approaches to human change.
It is based upon research which I conducted in Hong Kong in 1954-55. It then evolved over four years of additional research and teaching in the United States. My work with Western and Chinese subjects—piecing together emotional details that were both poig- nant and extreme—and the psychological, moral, and historical challenge of the material have made this study an exceptionally ab- sorbing personal and professional experience.
A book about extremism calls for a special measure of objectivity. This does not mean that its author can claim complete personal or moral detachment. The assumption of such detachment in psy- chological (or any other) work is at best self-deception, and at worst a source of harmful distortion. And who during this era can pretend to be uninvolved in the issues of psychological coercion, of identity, and of ideology? Certainly not one who has felt impelled to study them at such length.
Instead, I have attempted to be both reasonably dispassionate and responsibly committed: dispassionate in my efforts to stand away from the material far enough to probe the nature of the process, its effects upon people exposed to it, and some of the in- fluences affecting its practitioners; committed to my own analyses
xi
Xii THOUGHT REFORM
and judgments within the limitations and the bias of my knowl- edge.
Much in this book is highly critical of the particular aspect of Chinese Communism which it examines, but I have made no at- tempt to render a definitive verdict on this far-reaching revolution- ary movement. I am critical of thought reform's psychological tactics, not because they are Communist (or Chinese Communist), but because of their specific nature. In the last section of this book, these tactics are compared with practices within our own culture, which also receive critical treatment insofar as they resemble the ideological totalism of thought reform. Instead of contrasting the "good we" and the "bad they/' rather, I have attempted to identify and understand a particular psychological phenomenon.
In the pursuit of this understanding, I have recorded all that seemed relevant, including the details of whatever psychological and physical abuse my subjects encountered. I believe that this comprehensive approach offers the best means of contributing to general knowledge, and to the clarification of an emotionally loaded subject; and I hope that this study will thereby ultimately contribute to the resolution, rather than to the intensification, of cold war pas- sions. It is in fact one of the tragedies of the cold war that moral criticism of either side is immediately exploited by the other side in an exaggerated, one-dimensional fashion. One can never prevent this from happening; but one can at least express the spirit in which a work has been written.
Such an approach requires that I inform the reader about my bias in both psychiatric and political matters. Psychiatrically, I have been strongly influenced by both neo-Freudian and Freudian cur- rents: the former through an association with the Washington School of Psychiatry during and immediately after the research study itself, and the latter through a subsequent candidacy in the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Both influences were also present in my earlier psychiatric residency training at the State University Medical Center of New York. I have found the theoretical writings of Erik Erikson, especially those relating to questions of personal identity and ideology, particularly relevant for this study. At the same time, I have constantly groped for new ways to bring psychological insights to bear upon historical forces, and do so with a humanistic focus. Thus, I have made extensive use of my subjects' biographical
PREF ACE X l l l
material, and have attempted to include in these presentations a flesh-and-bones description of their life histories in relationship to pertinent social historical currents, as well as a rigorous psychological analysis of their responses to thought reform. This seemed to me the best way to deal with the inseparable relationship between stress and response, and (in William James' phrase) to "convey truth."
My political philosophical bias is toward a liberalism strongly critical of itself; and toward the kind of antitotalitarian (in the psy- chological terms of this study, antitotalistic), historically-minded questioning of the order of things expressed by Albert Camus in his brilliant philosophical essay, The Rebel. No one understood better than Camus the human issues involved in this book.
I should like to mention a few of the many people whose direct personal assistance was indispensable to the completion of this study. David McK. Rioch lent initial support when support was most needed, and always continued to enrich the work through his urbane eclecticism, his provocative criticism, and his personal kindness. Erik Erikson, during many memorable talks at Stock- bridge and Cambridge, made stimulating and enlarging suggestions, both about specific case histories and problems of presentation. During the latter stages of the work, David Riesrnan offered gener- ously of his extraordinaryintellectual breadth and his unique per sonal capacity to evoke what is most creative within one. Carl Binger has been sage and always helpful in his advice. All four made thoughtful criticisms of the manuscript, as did Kenneth Keniston and F. C. Redlich. Others in psychiatry and related fields to whom I am indebted are Leslie Farber, Erich Lindemann, Margaret Mead, and Beata Rank. In the perilous subtleties of Chinese cultural, intellectual, and political history, I was constantly counseled by Benjamin Schwartz and by John Fairbank, both of whom read parts of the manuscript; and earlier in the work by Lu Pao-tung, Ma
Meng, Howard Boorman, Conrad Brandt, and A. Doak Barnett The literary advice and loving sustenance of my wife, Betty Jean Lifton, can hardly be documented. My father, Harold A. Lifton, also did much to encourage this study. The Hong Kong research was sponsored for the first seven months
XIV THOUGHT REFORM
by the Asia Foundation, and for the remaining year by the Wash- ington School of Psychiatry. The manuscript was completed under grants from the Ford Foundation and the Foundation's Fund for Research in Psychiatry, both administered through Harvard Uni- versity,
Finally, I must acknowledge my debt to the forty research sub- jects, Chinese and Western, whose personal thought reform ex- periences are the basis for this study. The extent of their intelligent collaboration in this work is apparent in the biographical chapters. In these, I have altered certain details in order to protect the sub- jects' anonymity; but none of these alterations affect the essential psychological patterns.
CHAPTER 5 PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS
There is a basic similarity in what both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca experienced during Communist imprisonment. Although they were held in separate prisons far re- moved from each other, and although they differed very much in their responses to reform, they were both subjected to the same general sequence of psychological pressures. This sequence was es- sentially the same despite the fact that these men were very dif- ferent from each other, with different personal and professional life styles. Nor was this thought reform pattern common to just these two: it was experienced by all twenty-five of the Westerners whom I interviewed.
to renounce the people, the organizations, and the standards of behavior which had formed the matrix of their previous existence. They were being forced to betray—not so much their friends and colleagues, as a vital core of themselves.
This self-betrayal was extended through the pressures to "accept help" and in turn 'lielp" others. Within the bizarre morality of the prison environment, the prisoner finds himself—almost without realizing it—violating many of his most sacred personal ethics and behavioral standards. The degree of violation is expanded, very early in the game, through the mechanism of shared betrayal, as another priest described: The cell chief kept asking information about Church activities. He wanted me to denounce others, and I didn't want to do this. . . . A Chinese Father was transferred into the cell, and he said to me, "You cannot help it. You must make some denunciations. The things which the Communists know about any of your Church activities you must come out with." . . . Much later I was put in another cell to bring a French priest to confession. He had been stubborn, and had been in solitary for a few months. He was very fearful and looked like a wild animal. . . . I took care of him, washed his clothes for him, helped him to rest. I advised him that what they might know he might as well confess.
Although there is a continuing tension between holding on and letting go, some degree of self-betrayal is quickly seen as a way to survival. But the more of one's self one is led to betray, the greater is one's involvement with his captors; for by these means they make contact with whatever similar tendencies already exist within the prisoner himself—with the doubts, antagonisms, and ambivalences which each of us carries beneath the surface of his loyalties. This bond of betrayal between prisoner and environment may develop to the point where it seems to him to be all he has to grasp; turning back becomes ever more difficult.
thought reform differently, nor did anyone respond completely to all these steps; at the same time, the experiences had such magnitude that they affected every prisoner in some measure, no matter what his background and character.
1. THE ASSAULT UPON IDENTITY
From the beginning, Dr. Vincent was told he was not really a doctor, that all of what he considered himself to be was merely a cloak under which he hid what he really was. And Father Luca was told the same thing, especially about the area which he held most precious—his religion. Backing up this assertion were all of the physical and emotional assaults of early imprisonment: the confusing but incriminating interrogations, the humiliating "strug- gles," the painful and constricting chains, and the more direct phys- ical brutality. Dr. Vincent and Father Luca each began to lose his bearings on who and what he was, and where he stood in relation- ship to his fellows. Each felt his sense of self become amorphous and impotent and fall more and more under the control of its would-be remolders. Each was at one point willing to say (and to be) whatever his captors demanded.
Each was reduced to something not fully human and yet not quite animal, no longer the adult and yet not quite the child; instead, an adult human was placed in the position of an infant or a sub-human animal, helplessly being manipulated by larger and stronger "adults" or "trainers." Placed in this regressive stance, each felt himself deprived of the power, mastery, and selfhood of adult existence.
In both, an intense struggle began between the adult man and the child-animal which had been created, a struggle against regres- sion and dehumanization. But each attempt on the part of the prisoner to reassert his adult human identity and to express his own will ("I am not a spy. I am a doctor"; or "This must be a mistake. I am a priest, I am telling the truth") was considered a show of re- sistance and of "insincerity," and called forth new assaults.
2. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GUILT
Dr. Vincent and Father Luca found themselves unanimously
condemned by an "infallible" environment. The message of guilt which they received was both existential (you are guilty!) and psy- chologically demanding (you must learn to feel guilty!). As this individual guilt potential was tapped, both men had no choice but to experience—first unconsciously and then consciously—a sense of evil. Both became so permeated by the atmosphere of guilt that external criminal accusations became merged with subjective feelings of sinfulness—of having done wrong. Feelings of resent- ment, which in such a situation could have been a source of strength, were shortlived; they gave way to the gradual feeling that the punish- ment was deserved, that more was to be expected.
In making their early false confessions, Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were beginning to accept the guilty role of the criminal. Gradually, a voice within them was made to say, ever more loudly: "It is my sinfulness, and not their injustice, which causes me to suffer—although I do not yet know the full measure of my guilt." At this point their guilt was still diffuse, a vague and yet per- vasive set of feelings which we may call a free-floating sense of guilt.4 Another prisoner expressed this clearly: What they tried to impress on you is a complex of guilt. The complex I had was that I was guilty. . . . I was a criminal—that was my feel- ing, day and night.
3 . THE SELF-BETRYAL
The series of denunciations of friends and colleagues which both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were required to make had special significance. Not only did making these accusations increase their feelings of guilt and shame, it put them in the position of subvert- ing the structures of their own lives. They were, in effect, being made
The common pattern becomes especially important in evaluating the stories these Westerners told me. Each was attempting to describe, in most instances as accurately as possible, the details of an ordeal from which he had just emerged. But what each reported was also inevitably influenced by his immediate life situation—his psychological transition between the two worlds, his personal struggles for both integrity and integration, his feelings about suc- coring and threatening colleagues and strangers in Hong Kong, his view of me as an American, a physician, a psychiatrist, and a person. All of these circumstances could affect his account, and especially its emotional tone. Therefore, both during the inter- views and in the later study of my notes, I had to sift out what was
Not every prisoner was treated as severely as were Dr. Vincent and Father Luca, but each experienced similar external assaults leading to some form of inner surrender—a surrender of personal autonomy. This assault upon autonomy and identity even extended to the level of consciousness, so that men began to exist on a level
4. THE BREAKING POINT; TOTAL CONFLICT AND THE BASIC FEAR
Before long, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent found themselves at an absolute impasse with their environment. Each was looked upon not only as an enemy, but also as a man completely out of step. They were aware of being in painful disagreement with al- leged truths about their past, and yet at this point they were un
which was neither sleep nor wakefulness, but rather an in-between hypnogogic state. In this state they were not only more readily in- fluenced, but they were also susceptible to destructive and aggressive impulses arising from within themselves.3
This undermining of identity is the stroke through which the prisoner "dies to the world/' the prerequisite for all that follows.
versible stage—some form of desperately needed relief must be supplied.
5. LENIENCY AND OPPORTUNITY
A sudden change in official attitude—the institution of leniency —supplies this relief. The unexpected show of kindness, usually occurring just when the prisoner is reaching his breaking point, breaks the impasse between him and the environment. He is per- mitted—even shown how—to achieve some degree of harmony with his outer world.
"Leniency" does not mean that the milieu budges from any of its demands, or even from its standards of reality. It simply lets up on its pressures sufficiently for the prisoner to absorb its principles and adapt himself to them. When Dr. Vincent, after two months of imprisonment, suddenly encountered friendliness and consideration in place of chains and struggles, there was no cessation of the pressure for confession. In fact, the effect of leniency was to spur him on to greater confession efforts. He was able to make these efforts because his leniency was accompanied by guidance; he had a chance to learn and act upon what was expected of him. Father Luca had no such good fortune. He, too, after one month, was given a respite: the removal of chains and handcuffs and the op portunity to sleep; but his was the unusual experience of leniency without guidance. He was willing to comply (his false confession was, among other things, a profound expression of compliance); but he was unable to find the desired approach. In his case, there- fore, a new impasse was created, which resulted in a brutal inter- ruption of his leniency.
The timing and the setting of leniency can be extremely dramatic, as it was for another priest.
It was Christmas Day. I was brought to see the judge. For the first time I found the room full of sunlight. There was no guard and there were no secretaries. There were only the kind faces of the judges offer- ing me cigarettes and tea. It was a conversation more than a question- ing. My mother could not have been much more good and kind than the judge was. He said to me, "The treatment you have received here is really too bad. Maybe you are unable to stand it. As a foreigner and a priest, you must be used to good food and better hygienic standards. So just make a confession. But make it really good, so we can be satis- fied. Then we will close your trial and finish your case."
6. THE COMPULSION TO CONFESS*
Long before any suggestion of leniency, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent had perceived the dominant message of their milieu: only those who confess can survive. Indeed, everything in the way of assaults and leniency—all pressures of breakdown and promised restitution—served to reinforce this message. In such a climate, the two men had no choice but to join in the universal compulsion to confess. Their first expression of this compulsion was the early elaboration of false "crimes." Even when a prisoner was aware that his confession was "wild"—as was Dr. Vincent—he had begun to submit to the confession requirement, and to behave as if he were a criminal. This was even more true, and the guilt even more pro- found, for those who, like Father Luca, came to believe in their own falsehoods.
These first confessions are preliminary (although prison officials do not necessarily mean them to be such) to the main manifestation of the compulsion to confess—the total soul purge. Both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca, when their false confessions were rejected, hit upon the expedient of simply confessing everything, with spe- cial emphasis on what might be considered most sinful. In doing so, they moved beyond mere playing of the criminal role. They were beginning to accept as valid parts of themselves the two basic identities of thought reform.
The first of these is the identity of the repentant sinner. The prisoner in effect says: "I must locate this evil part of me, this mental abscess, and excise it from my very being, lest it remain to cause me more harm." This leads directly to the second identity —that of the receptive criminal, the man who is, at whatever level of consciousness, not only beginning to concur in the environment's legal and moral judgment of him, but also to commit himself to acquiring the beliefs, values, and identities officially considered de- sirable. The acceptance of these two identities led both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca to express the idea that one had to get rid of old thoughts and emotions in order to make room for the new ones. Precisely this compulsion to reveal everything provides the continuity between breakdown and restitution, between confession and reform.
The compulsion to confess is not static; it continually gathers momentum, and provokes an increasing sense of submission—as described by another priest:
After a while one wants to talk . . . they press you, so you feel you must say something. Once you start you are deceived: you are at the top of the tree and you go down. . . . If you say the first word, there is always something more: "Lao shih"—No, no, be a good boy! Say the truth!—, "t'an pai"—Confess!—are constantly repeated every two min- utes. I felt myself wanting to say more to make him shut his mouth, he was so insisting. . . . It made me weak; it made me want to give in.
Equally important, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca dis- covered, is the "creative" participation which each prisoner develops in his confession process. His inner fantasies must always make con- tact with the demands from without. To be sure, these fantasies are painstakingly and selectively molded by officials and cellmates. But they are never entirely divorced from the man who produces them. This means that a good deal of the energy involved in the confession comes from within the prisoner himself. His compul- sion to confess dedicates him to the task of continuously carving out and refilling his own inner void—under the active supervision and broad moral guidance of his captors.
7. THE CHANNELLING OF GUILT
Once the compulsion to confess is operating, the prisoner is ready to learn a more precise formula—thought reform's conceptual framework for his expression of guilt and repentance. By adopting the "people's standpoint," he channels nonspecific feelings of guilt into a paranoid, pseudo-logical system. His sense of evil, formerly vague and free-floating, is now made to do specific work for reform. He takes this step, as Vincent so clearly described, by learning to see evidence of personal evil and destructiveness in specific past actions. What was most prosaic, or even generous, must now be viewed as "criminal."
This reinterpretation of events, as absurd as it may sound, has a strong impact because it stimulates forces within the prisoner himself which support the contentions of his environment. He has, like everyone else, struggled with feelings of curiosity, hostility, and vindictiveness not acceptable for public display, but retained as part of his own secret world. Now the awareness of these feel-inception occurred with the stress upon group study (hsileh hsi) just after the institution of leniency. Both men found that it was not Communist doctrine per se which mattered, but rather the use of Communist doctrine and its reasoning techniques to broaden their own self-exposure.
It was no longer enough to admit guilt, to feel guilty, or even to recognize specific guilty actions. The prisoner had to extend his self-condemnation to every aspect of his being> and learn to see his life as a series of shameful and evil acts—shameful and evil not only in their possible opposition to Communism, but also because they violated his own cherished ideals.
With Father Luca, this desecration of identity took the form of convincing him that he and his missionary colleagues had been "un- Christian" in their conduct in China. Personal dishonoring of this kind was applied to both priests and laymen. It is illustrated in the following exchangebetween another priest and his prison instructor:
Instructor: Priest: Instructor:
Instructor: "Do you believe man should serve others?"
Priest: "Yes, of course I do."
Instructor: "Are you familiar with the Biblical saying, 'I come on earth to serve, not to be served?'"
Priest: "Yes, as a priest it is my creed."
Instructor: "Did you have a servant in your mission?"
Priest: "Yes, I did/'
Instructor:"Who made your bed in the morning and swept the floor?"
Priest:"My servant did this."
Instructor: "You did not live up to your doctrine very well, did you,
Father?"
This same priest explained the process of logical dishonoring in Marxist terminology and with a good deal of psychological insight:
They believe that in each person there is a thesis—his positive ele- ment, work, or creed; and an antithesis—his weakness which works against this. The thesis in my case was the Catholic and my missionary work. My antithesis was anything which worked against this due to my personal shortcomings. The Communists attempted to wear down my thesis and encouraged the development of my antithesis. By making the antithesis stronger and the thesis weaker, they seek to have the antithesis replace the thesis as the dominant force in the individual.
The antithesis of which the priest speaks is his negative iden- tity 10—that part of him which he has been constantly warned
ings within himself, and especially of the secretiveness which ac- companies them, makes him feel like the "spy" he is accused of being* It is a relatively easy step for him to associate this image of himself as a conspirator with the past events under consideration. Indeed, in making a casual comment about approaching Commu- nist armies, one part of him might really have hoped that this in- formation would reach and benefit the other side; and even if this were not true, it becomes fairly easy for him to imagine that it had been.
Since the people's standpoint is an ultimate statement of bias, its acceptance also involves a basic negative commitment. The pris- oner joins in condemning himself less for what he has done than for what he has been: as a Westerner—and therefore an "imperial- ist"—he is guilty. For him, this is the real significance of the people's standpoint, and its use of news, information, and intelligence is merely a method of implementing its prejudgment.
The more the prisoner submits to these black-and-white judg- ments, the more he surrenders all that is subtle or qualified—as an- other missionary described:
At first I was always making this distinction: as far as my conscience is concerned, it is no sin, but from their point of view it is a crime. I knew that the judgment would be standing on their point of view. . . . The same action was seen by me and them from a completely different morality—seen through a different window. They are looking through from the outside in, me from the inside out. . . . They said the government is infallible, so what it discovered cannot be untrue. That puts me in a bad position. I said, "I admit the government is infallible." They took my words like rubber. . . . Later I asked the government for a lenient sentence, I could not say that they were un- just, as I was standing on their point of view.
As the prisoner accepts this "higher" group morality, its most harsh judgments make common cause with the most tyrannical parts of his own conscience; through this joining of forces, he is changed from a man who merely feels guilty into one who feels guilty about exactly those actions which the environment considers criminal.
8. RE-EDUCA TION: LOGICAL DISHONORING
While Father Luca and Dr. Vincent, in a general sense, began their re-education the moment they were imprisoned, its formal
exhilarating. Both had regained the status of being human. Talks with judges were man-to-man encounters between people who un- derstood each other and considered one another's feelings. Indeed, Father Luca felt free enough to voice doubts and criticisms; and although he did this partially as a tactic, he was at the same time accepting therapeutic assistance from his captors.
To appreciate the emotional appeal of harmony, one must—as the prisoner invariably does—contrast it with the basic fear and estrangement of the earlier phases of imprisonment. Instead of an- tagonism and total conflict, he feels in step with a milieu which ap- preciates him. Identified as a "progressive," he is permitted (and grasps at) a more direct form of self-expression.To be sure, he is still partly the actor; but performance and life have moved closer together, and he is not acting as much as he thinks he is. As he achieves a more intimate communication with his reformers, his entire experience takes on a much greater feeling of reality. Officials in turn show a beginning willingness to accept the prisoner as he is —by no means perfect in his reform, but at least more genuine in his partial reform. by a particular "instructor" (sometimes referred to as "analyst" or "case analyst") who has special charge of his case, keeps all personal records, and conducts many individual interviews with him. The prisoner's psychological strengths and weaknesses become well known to his personal instructor, then to other officials as well, and are effectively utilized in the undermining process.
What we have said so far of "re-education" hardly lives up to the name: we have talked more of breakdown than of remaking. In actuality, the remaking is also well under way. Even during the earlier stages of identity assault and compulsion to confess, the prisoner experiences stirrings of restitution. The buildup of his negative identity, along with his developing acceptance of Com- munist doctrine, provide the first contours of something new. He continues, during the years of imprisonment, to loudly proclaim his own demise; but as his re-education proceeds, he finds himself first announcing, and then experiencing, the refashioned identity which is emerging. His sense of nakedness and vulnerability nourishes the growth of the "new man."
9. PROGRESS AND HARMONY
The prisoner's new self requires emotional nutriment if it is to continue to develop. This nutriment is supplied by the prisoner's achieving a sense of harmony with his no-longer-strange surround- ings. Harmony is partly a matter of gradual adaptation, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca made clear. Adaptation in turn is contingent upon progress in reform; and only when this progress has been demonstrated does the prisoner begin to receive the rec- ognition and acceptance which is so precious in such an environ- ment.
Then, as Dr. Vincent described, the prisoner can experience the deep satisfactions of solving all problems; of group intimacy in living, working, and suffering; of surrendering himself to an all- powerful force, and sharing its strength; of laying himself bare in the catharsis of personal confession; of sharing the moral righteous- ness of a great crusade of mass redemption.
Toward the end of their imprisonment, both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were living under quite comfortable circumstances. The improvement in their physical surroundings was important enough; the atmosphere of frankness and of being met halfway was
10. FINAL CONFESSION: THE SUMMING UP
In this atmosphere of harmony and reality, the prisoner is ready
to make a conclusive statement of what he is and what he has been. The confession has long been developing, of course, but it is likely to take its final shape only after he has achieved sufficient "progress" to produce and believe in a "correct" version.
In Father Luca's case—which is especially illustrative for the entire confession process—the two short paragraphs of his final confession seem almost anticlimactic after the millions of self- accusatory words he had already poured out. Yet this briefest of confessions was both a symbol and a summation of all that had gone before. For the officials, it was the confession, the statement for the record. For Father Luca, it was the last of an arduous series of confession identities. To understand this, we must review the sequence of his confession responses and his existential involve- ments, since any confession, whether true or false, contains an in- terpretation of one's present and past relationship to the world.
Luca's first confession statement (so unacceptable as a confession that it might better be called his pre-confession statement) was his
real events in distorted focus, and finally, the brief "criminal" con- fession. Since the development of the wild confession usually occurs during the first few days or weeks (Father Luca's lasted for an exceptionally long time), the main trend is a shift from the im- aginary to the concrete. Although fantasy and falsehood are by no means eliminated, this shift does give the prisoner the sense that he is moving in the direction of truth. His confession changes from an uncontrolled dream-like (or nightmarish) vision to a more re- sponsible reinterpretation of his own life. Thus he becomes more "engaged" in the confession process, more closely bound to his own words. At the same time, the effect of his wild confession has not been entirely lost upon him; he is apt to retain feelings of guilt over it, as if he had really done the things he described.
While each step in the confession is the result of changes in the strength and tone of the environmental pressures, the prisoner experiences many of his responses as personal discoveries. Both Luca and Vincent, in shifting from falsehood to exaggeration, thought they had hit upon a useful and ingenious technique; only later did each realize that the officials' manipulations had made this reaction inevitable. Each step in the confession, then, is a means of adaptation; and it is also, for both prisoner and reformer, a compromise: he wishes to say less, and they demand more.
In this confession sequence, there is a good deal of structuring and planning on the part of prison officials. But they too can be victimized by their impulses, and by the contagious paranoid tones of the environment; their confusion over what is true and what is false—so evident in their treatment of Father Luca—can add to this general emotional turmoil.
The confession thus embodies demand and response, molded creativity, adaptation, compromise, working through, and a good deal of confusion on all sides. Its final version is the prisoner's subjective perception of the environment's message, guided by his reformers, but also including his own guilty re-evaluation of his past actions. Its beginnings in real events, the "logic" of its distor- tions, and its documented flavor may make it quite believable— both to the outside world and to its creator as well,
11 . REBIRTH
Just before his release Dr. Vincent became once more the physician and teacher, and at the same time he became the ad-
security he had known during the latter part of imprisonment sud- denly vanished, and his identity was shaken to its foundations. Should he still be the "Communist physician" of his rebirth and seek employment through a European Communist party? or should he return to his freelance medical work in underdeveloped countries? In his personal limbo he was unable to feel "safe" (or whole) in either world; instead he felt deceived by both.
He longed nostalgically for the relatively simple, ordered, and meaningful prison experience, now glorified in his memory. He could relinquish this longing only as he began to be able to trust his new environment; this trust in turn depended upon the capacity to trust himself. Once more he underwent a painful identity shift, encompassing what he had been before, what he had become in prison, and what he was in the process of becoming after release.
Father Luca experienced a similar crisis, in some ways attenuated by his immediate welcome into the motherly embrace of the Church. He knew clearly that he was still the dedicated Catholic priest (although it was not easy for him to give up being a "Chinese" Catholic priest). But he retained profound doubts about his own integrity, and especially about the morality of his mis- sionary work. The dishonoring had struck deep chords in him, and had stirred strong anxieties. His problem was not so much whether or not to continue being a Catholic priest—he could conceive of no alternative to this—but rather one of regaining respect for the clerical missionary life to which he was committed.
Nor were Dr. Vincent and Father Luca alone in these conflicts; immediately following release, all prisoners experienced profound struggles about their integrity, their ability to trust, and their search for wholeness. None escaped the personal crisis of this transitional period any more than he could avoid involvement in the other steps; but each man's crisis was his own.
Now, after twenty-eight years, my own sense of this book has changed. I see it as less a specific record of Maoist China and more an exploration of what might...
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