The Rape of the Mind
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Rape of the Mind A. M. Meerloo, M.D. The Rape of the Mind explores the Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing. Published in 1956 and written by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., Instructor in Psychiatry, Columbia University Lecturer in Social Psychology, New School for Social Research, Former Chief, Psychological Department, Netherlands Forces. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE The Techniques of Individual Submission 6 CHAPTER ONE – YOU TOO WOULD CONFESS 7 The Enforced Confession 7 Mental Coercion and Enemy Occupation 10 Witchcraft and Torture 12 The Refinement of the Rack 14 Menticide in Korea 17 CHAPTER TWO – PAVLOV’S STUDENTS AS CIRCUS TAMERS 21 The Salivating Dog 21 The Conditioning of Man 24 Isolation and Other Factors in Conditioning 26 Mass Conditioning Through Speech 28 Political Conditioning 30 The Urge to be Conditioned 33 CHAPTER THREE – MEDICATION INTO SUBMISSION 35 The Search for Ecstasy Through Drugs 36 Hypnotism and Mental Coercion 38 Needling for the Truth 41 The Lie-Detector 44 The Therapist as an Instrument of Coercion 45 CHAPTER FOUR – WHY DO THEY YIELD? THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF FALSE CONFESSION 47 The Upset Philosopher 47 The Barbed-Wire Disease 49 The Moment of Sudden Surrender 50 The Need to Collapse 51 The Need for Companionship 53 Blackmailing Through Overburdening Guilt Feelings 55 The Law of Survival versus the Law of Loyalty 58 The Mysterious Masochistic Pact 61 A Survey of Psychological Processes involved in Brainwashing and Menticide 63 2 PART TWO The Techniques of Mass Submission 65 CHAPTER FIVE – THE COLD WAR AGAINST THE MIND 65 The Public-Opinion Engineers 67 Psychological Warfare as a Weapon of Terror 69 The Indoctrination Barrage 71 The Enigma of Co-existence 72 CHAPTER SIX – TOTALITARIA AND ITS DICTATORSHIP 73 The Robotization of Man 74 Cultural Predilection for Totalitarianism 76 The Totalitarian Leader 79 The Final Surrender of the Robot Man 82 The Common Retreat from Reality 84 The Retreat to Automatization 86 The Womb State 88 CHAPTER SEVEN – THE INTRUSION BY TOTALITARIAN THINKING 91 The Strategy of Terror 92 The Purging Rituals 94 Wild Accusation and Black Magic 96 Spy Mania 98 The Strategy of Criminalization 99 Verbocracy and Semantic Fog – Talking People into Submission 101 Logocide 103 Labelomania 104 The Apostatic Crime in Totalitaria 105 CHAPTER EIGHT – TRIAL BY FIRE 106 The Downfall of Justice 107 The Demagogue as Prosecutor and Hypnotist 109 The Trial as an Instrument of Intimidation 113 The Congressional Investigation 114 The Witness and his Subjective Testimony 116 The Right to be Silent 118 Mental Blackmail 119 The Judge and the Jury 122 Televised Interrogation 124 The Quest for Detachment 125 3 CHAPTER NINE – FEAR AS A TOOL OF TERROR 126 The Fear of Living 126 Our Fantasies about Danger 129 Paradoxical Fear 130 Regression 131 Camouflage and Disguise 132 Explosive Panics 134 The Body Takes Over 135 PART THREE Unobtrusive Coercion 137 CHAPTER TEN – THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN 137 How some Totalitarians may Develop 138 The Moulding Nursery 140 The Father cuts the Cord 145 CHAPTER ELEVEN – MENTAL CONTAGION AND MASS DELUSION 149 The Affirmation of my own Errors 149 Stages of Thinking and Delusion 152 The Loss of Verifiable Reality 154 Mass Delusion 156 The Danger of Mental Contagion 159 The Explanation of Delusion 161 The Liberation from Magic Thinking 162 CHAPTER TWELVE – TECHNOLOGY INVADES OUR MINDS 163 The Creeping Coercion by Technology 165 The Paradox of Technology 169 CHAPTER THIRTEEN – INTRUSION BY THE ADMINISTRATIVE MIND 172 The Administrative Mind 173 The Ailments of those in Public Office 176 The Conference of Unconscious Minds 178 The Bureaucratic Mind 180 4 CHAPTER FOURTEEN – THE TURNCOAT IN EACH OF US THE CONFUSING INFLUENCE OF THE PROBLEM OF TREASON AND LOYALTY 184 The Involuntary Traitor 184 The Concept of Treason 187 The Traitor who Consciously takes Option for the Other side 189 Our Treacherous Intellect 192 Self-Betrayal 193 The Development of Loyalty 196 In Praise of Nonconformity 197 The Loyalty Compulsion 198 PART FOUR In Search of Defences 203 CHAPTER FIFTEEN – TRAINING AGAINST MENTAL TORTURE THE U.S. CODE FOR RESISTING BRAINWASHING 204 Indoctrination Against Indoctrination? 207 CHAPTER SIXTEEN – EDUCATION FOR DISCIPLINE OR HIGHER MORALE 209 The Role of Education 209 Discipline and Morale 213 Discipline and Brainwashing 214 The Breaking Point and our Capacity for Frustration 217 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – FROM OLD TO NEW COURAGE WHO RESISTS LONGER AND WHY? 219 The Myth of Courage 221 The Morale-Boosting Idea 224 The New Courage 229 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – FREEDOM – OUR MENTAL BACKBONE 231 The Democratizing Action of Psychology 232 The Battle on Two Fronts 235 The Paradox of Freedom 238 The Future Age of Psychology 240 BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 5 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. 6 CHAPTER ONE 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 defenceless 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. 7 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 behaviour 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 behaviour forms which we can call a confession syndrome. In 1933 this type of behaviour was unknown to psychiatrists.