SelfDefinition.Org
The Brainwashing Manual
(1955)
L. Ron Hubbard
Chapter IX The Organization of Mental Health Campaigns
[A few shameless plugs for Dianetics in this chapter.]
Psychopolitical operatives should at all times be alert to the opportunity to organize "for the betterment of the community" mental health clubs or groups. By thus inviting the cooperation of the population as a whole in mental health programmes, the terrors of mental aberration can be disseminated throughout the populace. Furthermore, each one of these mental health groups, properly guided, can bring, at last, legislative pressure against the government to secure adequately the position of the psychopolitical operative, and to obtain for him government grants and facilities, thus bringing a government to finance its own downfall.
Mental health organizations must carefully delete from their ranks anyone actually proficient in the handling or treatment of mental health. Thus must be excluded priests, ministers, actually trained psychoanalysts, good hypnotists, or trained Dianeticists. These, with some cognizance on the subject of mental aberration and its treatment, and with some experience in observing the mentally deranged, if allowed frequency within institutions, and if permitted to receive literature, would, sooner or later, become suspicious of the activities engaged upon by the psychopolitical operative. These must be defamed and excluded as "untrained", "unskilful", "quacks", or "perpetrators of hoaxes".
No mental health movement with actual goals of mental therapy should be continued in existence in any nation. For instance, the use of Chinese acupuncture in the treatment of mental and physical derangement must, in China, be stamped out and discredited thoroughly, as it has some efficacy, and, more importantly, its practitioners understand, through long conversation with it, many of the principles of actual mental health and aberration.
In the field of mental health, the psychopolitician must occupy, and continue to occupy, through various arguments, the authoritative position on the subject. There is always the danger that problems of mental health may be resolved by some individual or group, which might then derange the programme of the psychopolitical operative in his mental health clubs. City officials, socialites, and other unknowing individuals, on the subject of mental health, should be invited to full cooperation in the activity of mental health groups. But the entirety of this activity should be to finance better facilities for the psychopolitical practitioner. To these groups, it must be continually stressed that the entire subject of mental illness is so complex that none of them, certainly, could understand any part of it. Thus, the club should be kept on a social and financial level.
Where groups interested in the health of the community have already been formed, they should be infiltrated and taken over, and if this is not possible, they should be discredited and debarred, and the officialdom of the area should be invited to stamp them out as dangerous.
When an hostile group dedicated to mental health is discovered, the psychopolitician should have recourse to the mechanisms of peyote, mescaline, and later drugs which cause temporary insanity. He should send persons, preferably those well under his control, into the mental health group, and invite the group, whether Christian Science or Dianetics or other practice, to demonstrate its abilities upon this new person. These, in demonstrating their abilities, will usually act with enthusiasm. Midway in the course of their treatment, a quiet injection of peyote, mescaline, or other drug, or an electric shock, will produce the symptoms of insanity in the patient which has been sent to the target group. The patient thus demonstrating momentary insanity should immediately be reported to the police and taken away to some area of incarceration managed by psychopolitical operatives, and so placed out of sight. Officialdom will thus come into a belief that this group drives individuals insane by their practices, and the practices of the group will then be despised and prohibited by law.
The values of a widespread mental health organization are manifest when one realizes that any government can be forced to provide facilities for psychopolitical operatives in the form of psychiatric wards in all hospitals, in national institutions totally in the hands of psychopolitical operatives, and in the establishment of clinics where youth can be contacted and arranged more seemingly to the purposes of Psychopolitics. Such groups form a political force, which can then legalize any law or authority desired for the psychopolitical operative.
The securing of authority over such mental health organizations is done mainly by appeal to education. A psychopolitical operative should make sure the those psychiatrists he controls, those psychologists whom he has under orders, have been trained for an excessively long period of time. The longer the training period which can be required, the safer the psychopolitical programme, since no new group of practitioners can arise to disclose and dismay psychopolitical programmes. Furthermore, the groups themselves cannot hope to obtain any full knowledge of the subject, not having behind them many, many years of intensive training.
Vienna has been carefully maintained as the home of Psychopolitics, since it was the home of Psychoanalysis. Although our activities have long long since dispersed any of the gains made by Freudian groups, and have taken over these groups, the proximity of Vienna to Russia, where Psychopolitics is operating abroad, and the necessity "for further study" by psychopolitical operatives in the birthplace of Psychoanalysis, makes periodic contacts with headquarters possible. Thus, the word "psychoanalysis" must be stressed at all times, and must be pretended to be a thorough part of the psychiatrist's training.
Psychoanalysis has the very valuable possession of a vocabulary, and a workability which is sufficiently poor to avoid recovery of psychopolitical implantations. It can be made fashionable throughout mental health organizations, and by learning its patter, and by believing they see some of its phenomena, the members of mental health groups can believe themselves conversant with mental health. Because its stress is sex, it is, itself, an adequate defamation of character, and serves the purposes of degradation well. Thus, in organizing mental health groups, the literature furnished such groups should be psychopolitical in nature.
If a group of persons interested in suppressing juvenile delinquency, in caring for the insane, and the promotion of psychopolitical operative and their actions can be formed in every major city of a country under conquest, the success of a psychopolitical programme is assured, since these groups seem to represent a large segment of the population. By releasing continued propaganda on the subject of dope addiction, homosexuality, and depraved conduct on the part of the young, even the judges of a country can become suborned into reacting violently against the youth of the country, thus mis-aligning and aligning the support of youth.
The communication lines of psychopolitics, if such mental health organizations can be well established, can thus run from its most prominent citizens to its government. It is not too much to hope that the influence of such groups could bring about a psychiatric ward in every hospital in the land, and psychiatrists in every company and regiment of the nation's army, and whole government institutions manned entirely by psychopolitical operatives, into which ailing government officials could be placed, to the advantage of the psychopolitician.
If a psychiatric ward could be established in every hospital in every city in a nation, it is certain that, at one time or another, every prominent citizen of that nation could come under the ministrations of psychopolitical operatives or their dupes.
The validation of psychiatric position in the armed forces and security-minded institutions of the nation under conquest could bring about a flow and fund of information unlike any other programme which could be conceived. If every pilot who flies a new plane could come under the questioning of a psychopolitical operative, if the compiler of every plan of military action could thus come under the review of psychopolitical operatives, the simplicity with which information can be extracted by the use of certain drugs, without the after-knowledge of the soldier, would entirely cripple any overt action toward Communism. If the nation could be educated into turning over to psychopolitical operatives every recalcitrant or rebellious soldier, it would lose its best fighters. Thus, the advantage of mental health organizations can be seen, for these, by exerting an apparent public pressure against the government, can achieve these ends and goals.
The financing of a psychopolitical operation is difficult unless it is done by the citizens and government. Although vast sums of money can be obtained from private patients, and from relatives who wish persons put away, it is, nevertheless, difficult to obtain millions, unless the government itself is co-operating. The cooperation of the government to obtain these vast sums of money is best obtained by the organization of mental health groups composed of leading citizens, and who bring their lobbying abilities to bear against the nation's government. Thus can be financed many programmes, which might otherwise have to be laid aside by the psychopolitician.
The psychopolitical operative should bend consistent and continual effort toward forming and continuing in action innumerable mental health groups.
The psychopolitical operative should also spare no expense in smashing out of existence, by whatever means, any actual healing group, such as that of acupuncture, in China; such Christian Science and Dianetics, in the United States; such as Catholicism in Italy and Spain; and the practical psychology groups of England.