15. Rape of the Mind

Part 4 – In Search of Defenses

Ch. 15. Training Against Mental Torture

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.

Chapter 15

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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!

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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.

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