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Rape of the Mind
The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide and Brainwashing
Joost A.M. Meerloo
(1903-1976)
18. Freedom – Our Mental Backbone
Introduction
The totalitarian state is continually driving out man's private opinions and convictions. For the police state, thinking is already acting. The inner preparation for action as expressed in trial action – thought – is not accepted. Innate doubt and the trials and tribulations of thought adaptation are denied. Inbreeding destructive thought is one way to undermine the community. Not trusting the liberty of thought and free expression of opinion is even more dangerous; the natural destructive desires are repressed to that uncontrollable realm of the mind that may explode more easily into action. The verbal expression of a destructive thought however often partly conquers that thought, and renders it less potent. Here lies the actual paradox! Condemning antisocial thought – thought not yet put into action – provokes a short circuit of explosive action!
Every piece of logic may have its dangerous implications: inquisitional murder took place in the service of high ideals. If we cannot gamble with the innate good sense of man, a free and peaceful society are impossible, a democracy is impossible. Moral culture begins and ends with the individual. Only the cult of individual freedom, individual possession, and individual creativity makes man willing to curb instinctual desires and to repress destructivity. Man is not only a social being. Somewhere away from the crowd and the noise, he has to come to grips with himself, God and nature. In order to grow, he needs reserve and isolation and silence. In addition to his mechanical devices and machines, he needs to get back to nature, to camp out-of-doors by himself. Somewhere along the line, he has to be the maker of some of his own tools, as a shoemaker or a healer or a teacher. Without being thrown on his own and knowing loneliness, man is dwarfed, he is lost among the waves of overpowering human influence and a sea of coercive probabilities.
The Democratizing Action of Psychology
The deepest conviction of the power of psychological understanding came to me in my protracted mental struggles with a man who held membership in a totalitarian organization. He came to me for psychological advice during the Nazi occupation of Holland, and I knew that I had to be careful to avoid discussing politics with him; in those days free expression of opinion could be severely punished, and my patient would have reported me if I had said anything "suspicious."
However, as my therapy of passive listening liberated him from his personal tensions, the patient became more humane. He developed an increasing respect for the individual personality as such, and sometimes grew very critical of the Nazis' callous treatment of human life and human dignity. As time passed, he dissociated himself more and more from his totalitarian political friends. This was indeed courageous, for, especially at that time, the turn from collaboration toward non-conformism was usually interpreted as high treason. In his last visits before we agreed that he was cured, we spoke of our mutual faith in the dignity of the individual and our confidence in the decisions of the mature adult as to the path of his own interests.
Does psychology really exert a democratizing influence on the authoritarian and totalitarian spirit? The case I have just cited would seem to indicate that it does. On the other hand, we know that Goebbels's propaganda machine applied psychological principles to hypnotize the German people into submission. Hitler, too, laid down his psychological artillery barrage to spread panic throughout Europe.
In Nazi Germany, all psychoanalytic treatment was controlled by psychology's own Fuhrer, Goering's brother. Certainly the science of suggestion, hypnosis, and Pavlovian training can be used to enlist cowardly, submissive followers for a program of despotism. These uses of psychological knowledge are perversions of both the principles and the purposes of psychology. Intrinsic in the psychological approach, and above all in psychoanalytic treatment, is an important element that fosters an attitude diametrically opposite to the totalitarian one.
The true purpose of psychology, and especially of its mental health branch, is to free man from his internal tensions by helping him to understand what causes them. Psychology seeks to liberate the human spirit from its dependency on immature thinking so that each man can realize his own potentialities. It seeks to help man to face reality with its many problems, and to recognize his own limitations as well as his possibilities for growth. It is dedicated to the development of mature individuals who are capable of living in freedom and of voluntarily restricting their freedom, when it is indicated, for the larger good. It is based on the premise that when man understands himself, he can begin to be the master of his own life, rather than merely the puppet either of his own unconscious drives or of a tyrant with a perverted lust for power.
As we have said earlier, every man passes through a stage in his own development of greater susceptibility to totalitarianism. This usually occurs during adolescence when the pubescent becomes aware of his own personality-the authority within himself. In not accepting this responsibility, he may look for a strong leader outside the home. At an earlier age-in infancy-the more unconscious patterns of compulsion and automatic obedience are laid. With the advent of his new sense of selfhood, the youth begins to oppose the adult authorities who previously directed his life.
Becoming conscious of the entity we call ego or self or I is a painful mental process. It is not a matter of chance that the feeling of endless longing, of Weltschmerz, is traditionally connected with adolescence. The process of becoming an autonomous and self growing individual involves separation from the security of the family. To achieve internal democracy, the adolescent must separate himself from his protective environment. In so doing he is not merely intoxicated with his sense of growth and emancipation, he is also filled with a sense of fear and loneliness. He is entering a new world in which he must henceforth assume mature responsibility for his actions. At that time he may become an easy prey for totalitarian propaganda. A personal grudge against growing up may lead him to forsake the struggle for personal maturity.
This problem is particularly acute in Western society not only because of the real ideological-political battle we have to face, but also because our ways of raising children may emphasize this problem. Whereas primitive groups impose some measure of social responsibility upon the child early in life and increase it gradually, our middle-class culture segregates him completely in the world of childhood, nursery, and schoolroom, and then plunges him precipitously into adulthood to sink or swim. At this turning point, many young people shrink from such a test. Many do not want a freedom that carries with it so many burdens, so much loneliness. They are willing to hand back their freedom in return for continued parental protection, or to surrender it to political or economic ideologies which are in fact displaced parental images.
Alas, the youth's surrender of individuality is no guarantee against fear and loneliness. The real outside world is in no way altered by his inner choice. Therefore the youth who relinquishes his freedom to new parent figures develops a curious, dual feeling of love and hate toward all authority. Docility and rebellion, submission and hate live side by side within him. Sometimes he bows completely to authority or tyranny; at other times, often unpredictably, everything in him revolts against his chosen leader. This duality is an endless one, for one side of his nature continually seeks to overstep the limits which his other, submissive side has imposed. The man who fails to achieve freedom knows only two extremes: unquestioning submission and impulsive rebellion.
Conversely, the individual who is strong enough to embrace mature adulthood enters into a new kind of freedom. True, this freedom is an ambiguous concept since it involves the responsibility of making new decisions and confronting new uncertainties. The frontiers of freedom are anarchy and caprice on the one side and regimentation and suffocation by rules on the other.
If only we could find an easy formula for the mature attitude toward life! Even if we call it the democratic spirit, we can still explain more easily what democracy is not, than what it is. We can say that our individualizing democracy is the enemy of blind authority. If we wish a more detailed, psychological explanation, we must contrast it with totalitarianism.
Our democracy is against the total regimentation and equalization of its individuals. It does not ask for homogeneous integration and smooth social adjustment. Democracy, in comparison with these aims, implies a confidence in spontaneity and individual growth. It is able to postulate progress and the correction of evil. It guards the community against human error without resorting to intimidation. Democracy provides redress for its own errors; totalitarianism considers itself infallible. Whereas totalitarianism controls by whim and manipulated public opinion, democracy undertakes to regulate society by law, to respect human nature, and to guard its citizens against the tyranny of a single individual on the one hand and a power-crazy majority on the other. Democracy always fights a dual battle. On the one hand, it must limit the resurgence of asocial inner impulses in the individual; on the other, it must guard the individual against external forces and ideologies hostile to the democratic way of life.
The Battle on Two Fronts
The inner harmony between social adaptation and self-assertion has to be re-formed in every new environment. Each individual has to fight over and over again the same subtle battle that started during infancy and babyhood. The ego, the self, forms itself through confrontation with reality. Compliance battles with originality, dependence with independence, outer discipline with inner morale. No culture can escape this inner human battle, though there is a difference in emphasis in every culture and society and in every family.
The combination of internal and external struggle, of a mental conflict on two fronts, renders the Western ideal of an individualized democracy highly vulnerable, particularly when its adherents are unaware of this inherent contradiction. Democracy, by its very nature will always have to fight against dictatorship from without and destructiveness from within. Democratic freedom has to battle against both the individual's inner will to power and his urge to submit to other people. It also has to battle against the contagious drive for power intruding from over the frontiers and so often backed up by armies.
The freedom toward which democracy strives is not the romantic freedom of adolescent dreams; it is one of mature stature. Democracy insists on sacrifices which are necessary to maintain freedom. It tries to combat the fears that attack men when they are faced with democracy's apparently unlimited freedom. Such lack of limitations can be misused to satisfy mere instinctual drives. However, because democracy does not exploit man by myth, primitive magic, mass hypnotism, or other psychological means of seduction, it is less fascinating to the immature individual than is dictatorial control.
Democracy, when it is not involved in a dramatic struggle for survival, may appear quite drab and uninspiring. It simply demands that men shall think and judge for themselves; that each individual shall exercise his full conscious ability in adapting to a changing world; and that genuine public opinion shall mould the laws that govern the community. Essentially, democracy means the right to develop yourself and not to be developed by others. Yet this right like every other, has to be balanced by a duty. The right to develop yourself is impossible without the duty of giving your energy and attention to the development of others. Democracy is rooted not only in the personal rights of the common man, but even more in the personal interests and responsibilities of the common man. When he loses this interest in politics and government, he helps to pave the road to power politics. Democracy demands mental activity of a rather high level from the common man.
What the general public digests and assimilates in its mind is, in our new era of mass communication, just as important as the dictates of the experts. If the latter formulate and communicate ideas beyond the common grasp, they will talk into a vacuum. Thus they may permit a more simple and even an untrue ideology to slip in. It is not enough that an idea is only formulated and printed; we have to take care that the public can participate in the new concept.
The mystery of freedom is the existence of that great love of freedom! Those who have tasted it will not waver. Man revolts against unfair pressure. While the pressure accumulates he revolts silently, but at some critical moment it bursts into open revolt. For those who have lived through such an outburst, freedom is life itself. We have learned this especially in the days of persecution and occupation, in the underground, in the camps, and under the threat of demagoguery. We can even discover it in the totalitarian countries where nonetheless the terror, the resistance goes on.
Freedom and respect for the individual are rooted in the Old Testament, which convinced man that he makes his own history, that he is responsible for his history. Such freedom implies that a man throws off his inertia, that he does not cling arbitrarily to tradition, that he strives for knowledge and accepts moral responsibility. The fear of freedom is the fear of assuming responsibility.
Freedom can never be completely safeguarded by rules and laws. It is as much dependent on the courage, integrity, and responsibility of each of us as it is on these qualities in those who govern. Every trait in us and our leaders which points to passive submission to mere power betrays democratic freedom. In our American system of democratic government, three different powerful branches serve to check each other, the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Yet when there is no will to prevent encroachment of the power of one by any of the others, this system of checks, too, can degenerate.
Like adolescents who try to hide behind the aprons of parental authority rather than face mature adulthood, the individual members of a democratic state may shrink from the mental activity it imposes. They long to take flight into a condition of thoughtless security. Often they would prefer the government, or some individual personification of the state, to solve their problems for them. It is this desire that makes totalitarians and conformists. Like an infant the conformist can sleep quietly and transfer all his worries to Father State. When the intellectuals lose their selfcontrol and courage and are possessed only by their fears and emotions, the power of those with prejudice and stupidity gains.
Since within each of us lie the seeds of both democracy and totalitarianism, the struggle between the democratic and the totalitarian attitude is fought repeatedly by each individual during his lifetime. His particular view of himself and of his fellow men will determine his political creed. Coexisting with man's wish for liberty and maturity are destructiveness, hate, the desire for power, resistance to independence, and the wish to retreat into irresponsible childhood. Democracy appeals only to the adult side of man; fascism and totalitarianism tempt his infantile desires.
Totalitarianism is based on a mechanized narrow view of mankind. It denies the complexity of the individual, and the struggle between his conscious and unconscious motivations. It denies doubt, ambivalence, and contradiction of feelings. It simplifies man, making him into a machine that can be put to work by governmental oil.
In every psychoanalytic treatment there comes the moment when the patient has to decide whether or not he will grow up. The knowledge and insight he has gained have to be translated into action. By this time he knows more about himself; his life has become an open book to him. Although he understands himself better, he finds it difficult to leave the dreamland of childhood, with its fantasies, hero-worship, and happy endings. But, fortified with a deeper understanding of his inner motivation, he steps over into the world of self-chosen responsibility and limited freedom. Because his image of the world is no longer distorted by immature longings, he is now able to function in it as a mature adult.
Systematic education toward freedom is possible. Freedom grows as the control over destructive inner drives become internalized and no longer depend on control from the outside, on control by parents and authorities.
It is the building up of our personality and our conscience-ego and superego-that is important. Nor can this development be brought about in an enforced and compulsive way as tyrants and dictators try to do. We must develop it through free acceptance or rejection of existing moral values until the inner moral person in us is so strong that he is able to go beyond existing values and can stand on his own moral grounds. The choice in favour of freedom lies between self-chosen limitationthe liberation from chaos-and the pseudo-freedom of unconscious chaos. To many people freedom is an emotional concept of letting themselves go, which really means a dictatorship by dark, instinctual drives. There is also an intellectual concept of freedom, meaning a limiting of bondage and unfreedom.
In order to become free, certain outside conditions must be prevented from hampering this moral development of self-control. We have to become increasingly aware of the internal dangers of democracy: laxity, laziness, and unawareness. People have to be aware of the tendency of technology to automatize their minds. They have to become aware of the fact that mass media and modern communication are able to imprint all kinds of suggestions on our brains. They have to know that education can turn us either into weak fact-factories or strong personalities. A free democracy has to fight against mediocrity in order not to be smothered by mere numbers of automatic votes. Democratic freedom requires a highly intelligent appraisal and understanding of the democratic system itself. This very fact makes it difficult for us to advertise or "promote" it. Furthermore, inculcating democracy is just as dangerous as inculcating totalitarianism. It is the essence of democracy that it must be self-chosen, it cannot be imposed.
The Paradox of Freedom
Freedom and planning present no essential contrasts. In order to let freedom grow, we have to plan our controls over the forces that limit freedom. Beyond this, we must have the passion and the inner freedom to prosecute those who abuse freedom. We must have the vitality to attack those who commit mental suicide and psychic murder through abuse of liberties, dragging down other persons in their wake. Suicidal submission is a kind of subversion from within; it is passive surrender to a mechanized world without personalities; it is the denial of personality. We must have the fervour to stand firmly for freedom of the individual, for mutual tolerance and dignity, and we must learn not to tolerate the destruction of these values. We must not tolerate those who make use of worthy ideas and values only to destroy them as soon as they are in power. We must be intolerant of these abuses as long as the battle for mental life or death goes on.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that liberty is only possible with a strong set of beliefs and moral standards. This means that man has to adhere to self-restrictive rules-moral rules-in order to keep his freedom. When there is lack of such internal checks, owing to lack of education or to stereotyped education, then external pressure or even tyranny becomes necessary to check unsocial drives. Then freedom becomes the victim of man's inability to live in freedom and self-control.
Mankind should be guaranteed the right not to hear and not to conform and the right to defense against psychological attack and against intervention in the form of perverted mass propaganda, totalitarian pressure, and mental torture.
No compromise or appeasement is possible in dealing with such attitudes. We have to watch carefully lest our own mistakes in attacking personal freedom become grist for the totalitarian's mill. Even our denunciation may have a paradoxical effect. Fear and hysteria further totalitarianism. What we need is careful analysis and understanding of such phenomena. Democracy is the regime of the dignity of man and his right to think for himself, the right to have his own opinion more than that, the right to assert his own opinion and to protect himself against mental invasion and coercion.
When the United Nations has devised rules curtailing menticide and psychological intrusion, it will have insured a human right as precious as physical existence, the right of the nonconforming free individual-the right to dissent, the right to be oneself. Tolerance of criticism and heresy is one of the conditions of freedom.
Here we touch on another crucial point related to the technique of governing people. There is a relationship between over centralization of government, mass participation, and totalitarianism.
Mass participation in government, without the decentralization that emphasizes the value of variation and individuality and without the possibility of sound selection of leaders, facilitates the creation of the dictatorial leader. The masses then transfer their desire for power to him. The slave participates in a magic way in the glory of the master.
Democratic self-government is determined by restraint and self limitations, by sportsmanship and fairness, by voluntary observance of the rules of society and by cooperation. These qualities come through training. In a democratic government those who have been elected to responsible positions request controls and limitations against themselves, knowing that no one is without fault. Democracy is not a fight for independence but a mutually regulated interdependence. Democracy means checking man's tendency to gather unlimited power unto himself. It means checking the faults in each of us. It minimizes the consequences of man's limitations.
The Future Age of Psychology
Let me repeat what I said at the very beginning of this book. The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide-those perversions of psychology-can bring almost any man into submission and surrender. Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself.
Psychological knowledge and psychological treatment may in themselves generate the democratic attitude; for psychology is essentially the science of the just milieu, of free choice within the framework of man's personal and social limitations. Compared with the million-year span of human existence and evolution, civilization is still in its infancy. Despite historical reversals, man continues to grow, and psychology-no matter how imperfect now-will become one of man's most powerful tools in his struggle for freedom and maturity.
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