The Rape of the Mind, by A.M. Meerloo, M.D.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: EDUCATION FOR DISCIPLINE OR HIGHER MORALE

The Role of Education

The child's formative years are spent under the guidance of first parents and then
teachers; jointly they influence his future behaviour. The educational system can
either reinforce or correct parental errors and attitudes, either strengthen the child's
desire to grow toward freedom and maturity or stifle his need to develop and twist it
into the need to resign himself to permanent childishness and dependence.


Since the Renaissance, the ideal of universal scholastic training has made steady
gains. But today we unwittingly tend to mould minds into a prefabricated pattern and
to give our students the illusion that they know or have to know all the answers. The
fallacy of such half-education is that the so-called alphabetics in contrast to those
who cannot read-may become better followers and worse thinkers.


The totalitarians, for example, are not against schools; on the contrary, for the more
you overburden the mind with facts, the more passive it may become. Intellectual
erudition and book-learning alone do not make strong personalities, and in our
passion for factual education and the quiz type of examination there lies hidden a
form of mental pressure. The awe with which we regard the accumulation of school
facts may inhibit the mind so that it cannot think for itself. We must become more
aware of the involuntary pressures an educational system can impose on us, and
their possibly dangerous effects on the future of our democratic society. The actual
strategy of keeping people as permanent students under prolonged supervision is a
help to totalitarian indoctrination. For instance, somewhere along the line in some
administrative minds, there sprang up the idea that repeated, comparative
examinations would increase the quality of the corps of administrators. Instead,
infantile anxieties developed related to the fear of this infantile tool of measurement
and evaluation: the examination. There is now hardly any administrator who dares to
look at reality as the best test of human capacity and human endurance.


The form of education which sets a premium on dependency, which over-controls
the child, which makes a moral appeal through punishment and provoking a sense of
guilt, which overrates mechanical skills and automatic learning, this form of
education kneads the brain into a pattern of conformity which can easily be turned
into totalitarian channels. This is even more the case in regard to the disciplinary
training of soldiers. Such rigid education glorifies good behaviour far too much;
imitation and conformity are approved at the expense of spontaneous creativity,
thinking for oneself, and the free expression and discussion of dissenting ideas. Our
examination mania forces students into mental pathways of automatic thinking. Our
intellectual and so-called objective education overrates rationalism and technical
know-how under the delusion that this will keep emotional errors under control.


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What it does instead, of course, is to train children into automatic patterns of thinking
and acting, which are closer to the pattern of conditioned reflexes, of which
Pavlovian students are so fond, than they are to the free, exploratory, creative
pattern toward which democratic education should be oriented.


Totalitarianism is well aware that youth has a sensitive period during which
Pavlovian conditioning may be established without difficulty. Early teachings form
nearly indestructible patterns in the child's mind and eventually replace innate
instinctual precision. This early Pavlovian automatization of life may itself develop
almost the force of an innate instinct. Indeed this is precisely what happens in
Totalitaria. Dictators especially organize youth and press them to join disciplinary
youth movements.


The paradox of universal literacy is that it may create a race of men and women who
have become (just because of this new intellectual approach to life) much more
receptive to the indoctrination of their teachers or leaders. Do we need conditioned
adepts or freethinking students? Beyond this, our technical means of communication
have caught up with our literacy. The eye that can read is immediately caught by
advertising and propaganda. This is the tremendous dilemma of our epoch.


In many of our primary schools students are taught in an atmosphere of compulsive
regimentation and are imprinted with a sense of dependency and awe of authority
which lasts throughout their lives. They never really learn to think for themselves.
The scholastic fact-factories, the schools, keep many pupils too busy to think; they
may instead educate them into progressive immaturity. As long as people can quote
one another and the available "expert" opinion, they are considered well-informed
and intellectual. Many schools emphasize what we could call a quotation mania,
making; the ability to quote the epitome of all wisdom. Yet anyone with an apparently
unanswerable logic, anyone who can back up his position with authoritative
statements and quotations, can have a strong impact on such a mind, for it can
readily be caught and conditioned by emotionally attractive pseudo-intellectual
currents. AS a matter of fact, in the process of brainwashing the inquisitor makes.
use of the feeling of confusion his victim gets when he is shown that his facts don't fit
and that there are flaws in his concepts. The man who doesn't know the tricks of
argument will break down sooner.


I like to distinguish among the intellectuals quantellectuals and. quintellectuals. The
former aim for quantity of knowledge and easily yield to any kind of new conditioning.
To the quintellectuals,, on the other hand, intellect is a quality of personal integrity.
Facts. are not consumed passively but are weighed and verified. This kind of intellect
has a potentiality independent of school education and often school can spoil it.


One of the most amazing cases I ever treated was a typical quantellectual, a doctor
of psychology who had just completed his university education with a dissertation on
a psycho-technical subject. He came to me because he was a complete failure in all
his relationships with girls. He wanted this "impotence" to be treated medically, and
at first he rejected any kind of psychotherapy because he "knew all that stuff." In the
course of our conversation it became apparent that his entire scholastic education
had bypassed him.


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He had gotten A's at school, but the very essence of what he had studied had eluded
him. He had grasped literally nothing about psychology. He had memorized
everything and had understood nothing. He could quote from every page of the book
but explain none. Every time he had to work out a test or give practical advice, he
went into a panic. It took years of treatment to break through his rigid, compulsive
habits, and to bring him to a point where he was able to think and feel as a human
being rather than as a machine. At the end of his treatment he started to learn all
over again, reading with greed and fervour what had before been empty facts.


But he was not the only walking fact-collection I have met. Another one of my
patients was a young man who was obsessed with the desire to accumulate all the
learned degrees his university could deliver. At the time I met him he was a member
of a Nazi organization. (Here is an example of the fact that many a pedant has an
affinity with an authoritarian political system.) Even in this group he provoked hostility
because of his search for facts and more facts, facts only for the sake of facts. His
compulsions became too much for even his totalitarian fellows. He had delusions of
grandeur and had absolutely no emotional relationships at all; both signs that a
psychotic process was going on. But his intellectual capacity was intact. The son of a
scholar, he had lived in constant competition with his father; early in youth he started
to read the encyclopaedia, and later, in grade school and high school, he was
cheered because of his phenomenal "knowledge." Indeed, he did know the facts, but
he knew nothing else. He knew neither how to get along with himself nor with
anyone else.


These two cases serve to demonstrate how a mechanized educational system,
failing to detect even an urgent need for emotional relationships and a sense of
belonging, and placing its emphasis on learning instead of living, can produce adults
who are totally unequipped to meet the problems of life, who are themselves only
half alive and completely incapable of meeting the challenges of reality. Such men
and women do not make good democratic citizens.


One of the most essential tasks of education for mental freedom is to prepare the
child for mature adulthood by teaching him to see the essentials and by teaching him
to think for himself. There are several fields of interest through which the capacity to
think for oneself may be developed-for instance, the field of communication and the
science of abstraction. A child's awareness of his own language, of the words he
himself uses, as an expressive tool rather than as a set of grammatical rules can
lead him to inquisitiveness about other languages and other ways of thinking, and
thus may lead him to the ability to think abstractly and to understand relationships.
The child's period of greatest sensitivity to foreign languages is when he is about ten-
much younger than the age at which we normally teach foreign languages. At this
age, too, the child begins to have an active personal interest in words and self
expression. This interest can be used to make language an exciting adventurous
exploration instead of a cut-and-dried process of memorization.


Our schools must stimulate inventiveness and self-activity too, through such subjects
as carpentry and designing. Creative play with concrete objects also develops the
child's capacity to abstract and to generalize, making it easier for him to absorb the
abstractions which underlie all mathematics.


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If, instead of throwing the child into the sea of abstractions he finds in the daily
arithmetic drill, we brought him to an understanding of the process of abstraction by
carefully graded steps, he would absorb and assimilate what he learned, not merely
parrot what he was told. We tend, for instance, to teach mathematical abstractions at
too early an age, just as we wait too long to teach language and verbal expression.
History is a subject which is not learned by memorizing facts and dates but through
mutual discussion. It has to start with the concept of personal lifetimes and personal
history. It is better to give a child a printed report of the history of yesterday and ask
for his comments and opinions on it, or better to promote individual thought by letting
him search for background information in a library or museum, than to ask him to
memorize facts. In this way the learning of history can become an adventure.


We can also revise the system that risks so easily rearing mediocre people who fit
into a pattern of mediocrity. Different children must be trained and educated
differently. Each one has his own internal timetable; each one will have his own life
adjustments. Why should we compulsively do to our children what we would never
do to the flowers in our gardens? Every plant is allowed to attain its own natural size.
Our current scholastic practice stimulates ambition in a few children, but stifles it in
others. Instead of promoting cheating by our rigid examination rules, why do we not
allow children to help one another in the solution of common problems? Very often
children can teach each other what the teacher cannot.


Think for a moment of the child especially sensitive to the boredom of some of our
contemporary schools. He becomes either a conformist-full of good marks and no
original thoughts-or a rebel-ripe for the child-guidance clinic of today and possibly for
the totalitarian state of tomorrow.


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Discipline and Morale


While good morale implies inner strength and self-discipline, it may not necessarily
imply a set group discipline in a political or military sense. Good personal morale and
backbone were two of the needed qualifications for taking part successfully in the
underground during the last war. The partisans, working secretly-now here, now
there-relied, in their lonely combat, on their individual initiative and morale as much
as, if not more than, on distant leadership and discipline. This is just the opposite of
a kind of stand-by morale impelled by blind fear and maintained from a distance, the
kind which is obtained in jails or concentration camps, or in a tribe with extreme
emphasis on common participation. In the first groups, there was morale without
discipline; in the second, discipline without morale. In the same way, there are some
officers who can only develop discipline without morale.


Nevertheless, there is usually an inner relation between discipline and morale. Only
when a certain amount of initial disciplinary training is given to youngsters or soldiers
are they well conditioned for that personal inner strength which is based on self-
confidence and trust in the group as a whole, together with confidence in the
authorities. Emergency discipline is resorted to during times of stress when there is
usually lack of time, with the result that there is not a sufficient period for self-control
and adjustment to the group. Only a self-chosen discipline which develops gradually
can lay the basis for inner freedom and morale. This rule has been forgotten by
many educators. Only this basis of initial, conditioned patterns gives us the
confidence to stand on our own.


We all start by interjecting and taking over our morale from others-our parents and
educators. The basis of our personal morale is what we internalized from them. The
subtle mutual relation between discipline and freedom starts in the cradle under the
care of loving and interested and consistent parents. The parents are the first to build
morale. The conflict between discipline and morale in a group usually arises when
the members are held together by compulsion or necessity. Here the inner
coherence will be completely different from that of a situation in which there is a
spontaneous loyalty to the group. The aim of all discipline is to develop a better
adjustment to the group. In turn, success in identifying with the group develops a
stronger ego. From this point on, freedom begins.


A further understanding of these morale-building principles is important for an
evaluation of the inner strength or vulnerability of the various cultural groups. We
may expect, according to our experiences in psychotherapy, that where too much
discipline, or even slavery, prevails, the inner cohesion of the group will be very
different from that of a group respecting and holding the individual in high esteem.
Yet we have found men even in the armies of totalitarian systems who exemplify
high morale. I call to mind those Japanese soldiers who-without any tie with the
mother country-stuck to their lonely posts for years after the war, as though the
emperor and his generals were still looking at them. This tells us something about
the consistent love, security, and dedication they received in the first six years of life.


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Discipline and Brainwashing


When we want to train a soldier to resist brainwashing, we have to give him
antidotes against mass suggestion. We have to teach him to make up his own
answers and to criticize his teachers. We must train him in negative suggestibility
and emphasize the courage to reject emotionally pleasant reasoning when it does
not seem truthful. Above all, we have to repeat such lessons many times to make a
self-confident individual out of a recruit. Against the daily barrage of suggestions, we
have to provoke individual criticism. All this has to be done in addition to making the
soldier familiar with the concept and implications of brainwashing.


In so doing, he will learn, unconsciously, to judge what propaganda is or what it is
not-as we all partially do when listening to advertising over the radio. Psychological
experience tells us that part of propagandistic suggestions can leak through even
alert mental defences and penetrate our opinions. Anti-brainwashing training has to
be done thoroughly and repeatedly. It may appear to be in conflict with rigid
discipline; when the teacher and officer Knows enough about the subject, however,
the student's self-respect is enhanced through identification with the leading officer.
True, we see here a change of disciplinary relations, but it offers the real test of
discipline in a free, democratic community. A man who has been taught self-esteem
and knowledge will stand to the end when the hour of challenge comes.


The change of the war of weapons into a mental cold war requires a change of
discipline. The soldier has to know not only his rifle, but even more the sense of his
mission and the nonsense of the enemy.


The Quality of the Group and the Influence of the Leader In every group situation,
morale refers to the degree of cohesive strength of the members and to the amount
of loyalty toward the group and its goals. Morale may, or may not, imply an
understanding of the goals. In Western culture with its subtle pros and cons, a much
deeper need for awareness, understanding, and consideration of goals is implied
than is called for in a totalitarian state.


In the totalitarian state with its veneration for the strong leader; the threatening loss
of coherence-when the dictator or leading group fails-would have a much more
disintegrating effect than such failure in a democratic society, whose members
usually have reached a higher degree of self-determination and governmental skill. A
democracy always finds new leaders ready to take responsibility.


Morale includes the question of how much people can endure physically and
mentally, and for how long. Under different kinds of regimentation the limit of
endurance will be different. Stand-by morale, based on fear as in prisons, may
disintegrate at the least sign of weakness in leader or guard, or when the individuals
have not as yet been sufficiently disciplined.


The kamikazes, the pilots educated for suicide, were thoroughly indoctrinated with


the self-offering ideology; and their morale, as shown in the war with Japan, might be
said to have been high in an Oriental sense.


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Here discipline and allegiance had become so automatic that life was of no
importance either to the individual or to the group. The only thought was to keep
going and beat the enemy. This kind of morale is often dependent on obtaining a
frenzied desperation-a kind of collective suicidal rage-in pursuit of the national goal.
We are becoming more and more aware of how important leadership is in boosting
morale. The leader is the embodiment of the valued human relationships for which
we are willing to offer our energy and even, when needed, our lives. Through
identification with him we borrow his fortitude. It is not always the official leader who
has charge of lifting the morale. Sometimes a sergeant or a soldier may take over
this function.


The official leader himself is in a more difficult position. He must be many things that
may seem to contradict one another. He must represent paternal authority as well as
Our ego, our conscience, and our ideals. He must relieve us of our sense of guilt and
anxiety, and he must be able to absorb our needs for strength, affection, and
dedication-our transference needs, as expressed in psychological terms. He must be
able to create group action and motivation and at the same time increase the
individual's self-esteem. His doubts may become our doubts; his loss of confidence
makes us lose our self-confidence.


At times we may want him to be a tyrant so that we can be relieved of our personal
resentments and responsibilities. Sometimes we want to compete with him as we
competed with our fathers. At other times we want affection from him. The leader
must be both a scapegoat and a giant. Our own inner strength will grow, depending
on the leader's inspiring and guiding personality. While we may never love him
completely, we will use him to grow or decline in our morale.


Yet the individual not only borrows strength from the group and its leader, he also
brings his own spirit to it. Even when he is used as a scapegoat to release group
hostility, the individual-when he takes it with humour and philosophy-may unwittingly
boost the morale of the group. He communicates, as it were, his personal tolerance
to others. The black sheep in a platoon is often as much accepted as the beloved
sports hero.


In the same way, the group communicates all kinds of feelings to the individual; the
process of morale contagion is continually going on. Its quality depends on mutual
acceptance, friendships, the amount of contagious fear in the group, the quality of
interpersonal processes, resistance-provoking qualities in the few, and so on.


Let us not forget that the best morale booster for ourselves is to help to lift the
morale of others. When inter-human contact is not allowed, morale is soon lacking.
For instance, we heard from several escaped people from behind the iron curtain
that their most prominent complaint in the totalitarian system was the feeling of
mental isolation. The individual feels alone and continually on the alert. There is only
mutual suspicion. The new gospel for those escapees was the ready humane
acceptance and contact they experienced in the democratic group, because here
was spontaneous enthusiasm and mutual acceptance-even when there was
disagreement.


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Enumeration of Some Factors Influencing Group Morale The following factors
resulting mostly from military experience may endanger morale:


. Wrong anticipation of danger; myths and rumours about the enemy

. Severe stress; battle fatigue

. Poor physical and mental health (flu!)

. Lack of food, lack of sleep; cold and dirt

. Bad leadership

. Poor training; lack of skill; overtraining

. Poor communication and poor information

. Destruction of basic values, lack of faith

. Confusion of activities, strife in politics, wrong selection of government
10. Authoritarian and undemocratic behaviour; humiliation

11. Tyranny; too rigid discipline, also lack of discipline

12. Homesickness and feelings of estrangement

13. Internal hostilities, prejudices, persecution of minorities

14. Thought control and menticide; no right to be an individual, no justice, no right to
appeal

15. No function in the social setting, no duties. 16. Alcohol and sedatives


OONDOARWND —


The following factors may boost morale:


. Sound democratic leadership

. Well-planned organization with the freedom of improvisation; minimum of red tape
. Democratic self-discipline. Do we have faith in our own institutions?

. Information and unhampered communication

. Freedom of religion; moral integrity

. Mutual loyalty and mature responsibility; team spirit

. Mental alertness; the important psychology of awareness of the problems of our
own epoch

8. A sense of belonging and being accepted. g. A sense of justice, freedom, and
privacy

10. Confidence in experts ready to give first aid (mental hygiene experts, clergy, Red
Cross, Civil Defense, medical first aid)


NOOR WOD —


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The Breaking Point and Our Capacity for Frustration


What is the straw that breaks the camel's back? This is a key question in the
problem of personal morale. During the Second World War, I treated a fighter pilot
who was unafraid of his dangerous work but who felt unhappy about his personal
relationships. Suddenly during an air-raid alert in London, where he was on furlough,
he was struck by utter panic. In normal life he had been a rather shy and withdrawn
young man. Unexpectedly he found himself in a shelter with a frightened group about
him, and he became contaminated by the fear of other people. The strange situation
found him unprepared and so he broke down. I mention this point to show again how
contagious the atmosphere in a P.O.W. camp can be.


No one can really tell how he will behave in times of great danger until it comes to
actually facing the test. The true test of reality is solved in different ways. Many
accept the challenge. Some over-defensive, compulsive individuals even welcome
the danger. Still others-who were already unstable-misuse the new situation as an
excuse to break down and let their emotions go. Segal calls the last group frustrated
big-dealers, exclusives, dupes, scared kids, praise-starved egotists-all having egos
that could easily be boosted by a flattering inquisitor.


In psychology we are aware of the fact that there are two sets of determinants which
bring on mental breakdown: one set consisting of long-term considerations which
Cause a gradual breakdown of inner defences, the other consisting of short-term
factors, the triggers or provoking factors causing a sudden collapse of the mental
and physical integration. To the first set of factors may belong chronic disease or the
many chronic irritations of life. The second operates by means of a sudden symbolic
impact on hidden sensitivities. A mouse appearing in a girls’ class doesn't arouse
panic because of its objective danger. Modern psychopathology has studied the
manifold sensitizing occurrences, experienced in early life, which make people
subject to unknown trigger reactions.


Yet, trauma and frustration are emphasized too much as weakeners of the
personality during its development. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true.
Challenge and resistance to unfavourable influences make the personality. In order
to develop greater inner strength and better ego defences, the individual has to
expose and traumatize himself. What else is "fair" sport and "fair" competition but
repeated training in morale? Physical training doesn't have to be "soft." The self-
traumatization by trial and error, to which we unconsciously expose ourselves in
encounters during sports, is part of a spontaneous effort toward self-discipline. When
the person cannot find strength within himself, he must borrow it from his neighbour
and look for strength by proxy. Too great emphasis on dependence or leadership
increases this proxy mechanism. Leadership is not exclusively the secret of morale.
Identification with the leader may sometimes fortify the person's inner strength, but it
may also frustrate his capacity to grapple with his own problems. A frustrating leader
may decrease our capacity to tolerate frustration.


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Living under too soft circumstances is probably a weakening factor; a recent
publication (Richter) on experiences with men under combat stress, and later with
rats in the laboratory, have proven that luxury in general influences negatively man's
capacity to endure.


Somewhere along the line, good morale means no longer being afraid to die; it
means solving that mythological anxiety about death being something dark and
obscure; and it means the willingness to accept fate. Accepting fate and duty and
responsibility is living in a different way: it is living with the moral courage to stand for
moral principles that you have gathered in your life and without which life is not worth
living.


The anticipation of bad occurrences can have a paralyzing effect. If one expects
people to break down, they may either give in more easily to these false prophets,
or, out of hostility, feel boosted in their morale. The press, the radio, television have
to be aware of their subtle responsibility as morale-influencing mediums.


It is important to realize that mental prophets expect more panic in others when they
themselves feel jittery and insecure. In the last war, there were many sensational
forecasts of panic that, happily enough, did not materialize, such as Dunkerque. Man
is often mentally much stronger than we expect him to be. Of all the animals, he can
suffer most and take danger best-provided he does not weaken himself by his belief
in supernatural terror stories nor become unnerved in a cold war.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: FROM OLD TO NEW COURAGE WHO RESISTS LONGER AND WHY?

What then can give a man strength to resist a menticidal assault? What made it
possible for so many thousands to survive mentally and physically the horrors of the
Nazi concentration camps and the Communist P.O.W. camps?


The answer is essentially simple. Men yield primarily because at some point they are
overwhelmed by their unconscious conflicts. These conflicts, kept under control in
normal circumstances, come to the surface under the strain of menticidal pressure.
The stronger the inner conflicts and the greater the pressure, the greater the
tendency to yield. Men withstand pressure when these conflicts cannot be so easily
aroused or have been inwardly overcome.


This simple answer itself contains a clinical paradox. One of the characteristics of
severe neurosis, and of some cases of pathological character structure, is that
unconscious conflicts are so severe that they are either repressed so deeply that the
sufferer is not even vaguely aware of their existence or they are transformed into a
set of overt attitudes which are more acceptable to the individual, and therefore
easier to handle. If the severe neurotic permitted himself to feel his real conflicts,
they would dominate his life completely; consequently he exerts tremendous force to
hold down this explosive material. The man who is always rebellious, never growing
from healthy rebellion into healthy maturity, may have transformed some basic and
profound conflict in his own personality into a chronic resistance against any kind of
social demand. Psychiatric examination of returned P.O.W.s from Korea showed that
many of the men who resisted enemy propaganda most strongly were those with a
history of lifelong rebellion against all authority -from parents through teachers to
army superiors. They were troublemakers wherever they were, among their friends
as well as among their enemies (Segal.)


This negative side of the coin is only part of the picture. A man with deep self-
knowledge, aware of his own inner conflicts and aware, too, of what the enemy is
trying to do to him is prepared to meet and resist the attack. I interrogated many
people who went through the tortures of Nazi prison and concentration camps. Some
were ordinary folk with no political affiliations, some were members of the resistance,
a few were psychologists and psychoanalysts. Those who understood themselves,
who were willing to accept danger and challenge, and who realized, even faintly,
how bestial man can be, were able to stand the harrowing concentration-camp
experience. They were not defeated by their own innocent perplexity and lack of
insight into themselves and others, but were protected by their knowledge and
inquisitive alertness.


There are other factors which play an important role too. My investigations have


made it abundantly clear to me that those who can resist, who can maintain their
strength under marginal circumstances, never feel that they are alone.


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As long as they can think of their loved ones at home, as long as they can look
forward to seeing them again, as long as they know their families are faithfully
waiting for them, they can maintain their strength and keep the unconscious drive to
give in from taking over their lives. The love and affection we get and gather in our
hearts is the greatest stimulus to endurance. Not only does it provide a goal toward
which we can direct our lives, it also gives us an inner assurance and a sense of
worth that make it possible for us to keep in check the self-destroying conflicts.


This knowledge of loving and being loved is not limited to love of family or friends.
People in whom a religious faith or a political conviction is a deeply rooted, living
thing have this same sense of belonging, of being needed, of being loved. Their
allegiance is to a whole group or to a set of ideals rather than to individuals. To such
people, beliefs are real and concrete, as real and concrete as people or objects.
They provide a bulwark against loneliness, terror, fantasies conjured up by the
unconscious, and the unleashing of deep-seated conflicts, a bulwark that is as strong
as the memory of love. Yet, such mentally strong people form a minority in our
conflict ridden society.


Experience has shown that robust athletes cannot withstand the concentration-camp
or the P.O.W. camp experiences any better than can their physically weaker
brothers. Nor is intellect alone any real help in fending off the daily assaults on the
will. On the contrary, it can provide useful rationalization for surrender. Mental
backbone and moral courage go deeper than the intellect. Fortitude is not a physical
or intellectual quality; it is something we get from the cradle, from the consistency of
our parents' behaviour, and from their beliefs and faith. It has become increasingly
rare in a world of changing values and little faith.


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The Myth of Courage


There is something in the glorious myth of strength and courage that confuses all of
us. Physical strength is too frequently confused with spiritual strength. Bravery and
heroism are, indeed, needed qualities in battle. Yet analysis of soldiers in combat
shows that each one of them has to conduct a constant battle against his own fears.
The brave are the ones who can check their fears, who can cope with the paralyzing
fantasies that fear creates, and who can control the desire to regress into childish
escapism. A man cannot be forced to become a hero, and it is ridiculous to punish
him if he is not. It is as pointless as punishing him for bleeding or fainting.


The hero, the man who offers himself up to death for the sake of others, is found
more in mythology than in reality. Psychology and anthropology have shown that the
hero myth is related to eternal dream images. The hero symbolizes the rebellious
new generation, the strong son becoming stronger than the father. He symbolizes,
too, our wish to be mature and to take responsibility into our own hands.


We need the myth for the inspiration it offers us. We commemorate with post humour
glorification the heroic feats of the few who have, throughout history, offered
themselves up as sacrifices to their comrades or to society. Yet what do we know of
their real motives?


During the Second World War, I gave psychiatric treatment to many soldiers. As I
spoke and worked with them, I became increasingly conscious of how dangerous it
is to stick the simple label "hero" or "coward" on any man. One of my patients, for
example, was a boy who had received a high military decoration because he had
stuck to a lonely place with his machine gun, firing automatically until the enemy was
forced to withdraw. In the course of his treatment, the boy confessed that his
apparent heroism was really the result of a paralyzing fear, which had made it
impossible for him to follow his commander's order to retreat.


No one can really tell how he will behave in times of danger. Each person will solve
the frightening test that reality confronts him with in his own way. Several will accept
the challenge and stand up to it. Some over-defensive, compulsive individuals may
even welcome this burden as a test of their strength. Still others whose instability has
deep roots in the past-will unconsciously take advantage of a perilous situation to
break down completely and let their tears and emotions go.


Freud has directed our attention to the peculiar interplay between external and
internal dangers, between frightening reality and equally frightening fantasy.
Objective, recognizable dangers often stimulate the mind to alertness and encourage
it to set up its inner defences. But there are subjective panic-creators too-frustration,
feeling of guilt, infantile horror fantasies-and these can often be so terrorizing in their
effects that all our cultural defences collapse. Many men who face the test of reality
with stalwart courage can be brought to collapse by apparent trivia which somehow
touch them in a vulnerable spot.


221


Another of my wartime patients mentioned previously showed such a pattern. The
young fighter pilot, who had flown forty combat missions without any sign of fear or
panic, suddenly broke down completely in an air-raid shelter in London. In the course
of treatment, it became apparent that this young man was bitterly unhappy about his
personal relationships. He did not get along with his commanding officer; he had had
a serious quarrel with his girl friend the night before his breakdown. A shy and
withdrawn person, when he suddenly found himself in the shelter with a frightened
group about him, he became contaminated by the fear in the atmosphere.
Weakened by recent unhappiness, he found himself completely unable to put up the
inner defences that had served him so well under the frightening experiences of
active war.


Are we to say that he was less of a hero than the much-decorated machine-gunner?
There still lives in all of us an admiration for bravado, for the theatrical display of
courage, for the devil-may-care invitation to destruction. We are beginning to
recognize now that real courage is different; it is at one and the same time an
expression of faith in life and a resignation to death. Courage is not something that
can be forced on a man from the outside. It has to come from inside him.


In the reality of modern war-the impersonal Moloch-a man can be easily reduced to a
feeling of helplessness and dependency. Personal courage can turn the tide of battle
in a hand-to-hand encounter, but personal courage is no defense against bombs and
machine guns. Today, reckless courage, as we have glorified it, is less important
than personal morale, faith, conviction, knowledge, and adequate preparation.


A boy of seventeen years of age is drafted into the army. He has spent his entire life
in a small town in Texas. He receives training in the routine of army life and the use
of his weapons. Soon thereafter he is sent to Korea, and almost immediately he is
taken prisoner. Now this child has to defend himself against the propaganda barrage
which well-trained Communist theoreticians daily hurl at him. His education is limited,
his background narrow, his political training inadequate. He even tries to escape
from his prison camp but is caught. As a result, the enemy's mental hold on him
increases. His great disappointment makes him feel trapped. Finally he surrenders
and collaborates. How can a military court hold him responsible, and even
punishable, for the fact that he finally gave in to enemy propaganda?


This is part of the story of Corporal Claude Bachelor, recently sentenced to twenty
years imprisonment for collaboration with the enemy. I would venture to guess that it
could have been the story of nearly any American boy of similar background.


After the Second World War, several European countries had to face the difficult
problem of how to treat those members of the underground who, after torture by the
Nazis, had confessed and betrayed their compatriots. In Holland a Court of Honor
was established to judge these special cases. This court reached the following
conclusions:


No man can possibly vouch for it that under no circumstances will he ‘confess,’
‘cooperate,’ or ‘betray’ his country. No man who has not himself gone through the
hell which Communists and Nazis have been so able to organize has any right to
judge the conduct of a man who did.


222


Psychological torture is more effective in many cases than physical torture. This is all
the more true of the victim who has above average intellectual background. It seems
that intelligence makes physical torture more easily bearable but at the same time
exposes one more to the impact of mental torture. Anyone who ‘submitted’ under
such circumstances to the enemy after having given proof of his loyalty, patriotism
and courage will suffer terribly because his condemnation of himself will always be
more severe than that of any judge.


There is, however, not the slightest reason for shame, nor for considering such a
person incapacitated for giving leadership. On the contrary, more than outsiders he
will know what superhuman strength is required to resist the subtle methods of
mental torture, and more than outsiders he can be helpful to others to prepare
themselves for the ordeal as far as that is at all possible.


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The Morale-Boosting Idea


When we look at the varieties of human behaviour under extreme and pressing
circumstances, we see how easily man can be subdued, and at the same time we
see that certain factors seem to have a positive effect on his morale, keeping him
from despair and collapse. When these factors are operative, the spirit revives and
people are enabled to live with integrity In spite of dangerous circumstances. There
are many such morale boosters-religious faith or a political ideology are among
them.


Perhaps the most effective is the sense of having some mission and inner goal. This
ideal with which a man identifies can be love of the native land, love of freedom or
justice, or even the thought of hate and revenge. Whatever it is, at the moment of
calamity a guiding idea is as much needed as mere physical strength and
endurance. In every case where the individual has learned to withstand danger and
to maintain at least some of his normal esprit under circumstances of deprivation,
want, and brutality, one or more of the morale-boosting factors must have been
present.


I do not believe that the inner search for the morale-boosting regenerative idea is a
conscious function of the mind. Such psychological regeneration is comparable with
the physical regenerative processes we see in the body. The body hardly ever gives
up its regenerative capacities. Even when a man is dying of cancer, his surgical
wounds still heal, the local regenerating forces are still there. The same thing seems
to operate on a mental level; in times of confusion, pressure, and exhaustion, man's
psychological healing and regenerating forces are still in action. This applies as
much to large groups of people as it does to the individual, though in the former,
restraining forces remain in action because of intricate interpersonal relationships.


My experiences with people living in the utmost dangerous circumstances showed
that very soon after an initial bewilderment the individuals develop an inner need for
what we might call mental budgeting. They all display observable clinical symptoms
indicating that this process of regaining their self-assertive resistance is going on.
When they first come to the prison camps, for instance, they show complete
passivity, surrender, and depersonalization, but soon a guiding idea begins to grow
out of their need to understand fate, their need for protective intercommunication and
adherence to some common faith, for building something for the self. We can detect
this favourable change in mood by the way every prisoner makes his own corner a
place of security, even when it is only a dirty wooden bunk. He begins to rearrange
the few things he has; he builds his own nest, and from it he begins to look out into
his miserable marginal world.


When the prison-camp inmate finds friends whose faith and strength of character are
greater than his, his life becomes more bearable to him. Through mere association
with others he can better face the horrors without. Mutual love and common hate,
both may be equally stimulating.


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Renewed human contact changes his inherent fear into confidence in at least one
other person. When this grows into some identity with an active, working team, the
temporary loss of inner strength is gone. When he does not find such a group or
personality to identify with, the prison guard and his foreign ideology may take over.


It must be said that the stimulating morale-boosting idea is nearly always a moral
idea, an ethical evaluation-faith in goodness, justice, freedom, peace, and future
harmony. Even the most cynical dictator needs the help of moral ideas to raise the
morale of those submissive to his regime. If he cannot give them at least the illusion
of peace and freedom in addition to prospects for future wealth, he reduces them to
dull apathetic followers. At the entrance of the Nazi concentration camps were large
signs bearing the cynical slogan: Arbeit macht frei ("Work makes man free"). This
may not have fooled the inmates, but it gave the German people outside the camps
a way of justifying their innhuman behaviour. The need for moral justification, which is
felt by even the most ruthless tyrants, proves how deeply alive these ideas of
morality are in man. The more a man lives in marginal and torturous situations, the
greater is his need for supportive moral values and their stimulating action.


In general we may say that there are three influences under which the unbearable
becomes bearable. Again, in the first place, one must have faith; this can be simple
faith in religious or ethical values, or faith in humanity, or faith in the stability of one's
own society, or faith in one's own goals. In the second place, the victim must feel that
in spite of the disaster which has overtaken him and turned him into an outcast, he is
wanted and needed somewhere on this earth. In the third place, there must be
understanding, not sophisticated book knowledge but simple, even _ intuitive,
psychological understanding of the motivations of the enemy and his deluded
drives. Those who cannot understand and are too perplexed break down first.


Anti-brainwashing training has to be done very thoroughly. It is true that inner
defences can be built against thought control and against the daily barrage of
suggestions. With the help of good and repeated instruction, people can be made
familiar with the concepts. Perceptual defences are then built up; we learn to detect
the false propaganda and we do not listen to it. Even though part of the
propagandistic suggestions leak through these perceptual defences and creep
unobtrusively into our opinions (all advertising is based on this leakage), it cannot be
stressed enough that full knowledge of the enemy's methods gives us more strength
to resist.


Several psychologists have told me how, under the frightful circumstances of life in
the Nazi concentration camps, they felt sustained by their science. It gave them
perspective and made it possible for them to see their own suffering from a greater
distance. It was the philosophical attitude of the inquisitive mind that fortified their
inner strength.


Still, there are only a few stories of those who could not be broken down by the
process of Communist brainwashing. Such a hard-boiled revolutionary as the
Spaniard El Campesino, for one, was able to stand it (Gonzales and Gorkin). He
knew the tricks of the totalitarians. It is also possible that they might not have thought
him important enough to waste too much time and effort on him; after all, he could
always be sent to a concentration camp to waste away.


225


It must be repeated that any kind of illicit group formation in the camps-no matter
how dangerous-immediately gave the individual a sense of being protected. Most of
those who resisted cooperation and group membership and worked on their own
succumbed to despair and defeat. Those who betrayed their comrades. usually did
so after they had gone through a long period of isolation, not necessarily enforced,
but often caused by their own peculiar character structure.


Human contact with a trusted source is needed more than bread to keep the spirit of
freedom and belonging alive. During the Second World War the anti-Nazi
underground lived on the daily radio news from free England. Even now there are
people in enslavement and distress who live on the few communications we are able
to transmit to them. The Voice of America and Radio Free Europe have a
tremendous morale-boosting function in countries where the totalitarian air leads to
despair.


In our present-day fight against brainwashing, intelligent preparation for what the
prisoner has to expect and simple understanding of the enemy's tactics are the
greatest aid. In the first place, this will undermine the enemy's political strategy;
nobody will believe his deceitful accusations. In the second place, victims of
brainwashing will no longer suffer from the paralyzing bewilderment of those who are
suddenly caught by an unfamiliar situation. Perhaps, too, we should advise our
soldiers under duress to confess too much, to confuse the inquisitor and to take over
the enemy's strategy of confusion, lying, and deceit to bring him to frustration. This
suggestion was also made by Rear Admiral D. V. Gallery of the United States Navy.


In cases where victims of menticide have done this, the inquisitors have often
begged their victims to become rational again; the torturer himself was disturbed and
upset by the feigned craziness of his victim. Of the greatest importance is the victim's
awareness that other people know and understand what is happening, that there is a
home front that is acquainted with his lonely struggle and torture.


If he does succumb, he should know that others understand that he cannot be held
completely responsible for his behaviour. His brain wanted to resist, his mind wanted
to say no, but in the end everything in his body acted against him. It is an eerie and
strange experience-awareness of the fact that against one's will, one has lost the
freedom of mental action. It is an experience which enough pressure can make
familiar to most men:


Are the effects of brainwashing only temporary? There is a difference between
young people whose thoughts are still likely to be moulded into permanent patterns
of thinking and adults whose patterns are already formed by a free education. In
mature people, brainwashing is an artificial nightmare they can often shed the
moment they return to free territory. In some, it may leave long-lasting scars of
depression and humiliation, but gradually the spell subsides in an atmosphere where
freedom reigns.


During and directly after the Second World War, those members of the resistance


who had lost their bearings under the influence of the Nazi terror made it necessary
for psychiatrists to face a new problem, that of a temporarily changed personality.


226


Obviously the terror in prisons and concentration camps had not only made meek
collaborators of a certain few, but they came out of their ordeal as lost souls, full of
guilt and remorse and unable to face themselves as valid citizens. Even the
honourable official exoneration of responsibility granted to them by a special court
was not always able to repair their self-esteem. Before accepting themselves they
had to go through a slow and difficult psychological process of undoing the
nightmarish mental confusion into which they were thrown.


During psychotherapy several of them had to recall and experience once more the
terror they had suffered: their initial struggle to resist the mental dinning of their
inquisitors, the gradual paralysis of will, their final surrender. It was a subtle inner
battle between their feelings of guilt and the wish to reassert themselves. Emotional
outbursts were followed by thoughts of suicide as a final flight from their shame. After
they had vented their pent-up emotions, the therapist was able to convince them that
everybody has his physical and psychological limits of endurance. From this point
on, they could express themselves freely as independent human beings with a
mixture of both negative and positive qualities.


In one case of a young man who had spent years in a concentration camp after a
thorough brainwashing by the Nazis, the process of rehabilitation lasted nearly two
years. The victim emerged from it without mental scars, and was even strengthened
by his bitter experience.


I am convinced that in the case of prisoners who were for years in a totalitarian
prison and were consequently politically conditioned, a cathartic, psychotherapeutic
approach will help them to find their old inner selves once more. Threats and
aggressive discussions would only be a continuation of the same coercive
brainwashing process their jailors used. The best therapy for them is the daily
contact and exchange with the free, democratic world, as we have seen proven in so
many cases of ex-prisoners of the totalitarian machine. Free air is for them the best
therapy!


For the millions of children who from the cradle are pressed into the framework of
mental automatization, no such option for freedom exists. For them there is no other
world, there are no other beliefs; there is only the all-consuming totalitarian Moloch,
in whose service every means and every deed is justified.


Brainwashers are very naive in thinking that the enforced reformation of the mind-the
transformation of capitalist prisoners into Communist propagandists-will be
permanent. For the first few weeks after their return to a normal environment, the ex-
prisoner will speak the language he has been "taught." He will recite his piece, but
then, and often suddenly and surprisingly, his old self comes back. If the victim has a
chance to investigate and examine the Communist propaganda and accusations, the
whole artificial nightmare will fall away. For this reason, the jailers are careful not to
dismiss all their converts at once. A few must stay behind as hostages to assure that
those who are released will not expose the whole plot and thus endanger their
friends in jail. Those who do tell the truth on their return home feel guilty because
their revelations may expose the hostages to even greater torture.


227


I have been fascinated by a peculiar character trait that makes for courage and
endurance. I called it in my study on the problem of time the sense of continuity, the
awareness that our experiences now are not only chained to our experiences from
the past, but also to our image and fantasy of a future. We live in a world where we
accept too much of the actual occurrences, without asking why and for what all this
happens. Those who think of planning for the future are sneeringly called utopianists,
as if the idea of Utopia had not always sprung from human yearning. Our ancestors
believed in the future, the coming of Christ, the coming of the messiahs, the
Kingdom of God. They anticipated and worked for a better epoch. The people in the
concentration camps who believed in a future, who believed in a plan, who could see
their actual calamity as a small chain between past and future, could endure better
their temporary suffering.


I had the privilege of knowing people who belonged to the few kernels of strength
and who were able to do more than exist passively and borrow strength from others.
They were able to live courageously under the extreme stress of the Nazi
concentration camp. They accepted the camp and the persecution as a challenge

to their minds. Physical pain did not touch them. The abnormal circumstances
stimulated their spirit; they lived beyond the circumstances. The morale of these
people inspired others; they lived by fortifying and helping others. They accepted the
Spinozistic amor fati, the love and acceptance of fate. They are a living proof that the
mind can be stronger than the body.


228


The New Courage


Philosophy and psychology have made us aware of new challenges and new
courage. Socrates, over two thousand years ago, considered bravery a spiritual
courage which goes far beyond the courage of physical battle. A soldier can be
aggressive and have contempt for death without being brave. His rashness can be a
suicidal foolhardiness inspired by a collective élan. This may be the panicky courage
of the unaware primitive infant in us.


There is also a spiritual bravery, a mental courage that goes beyond the self. It
serves an idea. It asks not only what the price of life is, but also for what that price is
being asked. It asks for a hyperconsciousness of the self as a thinking spiritual
being.


It is only comparatively recently that spiritual courage has been esteemed. Socrates'
notion has taken a long time to seep into our thinking. It was only after the
Reformation that the heroic struggle of the lonely battling personality gained value.
To defend your own dissenting opinion courageously, even against the pressure of a
majority opinion, acquired a heroic color-especially where non-conformism and
heresy were forbidden. Gandhi's quiet and stubborn campaign of passive resistance
is today considered more courageous than the bravery of the soldier who throws
himself into the ecstasy of battle. Spiritual bravery is not found among the
conformists or among those who preach uniformity or among those who plead for
smooth social adjustment. It requires continual mental alertness and spiritual
strength to resist the dragging current of conformist thought. Man has to be stronger
than the mere will for self-protection and self-assertion; he has to be able to go
beyond himself in the service of an idea and has to be able to acknowledge loyally
that he has been wrong when higher values are found. Indeed, there is a spiritual
courage that goes beyond all automatic reflex action.


Man is not only a mass, a piece of kneaded dough; he is also a personality. He
dares to confront the human masses as he confronts the entire world-as a thinking
human being. Consciousness, alert awareness are themselves a form of courage, a
lonely exploration and a confrontation of values. Such courage dares to break
through old traditions, taboos, prejudices and dares to doubt dogma. The heroes of
the mind do not know the fanfare, the pathetic show, the pseudo-courage of
exaltation and glory; these brave heroes fight their inner battle against rigidity,
cowardice, and the wish to surrender conviction for the sake of ease. This courage is
like remaining awake when others want to soothe themselves with sleep and
oblivion. Totalitarian ideology is able to blackmail man through his inner cowardice. It
threatens him into surrendering his innermost convictions in exchange for glamour
and acceptance, for hero worship, for honor and acknowledgment. Yet the true hero
is true to his ideals.


Only when people have learned to accept individual responsibility can the world be
helped by the combined efforts of many individuals. Don't imitate the master, don't
merely identify with the leader, but if you do conform, accept his lead with the full
recognition of your own responsibility. Such heroism of the spirit is only possible if
you are the master of your emotions and in full control of your aggressions.


229


The new hero will not be recognized because of his muscles or aggressive power,
but because of his character, his wisdom, and his mental proportions.


Intimate knowledge of bravery dethrones most of the popular notions about it as an
exalted fascination. Psychological knowledge fosters new forms of courage,
demanding exhausting labour, the labour of thought rather than the easy work of
recklessness.


I cannot take any other option than for this enduring courage of life, courage that no
longer embodies the magic attraction of suicide and decline. Courage should be the
vivid faith in, and the alert awareness and the sound consideration of, all that moves
life.


Such courage accepts the great fear behind all the mysteries of life and dares to live
with it.


The Nazis were very much aware of the existence of unbendable heroes among
their victims, whose faces could not be changed, whose minds could not be coerced.
They called their calmness and stubborn will physiognomic insubordination, and they
tried to kill these heroes as soon as they were discovered. Happily, the jailers had
many blind spots when it came to detecting spiritual greatness.


When the war was over, most of these heroes disappeared modestly into the crowd


after their mission was fulfilled, leaving leadership to the more s sophisticated
politicians.

[admin]

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: FREEDOM - OUR MENTAL BACKBONE

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.


231


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.


232


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.


233


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.


234


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.


235


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 self-
control 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.


236


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 limitation-
the 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.


237


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.


238


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.


239


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.

[admin]

BIBLIOGRAPHY


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Journal of American Medical Association, Vol. 133, i951.


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Almond, G. A., and others, The Appeals of Communism. Princeton, Princeton
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Asch, S. E., "Opinions and Social Pressure," Scientific American, VO1. 193, 1955.
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Aspaturian, V., "What Do the Communists Mean by ‘Peaceful Coexistence'?" The
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"Automation Is Here," Democratic Digest, 1955.
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Beer, M., "The Battle for Man's Rights," United Nations World, z950.


Bergler, E., The Battle o f the Conscience. Washington, D. C., Washington Institute
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The Superego-Unconscious Conscience. New York, Grune & Stratton, Inc., 1952.

[To be cont'd.]