No More Learning

Peri- odically, they still loosed torrents of criticism upon their European cellmates, but these were not necessarily hateful in tone, and they had a lot of performance in them. Even Bauer's attitude of su- periority (which they were aware of, and which he frequently had to confess to) was absorbed. Later on, during the recreation periods afforded by more "lenient treatment/' the Europeans found them- selves teaching their Chinese cellmates various games, and even social dancing. The Western group had, so to speak, secured its flank; every bit of goodwill from its Chinese cellmates created some measure of insulation from reform pressures.
The qualities in Vechten which meant so much to this group
? GROUP R E F O R M 1 7 3
were not emerging for the first time. As a missionary, he had shown unusual ability and leadership. His special talents for bringing men together, for arbitrating between extremes, for pursuing a steady and moderate approach, had long been prominent. Yet it is interesting to note that from early life he had been subject to severe episodes of uncontrolled anger. As a child he experienced such severe temper tantrums when his will was frustrated that "I would turn red, then blue, and stop breathing, and my brother had to beat me to make me again conscious''; during early ado- lescence he suffered from almost daily headaches, caused mainly by inner hostility; as a young man he had outbursts of anger or tears. He had painfully conquered these tendencies, largely through his strong emotional bonds with the Catholic religion; and his skills as a moderator were in part the reflection of his highly-developed personal mechanisms of control. They were much more than this, however, because they depended upon an additional quality which was described by Bauer as "echt" a term by which he suggested purity and authenticity: "He is not an imitation. He doesn't pre- tend to be what he is not . . . he is one of the few people I have met in life who at least realizes what he is. " What Bauer meant by this statement was Vechten's unusual integrity, his ability to live the life to which he claimed to aspire. At moments when Vechten felt himself overwhelmed by anger, guilt, and doubt, he would draw upon an unusual blend of the supernatural and the human: "Praying brings you back to the reality of what you are. Talking with the group of foreigners [Europeans], had a similar effect. "
The full impact of Vechten's prison behavior can only be under- stood through the effect it had on his Western cellmates. His leader- ship, once assumed, was never questioned; his influence increased steadily over the two years he was in the cell, until the eventual breakup of the group through the sentencing and release of the Western prisoners. He was the only person among the Europeans whose stature completely overshadowed the complicated hostilities and weaknesses which thought reform engenders--the one most warmly and unreservedly praised by all of the others. Every one of them felt that it was his influence, more than anything else, that kept the group intact, which in turn preserved the values and stability of each of them. Kallmann perhaps summed up their feelings best:
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He made the most impressive showing of all of us--human and spirit- ual. He never really lowered himself . . . he taught us how to do the necessary and still keep our own.
Epilogue
To what extent was the group successful? Did it really protect the psychological health and the private beliefs of its members? We can answer this by taking a brief look at each of the men im- mediately after his release.
The first of the six to arrive in Hong Kong was Father Bene*t. I was not able to interview him (either because of his resistance, or that of his Church colleagues, or both), but I was able to talk with several people very close to him. Benet claimed that his rel- atively early release proved that his policy had been the best one after all; but there was much question about this, since he was re- leased simultaneously with a number of other French priests, ap- parently for political reasons. He had spent almost another year in a different cell after his transfer from the group. At some point, his attitude (or at least his tactics) dramatically changed: not only did he become a good deal less "progressive" himself, but he en- couraged resistance in others; and a Westerner who had known him in both cells described him as "completely different. " When he ar- rived in Hong Kong, his old friends felt that his prison experience had left him "not much changed"--still brilliantly outspoken and erratic as ever. They were struck, however, by his combination of bitter criticism of the Communists and his impression of their immense power, their near-invincibility. Unusually fearful during the post-release period, Benet had apparently undergone a great emotional upset rather than an ideological change. His form of totalism had carried him from his initial stance of the apparent convert to the opposite (and . clearly related) category of the ap- parent resister. Yet like Bishop Barker and others in this latter category, his sharp condemnation of Communism was in part a defensive device for denying the profound reform influences he had clearly absorbed. I will say more about his peculiar form of leader- ship later on.
Dr. Bauer was the next to arrive; and since he had been con- sidered the most reactionary, his belief that the date of a prisoner's
? GROUP REFORM 175
telease had little to do with the extent of his "progress" was con- firmed. He was, as might be expected, the most adamant in his denunciation of the Communists, and the most personally removed from the Communist communication system. Although not with- out fear, he was very quick to regain sufficient composure and de- tachment to launch into a comprehensive analysis of Communist methods. More than any of the others, he emphasized the absolute effectiveness of the group--even to the point of idealization: "We played theatre with them day in and day out. " When discussing the other group members, he spoke in a similar vein, stressing the "comradeship" of each, and carefully controlling his own hostilities wherever they existed--except in the case of his feelings toward Benet, which were admittedly bitter. He was an archetype of the apparent resister, and he exhibited clearly the oppositional atti- tudes, the totalism in his character, and the use of repression and denial to ward off reform influences. Yet he did impress me as be- ing one of the least affected ideologically of all of my Western sub- jects. He had tenaciously held on to his alternative Nazi ideology (although disclaiming of course its excesses); but he emphasized even more his frank devotion to "bourgeois" family life, and always maintained a controlled charm and friendliness with me and with whomever he met in Hong Kong. His identity had stood firm.
Father Emile, whom I met next, was somewhat confused and agitated when he arrived, but he still managed to express himself with a good deal of gaiety and humor, as he had when in prison. He was critical of the Communists, but less interested in discussing ideological matters than in the sequence of his own experiences and their religious implications; he frequently mentioned St. Paul. He referred to the group sympathetically ("Foreigners tried to pro- tect each other") but did not speak of it with especially strong emotion. He had spent just one year in the group, less time than most of the others, and had for the last few months of his im- prisonment been permitted to perform technical work under much less intensive psychological pressure. His colleagues felt that he had greatly matured through his prison experience, that he had attained more self-mastery, and greater inner peace, and that he was not as "overly active" as they felt he had been before.
Mr. Kallmann emerged with a strong need to discuss his experi- ences in great detail as a means of conquering his remaining fear.
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Sensitive to psychological currents, he spoke with a striking combina- tion of insight and confusion. He stated that he had "studied hard," learned a great deal, and now wished to "continue his studies" through extensive readings in non-Communist political literature; he felt that he could never become an adherent of the Communist world, but had come to realize the grave shortcomings of the capitalist world. He spoke enthusiastically of his experiences in the group: "They were all marvelous comrades . . . we always felt we were mentally holding our own/' although he also talked of the dif- ficultiesand the painful personal irritabilities. He remained Benet's staunchest defender. While he was certainly among the obviously confused, he believed that he had been protected from Communist indoctrination by the values he had absorbed from the German youth movement: "Erlebnis . . . the value in life of the natural experience . . . the sensation of the eternal beauty of what God creates. " It was to this earlier ideology that he wished to return.
Mr. Weber too had signs of obvious confusion when I met him in Hong Kong. He felt that his condition had been greatly improved by a period of skilled manual labor in which he had par- ticipated after his transfer from the group. Vehemently critical of the Communists, he nonetheless had become convinced during his imprisonment that "evolutionary socialism rather than revolu- tion" was desirable; and he also felt that the technique of self- criticism could be a useful personal device. Concerning the group and its function, he was more critical than any of the others, and emphasized the suffering it caused him and his relief at being separated from it. Yet in the next breath, he would unwittingly praise it, pointing out that "we foreigners used self-criticism in a fair way," in contrast to the cruel and "reckless manner of the Communists. " Moreover, the behavior of Emile and Vechten had so deeply impressed him that he wished to return to his own active Catholic religious practice. He managed his mixed feelings about the group with outward good humor: "I guess we were all a bit crazy in there. " On the whole, he wanted to leave his prison experience behind him and be "through with politics. "
Father Vechten, even after his arrival in Hong Kong, remained the group's leader and guardian. Still speaking as if responsible for it, he gave the most thoughtful and comprehensive picture of its function. He was in fact remarkably balanced in all of his ex-
? GROUP REFORM 177
pressed opinions, and yet he too spoke of feeling confused about many issues. Rather than seeing himself as the hero which the others thought him to be, he was deeply troubled that "maybe I was too progressive. " He seemed mildly depressed, torn by feelings of shame and guilt; and he minimized his own accomplishments at every turn. He did feel that the "corps spirit" of the group had been very helpful to everyone, including himself, and he recognized that he had been "better than the others" in holding the group together; but he also stated that "all of us could have very easily been enemies. . . . except for the fact that we all had a greater enemy. " Deeply aware of the magnitude of individual antagonisms, he tended, if anything, to understate the group's accomplishments, He was critical of Communist theory and practice, and much con- cerned (like Father Luca) about the future of the Catholic Church in China. He felt that he had done his Church a great disservice in making certain confessions about religion. After a few weeks in Hong Kong, his psychological state seemed a bit improved, but he still stressed that he had much to think about in the future.
In assessing these men after their release, it was not easy to make an over-all judgment of the group's effectiveness. One thing is immediately clear: the experience meant something different to each of its members. For Bauer, the experience was a panacea, al- though his reaction must be judged in the light of a tendency to idealize many of his relationships as a way to control disruptive forces within himself; for Weber it was painful and humiliating, and yet even he derived emotional benefits from it; for Ben6t, the group exposure must have been deeply disillusioning; and for the re- maining three men, it was, to varying degrees, a source of strength, despite its emotional pitfalls. Moreover, the man whom the others saw as the unifying spirit (Vechten) seemed much less enthusiastic about the group's effectiveness than at least two of the others (Bauer and Kallmann); and many of the very acts of leadership which the others thought heroic were to him shameful evidences of compro- mise.
I felt, when I interviewed these men in Hong Kong, that the group achievement had been a rather remarkable one. These six men had succeeded in creating a small world of partial independence within the larger threatening universe of the Communist prison. Their independence was never anything like complete, and at
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times it seemed about to disappear altogether; but its survival created vital alternatives within an otherwise saturated environment. The intellectual alternative--the standing critique of Communist theory --was impressive enough; but even more important was the emo- tional alternative--the construction through trust and co-operative resistance of a psychological "home" and "family" where each mem- ber could find support and spiritual replenishment, and thereby avoid complete dependence upon the offerings of reform. This amounted to the undermining of thought reform's communica- tion network, an impediment to the milieu control which thought reform seeks always to maintain. These six men were not reformed within a closed system of Communist discourse: rather, by pool- ing their knowledge and the emotions of their individual back- grounds, they created a vital alternative to the Communist system. In the midst of penal thought reform pressures this was no mean accomplishment.
There is little doubt that the group did much to preserve the emotional well-being and the resistance to Communist influence of its individual members. It also, of course, to some extent served as a vehicle for conveying Communist influence to those within it; but it is probably fair to say that, without the group, this influence would have been at least as great and a good deal more painful.
The results of this group achievement were evident in the condi- tion of the five men I interviewed after release. They showed symp- toms and attitudes in many ways typical of all of my subjects, but they were quicker than others to overcome confusion and fear and to begin to reconstruct a sense of identity in the non-Communist environment. As far as indoctrination was concerned, I felt that these men had emerged slightly less affected than my average sub- ject. Their distribution among the response categories was not un- usual (four obviously confused, one apparent resister, and one ap- parent convert turned apparent resister); but they were unusual in their capacities to weigh their reform experience not only against what they found in the non-Communist world, but also against the alternative group ethos they had known during their imprison- ment.
These judgments were, of course, tenuous. So many factors af- fected the way in which a man emerged that it was very difficult, in comparing these people with other subjects, to evaluate the
? GROUP REFORM 179
part which the group had played. And I had to keep in mind the fact that this group contained two men who had made serious suicidal attempts, the only ones among my twenty-five subjects. Indeed, in the followup studies I made three years later (see Chap- ter 10), I encountered a number of surprises, including severe emotional difficulties which I had not been able to predict. I con- cluded then that the group had supplied a good deal of spiritual nourishment and protection during the imprisonment itself, but that this protection could not last sufficiently to avoid profound problems later on. Nonetheless, the psychological and biological strengths which an intimate group structure can evoke were con- vincingly demonstrated.
Styles of Leadership
What did the history of this group reveal about the relationship among leader, milieu demands, and group behavior? The exag- gerated and bizarre quality of the group experience throws into sharp relief principles which are equally operative, if less apparent, in everyday situations.
Three men became official or unofficial leaders of this group of Westerners during the course of its existence, and yet none was the leader during his entire stay with the group. Each of the three men developed a style of leadership which became characteristic for the particular phase which he dominated. What characterized each style, and what produced it?
The first, Bauer's hegemony during the academic phase, was characterized by intellectual leadership and avoidance of participa- tion. The combination which produced this style was: first, a lax milieu, which said, in effect, as long as you keep studying and seem to be reforming, you will not be bothered; second, a previously de- moralized group of three Westerners ready to respond to any show of strength; and third, the sudden appearance of a confident and emotionally intact European (Bauer) psychologically suited to exert strong influence over others. Bauer's intellectual skills were especially useful at a time when independent study and speculation were allowed; his authoritarian emotional traits served well during a period when maximum self-assertion and resistance were per- mitted; his human skills (which were considerable) were especially
? l 8 o THOUGHT R E F O R M
geared to foster individual strength rather than a spirit of compromise in others, which is just what is needed when resistance is possible. The style of academic resistance which developed had something to offer to everyone: to the officials and the cell chief directing the outer environment, a studious display and a certain amount of re- form; to the other Westerners, protection, clear policy, and spell- binding intellectual excursions; to Bauer himself, a means of re- maining emotionally intact and avoiding anxiety by guiding and dominating others, as well as egocentric satisfactions derived by the exercise of his superior intellect. This style of leadership was thus nourishing to all of the Westerners, although perhaps most so to Bauer himself; others in the group (especially Kallmann and Weber) had more of a need to submit, and indeed were sometimes -at odds with Bauer even during this harmonious time. From the
standpoint of group independence, this was the most successful of the three styles of leadership. It was also the easiest of the three to maintain.
The second style (Ben&'s) involved histrionic exhortation and the splitting of identity. The circumstances were very different: the group had not chosen an unofficial leader, but rather had had an official one thrust upon it. And the style of leadership, although predominant, was never fully accepted by the other group members. In terms of the three factors we have been discussing: the environ- ment had suddenly clamped down--no more of this foolery, we mean business, and you had better reform yourselves or else; the four Westerners, who by this time had learned the ropes, were ready to make concessions where necessary, but were still riding a small private wave of resistance; and a newcomer, Ben6t, appeared who was a strange blend of fear, brilliance, exhibitionism, and sadomasochism. Benet behaved as he did partly because he be- lieved that extreme progressivism was necessary, and partly because he was so frightened--primarily because the combination of self- flagellating submissiveness and arrogant, pain-inflicting domination of others was his own long-standing mechanism for dealing with anxiety. Yet this mechanism was especially appropriate for the position into which Ben? t was thrust: any new study leader under these same circumstances would have had to take a good deal of punishment from the officials and cell chief above, and deal in some mutually painful manner with the recalcitrant Westerners
? GROUP REFORM l8l
below.
As with Bauer's, Benet's leadership offered some service to every-
one involved: the officials got their whipping boy, who at the same time effectively conveyed their pressures to the group; Bendt him- self derived an emotional satisfaction from the pain-and-punish- ment pattern; and the other Westerners, through Benet's own absorption of punishment, were afforded some degree of protection from the renewed assaults. But such histrionic and chaotic leader- ship could not be expected to last, and Ben&'s style soon became universally disturbing: the officials could not trust such an exag- gerated performance, especially when they noted his declining influence upon his fellow Europeans; the other Westerners were made hostile and antagonistic to Ben? t and to each other by the loss of their group independence and solidarity, and--worst of all-- by the loss of the capacity to test emotional and intellectual realities; Benet himself began to break down under the strain. All of the Westerners, including Benet, were pressured toward a disintegra- tion of identity and a strong sense of guilt.
On the whole, Benet's style also was more compatible with his own emotional needs than with those of the led. Ben6t, the "marvelous actor," was able to take a histrionic plunge and still land mostly on his feet, as his later attitudes suggest. But the other Westerners, who lacked this talent, could never trust him suf- ficiently to be certain that he was truly identified with them in their struggle to preserve values and group cohesion, rather than with his captors' demands for confession and reform. Under these conditions, one can play no "game": the whole thing becomes "real/' and personal accusations are a true threat to one's sense of self.
Were these circumstances created by the demanding outer milieu, or by Benet's special character traits? We can only say that the small group became a captive audience for both.
The third style of leadership may be termed flexible adaptation and preservation of identity. This was undoubtedly the most re- markable phase of the group's existence. Still subjected to extremely disruptive pressures, its members somehow managed to achieve a restoration of trust. How did this come about?
An emotional demand for a change in style came from all three directions. The group of Westerners' urge for survival made them
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cast about for some alternative to the painful confusion of Benet's leadership; the environment slightly toned down its assaults in order to pursue its reform process on a more even keel; and a potential replacement for Benet appeared, a man of unusual humility and integrity--a man who also had the necessary knowledge of Chinese. Vechten brought to his leadership an emphasis upon moderation because this had always been his emphasis; he brought the men to- gether skilfully, emphasizing what they shared, and activating the best in each of them because this had long been his method of deal- ing with conflict--conflict among others and within himself. His was the gift of the creative man: the capacity to make use of inner struggles to evolve a new form which can both express personal emotions and strike deep chords of feeling in others. In human relations, he was a true artist; and like any artist, his own wellbeing depended upon his continuous creativity. He was inwardly impelled as well as outwardly encouraged to take an active role in guiding the fortunes of the group: his own self-control and his sense of clerical identity demanded it.
Again there were satisfactions to be derived from his leadership for all three elements, but this time, in contrast to the previous two stages, there were more satisfactions for the other Westerners than for either the officials or for the leader himself. The resuscitated Europeans had their group independence restored, and found a means of mutual emotional support. The officials seem to have benefited the least, although from their standpoint, Vechten was still an active enough reformer.
For Vechten himself, the benefits of his leadership were most contradictory. He did derive the satisfaction of doing, and doing well, what inner needs and outer demands required of him. His talent for moderation, however, conflicted with the more im- moderate (and totalistic) ideal of martyrdom against which every Catholic priest, when under extreme duress, must in some degree measure himself--a self-judgment likely to be particularly severe in a man for whom complete integrity is essential. In a study leader this conflict is especially intense, because of the continuous com- promises he must make. Further, Vechten's give-and-take approach could not permit him to be conveniently absolute in his judgments
(in the manner of Bauer or Benet), but rather required him to
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question continuously his own ideas and to weigh them against the points of view of the others. Finally, the style of deception which he and the other Westerners worked out was more compli- cated than either the academic iconoclasm of Bauer or the all-or- none submersion of Benet. It is no surprise that under these cir- cumstances, earlier problems of feeling unloved, inferior, and over- whelmed by his own anger once more emerged. And any problem for Vechten immediately became a problem for the entire group, which had, after all, never rid itself of its antagonisms. Vechten's preservation of autonomy, both of the group and of the individual, under conditions such as these was one of the most unusual human achievements I met with during the course of this study.
In evaluating these three patterns of leadership (and I have made them, for purposes of clarity, perhaps a bit more sharply defined than they really were), I have tried to make it clear that neither the milieu, the leader, nor the led were solely responsible for producing a particular style of behavior. Rather, each phase is an example of the principle (as valid for psychology as for physics and medicine) of multiple causation. It would be wrong to say, for instance, that Vechten's emergence as a leader was entirely due to his character traits, although it is probable that, because of his outstanding qualities, he would become a leader of most groups in most situations. The point is that he was a particularly appropriate leader of this group at this time. It may well be that Bauer's intel- lectual attainments would have kept him the leader, even if Vechten had been present, during the lax early phase, and that Ben&'s "progressive" histrionics would have made him the most likely leader during the time when political levels had to be "raised. " Also, leadership styles may vary in the same man. Had Bauer experienced stronger personal pressures before he came into the group, his leadership could have been a good deal less firm; had Ben& been less fearful, his leadership might have been less extreme. Leadership leaves a good deal of room for heroism; but this heroism is intimately related to the peculiar demands which prevail in a particular environment at a given time.
This group experience also suggests that we re-examine and expand our concepts (and stereotypes) of "The Leader. "2 Father V echten's impressive performance demonstrates the leadership
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potential of the man who can mediate with integrity, who can set an example which helps other men retain their identity and adapt with dignity. It may be that during our age of ideological excess, it is he, rather than his more flamboyant and charismatic counterpart, who is needed.
? CHAPTER 10 FOLLOW-UP VISITS
What happened to these twenty-five people in the
years after their thought reform experiences? When I saw most of them in Hong Kong, they were in what was clearly a transitional state, a brief period of stocktaking before their return to a permanent, non-Communist, Western way of life. I felt then that many were about to meet emotional challenges almost as dif- ficult as those they had just faced. Some of these psychological problems were inherent in their strong sense of guilt and shame, and in conflicts over where they stood in relationship to their pro- fessions, to their sacred personal commitments, and to themselves. Of course I could not predict exactly what was in store for them; I was, however, very much interested in finding out.
And my efforts were further stimulated by comments of colleagues and friends: "What you say about thought reform is all very well--but what about the long-term effects? Do these people undergo a new course of 'brainwashing' in the environment to which they return? "
I kept in touch with many of my subjects by mail: some wrote to me on their own, wishing to continue our relationship, and others responded to a follow-up questionnaire which I sent out when I returned to America. But my real opportunity for learning about the residual effects of thought reform came during the summer of 1958, when I was scheduled to spend two months in Japan in con- nection with another psychiatric study. I decided to go by way of
'85
? l 8 6 THOUGHT REFORM
Europe in order to revisit some of my subjects in their Western settings; and I also arranged to meet one of them in South Asia where he had returned to do missionarywork.
I was able to obtain information about twenty-one of my twenty- five subjects. I especially sought personal interviews with those people with whom I had worked intensively in Hong Kong; and in meeting them once more, I was struck by how different they looked to me, as well as by the strange combinations of emotions which they expressed. I felt they had personally served as battlegrounds for the conflicting ideologies of our time, and had been victims of the many kinds of alienation peculiar to the twentieth century.
I will start with the members of the Western group, and then return to the others who were discussed in earlier chapters.
Father Vechten
Father Vechten wrote to me several times in the four years be- tween our meetings. Still the group's central figure, he kept in touch with all the others, and sent me some of their latest ad- dresses. He had also informed me of a tragic motorbike accident in which he nearly lost his life three weeks after his arrival in Hol- land. From his hospital bed, he had written of his feeling of shame "for my moral, human, mental, ideological defects which I have suffered in prison. . . . For having been weak, without principle, even harming others in co-operating with Communism. " And he described his great longing for the chance to "continue my mission- work among the Chinese/7
When we were seated across a table in his austere room, in his small seminary in the Dutch farmlands, I was struck by the re- moteness and quiet of his new environment, so different from the sense of urgency and involvement which had existed during our interviews in Hong Kong. Father Vechten had to some extent blended with this milieu: as he talked of such things as "moral faults" (while puffing on a large cigar), he seemed more the re- turned Dutch priest than the "Chinese*7 missionary and group leader I had known in Hong Kong. But it was not long before he began to express the more profound emotions he had experienced since his return; and as he described those first few weeks, the events seemed to follow with the psychological inevitability of Greek
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tragedy.
Vechten had stopped briefly in Rome on his way home. It was
a visit of the deepest significance for him, at once magnifying his pain, symbolizing his complete return to the embrace of the Church, and accelerating his new changes in attitude.
When I arrived in Rome, things became more urgent for me. . . . When I entered St. Peter's, I shed tears just before the chair of Peter. I had suffered. I was much impressed. . . . My way of thinking and judging became more that which I had formerly.
In Rome he made a detailed confession in which he told of all he had said and done in prison which could be considered against the Church's interests. He told his confessor of his embarrassment at being considered a hero, and asked whether he was required to tell others of the extent of his co-operation and "weakness"; he was relieved by the confessor's reassurance that he was not obliged to talk about shortcomings, and should feel "no need to humiliate yourself. "
Arriving in Holland he felt "rather serene" because "there was no more feeling that I had not made things right. " He was, how- ever, struck by the contrast between his own and others' views of his prison experiences:
When I was asked to speak on the radio, I did not know what to say. The superior asked me: "W ere you always in a cell? " I said, "Sure, for one-and-one-half years I was not out of the cell. " He considered this terrible, so I told it over the radio. I hadn't realized it was so bad. I considered it normal. People were astonished and I was astonished that the people were astonished.
The warmth of the greetings which he received from family, fellow priests, and villagers affected him greatly: "Contact with people . . . with love for each other . . . who admired and didn't ask about faults . . . was of great importance. . . . If I had not been so well received, I should have been a broken man and useless in society. "
But he was nonetheless troubled by recurrent anxiety dreams, in one of which he was in a Chinese Communist prison for a second time, again preoccupied with "trying to escape from difficulties for myself and for the group. " In this dream he also asked himself,
? l 8 8 THOUGHT REFORM
"Why have you been so foolish as to go back to China? " In his waking life, too, he experienced a similar fear, so that when he requested he be returned to a Chinese area, he also asked that he be permitted to leave before any Communist occupation, should this occur: "I thought, 'Never a second time'. "
And his sense of shame and guilt could not be stilled. He kept thinking that if he had been physically tortured, as some other priests had, his concessions might have been justified. "But I had not been tortured. Why have I come to such deeds? " During this early period, it was almost impossible for him to talk about his prison experiences. He did, on one occasion, tell a colleague a few of the things he confessed; but when the latter gave evidence of surprise, Vechten felt deeply upset. On the other hand, he con- demned himself for holding back this information: "I thought to myself that it was a lack of humility, because you don't like other people to consider you so weak. " He could find no relief from his suffering, despite considerate, and often psychologically sensitive attitudes on the part of his fellow-priests.
Nor could he permit himself to rest as others suggested that he do; he felt almost immediately an urge to be active. "I had one strong idea; I had lost three years of working time, and I had to make up for it, to work more and be as busy as possible. " In re- sponse to invitations, he preached and lectured repeatedly, less about his imprisonment than about Catholic activities in China.
He also, soon after his return, became fascinated with the new motorbikes, never having seen this type before. He immediately decided to buy one, despite warnings from family and friends who --possibly sensing his agitation and his adjustment difficulties-- told him that it might be dangerous for him to ride one. These warnings had little effect upon him because of his sense of invulner- ability ("I felt that nothing could happen to me"), and his con- viction that, with increased mobility, "I would be free. "
He decided to use his new motorbike to travel part of the way to a nearby conference of Catholic missionaries who had been re- cently released from Chinese prisons. The conference was emo- tionally loaded for him: he was pleased at being invited by a group of distinguished colleagues, but apprehensive about meeting one of them who had been together with him in a cell for a brief period during which time Vechten had exerted a slightly "progressive" in-
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fluence. When he was returning a few days later, he started to turn off on a hack road not far from his home, only to find that the road had been closed during his absence. As he crossed the main highway to reroute himself, he was struck from behind by a car, and suffered severe head and leg injuries; he spent the next two years in hospitals, undergoing a long series of difficult operations. It was significant that he was told by others (he did not remember him- self) that in a semiconscious state soon after the accident he answered a policeman's questions in a manner which placed all the blame upon himself.
Despite his concern with his physical state, he told me that he "enjoyed" his hospital experience. Not only was it a relief from his immediate struggles, but it seemed to answer a deep longing:
Sometimes when I was in prison I thought, "Some day you will come back to Holland, to a clean bed, and people will take care of you. " In the hospital it happened exactly as I had imagined.
This period of hospitalization also served as a useful interlude during which he was able to prepare himself for life in the Western world. "In the beginning I said that I never will succeed in adapt- ing myself to Holland as it is now. . . , But in the hospital I began to understand the Dutch way of thinking, to read and study. . . . It did me a lot of good to have a long rest in the hospital. "
I was convinced that Vechten's emotional conflicts had played a very important role in bringing about his accident. His experi- ence in Rome had symbolized a return to a more "pure" Catholic identity; it had also intensified his sense of guilt and shame about his prison behavior, guilt and shame which not even his religious confession could erase. Physical torture in prison might have of- fered inner justification, as well as more concrete punishment, for his compromises; his accident supplied the punishment which he unconsciously sought. It also satisfied his strong desire to lie back and be cared for, a passive longing which reflected the human tendency to regress to earlier forms of emotional satisfaction when under great duress. In addition, the accident fulfilled his need to withdraw from his outer environment--now inappropriately viewed as accusatory--in order to come to better terms with his inner self. His exaggerated activity had been largely a form of compensation,
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an unsuccessful attempt to master the situation through external action rather than introspection, and--as it turned out--a round- about route to the more passive goal. 1 Caught between painful and unresolved conflicts in both his prison and his Catholic identities, he found his solution through a third and more transitional identity, that of the hospital patient.
Father Vechten later recognized that his injuries had served as a substitute expression for a psychological condition and that his hospitalization offered him an opportunity for psychological re- covery.
It benefited me very much in a spiritual sense. . . . Other people told me that before I had looked so wild, so restless. Afterwards in the hos- Eital, little by little, I became normal once more. . . . If I didn't
ave the accident, something else would have happened--perhaps a mental breakdown.
He become "normal" by bringing into the open and coming to better terms with his feelings about thought reform and about China; these problems were, for Father Vechten, unusually com- pelling.
Indeed, he began to unburden himself (once more he could not remember having done so) when still in a semiconscious state: "After the accident, they could not speak to me about anything but China, the nurses told me. " A few months later, he discussed with a senior Church official his feeling that his behavior had not been justified because he had not been physically tortured; and he was much relieved by his colleague's reassurance that those who had been so tortured had been in a situation no more difficult than his, and that he had been no less brave than they. Vechten considered these words a turning point in his recovery. They had the effect of a valid and reassuring psychotherapeutic interpretation, made at a time when the patient is ready to receive it. After that Vechten felt encouraged to talk more about his experiences, and he also read everything he could find on the general subject of brainwash- ing or thought reform: "It was the one subject which could captivate my imagination. " He has since continued these explora- tions: "I am always looking to find an explanation, especially one which could give me more assurance," Gradually, after leaving the hospital, he began to write and speak about his own experiences,
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and to formulate his own analysis of the process. In the continuing struggle for mastery, he had gained much ground.
His difficulties over being separated from China were greatly eased by a professional assignment which involved translating Chinese documents. Moreover, during his hospital stay, he was able to discuss China to his heart's content with other patients and staff members--while at the same time absorbing, in small and relatively painless doses, the Dutch Catholic environment from which he was protectively shielded by the hospital itself. Nor had he severed his ties with China even after he left the hospital. He still made an effort to meet with other China missionaries; they would sometimes speak in Chinese and call each other by their Chinese names. And in talking to ordinary colleagues, he found it necessary to check himself constantly to avoid "always talking about China," Despite his fear of again falling into Communist hands, he was still trying to arrange to return to a Chinese cultural area to work. He had by no means cast off his "Chinese" self, but he had come to better terms with it. "There remains my great love for China and all that is Chinese; but now I should be able to accustom myself to the Dutch way too. "
During the years after his release, Vechten's ideological position regarding Communism hardened:
Before being in prison I was much opposed to the Communists because I regarded them as enemies of religion. . . . Now my opposition is greater and I hate them because they are opposed to humanity. . . . I see now the enormous danger to the human person to be under Communism--more even than just its opposition to religion.
He had also become more critical of socialist movements in his own country which favored more government controls. He ad- vocated the "co-operative" form of social welfare described in of- ficial Catholic sociology as an alternative to the Communist class struggle. In all expressions of political opinion, he combined these personal and official approaches.
Toward the end of my two-day visit with Vechten, we discussed some of the long-range effects of thought reform upon his personal character. He described an "increased guilt consciousness" which included not only a highly critical attitude toward himself, but an insistence that others maintain it toward themselves as well. When
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a colleague, for instance, during a game of table tennis placed the blame for a bad shot on the racket, Vechten replied--whimsically but meaningfully--"You don't recognize your own faults. You should be put in prison in China and then you would be taught what is really your fault and what is due to other things," He was defending by this remark the general importance of personal guilt and responsibility; and yet it was significant that he chose to use thought reform as a specific (and affirmative) example. Even among priests, he was considered "too guilt-conscious. "
As I have already noted, Vechten's tendency toward guilt did not originate with thought reform. In discussing it, he recalled that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two he had been preoc- cupied with avoiding sin, and with a fear that he was, as much as he tried, not telling all during confession. He retained a similar attitude toward revealing in full detail his prison "sins"; he was more aware of consciously holding back, but he always felt guilty about doing so. He also gave a classical description of his sense of shame: "I am ashamed I could not be as strong as others supposed I should be. " But like many such descriptions, it was incomplete: he suffered not so much from failing to live up to others' standards as from having internalized these standards (however unrealizable), so that he became his own worst critic in matters of shame as well as of guilt.
He felt, however, that both the shame and guilt were becoming attenuated because of his gradual acquisition of the distance from, understanding of, and perspective on the thought reform process which he had so lacked when he had arrived in Europe: "These feelings are diminishing a lot, because I can better see the whole impact of brainwashing. I can explain now why, with my full consent, I have come to such things as I now consider not good/1 He emphasized that my talks with him in Hong Kong had been of some help; and at that time I did have the impression that he was beginning to come to grips with his prison experiences. His subsequent difficulties, however, suggest that he had actually been a long way from any genuine insight; and his experience confirmed the psychiatric truism that insight is not a thing of the moment, but is rather a continuous and repetitious form of inner recognition which is always contested by antagonistic emotions.
Apart from this "increased guilt-consciousness," about whose
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value Father Vechten had mixed feelings, he described a series of more indirect effects which were more clearly positive. He said that he had become "more optimistic about people" because of ob- serving other prisoners7 impressive behavior. He felt more confident about meeting people of higher standing, and less apt to believe himself unworthy of their presence. He had retained the "Chinese way" of avoiding direct refusal, preferring to say "Yes, I will" to requests for his services even when he knew he would not be able to do what was asked. He felt "more able to make jokes about things that are difficult"--about his return to "normality" after the prison experience, about the results of his accident, about future problems; and he found himself advising his students to face their difficulties with a sense of humor. Without attempting to speculate extensively about the meaning of all of these effects, we can summarize them as: i) an intensification of old traits: susceptibility to guilt and shame, and a strong conciliatory tendency, now with a Chinese flavor; and 2) a general expansion of his emotional horizons, lead- ing to an increased receptivity to his own feelings and those of others. Father Vechten had spent four years overcoming an in- appropriate sense of defeat; the problem was still with him, but he was making psychological use of it to emerge as a more developed human being.
I have described Father Vechten's experiences in some detail because they shed light not only on his personal struggle, but on the general psychological patterns typical of most Western sub- jects. Before summarizing these patterns (see Chapter 12), I will first discuss briefly the other group members. Of those I had met in Hong Kong, two (Kallmann and Emile) were available for fol- low-up visits. The other two were geographically inaccessible to me, but I was able to learn something about them, and about Benet, from the three group members I did interview, as well as from correspondence.
The Kallmanns
When I met Mr. Kallmann in his modest but attractive apart- ment in a small West German city, he presented many-sidedviews of the world and of himself. He had followed through in the inten-
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tion he had expressed in Hong Kong, and had returned to the ideals of his youth. Condemning the postwar tendency "not to believe in anything/' he sought out many old friends from his youth move- ment days, and not only tried to maintain close relations with them, but also established with them a youth group for their children. This gave him some satisfaction, but it did not produce the ideo- logical absorption for which he had hoped.
He was, in fact, caught up in the very pattern which he com- plained about. Rather than believing in "nothing," he believed in, and felt some part of himself to be, practically everything--which is almost the same thing. He alternated between being an outspoken critic of Communism, who found the Communist world "just utterly unacceptable. . . . beyond human dignity" and who be- came angry when visiting dignitaries "naively" accepted Com- munist propaganda during trips to China; an explainer and to some extent a justifier of Chinese Communism--he wrote me, "In spite of my very adverse experiences, I take a positive view towards the things in China," and when I saw him he emphasized the regime's accomplishments and his willingness to "give credit" and extend himself to be fair in his judgments; a moderator between East and West, who stressed his love for the Chinese people and imagined the possibility of being invited to China by Mao Tse-tung to help bring together the opposing camps; an "Old China Hand," who remembered his life in the Far East fondly, and who set his expert personal knowledge against the ignorance of those who had not been there; a German bourgeois merchant, struggling to re-establish his business and deeply concerned with the welfare of his family; a nostalgic Nazi, who quoted the opinion of friends that the move- ment "could have succeeded"--he had himself been a Nazi when in China, and although he was very critical of many of its features, he nonetheless felt it had been a "genuine people's movement"; and a new believer in democracy, who had read a number of books
on the subject, favored his country's postwar democratic methods, and tried diligently to indoctrinate his family with the principles of freedom and responsibility which he considered to be the basis of democracy.
He maintained an extremely active interest in China, Chinese Communism, and thought reform; and he lectured, wrote, and sought out prominent people he wished to influence with his views.
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In attempting to achieve what he termed "resonance" with his audiences, he was reversing the thought reform situation (he was now exerting the influence) as well as expressing his desire for human intimacy.
Although he emphasized to me the depth of his suffering under thought reform, he had tried to adopt one of its main features-- a planned program of criticism and self-criticism--within his own family. He claimed he was using it to instill democracy, and his slogan was "The Democratic Family. " He had organized family gatherings at which children and parents were to criticize them- selves and each other, but this program was something less than a glowing success. His young children, ignorant of adult techniques for playing the game, at first frankly confessed their sins: one would reveal that he had been bad at school, while another would admit that he had stayed on the toilet a particularly long time in order to avoid the chore of drying dishes. They soon caught on, however, and began to find themselves having "too much homework" when- ever the time for the evening sessions arrived. Nor did they wel- come the opportunity to criticize their parents; they made it clear that equality was not what they wanted, and that they preferred their mother and father to take over, Kallmann himself began to see the program's limitation: "It was as if I had lined them up and had them all undressed. " He had not given up the idea entirely, but he had come to the conclusion that "even children want to have some sphere of privacy. "
Kallmann's path was not easy. He tried to look upon thought reform as "something that has passed," but he found that the ex- perience had left him "more sensitive" in many ways. Since his return, he had experienced phobic symptoms (fear of policemen, of crowds, of large cities), periods of profound anxiety sometimes related to family and business problems, rather severe physical ill- ness, and episodes of moderate depression. These had diminished; but he did mention that he would still at times feel envious of those who, through death, no longer had to face the struggles of existence. Some (and perhaps all) of these symptom patterns had been present during crises in his life prior to imprisonment. I felt that he was having great difficulty establishing a new sense of identity after having hit rock bottom during his reform. He was genuinely pursuing the ideological ideal of democracy which he
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had adopted; yet the extreme diffusion of his multiple identities made it difficult for him to develop a coherent pattern, whether of self or of belief. While he denied conscious feelings of guilt, he had clearly been unable to divest himself of thought reform's humilia- tion, and of the compounded shame and guilt which this included.