Bishop Barker
I saw Bishop Barker (the elderly Belgian "priest, doctor, soldier") at an unusual but not inappropriate site--the Catholic shrine at Lourdes.
I saw Bishop Barker (the elderly Belgian "priest, doctor, soldier") at an unusual but not inappropriate site--the Catholic shrine at Lourdes.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
"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
? 192 THOUGHT REFORM
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
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 193
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-
? 194 THOUGHT REFORM
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.
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 1QJ
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
? 196 THOUGHT REFORM
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. Because of his diffuse self-image, he remained extremely vulnerable to others' attitudes, easily hurt by criticism, encouraged by praise. Withal, he remained loyal to the Western group experience and retained his warm attitudes toward the other men; he had been able to arrange to see most of them, and was still Father Benet's staunchest defender.
Mrs. Kallman's response made an interesting contrast to her husband's. She had also been in prison in China, and arrangements had been made for them to leave the country together. She de- scribed to me their dramatically silent jeep ride to the pier (still in police custody, they were forbidden to talk), their silence long after the Communist guard had left them alone in their cabin on the European-owned ship, while both of them looked up at the ventilators fearing that they might be overheard; and finally, their speaking to each other only when they were certain that they were out of Chinese waters.
Her responses after prison were simpler and a good deal less ambivalent than her husband's. She hated the Communists for what they had done to her husband and herself. She disapproved of her husband's lectures because she feared that they might cause him trouble in the future. She and her husband had discussed their prison experiences at great length; now she wished to forget about them and devote her energies to her family. She did not escape aftereffects--recurrent dreams and a certain amount of physical and psychosomatic illness--and we may assume that she was not entirely free of inner doubts. But she remained the stronger of the two, offering continual emotional support to her husband. She also felt that, in their marriage, thought reform had made them both more conciliatory. She was very "female" in her entirely personal and nonideological judgments, although, as we have seen with Miss Darrow, such a response was by no means characteristic of every woman who experienced thought reform.
? Father ? mile
I visited Father Emile at a mission house in southern France. Robust, confident, and energetic, he bore little resemblance to the tense and confused man I had seen in Hong Kong. In char- acteristic fashion, he opened our talk with several humorous anec- dotes about his experiences during and after imprisonment. Indeed, his sense of humor was his mainstay in his recovery ("I took it lightly, not tragically"), so much so that he was concerned lest he deal with these matters "too much as a joke. " Like other priests, he had experienced a certain amount of remorse about things he had said and done which might hurt the Church. He was especially con- cerned about a Chinese priest who might have been endangered by his words, and extended this concern to all Chinese priests: "Now I suffer about Chinese fathers. . . . I am afraid they might feel we betrayed them. " Most foreign priests shared these sentiments about imprisoned Chinese colleagues, but fimile carried it to the point of insisting upon sleeping on a wooden bed without a mattress-- much as he did in jail--"to show my sympathy for them/'
He too had retained his passion for China, and looked all over France for friends he had known there. When asked if he wished to take up missionary activities in another part of the world, his answer was: "I have been married to China--and I am faithful to my first wife. " So intense was his interest in speaking and writing about thought reform and other aspects of Chinese Communism that he neglected his first teaching assignment; he was then trans- ferred to a new position which allowed him contact with Chinese missionary activities. During this period he became extremely inter- ested in supplying detailed information to an international group which was investigating forced labor practices throughout the world. He much preferred this form of activity to concentrating upon his new French surroundings; after two decades in China, Europe seemed so alien to him that "I thought I needed another re-education. "
When I saw him in France, his anti-Communist position was firm ("They don't even consider elementary human rights"), and more outspoken than it had been in Hong Kong, although perhaps
FOLLOW-UP VISITS 197
? 1 9 8 THOUGHT REFORM
a bit less vehement than it had been one year after his return--in a letter to me then he spoke of the "mixture of threats, wheedling, and blackmail" characteristic of thought reform. He had also be- come more accustomed to life in France, and had achieved a balance between his continuing interest in China and his involve- ment in his immediate environment.
Father Ernile still conceded that the thought reform method had "some good" in its ability to get to the "root of the bad thought," He also believed the Communist stress upon communal co-operation was valuable. He had remained on good, though not intimate, terms with the other group members. He tended to avoid extensive introspection concerning his experience, preferring to deal with it in an "active way/' and characterizing himself as "dynamic rather than speculative. " His recovery was, on the whole, quite impressive. He had (in contrast to Father Vechten) been able to deal effectively and promptly with his guilt and shame within the idiom of the Catholic priesthood. This accomplished, he was free to make good use of humor and activity as a means of further detoxifying these dangerous post-release emotions, and creating distance between himself and the prison experience.
What about the other three men?
Mr. Weber (the businessman-adventurer) paid a warm visit to Father Vechten almost immediately after their return to Europe, during which he received the sacraments from his previous cellmate in a formal resumption of Catholic religious life. But almost im- mediately afterward he apparently went back to his former style of existence: active engagement in commerce and adventure in an underdeveloped country, supported by a liberal indulgence in alcohol. Most of the others in the group retained an affectionate, if not fully admiring, feeling for Weber, and believed this resump- tion of his previous pattern to be inevitable because of his "in- stability. "
Dr. Bauer had lived up to his impressive Hong Kong perform- ance. He had been able to resume medical practice almost im- mediately, and had re-established his family in a European-in- habited area far from Europe itself. In letters to rne, he denied psychological difficulties of any variety, described his continuing antagonism to Communism ("I feel hot under the collar about it
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 199
in general"), and considered himself to be "a scientific witness of unpleasant experiments. " On this basis he had lectured extensively during the months after his return. He continued to make friendly overtures toward other group members, to which they were not un- responsive; but most of the others experienced mixed feelings toward him, remembering with admiration his courage and support during imprisonment, but at the same time being unable to recon- cile antagonisms related to his Nazi background, racist views, and to certain of his personal traits.
Father Ben&'s readjustment was apparently a bit more stormy, as might be expected. According to a colleague who accompanied him, Benet had experienced "a kind of crisis" during the boat trip back to Europe which was apparently related to his overwhelming fear--no longer fear of the Communists, but rather of his own Church superiors because of his behavior during imprisonment. But it was not long before he too was able to resume his profes- sional activities. When he did, however, and began to give talks about his prison experiences, he emphasized (as he explained in a letter to one of the others) how the missionaries had deceived them- selves, how much they had been humiliated, how close they had been brought to complete breakdown. He thus still maintained a histrionic posture of exhibitionism and masochism. As one colleague expressed it, "He is still playing a game--now on the other side. " Moreover, Benet claimed that the man to whom he wrote the letter mentioned above had been "near a nervous breakdown" him- self--a part of this posture, and at the same time a means of projecting his own state on to someone else. The other group members maintained many of the critical feelings toward him they had expressed upon their release; but these had, on the whole, tended to soften over the years.
Of those prisoners discussed in earlier chapters, I have follow-up information about all but one, Dr. Vincent. I was not surprised when he failed to respond to my letters, and I was unable to obtain any definite information about him. An acquaintance of his told me that Vincent had been trying to arrange to return to medical work in another part of Asia; since this was consistent with the plans Vincent had described to me, it is probably what happened. We may also assume that he regained his exaggerated possession of
? 200 THOUGHT REFORM
his "insides" and reverted to his distinctive identity of the mystical healer.
Father Luca
About Father Luca, I have more definite knowledge. When I visited him at his family home in a medium-sized Italian city, I encountered a man different from the driven, restless, and probing missionary I had met in Hong Kong. He was a friendly and forceful priest, lively and definite in his discussion of everything Chinese, and at the same time quite at home in his middle-class European surroundings. He was now physically healthy--he had recovered from his back injuries and gained a good deal of weight--and emotionally assertive rather than self-questioning.
He had not found Europe too difficult to get used to--he had not been away nearly as long as many of the others--but he had ex- perienced the painful inner struggle which, from our talks in Hong Kong, I knew he could not escape. He was deeply moved by his reunion with family members and colleagues; but he found himself troubled by feelings of confusion and sadness. He related these to his separation from China and from his Chinese friends, and to his uncertain physical condition, thus tending to minimize his sense of guilt. He came to crave useful activity, and chafed under his physician's prescription of extended rest. He achieved an active solution similar to the one utilized by many of my other subjects. He prepared an extensive evaluation of Communist reform prac- tices for the group investigating concentration camps and forced labor, an evaluation which included opinions about both the re- formers and the reformed. When this was completed, he began, on his own initiative, a much more ambitious piece of work: a de- tailed study and analysis of the life and letters of the founder of his society, an outstanding figure among modern missionaries to China. As he proceeded with this study, Father Luca compared his own religious experiences, in Europe as well as in China, with those of a man who had long served as his ideal, and this project helped him greatly in his continual struggle to define himself in relation- ship to the Church and to China. Moreover, he was able to work on both these tasks during a time when his physical activities were restricted.
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 2O1
Soon after, he began to make strong efforts to educate others about the realities of Communist China--by briefing people pre- paring for visits, writing magazine articles, and appearing at public debates. His voice rose as he described to me the "naivet6 of some people who refuse to recognize that persecutions exist in Com- munist China. " His sense of personal integrity was clearly involved in these matters--so much so, that on one occasion he sought out the leader of an official group of Communist Chinese visitors, described the brutality he had experienced in prison, and urged this man to request his government to admit (making use, if neces- sary, of some face-saving maneuver) that the "people it said were guilty were really not guilty. " Luca also continued to advocate a liberal course in future missionary activities, recommending more self-expression and local authority among indigenous groups. He could still admit that the Chinese Communists were "right" about some things, and that the missionaries had made mistakes; but his general tone when he referred to the present regime, as compared to his attitude in Hong Kong, had become more militantly critical and more consistently hostile.
He had remained concerned about the possible harm some of the statements in his confession might have caused to the Church and its representatives. He was especially troubled about the letter he had written under duress to a young Chinese Catholic girl de- nouncing his own organizational activities, and he had gone so far as to send a gift to the girl through a countryman visiting China in order to rectify the situation. He felt hurt when the gift was refused, although he knew that the refusal was based on the girl's concern for her own safety. Nor was he free of his old nemeses: he still had trouble managing his emotions whenever he wished to oppose a superior, and he had to maintain his vigilance against ever-recurring sexual desires. But in all of these matters, I felt, his conflicts were under much better control than when I had last seen him. Like so many of the other imprisoned Westerners, Father Luca believed he had become more spontaneous and more fluent in his self-expression as a result of his thought reform: "I am more free in my behavior. . . . I speak more easily in public and with other people/' His spiritual life, he felt, had become more routine and "plain," in contrast to its precious intensity during imprison- ment: "then I had to seek an opportunity. "
? 2O2 THOUGHT REFORM
When I asked him, near the end of our three-hour talk, whether any of the ideas of thought reform remained with him, he replied: "They come to mind, sometimes to be taken into account, some- times to be contradicted, sometimes to be accepted. " He elaborated upon those ideas which he at least partially accepted:
I agree that a way for the peasants to escape the moneylender when they needed credit was necessary. . . . Sometimes I have a feeling that a system of co-operatives can solve some of these problems, . . . Not necessarily the whole Marxist system. . . . I had already a theoretical idea of this before, but I have a more sensitive idea of it now.
In these ideas, as in all of his emotions, Father Luca was at- tempting to reconcile influences he felt he could not ignore with older respected values. He had found it necessary to repress much that was painful, especially those things related to feelings of guilt; and he had taken on some of the aspects of a conventional priest expressing the accepted ideas of the Church. Yet beneath, he fought a continuous struggle with his own most negative images of himself, and continuously searched for a personal synthesis. He had not been spared anxiety, but he had managed to make an effec- tive recovery without undue self-damage (had his prison injuries made this unnecessary? ) or excessive inner distortion.
Professor Castorp
At the time of my trip to Europe, Professor Castorp, the sub- missive scientist, was well established in a teaching position in another part of Asia. He had, in fact, begun to make these new arrangements within weeks after his release. He wrote me a long and humorous letter describing his experiences since leaving Hong Kong. He mentioned family matters, but focused mainly upon problems of resuming his work--which to him meant resuming his existence as a self-respecting human being. He too wrote a report of his prison experiences; but after he had completed this, he looked forward to returning to teaching and research in his more usual scientific areas.
Professor Castorp at first was impeded by physical difficulties with his teeth, gums, and hearing, poor memory, easy fatigue, and worst of all, the loss of his former "pleasure and delight in solving
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 203
somewhat complicated problems. " But gradually his enthusiasms returned, and he was able to look at his diminishing difficulties with his usual acceptance and detachment: "It may be . . . that a racehorse just has to race to keep fit, and if you put him in a stable for a long time, he does not race well any more in spite of good food. " He was apparently following his long-standing pattern of blending with his new surroundings in his individualistic and somewhat withdrawn manner, and had already become an expert in the local geography. He retained his interest in thought reform and in problems of imprisonment; he also continued to feel some apprehension about the possibility of being captured again by the Communists. Characteristically, he made no mention of ideological issues; rather, he was concerned with practical matters. The letter, on the whole, confirmed my earlier impression of good recovery, and suggested that Professor Castorp had quickly and actively resumed his pre-thought reform identity.
Bishop Barker
I saw Bishop Barker (the elderly Belgian "priest, doctor, soldier") at an unusual but not inappropriate site--the Catholic shrine at Lourdes. He had led a pilgrimage there, and he suggested it as the most convenient place to meet, a suggestion which I welcomed. Now about seventy, he was an impressive figure in bishop's purple, his eyes alert, his movements quick, and his goatee pure white. In some ways he seemed more removed from other people (he ex- plained this as a continuation of his deepening religious sense), but at the same time he clearly enjoyed the adulation he received everywhere he went in Lourdes. As I observed him one day, taking part in a large Church processional, marching among other high Church officials in the privileged place behind the Holy Sacrament --his step slow and dignified, his lips moving in prayer--I thought that he had indeed come far from the deep humiliation of his thought reform.
During the years since I had first seen him, Bishop Barker had continued his two crusades: his personal attempt to direct all of his emotions into a continuing Catholic religious experience, and his broader effort to spread his message about Chinese Communism and about reform techniques. He had spoken before many groups,
? 204 THOUGHT REFORM
always bent upon "stirring up the audience to reform their inner life. " He would stress both the power of the Communists and the need for sacrifice in order to "overcome" them. At the same time he 'emphasized that he was still "using the material of thought reform to deepen my own religious sense. "
His ideological interests--and in fact his major life interests-- had become limited to Communism and Catholicism, and he con- cerned himself with political questions only when they were related to one or both of these. He had retained his strongly anti-Communist position; he admired John Foster Dulles and Konrad Adenauer as the two men "best against Communism. " There was, at,the same time, some suggestion of ambivalence toward Americans: when I told him that my spoken French was far from fluent, he immediately replied, "No matter--your dollars speak for you all over the world. " This was not a remarkable statement, of course, but it must be viewed in relationship to Bishop Barker's previous tendency to express unconsciously retained reform influences. His interest in thought reform continued only so long as he could discuss it in his own crusading Catholic idiom. When I questioned him about specific post-release feelings related to guilt and shame, he became evasive and suggested to me that the conversation was becoming a strain. He did tell me that if he were to be imprisoned again, he would "not give in at all," since the Communists distort any admission a prisoner makes. He had carried this attitude a step further, however, and he implied (and almost believed) that he had not given in at all during his actual prison experience.
Thus, another one of my subjects was astounded to hear Barker say, during a brief meeting, that he had "not confessed anything. " The Bishop did not say this to me, but he did limit his prison ref- erences to stories of outwitting his jailers and frustrating their in- tentions. After relating one of these anecdotes, he would quickly change the subject to his varied experiences during his long stay in China, again presenting himself in a heroic light and only oc- casionally permitting himself an admission of fear or nervousness.
He also delighted in telling me of his Catholic religious life-- of his greeting his guardian angel the first thing every morning, and of his feeling that in prison he needed an additional guardian angel and his calling upon the archangel Raphael. He asked me to attend one of his Masses; and--with minimal encouragement--he launched
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 205
into long discussions of theological symbolism. At the same time he enjoyed bringing up questions of morality and sexual behavior, presenting always a conventional Catholic viewpoint, but curious about a psychiatrist's opinions as well.
I had the impression that Bishop Barker, keenly aware he was living in his declining years, was attempting to assume a final iden- tity stance which would permit him to feel that his life had had value and meaning. In struggling to maintain the self-image of the hero--to which he had aspired since early childhood--he was still fighting off the inner voice which accused him instead of being the weakling. This underlying threat of despair made him much more comfortable in reaching for others' souls than in probing the psychological conflicts of his own. In dealing with thought reform experiences, he had not only intensified his tendency to repress and to deny: he had taken the next step, that of confabulation. Cer- tainly, during thought reform and in the rest of his life, as well, he had in many ways come close to realizing his heroic self-image; yet to believe this and to maintain a sense of self-esteem, he had to resort to grossly distorted reconstructions.
Miss Darrow
This leaves only Miss Darrow (the missionary's daughter) whose apparent conversion had, when I last saw her, already begun to wear off. From occasional correspondence, as well as from contacts with people who knew her, I learned that her pattern had continued to be very similar to the one she had shown when I interviewed her; but since these interviews had taken place in Canada three months after her release, they were able--much more clearly than the Hong Kong encounters--to indicate long-range tendencies. She was con- tinuing her gradual adaptation to Canadian life, and also continu- ing her painful and guilt-ridden reality testing. She remained much more sympathetic to the Chinese Communist regime than most other subjects, but she was able to be increasingly critical of its distortion and its oppression. She was indeed realizing her (self- fulfilling) prophecy of becoming the "left-wing liberal"--willing to co-operate with various groups and individuals interested in study- ing thought reform but strongly opposed to right-wing propagan- distic exploitation. In her personal and professional life, she im-
? 2O 6 THOUGHT REFORM
pressed friends and colleagues with her unusual intelligence and perceptiveness. She still suffered from the sense of being the "be- trayer" when she was critical of the Chinese Communists, especially when she contrasted her change in view with the still uncompromis- ingly "reformed" ideas of her male friend. Her older and closer female friend had continued to offer much emotional support, and an interlude of physical illness had supplied a helpful moratorium; but Miss Darrow continued with her step-by-step search, still plagued by her ever-present susceptibilities to guilt.
? CHAPTER 11
FATHER SIMON:
THE CONVERTED JESUIT
In the course of my follow-up visits, I was intro- duced to a priest who had experienced prison thought reform, but who had not been a subject of my original Hong Kong study. A French Jesuit, he was teaching science at a small Catholic school near the Franco-German border. My interview with him was not, strictly speaking, a follow-up visit; but it proved to be an un- usually interesting encounter. This Catholic Father, three-and-a- half years after his release, was still seeing the world almost entirely through "reformed" eyes. He had come closer to a true conversion
experience than had any of my original subjects,
The interplay between Father Simon and the colleague of his
(also a subject of mine) who introduced us was a good indication of what was to follow. This other priest explained to Simon that I had tried to meet him in Hong Kong, but had been told that he
(Simon) did not wish to see me. Simon irately denied this, insist- ing that he had never been approached, and accusing his clerical colleagues in Hong Kong of preventing a meeting between us be- cause they were embarrassed by his views. (Actually, it is difficult to say just who had prevented me from seeing Father Simon in Hong Kong; it is quite probable that neither he nor his fellow priests felt very enthusiastic about my interviewing him. )
207
? 2O8 THOUGHT REFORM
In Europe, however, Simon was clearly interested in talking with me, A thin, tense man in his late fifties, he quickly gave me the impression that he had a great deal to say about matters which he did not feel free to discuss too openly in his present environment. Indeed, his first words were pointed expressions of criticism directed at fellow priests who published strongly anti-Communist writings or presented what were in his opinion distorted views of prison thought reform. And when I asked him how he felt about his im- prisonment, he answered without hesitation: "It was one of the best periods of my life. " Then he explained that thought reform was valid because it was effective: "People claim that the Com- munists tried to introduce false points of view into your brain-- but this could never work; it is only because they introduced true things . . . that it works. " He went on to say that, "As for free- dom of speech, I had more . . . in jail than I have right here," explaining that while he was in prison, "I accepted all of their points of view--political and economic, everything," then adding as some- thing of an afterthought, "except for a deadlock on the religious point of view. "
Father Simon wasted no time in making it clear just where he stood. I could not help feeling amazement during these first few minutes of our interview, as I heard this Jesuit priest express only praise for Communism and only criticism for the actions of his Catholic colleagues. Although I knew the general principles of thought reform, I wondered just how this had been accomplished.
Father Simon was brought up in a hardworking middle-class fam- ily in a French provincial town. Since his father owned a small busi- ness enterprise, he now felt that "I was born on the wrong side of the fence. . , . My education was entirely on the capitalistic side. " He had learned in prison that "I lived from a salary taken from workmen," but defended his parents as having done the best they could, limited as they were by "the ideas of their surroundings. " Simon described the religious influences in his family as very strong: two sisters trained as nuns, and two uncles became missionaries. A conscientious boy who always "had the feeling that life was some- thing serious," he had wished to become a priest from the age of eleven, and had made his definite decision when he was fifteen. He attributed his religious inclinations to his mother's influence; his father--an austere, distant, and highly-respected figure--had
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 209
originally opposed his decision to enter the priesthood. As in the case of Father Luca, his mother's intercession helped him to carry it through.
He received extensive training in science, philosophy, and theol- ogy. This work included three years of study in the United States during his early thirties, and it is significant that he returned to Europe something of a convert to the American way of life, so much so that he sometimes irked his colleagues (several of whom I had spoken to) with his expression of his new allegiance, and his insistence that French science was nothing compared to ad- vanced American developments. He had retained these sentiments over the twenty years he spent teaching science in China; but they were soon overshadowed by his enormous attachment to China it- self. Although a distant and reserved man, he sought always to enter deeply into Chinese life. He organized scientific trips during which he traveled and camped outdoors with a small group from his uni- versity. "For two or three weeks . . . I lived entirely among stu- dents. . . . It made life more human . . . and the students found me as a man they did not know before. "
In other ways too, he tended to be different from and sometimes at odds with his colleagues. One described him as "very independ- ent in judgments . . . liked to be against things . . . enthusiasms strong but changeable . . . apparently cold, but really passionate. "
He was at the same time extremely diligent in his work, and utterly conscientious in his religious life. As one friend expressed it, "I often broke rules, but Simon never did. "
Thus, before his contact with the Communists, he was a man strongly susceptible to some forms of environmental influence, and at the same time capable of stubbornly resisting others. He possessed a powerful conscience and an accompanying susceptibility to guilt, both related to early family struggles; and much of Simon's life was involved with which influence he should follow as the "good" one, and which he should resist as the "bad. " In his various experiments with identity, however, it was his sense of being the conscientious enthusiast which prevailed over each of a number of different en- thusiasms.
During the early years of Communist rule, he was proud of being the only foreigner permitted to integrate his scientific work with the government program. At the same time, he was extremely criti-
? 210 THOUGHT REFORM
cal of the Communist movement, and strongly opposed the regime's attempts to spread its influence within his university. He expected to be arrested because he had been accused with others (falsely) of using a radio for espionage purposes.
Simon admitted to me that the early period of his imprisonment was "hard. " But he avoided any mention of specific brutality and claimed that he had been deprived of sleep for only one night. He preferred to "explain" the Communist approach ("According to their method they take advantage of the first shock"), and implied that their techniques were necessary because he had so extremely opposed them at the beginning. I was able to learn some of the missing details, however, from another European who had shared the same cell with Simon for a while: "Simon had been interrogated three days without sleep. They said he hadn't been giving any in- formation. The inspector, when alone with him, spat in his face ten times. " This same informant said that Simon had been un- usually stubborn in his resistance: "a daredevil. " In both versions, however, it was clear that Simon was extremely fearful of being shot.
He went then from extreme resistance to complete compliance, and his own story makes clear the psychological features of this reversal. Even after he no longer feared death, his desire to remain in China profoundly influenced his behavior:
I thought that I was one of those with the best chance to stay. I had received instructions from my superior to try to stay. I realized that if I did not change my mind, I would have no chance at all to stay. I decided I would try to see what was right, and if doubtful, I could try to adopt the Communist point of view.
Simon was helped along this path by a fellow Jesuit in the same cell who taught him how to begin his confession.
But he recognized that his own sense of guilt had played the most important part: "My position changed when I said, 'I am guilty'. " While unconscious guilt was undoubtedly present all along, his sense of being criminallyguilty developed after about one year, and was accompanied by a strong compulsion to confess. "I made a list in French . . . for my own use of ten points which I should never mention. . . . Sixmonths later I had told everything. . . . I was then ready to tell everything about myself and anyone else. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 211
His list had, of course, been his unconscious preparation for what was to come. When he made it he decided that "if I put together all these faults I had been accused of . . . I could say I was guilty. "
When I asked him what he had to feel guilty about, he first an- swered evasively, "We had plenty of things. " And then he did describe one of them--an occasion soon after World War II when Catholic chaplains from the American Army brought an intelligence officer to see Simon and some of his colleagues, "and then we told them plenty of things. " But, as if realizing that this might not be in itself so damning, he added, "What we did any foreigner would have done, but we should have been more careful. " Then, as if to justify further his guilt, he explained that "In jail we didn't ac- cuse only our crimes, but rather the intention of our crimes"; he went on to describe how he had contemplated (but had never carried out) telling an American missionary who was leaving de- tails about Communist work on an airfield, realizing that this in- formation might be passed on to an official American group.
I had no way of knowing whether this idea had really occurred to Simon before his imprisonment, or whether it was a product of the guilt-stimulating pressures of imprisonment itself. Either way, it was part of his need to find evidence of both wrongdoing and wrong-thinking so he could rationalize, in thought reform terms, his own psychological state: "Every time I found a crime I had committed, I was glad to find it. " But among a myriad of trivial self-accusations, the encounter with an American intelligence officer was undoubtedly a true source of psychological guilt, as it violated Simon's deepest sense of what a missionary should do and be.
His guilt established in his own mind, Simon moved on to the next step--complete enthusiasm and complete trust:
One of the prisoners suggested writing diaries--only about our change of mind. . . . Every day we gave the cell chief our diary. We had the feeling we were living in a glass house--but we had no bad feelings at all. Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government.
Simon's attainment of mutual trust and harmony with the Chi- nese realized a long-desired goal, a goal which he felt had before this always eluded him: "I never had a good chance to live among the Chinese except the last three years in jail. " During this period
? 212 THOUGHT REFOKM
he held nothing back from his colleagues and cellmates ("I was glad to get rid of all I had on my mind and to speak very frankly"), and his statements included extensive denunciations of the behavior of many of his colleagues, both in and out of jail,
He was transferred during his last year to a jail where he was permitted to do manual labor. His guilt had led to a feeling of tranquility: "I was more quiet. I thought I am guilty and deserve it. " Once he was happy in jail, his main fear was that he would soon be released. He knew that jail was a safer place for him than life in China on the outside; and contact with his own colleagues in Europe seemed least safe of all:
When I was in labor camp during the last year, I was glad to be there. I was afraid to be out, because if allowed to stay in China I would have much trouble. If I came out, there would be trouble with my Order. . . . When I received my sentence, I wrote immediately to the head of the court, "I do not ask for a reduction in the sentence, but I would like you to cross out the clause about being kicked out of the country. "
By this time, he was, more than any of my subjects, identifying himself with his reformers. He took pride in bringing others around: "There was one fellow we worked on for two full days. At first we couldn't get to him . . . but finally we did. " Much impressed with individual Communists, he set them up as his standard, and always compared himself unfavorably to them: "We worked hard--but could not beat them. . . . They worked all of the days, and had meetings at night. . . . And they were very enthusiastic about their work. " He could justify in his mind even their curbs upon religion: "They said that outside of jail there is religious freedom, inside no. . . . That was tough on us, but we had to follow regulations"; and he was grateful for a slight relaxation in this area: "At the end,
for instance, I was allowed to say my breviary. "
He emphasized that in all this he had become increasinglyim-
pressed with the sincerity of the Communist officials, and illustrated this with their attitude toward their false accusation about the radio:
At the beginning, I thought that this was a pretext to arrest me. They wanted to take over our university and used this as their pretext. Later I found they really believed it. They were in good faith. . . . Then they dropped it, and they believed me.
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
? 192 THOUGHT REFORM
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
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 193
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-
? 194 THOUGHT REFORM
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.
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 1QJ
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
? 196 THOUGHT REFORM
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. Because of his diffuse self-image, he remained extremely vulnerable to others' attitudes, easily hurt by criticism, encouraged by praise. Withal, he remained loyal to the Western group experience and retained his warm attitudes toward the other men; he had been able to arrange to see most of them, and was still Father Benet's staunchest defender.
Mrs. Kallman's response made an interesting contrast to her husband's. She had also been in prison in China, and arrangements had been made for them to leave the country together. She de- scribed to me their dramatically silent jeep ride to the pier (still in police custody, they were forbidden to talk), their silence long after the Communist guard had left them alone in their cabin on the European-owned ship, while both of them looked up at the ventilators fearing that they might be overheard; and finally, their speaking to each other only when they were certain that they were out of Chinese waters.
Her responses after prison were simpler and a good deal less ambivalent than her husband's. She hated the Communists for what they had done to her husband and herself. She disapproved of her husband's lectures because she feared that they might cause him trouble in the future. She and her husband had discussed their prison experiences at great length; now she wished to forget about them and devote her energies to her family. She did not escape aftereffects--recurrent dreams and a certain amount of physical and psychosomatic illness--and we may assume that she was not entirely free of inner doubts. But she remained the stronger of the two, offering continual emotional support to her husband. She also felt that, in their marriage, thought reform had made them both more conciliatory. She was very "female" in her entirely personal and nonideological judgments, although, as we have seen with Miss Darrow, such a response was by no means characteristic of every woman who experienced thought reform.
? Father ? mile
I visited Father Emile at a mission house in southern France. Robust, confident, and energetic, he bore little resemblance to the tense and confused man I had seen in Hong Kong. In char- acteristic fashion, he opened our talk with several humorous anec- dotes about his experiences during and after imprisonment. Indeed, his sense of humor was his mainstay in his recovery ("I took it lightly, not tragically"), so much so that he was concerned lest he deal with these matters "too much as a joke. " Like other priests, he had experienced a certain amount of remorse about things he had said and done which might hurt the Church. He was especially con- cerned about a Chinese priest who might have been endangered by his words, and extended this concern to all Chinese priests: "Now I suffer about Chinese fathers. . . . I am afraid they might feel we betrayed them. " Most foreign priests shared these sentiments about imprisoned Chinese colleagues, but fimile carried it to the point of insisting upon sleeping on a wooden bed without a mattress-- much as he did in jail--"to show my sympathy for them/'
He too had retained his passion for China, and looked all over France for friends he had known there. When asked if he wished to take up missionary activities in another part of the world, his answer was: "I have been married to China--and I am faithful to my first wife. " So intense was his interest in speaking and writing about thought reform and other aspects of Chinese Communism that he neglected his first teaching assignment; he was then trans- ferred to a new position which allowed him contact with Chinese missionary activities. During this period he became extremely inter- ested in supplying detailed information to an international group which was investigating forced labor practices throughout the world. He much preferred this form of activity to concentrating upon his new French surroundings; after two decades in China, Europe seemed so alien to him that "I thought I needed another re-education. "
When I saw him in France, his anti-Communist position was firm ("They don't even consider elementary human rights"), and more outspoken than it had been in Hong Kong, although perhaps
FOLLOW-UP VISITS 197
? 1 9 8 THOUGHT REFORM
a bit less vehement than it had been one year after his return--in a letter to me then he spoke of the "mixture of threats, wheedling, and blackmail" characteristic of thought reform. He had also be- come more accustomed to life in France, and had achieved a balance between his continuing interest in China and his involve- ment in his immediate environment.
Father Ernile still conceded that the thought reform method had "some good" in its ability to get to the "root of the bad thought," He also believed the Communist stress upon communal co-operation was valuable. He had remained on good, though not intimate, terms with the other group members. He tended to avoid extensive introspection concerning his experience, preferring to deal with it in an "active way/' and characterizing himself as "dynamic rather than speculative. " His recovery was, on the whole, quite impressive. He had (in contrast to Father Vechten) been able to deal effectively and promptly with his guilt and shame within the idiom of the Catholic priesthood. This accomplished, he was free to make good use of humor and activity as a means of further detoxifying these dangerous post-release emotions, and creating distance between himself and the prison experience.
What about the other three men?
Mr. Weber (the businessman-adventurer) paid a warm visit to Father Vechten almost immediately after their return to Europe, during which he received the sacraments from his previous cellmate in a formal resumption of Catholic religious life. But almost im- mediately afterward he apparently went back to his former style of existence: active engagement in commerce and adventure in an underdeveloped country, supported by a liberal indulgence in alcohol. Most of the others in the group retained an affectionate, if not fully admiring, feeling for Weber, and believed this resump- tion of his previous pattern to be inevitable because of his "in- stability. "
Dr. Bauer had lived up to his impressive Hong Kong perform- ance. He had been able to resume medical practice almost im- mediately, and had re-established his family in a European-in- habited area far from Europe itself. In letters to rne, he denied psychological difficulties of any variety, described his continuing antagonism to Communism ("I feel hot under the collar about it
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 199
in general"), and considered himself to be "a scientific witness of unpleasant experiments. " On this basis he had lectured extensively during the months after his return. He continued to make friendly overtures toward other group members, to which they were not un- responsive; but most of the others experienced mixed feelings toward him, remembering with admiration his courage and support during imprisonment, but at the same time being unable to recon- cile antagonisms related to his Nazi background, racist views, and to certain of his personal traits.
Father Ben&'s readjustment was apparently a bit more stormy, as might be expected. According to a colleague who accompanied him, Benet had experienced "a kind of crisis" during the boat trip back to Europe which was apparently related to his overwhelming fear--no longer fear of the Communists, but rather of his own Church superiors because of his behavior during imprisonment. But it was not long before he too was able to resume his profes- sional activities. When he did, however, and began to give talks about his prison experiences, he emphasized (as he explained in a letter to one of the others) how the missionaries had deceived them- selves, how much they had been humiliated, how close they had been brought to complete breakdown. He thus still maintained a histrionic posture of exhibitionism and masochism. As one colleague expressed it, "He is still playing a game--now on the other side. " Moreover, Benet claimed that the man to whom he wrote the letter mentioned above had been "near a nervous breakdown" him- self--a part of this posture, and at the same time a means of projecting his own state on to someone else. The other group members maintained many of the critical feelings toward him they had expressed upon their release; but these had, on the whole, tended to soften over the years.
Of those prisoners discussed in earlier chapters, I have follow-up information about all but one, Dr. Vincent. I was not surprised when he failed to respond to my letters, and I was unable to obtain any definite information about him. An acquaintance of his told me that Vincent had been trying to arrange to return to medical work in another part of Asia; since this was consistent with the plans Vincent had described to me, it is probably what happened. We may also assume that he regained his exaggerated possession of
? 200 THOUGHT REFORM
his "insides" and reverted to his distinctive identity of the mystical healer.
Father Luca
About Father Luca, I have more definite knowledge. When I visited him at his family home in a medium-sized Italian city, I encountered a man different from the driven, restless, and probing missionary I had met in Hong Kong. He was a friendly and forceful priest, lively and definite in his discussion of everything Chinese, and at the same time quite at home in his middle-class European surroundings. He was now physically healthy--he had recovered from his back injuries and gained a good deal of weight--and emotionally assertive rather than self-questioning.
He had not found Europe too difficult to get used to--he had not been away nearly as long as many of the others--but he had ex- perienced the painful inner struggle which, from our talks in Hong Kong, I knew he could not escape. He was deeply moved by his reunion with family members and colleagues; but he found himself troubled by feelings of confusion and sadness. He related these to his separation from China and from his Chinese friends, and to his uncertain physical condition, thus tending to minimize his sense of guilt. He came to crave useful activity, and chafed under his physician's prescription of extended rest. He achieved an active solution similar to the one utilized by many of my other subjects. He prepared an extensive evaluation of Communist reform prac- tices for the group investigating concentration camps and forced labor, an evaluation which included opinions about both the re- formers and the reformed. When this was completed, he began, on his own initiative, a much more ambitious piece of work: a de- tailed study and analysis of the life and letters of the founder of his society, an outstanding figure among modern missionaries to China. As he proceeded with this study, Father Luca compared his own religious experiences, in Europe as well as in China, with those of a man who had long served as his ideal, and this project helped him greatly in his continual struggle to define himself in relation- ship to the Church and to China. Moreover, he was able to work on both these tasks during a time when his physical activities were restricted.
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 2O1
Soon after, he began to make strong efforts to educate others about the realities of Communist China--by briefing people pre- paring for visits, writing magazine articles, and appearing at public debates. His voice rose as he described to me the "naivet6 of some people who refuse to recognize that persecutions exist in Com- munist China. " His sense of personal integrity was clearly involved in these matters--so much so, that on one occasion he sought out the leader of an official group of Communist Chinese visitors, described the brutality he had experienced in prison, and urged this man to request his government to admit (making use, if neces- sary, of some face-saving maneuver) that the "people it said were guilty were really not guilty. " Luca also continued to advocate a liberal course in future missionary activities, recommending more self-expression and local authority among indigenous groups. He could still admit that the Chinese Communists were "right" about some things, and that the missionaries had made mistakes; but his general tone when he referred to the present regime, as compared to his attitude in Hong Kong, had become more militantly critical and more consistently hostile.
He had remained concerned about the possible harm some of the statements in his confession might have caused to the Church and its representatives. He was especially troubled about the letter he had written under duress to a young Chinese Catholic girl de- nouncing his own organizational activities, and he had gone so far as to send a gift to the girl through a countryman visiting China in order to rectify the situation. He felt hurt when the gift was refused, although he knew that the refusal was based on the girl's concern for her own safety. Nor was he free of his old nemeses: he still had trouble managing his emotions whenever he wished to oppose a superior, and he had to maintain his vigilance against ever-recurring sexual desires. But in all of these matters, I felt, his conflicts were under much better control than when I had last seen him. Like so many of the other imprisoned Westerners, Father Luca believed he had become more spontaneous and more fluent in his self-expression as a result of his thought reform: "I am more free in my behavior. . . . I speak more easily in public and with other people/' His spiritual life, he felt, had become more routine and "plain," in contrast to its precious intensity during imprison- ment: "then I had to seek an opportunity. "
? 2O2 THOUGHT REFORM
When I asked him, near the end of our three-hour talk, whether any of the ideas of thought reform remained with him, he replied: "They come to mind, sometimes to be taken into account, some- times to be contradicted, sometimes to be accepted. " He elaborated upon those ideas which he at least partially accepted:
I agree that a way for the peasants to escape the moneylender when they needed credit was necessary. . . . Sometimes I have a feeling that a system of co-operatives can solve some of these problems, . . . Not necessarily the whole Marxist system. . . . I had already a theoretical idea of this before, but I have a more sensitive idea of it now.
In these ideas, as in all of his emotions, Father Luca was at- tempting to reconcile influences he felt he could not ignore with older respected values. He had found it necessary to repress much that was painful, especially those things related to feelings of guilt; and he had taken on some of the aspects of a conventional priest expressing the accepted ideas of the Church. Yet beneath, he fought a continuous struggle with his own most negative images of himself, and continuously searched for a personal synthesis. He had not been spared anxiety, but he had managed to make an effec- tive recovery without undue self-damage (had his prison injuries made this unnecessary? ) or excessive inner distortion.
Professor Castorp
At the time of my trip to Europe, Professor Castorp, the sub- missive scientist, was well established in a teaching position in another part of Asia. He had, in fact, begun to make these new arrangements within weeks after his release. He wrote me a long and humorous letter describing his experiences since leaving Hong Kong. He mentioned family matters, but focused mainly upon problems of resuming his work--which to him meant resuming his existence as a self-respecting human being. He too wrote a report of his prison experiences; but after he had completed this, he looked forward to returning to teaching and research in his more usual scientific areas.
Professor Castorp at first was impeded by physical difficulties with his teeth, gums, and hearing, poor memory, easy fatigue, and worst of all, the loss of his former "pleasure and delight in solving
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 203
somewhat complicated problems. " But gradually his enthusiasms returned, and he was able to look at his diminishing difficulties with his usual acceptance and detachment: "It may be . . . that a racehorse just has to race to keep fit, and if you put him in a stable for a long time, he does not race well any more in spite of good food. " He was apparently following his long-standing pattern of blending with his new surroundings in his individualistic and somewhat withdrawn manner, and had already become an expert in the local geography. He retained his interest in thought reform and in problems of imprisonment; he also continued to feel some apprehension about the possibility of being captured again by the Communists. Characteristically, he made no mention of ideological issues; rather, he was concerned with practical matters. The letter, on the whole, confirmed my earlier impression of good recovery, and suggested that Professor Castorp had quickly and actively resumed his pre-thought reform identity.
Bishop Barker
I saw Bishop Barker (the elderly Belgian "priest, doctor, soldier") at an unusual but not inappropriate site--the Catholic shrine at Lourdes. He had led a pilgrimage there, and he suggested it as the most convenient place to meet, a suggestion which I welcomed. Now about seventy, he was an impressive figure in bishop's purple, his eyes alert, his movements quick, and his goatee pure white. In some ways he seemed more removed from other people (he ex- plained this as a continuation of his deepening religious sense), but at the same time he clearly enjoyed the adulation he received everywhere he went in Lourdes. As I observed him one day, taking part in a large Church processional, marching among other high Church officials in the privileged place behind the Holy Sacrament --his step slow and dignified, his lips moving in prayer--I thought that he had indeed come far from the deep humiliation of his thought reform.
During the years since I had first seen him, Bishop Barker had continued his two crusades: his personal attempt to direct all of his emotions into a continuing Catholic religious experience, and his broader effort to spread his message about Chinese Communism and about reform techniques. He had spoken before many groups,
? 204 THOUGHT REFORM
always bent upon "stirring up the audience to reform their inner life. " He would stress both the power of the Communists and the need for sacrifice in order to "overcome" them. At the same time he 'emphasized that he was still "using the material of thought reform to deepen my own religious sense. "
His ideological interests--and in fact his major life interests-- had become limited to Communism and Catholicism, and he con- cerned himself with political questions only when they were related to one or both of these. He had retained his strongly anti-Communist position; he admired John Foster Dulles and Konrad Adenauer as the two men "best against Communism. " There was, at,the same time, some suggestion of ambivalence toward Americans: when I told him that my spoken French was far from fluent, he immediately replied, "No matter--your dollars speak for you all over the world. " This was not a remarkable statement, of course, but it must be viewed in relationship to Bishop Barker's previous tendency to express unconsciously retained reform influences. His interest in thought reform continued only so long as he could discuss it in his own crusading Catholic idiom. When I questioned him about specific post-release feelings related to guilt and shame, he became evasive and suggested to me that the conversation was becoming a strain. He did tell me that if he were to be imprisoned again, he would "not give in at all," since the Communists distort any admission a prisoner makes. He had carried this attitude a step further, however, and he implied (and almost believed) that he had not given in at all during his actual prison experience.
Thus, another one of my subjects was astounded to hear Barker say, during a brief meeting, that he had "not confessed anything. " The Bishop did not say this to me, but he did limit his prison ref- erences to stories of outwitting his jailers and frustrating their in- tentions. After relating one of these anecdotes, he would quickly change the subject to his varied experiences during his long stay in China, again presenting himself in a heroic light and only oc- casionally permitting himself an admission of fear or nervousness.
He also delighted in telling me of his Catholic religious life-- of his greeting his guardian angel the first thing every morning, and of his feeling that in prison he needed an additional guardian angel and his calling upon the archangel Raphael. He asked me to attend one of his Masses; and--with minimal encouragement--he launched
? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 205
into long discussions of theological symbolism. At the same time he enjoyed bringing up questions of morality and sexual behavior, presenting always a conventional Catholic viewpoint, but curious about a psychiatrist's opinions as well.
I had the impression that Bishop Barker, keenly aware he was living in his declining years, was attempting to assume a final iden- tity stance which would permit him to feel that his life had had value and meaning. In struggling to maintain the self-image of the hero--to which he had aspired since early childhood--he was still fighting off the inner voice which accused him instead of being the weakling. This underlying threat of despair made him much more comfortable in reaching for others' souls than in probing the psychological conflicts of his own. In dealing with thought reform experiences, he had not only intensified his tendency to repress and to deny: he had taken the next step, that of confabulation. Cer- tainly, during thought reform and in the rest of his life, as well, he had in many ways come close to realizing his heroic self-image; yet to believe this and to maintain a sense of self-esteem, he had to resort to grossly distorted reconstructions.
Miss Darrow
This leaves only Miss Darrow (the missionary's daughter) whose apparent conversion had, when I last saw her, already begun to wear off. From occasional correspondence, as well as from contacts with people who knew her, I learned that her pattern had continued to be very similar to the one she had shown when I interviewed her; but since these interviews had taken place in Canada three months after her release, they were able--much more clearly than the Hong Kong encounters--to indicate long-range tendencies. She was con- tinuing her gradual adaptation to Canadian life, and also continu- ing her painful and guilt-ridden reality testing. She remained much more sympathetic to the Chinese Communist regime than most other subjects, but she was able to be increasingly critical of its distortion and its oppression. She was indeed realizing her (self- fulfilling) prophecy of becoming the "left-wing liberal"--willing to co-operate with various groups and individuals interested in study- ing thought reform but strongly opposed to right-wing propagan- distic exploitation. In her personal and professional life, she im-
? 2O 6 THOUGHT REFORM
pressed friends and colleagues with her unusual intelligence and perceptiveness. She still suffered from the sense of being the "be- trayer" when she was critical of the Chinese Communists, especially when she contrasted her change in view with the still uncompromis- ingly "reformed" ideas of her male friend. Her older and closer female friend had continued to offer much emotional support, and an interlude of physical illness had supplied a helpful moratorium; but Miss Darrow continued with her step-by-step search, still plagued by her ever-present susceptibilities to guilt.
? CHAPTER 11
FATHER SIMON:
THE CONVERTED JESUIT
In the course of my follow-up visits, I was intro- duced to a priest who had experienced prison thought reform, but who had not been a subject of my original Hong Kong study. A French Jesuit, he was teaching science at a small Catholic school near the Franco-German border. My interview with him was not, strictly speaking, a follow-up visit; but it proved to be an un- usually interesting encounter. This Catholic Father, three-and-a- half years after his release, was still seeing the world almost entirely through "reformed" eyes. He had come closer to a true conversion
experience than had any of my original subjects,
The interplay between Father Simon and the colleague of his
(also a subject of mine) who introduced us was a good indication of what was to follow. This other priest explained to Simon that I had tried to meet him in Hong Kong, but had been told that he
(Simon) did not wish to see me. Simon irately denied this, insist- ing that he had never been approached, and accusing his clerical colleagues in Hong Kong of preventing a meeting between us be- cause they were embarrassed by his views. (Actually, it is difficult to say just who had prevented me from seeing Father Simon in Hong Kong; it is quite probable that neither he nor his fellow priests felt very enthusiastic about my interviewing him. )
207
? 2O8 THOUGHT REFORM
In Europe, however, Simon was clearly interested in talking with me, A thin, tense man in his late fifties, he quickly gave me the impression that he had a great deal to say about matters which he did not feel free to discuss too openly in his present environment. Indeed, his first words were pointed expressions of criticism directed at fellow priests who published strongly anti-Communist writings or presented what were in his opinion distorted views of prison thought reform. And when I asked him how he felt about his im- prisonment, he answered without hesitation: "It was one of the best periods of my life. " Then he explained that thought reform was valid because it was effective: "People claim that the Com- munists tried to introduce false points of view into your brain-- but this could never work; it is only because they introduced true things . . . that it works. " He went on to say that, "As for free- dom of speech, I had more . . . in jail than I have right here," explaining that while he was in prison, "I accepted all of their points of view--political and economic, everything," then adding as some- thing of an afterthought, "except for a deadlock on the religious point of view. "
Father Simon wasted no time in making it clear just where he stood. I could not help feeling amazement during these first few minutes of our interview, as I heard this Jesuit priest express only praise for Communism and only criticism for the actions of his Catholic colleagues. Although I knew the general principles of thought reform, I wondered just how this had been accomplished.
Father Simon was brought up in a hardworking middle-class fam- ily in a French provincial town. Since his father owned a small busi- ness enterprise, he now felt that "I was born on the wrong side of the fence. . , . My education was entirely on the capitalistic side. " He had learned in prison that "I lived from a salary taken from workmen," but defended his parents as having done the best they could, limited as they were by "the ideas of their surroundings. " Simon described the religious influences in his family as very strong: two sisters trained as nuns, and two uncles became missionaries. A conscientious boy who always "had the feeling that life was some- thing serious," he had wished to become a priest from the age of eleven, and had made his definite decision when he was fifteen. He attributed his religious inclinations to his mother's influence; his father--an austere, distant, and highly-respected figure--had
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 209
originally opposed his decision to enter the priesthood. As in the case of Father Luca, his mother's intercession helped him to carry it through.
He received extensive training in science, philosophy, and theol- ogy. This work included three years of study in the United States during his early thirties, and it is significant that he returned to Europe something of a convert to the American way of life, so much so that he sometimes irked his colleagues (several of whom I had spoken to) with his expression of his new allegiance, and his insistence that French science was nothing compared to ad- vanced American developments. He had retained these sentiments over the twenty years he spent teaching science in China; but they were soon overshadowed by his enormous attachment to China it- self. Although a distant and reserved man, he sought always to enter deeply into Chinese life. He organized scientific trips during which he traveled and camped outdoors with a small group from his uni- versity. "For two or three weeks . . . I lived entirely among stu- dents. . . . It made life more human . . . and the students found me as a man they did not know before. "
In other ways too, he tended to be different from and sometimes at odds with his colleagues. One described him as "very independ- ent in judgments . . . liked to be against things . . . enthusiasms strong but changeable . . . apparently cold, but really passionate. "
He was at the same time extremely diligent in his work, and utterly conscientious in his religious life. As one friend expressed it, "I often broke rules, but Simon never did. "
Thus, before his contact with the Communists, he was a man strongly susceptible to some forms of environmental influence, and at the same time capable of stubbornly resisting others. He possessed a powerful conscience and an accompanying susceptibility to guilt, both related to early family struggles; and much of Simon's life was involved with which influence he should follow as the "good" one, and which he should resist as the "bad. " In his various experiments with identity, however, it was his sense of being the conscientious enthusiast which prevailed over each of a number of different en- thusiasms.
During the early years of Communist rule, he was proud of being the only foreigner permitted to integrate his scientific work with the government program. At the same time, he was extremely criti-
? 210 THOUGHT REFORM
cal of the Communist movement, and strongly opposed the regime's attempts to spread its influence within his university. He expected to be arrested because he had been accused with others (falsely) of using a radio for espionage purposes.
Simon admitted to me that the early period of his imprisonment was "hard. " But he avoided any mention of specific brutality and claimed that he had been deprived of sleep for only one night. He preferred to "explain" the Communist approach ("According to their method they take advantage of the first shock"), and implied that their techniques were necessary because he had so extremely opposed them at the beginning. I was able to learn some of the missing details, however, from another European who had shared the same cell with Simon for a while: "Simon had been interrogated three days without sleep. They said he hadn't been giving any in- formation. The inspector, when alone with him, spat in his face ten times. " This same informant said that Simon had been un- usually stubborn in his resistance: "a daredevil. " In both versions, however, it was clear that Simon was extremely fearful of being shot.
He went then from extreme resistance to complete compliance, and his own story makes clear the psychological features of this reversal. Even after he no longer feared death, his desire to remain in China profoundly influenced his behavior:
I thought that I was one of those with the best chance to stay. I had received instructions from my superior to try to stay. I realized that if I did not change my mind, I would have no chance at all to stay. I decided I would try to see what was right, and if doubtful, I could try to adopt the Communist point of view.
Simon was helped along this path by a fellow Jesuit in the same cell who taught him how to begin his confession.
But he recognized that his own sense of guilt had played the most important part: "My position changed when I said, 'I am guilty'. " While unconscious guilt was undoubtedly present all along, his sense of being criminallyguilty developed after about one year, and was accompanied by a strong compulsion to confess. "I made a list in French . . . for my own use of ten points which I should never mention. . . . Sixmonths later I had told everything. . . . I was then ready to tell everything about myself and anyone else. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 211
His list had, of course, been his unconscious preparation for what was to come. When he made it he decided that "if I put together all these faults I had been accused of . . . I could say I was guilty. "
When I asked him what he had to feel guilty about, he first an- swered evasively, "We had plenty of things. " And then he did describe one of them--an occasion soon after World War II when Catholic chaplains from the American Army brought an intelligence officer to see Simon and some of his colleagues, "and then we told them plenty of things. " But, as if realizing that this might not be in itself so damning, he added, "What we did any foreigner would have done, but we should have been more careful. " Then, as if to justify further his guilt, he explained that "In jail we didn't ac- cuse only our crimes, but rather the intention of our crimes"; he went on to describe how he had contemplated (but had never carried out) telling an American missionary who was leaving de- tails about Communist work on an airfield, realizing that this in- formation might be passed on to an official American group.
I had no way of knowing whether this idea had really occurred to Simon before his imprisonment, or whether it was a product of the guilt-stimulating pressures of imprisonment itself. Either way, it was part of his need to find evidence of both wrongdoing and wrong-thinking so he could rationalize, in thought reform terms, his own psychological state: "Every time I found a crime I had committed, I was glad to find it. " But among a myriad of trivial self-accusations, the encounter with an American intelligence officer was undoubtedly a true source of psychological guilt, as it violated Simon's deepest sense of what a missionary should do and be.
His guilt established in his own mind, Simon moved on to the next step--complete enthusiasm and complete trust:
One of the prisoners suggested writing diaries--only about our change of mind. . . . Every day we gave the cell chief our diary. We had the feeling we were living in a glass house--but we had no bad feelings at all. Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government.
Simon's attainment of mutual trust and harmony with the Chi- nese realized a long-desired goal, a goal which he felt had before this always eluded him: "I never had a good chance to live among the Chinese except the last three years in jail. " During this period
? 212 THOUGHT REFOKM
he held nothing back from his colleagues and cellmates ("I was glad to get rid of all I had on my mind and to speak very frankly"), and his statements included extensive denunciations of the behavior of many of his colleagues, both in and out of jail,
He was transferred during his last year to a jail where he was permitted to do manual labor. His guilt had led to a feeling of tranquility: "I was more quiet. I thought I am guilty and deserve it. " Once he was happy in jail, his main fear was that he would soon be released. He knew that jail was a safer place for him than life in China on the outside; and contact with his own colleagues in Europe seemed least safe of all:
When I was in labor camp during the last year, I was glad to be there. I was afraid to be out, because if allowed to stay in China I would have much trouble. If I came out, there would be trouble with my Order. . . . When I received my sentence, I wrote immediately to the head of the court, "I do not ask for a reduction in the sentence, but I would like you to cross out the clause about being kicked out of the country. "
By this time, he was, more than any of my subjects, identifying himself with his reformers. He took pride in bringing others around: "There was one fellow we worked on for two full days. At first we couldn't get to him . . . but finally we did. " Much impressed with individual Communists, he set them up as his standard, and always compared himself unfavorably to them: "We worked hard--but could not beat them. . . . They worked all of the days, and had meetings at night. . . . And they were very enthusiastic about their work. " He could justify in his mind even their curbs upon religion: "They said that outside of jail there is religious freedom, inside no. . . . That was tough on us, but we had to follow regulations"; and he was grateful for a slight relaxation in this area: "At the end,
for instance, I was allowed to say my breviary. "
He emphasized that in all this he had become increasinglyim-
pressed with the sincerity of the Communist officials, and illustrated this with their attitude toward their false accusation about the radio:
At the beginning, I thought that this was a pretext to arrest me. They wanted to take over our university and used this as their pretext. Later I found they really believed it. They were in good faith. . . . Then they dropped it, and they believed me.
