No More Learning

Yet even this shared omnipotence cannot protect him from the opposite (but not unrelated) feelings of humiliation and weakness, feelings especially prevalent among those who remain more the enforced penitent than the all-powerful judge.
The "Sacred Science"
The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the or- dering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the pro- hibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the
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Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute "scientific" precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also "unscientific. " In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected her- itage of natural science.
The assumption here is not so much that man can be God, but rather that man's ideas can be God: that an absolute science of ideas (and implicitly, an absolute science of man) exists, or is at least very close to being attained; that this science can be combined with an equally absolute body of moral principles; and that the resulting doctrine is true for all men at all times. Although no ideology goes quite this far in overt statement, such assumptions are implicit in totalist practice. 9
At the level of the individual, the totalist sacred science can offer much comfort and security. Its appeal lies in its seeming unification of the mystical and the logical modes of experience (in psychoanalytic terms, of the primary and secondary thought proc- esses). For within the framework of the sacred science, there is room for both careful step-by-step syllogism, and sweeping, non- rational "insights. " Since the distinction between the logical and the mystical is, to begin with, artificial and man-made, an oppor- tunity for transcending it can create an extremely intense feeling of truth. But the posture of unquestioning faith--both rationally and nonrationally derived--is not easy to sustain, especially if one dis- covers that the world of experience is not nearly as absolute as the sacred science claims it to be.
Yet so strong a hold can the sacred science achieve over his mental processes that if one begins to feel himself attracted to ideas which either contradict or ignore it, he may become guilty and afraid. His quest for knowledge is consequently hampered, since in the name of science he is prevented from engaging in the recep- tive search for truth which characterizes the genuinely scientific ap- proach. And his position is made more difficult by the absence, in a totalist environment, of any distinction between the sacred and the profane: there is no thought or action which cannot be related
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to the sacred science. To be sure, one can usually find areas of experience outside its immediate authority; but during periods of maximum totalist activity (like thought reform) any such areas are cut off, and there is virtually no escape from the milieu's ever- pressing edicts and demands. Whatever combination of continued adherence, inner resistance, or compromise co-existence the in- dividual person adopts toward this blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion, it represents another continuous pressure toward personal closure, toward avoiding, rather than grappling with, the kinds of knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-ex- pression and for creative development
Loading the Language
The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In thought reform, for instance, the phrase "bourgeois mentality" is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome con- cerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of al- ternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in politi- cal judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called "ultimate terms": either "god terms," representative of ultimate good; or "devil terms," representative of ultimate evil. In thought reform, "progress," "progressive," "liberation," "proletarian stand- points" and "the dialectic of history" fall into the former category; "capitalist," "imperialist," "exploiting classes," and "bourgeois" (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. 10 Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categori- cal, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted ad- vocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling's phrase, "the language of nonthought. "
To be sure, this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief de- pend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness:
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as Edward Sapir put it, " 'He talks like us' is equivalent to saying 'He is one of us'. " n The loading is much more extreme in ideologi- cal totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed cer- titudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlyingassump- tion that language--like all other human products--can be owned and operated by the Movement. No compunctions are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause.
For an individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. This is what Hu meant when he said, "using the same pattern of words for so long . . . you feel chained. " Ac- tually, not everyone exposed feels chained, but in effect every- one is profoundly confined by these verbal fetters. As in other as- pects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of in- sight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness. This uneasiness may result in a retreat into a rigid orthodoxy in which an individ- ual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demon- strate his conformity, hide his own dilemma and his despair, and protect himself from the fear and guilt he would feel should he at- tempt to use words and phrases other than the correct ones. Or else he may adopt a complex pattern of inner division, and dutifully produce the expected cliches in public performances while in his private moments he searches for more meaningful avenues of ex- pression. Either way, his imagination becomes increasingly dis- sociated from his actual life experiences and may even tend to atrophy from disuse.
Doctrine Over Person
This sterile language reflects another characteristic feature of ideological totalism: the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine. This primacy of doctrine over person is evident in the continual shift between experience itself and the highly abstract interpretation of such experience--between genuine feelings and spurious cataloguing of feelings. It has much to do with the peculiar aura of half-reality which a totalist environment seems, at
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least to the outsider, to possess.
This tendency in the totalist approach to broad historical events
was described in relationship to Chinese Communism by John K. Fairbank and Mary C. Wright:
. . . stock characters like capitalist imperialists from abroad, feudal and semi-feudal reaction at home, and the resistance and liberation move- ments of "the people7' enact a morality play. This melodrama sees ag- gression, injustice, exploitation, and humiliation engulf the Chinese peo- ple until salvation comes at last with Communism. Mass revolutions re- quire an historical myth as part of their black and white morality, and this is the ideological myth of one of the great revolutions of world his- tory. 12
The inspiriting force of such myths cannot be denied; nor can one ignore their capacity for mischief. For when the myth becomes fused with the totalist sacred science, the resulting "logic" can be so compelling and coercive that it simply replaces the realities of individual experience. Consequently, past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored, to make them consistent with the doctrinal logic. This alteration becomes es- pecially malignant when its distortions are imposed upon individ- ual memory as occurred in the false confessions extracted during thought reform (most graphically Father Luca's).
The same doctrinal primacy prevails in the totalist approach to changing people: the demand that character and identity be reshaped, not in accordance with one's special nature or poten- tialities, but rather to fit the rigid contours of the doctrinal mold. The human is thus subjugated to the ahuman. And in this manner, the totalists, as Camus phrases it, "put an abstract idea above hu- man life, even if they call it history, to which they themselves have submitted in advance and to which they will decide quite arbitrarily, to submit everyone else as well/'13
The underlying assumption is that the doctrine--including its mythological elements--is ultimately more valid, true, and real than is any aspect of actual human character or human experience. Thus, even when circumstances require that a totalist movement follow a course of action in conflict with or outside of the doctrine, there exists what Benjamin Schwartz has described as a "will to orthodoxy" 14 which requires an elaborate fagade of new rationaliza- tions designed to demonstrate the unerring consistency of the
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doctrine and the unfailing foresight which it provides. The public operation of this will to orthodoxy is seen in the Party's explanation of the Hundred Flowers Campaign. But its greater importance lies in more hidden manifestations, particularly the totalists' pattern of imposing their doctrine-dominated remolding upon people in order to seek confirmation of (and again, dispel their own doubts about) this same doctrine. Rather than modify the myth in ac- cordance with experience, the will to orthodoxy requires instead that men be modified in order to reaffirm the myth. Thus, much of prison thought reform was devoted to making the Westerner conform to the pure image of "evil imperialist," so that he could take his proper role in the Communist morality play of Chinese history.
The individual person who finds himself under such doctrine- dominated pressure to change is thrust into an intense struggle with his own sense of integrity, a struggle which takes place in relation to polarized feelings of sincerity and insincerity. In a totalist environment, absolute "sincerity" is demanded; and the major criterion for sincerity is likely to be one's degree of doctrinal compliance--both in regard to belief and to direction of personal change. Yet there is always the possibility of retaining an alterna- tive version of sincerity (and of reality), the capacity to imagine a different kind of existence and another form of sincere commit- ment (as did Grace Wu when she thought, "the world could not be like this"). These alternative visions depend upon such things as the strength of previous identity, the penetration of the milieu by outside ideas, and the retained capacity for eventual individual renewal. The totalist environment, however, counters such "deviant" tendencies with the accusation that they stem entirely from personal "problems" ("thought problems" or "ideological problems") derived from untoward earlier ("bourgeois") influences. The outcome will depend largely upon how much genuine relevance the doctrine has for the individual emotional predicament. And even for those to whom it seems totally appealing, the exuberant sense of well-being it temporarily affords may be more a "delusion of wholeness" 15 than an expression of true and lasting inner harmony.
? The Dispensing of Existence
The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right. In thought reform, as in Chinese Communist practice generally, the world is divided into the "people" (defined as "the working class, the peasant class, the petite bourgeoisie, and the na- tional bourgeoisie"), and the "reactionaries" or "lackeys of im- perialism" (defined as "the landlord class, the bureaucratic capitalist class, and the KMT reactionaries and their henchmen"). Mao Tse- tung makes the existential distinction between the two groups quite explicit:
Under the leadership of the working class and the Communist Party, these classes [the people] unite together to form their own state and elect their own government [so as to] carry out a dictatorship over the lackeys of imperialism. . . . These two aspects, namely, democracy among the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, combine to form the people's democratic dictatorship . . . . to the hostile classes the state apparatus is the instrument of oppression. It is violent, and not "benevolent. " . . . Our benevolence applies only to the people, and not to the reactionary acts of the reactionaries and reactionary classes outside the people. 16
Being "outside the people," the reactionaries are presumably nonpeople. Under conditions of ideological totalism, in China and elsewhere, nonpeople have often been put to death, their execu- tioners then becoming guilty (in Camus' phrase) of "crimes of logic. " But the thought reform process is one means by which non- people are permitted, through a change in attitude and personal character, to make themselves over into people. The most literal example of such dispensing of existence and nonexistence is to be found in the sentence given to certain political criminals: execution in two years' time, unless during that two-year period they have demonstrated genuine progress in their reform.
In the light of this existential policy, the two different pronuncia- tions of the word people ("people" and "peepul") adopted by the European group described in Chapter 9 was more than just a practi- cal maneuver. It was a symbolic way to cut through the loaded totalist language and restore the word to its general meaning,
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thereby breaking down the imposed distinction between people and nonpeople. Since the Westerners involved were themselves clearly nonpeople theirs was an invention born of the negative status dispensed to them.
Are not men presumptuous to appoint themselves the dispensers of human existence? Surely this is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant man making himself God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the con- viction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false. Totalists thus feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed. Indeed, Mao's words sug- gest that all of thought reform can be viewed as a way to eradicate such allegedly false modes of existence--not only among the non- people, within whom they supposedly originate, but also among legitimate people allegedly contaminated by them.
The [function of the] people's state is to protect the people. Only where there is the people's state, is it possible for the people to use dem- ocratic methods or a nationwide and all-round scale to educate and re- form themselves, to free themselves from the influence of reactionaries at home and abroad . . . . to unlearn the bad habits and ideas acquired from the old society and not to let themselves travel on the erroneous path pointed out by the reactionaries, but to continue to advance and develop towards a Socialist and Communist society accomplishing the historic mission of completely eliminating classes and advancing toward a universal fraternity. 17
For the individual, the polar emotional conflict is the ultimate existential one of "being versus nothingness. " He is likely to be drawn to a conversion experience, which he sees as the only means of attaining a path of existence for the future (as did George Chen). The totalist environment--even when it does not resort to physical abuse--thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation much like the basic fear experienced by Western prisoners. A person can overcome this fear and find (in Martin Buber's term) "confirmation," not in his individual relationships, but only from the fount of all existence, the totalist Organization. Existence comes to depend upon creed (I believe, therefore I am), upon submission (I obey, therefore I am) and beyond these, upon
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a sense of total merger with the ideological movement. Ultimately of course one compromises and combines the totalist "confirmation" with independent elements of personal identity; but one is ever made aware that, should he stray too far along this "erroneous path," his right to existence may be withdrawn.
The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychologi- cal themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform (or "brainwashing"). But facile comparisons can be misleading. No milieu ever achieves complete totalism, and many relatively moderate environments show some signs of it. Moreover, totalism tends to be recurrent rather than continuous: in China, for instance, its fullest expressioii occurs during thought reform; it is less apparent during lulls in thought reform, although it is by no means absent. And like the "enthusiasm" with which it is often associated, totalism is more apt to be present during the early phases of mass movements than later--Communist China in the 1950*5 was generally more totalist than Soviet Russia. But if totalism has at any time been prominent in a movement, there is always the possibility of its reappearance, even after long periods of relative moderation.
Then too, some environments come perilously close to totalism but at the same time keep alternative paths open; this combina- tion can offer unusual opportunities for achieving intellectual and emotional depth. And even the most full-blown totalist milieu can provide (more or less despite itself) a valuable and enlarging life experience--if the man exposed has both the opportunity to leave the extreme environment and the inner capacity to absorb and make inner use of the totalist pressures (as did Father V echten and Father Luca).
Also, ideological totalism itself may offer a man an intense peak experience: a sense of transcending all that is ordinary and prosaic, of freeing himself from the encumbrances of human ambivalence, of entering a sphere of truth, reality, trust, and sincerity beyond any he had ever known or even imagined. But these peak experi- ences, the result as they are of external pressure, distortion, and threat, carry a great potential for rebound, and for equally intense opposition to the very things which initially seem so liberating. Such
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imposed peak experiences 18--as contrasted with those more freely and privately arrived at by great religious leaders and mystics-- are essentially experiences of personal closure. Rather than stimu- lating greater receptivity and "openness to the world/' they en- courage a backward step into some form of "embeddedness"--a retreat into doctrinal and organizational exclusiveness, and into all-or-nothing emotional patterns more characteristic (at least at this stage of human history) of the child than of the individuated adult. 19
And if no peak experience occurs, ideological totalism does even greater violence to the human potential: it evokes destructive emo- tions, produces intellectual and psychological constrictions, and deprives men of all that is most subtle and imaginative--under the false promise of eliminating those very imperfections and ambivalences which help to define the human condition. This combination of personal closure, self-destructiveness, and hostility toward outsiders leads to the dangerous group excesses so characteris- tic of ideological totalism in any form. It also mobilizes extremist tendencies in those outsiders under attack, thus creating a vicious circle of totalism.
What is the source of ideological totalism? How do these ex- tremist emotional patterns originate? These questions raise the most crucial and the most difficult of human problems. Behind ideological totalism lies the ever-present human quest for the om- nipotent guide--for the supernatural force, political party, philo- sophical ideas, great leader, or precise science--that will bring ul- timate solidarity to all men and eliminate the terror of death and nothingness. This quest is evident in the mythologies, religions, and histories of all nations, as well as in every individual life. The degree of individual totalism involved depends greatly upon factors in one's personal history: early lack of trust, extreme environmental chaos, total domination by a parent or parent-representative, in- tolerable burdens of guilt, and severe crises of identity. Thus an early sense of confusion and dislocation, or an early experience of unusually intense family milieu control, can produce later a com- plete intolerance for confusion and dislocation, and a longing for the reinstatement of milieu control. But these things are in some measure part of every childhood experience; and therefore the po- tential for totalism is a continuum from which no one entirely es-
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capes, and in relationship to which no two people are exactly the same.
It may be that the capacity for totalism is most fundamentally a product of human childhood itself, of the prolonged period of helplessness and dependency through which each of us must pass. Limited as he is, the infant has no choice but to imbue his first nurturing authorities--his parents--with an exaggerated omnip- otence, until the time he is himself capable of some degree of in- dependent action and judgment. And even as he develops into the child and the adolescent, he continues to require many of the all- or-none polarities of totalism as terms with which to define his in- tellectual, emotional, and moral worlds. Under favorable circum- stances (that is, when family and culture encourage individuation) these requirements can be replaced by more flexible and moderate tendencies; but they never entirely disappear.
During adult life, individual totalism takes on new contours as it becomes associated with new ideological interests. It may become part of the configuration of personal emotions, messianic ideas, and organized mass movement which I have described as ideological totalism. When it does, we cannot speak of it as simply a form of regression. It is partly this, but it is also something more: a new form of adult embeddedness, originating in patterns of security- seeking carried over from childhood, but with qualities of ideas and aspirations that are specifically adult. During periods of cultural crisis and of rapid historical change, the totalist quest for the om- nipotent guide leads men to seek to become that guide.
Totalism, then, is a widespread phenomenon, but it is not the only approach to re-education. We can best use our knowledge of it by applying its criteria to familiar processes in our own cul- tural tradition and in our own country.
? CHAPTER 23 APPROACHES TO RE-EDUCATION
Throughout this book I have been discussing what
Milton called "the bitter change of fierce extremes. " This kind of discussion, especially when it is critical in tone, im- plies that there are alternative possibilities for human change less bitter and less extreme. By human change I mean those shifts and alterations in the sense of inner identity which occur within individ- uals during late adolescence and adult life. My concern in this chapter is with the great agencies of such change--educational, psychological, religious, and political--and with their resemblances to, and their possibilities for avoiding, ideological totalism.
All these agencies make use of four general approaches to chang- ing people: coercion, exhortation, therapy, and realization. Ideologi- cal totalism utilizes all four, as this study of thought reform makes clear; but it leans most heavily upon the first two. The approaches, therefore, are by no means mutually exclusive; however, each con- veys a distinct message, a specific goal, and an appeal to a particular aspect of human nature.
The message of coercion is: you must change and become what we tell you to become--or else. The threat embodied in the "or else" may be anything from death to social ostracism, any form of physical or emotional pain. The goal of naked coercion is to pro- duce a cowed and demoralized follower. It is directed at the most primitive of human emotions, and stimulates the desire to flee, or
438
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to fight back, to freeze in fear, or submit completely. A good ex- ample of the coercive approach to changing people was the Nazi concentration camp. There, as Bruno Bettelheim has described,1 the intent was "to break the prisoners as individuals and to change them into docile masses. . . . useful subjects of the Nazi state/' Gestapo authorities made no effort to indoctrinate the inmates, and in fact treated them in an unprecedentedly cruel, sadistic, and degrading fashion. Yet it is significant that even under such con- ditions some ideological conversions occurred: some long-term prisoners eventually adopted Nazi views on Aryan racial supremacy and on the legitimacy of German expansionism--a literal expres- sion of the psychological mechanism of "identification with the aggressor. "2 In thought reform, coercion is greatest during the early stages of the prison process; but it is an essential ingredient of all varieties of thought reform and of all phases, however much it may temporarily be shunted to the background.
The message of the exhortative approach is: you should change --if you are a moral man--and become what we (in the name of a higher moral authority) tell you to become. Exhortation seeks to create converts and disciples, people who have been changed in accordance with the specific ideological convictions of the mentor. It appeals to the individual's wish to be a good man, or to become a better one; to pre-existing tendencies toward experiencing guilt and shame, including existential guilt. It is the method par excel- lence of religions and of pseudo-religious secular ideologies, both of which reinforce their moral appeal by their promise of reward, earthly or supernatural. Exhortation is, as I have already empha- sized, always extremely prominent in thought reform, and is per- haps the most prominent of thought reform's approaches.
The message of the therapeutic approach is: you can change --from your sickly state, and find relief for your suffering--if you have a genuine urge to become healthy; and if you are willing to follow my (or our) method and guidance. Its goal is physical and emotional health (in the sense conveyed by the words hale and wftoZe), freedom from incapacitating disease and defect. It makes its appeal to that part of a man that is most reasonable, healthful, health-seeking, and balanced. This has been the tra- ditional approach of the medical profession, and in the emotional sphere it is best exemplified by psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
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But religious and secular ideologies also use this approach, or at least make claims on it. Thought reform is extravagant in its re- ferral to "illness," "health," and "cure/' following Mao Tse-tung's original lead; this usage implies biological restoration, and places reformers in the role of social physicians.
The message of realization is: you can change--in such a fashion that you will be able to express more fully your own potential-- if you are willing to confront yourself with ideas and approaches which challenge your present ways of knowing and acting. Its goal is to produce a person who expresses his creative potential to the full, one who extends his faculties to their utmost in the effort to appreciate and produce at the highest level at which he is capable. Although this goal is closely related to that of the therapeu- tic approach, it is by no means the same; it may cause rather than relieve pain, and may promote within a person periods of incapacity alternating with creative peaks rather than a balanced continuity of health and strength. Each of the major agencies for change at times emphasizes the approach of realization; at other times, each strays from it. It has been an avowed ideal of such diverse groups as political forces associated with traditional liberalism; various psychoanalytic groups/ most recently those influenced by exis- tentialism; mystics of all major Eastern and Western religions and practicing Zen Buddhists; and educators influenced by the philos- ophy of John Dewey. Other historical variations are the Confucian concept of self-cultivation,and the Greek notion of aret&--the view that life exists for the purpose of reaching the full expression of one's inborn capacity. 4 But the approach of realization is the most difficult of all to maintain: many have violated it even as they theoretically proclaimed it, and it is notorious for its quick mortality rate. Indeed, the very formation of an institution around it has too
often signified the beginnings of its disappearance. Here thought reform's claim is frequently the bitterest of ironies, since totalism does more to stifle than to realize the human potential. Yet the claim is not entirely false, since sometimes, especially among the young, thought reform has been experienced as a pathway to self- realization.
In practice, no one of these approaches ever appears in pure form (even the Nazi concentration camp must have been influenced by the exhortative spirit of the mass movement behind it), and
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significant attempts at changing people usually embody elements of all four. There is, moreover, considerable overlapping among them, and distinguishing them can become difficult.
Thought reform in particular shows the complexities of interplay between exhortation and coercion: the use of coercion to stimulate excessive guilt and shame so that these in turn create an inner exhortation; and the use of exhortation to stimulate negative conscience so power- ful that it becomes in effect a form of self-coercion. At its other end, exhortation merges with therapy, as therapy merges with re- alization. Yet these four approaches can and should be distinguished from one another in any attempt at re-education, if not as abso- lute alternatives, at least as predominant emotional tones.
In discussing the broader agencies of change--education, psy- chiatry, religion, and politics--I shall make no attempt to list every possible similarity and dissimilarity with thought reform. Rather, I shall point up those aspects in each of these agencies which can be illuminated by our general study of totalism.
Education and Re-education
I can best introduce the subject of the relationship of educa- tion to thought reform and to ideological totalism by presenting the several points of view which emerged at a small faculty seminar held at an American girls' college. After I had described the thought reform process at a revolutionary university, a lively debate began among the participating teachers about the relevance of thought reform to practices at their own institution (which I shall call Arly College).
Professor A made a blunt accusation:
I think we are doing the same thing. We are brainwashing the girls here at Arly. When the girls arrive as freshmen, they are herded together, greeted by seniors and other students who help them and show them around so that when they get to a class they can be relaxed and they can listen. They can agree with what is said and then we can be sure they will not leave Arly and go home. Then they can settle down to learning how to become good Arly girls. . . . In most of our classes, the teacher has a definite idea of what we expect, and will view the stu- dent's past as evil until the student comes to this idea. There is no difference at all.
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As I listened to Professor A's accusation (and self-accusation), I felt that she was taking her extreme stand partly for its shock value, partly because she wished to air her worst fears (and have them relieved), and partly to express a certain amount of hos- tility toward her profession. Her attitude was manifestly open- minded, but it was also intellectually inadequate. Impressed by the similarities, and unable to immediately fathom the differences, she had in effect concluded: education is "brainwashing. "
Her words did not go unchallenged. Professor B became visibly upset, and firmly disagreed:
What we do is entirely different. The point is that at a revolutionary university they demand a specific product, and insist that everyone emerge as this. Here at Arly we do not care about such things. We do not care what the girls believe when they graduate. Our main concern is that they learn something from their college experience.
Professor B compassionately defended an institution to which she was deeply committed, and in her emphasis on the "expected product," she made an important point. But the threat to her self- esteem, implicit in Professor A's comparison, led her to overstate her defense; for when the others questioned her more closely she admitted that as a serious educator she could not avoid caring about what her students believed and about what kind of young women they were encouraged to become during their college years. She was taking an equally simplistic intellectual position: namely, that good education has absolutely no connection with "brainwash- ing" (or with ideological totalism).
A young professor of English, also troubled, but more wary of facile conclusions, restated the issue as a dilemma:
Much of what we teach depends upon some kind of group agreement on standards of quality and truth of concepts. At the same time, one of our main troubles is getting people to speak up and offer criticisms of others' ideas based upon their own genuine opinions. . . . But just by simply saying that Shakespeare was the greatest poet in the English language--an assumption on which any English teacher would find widespread common agreement--and by then expecting the student to hold this opinion, aren't we really indulging in the same kind of process as thought reform?
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After considerable additional discussion, during which I men- tioned some of the features of ideological totalism, Professor C made a thoughtful attempt at resolution:
Perhaps we can avoid this by holding our beliefs with a certain amount of tension . . . with an attitude that "I believe in this, but recognize that there can be other beliefs in opposition to it. " In this way we can subject any belief which we hold to the tension or pressure of its own limitations and of other alternative beliefs.
By neither denying the continuities with thought reform nor overstating them in nihilistic despair, but instead by facing them as an unavoidable paradox, Professor C opened the way to a more fundamental approach. He grasped the necessity for both commit- ment and flexibility in education, and especially the necessity for its inclusion of what Michael Polanyi has called "personal knowl- edge"--knowledge neither strictly objective nor strictly subjec- tive which demands active participation and responsibility on the part of the knower. 5
Later, as I thought about these three positions, I realized that Professors A and B had gone astray largely because they were un- able to understand the relationship between education and re-ed- ucation. In the broadest sense, these amount to the same thing. For in the student's act of attaining knowledge, his previous pat- terns of identity as well as belief must be altered, however slightly. Every new idea or technique requires a complex rearrangement of what existed before. And this rearrangement is necessary from the moment of birth, since the infant begins not as a tabula rasa but as an organism with innate behavioral tendencies (whether we call these tendencies drives, instincts, or needs). Re-education is inevi- tably influenced by the attitudes and beliefs (personal and institu- tional) conveyed by the mentors who guide it, and thus has some- thing in common with thought reform. Professor A perceived some of this and was overwhelmed by her perception. Professor B had to deny both the relationship between education and re-education and the extent of the mentor's involvement in the educational process. Professor C was searching for a formulation which would account for the relationship between education and re-education, for the mentor's influence upon it, and also for his being himself
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bound by certain group standards; but he transcended these simi- larities by distinguishing between good educational practice and ideological totalism. His concept of tension in the educational proc- ess was thus an affirmative addition to the negative criteria of ideological totalism described in the previous chapter.
Any educational experience is a three-way interplay among stu- dent, mentor, and the ideas being taught--ideally it is an interplay of stimulating tension. Such tension includes the mentor's forceful presentation of ideas within the context of the cultural traditions in which they arose; his demand that each student permit himself to be challenged by these ideas; and his allowance for each stu- dent's individual relationship to the ideas. When this tension does not exist, education is apt either to move in the direction of totalism or else simply fail. If, for instance, the idea or the subject matter becomes so predominant that mentor and student come to see themselves as mere vehicles for it, education encounters the totalistic dangers of doctrine over person and of the implied claim of a sacred science. Either the student will be completely uninvolved, or else he will be coerced by seemingly mysterious ahuman forces. The same totalist trends are present when mentor and idea come to- gether in an incontestable, omnipotent combination which makes no provision for the student; also present in these circumstances are milieu control, mystical manipulation, and--depending upon the forms of discipleship which the mentor's individual and institu- tional character dictate--the possibility of the demand for absolute purity, the cult of confession, and the dispensing of existence.
This situation might exist, for instance, in a graduate school department of, let us say, economics, sociology, or literature, domi- nated by a forceful, authoritarian department head who is a single- minded devotee of one particular doctrinal approach to his subject and who considers alternative views "erroneous," and "unscientific. " His students' assigned reading matter would be limited to this "cor- rect" approach, except possibly for a few readings among "incor- rect" writers included for the sake of gathering ammunition with which to ridicule them; students would be unable to question the ultimate truth of the prescribed doctrine and approach; they would feel guilty, frightened, and ashamed if they began to suspect that a rival approach might be a better one; and each would be under great pressure to reshape his identity in such a way that it could
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encompass the correct doctrine--especially those who might be seeking the good will of the department head in relation to their future careers. This is, of course, the educational situation which most closely approximates totalism, although the ultimate avail- ability of alternative life choices outside the correct doctrine does distinguish it from thought reform.
Finally, at the opposite extreme is the teaching situation in which ideas are considered to have little importance and are presented (and are expected to be received) with minimal involvement on everyone's part. In these circumstances, a disinterested withdrawal on the part of both mentor and student occurs, or else a com- pensatory overfocus on the student-mentor relationship, so that both become bogged down in a psychological morass which neither understands.
In each of these imbalances within the three-way relationship, the student's intellectual growth and his quest for realization are both hampered.
Three-way tension does not in any way imply absolute equality of mentor and student; on the contrary, it demands that the former accept the responsibility of his intellectually superior position, and that the latter surrender himself to the extent that he becomes receptive rather than refractory to what is being taught. Moreover, temporary discipleships and educational environments of near-to- talism (such as sometimes exist in Jesuit-run schools) offer distinct intellectual advantages if the student goes on from these to the world outside. Even relatively coercive institutional demands for a particular identity product--transmitted by faculty and advanced students through a number of well-defined hazing rituals--can pro- vide emotional benefits: strong identifications, the opportunity to test one's capacity for rebellion against respected authorities, and an experience of personal trial and initiation which, although pain- ful at the time, is nostalgically recalled forever after. Relatively coercive environments can come close enough to totalism to do their damage, especially at lower age levels (for instance, the British public schools described by George Orwell). 6 But in pluralistic societies, even the most extreme of these institutions see themselves as part of the individual's continuing educational process. They may try to influence him as much as possible during his stay; but it is assumed that he will go on to new ideas and different identities
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in the future. They become most harmful when they approach the totalist extreme of claiming to offer the student a single path of absolute perfection whose limits he is never to exceed.
The alternative to totalism in education then is a liberalism based upon the three-way tension described above, a liberalism that in Lionel Trilling's words can recapture its "essential imagination of variousness and possibility/' without losing the "awareness of complexity and difficulty/' It is, as Trilling goes on to say, "a large tendency rather than a concise body of doctrine. "7 In this "tendency" there is a rejection of omnipotence on the part of the mentor even when the student seeks to thrust it upon him; and a balance between a vigorous presentation of available knowledge and the encouragement of those elements of the student's imagina- tion which may someday transcend that knowledge in new dis- covery.
Psychological Re-education
Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are forms of psychological re- education; but they focus less upon man's knowledge of the world about him than upon his understanding of his own self. Their concern with the most fundamental and the most hidden of human emotions adds a special depth to their re-educating efforts, and a special intensity to their influence. Their avoidance of totalism is therefore a matter of particular importance. 8
The ethos of psychoanalysis and of its derived psychotherapies is in direct opposition to that of totalism. Indeed, its painstaking and sympathetic investigations of single human minds place it within the direct tradition of those Western intellectual currents which historically have done most to counter totalism: humanism, individualism, and free scientific inquiry. Because of its continuing concern for individual differences and for flexible personal develop- ment, it is not surprising that psychoanalytic work has never been permitted under totalitarianism (or political totalism). And psycho- analytically-derived insights, as I have attempted to suggest through- out this book, provide one of the best ways to counter totalism through shedding light on its manner of functioning.
But in its organizational aspects, psychoanalysis--like every other revolutionary movement, whether scientific, political, or religious
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--has had difficulty maintaining its initial liberating spirit; it has had its full share of bitter ideological controversy and schism. More- over, certain social and historical features of the psychoanalytic movement--its early struggle with the unusually strong hostilities stimulated by its "shocking" doctrines, the novelty and isolated intensity of its therapeutic relationship, the brilliant virtuosity and "grandiose one-sidedness"9 of its originator, and the subsequent intellectual and emotional appeal of its doctrine among practi- tioners and patients to the point of sometimes substituting for religious or political beliefs--have given rise to special problems in relationship to its scientific pursuits. These problems, and espe- cially the effect they have on the psychoanalytic training situa- tion, have been commented on by many psychoanalysts*10 I can add little to what has already been written except to place some of these issues in the perspective of this study of totalism.
Psychoanalytic training is a form of personal re-education, in preparation for re-educating others. During his years of apprentice- ship the trainee develops three important identities. He becomes first a patient. Through his own free associations in the "faceless" encounter with his analyst, he comes to grips with previously buried emotions in a waythat "can play havoc with . . . his adjustments to the individuals close to him, who cannot for the life of them see why a person has to get sick in order to learn how to cure others. " 1J- This training analysis is his means of gaining insight into and mastery over those psychological tendencies which might other- wise interfere with his own therapeutic work. He is also a student. He attends seminars on psychoanalytic theory and technique, sees these principles demonstrated in his own analysis, and learns how to utilize them in the analyses he later conducts under the supervision of senior analysts. And he is a candidate. He seeks to qualify for membership in the local institute, and in the national and international psychoanalytic organizations--for eventual "con- firmation" as a psychoanalyst. Erikson has referred to this train- ing as "a new kind of asceticism," one that "demands a total and central personal involvement . . . which takes greater chances with the individual's relationship to himself . . . than any other pro- fessional training except monkhood. " 12
From the standpoint of the criteria for ideological totalism, we may raise the following additional questions: Does this combina-
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tion of personal therapy, professional instruction, and organiza- tional influence--all mediated by a single training institute--create a tendency toward milieu control? Does it cause the institute itself to become surrounded with a near-mystical aura? Do these circum- stances--especially the candidate's learning a scientific doctrine in connection with its therapeutic application to his own psychological distress--create an implicit demand for ideological purity? And do they raise the possibility that his analyst and his institute, by bring- ing about his "cure," will become (even if inadvertently) the ar- biters of his neurotic and existential guilt? Could the confession process of therapy in this way take on an extratherapeutic function of binding the candidate to the psychoanalytic movement, thereby making him hesitant to criticize its teaching? Is there sometimes a tendency, in the descriptive and reductive overemployment of a particular school's or institute's favorite technical terms, to load the language or to suggest a sacred science? Is there thus a danger of establishing (perhaps unconsciously on everyone's part) a pat- tern of intellectual conformity as a prerequisite for a successful training experience--or in other words, establishing a primacy of doctrine over person? And when questions of ideological difference influence decisions about who is to be recognized as a legitimate psychoanalyst, is there a tendency toward the dispensing of exist- ence?
It is perhaps unnecessary to stress that the psychoanalytic train- ing procedure never approaches the totalist actualities of thought reform, and for this reason I raise questions about "tendencies" and "dangers. "13 Nor can the problems involved in preparing men and women for psychoanalytic work in a manner that offers maximum protection for future patients be ignored. Indeed, it may be that the psychoanalyst often requires something stronger than a working hypothesis--something closer to a dogma--as a combined protective shield and sorting mechanism for the extraordinary rush of emotions released by the psychoanalytic process. But psycho- analysis is able to look critically at itself, to experiment, correct, and change. As early as 1937, Franz Alexander, then President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, warned against these dangers and urged that psychoanalysisdivest itself of its own "move- ment"; 14 others subsequently have suggested diminishing the insti- tutes' power,15 and dividing the therapeutic and didactic aspects
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of the student's training so that they are no longer controlled by the same institute. 16 Studies of the training procedure are being conducted; and the general trend is toward a more "open" environ- ment, toward a better balance in the educational tension among doctrine, mentor, and student. Thus the sweeping accusation that "psychoanalysis is brainwashing" is as false as the statement that "education is brainwashing/' Insofar as tendencies toward totalism exist, however, they are bound to interfere with intellectual prog- ress, and with the emergence of those creative spirits which any discipline requires if it is to continue to contribute to the stream of human thought
I shall mention briefly just a few more of the many implications of this study of thought reform for the theory and practice of psy- chiatric re-education. The first pertains to the concept of "resist- ance," which is basic to most psychotherapy. Since thought reform has its own notion of "resistance/7 the caricatured exaggerations of ideological totalism can be helpful in examining some of the presuppositions of more moderate and more genuinely therapeutic work. Chinese reformers are apt to consider any inner opposition or outer hesitation--in fact anything at all that stands in the way of thought reform--as "resistance. " The psychotherapist sim- ilarly regards almost any attitude or behavior standing in the way of cure--but especially the reluctance to bring unconscious ideas into consciousness--to be expressions of resistance to therapy. These resistances are the real experience of any therapist; but after a study of thought reform one cannot help but be a bit chastened in the use of the concept. That is, as a psychotherapist I would consider it important to ask myself whether what appears to be resistance is truly a reflection of inner opposition to cure, or whether it might be inner opposition to my concept of the necessary direction of cure. And I would also wonder whether such resistance might not be a reflection of poor communication between the patient and myself, or of the absence between us of shared values17 and assump- tions about the therapy, both of which might be profitably in- vestigated along with any psychological barriers within the patient.
The psychoanalytic concept of "transference"--a concept which is constantly being studied and reformulated--may also be re- examined in the light of questions of totalism. The therapist's
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recognition of the existence of transference--that is, of the patient's tendency to re-experience, in relationship to the therapist, earlier attitudes and fantasies developed originally toward parental authori- ties--is on the whole an extremely important check against to- talism. For it provides a theoretical framework within which any tendencies in the patient to grant omnipotence to the therapist can be questioned by both, as well as a means of inquiring thera- peutically into the sources of such tendencies, and a rationale for resolving these emotions--however difficult a task this resolution may be. In thought reform an opposite policy prevails. Transfer- ence occurs there too, not so much in relationship to one "therapist" as to the entire ideological movement; but instead of attempting to understand and ultimately resolve this transference, the reformers seek to enlarge and perpetuate it in the participant's permanent surrender of self to the authoritarian organization.
Like many other useful concepts, however, the notion of trans- ference, if it is overemphasized, can produce the very results against which it ordinarily guards. Thus, if the therapeutic relationship is viewed as exclusively one of transference--with the actual person of the therapist and the adult self of the patient ignored--the danger arises that the patient will come to see himself almost entirely within his infant-child identity, and that his bestowal of omnipo- tence upon the therapist will be inadvertently encouraged. Psycho- analysts have recognized this problem and have emphasized the necessary dialectic in every therapeutic relationship between actual encounter and transference, as well as the inevitability of the therapist's own emotional involvement (or countertransference reactions). 18 Especially relevant is Janet Mackenzie Rioch's con- cern 19 that the psychotherapist do all possible to offset rather than perpetuate the patient's frequent "willingness to surrender," and that he take cognizance of the "symbolically submissive position" inherent in the psychoanalytic treatment situation. Her warning to the analyst to avoid the role of the "chronic hypnotist" amounts to a warning against totalism--since hypnosis is in effect a situation of interpersonal totalism in which the subject's perceptual world is reduced to the highly-focused influence of the omnipotent hyp- notist. 20
Another important issue which thought reform raises for psy- chiatric therapy is the use of the concept of "reality. " The totalist
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environment (in a Chinese prison, for instance) can literally stand reality on its head: demand that all within its sway commit them- selves to altered versions of external events, and then insist that these falsehoods constitute "objective reality. " Psychiatrists are familiar with distortions like these, but arising in the minds of in- dividuals rather than resulting from group manipulations; and as psychiatrists we consider them signs of mental illness, thereby imply- ing that we expect psychologically healthy people to be able to adhere to a reality of external events. We also recognize the great variation in interpretations of reality, especially in relationship to the "psychological realities" of individual patients. And we extend the concept of reality to suggest something on the order of the way things are, as opposed to the way that the patient imagines them to be. In fact, we regard the therapeutic relationship as a means of enhancing the patient's reality-testing, of helping him to recognize his own distortions.
All of these usages have validity; but the therapist's notion of reality is nonetheless highly colored by his own ideological convic- tions about such matters as psychological health and illness, social conformity and rebelliousness, commitment and detachment, and especially about what constitutes wise or mature attitudes and be- havior. Moreover, it is precisely these issues--and their relationship to problems of personal identity--which trouble patients in psycho- therapy in America today, rather than the more clear-cut symptom neuroses described during the earlier days of psychoanalysis. This means consequently that unless the therapist can sort out his own reality prejudices, he may inadvertently transmit his personal ideologies within the treatment situation and require a successful implant upon the patient as a criterion for cure. Since ideological convictions about all of these matters are never absent, and indeed are necessary for any constructive change in therapy, they are better openly discussed as a part of the therapeutic process, and discussed in a manner that allows for their subjectivity and tenta- tiveness. To do this requires the view that reality is both definite
(in relationship to external events), and highly relative (in relation- ship to any observer's interpretation of such events).
Concerning milieu therapy, I have already mentioned thought reform's demonstration of the tremendous influence which a partic- ular milieu--and the psychological themes contained therein--can
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bring to bear upon the individual person. This has great importance for psychiatric practice in a variety of ways, but I shall limit myself here to mentioning the harmful effects of environments that are "extremist" in regard to the magnitude of stimuli which they offer. At one pole is the deprived milieu--the milieu of "sensory depriva- tion"21--in which stimuli are so sparse as to be insufficient for the maintenance within the individual person of a reasonable degree of interest in and responsiveness toward his surroundings. Such an environment has been created under experimental condi- tions, and it produces patterns of boredom, restlessness, stimulus- hunger, extensive day-dreaming, loss of organized thinking, hyno- gogic states, and a variety of hallucinatory experiences. The rough equivalent of a deprived milieu within a psychiatric environment is the old-fashioned back ward in which patients sat about (and un- fortunately still sit about) aimlessly, with little or no challenge or activity-evoking stimuli from their external surroundings. The op- posite pole is the milieu of ideological totalism, in which the in- dividual is bombarded with stimuli to the point of suffocation. The counterpart of this kind of environment within a psychiatric hos- pital would be (again speaking very roughly) the "total push" ap- proaches adopted during the recent past by many institutions as a reaction against the stagnancy of the back wards atmosphere. While this was a definite improvement, it sometimes led to ac- tivity for activity's sake; a revealing comment on this was made to me by a schizophrenic patient after a few weeks' exposure to total push: "Gee, Doc, I wish I had a minute to sit down and think. "
There is a certain similarity in these two types of extreme en- vironments: both are overcontrolled milieux, and both interfere with the variety and balance of environmental stimuli required for optimal psychological function. Both are thus ultimately "de- prived," although we cannot say (as has sometimes been suggested) that the milieu of sensory deprivation is an experimental model for thought reform.
Psychiatric hospitals have learned to avoid both extremes, and to develop programs and activities which offer a better balance between individual and milieu, so that the patient is neither overwhelmed by external stimuli nor so cut off from them that he is thrown back entirely upon his already malfunctioning internal life. Recent workers have stressed both socialization and individual creativity,
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the increase of "open" (unlocked) wards, and the therapeutic com- munity. They have advocated patient participation in the planning of hospital programs, a balance between ordered and spontaneous activities, and finally, an avoidance of the identity of permanent patienthood through emphasizing the patient's connections with and educational preparation for--rather than his medical isolation from--the outside world. 22
Finally, thought reform also has sobering implications for psy- chiatric theory. Despite contrivances and crudities, Chinese Com- munist theory about the "class character of man" was made opera- tive and--at least to a certain extent--could be shown to "work. " Theories have an irrepressible tendency to confirm themselves, especially when one deals with human beings; in Alfred North Whitehead's phrase, "the idea is a prophecy which procures its own fulfillment. " This does not mean that we need despair and give up theorizing entirely (I certainly have shown no such tend- ency in this book); but it does suggest that psychiatrists can learn from physical scientists to look on theory not as a permanent and unalterable structure but rather as a useful and relatively valid means of ordering the data of experience within the framework of existing knowledge. Everyone of course recognizes this about theory--except when it comes to his theoretical beliefs.
Similarly, thought reform should make us somewhat cautious about those claims to "unification" of the behavioral sciences which imply an ultimate monopoly of one approach or an ultimate ideal of incontrovertible truth. A plunge into this kind of theoretical closure would be but another example of an intolerance for con- fusion driving us into the seductive embrace of totalism. I do not suggest that we can afford to rest content or cease being critical of faulty and ill-conceived theory and research; nor is there any doubt about our need for greater unity in our knowledge of man. But thought reform illustrates (and scientific experience strongly af- firms) the importance of remaining open to knowledge from all sources, even (or especially) the most unlikely. I am convinced that we need new approaches to psychiatric theorizing based upon humanized notions of style, pattern7 and configuration in the inter- play of internal and external psychological forces, rather than upon the more simplistic cause-and-effect mechanical images of nine- teenth-century physics now so widely employed. Such new ap-
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preaches seem to be necessary if we are to learn more about the nature of man's emotional involvement in his changing physical environment, the ways in which he is himself undergoing change, and the relationship of this change to psychological health and disease, and to the realization of human potentialities. They will require outlooks which are the very antithesis of totalism: a subtle and flexible historical perspective beyond that of the individual life- history, a certain degree of boldness in the application of dis- ciplined imagination, and a willingness to risk being wrong--or to expose (in Riesman's term) the "nerve of failure. "
Religion, Political Religion, and Science
I have already suggested that thought reform bears many re- semblances to practices of organized religion, and to various kinds of religious re-education. Indeed, most of the psychological themes of ideological totalism can be found somewhere in the Judeo- Christian tradition, however indirect any such theological in- fluences may have been in the development of thought reform itself. These totalist tendencies have usually been related either to the theocratic search for heresy or to patterns of revitalizing enthusiasm--or (as in thought reform) to both.
In the first of these, the theocratic search for heresy, the in- evitable assumption is that the administrators--whether themselves secular or clerical--rule their community and carry out their ideo- logical purifications only as agents of a perfect and omniscient deity. The classical examples are the Inquisition of the middle ages and the treason and anti-Papist trials of sixteenth-century England. Both of these movements were characterized by orgies of false confessions, apparently produced by psychological manipulations of reality, identity, and guilt similar to those of thought reform. Thus the Inquisition created its own witches, much as thought reform created its spies and reactionaries--this despite the fact that Inquisitors were specifically cautioned in one of their "technical manuals" (Malleus Maleficarum or Witches' Hammer) 23 against the undesirable possibility of producing false confessions. And prominent persons in Tudor England, impressed by "the brilliant aura of divinity, the inscrutable light of infallibility which emanated from the royal person" denounced themselves for crimes they had
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never committed. 24 Chinese Confucianism (whether or not one considers it a religion) on the whole avoided such tendencies, al- though it too at times became sensitive to heresy and moved in the direction of totalism; for the most part it created something closer to what Whitehead has termed a "genial orthodoxy," and allowed a considerable amount of personal leeway within the limits of its unchallengeable assumptions (in this respect not unlike some phases of medieval Catholicism).
The second variety of religious totalism, that associated with revitalizing enthusiasm, has been widespread enough: it can be found in the more extreme practices of early Lutheranism and Calvinism,25 in the Chiliastic sects of the middle ages26 and in many post-Reformation fundamentalist and revivalist cults. All of these movements, according to Ronald Knox, reflect the "over- mastering influence" of St. Augustine--even if "exaggerated now from this angle, now from that. " 27 Usually laying great stress upon the dramatic personal conversion experience, while varying in their relative emphasis upon confession and re-education, they have sought to purify man in accordance with a particular vision of Biblical truth or prophecy; as in thought reform, this vision has sometimes been so urgent that men have been physically and psychologically brutalized in its name.
Beyond these theological excesses, thought reform has a more fundamental relationship to religion in general, a relationship noted by almost every priest and minister who has come into contact with it. One Jesuit priest who was studying Chinese indoctrination methods in Hong Kong emphasized to me the following parallels with Christianity: the concept of love (of country, "the people," labor, science, and public property); the concept of hope in the future (through the accomplishments of socialism); faith (in Communist ideology); a deity (the Communist movement); a spirit of martyrdom, of sacrifice and suffering, an aspiration to sainthood; stress upon humility and selflessness; and the stress upon converting theoretical principles into a way of life. (Many secular writers--Bertrand Russell, for instance--have made similar com- parisons.