No More Learning

. A very powerful tool.
I felt his alternation in this statement between first person sin- gular and plural, and the second and third persons, was more than a matter of a European speaking English (his English was, in fact, fluent), and really reflected his alternating images of himself as a member of the Communist-oriented group, as the target of its criticism, and as a spiritually-active European Catholic. He in fact emphasized that it was not possible to use this kind of group criticism in his present circumstances, and that he was forced to apply this "tool" himself--and so, in effect, assumesimultaneously all three identities. He believed that Communism and Catholicism should maintain their interchange of techniques and that Catholi- cism should seek to benefit from the Communist improvements "Lenin borrowed many things from religious orders, but amplified them a lot. . . . If we can get them back from Lenin, that is all right. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 217
Yet he could not avoid recognizing his inevitable conflict, as a Catholic priest, with the Communist creed. When I asked, for in- stance, if he were troubled by the problem of materialism--a point of bitter controversy, at least theoretically, between Communism and Catholicism--he replied, "No, but it means I can never be a Communist/' and went on to say:
My conflict with the Communists came when I said, "For me religion is first, Communism is second/' If I had been able to write a blank check and say that anything the Communists do about religion is OK, then I could have stayed. That much I could not have done. . . . I trusted them very much, but not that much. . . . If not for this prob- lem of religion I would have followed the Communist Party entirely, without any restriction.
He added that during his last month in jail he wondered, "Do I not go too far? " and then decided, "I shall never have an uncondi- tional surrender. I shall never sign a blank check. " Now he con- cluded, not without some sadness, that because of this unwilling- ness, "for the Communists I am still an enemy . . . since if you don't accept them entirely, they consider you an enemy. "
When I asked him whether he would consider such a black-and- white judgment on the part of the Communists to be at all unfair, his answer was what could be expected--but its implications were nonetheless striking:
No. To understand Communism you must compare it with Catholic belief. If with Catholic belief, you don't accept one article of faith, you are not a Catholic. If you don't sign a blank check, you are not a Catholic.
Simon had no objection to the demand itself. When I asked him whether he was willing to make this "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism, he replied:
Of course. . . . I like Communism and Catholicism, but Catholicism always comes first. In case of conflict, I will stay with Catholicism.
World politics were, of course, another matter. As far as Com- munist activities in general were concerned, Simon said, "I am not even against a revolution--of course as mild as possible, but you cannot always do anything about that. " And about the return of
? 2l8 THOUGHT REFORM
General de Gaulle to power during 1958, he offered a remarkably candid opinion:
W ell, give him a chance. See what he can do. I was rather against him at first because I thought he was reactionary. Then someone said that Moscow was not against him because they thought he would break NATO. Since then I have not been so much against him because Mos- cow had that opinion. If Moscow stands for de Gaulle, then I am for de Gaulle.
But in discussing thought reform, he made a statement far more significant than he realized:
The way you look at it depends upon whether you feel that their opin- ions are true or false. If you say they are false, then it is all brainwashing stuff. If you think them true, they help you. I saw cases of serious offences--even some real crimes--completely changed. . . . With the habit of introspection you can very quickly see whether someone is tell- ing the truth.
Here Simon, quite unintentionally, let his inner doubts out of the bag, implying with this slip that he and others like him were not guilty of "real crimes/' but of something else that must be dis- tinguished from them.
He ended the interview--just as he began it--with praise for the 'Very powerful" and "wonderful" thought reform methods, and denunciation of those Catholic priests who he felt had presented distorted views of Communist China.
Why did Father Simon go so far that his conversion strains the meaning of apparent? It is interesting to compare him with our other apparent convert, Miss Darrow. The two are very different kinds of people; and yet there are striking similarities in their emo- tional reactions. Both responded very strongly to the opportunity to merge with the Chinese people; both experienced an unusually strong sense of guilt, and a strong need to be absolutely sincere with their captors; both eventually achieved a greater harmony with their prison environment than with any they had previously known, and were loath to surrender it for the anticipated pain of "freedom. " This authoritarian priest shared with the liberal mis- sionary's daughter psychological traits characteristic for the ap- parent convert: strong susceptibility to guilt, confusion of identity,
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 1 9
and most important of all, a long-standing pattern of totalism. Simon's totalism had in fact always been much more prominent than,Miss Darrow's. As the conscientious enthusiast, he had shown a tendency to embrace totally a series of influences--Catholicism, American know-how, Chinese life, and then Chinese Communism. Unlike Miss Darrow, he had not rebelled from the religious in- fluences which helped to shape this totalism during his early life. He did not seek a liberal alternative; rather, in his "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism he was attracted toward the most au- thoritarian and uncompromising elements within a many-sided (but
always potentially authoritarian) ideology.
But within his identity of conscientious enthusiast were two
vying elements, the convert and the defier. As the former, he sought, and as the latter feared, total unity with an all-powerful force. He required a pattern of defiance in order to ward off the strong attrac- tions to continuous influences around him. Sometimes he would defy one first and convert to it later, sometimes convert to it first and then defy it; or on still other occasions, defy one strong in- fluence while converting to another. Thus he defied his father to convert to the priesthood (it would be interesting to know whether he had originally been at all defiant in his attitude toward religion), defied French influencein his conversion to America and Western influence in his conversion to China, defied both Catholic and American influences in his conversion to Communism, and then continued to defy Catholic pressures as a means of maintaining this conversion. Whether defying or converting, his was an all-or- none approach. This is symbolized in his repeated use of the term "blank check": for one who issues a "blank check" to another may be offering either everything or nothing, without specifying how much of himself he gives and how much he insists upon retaining.
As a conscientious Catholic priest and scientist, his total dedica- tion to missionary work, credal purity, truthfulness, and sincerity were basic to his affirmative self-image. But both the defier and the convert within him could interfere and become part of his negative identity; for underneath both of them was a profound inability to trust or to become intimate with other human beings. Each con- version was a quest for the trust and intimacy that had long eluded him; unable to experience them in ordinary human doses, he sought trust and intimacy on absolute terms. For him, both conversion and
? 22O THOUGHT REFORM
defiance were attempts to ward off inner feelings of aloneness, weakness, and helplessness.
In prison, he was first the defier (an unusually courageous one), and then the convert (an unusually loyal one). In both identities, his conscientiousness was outstanding; but his behavior also re- vealed the basic contradiction within his convert-defier pattern. His ideal of "unconditional surrender" was not fully attainable. He could not, after all, sign the "blank check. " He tells us that this was because he could not submit simultaneously and totally to two masters; and this is true enough. But it is also true that he could not--either then or before--submit totally to any master. Ulti- mately, the "unconditional surrender*' and the "blank check" were unrealizable ideals, as they so often are for those who seek them. For Simon, they had been an inspiring myth; but defiance, doubt, and mistrust eventually interfered in relation to both Catholicism and Communism.
In his post-prison years, Simon--despite his outward assurance-- was inwardly walking an emotional tightrope. Whatever his denials, he did continue to serve two emotional masters, and this is a con- siderable strain. Even more subject to totalism than Miss Darrow, he remained truer than she to his thought reform conversion. Three-and-a-half years after his release he was still unable to come to terms with the actualities of his experience; he felt the need to reconstruct thought reform events to make them more congenial and less brutal, and to emphasize his compliance rather than his resistance. He had to avoid the recognition of having been manipu- lated, or else minimize the manipulation and justify its usage.
Obviously all was not well with this last--and perhaps most profound--of Simon's conversions. He was not, after all, immune from the Catholic influences around him, nor from the forces of reality testing, nor from the voice of his own doubts. Evidence for this lies in his slightly more critical (though hardly very critical) attitude toward Communism, in his slips of the tongue, in his over- stated protestations. As with all true believers, his doubts were not easy to tolerate, since unconsciously he tended to see them as a lack of total sincerity on his part. Yet his doubts were constantly stimulated by the presence of his other (Catholic) master--that is, by Church officials and Catholic ideas. This accounts for some of the vehemence with which he criticized his fellow clergymen; he was
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 2 1
calling his defiant self into play in order to purge the doubts which threatened to "betray" his thought reform experience, and conse- quently overstating his praise for Communism.
It may be that in the long run he, too, will backslide. But the tenacity with which this Jesuit priest had held on to his Chinese Communist conversion was as impressive a reform result as any I witnessed, particularly since there was no environmental reinforce- ment for his thought reform views. To be sure, the unanimity of his colleagues' opposition served as a stimulus to his defiance of them; and some reinforcement was available, even if from a dis- tance, in the constant information about the Communist world reaching him through newspapers, magazines, and casual conversa- tions. But even after all of this has been said, Father Simon's case leaves one with a renewed respect for the emotional power of thought reform.
? CHAPTER 12
RECOVERY AND RENEW AL: A SUMMING UP
We have described in the last two chapters the
emotional trials of Westerners during their first few post-thought reform years. These were never easy, and they took many different personal forms, but the common pattern was one of recovery and renewal. There were certain basic tasks which they all faced, psychological principles to which they were all subject. Their common problems were mainly the result of the thought re- form emotions they had shared; but they were also related to an- other heritage common to all these men, that of the Westerner in China.
Mastery and Integrity
When the Westerners returned home, typically they found them- selves compelled to be active, preoccupied with thought reform in particular and with China in general, and unable to become im- mediately interested in their Western environments. It was as if they had some piece of psychological business to attend to before they could permit themselves the luxury of rest or could assume the responsibility of new involvements. This unrest represented the psychological need to re-enact a highly disturbing experience, and
2
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 223
is related to what Freud called the "repetition compulsion. " * It is an effort at mastery in which, as Erilcson has described, "The in- dividual unconsciously arranges for variations of an original theme which he has not learned either to overcome or to live with/' and deals with the stressful situation by "meeting it repeatedly and of his own accord. "2
As is also true of people put through many other kinds of painful experiences, these subjects were reliving their thought reform as a means of coming to terms with it. Their experience involved spe- cial emphasis upon problems of shame and guilt, and it was these emotions which they had in some measure to overcome. Otherwise they would be unable either to overcome or to live with their thought reform, and unable to recover their self-esteem. We may therefore describe their psychological task as mastery through res- toration of integrity.
Lecturing and writing about thought reform were particularly effective ways of achieving this mastery. By these acts the subject was in effect saying: "I am no longer the passive, helpless criminal and betrayer. I am an active, strong authority on a manipulative process which could affect any of you in my audience or reading public/7 Such retelling is the former prisoner's means of declaring his identity shift, his beginning disengagement from his own ex- perience.
However, after any great adventure, or even a commonplace oc- currence, the reconstruction can never reproduce exactly the ex- perience itself. The changed inner and outer circumstances and the passage of time must induce distortions. Truth is at best an ap- proximation, and for these men the need for altered reconstruction is likely to be great. The direction and the degree of distortion depended upon the Westerner's way of responding to thought re- form, his developing relationship with his new environment, and his long-standing psychological techniques for dealing with threats to his sense of integrity.
Bishop Barker's reconstruction, for instance, was the story of a clever and heroic man who made no concessions and who out- witted his reformers at every turn. I said of him that he had ex- tended his use of the mechanism of denial to the point of con- fabulation, because I knew that his reconstruction was inaccurate both in terms of actual events and attitudes towards those events.
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Such a distortion in self-representation was characteristic for ap- parent resisters: in order to maintain a sense of integrity, over the years they would build upon the heroic self-image, and "forget" events and emotions associated with their having been weak or deceived. While Bishop Barker was by no means completely free of inner doubts about his heroic self-image, he had been able to master the thought reform experience sufficiently to carry through his distortion rather effectively.
But there were apparent resisters to whom these patterns of denial and repression were dangerous. Another priest whom I saw in follow-up (he was not mentioned earlier) had, like Bishop Barker used denial and repression to reinforce the heroic image which others were ready to confer upon him. He too gave many crusading speeches, and impressed both his audiences and his colleagues with his strength, energy, and stature. Yet when I saw him, I noticed that his eyes expressed fear and agitation. His gaze resembled the "thousand-mile stare" characteristic of prisoners immediately after their release--and he was the only one of my subjects who looked this way three years later. For almost two hours this priest de- scribed his flawless adjustment to European life, denied emotional difficulties of any kind, and spoke of the enthusiasm which he was able to arouse during his lectures on thought reform. Then, in a suddenly lowered voice, he made this admission:
But one thing was strange. . . . For months after I came out, each time I saw a stairway in a house, I thought, "What a wonderful place to jump . . . to commit suicide. "
Underneath the show of strength he was a deeply troubled man who could not fully believe his own self-representation. His obses- sive thoughts of suicide and his outer signs of fear revealed under- lying patterns of depression and anxiety. His efforts at mastery could not still his inner self-accusations, and his need to idealize his behavior prevented him from coming to terms with his strong feelings of guilt. Although he demonstrated strength and effective- ness in many areas, he was having great difficulty restoring his sense of integrity.
Father Simon made use of similar mechanisms, but his distor- tions were in the opposite direction. His need was to justify his conversion to Communism and live up to his identity of the con-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 22 5
scientious enthusiast. This involved denial of brutality during his imprisonment, repression of antagonisms toward the Communists and of recent doubts, and rationalization to justify and explain Communist behavior. Like all apparent converts, his sense of in- tegrity required that he idealize the Communists and deprecate himself, and he reconstructed, in this light, not only his prison experience, but his entire life history. The identity of the apparent convert (and this was true of Miss Darrow as well) puts one in a masochistic stance, the paradoxical situation of being able to main- tain self-esteem only by continuous self-flagellation.
The same thing was true of Father Benet Although he had run the gamut from apparent convert to apparent resister, his ap- proach to mastery required that he continually focus upon thought reform's capacity to humiliate and to make men betray themselves. His distortion was in the direction of exaggerating both thought reform's power and the human weakness of those put through it. This "analysis" was partly a reflection of his own experience, and partly a means of restating the sado-masochistic self-representation which he needed for his sense of integrity.
Father Vechten required a serious "accident" to interrupt his compensatory overactivity and permit him the opportunity to deal with his inner conflicts. As one of the obviously confused, he had not resorted to the gross distortions which were characteristic for
(although by no means limited to) apparent resisters and apparent converts. He in fact went to the opposite extreme, and his inability to permit himself the slightest amount of poetic license was a large factor in his difficulties. His approach to integrity demanded that he spare no details of his own "misbehavior" in his reconstruc- tion; on the other hand, his intensified shame and guilt, and his fear of not finding acceptance within his European Catholic en- vironment, prevented him from sharing this accurate version with his colleagues and as a result, he had no way to express his inner preoccupations. His integrity could not be restored until the "ac- cident" broke this impasse.
The struggle for mastery is most intense immediately following thought reform, and during the first weeks and months after re- lease emotional crises center around it. In most of my Western subjects> it tended to subside a great deal after a year, as distance and perspective were gradually achieved, and the Westerners be-
? 226 THOUGHT REFORM
came able to formulate an explanation of their behavior. This re- construction is the subject's new psychological truth, his means of coming to terms with both his thought reform and his Western environment. A subject was likely to have difficulty with his re- construction when it was so distorted that he found it hard to sup- port his own belief in it, or when it was so literal and unsparing that he was unable to express it. In any event, each subject's struggle for mastery probably will continue indefinitely, whether or not he is consciously aware of the struggle.
Separation
A second major emotional conflict for these men and women was the problem of separation. At first I was surprised when West- ern subjects, almost without exception, put as much emphasis on their sadness at being separated from China as on their conflicts over thought reform, and wondered if their doing so was a means of avoid- ing more disturbing emotions. This was the situation to some extent in a few; but the continued longing for China which most of them expressed years later convinced me that separation was a profound problem in itself. They were clearly experiencing a "grief" reaction. But what were they mourning?
Some were mourning the loss of the very special intimacy of the thought reform group--the delight in total exposure and sharing. As was true of Dr. Vincent, this delight can be keenly felt if one has never before known it; and Father Simon still retained the effects of this loss years later. Others, like Father ? mile, mourned for those (in his case, Chinese Catholic priests) who were left be- hind to suffer. As a Western missionary, he felt that because he had helped introduce the alien religion now being persecuted, he was responsible for the suffering. This emotion is not unlike that of a man who has lost a wife, parent, or, perhaps more appropriately, brother or son by death; he remembers all the ways in which he had caused his loved one suffering, to the point where (at least uncon- sciously) he feels he is responsible for the death itself. This type of reaction is intensified by any pre-existing hostility which the mourner might have had for the mourned, since this makes the assumption of a sense of responsibility for the death or suffering all the easier.
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 22J
Others among my subjects--Father Luca is a notable example-- suffered from the realization that they were being separated per- manently from their life in China. They would have no more con- tact with the special combination of human beings and landscape which had nourished them during important adult years. This more generalized grief at separation from China includes and transcends the first two reactions. In fact, the fear of separation, and the anticipated grief could render a prisoner susceptible to thought reform, as was clearly true of Father Simon. When this separation does occur, finally and irrevocably, the Westerner must experience true mourning: he temporarily intensifies his identification with China, preoccupies himself with reminders of his past existence there, and then bit-by-bit works through the process of detaching himself from what has been lost. 3
All these Westerners mourned the loss of something which in- volved their most profound emotions; we may say that each mourned a lost part of himself. Moreover, this symbolic splitting of identity was forced upon these men under the most dishonorable conditions; they were expelled from China as criminals and spies. This separation with dishonor at the same time robbed them of that part of their identities they most treasured, and imposed on them the shameful and guilt-laden thought reform elements.
The problem of separation becomes most acute when a West- erner arrives in Europe or America: at that time he becomes aware of having been totally removed from the Chinese environment. He will then seek to return to a Chinese environment, or to main- tain contact with others who are in one, in order to recapture what has been lost of himself, to reverse the separation process. Much depends, of course, upon the degree of involvement with China; but among my subjects, there were few for whom the problem of separation is not a lingering source of pain.
Expatriates Return
The return to Europe or America confronts the Westerner with still another difficult psychological issue, that of the expatriate's return. (None was literally an expatriate; the term is used here symbolically. ) Long residence in China had created in many of them a sense of alienation from their own countries, an alienation
? 228 THOUGHT REFORM
which thought reform greatly intensified; and almost all felt them- selves emotionally removed from those around them who had not shared their Chinese experiences. They themselves created and perpetuated this emotional distance, partly because of their need for a personal moratorium which would help them solve problems of mastery and separation. This moratorium also allowed them to postpone their confrontation with the Western milieu.
Most of my subjects found the Western world strange and hard to get used to.
And indeed, for those who had been in China for several decades, the changes that had occurred in the Western en- vironment during that time, as well as in its people, must have been striking. Yet the problem was not so much strangeness as it was familiarity. Father Vechten's visit to Rome (the center and the spiritual patria for all Catholic priests) confronted him with beliefs, behavioral codes, and a world view which had always been part of him, but which had, during his years in China--and espe- cially during his imprisonment--become in some ways modified, combined with other influences, and less clearly present in his moment-to-moment consciousness. This confrontation did not have the effect of something new; rather, he felt an uneasy revival within him of a "way of thinking and judging . . . more that which I had formerly. " The same kind of revival also occurred, usually in a more insidious fashion, with all of my Western subjects, whether in mat- ters religious, cultural, or specifically personal.
The expatriate's return then is a confrontation with elements of one's identity which one has long denied, repressed, or modified be- yond easy recognition. The Westerners had originally become ex- patriates only in relation to their own identity: the emotions which led them to choose careers in China included a need to deny or repress, at least temporarily, portions of their heritage in the search for a newer synthesis. Each man's early self had been further un- dermined by the imposed judgments of thought reform. Back home, they were brought in contact---sometimes critically, some- times with psychological sensitivity, but always with full impact-- with these archaic parts of themselves, reminded of them by the physical surroundings they encountered and by the people they met. Having to face their roots in this manner was both nourish- ing and disturbing: they could feel strengthened by being brought back to what they had been, and at the same time feel threatened
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 229
by partisan and provincial emotions arid ideas which they thought they had long discarded in their cosmopolitan existence. This ex- perience of outward journey and inward return is not characteristic only of the temporary exile or expatriate; it occurs with anyone who risks the slightest deviation from the life patterns originally assigned him. 4 For these subjects, either their years of work in China or the thought reform experience alone would have made this problem a profound one. Together, the two exposures produced one of the most difficult forms of expatriate's return imaginable.
Renewal of Identity
The overriding task for these men--a task which included and went beyond problems of mastery, separation, and return--was that of renewal of identity. To renew, one must look to what has gone before; and it was no accident that so many of these men ap- proached the problem historically, in both a personal and a broader sense.
Sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Kallmann, this historical orienta- tion led to a good deal of confusion: unable to trust sufficiently any one among many identity elements, he clung tenaciously and some- what uncritically to a number of antithetical sides of himself, re- lating to Communism and anti-Communism, Nazism and anti- Nazism, authoritarian and libertarian emotions, China and the West, and a general sense of being "all things to all men" in mediating among men. In other cases the historical search had a careful, almost academic pattern, although no less emotionally in- volved: when Father Luca, for example, studied the life of a great modern missionary, he was also immersing himself in the historical problems of all Western missionaries in China. To understand this process of renewal, we must make a brief excursion into some of these historical aspects of the identity of the Westerner in China.
We may begin with the most painful of Western identities--- that of the imperialist. The Communists built a highly personalized image around this term; a non-Communist Westerner was per se an "imperialist" (one spoke in prison of "the People" and "the Imperialists"); he was greedy, demanding, intrusive, and unscru- pulous; he sought to further his own interests by taking from
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others what was rightfully theirs. And only a Westerner could be an imperialist; Chinese might be "bourgeois" or "reactionary"--even "lackeys" of the imperialists--but never imperialists themselves. In ideological terms derived from Lenin's theory of imperialism, they considered the imperialist the agent of,'military, political, economic, and cultural subversion, and the destroyer of all that was good and noble in Chinese civilization.
The Westerners who had this version of the imperialist identity drummed into them during imprisonment began to dislodge them- selves from it during the years after release; but each remained troubled by the Icernel of truth around which the identity is built. It is mainly to decide how much of this guilt they should personally assume that so many of them made investigations of what the West- erner in China had really been. Each discovered what he had al- ready known, that the heritage was mixed; schools and gunboats, industrial techniques and exploitation, enlightenment and dog- matism.
At best, Chinese attitudes toward Westerners have always been ambivalent. They have always viewed Westerners with an ethno- centric eye, and during four centuries of contact there have been periodic waves of persecution and anti-foreign outbreaks. Many times before, they have accused the foreigner (with his strange, non-Confucian doctrines) of being dangerous and "subversive. " Conflicts magnified during the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries, the era of the West's most vigorous military penetration of China. Then all individual West- erners became party to the special arrangements and privileges of the "unequal treaties" so much resented by the Chinese. This was as true for the missionaries as for anyone else--perhaps even truer for them because of their influence on Chinese subjects:
. . . the treaties placed not only the missionaries but Chinese Chris- tians under the aegis of the foreign powers. . . . The provision . . . tended to remove Chinese Christians from the jurisdiction of their government and to make of Christian communities imperia in imperio, widely scattered enclaves under the defense of aliens. . . . The Church had become a partner in Western imperialism and could not well dis- avow some responsibility for the consequences. 5
These are not the words of Chinese Communists, but the well- considered opinions of Kenneth Latourette, a distinguished Ameri-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 2 3 1
can historian of China, and himself part of the Protestant mission- ary movement.
Some missionaries welcomed this "partnership" with imperialism, viewing the military operations and treaties which followed as "God's way of opening up the country to his servants. " 8 But an increasing number of both Catholics and Protestants came to re- gard the situation as not only highly "un-Christian" but potentially dangerous. In terms of identity, these two groups may be divided roughly into pure proselytizers and spiritual mediators; one of these two patterns predominated in every W estern missionary who came to the Middle Kingdom from the sixteenth to the twentieth cen- turies.
The spiritual mediator approached China with respect for (or at least recognition of) its traditions; he sought to establish common cultural ground, so that Chinese could become Christians and still retain their identity as Chinese. The missionary himself also had to undergo some shift in his own identity before he could move to- ward this common ground. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), one of the first and greatest of Catholic missionaries in China and a spiritual mediator par excellence, found that the best way to approach the Chinese was through the literati, and the best way to approach the literati was to blend with the Chinese scene--to become proficient in the Chinese language, wear the clothes of a mandarin, adopt completely the complex honorifics of literati speech and writing. He gained the respect of his hosts by demonstrating his scholarship, and by teaching them the latest (Renaissance) Western ideas in mathematics, natural sciences, astronomy, and geography. But even in this teaching he and his colleagues were careful to make con- cessions to Chinese ethnocentricity: on a map of the world which they prepared, China was located at the center--it was hard enough for the Chinese to accept the idea that great geographical and cultural areas existed at all among the "barbarians" outside the Chinese sphere.
Ricci went further: he made a detailed study of classical Chinese philosophical texts, finding much to admire in Confucian beliefs, and always stressing whatever similarities he could find between the words of the Sage and the Christian doctrine. He made a special point of his conviction that a man could embrace the beliefs and customs of both without doing injustice to either. Ricci and his colleagues were known as "preaching literati. " Their early Jesuit
? 2%2 THOUGHT REFORM
successors became important figures at court; some of them were given titles as scholar-officials, and received financial and moral support from the Emperor himself. Their learning, and especially their cultural flexibility, carried them far. As one historian has put it, "The Jesuits largely fulfilled traditional Chinese expectations as to the likely course of intelligent barbarians in Chinese society. " They were "culturally conciliatory" and quick to realize that in the stable and self-confident Chinese society of that day, "they would receive a hearing more or less as candidates for membership or not at all. " 7
Not all Catholic missionaries approached China with such a light touch. The early Franciscans and Dominicans were contem- poraries of the Jesuits, and they--rather than Renaissance-influenced scholars--were the "simple friars"8 who brought with them to China attitudes of purified medieval Christianity. They were pure proselytizers; and their approach to missionary work was "going headlong at it/' Thus, in 1579, a Franciscan expedition on its way to Japan "took possession of China in the name of Christ by offer- ing mass on the 24th of June in Canton. "9
The Jesuits were cautious about displaying the crucifix because they realized that it "horrified" many Chinese; but the Franciscans, in their evangelizing, would "march openly through the streets dressed in their outlandish habit, cross in hand. " 10 Similarly, one Dominican "set about overthrowing idols wherever he could lay his hands on them" until "the Mandarins . . . laid their hands on him and he was speedily ejected. " n A great Dominican hero of this period was Francis Capellas who, during a persecution, was taken into custody and put to death, Before achieving martyrdom, he is reported to have said: "I have no other house than the wide world, no other bed than the ground, no other food than what Providence provides from day to day, and no occupation other than that of laboring and suffering for the glory of Jesus Christ and the eternal happiness of those who believe in Him. " His death was witnessed by some of his own recently arrived Dominican col- leagues, and its news was received in Spanish Catholic circles throughout the world "not . . . with mourning but with great
developed. The Jesuits were appalled by what they considered the
joy"12
Conflict between spiritual mediators and pure proselytizers soon
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 233
crude approach of the Dominicans, and feared that it would en- danger their own patiently constructed accomplishments. The Dominicans--at least many of them--regarded the Jesuits as too loose in their methods and too tolerant toward paganism, and as threats to the purity of Christianity. Their battle was the celebrated "Rites Controversy" of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, fought over the question of how much of customary Chinese practice the Christian convert could be permitted to re- tain. The Jesuits favored Ricci's approach of conveying the Chris- tian concept of God through the use of the classical Chinese terms for "Heaven" (Tien and Sftang Ti), claiming that these words originally had a theistic significance, and were in any case necessary to explain the new faith in a familiar idiom. The Dominicans held that these Chinese terms connoted a material heaven or sky; that much "superstition" had grown up around them in the Chinese mind; and that therefore they should not be used.
Again following Ricci, the Jesuits favored allowing Chinese Christians to continue to honor Confucius and their ancestors, on the ground that these observances were a tradition of the Chinese empire, with a civil rather than a religious significance. The Do- minicans considered the observances "pagan" and "superstitious," and therefore not permissible. The Dominican position was upheld by Papal decrees in 1704, 1710, 1715, and 1742,much to the detri- ment of Catholic missionary efforts. The decision injured Chinese sensibilities in a variety of ways--the Emperor K'ang Hsi had ex- pressed his support of the Jesuit position, and felt that the Pope was contesting his authority--and a century of persecutions fol- lowed. These persecutions had complex causes and were by no means simply a result of the Rites Controversy; but the outcome of this controversy and the events which followed were in psy- chological and cultural senses, a major triumph for purist, ex- tremist forces--and a major defeat for the mediators on both sides. Not until 1939, 235 years after the initial decree, did Rome finally reverse its decision.
Much more can be said about the political, religious, and cul- tural issues of the Rites Controversy; but this outline is enough to indicate the importance of these two conflicting identity stances for the Westerner in China, and for relations in general between China and the W est. 13 The examples cited were from early Catholic
? 2 J 4 THOUGHT REFOKM
experience, but these two identities were equally present in later Protestant missionaries: the pure proselytizers were the Funda- mentalist preachers who with their message of hellfire and brim- stone had little regard for Chinese cultural traditions; the spiritual mediators were those more liberal and socially-oriented missionaries who tried to understand and to enter into Chinese life while build- ing their churches, universities, and hospitals.
Even secular Western residents--businessmen, diplomats, non- missionary teachers, students, and free-lance Sinophiles--were not entirely free from this dilemma. They had not come to China to propagate Christianity, but they too had the problem of how much of the West to sell to the Chinese (or at least to hold onto themselves) versus how "Chinese" to become. The treaty-port businessman, that prototype of the "old China hand," could be something of a proselytizer of Western business methods; or he could relax comfortably into his surroundings, accepting his priv- ileged position as his due, and regarding the Chinese around him with "patronizing affection. "M The true spiritual expatriates were the "Peking Men," a unique group of scholars, writers, and as- sorted individualists so thoroughly absorbed by China (even if they lived in its past glory) that the rest of the world seemed to them virtually uninhabitable, and everything after Peking anticlimactic. Those among the Peking Men who had the special subidentity of the "China-born" often (like Miss Darrow) struggled hard in their adult lives to establish an intimacy with China which they felt had been denied to them by the segregated patterns of their missionary upbringing; at the same time they tried to recapture and embel- lish an idealized childhood memory.
My Western subjects had also found that confronted with China over a period of time, one's identity could not, so to speak, stand still. Most, spiritual mediators more than anything else, gradually slipped into a "Chinese" pattern. They usually made an elaborate identity compromise, rather than completely "going native"; the compromise offered many creative satisfactions, but there was al- ways the danger, whether or not a Westerner was aware of it, of his old identities becoming obscured and his sense of commitment confused. Yet the same man could also identify a part of himself as uncompromisingly Western, and feel stirrings of the pure pros-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 235
elytizer. The psychological rewards for so doing were those of im- posing on others one's own creed and thereby exerting influence over others; the dangers (in a sense interchangeable with the re- wards) were those of arousing antagonism and persecution, and of becoming isolated from Chinese life. What is more, these subjects found that historical circumstances generated increasing tension between the mediator and the proselytizer within them. China, in its quest for modernization, both sought and resented various forms of proselytizing. Western institutions which sent people to China became more sensitive to the need for mediating, but these in- creasing sensitivities opened the way for the kind of historical and racial guilt I have already described.
These conflicts were especially great for the priests among my subjects. Their education and characters bore the stamp of modern liberalism; they tended strongly to become cultural mediators, and play down the pure proselytizer within themselves. Even so, the conflict between these two aspects of their identity was ever-present: Father Luca was torn between his liberalism and his urge to mar- tyrdom; Father Vechten's deep commitment to spiritual mediating was certainly undermined by his confrontation in Rome with a more pure proselytizing attitude. All these men experienced with unusual intensity the inner struggle between liberal and authoritar- ian emotions which any modern Catholic priest faces. Many tried to resolve the struggle by using the approach of Father Vincent Lebbe, considered by many to be a modern counterpart of Father Ricci. One of the most articulate of modern mediators, he had condemned Western imperialism, refused the protection of his own consul, and advocated love for and intimate identification with the host coun- try; he had set a personal example by taking out Chinese citizen- ship and forming a stretcher-bearing battalion during the Japanese war. 15 But whatever the approach, the tension between these two elements had to remain, since they are both part of the identity of any missionary anywhere: the urge to proselytize takes him to the mission land in the first place; and the mediator within him makes his work possible.
The Communists--themselves pure proselytizers in the extreme --were quick to make the association between missionary - pros- elytizing and imperialism, an association not too difficult to estab- lish. It was a bit harder for them to cast a spiritual mediator as an
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imperialist, but they accomplished this also with two approaches: they held him responsible for the behavior of his less liberal col- leagues, and called his flexible adjustment a tactical maneuver to deceive people and obscure ultimate goals. Moreover, although Father Lebbe himself was a spiritual mediator, some of the priests (including close colleagues of my subjects) who had followed his lead in aiding China's defense efforts against the Japanese had gone on to co-operate with Nationalist forces in their struggle against the Communists--thus giving the reformers a good reason to label them imperialists.
The Communists thus used actual historical events to exploit already-existing identity strains of the Westerner in China, sim- plifying the complex elements involved into the single pure image of the evil imperialist. They then did everything possible to make the man fit the image.
During the years after their release, my subjects were preoc- cupied with extricating themselves from this pure image, and find- ing a version of what they had been (and still were) which was both reasonably accurate and morally justifiable. Some form of recon- struction was necessary, and the degree of distortion paralleled that of the thought reform experience itself. Thus Fathers Luca and Vechten could be critical of much of their Church's behavior and at the same time reject exaggerated Communist charges; while Bishop Barker brought his characteristic all-or-nothing fundamen- talist judgmentsto bear upon both the Church and the Communists.
These men and women were aware that their prison thought reform marked the end of an era for the non-Communist Westerner in China, as well as for them as individuals. They had to achieve a new relationship with Western institutions to overcome the guilt associated with the imperialist label. What they sought during the years after imprisonment, and what many of them attained, was nothing short of another rebirth.
Long-term Effects
What can be said about the long-range success or failure of prison thought reform as applied to Westerners? From the stand- point of winning them over to a Communist view of the world, the program must certainly be judged a failure. Only one (Father
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Simon) among my twenty-five subjects (and only one or possibly two more from among the scores of others I heard about) could be regarded as a truly successful convert. Follow-up information con- firmed what I had begun to observe when I interviewed these sub- jects in Hong Kong: a general movement away from the reform ethos toward a more critical view of Chinese Communist behavior. Three or four years after their release, most of them expressed sentiments much more harsh toward Communism than those they had felt before being imprisoned. They looked not to Communism, but to the forces in the West they had known earlier, and to an inner synthesis of their own, for answers to the world's great ide- ological questions. This conscious disavowal of their reform was by no means the entire psychological picture; but conscious opinions are, after all, not unimportant,
Whatever success thought reform had with most of the West- erners lay in the unconscious influences which they retained from it. These influences are basic to an understanding of what really hap- pened, even though they can be easily overlooked. Despite the years that had passed since their imprisonment, these men and women were still grappling with the powerful emotions and ideas implanted by the Chinese Communists. Most had succeeded in neutralizing them; but the implant had been compelling enough to defy easy excision. For once a man has been put through prison thought reform, he never completely casts off its picture of the world and of himself.
Inner tension between the reformed and nonreformed elements of a person can be itself imprisoning; or lead toward expanding horizons. Most people felt something of each, but the ratio be- tween the two varied greatly. Father Luca and Father Vechten, for example, had suffered and continued to suffer from a compulsive weighing of the influences of thought reform; yet both had broad- ened their personal vistas and enlarged their sense of identity as a result of their prison experiences. Father Simon and Bishop Barker, on the other hand, seemed to have narrowed their focus, con- stantly protecting themselves against too broad an exposure lest this upset their singlemindedness. It was generally true that those who, like Father Simon and Bishop Barker, were either apparent con- verts or apparent resisters, had to live on this constricted level if they were to maintain their extreme position; while the obviously
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confused reaped both pain and creative benefit from their con- fusion. Those who, like Miss Darrow, gradually gave up an extreme position, were opened to the same pitfalls and opportunities as they surrendered both their constriction and the reassuring cer- tainties it had offered. One other position is possible: one can, like Mr. Kallmann, become so "broad" in his horizons that the inner substance of identity and commitment can scarcely take shape.
And this brings up the nonideological residua present in all Westerners, whose effects were also mixed. Four years after the experience, my subjects still bore marks of both fear and relief. The fear was related to the basic fear mentioned earlier, the fear of total annihilation; it is an unconscious memory not easily lost. Some people may equate it with the experience of having felt totally controlled and dangerously threatened by a powerful parent; but whatever its associations, all dread the possibility of risking its re- currence through re-exposure to total control. Along with this dread, however, some entertain a deeply repressed desire for just such a repetition as a means of atoning for a troubling sense of guilt. I need not again emphasize the importance of this guilt, except to say that it joins with the residual fear to form the most destructive of thought reform's bequests.
Nonetheless, thought reform can also produce a genuinely thera- peutic effect. Western subjects consistently reported a sense of having been benefited and emotionally strengthened, of having be- come more sensitive to their own and others' inner feelings, and more flexible and confident in human relationships. These bene- ficial effects occurred in subjects with all three reactions, although it is difficult to say just what produced them. The best explanation is perhaps that these people had had the experience of testing their emotional limits. They had undergone the ultimate in physical and spiritual pain, and had yet survived; they had been forced to hit rock bottom in their imposed negative self-analysis, and yet had emerged with some measure of self-respect. Each had thus gone farther than ever before in realizing his human potential. Their consequent feeling of having been benefited is analogous to the sense of well-being which has been observed in people after they have experienced severe stress of almost any kind, including that of prolonged sensory deprivation. 16 When the stress is brief, the well- being may be limited to a rebound euphoria. But after an experi-
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ence as totally disintegrating as prison thought reform, the relief at being put together again is more basic and more enduring. In the experience itself, and in the process of recovery and renewal which followed it, these men and women gained access to parts of them- selves they had never known existed.
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? ? PART THREE
THOUGHT REFORM OF
CHINESE INTELLECTUALS
We must be engineers of the human soul.
V. I. Lenin
The cultivation of the person depends upon recti-
fying the mind.
Confucius
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? ? 1
In turning from imprisoned Westerners to "free"
Chinese intellectuals, we arrive at the ideological center of the thought reform movement. Instead of being directed at alleged criminals and "imperialists/' reform is used to manipu- late the passions of the most enlightened members of Chinese society. Chinese intellectuals experience thought reform in their own country's educational institutions, under the direction of coun- trymen not too different from themselves. They are asked to un- dergo it as an act of patriotism, as an expression of personal and national rejuvenation.
Their thought reform is not entirely different from the prison program applied to Westerners, Indeed, as I alternated between Western and Chinese subjects during the study, I was often struck by the similarities in the emotional experiences reported by two such divergent groups. But the contrasts were also impressive-- contrasts in thought reform settings and pressures, in life experi- ences and character traits, and in differing relationships to Chinese Communism--so much so that I sometimes felt as if I were con- ducting two separate research projects.
An exploration of these differences takes us inevitably into mat- ters Chinese, into a consideration of influences derived from tradi- tional Chinese culture and from the modern, antitraditional Chi- nese cultural rebellion. Only these patterns can account for China's
CHAPTER THE ENCOUNTER
243
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unique way of dealing with imported Communist principles. I shall retain my emphasis upon individual emotions and the sense of inner identity, and move from the individual outward as I attempt to explain his experience in the light of his own and his country's history and culture. This approach also requires an examination of thought reform's origins, both its actual history, and its use of psychological themes derived from Soviet Russian and traditional Chinese models. After that, I shall summarize the general prin- ciples derived from my study of both subject groups--principles which apply to any culture and have significance far beyond that of thought reform itself.
Who are the "Chinese intellectuals"? The term is a loose one and is often applied to anyone in China with a secondary school educa- tion, although the Communists themselves distinguish between "higher intellectuals" and "general intellectuals. " It includes, of course, scholars, teachers, artists, writers, scientists, advanced stu- dents, physicians, and other professional people--all of whom make up a very small but particularly influential segment of the Chinese population. As a group, they are the spiritual if not lineal descend- ants of the Confucian literati, the celebrated class of scholar- officials who in the past set the cultural standards and administered the political structure for whatever dynasty they served. Nowhere was learning more honored than in traditional China, and nowhere was a body of knowledge more necessary for personal advancement; until the beginning of the twentieth century, the main path to wealth and prestige was the state examination based entirely upon the Confucian classics.
But during the last fifty years, the intellectuals, influenced by the West, have led the revolutionary movements to cast off the decay- ing traditional social structure. Much of their identity was trans- formed in the process, and the rebellion was costly to them in an emotional as well as a material sense. Yet even when most be- leaguered, they have always retained their aura of a learned ? lite and a sharp sense of separation from the rest of the mostly illiterate population.
Like the dynasties before them (and like Communist parties everywhere) the Chinese Communists recognized the importance of winning over and putting to effective use this precious intellectual
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talent. Indeed, their thought reform program has gone far beyond anything either their dynastic predecessors or their Russian Com- munist mentors ever attempted. They called for a personal con- version (or for something very closely resembling one) from every Chinese intellectual, surely an excessively ambitious program.