His sense of evil,
formerly
vague and free-floating, is now made to do specific work for reform.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
Much later I was put in another cell to bring a French priest to confession.
He had been stubborn, and had been in solitary for a few months.
He was very fearful and looked like a wild animal.
.
.
.
I took care of him, washed his clothes for him, helped him to rest.
I advised him that what they might know he might as well confess.
Although there is a continuing tension between holding on and letting go, some degree of self-betrayal is quickly seen as a way to survival. But the more of one's self one is led to betray, the greater is one's involvement with his captors; for by these means they make contact with whatever similar tendencies already exist within the prisoner himself--with the doubts, antagonisms, and ambivalences which each of us carries beneath the surface of his loyalties. This bond of betrayal between prisoner and environment may develop to the point where it seems to him to be all he has to grasp; turning back becomes ever more difficult.
4. THE BREAKING POINT; TOTAL CONFLICT AND THE BASIC FEAR
Before long, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent found themselves at an absolute impasse with their environment. Each was looked upon not only as an enemy, but also as a man completely out of step. They were aware of being in painful disagreement with al- leged truths about their past, and yet at this point they were un-
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clear about what these "truths" were.
At the same time, they had been impressed with the inflexibility
of their milieu. The government, being infallible, would not give way; it was the "stubborn criminal" who had to "change. " Their situation was like that of a man taken suddenly from his ordinary routine and placed in a hospital for the criminally insane, where he is accused of a horrendous but vague crime which he is expected to recognize and confess; where his assertion of innocence is viewed as a symptom of his disease, as a paranoid delusion; and where every other inmate-patient is wholly dedicated to the task of pressuring him into a confession and a "cure. " 6 The sense of total reversal is like that of Alice after falling down the rabbit hole; but the weirdness of the experience is more that of a Kafka hero.
The prisoner's dilemma leads him to a state of antagonistic es- trangement. He is not totally estranged from the environment, be- cause even antagonism is a form of contact; but he is totally cut off from the essential succor of affectionate communication and related- ness, without which he cannot survive. And at the same time, his increasing self-betrayal, sense of guilt, and his loss of identity all join to estrange him from himself--or at least from the self which he has known. He can contemplate the future with only hopeless- ness and dread. Literally and emotionally, there seems to be no escape from this hermetically-sealed antagonism.
As the assaults continue, and as they are turned inward, he begins to experience one of the most primitive and painful emotions known to man, the fear of total annihilation. This basic fear e--considered by some the inherited forerunner of all human anxiety--becomes the final focus for all of the prison pressures. It is fed by every threat and accusation from without, as well as by all of the destructive emotions stimulated within. The fear is compounded by the hor- rifying realization that the environment seems to be making it come true. Dr. Vincent did not only fear annihilation; he actually felt himself to be annihilated. It was this confirmation of a primitive fear which led him to hope for relief through quick death.
This is the point at which physical and mental integration break down. Some prisoners may be brought by their severe anxiety and depression to the point of suicidal preoccupations and attempts:
They scolded me in a nasty way. I had the feeling that everyone was cross with me and despised me. I thought, why do they despise rne?
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 71
What have I done? . . . I was eating very little. . . . I refused toeat or drink. . . . I felt very much down. I felt there was no chance for me. . . . It was so utterly hopeless. For six weeks I did nothing but think how I might kill myself.
Others experience the delusions and hallucinations usually as- sociated with psychosis:
I heard investigations taking place below, and one day I heard my name called. I listened while Chinese were indoctrinated to testify how I had been gathering information on troop movements. . . . The next day I recognized the voice of my Chinese accountant who was told that I had confessed everything and therefore his confession better agree with mine. . . . Once I heard the guards saying in a social con- versation with a German that they would soften me up by locking me in a cage which used to be used by the KMT. . . . I wasnear going nuts.
Such symptoms are clear evidence of the loss of the capacity to cope with one's environment. At the same time, they represent --as do any psychiatric symptoms--protective efforts, attempts on the part of the human organism to ward off something perceived as an even greater danger: in these cases, the anticipation of total annihilation.
Many of Father Luca's transient delusions represented just such a combination of breakdown and restitution. His imagining (and believing) that his consul was visiting the prison, or that he was once more among his fellow Christians, were evidence he had lost the ability to discriminate between the real and the unreal. But in experiencing these same delusions, the content of which re- inforced his fantasies of rescue, Father Luca was clinging tenaciously to his own life force, and at the same time warding off his basic fear. 7
No prisoner, whatever his defenses, ever completely overcame this fear of annihilation. It remained with each in greater or lesser degree throughout imprisonment, and in some cases for a long time after- ward. It was a constant inner reminder of the terrible predicament he might again be forced to face should he further displease his captors.
At this point, the prisoner's immediate prospects appear to be physical illness, psychosis, or death. If his death is to remain sym- bolic--and psychic damage kept from progressing beyond the re-
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versible stage--some form of desperately needed relief must be supplied.
5. LENIENCY AND OPPORTUNITY
A sudden change in official attitude--the institution of leniency --supplies this relief. The unexpected show of kindness, usually occurring just when the prisoner is reaching his breaking point, breaks the impasse between him and the environment. He is per- mitted--even shown how--to achieve some degree of harmony with his outer world.
"Leniency" does not mean that the milieu budges from any of its demands, or even from its standards of reality. It simply lets up on its pressures sufficiently for the prisoner to absorb its principles and adapt himself to them. When Dr. Vincent, after two months of imprisonment, suddenly encountered friendliness and consideration in place of chains and struggles, there was no cessation of the pressure for confession. In fact, the effect of leniency was to spur him on to greater confession efforts. He was able to make these efforts because his leniency was accompanied by guidance; he had a chance to learn and act upon what was expected of him. Father Luca had no such good fortune. He, too, after one month, was given a respite: the removal of chains and handcuffs and the op portunity to sleep; but his was the unusual experience of leniency without guidance. He was willing to comply (his false confession was, among other things, a profound expression of compliance); but he was unable to find the desired approach. In his case, there- fore, a new impasse was created, which resulted in a brutal inter- ruption of his leniency.
The timing and the setting of leniency can be extremely dramatic, as it was for another priest.
It was Christmas Day. I was brought to see the judge. For the first time I found the room full of sunlight. There was no guard and there were no secretaries. There were only the kind faces of the judges offer- ing me cigarettes and tea. It was a conversation more than a question- ing. My mother could not have been much more good and kind than the judge was. He said to me, "The treatment you have received here is really too bad. Maybe you are unable to stand it. As a foreigner and a priest, you must be used to good food and better hygienic standards. So just make a confession. But make it really good, so we can be satis- fied. Then we will close your trial and finish your case. "
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In other cases, leniency was utilized to confront the prisoner with a threatening life-or-death alternative. It might include a new "good" interrogator who replaces or alternates with the "bad" one:
An inspector had talked to me nastily and I collapsed. Soon after, a nicer inspector came to visit me. He was worried--very friendly to me--and asked me if I had heart disease. . . . He said, "Your health is not good; you must have a better room. " He called on me again and said, "We must get your case settled now. The government is interested in you. All you must do is change your mind. There are only two ways for you to go: one way leads to life, and the other to death. If you want the road that leads to life, you must take our way. You must re- form yourself and re-educate yourself. " I said, "That sounds very good," I felt light of heart and told the other cellmates about it. They said, "That's good. Write your confession about how wrong your old political ideas were, and how willing you are to change your mind--and then you will be released. "
This threat also was clear in the experience of another prisoner who had been transferred to a hospital after an attempt at suicide:
At first they told me that I had tried to kill myself because I had a bad conscience. . , . But the doctor seemed very kind. . . . Then an official came to see me and he spoke to me in a very friendly voice: "The government doesn't want to kill you. It wants to reform you. We don't want to punish you at all, we just want to re-educate you. " , . . It was my first glimmer of hope. I felt finally there might be a way out. I wasn't feeling so hopelessly alone any more. The official had actually shown some human quality. 8
Apparent in all these examples is the immense stimulus which leniency provides for the prisoner's reform effort. Total annihila- tion is no longer all he can visualize. He has been offered rest, kind- ness, and a glimpse of the Promised Land of renewed identity and acceptance--even freedom; annihilation is now something he can avoid, and in fact must avoid at all costs.
The psychological decompression of his environment serves to win him over to the reform camp, especially to that part of the reform camp which is working on him. In other words, he becomes motivated to help the officials achieve what they are trying to do to him. He becomes, as did Dr. Vincent, their grateful partner in his own reform.
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6. THE COMPULSION TO CONFESS*
Long before any suggestion of leniency, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent had perceived the dominant message of their milieu: only those who confess can survive. Indeed, everything in the way of assaults and leniency--all pressures of breakdown and promised restitution--served to reinforce this message. In such a climate, the two men had no choice but to join in the universal compulsion to confess. Their first expression of this compulsion was the early elaboration of false "crimes. " Even when a prisoner was aware that his confession was "wild"--as was Dr. Vincent--he had begun to submit to the confession requirement, and to behave as if he were a criminal. This was even more true, and the guilt even more pro- found, for those who, like Father Luca, came to believe in their own falsehoods.
These first confessions are preliminary (although prison officials do not necessarily mean them to be such) to the main manifestation of the compulsion to confess--the total soul purge. Both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca, when their false confessions were rejected, hit upon the expedient of simply confessing everything, with spe- cial emphasis on what might be considered most sinful. In doing so, they moved beyond mere playing of the criminal role. They were beginning to accept as valid parts of themselves the two basic identities of thought reform.
The first of these is the identity of the repentant sinner. The prisoner in effect says: "I must locate this evil part of me, this mental abscess, and excise it from my very being, lest it remain to cause me more harm. " This leads directly to the second identity --that of the receptive criminal, the man who is, at whatever level of consciousness, not only beginning to concur in the environment's legal and moral judgment of him, but also to commit himself to acquiring the beliefs, values, and identities officially considered de- sirable. The acceptance of these two identities led both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca to express the idea that one had to get rid of old thoughts and emotions in order to make room for the new ones. Precisely this compulsion to reveal everything provides the continuity between breakdown and restitution, between confession and reform.
The compulsion to confess is not static; it continually gathers
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 75
momentum, and provokes an increasing sense of submission--as described by another priest:
After a while one wants to talk . . . they press you, so you feel you must say something. Once you start you are deceived: you are at the top of the tree and you go down. . . . If you say the first word, there is always something more: "Lao shih"--No, no, be a good boy! Say the truth! --, "t'an pai"--Confess! --are constantly repeated every two min- utes. I felt myself wanting to say more to make him shut his mouth, he was so insisting. . . . It made me weak; it made me want to give in.
Equally important, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca dis- covered, is the "creative" participation which each prisoner develops in his confession process. His inner fantasies must always make con- tact with the demands from without. To be sure, these fantasies are painstakingly and selectively molded by officials and cellmates. But they are never entirely divorced from the man who produces them. This means that a good deal of the energy involved in the confession comes from within the prisoner himself. His compul- sion to confess dedicates him to the task of continuously carving out and refilling his own inner void--under the active supervision and broad moral guidance of his captors.
7. THE CHANNELLING OF GUIL T
Once the compulsion to confess is operating, the prisoner is ready to learn a more precise formula--thought reform's conceptual framework for his expression of guilt and repentance. By adopting the "people's standpoint," he channels nonspecific feelings of guilt into a paranoid, pseudo-logical system.
His sense of evil, formerly vague and free-floating, is now made to do specific work for reform. He takes this step, as Vincent so clearly described, by learning to see evidence of personal evil and destructiveness in specific past actions. What was most prosaic, or even generous, must now be viewed as "criminal. "
This reinterpretation of events, as absurd as it may sound, has a strong impact because it stimulates forces within the prisoner himself which support the contentions of his environment. He has, like everyone else, struggled with feelings of curiosity, hostility, and vindictiveness not acceptable for public display, but retained as part of his own secret world. Now the awareness of these feel-
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ings within himself, and especially of the secretiveness which ac- companies them, makes him feel like the "spy" he is accused of being* It is a relatively easy step for him to associate this image of himself as a conspirator with the past events under consideration. Indeed, in making a casual comment about approaching Commu- nist armies, one part of him might really have hoped that this in- formation would reach and benefit the other side; and even if this were not true, it becomes fairly easy for him to imagine that it had been.
Since the people's standpoint is an ultimate statement of bias, its acceptance also involves a basic negative commitment. The pris- oner joins in condemning himself less for what he has done than for what he has been: as a Westerner--and therefore an "imperial- ist"--he is guilty. For him, this is the real significance of the people's standpoint, and its use of news, information, and intelligence is merely a method of implementing its prejudgment.
The more the prisoner submits to these black-and-white judg- ments, the more he surrenders all that is subtle or qualified--as an- other missionary described:
At first I was always making this distinction: as far as my conscience is concerned, it is no sin, but from their point of view it is a crime. I knew that the judgment would be standing on their point of view. . . . The same action was seen by me and them from a completely different morality--seen through a different window. They are looking through from the outside in, me from the inside out. . . . They said the government is infallible, so what it discovered cannot be untrue. That puts me in a bad position. I said, "I admit the government is infallible. " They took my words like rubber. . . . Later I asked the government for a lenient sentence, I could not say that they were un- just, as I was standing on their point of view.
As the prisoner accepts this "higher" group morality, its most harsh judgments make common cause with the most tyrannical parts of his own conscience; through this joining of forces, he is changed from a man who merely feels guilty into one who feels guilty about exactly those actions which the environment considers criminal.
8. RE-EDUCA TION: LOGICAL DISHONORING
While Father Luca and Dr. Vincent, in a general sense, began their re-education the moment they were imprisoned, its formal
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inception occurred with the stress upon group study (hsileh hsi) just after the institution of leniency. Both men found that it was not Communist doctrine per se which mattered, but rather the use of Communist doctrine and its reasoning techniques to broaden their own self-exposure.
It was no longer enough to admit guilt, to feel guilty, or even to recognize specific guilty actions. The prisoner had to extend his self-condemnation to every aspect of his being> and learn to see his life as a series of shameful and evil acts--shameful and evil not only in their possible opposition to Communism, but also because they violated his own cherished ideals.
With Father Luca, this desecration of identity took the form of convincing him that he and his missionary colleagues had been "un- Christian" in their conduct in China. Personal dishonoring of this kind was applied to both priests and laymen. It is illustrated in the following exchangebetween another priest and his prison instructor:
Instructor: "Do you believe man should serve others? "
Priest: "Yes, of course I do. "
Instructor: "Are you familiar with the Biblical saying, 'I come on earth
to serve, not to be served? '" Priest: "Yes, as a priest it is my creed. "
Instructor: "Did you have a servant in your mission? "
Priest: "Yes, I did/'
Instructor: "Who made your bed in the morning and swept the floor? " Priest: "My servant did this. "
Instructor: "You did not live up to your doctrine very well, did you,
Father? "
This same priest explained the process of logical dishonoring in Marxist terminology and with a good deal of psychological insight:
They believe that in each person there is a thesis--his positive ele- ment, work, or creed; and an antithesis--his weakness which works against this. The thesis in my case was the Catholic and my missionary work. My antithesis was anything which worked against this due to my personal shortcomings. The Communists attempted to wear down my thesis and encouraged the development of my antithesis. By making the antithesis stronger and the thesis weaker, they seek to have the antithesis replace the thesis as the dominant force in the individual.
The antithesis of which the priest speaks is his negative iden- tity 10--that part of him which he has been constantly warned
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never to become. A priest's negative identity is likely to include such elements as the selfish man, the sinner, the proud man, the insincere man, and the unvigilant man. As the reformers encourage a prisoner's negative identity to enlarge and luxuriate, the prisoner becomes ready to doubt the more affirmative self-image (diligent priest, considerate healer, tolerant teacher) which he had previ- ously looked upon as his true identity. He finds an ever-expanding part of himself falling into dishonor in his own eyes.
At this point the prisoner faces the most dangerous part of thought reform. He experiences guilt and shame much more pro- found and much more threatening to his inner integrity than any experienced in relation to previous psychological steps. He iscon- fronted with his human limitations, with the contrast between what he is and what he would be. His emotion may be called true or genuine guilt, or true shame--or existential guilt n--to distinguish it from the less profound and more synthetic forms of inner ex- perience. He undergoes a self-exposure which is on the border of guilt and shame. Under attack is the deepest meaning of his en- tire life, the morality of his relationship to mankind. The one-sided exploitation of existential guilt is thought reform's trump card, and perhaps its most important source of emotional influence over its participants. Revolving around it are issues most decisive to thought reform's outcome.
Why call this process logical dishonoring? Surely it is not logical to have one's identity so disparaged--unless one sees this disparage- ment as a small but necessary part of a greater system of events. And this is precisely the kind of systematic rationale which the Communists--through their ideology--supply. A prisoner's incon- sistencies and evildoings are related to historical forces, political hap- penings, and economic trends. Thus, his acceptance of his negative identity and the learning of Communist doctrine become insepa- rable, one completely dependent upon the other. The realignment of affirmation and negation within one's identity requires an end- less repetition, a continuous application of self to the doctrine-- and indeed, this is the essence of re-education. The prisoner must, like a man under special psychological treatment, analyze the causes of his deficiencies, work through his resistances (or "thought prob- lems") until he thinks and feels in terms of the doctrinal truths to which all of life is reduced. In the process, he may be guided
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by a particular "instructor" (sometimes referred to as "analyst" or "case analyst") who has special charge of his case, keeps all personal records, and conducts many individual interviews with him. The prisoner's psychological strengths and weaknesses become well known to his personal instructor, then to other officials as well, and are effectively utilized in the undermining process.
What we have said so far of "re-education" hardly lives up to the name: we have talked more of breakdown than of remaking. In actuality, the remaking is also well under way. Even during the earlier stages of identity assault and compulsion to confess, the prisoner experiences stirrings of restitution. The buildup of his negative identity, along with his developing acceptance of Com- munist doctrine, provide the first contours of something new. He continues, during the years of imprisonment, to loudly proclaim his own demise; but as his re-education proceeds, he finds himself first announcing, and then experiencing, the refashioned identity which is emerging. His sense of nakedness and vulnerability nourishes the growth of the "new man. "
9. PROGRESS AND HARMONY
The prisoner's new self requires emotional nutriment if it is to continue to develop. This nutriment is supplied by the prisoner's achieving a sense of harmony with his no-longer-strange surround- ings. Harmony is partly a matter of gradual adaptation, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca made clear. Adaptation in turn is contingent upon progress in reform; and only when this progress has been demonstrated does the prisoner begin to receive the rec- ognition and acceptance which is so precious in such an environ- ment.
Then, as Dr. Vincent described, the prisoner can experience the deep satisfactions of solving all problems; of group intimacy in living, working, and suffering; of surrendering himself to an all- powerful force, and sharing its strength; of laying himself bare in the catharsis of personal confession; of sharing the moral righteous- ness of a great crusade of mass redemption.
Toward the end of their imprisonment, both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were living under quite comfortable circumstances. The improvement in their physical surroundings was important enough; the atmosphere of frankness and of being met halfway was
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exhilarating. Both had regained the status of being human. Talks with judges were man-to-man encounters between people who un- derstood each other and considered one another's feelings. Indeed, Father Luca felt free enough to voice doubts and criticisms; and although he did this partially as a tactic, he was at the same time accepting therapeutic assistance from his captors.
To appreciate the emotional appeal of harmony, one must--as the prisoner invariably does--contrast it with the basic fear and estrangement of the earlier phases of imprisonment. Instead of an- tagonism and total conflict, he feels in step with a milieu which ap- preciates him. Identified as a "progressive," he is permitted (and grasps at) a more direct form of self-expression. To be sure, he is still partly the actor; but performance and life have moved closer together, and he is not acting as much as he thinks he is. As he achieves a more intimate communication with his reformers, his entire experience takes on a much greater feeling of reality. Officials in turn show a beginning willingness to accept the prisoner as he is --by no means perfect in his reform, but at least more genuine in his partial reform.
10. FINAL CONFESSION: THE SUMMING UP
In this atmosphere of harmony and reality, the prisoner is ready
to make a conclusive statement of what he is and what he has been. The confession has long been developing, of course, but it is likely to take its final shape only after he has achieved sufficient "progress" to produce and believe in a "correct" version.
In Father Luca's case--which is especially illustrative for the entire confession process--the two short paragraphs of his final confession seem almost anticlimactic after the millions of self- accusatory words he had already poured out. Yet this briefest of confessions was both a symbol and a summation of all that had gone before. For the officials, it was the confession, the statement for the record. For Father Luca, it was the last of an arduous series of confession identities. To understand this, we must review the sequence of his confession responses and his existential involve- ments, since any confession, whether true or false, contains an in- terpretation of one's present and past relationship to the world.
Luca's first confession statement (so unacceptable as a confession that it might better be called his pre-confession statement) was his
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 8 l
defiance. In claiming that his arrest was either a mistake or a con- sequence of his faith, he was clinging to the identity of the priest with integrity. But as he began to surrender more and more of this part of himself, and became lost in the labyrinth of his own false confessions, he took on two additional identities: the secret con- spirator and the "novelist/' or creative confabulator. His belief in his own falsehoods indicated both the degree to which his identity had broken down and the strength of the image created within him of this conspiratorial self. When he consented to speak about his clerical colleagues, and give details about Catholic groups, he was assuming the imposed identity of the betrayer, and especially the self-betrayer. Then, when the "novel" was abandoned, and he began for the first time to confess everything--to lay before his reformers all that came to his mind--he became the ignorant supplicant, groping for acceptance. Next, in organizing specific points in an acceptably self-damning fashion, he was simultaneously the re- pentant sinner (he could be repentant because he knew better what his sins were) and the relatively advanced confessor (one who had learned the techniques of his environment). In the two para- graphs of his final confession--in which he referred to his "espi- onage" relationship with another priest, and to his "illegal" church activities--he took on (although hardly completely) the final identity of the "confirmed" criminal.
The reformers thus ended precisely where they had begun. From the beginning they had labelled Luca a criminal; and these two "crimes" were clearly the ones they had originally selected for him to "recognize. " Why, then, did they put everyone to so much trouble?
They did so because confession is as much a part of re-education as re-education is of confession. The officials demanded that their accusations become the prisoner's seZ/-accusations, and that the confession be made with inner conviction. They required that he present himself in the evil image they had constructed for him--and their reasons for requiring this, as we shall later discuss, are by no means completely rational.
Father Luca's sequence of confession was neither unique nor accidental; the sequence was essentially the same for Dr. Vincent also, and for almost all other prisoners. There is first the at- tempt at accuracy, then the wild confession, then the return to
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real events in distorted focus, and finally, the brief "criminal" con- fession. Since the development of the wild confession usually occurs during the first few days or weeks (Father Luca's lasted for an exceptionally long time), the main trend is a shift from the im- aginary to the concrete. Although fantasy and falsehood are by no means eliminated, this shift does give the prisoner the sense that he is moving in the direction of truth. His confession changes from an uncontrolled dream-like (or nightmarish) vision to a more re- sponsible reinterpretation of his own life. Thus he becomes more "engaged" in the confession process, more closely bound to his own words. At the same time, the effect of his wild confession has not been entirely lost upon him; he is apt to retain feelings of guilt over it, as if he had really done the things he described.
While each step in the confession is the result of changes in the strength and tone of the environmental pressures, the prisoner experiences many of his responses as personal discoveries. Both Luca and Vincent, in shifting from falsehood to exaggeration, thought they had hit upon a useful and ingenious technique; only later did each realize that the officials' manipulations had made this reaction inevitable. Each step in the confession, then, is a means of adaptation; and it is also, for both prisoner and reformer, a compromise: he wishes to say less, and they demand more.
In this confession sequence, there is a good deal of structuring and planning on the part of prison officials. But they too can be victimized by their impulses, and by the contagious paranoid tones of the environment; their confusion over what is true and what is false--so evident in their treatment of Father Luca--can add to this general emotional turmoil.
The confession thus embodies demand and response, molded creativity, adaptation, compromise, working through, and a good deal of confusion on all sides. Its final version is the prisoner's subjective perception of the environment's message, guided by his reformers, but also including his own guilty re-evaluation of his past actions. Its beginnings in real events, the "logic" of its distor- tions, and its documented flavor may make it quite believable-- both to the outside world and to its creator as well,
1 1 . REBIRTH
Just before his release Dr. Vincent became once more the physician and teacher, and at the same time he became the ad-
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vanced and sympathetic student of Chinese Communism. At the end, reformers made it clear he should combine these two aspects of himself. He was expected to bring the scientific and technical emphasis of his profession to his study of Communism, and to carry over a "progressive" approach (pedagogical shortcuts geared to the needs of "the people") to his medical teaching.
The same principle was applied to Father Luca. Toward the end of his imprisonment he was more and more recognized as a priest with the right to hold his religious views, even if the officials would not go so far as to allow him to practice his religion--an enemy ideology--in the prison. Simultaneously he reached a stage of maximum participation in the Communist movement. This com- bination is best symbolized in his assuming the role of the re- former, working on a Chinese Catholic priest to bring him to con- fession. The foreign European missionary who had helped to train Chinese colleagues was once more taking the role of the spiritual mentor, but this time under the imposed sponsorship of the Chinese Communist movement which now encompassed them both.
They did not cease to be priest or physician; rather each became a priest or physician sympathetic to, or at least in a working relationship with, Chinese Communism. Although much of their former identities had been dishonored during imprisonment, they had suffered only a temporary, controlled, and partial "death/' If anything like a whole man is to walk out of prison, a good deal of the prisoner's old self will have to be resurrected. This resurrection, however, can be permitted only when the imposed thought reform elements are strong enough to dominate the new combination. For it is just this confluence of identities--the bringing together of evil criminal, repentant sinner, student of Communist doctrine, and the man originally imprisoned--which constitutes the rebirth. Heralded by all of the identity shifts of previous steps, this con- fluence is likely to occur only after prolonged re-education. And since even the prison identities must be carved out of the prisoner's own emotions (albeit with a powerful knife), rebirth means a basic modification, but not a total replacement, of the former self.
It is a modification strong enough, as in the case of Dr. Vincent, to create a profound change in the prisoner's view of the world, and in his personal relationship to the world. He reinterprets his thought and behavior, shifts his values, recedes his sense of
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reality. 12 The Communist world, formerly considered aggressive and totalitarian, is now seen as peace-loving and democratic. He identifies with his captors, and is happy in his faith.
12. RELEASE: TRANSITION ANDLIMBO
At this point, the prisoner is ready for release, although the actual timing of a Westerner's release has been determined more by international political considerations than by his progress in reform. In recent cases, a public trial, replete with prosecuting and defense attorneys, has formalized both the conviction and the re- birth. Before an outside audience, the prisoner once more admits his crimes and expresses his new point of view, while the defense attorney makes a plea for additional "leniency. " More frequently, the prisoner is simply read his charge and sentence while still within the prison, as happened to both Vincent and Luca. On rare oc- casions, a Westerner is sentenced to serve additional time in a new setting (considered a true prison) where he undergoes "reform by labor," a procedure of much less emotional involvement. Whether publicly or privately sentenced, the great majority of Western prisoners have been immediately expelled from China,
But release and expulsion, as Vincent in particular discovered, do not put an end to one's troubles. Instead they thrust the Westerner into an environment which immediately questions all that has been so painstakingly built up during the years of imprisonment; and they precipitate a new identity crisis just as severe as the one ex- perienced during incarceration. Although this crisis occurs outside the thought reform milieu, it must be regarded as the final "step" in reform; it cannot be separated from what has gone before. The presence of this post-release identity crisis in virtually all of my Western subjects during the time of our interviews was what enabled them to describe so vividly the identity conflicts of their thought reform experiences.
Upon arriving in Hong Kong, Dr. Vincent discovered that what he had become in prison was of absolutely no use to him in his new milieu. Alone with his emotions, he found himself in a dev- astating predicament: he had internalized enough of his prison environment to feel a severe distrust of the non-Communist world, but was sufficiently receptive to the evidence around him to be highly suspicious of the Communist point of view as well. The
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 85
security he had known during the latter part of imprisonment sud- denly vanished, and his identity was shaken to its foundations. Should he still be the "Communist physician" of his rebirth and seek employment through a European Communist party? or should he return to his freelance medical work in underdeveloped countries? In his personal limbo he was unable to feel "safe" (or whole) in either world; instead he felt deceived by both.
He longed nostalgically for the relatively simple, ordered, and meaningful prison experience, now glorified in his memory. He could relinquish this longing only as he began to be able to trust his new environment; this trust in turn depended upon the capacity to trust himself. Once more he underwent a painful identity shift, encompassing what he had been before, what he had become in prison, and what he was in the process of becoming after release.
Father Luca experienced a similar crisis, in some ways attenuated by his immediate welcome into the motherly embrace of the Church. He knew clearly that he was still the dedicated Catholic priest (although it was not easy for him to give up being a "Chinese" Catholic priest). But he retained profound doubts about his own integrity, and especially about the morality of his mis- sionary work. The dishonoring had struck deep chords in him, and had stirred strong anxieties. His problem was not so much whether or not to continue being a Catholic priest--he could conceive of no alternative to this--but rather one of regaining respect for the clerical missionary life to which he was committed.
Nor were Dr. Vincent and Father Luca alone in these conflicts; immediately following release, all prisoners experienced profound struggles about their integrity, their ability to trust, and their search for wholeness. None escaped the personal crisis of this transitional period any more than he could avoid involvement in the other steps; but each man's crisis was his own.
? CHAPTER 6
VARIETIES OF RESPONSE:
THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED
In discussing in Chapter 5 the twelve psychological
steps of prison thought reform, I emphasized the similarities in the emotional responses of the people who were put through it. These similarities were due both to consistent pressures and to universal human characteristics. In this chapter, I shall turn to the equally important individual variations which I was able to observe. Each subject, during and immediately after his reform, demonstrated his own special combination of emotion and belief, his particular pattern of strengths and susceptibilities. The quality of this personal response depended largely upon the character traits of the man who was imprisoned, upon the configurations of emo- tions and identities developed within him during the course of his entire previous life.
Since no two men are the same, we could delineate as many types of response as there were subjects interviewed. It is convenient, however, to distinguish three general categories, based upon the beliefs these men expressed and the emotions which underlay those beliefs at the time of our interviews.
Although there is a continuing tension between holding on and letting go, some degree of self-betrayal is quickly seen as a way to survival. But the more of one's self one is led to betray, the greater is one's involvement with his captors; for by these means they make contact with whatever similar tendencies already exist within the prisoner himself--with the doubts, antagonisms, and ambivalences which each of us carries beneath the surface of his loyalties. This bond of betrayal between prisoner and environment may develop to the point where it seems to him to be all he has to grasp; turning back becomes ever more difficult.
4. THE BREAKING POINT; TOTAL CONFLICT AND THE BASIC FEAR
Before long, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent found themselves at an absolute impasse with their environment. Each was looked upon not only as an enemy, but also as a man completely out of step. They were aware of being in painful disagreement with al- leged truths about their past, and yet at this point they were un-
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clear about what these "truths" were.
At the same time, they had been impressed with the inflexibility
of their milieu. The government, being infallible, would not give way; it was the "stubborn criminal" who had to "change. " Their situation was like that of a man taken suddenly from his ordinary routine and placed in a hospital for the criminally insane, where he is accused of a horrendous but vague crime which he is expected to recognize and confess; where his assertion of innocence is viewed as a symptom of his disease, as a paranoid delusion; and where every other inmate-patient is wholly dedicated to the task of pressuring him into a confession and a "cure. " 6 The sense of total reversal is like that of Alice after falling down the rabbit hole; but the weirdness of the experience is more that of a Kafka hero.
The prisoner's dilemma leads him to a state of antagonistic es- trangement. He is not totally estranged from the environment, be- cause even antagonism is a form of contact; but he is totally cut off from the essential succor of affectionate communication and related- ness, without which he cannot survive. And at the same time, his increasing self-betrayal, sense of guilt, and his loss of identity all join to estrange him from himself--or at least from the self which he has known. He can contemplate the future with only hopeless- ness and dread. Literally and emotionally, there seems to be no escape from this hermetically-sealed antagonism.
As the assaults continue, and as they are turned inward, he begins to experience one of the most primitive and painful emotions known to man, the fear of total annihilation. This basic fear e--considered by some the inherited forerunner of all human anxiety--becomes the final focus for all of the prison pressures. It is fed by every threat and accusation from without, as well as by all of the destructive emotions stimulated within. The fear is compounded by the hor- rifying realization that the environment seems to be making it come true. Dr. Vincent did not only fear annihilation; he actually felt himself to be annihilated. It was this confirmation of a primitive fear which led him to hope for relief through quick death.
This is the point at which physical and mental integration break down. Some prisoners may be brought by their severe anxiety and depression to the point of suicidal preoccupations and attempts:
They scolded me in a nasty way. I had the feeling that everyone was cross with me and despised me. I thought, why do they despise rne?
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 71
What have I done? . . . I was eating very little. . . . I refused toeat or drink. . . . I felt very much down. I felt there was no chance for me. . . . It was so utterly hopeless. For six weeks I did nothing but think how I might kill myself.
Others experience the delusions and hallucinations usually as- sociated with psychosis:
I heard investigations taking place below, and one day I heard my name called. I listened while Chinese were indoctrinated to testify how I had been gathering information on troop movements. . . . The next day I recognized the voice of my Chinese accountant who was told that I had confessed everything and therefore his confession better agree with mine. . . . Once I heard the guards saying in a social con- versation with a German that they would soften me up by locking me in a cage which used to be used by the KMT. . . . I wasnear going nuts.
Such symptoms are clear evidence of the loss of the capacity to cope with one's environment. At the same time, they represent --as do any psychiatric symptoms--protective efforts, attempts on the part of the human organism to ward off something perceived as an even greater danger: in these cases, the anticipation of total annihilation.
Many of Father Luca's transient delusions represented just such a combination of breakdown and restitution. His imagining (and believing) that his consul was visiting the prison, or that he was once more among his fellow Christians, were evidence he had lost the ability to discriminate between the real and the unreal. But in experiencing these same delusions, the content of which re- inforced his fantasies of rescue, Father Luca was clinging tenaciously to his own life force, and at the same time warding off his basic fear. 7
No prisoner, whatever his defenses, ever completely overcame this fear of annihilation. It remained with each in greater or lesser degree throughout imprisonment, and in some cases for a long time after- ward. It was a constant inner reminder of the terrible predicament he might again be forced to face should he further displease his captors.
At this point, the prisoner's immediate prospects appear to be physical illness, psychosis, or death. If his death is to remain sym- bolic--and psychic damage kept from progressing beyond the re-
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versible stage--some form of desperately needed relief must be supplied.
5. LENIENCY AND OPPORTUNITY
A sudden change in official attitude--the institution of leniency --supplies this relief. The unexpected show of kindness, usually occurring just when the prisoner is reaching his breaking point, breaks the impasse between him and the environment. He is per- mitted--even shown how--to achieve some degree of harmony with his outer world.
"Leniency" does not mean that the milieu budges from any of its demands, or even from its standards of reality. It simply lets up on its pressures sufficiently for the prisoner to absorb its principles and adapt himself to them. When Dr. Vincent, after two months of imprisonment, suddenly encountered friendliness and consideration in place of chains and struggles, there was no cessation of the pressure for confession. In fact, the effect of leniency was to spur him on to greater confession efforts. He was able to make these efforts because his leniency was accompanied by guidance; he had a chance to learn and act upon what was expected of him. Father Luca had no such good fortune. He, too, after one month, was given a respite: the removal of chains and handcuffs and the op portunity to sleep; but his was the unusual experience of leniency without guidance. He was willing to comply (his false confession was, among other things, a profound expression of compliance); but he was unable to find the desired approach. In his case, there- fore, a new impasse was created, which resulted in a brutal inter- ruption of his leniency.
The timing and the setting of leniency can be extremely dramatic, as it was for another priest.
It was Christmas Day. I was brought to see the judge. For the first time I found the room full of sunlight. There was no guard and there were no secretaries. There were only the kind faces of the judges offer- ing me cigarettes and tea. It was a conversation more than a question- ing. My mother could not have been much more good and kind than the judge was. He said to me, "The treatment you have received here is really too bad. Maybe you are unable to stand it. As a foreigner and a priest, you must be used to good food and better hygienic standards. So just make a confession. But make it really good, so we can be satis- fied. Then we will close your trial and finish your case. "
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In other cases, leniency was utilized to confront the prisoner with a threatening life-or-death alternative. It might include a new "good" interrogator who replaces or alternates with the "bad" one:
An inspector had talked to me nastily and I collapsed. Soon after, a nicer inspector came to visit me. He was worried--very friendly to me--and asked me if I had heart disease. . . . He said, "Your health is not good; you must have a better room. " He called on me again and said, "We must get your case settled now. The government is interested in you. All you must do is change your mind. There are only two ways for you to go: one way leads to life, and the other to death. If you want the road that leads to life, you must take our way. You must re- form yourself and re-educate yourself. " I said, "That sounds very good," I felt light of heart and told the other cellmates about it. They said, "That's good. Write your confession about how wrong your old political ideas were, and how willing you are to change your mind--and then you will be released. "
This threat also was clear in the experience of another prisoner who had been transferred to a hospital after an attempt at suicide:
At first they told me that I had tried to kill myself because I had a bad conscience. . , . But the doctor seemed very kind. . . . Then an official came to see me and he spoke to me in a very friendly voice: "The government doesn't want to kill you. It wants to reform you. We don't want to punish you at all, we just want to re-educate you. " , . . It was my first glimmer of hope. I felt finally there might be a way out. I wasn't feeling so hopelessly alone any more. The official had actually shown some human quality. 8
Apparent in all these examples is the immense stimulus which leniency provides for the prisoner's reform effort. Total annihila- tion is no longer all he can visualize. He has been offered rest, kind- ness, and a glimpse of the Promised Land of renewed identity and acceptance--even freedom; annihilation is now something he can avoid, and in fact must avoid at all costs.
The psychological decompression of his environment serves to win him over to the reform camp, especially to that part of the reform camp which is working on him. In other words, he becomes motivated to help the officials achieve what they are trying to do to him. He becomes, as did Dr. Vincent, their grateful partner in his own reform.
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6. THE COMPULSION TO CONFESS*
Long before any suggestion of leniency, Father Luca and Dr. Vincent had perceived the dominant message of their milieu: only those who confess can survive. Indeed, everything in the way of assaults and leniency--all pressures of breakdown and promised restitution--served to reinforce this message. In such a climate, the two men had no choice but to join in the universal compulsion to confess. Their first expression of this compulsion was the early elaboration of false "crimes. " Even when a prisoner was aware that his confession was "wild"--as was Dr. Vincent--he had begun to submit to the confession requirement, and to behave as if he were a criminal. This was even more true, and the guilt even more pro- found, for those who, like Father Luca, came to believe in their own falsehoods.
These first confessions are preliminary (although prison officials do not necessarily mean them to be such) to the main manifestation of the compulsion to confess--the total soul purge. Both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca, when their false confessions were rejected, hit upon the expedient of simply confessing everything, with spe- cial emphasis on what might be considered most sinful. In doing so, they moved beyond mere playing of the criminal role. They were beginning to accept as valid parts of themselves the two basic identities of thought reform.
The first of these is the identity of the repentant sinner. The prisoner in effect says: "I must locate this evil part of me, this mental abscess, and excise it from my very being, lest it remain to cause me more harm. " This leads directly to the second identity --that of the receptive criminal, the man who is, at whatever level of consciousness, not only beginning to concur in the environment's legal and moral judgment of him, but also to commit himself to acquiring the beliefs, values, and identities officially considered de- sirable. The acceptance of these two identities led both Dr. Vin- cent and Father Luca to express the idea that one had to get rid of old thoughts and emotions in order to make room for the new ones. Precisely this compulsion to reveal everything provides the continuity between breakdown and restitution, between confession and reform.
The compulsion to confess is not static; it continually gathers
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 75
momentum, and provokes an increasing sense of submission--as described by another priest:
After a while one wants to talk . . . they press you, so you feel you must say something. Once you start you are deceived: you are at the top of the tree and you go down. . . . If you say the first word, there is always something more: "Lao shih"--No, no, be a good boy! Say the truth! --, "t'an pai"--Confess! --are constantly repeated every two min- utes. I felt myself wanting to say more to make him shut his mouth, he was so insisting. . . . It made me weak; it made me want to give in.
Equally important, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca dis- covered, is the "creative" participation which each prisoner develops in his confession process. His inner fantasies must always make con- tact with the demands from without. To be sure, these fantasies are painstakingly and selectively molded by officials and cellmates. But they are never entirely divorced from the man who produces them. This means that a good deal of the energy involved in the confession comes from within the prisoner himself. His compul- sion to confess dedicates him to the task of continuously carving out and refilling his own inner void--under the active supervision and broad moral guidance of his captors.
7. THE CHANNELLING OF GUIL T
Once the compulsion to confess is operating, the prisoner is ready to learn a more precise formula--thought reform's conceptual framework for his expression of guilt and repentance. By adopting the "people's standpoint," he channels nonspecific feelings of guilt into a paranoid, pseudo-logical system.
His sense of evil, formerly vague and free-floating, is now made to do specific work for reform. He takes this step, as Vincent so clearly described, by learning to see evidence of personal evil and destructiveness in specific past actions. What was most prosaic, or even generous, must now be viewed as "criminal. "
This reinterpretation of events, as absurd as it may sound, has a strong impact because it stimulates forces within the prisoner himself which support the contentions of his environment. He has, like everyone else, struggled with feelings of curiosity, hostility, and vindictiveness not acceptable for public display, but retained as part of his own secret world. Now the awareness of these feel-
? TO THOUGHT REFORM
ings within himself, and especially of the secretiveness which ac- companies them, makes him feel like the "spy" he is accused of being* It is a relatively easy step for him to associate this image of himself as a conspirator with the past events under consideration. Indeed, in making a casual comment about approaching Commu- nist armies, one part of him might really have hoped that this in- formation would reach and benefit the other side; and even if this were not true, it becomes fairly easy for him to imagine that it had been.
Since the people's standpoint is an ultimate statement of bias, its acceptance also involves a basic negative commitment. The pris- oner joins in condemning himself less for what he has done than for what he has been: as a Westerner--and therefore an "imperial- ist"--he is guilty. For him, this is the real significance of the people's standpoint, and its use of news, information, and intelligence is merely a method of implementing its prejudgment.
The more the prisoner submits to these black-and-white judg- ments, the more he surrenders all that is subtle or qualified--as an- other missionary described:
At first I was always making this distinction: as far as my conscience is concerned, it is no sin, but from their point of view it is a crime. I knew that the judgment would be standing on their point of view. . . . The same action was seen by me and them from a completely different morality--seen through a different window. They are looking through from the outside in, me from the inside out. . . . They said the government is infallible, so what it discovered cannot be untrue. That puts me in a bad position. I said, "I admit the government is infallible. " They took my words like rubber. . . . Later I asked the government for a lenient sentence, I could not say that they were un- just, as I was standing on their point of view.
As the prisoner accepts this "higher" group morality, its most harsh judgments make common cause with the most tyrannical parts of his own conscience; through this joining of forces, he is changed from a man who merely feels guilty into one who feels guilty about exactly those actions which the environment considers criminal.
8. RE-EDUCA TION: LOGICAL DISHONORING
While Father Luca and Dr. Vincent, in a general sense, began their re-education the moment they were imprisoned, its formal
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS JJ
inception occurred with the stress upon group study (hsileh hsi) just after the institution of leniency. Both men found that it was not Communist doctrine per se which mattered, but rather the use of Communist doctrine and its reasoning techniques to broaden their own self-exposure.
It was no longer enough to admit guilt, to feel guilty, or even to recognize specific guilty actions. The prisoner had to extend his self-condemnation to every aspect of his being> and learn to see his life as a series of shameful and evil acts--shameful and evil not only in their possible opposition to Communism, but also because they violated his own cherished ideals.
With Father Luca, this desecration of identity took the form of convincing him that he and his missionary colleagues had been "un- Christian" in their conduct in China. Personal dishonoring of this kind was applied to both priests and laymen. It is illustrated in the following exchangebetween another priest and his prison instructor:
Instructor: "Do you believe man should serve others? "
Priest: "Yes, of course I do. "
Instructor: "Are you familiar with the Biblical saying, 'I come on earth
to serve, not to be served? '" Priest: "Yes, as a priest it is my creed. "
Instructor: "Did you have a servant in your mission? "
Priest: "Yes, I did/'
Instructor: "Who made your bed in the morning and swept the floor? " Priest: "My servant did this. "
Instructor: "You did not live up to your doctrine very well, did you,
Father? "
This same priest explained the process of logical dishonoring in Marxist terminology and with a good deal of psychological insight:
They believe that in each person there is a thesis--his positive ele- ment, work, or creed; and an antithesis--his weakness which works against this. The thesis in my case was the Catholic and my missionary work. My antithesis was anything which worked against this due to my personal shortcomings. The Communists attempted to wear down my thesis and encouraged the development of my antithesis. By making the antithesis stronger and the thesis weaker, they seek to have the antithesis replace the thesis as the dominant force in the individual.
The antithesis of which the priest speaks is his negative iden- tity 10--that part of him which he has been constantly warned
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never to become. A priest's negative identity is likely to include such elements as the selfish man, the sinner, the proud man, the insincere man, and the unvigilant man. As the reformers encourage a prisoner's negative identity to enlarge and luxuriate, the prisoner becomes ready to doubt the more affirmative self-image (diligent priest, considerate healer, tolerant teacher) which he had previ- ously looked upon as his true identity. He finds an ever-expanding part of himself falling into dishonor in his own eyes.
At this point the prisoner faces the most dangerous part of thought reform. He experiences guilt and shame much more pro- found and much more threatening to his inner integrity than any experienced in relation to previous psychological steps. He iscon- fronted with his human limitations, with the contrast between what he is and what he would be. His emotion may be called true or genuine guilt, or true shame--or existential guilt n--to distinguish it from the less profound and more synthetic forms of inner ex- perience. He undergoes a self-exposure which is on the border of guilt and shame. Under attack is the deepest meaning of his en- tire life, the morality of his relationship to mankind. The one-sided exploitation of existential guilt is thought reform's trump card, and perhaps its most important source of emotional influence over its participants. Revolving around it are issues most decisive to thought reform's outcome.
Why call this process logical dishonoring? Surely it is not logical to have one's identity so disparaged--unless one sees this disparage- ment as a small but necessary part of a greater system of events. And this is precisely the kind of systematic rationale which the Communists--through their ideology--supply. A prisoner's incon- sistencies and evildoings are related to historical forces, political hap- penings, and economic trends. Thus, his acceptance of his negative identity and the learning of Communist doctrine become insepa- rable, one completely dependent upon the other. The realignment of affirmation and negation within one's identity requires an end- less repetition, a continuous application of self to the doctrine-- and indeed, this is the essence of re-education. The prisoner must, like a man under special psychological treatment, analyze the causes of his deficiencies, work through his resistances (or "thought prob- lems") until he thinks and feels in terms of the doctrinal truths to which all of life is reduced. In the process, he may be guided
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by a particular "instructor" (sometimes referred to as "analyst" or "case analyst") who has special charge of his case, keeps all personal records, and conducts many individual interviews with him. The prisoner's psychological strengths and weaknesses become well known to his personal instructor, then to other officials as well, and are effectively utilized in the undermining process.
What we have said so far of "re-education" hardly lives up to the name: we have talked more of breakdown than of remaking. In actuality, the remaking is also well under way. Even during the earlier stages of identity assault and compulsion to confess, the prisoner experiences stirrings of restitution. The buildup of his negative identity, along with his developing acceptance of Com- munist doctrine, provide the first contours of something new. He continues, during the years of imprisonment, to loudly proclaim his own demise; but as his re-education proceeds, he finds himself first announcing, and then experiencing, the refashioned identity which is emerging. His sense of nakedness and vulnerability nourishes the growth of the "new man. "
9. PROGRESS AND HARMONY
The prisoner's new self requires emotional nutriment if it is to continue to develop. This nutriment is supplied by the prisoner's achieving a sense of harmony with his no-longer-strange surround- ings. Harmony is partly a matter of gradual adaptation, as both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca made clear. Adaptation in turn is contingent upon progress in reform; and only when this progress has been demonstrated does the prisoner begin to receive the rec- ognition and acceptance which is so precious in such an environ- ment.
Then, as Dr. Vincent described, the prisoner can experience the deep satisfactions of solving all problems; of group intimacy in living, working, and suffering; of surrendering himself to an all- powerful force, and sharing its strength; of laying himself bare in the catharsis of personal confession; of sharing the moral righteous- ness of a great crusade of mass redemption.
Toward the end of their imprisonment, both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca were living under quite comfortable circumstances. The improvement in their physical surroundings was important enough; the atmosphere of frankness and of being met halfway was
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exhilarating. Both had regained the status of being human. Talks with judges were man-to-man encounters between people who un- derstood each other and considered one another's feelings. Indeed, Father Luca felt free enough to voice doubts and criticisms; and although he did this partially as a tactic, he was at the same time accepting therapeutic assistance from his captors.
To appreciate the emotional appeal of harmony, one must--as the prisoner invariably does--contrast it with the basic fear and estrangement of the earlier phases of imprisonment. Instead of an- tagonism and total conflict, he feels in step with a milieu which ap- preciates him. Identified as a "progressive," he is permitted (and grasps at) a more direct form of self-expression. To be sure, he is still partly the actor; but performance and life have moved closer together, and he is not acting as much as he thinks he is. As he achieves a more intimate communication with his reformers, his entire experience takes on a much greater feeling of reality. Officials in turn show a beginning willingness to accept the prisoner as he is --by no means perfect in his reform, but at least more genuine in his partial reform.
10. FINAL CONFESSION: THE SUMMING UP
In this atmosphere of harmony and reality, the prisoner is ready
to make a conclusive statement of what he is and what he has been. The confession has long been developing, of course, but it is likely to take its final shape only after he has achieved sufficient "progress" to produce and believe in a "correct" version.
In Father Luca's case--which is especially illustrative for the entire confession process--the two short paragraphs of his final confession seem almost anticlimactic after the millions of self- accusatory words he had already poured out. Yet this briefest of confessions was both a symbol and a summation of all that had gone before. For the officials, it was the confession, the statement for the record. For Father Luca, it was the last of an arduous series of confession identities. To understand this, we must review the sequence of his confession responses and his existential involve- ments, since any confession, whether true or false, contains an in- terpretation of one's present and past relationship to the world.
Luca's first confession statement (so unacceptable as a confession that it might better be called his pre-confession statement) was his
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 8 l
defiance. In claiming that his arrest was either a mistake or a con- sequence of his faith, he was clinging to the identity of the priest with integrity. But as he began to surrender more and more of this part of himself, and became lost in the labyrinth of his own false confessions, he took on two additional identities: the secret con- spirator and the "novelist/' or creative confabulator. His belief in his own falsehoods indicated both the degree to which his identity had broken down and the strength of the image created within him of this conspiratorial self. When he consented to speak about his clerical colleagues, and give details about Catholic groups, he was assuming the imposed identity of the betrayer, and especially the self-betrayer. Then, when the "novel" was abandoned, and he began for the first time to confess everything--to lay before his reformers all that came to his mind--he became the ignorant supplicant, groping for acceptance. Next, in organizing specific points in an acceptably self-damning fashion, he was simultaneously the re- pentant sinner (he could be repentant because he knew better what his sins were) and the relatively advanced confessor (one who had learned the techniques of his environment). In the two para- graphs of his final confession--in which he referred to his "espi- onage" relationship with another priest, and to his "illegal" church activities--he took on (although hardly completely) the final identity of the "confirmed" criminal.
The reformers thus ended precisely where they had begun. From the beginning they had labelled Luca a criminal; and these two "crimes" were clearly the ones they had originally selected for him to "recognize. " Why, then, did they put everyone to so much trouble?
They did so because confession is as much a part of re-education as re-education is of confession. The officials demanded that their accusations become the prisoner's seZ/-accusations, and that the confession be made with inner conviction. They required that he present himself in the evil image they had constructed for him--and their reasons for requiring this, as we shall later discuss, are by no means completely rational.
Father Luca's sequence of confession was neither unique nor accidental; the sequence was essentially the same for Dr. Vincent also, and for almost all other prisoners. There is first the at- tempt at accuracy, then the wild confession, then the return to
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real events in distorted focus, and finally, the brief "criminal" con- fession. Since the development of the wild confession usually occurs during the first few days or weeks (Father Luca's lasted for an exceptionally long time), the main trend is a shift from the im- aginary to the concrete. Although fantasy and falsehood are by no means eliminated, this shift does give the prisoner the sense that he is moving in the direction of truth. His confession changes from an uncontrolled dream-like (or nightmarish) vision to a more re- sponsible reinterpretation of his own life. Thus he becomes more "engaged" in the confession process, more closely bound to his own words. At the same time, the effect of his wild confession has not been entirely lost upon him; he is apt to retain feelings of guilt over it, as if he had really done the things he described.
While each step in the confession is the result of changes in the strength and tone of the environmental pressures, the prisoner experiences many of his responses as personal discoveries. Both Luca and Vincent, in shifting from falsehood to exaggeration, thought they had hit upon a useful and ingenious technique; only later did each realize that the officials' manipulations had made this reaction inevitable. Each step in the confession, then, is a means of adaptation; and it is also, for both prisoner and reformer, a compromise: he wishes to say less, and they demand more.
In this confession sequence, there is a good deal of structuring and planning on the part of prison officials. But they too can be victimized by their impulses, and by the contagious paranoid tones of the environment; their confusion over what is true and what is false--so evident in their treatment of Father Luca--can add to this general emotional turmoil.
The confession thus embodies demand and response, molded creativity, adaptation, compromise, working through, and a good deal of confusion on all sides. Its final version is the prisoner's subjective perception of the environment's message, guided by his reformers, but also including his own guilty re-evaluation of his past actions. Its beginnings in real events, the "logic" of its distor- tions, and its documented flavor may make it quite believable-- both to the outside world and to its creator as well,
1 1 . REBIRTH
Just before his release Dr. Vincent became once more the physician and teacher, and at the same time he became the ad-
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 83
vanced and sympathetic student of Chinese Communism. At the end, reformers made it clear he should combine these two aspects of himself. He was expected to bring the scientific and technical emphasis of his profession to his study of Communism, and to carry over a "progressive" approach (pedagogical shortcuts geared to the needs of "the people") to his medical teaching.
The same principle was applied to Father Luca. Toward the end of his imprisonment he was more and more recognized as a priest with the right to hold his religious views, even if the officials would not go so far as to allow him to practice his religion--an enemy ideology--in the prison. Simultaneously he reached a stage of maximum participation in the Communist movement. This com- bination is best symbolized in his assuming the role of the re- former, working on a Chinese Catholic priest to bring him to con- fession. The foreign European missionary who had helped to train Chinese colleagues was once more taking the role of the spiritual mentor, but this time under the imposed sponsorship of the Chinese Communist movement which now encompassed them both.
They did not cease to be priest or physician; rather each became a priest or physician sympathetic to, or at least in a working relationship with, Chinese Communism. Although much of their former identities had been dishonored during imprisonment, they had suffered only a temporary, controlled, and partial "death/' If anything like a whole man is to walk out of prison, a good deal of the prisoner's old self will have to be resurrected. This resurrection, however, can be permitted only when the imposed thought reform elements are strong enough to dominate the new combination. For it is just this confluence of identities--the bringing together of evil criminal, repentant sinner, student of Communist doctrine, and the man originally imprisoned--which constitutes the rebirth. Heralded by all of the identity shifts of previous steps, this con- fluence is likely to occur only after prolonged re-education. And since even the prison identities must be carved out of the prisoner's own emotions (albeit with a powerful knife), rebirth means a basic modification, but not a total replacement, of the former self.
It is a modification strong enough, as in the case of Dr. Vincent, to create a profound change in the prisoner's view of the world, and in his personal relationship to the world. He reinterprets his thought and behavior, shifts his values, recedes his sense of
? 84 THOUGHT REFORM
reality. 12 The Communist world, formerly considered aggressive and totalitarian, is now seen as peace-loving and democratic. He identifies with his captors, and is happy in his faith.
12. RELEASE: TRANSITION ANDLIMBO
At this point, the prisoner is ready for release, although the actual timing of a Westerner's release has been determined more by international political considerations than by his progress in reform. In recent cases, a public trial, replete with prosecuting and defense attorneys, has formalized both the conviction and the re- birth. Before an outside audience, the prisoner once more admits his crimes and expresses his new point of view, while the defense attorney makes a plea for additional "leniency. " More frequently, the prisoner is simply read his charge and sentence while still within the prison, as happened to both Vincent and Luca. On rare oc- casions, a Westerner is sentenced to serve additional time in a new setting (considered a true prison) where he undergoes "reform by labor," a procedure of much less emotional involvement. Whether publicly or privately sentenced, the great majority of Western prisoners have been immediately expelled from China,
But release and expulsion, as Vincent in particular discovered, do not put an end to one's troubles. Instead they thrust the Westerner into an environment which immediately questions all that has been so painstakingly built up during the years of imprisonment; and they precipitate a new identity crisis just as severe as the one ex- perienced during incarceration. Although this crisis occurs outside the thought reform milieu, it must be regarded as the final "step" in reform; it cannot be separated from what has gone before. The presence of this post-release identity crisis in virtually all of my Western subjects during the time of our interviews was what enabled them to describe so vividly the identity conflicts of their thought reform experiences.
Upon arriving in Hong Kong, Dr. Vincent discovered that what he had become in prison was of absolutely no use to him in his new milieu. Alone with his emotions, he found himself in a dev- astating predicament: he had internalized enough of his prison environment to feel a severe distrust of the non-Communist world, but was sufficiently receptive to the evidence around him to be highly suspicious of the Communist point of view as well. The
? PSYCHOLOGICAL STEPS 85
security he had known during the latter part of imprisonment sud- denly vanished, and his identity was shaken to its foundations. Should he still be the "Communist physician" of his rebirth and seek employment through a European Communist party? or should he return to his freelance medical work in underdeveloped countries? In his personal limbo he was unable to feel "safe" (or whole) in either world; instead he felt deceived by both.
He longed nostalgically for the relatively simple, ordered, and meaningful prison experience, now glorified in his memory. He could relinquish this longing only as he began to be able to trust his new environment; this trust in turn depended upon the capacity to trust himself. Once more he underwent a painful identity shift, encompassing what he had been before, what he had become in prison, and what he was in the process of becoming after release.
Father Luca experienced a similar crisis, in some ways attenuated by his immediate welcome into the motherly embrace of the Church. He knew clearly that he was still the dedicated Catholic priest (although it was not easy for him to give up being a "Chinese" Catholic priest). But he retained profound doubts about his own integrity, and especially about the morality of his mis- sionary work. The dishonoring had struck deep chords in him, and had stirred strong anxieties. His problem was not so much whether or not to continue being a Catholic priest--he could conceive of no alternative to this--but rather one of regaining respect for the clerical missionary life to which he was committed.
Nor were Dr. Vincent and Father Luca alone in these conflicts; immediately following release, all prisoners experienced profound struggles about their integrity, their ability to trust, and their search for wholeness. None escaped the personal crisis of this transitional period any more than he could avoid involvement in the other steps; but each man's crisis was his own.
? CHAPTER 6
VARIETIES OF RESPONSE:
THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED
In discussing in Chapter 5 the twelve psychological
steps of prison thought reform, I emphasized the similarities in the emotional responses of the people who were put through it. These similarities were due both to consistent pressures and to universal human characteristics. In this chapter, I shall turn to the equally important individual variations which I was able to observe. Each subject, during and immediately after his reform, demonstrated his own special combination of emotion and belief, his particular pattern of strengths and susceptibilities. The quality of this personal response depended largely upon the character traits of the man who was imprisoned, upon the configurations of emo- tions and identities developed within him during the course of his entire previous life.
Since no two men are the same, we could delineate as many types of response as there were subjects interviewed. It is convenient, however, to distinguish three general categories, based upon the beliefs these men expressed and the emotions which underlay those beliefs at the time of our interviews.
