No More Learning

And this is what happened--or almost happened. Thought re- form exploited each of these aspects of her negative identity, made conscious what was previously latent, and built into grotesque dimensions what had previously been held in balance. The core of her negative identity, the self-image of the "schemer," was a crucial factor in depriving her of a more moderate response to thought reform. Most of my subjects could think themselves reasonably clever and ingenious in playing the double game of acting "progressive" while retaining old beliefs, but Miss Darrow could only castigate herself for being a "cracked bowl. " She could not permit herself the usual form of adaptation without experi- encing the most derogatory view of herself, since in so adapting an inner voice would accuse her of being "the schemer" which in early life she had been warned against becoming.
Thus deprived of the usual defense against thought reform, she was at the mercy of her own totalism. As a response to her historical and racial guilt feelings, she saw herself as having lived not only a "parasitic" life, but a totally parasitic one. Similarly, she came to think herself totally removed from and unconcerned about the Chinese people, rather than maintaining (as did Father Luca, for instance) a more moderate view of a complex situation. On all of these issues, the reformers' totalism made contact with her own, as well as with the other features of her negative identity.
Once the affirmative elements within her liberal identity had been undermined, she could be made to feel at one with the Com- munist--and, more importantly, with the Chinese--world. For a person so long and so painfully the cultural outsider, this sense of belonging had a good deal to do with the outcome of thought re- form,
When she was ready for rebirth, she was able to see in Com- munism many of her own liberal aspirations: dedicated people working "to better the world," regulating society "in the interests of man/' She felt she was among gentlemanly and humane people, to whom submission would be justified. Their society appeared to offer fewer challenges to her problems of femininity, and more op- portunity for her old intellectual and newly-acquired ideological prowess. She emerged more a communist liberal than a true con-
? APPARENT CONVERTS 1J1
vert.
The element of totalism in her new identification with the
Chinese Communists made her misrepresent her own inner feel- ings, and present only her reformed side. Still afraid of the negative identity of the "schemer," she viewed any criticism of the Com- munists or any reconciliation with her own society as selfishness and betrayal. These emotions were intensified by the reformed sentiments of her friend, since she was able to share with him one of the few identities left open to her, that of the reformed West- erner. But like everyone else, Miss Darrow felt the pull of old ties and old identities; in Hong Kong she turned to the missionaries for comfort and for an ideological moratorium. Once back in Canada, she felt the old appeal of her liberal identity, an appeal reinforced by those liberal friends who offered emotional security. Her liberal identity turned out to have been much stronger than one might have suspected: within it, the search for truth and careful reality- testing were both possible and necessary. At the time I spoke with Miss Darrow, the emotions of her negative self-image were still supplying fuel for her identity crisis. She gave me the feeling none- theless that whatever her eventual beliefs, she was emerging from totalism, and reaffirming the more moderate parts of herself.
"Conversion" Trends
In all cases of apparent conversion (the two I studied in detail, the two I met briefly, and two others I heard of) similar emotional factors seemed to be at play: a strong and readily accessible negative identity fed by an unusually great susceptibility to guilt, a tendency toward identity confusion (especially that of the cultural outsider), a profound involvement in*a situation productive of historical and racial guilt, and finally, a sizable element of totalism.
It should be stressed, however, that I dealt with a very special group of subjects: any Westerner living in China over many years is likely to have experienced some form of profound identity search, and many had missionary ties which enhanced their susceptibility to guilt. This deep involvement with China makes the conversion as much cultural as political.
In Miss Darrow's case, her apparent conversion was associated with the identity struggles of the liberal. But an apparent con-
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version can also occur in a more authoritarian person. Guilt, identity conflict, and especially totalism are the important psychological factors, and these are not confined to any one kind of character structure.
It is also important to keep in mind that individual traits, al- though immensely important, are just one side of the coin; the circumstances of imprisonment are the other. These were essentially similar in all cases; but the length of time which people were held and the intensity with which the Communists pursued their reform measures varied. Since vulnerabilities to conversion are to some extent present in everyone (no one is free from susceptibility to guilt, confusion over identity, and some degree of totalism), the variations in the circumstances of imprisonment have a special significance.
There is a good deal of evidence--and European subjects fre- quently expressed this opinion to me--that American prisoners have been subjected to more severe pressures because of the inter- national political situation. There is no doubt that they have been held longer than other Westerners. If there is a slightly higher per- centage of apparent converts among American prisoners than among Europeans (this was not true for my subjects, but there have been some well-publicized cases of Americans who did fall into this group), these particularly difficult circumstances may have played an important part. Released Americans, when they re- turn home, also face very great pressure to abandon their reform identities--although this pressure has acted on some as an incen- tive to hold on to their reform.
In any case, underneath any apparent conversion there is likely to be (as there was with Miss Darrow) an identity search no less profound, if not nearly as overt, as oecurs among the obviously confused. The search is all the more difficult because so much of it must be hidden--from other people, and, to some extent, from the prisoner himself. Yet hidden doubts are very likely, after a period of time, to come to the surface, as they did with Miss Dar- row; and at this point, the apparent convert comes close to joining the ranks of the obviously confused. In becoming apparent con- verts in the first place, however, these people experience the most profound personal upheavals of any of the three groups.
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V ARIETIES OF RESPONSE: APPARENT RESISTERS
Apparent resisters are the people who cross the
border denouncing the cruelties of prison thought reform. At first encounter, many of them appear to be little affected by their ordeal, other than showing a certain amount of physical and mental strain; ideologically, they are bitterly anti-Communist, if anything, more so than they had been before imprisonment. They are received by the Western world with both admiration and relief --admiration for their strength, and relief for the proof which they convey that "brainwashing" can be resisted after all.
In talking with them, I too was impressed with their courage and endurance. As I probed more deeply, however, I found that their inner resistance was not nearly so complete as their external expression suggested. Eight of the people I interviewed fell into this category. The following case best illustrates the diverse psycho- logical factors which influence resistance, the complicated mean- ings behind the later condemnation of the Communists, and the way in which reform influences come to the surface at unexpected moments.
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Hems Barker: Priest, Doctor, Soldier
One of the first subjects I interviewed was an elderly, goateed Belgian Bishop, a man who had lived in the interior of China for more than forty years prior to his three years of imprisonment. When I first saw him, he had already been in Hong Kong for three months, but he was still deeply preoccupied with his three-year reform experience. He immediately launched into his own analysis of the Communist approach, describing it in fundamentalist Cath- olic theological language. The evil and the power of the Communist behavior could only be explained, he felt, through the influence of demons--the evil counterpart of angels who have equally great power. His explanation, enthusiastically rendered, combined Bib- lical and modem history:
The Old Testament says that the demons are the murderers of mankind. The Communists have killed off fantastic numbers of people. The de- mons seek to further the idea of people without God, as do the Com- munists. Both try to make the human being happy without God and against God. The demons are the mortal enemies of mankind. The demons make use of the Communists in order to kill as many human beings as is possible. . . . Therefore, in the long run, it is a religious question, only thoroughly understood through religion.
Born in a predominantly Catholic community, Bishop Barker was brought up under the strong influence of his deeply religious mother. But even in these surroundings, his response to the Church was unusual: at the age of four he attempted to "convert" one of his brothers to a more religious life; at the age of five he became fascinated with the lives of the saints and particularly those who had been martyred; at the age of seven he was impressed by the story of Daniel in the lion's den. During these early years he donated his spare money to Church collections for missionary work "to redeem the heathen child. " And by the time he was eight years old, he had already determined to do missionary work in China. He was influenced in part by an older brother who was studying for the priesthood, and even more strongly by the stories he had read and heard about saints and martyrs in China: "The Chinese were one of the peoples in the world who could make you a martyr . . . there I could have great hope to become a martyr. "
? APPARENT RESISTERS 1 3 5
He was a weak and sickly child, but in children's games he loved to play the part of the military officer: "I liked to show bravery, in contrast with my body, because I was so weak/' Although he never wavered from his early ambition to become a priest and missionary, his childhood imaginings included the wish to be a doctor and a military hero as well; and, as he proudly explained to me, he had managed in his work in China to be all of these.
During his primary and secondary school days, from about the age of eleven through seventeen, his path was not easy. He had difficulty sleeping at night ("I could never have soft, deep sleep") and was troubled by disturbing dreams in which "I was not free. . . . I could not do as I liked. . . . I washindered even in the dreams. " During the day he would often feel weak and tired; he would fall asleep in class during lessons, and in chapel during prayers. He remembers being told that he had "circulatory dif- ficulties," although their exact nature was never made clear. But he remained active, a leader among other children; and as far as his infirmity was concerned, "I tried to ignore it, to do the same work as the strong. " These difficulties subsided somewhat during the long years of seminary training, but they never disappeared completely.
In China, he called forth great energies for his missionary work: he studied Chinese music and religious rituals in order to in- corporate some of them into his Catholic services; he dispensed medicine, treated wounds, and offered assistance during the famines, droughts, floods, and civil wars; he arranged special meet- ings with bandit chiefs in order to safeguard "my Christians/7 in return serving as a guarantor and go-between for the bandits in their negotiations with the government. He often suffered from fatigue and insomnia, and on one occasion, after a brief visit to Europe, he requested that he be transferred to a different area (a request which was granted) in order to avoid the "nervous strain:' of the negotiations. But he otherwise carried on his work without interruption, avoiding any outward shqw of weakness, and refusing many opportunities for periods of rest and temporary replacement. He became widely known in his inland province, according to other Westerners, as a colorful, courageous, able, and dogmatic representative of the Catholic faith.
Bishop Barker divided his imprisonment into two main phases:
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the first six weeks of pressures, directed at "personal factors"; and the remaining time, "when I realized that the Communist program was not against me, but against my religion. " During the first phase, his captors emphasized "real facts/' These included: a de- scription of Communist policies in his mission area which he had written at the request of an American officer (while he was strongly anti-Communist, much of what he described in this report had been far from unfavorable, and he felt that it would have been better for him if the Communists had actually seen the report rather than just hearing about it); and his presence at a meeting organized by Japanese occupiers in their attempt to obtain co- operation from the missionaries (his sympathies were always with the Chinese, and he emphasized the many risks he had taken in helping them against the Japanese). Although he felt that these incidents were misinterpreted and distorted, he nonetheless re- gretted the two actions greatly, and they contributed to a strong personal sense of guilt.
He also took the next step, and began to view himself in rela- tionship to the Communist doctrine:
I said that imperialism is the parent of pride and acquisitiveness, and that I would fight it. I thought that maybe there was imperialism in me.
But during the second phase, as he began to get a better grasp of the prison world (he had known very little about Communist doctrine or reform methods), he realized that his captors were indicting his mission society and his Church as part of an "espi- onage network," At this point the trend was reversed, and "I mobilized all of my strength for resistance. " As he "learned what play was going on," he consciously substituted within his mind the Catholic religious equivalents of the subjects under discussion:
This saving thought came to me: for the state I substitute God; for the people, my Christians; the imperialists' failings, greed and pride, are aptly represented by uncharitable self-love and love of pleasure, and the "helping" more than takes the place of fraternal admonition. . . . It was necessary for me to find the proper standpoint in relationship to God.
He began to view his imprisonment as a personal religious trial:
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I suffered . . . because my self-love had to give way to the love of God. . . . One time when the warden spit in my face, I felt pain, but it was instantly suppressed. The pain meant I still had self-love . . , when you lose self-love, there is almost instant disappearance of pain. . . . In the struggle between the selfish I and God, the selfish I causes pain, uncertainty, insecurity, and a troubled heart. When you are wholly relying on God, you calm down and there is a quietude and peace that you feel. , . . When this happened I could feel my inner happiness increasing. . . . I was thankful to them for a rare occasion to live my religion.
Meditating whenever he could, he thought of the early Roman martyrs and of Christ himself on the Cross, reconstructing in his own way the New Testament passage which applied to his situation:
You will be persecuted. People will kill you like a dog, but do not be afraid. They can kill your body but not your soul. When they press you with arguments . . . give them the answer. The Holy Spirit will give you the answer.
He sought to retain this reversal in symbols throughout his im- prisonment; "I would agree to personal shortcomings because I had many shortcomings regarding God. "
At the same time, he attempted to avoid involvement in the re-education program as much as he could, pleading poor eyesight (his glasses had been broken soon after his imprisonment and were never replaced), difficulty in hearing (also partially true), and an
incomplete knowledge of written Chinese.
He also tried to maintain his sense of the humorous and the
human, as the following incidents suggest. Once an intelligent fellow-prisoner, after subjecting Bishop Barker to a grueling in- dividual session of "informal help" shook his head and said, quoting a Chinese proverb, "Talking to you is like playing a violin before a cow. " Back in the group, Bishop Barker was asked about the session, and whimsically reported, "He has been playing music to a horse"--stimulating in his helper the response which he had hoped it would bring out--"I must be making some progress. " For, as Bishop Barker explained to me, "A horse is more sensitive to music than a cow. "
Similarly, he reported on the efforts of a cellmate with a strong but brief argument: "He played a big drum, but he ran away. " And
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at a lighter moment, his cellmates temporarily joined the game and asked him "Which instrument? " another less forceful cellmate had "played/' to which Bishop Barker replied, "He played a small drum. "
When pressed for his "thoughts," his humor was tinged with the poignancy of the prisoner's position: "I am a man who does not exist. I cannot have any thoughts. " And frequently, when he was being abused by his cellmates, he would appeal to their sense of personal ethics: "I can endure this, but I wonder how you can endure it. Does your conscience allow this evil treatment? " This last approach especially would sometimes bring at least temporary relief. Bishop Barker also felt that his advanced age was responsible for a certain amount of moderation, sometimes expressed in the backhanded prison vernacular as an admonishment for his stub- bornness: "You have no pity for your old bones. "
The occasional presence of other Westerners, including priests, was also of great importance to him, although he had little op- portunity for direct exchange with them. Once, however, after a particularly difficult day, he recited a German poem to a fellow- European in the cell: "The day was hot, the battle was fierce, the evening quiet--it will be cool in the night. " This poem helped him to express his feelings and rally his strength; but since he was overheard, it also resulted in severe criticism for "cursing us in a foreign tongue. "
Despite his friendly, personal approach to other prisoners, Bishop Barker was careful to avoid real intimacy with them:
They would say, "This Number Four is not a good comrade. He remains separate from us. It must be because of his imperialist pride. " They wanted me to sit down with the other prisoners and to have them as comrades. But I was afraid that if I did this, my resistance would grow weaker.
Although he made many concessions, his imprisonment--con- trary to most cases--ended on a note of resistance. During his last five months, he received his most severe treatment, including handcuffs and chains--which he referred to as "decorations"-- directed toward extracting a final "espionage" confession: "my repentance and witness letter. " He doggedly refused to follow the judge's suggested version, insisting that untrue accusations involving
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his colleagues and his Church be left out; he finally agreed to a compromise version consisting only of "facts"--somewhat exag- gerated, but mainly concerned with his own behavior. The prison officials, rather than hold him longer to extract a more desirable confession, were apparently determined to release him at this time for reasons of their own. He left with the feeling that he had forced the government to back down and had successfully de- fended the integrity of the Church.
He arrived in Hong Kong, gaunt but confident, expressing to his friends the conviction that he had successfully met a severe trial. He experienced much less fear and suspiciousness than most, and the physician who first examined him described him as a "superior person," much more composed than others he had examined im- mediately after the same ordeal.
When he spoke to me three months later, he retained this ex- pressed feeling of victory: "In the long run, I have won. " He was strongly critical of the "diabolical" Communist world he had seen, and specifically condemned its manipulation of people:
The Communists drop a net all over the country, closing the frontiers. Then the net is dropped over an individual person, and he loses his freedom of movement and must follow their wishes.
But as we talked more, it became clear that he had some inner doubts about the completeness of his victory. He spoke whimsically of being "almost converted" during the early period of imprison- ment, criticized himself for having then gone "too far/' and gave me the general impression that he felt very uncomfortable about whatever concessions he had made.
This impression was confirmed when he showed me a summary of his prison experiences which he had prepared. In attempting to convey, in characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, the full impact of Communist arguments upon missionaries, he revealed perhaps more than he meant to:
And now, like a monster from out of the abyss, the most fearful realiza- tion dawned: you, a missionary, the herald of the Gospel, are not you a messenger of the imperialistic conquerors, their pioneer, on account of your ethnological and industrial reports on your mission land? And after the occupation of your mission land, you go on rendering the conquer- ors many different services. And take your mission work as a whole: does
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it not now prove to be a big, long, and heavy sin? And the question whether your mission activity has been of more harm or good to the people answers itself. But because you grew up in imperialistic ideolo- gies, it'has never until now occurred to you how much you have been of help in the enslaving and the exploitation of a people which for- merly enjoyed liberty. Yes, the scope of your corrupting activities is en- larged: what you do, your colleagues do. Thus you cannot escape the fact that your society and your mission ought to be regarded as spy centers, sending out reports to both headquarters, and that Rome be- comes the world center, from where imperialist governments draw their perverting information. . . . as proof that you now condemn this process, you must at once give full information about the spy activities of your society, of your mission, as of Rome. By doing this you acquire the mentality of the new regime, which alone will make you realize the sins of your past life, and those of your comrades. Only this men- tality will give you true guidance for your future work.
Even as he condemned the Communists, he was deeply im- pressed with their power and energy, and compared these favor- ably to the shortcomings of the W est in general and of the Catholic Church in particular:
The Communists have tremendous enthusiasm in their outright devo- tion to their doctrine. . . . What they believe, they do. . . . Weare divided between doctrine and practice. . . .
There is a discrepancy between religious life and doctrine. Therefore we are weak. . . . They are superior to us in carrying out their actions. . . . They have dialectic and a strange use of their proofs. . . . They have a keen instinct for finding out what each man may be doing against liis own creed and his work. . . . I don't know where human beings can find such proofs.
In resorting to the demonology of Catholic theology for his analysis of Communist strength, he expressed very little personal bitterness toward his former captors. Rather, he emphasized their antireligious (and therefore "unnatural") character as a cause of their ultimate failure:
Communists' faces are hard, reflecting cultivated hatred, insecurity with each other, and irritations. They are unsatisfied regarding human nature . . . because the essential relationship between the Creator andman is unsatisfied. . . . Their leaders have the greatest authority everfilled by human beings, but they obtained this authority by taking it them- selves, without the authority of God. . . . They are hanging in air without foundation, and the frame is too large for the image. . . . Al- though they aim to make people satisfied and happy by work and sacri- fice, in the long run they destroy this goal. . . . They rely only on
? APP ARENT RESISTERS 1 ^ 1
nature without God or any spiritual forces, but they do so many things against nature.
But despite all of this, he was struck by the similarity ("the identical methods, the identical terminology") between these Communist conversion techniques and those of his own Catholic Church. He also emphasized, however, what was for him the crucial difference between the two: "The state demands such a complete change and turnover of mind as we only allow God to demand. " He summed up his admiration-tinged condemnation of the Com- munists in the simple statement, "They lie so truly. "
He extended his analysis to the sources of his own courage and resistance, dividing these into the religious, the ethical ("for others") and the personal He felt he was weakest in the last category, and for this he felt a certain amount of guilt and shame; but he believed that this "natural defect" was compensated for by his strength in the other two areas, and particularly by the necessary strengthening of his "religious motive": "I had to become more religious or else give way to the Communists. " As a consequence, he felt that the entire experience had left him "more separated from the outside world than before," because of his "deeper religious life. " Always important in his evaluation of his personal experience was the theological significance he attributed to it. "In my whole life, I have always given suffering a higher meaning. . . . always recalling, 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians'. "
These religious preoccupations did not diminish his lively re- sponses to life around him. His enthusiasm for China and for the Chinese was always evident, and he was greatly affected by a short trip he took to a neighboring island whose landscape reminded him of the interior of China. He enjoyed wine with his meals, and was quick with a spirited metaphor at any time. He was impatient with clerical colleagues who were either dull or overly propagandistic. He criticized American women, both on moral grounds ("They show to everyone what only their husbands should see"), and for an implied defect in sensuality ("They are like a lukewarm shower bath"). He always welcomed psychological interpretations from me: "You are better in the natural. I am better in the supernatural," and asked for names of books from which he might learn the principles of psychiatric interviewing, which he thought would be
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useful for his religious work. At the same time, he repeatedly urged me in my future work to encourage my patients to deepen them- selves in their religion, whatever it might be; and he was not above a delicate pursuit of my own soul--recommending to me, and then producing the next day, a book written by a psychiatrist describing his spiritual journey from Judaism to psychoanalysis to Cathol- icism. 1
Toward the end of our talks, he summed up his feelings about his experience once more in an affirmative way: "My constant feel- ing is I have done good. . . . I have nothing to forget. " But once more I felt that while part of him believed this, another part of him required its expression in order to quiet guilty doubts. At that time, his prescription for the future was essentially a spiritual one: "I am convinced that we can resist Communism only if we are one hundred per cent adherents to God. "
I also saw him six months later, about ten months after his release, when he was passing through Hong Kong after a period of rest and travel, and after having lectured and given sermons on his experience. Then he spoke in a different key. He talked of the in- evitability of war, implying that we might as well "risk it now"; and he severely attacked the alternative path of negotiation and modera- tion: "You do not sit down with the Devil to discuss how to save your soul. " In developing this point of view, his explanation took a strange turn to economics: "America has lost many of her overseas markets--so something will happen--and this war must result" anyway. " In his activities, he continued to dedicate himself to what he called the "spiritual mobilization of Christians. "
To what extent did Bishop Barker resist thought reform? Cer- tainly, he was impressively successful in accomplishing what every imprisoned Catholic priest attempted to do (and what priests have
always attempted in these circumstances): to maintain a sense of inner theological experience rather than surrender to the influence <of those who would change him. His emotional strength upon re- lease, his clear preservation of his own ideals and his condemnation of those of the Communists, his capacity to place his entire experi- ence within the framework of his own theological idiom--all were very real demonstrations of strength and of resistance.
Nonetheless, there was clear evidence that his theological struc-
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ture had also been penetrated by significant thought reform in- fluences. His repeated need to affirm his "victory" had some of the quality of whistling in the dark, especially in the light of his awe and even admiration for the Communists' single-mindedness and "superhuman* (even if demonic) energies. His own written "fear- ful realization" statement expressed the depth to which one part of him had entered into the Communist idiom, the extent to which he had been made to feel guilty on their terms. His preparation of this statement was in fact his way of attempting to purge himself of this unwanted reform influence. Finally, there is his remarkable statement about economics a few months later--an extreme anti- Communist view, to be sure, but at the same time an orthodox Marxist analysis undoubtedly derived from his prison experience.
Bishop Barker--in his exposure to Communist indoctrination, and in his long life before this--had struggled with inner demons of his own. On the one hand, his life is a remarkable study in continuity. From the age of three to seventy, the direction of his life and of his view of the world never changed, only expanded. Moreover, he was one of those fortunate men who could achieve the unachievable, and live out fully during his adult life the imagina- tive fantasies of his childhood--which may not be, as Freud claimed, the only form of true happiness, but which is certainly one of the best paths to self-realization. His was undoubtedly an identity of great strength and consistency, combining fundamentalist ab- solutism with a well-developed worldliness and a taste for the human drama.
What, then, were his demons? They were his feelings of weak- ness, of being unable to accomplish what he so wished to do, his self-doubts (and possibly even lapses of faith), and the sense of guilt and shame which accompany such doubt. They were, in short, his negative identity.
His adolescent identity crisis was specifically his struggle with these demons, and he overcame them through subordination of self to the greater authority of Church and God. Like Vincent and Luca, he found his solution in an absorbing profession; in terms of belief and ideology, it was attained more by rigorous reinforcement of what already consciously existed than by the use of some new principle from the outside or of something long-buried within.
Although this ideological solution was certainly a successful one,
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the demons frequently re-emerged and gave rise, in later life, to anxiety, fatigue, and despair; and in a man as sensual as Bishop Barker, probably to considerable sexual temptation as well. Men are perhaps at their most heroic when fighting such inner demons, however, and Bishop Barker never succumbed. Instead, he used his form of totalism--his urge toward absolute surrender to an all- powerful supernatural force--as a means of taming them. Totalism was not, as it was with Miss Darrow, a threat to his self-affirmation. Quite the reverse; it was the power behind his most cherished self- image, the emotional counterpart of his ideal of martyrdom.
But the Communists would not meet him on this ground. By focusing upon personal weaknesses, and by creating a situation in which martyrdom was impossible, they denied him his strongest inner support. His early susceptibility to their influence was due to their circumventing his totalism and making contact with his per- sonal demons of guilt and self-doubt. And I believe this is what Bishop Barker really meant when he spoke of the alliance between the Communists and the demons: he was expressing in theological symbols what he knew from profound psychological experience-- the alliance between the undermining pressures of thought reform and his own negative identity, for him a particularly dangerous entente. It created an inroad for thought reform influence; and with his degree of totalism, the emotional extremes of Communist ideology and behavior held a seductive appeal. The process was, of course, enhanced by his painful awareness of having committed actions (the report for the American officer, and the attendance at the Japanese-run meetings) which violated both Communist law and his own moral standards.
He could protect himself from seduction only by reaffirming his tie to the Church, by reclaiming his totalism as a source of de- fensive strength. This was possible for him once he felt that the Church itself was under attack. Then he was able, as he always had been, to bring his inner demons under control, even make them work for him. By placing his negative identity squarely within the Catholic perspective, he could denounce his selfishness to his heart's content, as a prisoner was supposed to do, and through the denunciations move closer to the Catholic Church and create distance between himself and the Communists. At the same time he could also call upon that humane and flexible part of himself
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which had always lived side-by-side with his Catholic fundamen- talism and totalism, and which had contributed so much to his stature as a human being.
He was still in the midst of this reclaiming process when I saw him, simultaneously accentuating his totalism, and re-emphasizing its alignment with his Catholic supernatural identity. The thought reform seduction remained a constant threat and gave several evidences of its unconscious presence. Yet despite Bishop Barker's inner doubts about his "victory," it was by no means entirely a hollow one. He had resisted thought reform's disruptive pressures more effectively than most.
Methods of Resistance
Bishop Barker illustrates dramatically the psychological strengths and weaknesses of the apparent resisters. The same factors are present to some extent in all prisoners, but in the apparent re- sisters these strengths are most effective and the weaknesses most dangerous. These methods of resistance (for that is what both the strengths and weaknesses are) may be classified under five main headings:
The first form of resistance is the acquisition of a sense of under- standing, a theory about what is going on, an awareness of being manipulated. In Bishop Barker's case, this understanding was not immediate; and in a man of his intellectual and psychological breadth, we m^y assume that it was his "demons" which were re- sponsible for the delay. But once he began to grasp "which play was on" it could become for him just that--something of a con- trived drama, by no means completely artificial, but one in which he could do his "acting" while keeping in touch with his own spiritual tradition. In his explanation, he undoubtedly oversimpli- fied the importance of this understanding, but it was important nonetheless. Each of my subjects formulated his own psychological, theological, or philosophical concepts to explain the experience to himself, even while he was going through it. These theories offered protection: they gave each prisoner a capacity to predict what was coming next, a sense of anticipation;2 and they provided him one of the rewards of knowledge, a sense of control. This understanding, always partial at best, cannot offer complete immunization; but as
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Bishop Barker and many others demonstrated, a grasp of the techniques being used and the emotions being called forth helps to dispel the terrifying fear of the unknown and the sense of complete helplessness--two great stimulators of human anxiety upon which thought reform depends. The prisoner is thus enabled to mobilize his defenses and bring into play the other methods of resistance.
The second important resistance technique is the avoidance of emotional participation; in other words, the prisoner remains as much as possible outside the communication system of thought reform. Bishop Barker was doing this when he emphasized his dif- ficulties in sight and hearing, and his limited knowledge of written Chinese. Others, who had lived for shorter periods of time in China, managed to resist learning even spoken Chinese while in prison; still others, at their own request, were allowed to study Marxist writings or Russian, and thereby avoided more intense personal involvement in confession and re-education. Bishop Barker went even further. In his human relationships he steered clear of the kind of intimacy which would have drawn him more deeply into the group structure of the cell and integrated him more firmly into the prison world. This in turn enabled him to do what was most important of all--to maintain a private inner world of values, judgments, and symbols, and thereby keep3a measure of inde- pendence from the ever-pressing environment.
Since a prisoner could never fully avoid participation, the next best form of resistance was to adopt a neutralizing attitude, one which deflated rather than contested, and which thereby took the sting out of the assaults. Hostile rejoinders gained a prisoner little, and in fact brought about even more devastating pressures. But humor or humane stoicism (both of which Bishop Barker demon- strated) put officials and cellmates in a difficult psychological posi- tion.
A show of humor had the effect of breaking the general tension and dissipating the anxiety and guilt which hung heavy in the en- vironment. As one subject expressed it, "Since the judge is a tragedian before you, if you keep a smile this protects you, because the impressiveness of the tragedy is avoided. " This was not often possible, as the same subject was quick to add. But when it was possible to use it, humor was a way to express a tone contrary to
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thought reform's self-righteousness, an implication that the intense doings of the moment could be made fun of because they were merely a speck on the great human canvas. Since humor is a shared emotion, it can create a bond of sympathy (as it did for Bishop Barker) independent of and frequently antithetical to the world of reform.
Humane stoicism, the turning of the other cheek in the face of abuse, is, as Bishop Barker made clear, an attitude extremely dif- ficult to maintain in the prison environment. It is a form of passive resistance in the Gandhian tradition; but a prisoner can never flaunt the resistance, and even his passivity, or lack of enthusiasm in any direction, is highly suspect. Moreover, it requires unusual dedi- cation to a supernatural or humanitarian ideal. Yet it may produce startling effects, even to the extent of so dominating the cell for a moment that harsh behavior suddenly seems shameful in everyone's eyes. It is not long, of course, before there is a return to the usual prison standards; but the impact of this stoicism outlasts the brief moment of its effectiveness. It reaffirms--in the eyes of the stoic prisoner and his cellmates--a moral position superior to the grandiose moral claims of thought reform.
The steadfastness of humane stoicism is related to the fourth and generally most important resistance technique, that of identity reinforcement. Bishop Barker's major way of resisting thought re- form was to make it a Catholic theological struggle, rather than a Communist remolding. He sought always to maintain himself as a priest struggling against his selfishness, rather than as a stubborn imperialist spy. To do this, he needed a continuous awareness of his own world of prayer, Catholic ritual, missionary experience and Western cultural heritage; with nothing around him to encourage it, this awareness could come only from within. His behavior re- sembled Father Luca's conscious recollection of the people and places which had special meaning for him. This kind of identity reinforcement was for any prisoner the essence of self-protection, both against reform influence and against always-threatening psy- chological disintegration.
One priest expressed this very succinctly:
To resist . . . you must affirm your personality whenever there is the opportunity. . . . When I was obliged to speak my views about the
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government, I would each time begin, "I am a priest. I believe in religion. " I said it strongly every time.
This statement was perhaps a retrospective exaggeration of his self- assertion, but there was no doubt that so personal a reminder served him well.
A European professor used a more creative approach. He some- how managed during moments when pressures were relatively re- laxed to make a series of drawings representing precious moments in his past: a mother and baby, a boy before a Christmas tree, a university city, a young man on a romantic stroll with his fiancee. He also wrote a brief, idealized account of the incident in his life each drawing represented. He worked on both the drawings and the essays during moments when he was off by himself in a corner of the cell or with other Westerners; and they became so precious to him that he smuggled them out of the prison at great risk and proudly displayed them to me during OUT interviews. They re- established for him the world in which he wished to exist: "I could escape the horrible world around me and move in a world whose values I agreed with. "
The first four methods of resistance depend upon strength--ego strength, strength of character, strength of identity. Another aspect of Bishop Barker's response may be termed pseudo strength, and this method of resistance is a potential psychological danger. I am referring to his inability to come to conscious terms with thought reform influences, and his need instead to make use of the psycho- logical mechanisms of denial and repression in order to keep from himself the recognition of undue "weakness. " In this pattern he differed, not only from the obviously confused, but also from the apparent converts (although both of these groups of prisoners, especially the latter, had much of their own to hide from them- selves). Bishop Barker shared with other apparent resisters a sig- nificant attraction to the reform program; his repeated protesta- tions of resistance and his strong condemnations of Communism expressed his attempts to cast off this attraction. The potential danger of this pseudo strength lies in the effects of a highly unac- ceptable, and at the same time completely unresolved, set of emotions.
Thus, when Bishop Barker advocated "war now" with the Com-
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munists--at the same time justifying his view by Communist theory--he was attempting to eradicate these compelling thought reform influences (his new demons) which so deeply threatened his sense of who he was and what he believed. He was, in effect, saying: "If we can destroy all of the demons in the world, it will eliminate those within me without my having to recognize that they have been there/'
The apparent resisters characteristically combine these real and pseudo strengths. Their form of totalism, along with their habitual use of denial and repression, create a paradoxical situation in which those who have been least influenced by thought reform uncon- sciously feel themselves to be most in danger of being overwhelmed by its influence. They struggle continually against a breakthrough of despair.
Survival and Influence
We have been discussing in this, and in the previous two chapters, problems of indvidual thought reform experiences, and especially the problems of survival and influence. The two are closely related: for a prisoner to survive--hold on to physical and psychic life--he must avoid being totally overwhelmed by environ- mental influence. From the standpoint of identity, survival and resistance to influence converge, at least in an absolute sense: one cannot have his deepest feelings about who and what he is totally replaced, and still survive in a nonpsychotic state.
But one can go quite far in permitting his identity to give way to outside influence, and still function adequately, both physically and psychologically. Indeed, in thought reform, a prisoner had to submit to some degree of environmental influence as the price of survival. 4 This was especially clear in the cases of Professor Castorp and Miss Darrow, both of whom were aware that they had bartered the acceptance of reform views for survival. This bargain was also struck by prisoners like Bishop Barker, even though more of the bartering occurred outside of awareness. To survive thought reform and retain absolutely no trace of its influences was an ideal impos- sible to achieve--whether the ideal was held by the prisoner him- self, his colleagues, or the shocked onlookers of the outside world.
This paradoxical relationship between survival and influence al-
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lows a better understanding of the Westerners' performances during imprisonment. As far as survival is concerned, these men and women, when put under extreme forms of stress, were able to sum- mon an impressive store of strength and ingenuity. Bishop Barker's use of humor, Dr. Vincent's characterological shift from isolation to "togetherness/' even Father Luca's delusions all were methods of survival, as were the confessions and the "reformed" patterns of behavior elicited during imprisonment from every prisoner.
Thought reform succeeded with all Westerners in the first of its aims, the extraction of an incriminating personal confession, because it made this confession a requirement for survival. It fell far short of its more ambitious goal of converting Westerners into enthusiastic Communist adherents; for although none could avoid being profoundly influenced, virtually all prisoners showed a gen- eral tendency to revert to what they had been before prison, or at least to a modified version of their previous identity. The barter of influence for survival which Western prisoners made with their reformers turned out to be reasonable enough; only the unreason- able demands of their inner voice of conscience made some of these Westerners feel that their bargain had been a Faustian one.
One very important question remains: granted the variations in external reform pressures, what factors in individual character structure are responsible for the differing susceptibilities to thought reform influence? I found that it is not so much the specific type of character structure which is important, as is the degree of balance and integration; not so much who one is as how well one is put together. To speak, for instance, of "hysterical" or "obses- sive" character types does not help us, since these characterological tendencies appear among people in all three categories. Distinguish- ing "authoritarian" from "liberal" character traits5 is a bit more useful; but it does not explain why one apparent convert (Miss Darrow) falls into the liberal category, and another (Father Simon, discussed in Chapter 11) into the authoritarian.
Rather, each tended to be influenced to the degree that his iden- tity, whatever it may have been, could be undermined through the self-deprecating effects of guilt and shame.