Some
expressions
are rather ambiguous, but what they charged me of, I have admitted.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
CHAPTER 11
FATHER SIMON:
THE CONVERTED JESUIT
In the course of my follow-up visits, I was intro- duced to a priest who had experienced prison thought reform, but who had not been a subject of my original Hong Kong study. A French Jesuit, he was teaching science at a small Catholic school near the Franco-German border. My interview with him was not, strictly speaking, a follow-up visit; but it proved to be an un- usually interesting encounter. This Catholic Father, three-and-a- half years after his release, was still seeing the world almost entirely through "reformed" eyes. He had come closer to a true conversion
experience than had any of my original subjects,
The interplay between Father Simon and the colleague of his
(also a subject of mine) who introduced us was a good indication of what was to follow. This other priest explained to Simon that I had tried to meet him in Hong Kong, but had been told that he
(Simon) did not wish to see me. Simon irately denied this, insist- ing that he had never been approached, and accusing his clerical colleagues in Hong Kong of preventing a meeting between us be- cause they were embarrassed by his views. (Actually, it is difficult to say just who had prevented me from seeing Father Simon in Hong Kong; it is quite probable that neither he nor his fellow priests felt very enthusiastic about my interviewing him. )
207
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In Europe, however, Simon was clearly interested in talking with me, A thin, tense man in his late fifties, he quickly gave me the impression that he had a great deal to say about matters which he did not feel free to discuss too openly in his present environment. Indeed, his first words were pointed expressions of criticism directed at fellow priests who published strongly anti-Communist writings or presented what were in his opinion distorted views of prison thought reform. And when I asked him how he felt about his im- prisonment, he answered without hesitation: "It was one of the best periods of my life. " Then he explained that thought reform was valid because it was effective: "People claim that the Com- munists tried to introduce false points of view into your brain-- but this could never work; it is only because they introduced true things . . . that it works. " He went on to say that, "As for free- dom of speech, I had more . . . in jail than I have right here," explaining that while he was in prison, "I accepted all of their points of view--political and economic, everything," then adding as some- thing of an afterthought, "except for a deadlock on the religious point of view. "
Father Simon wasted no time in making it clear just where he stood. I could not help feeling amazement during these first few minutes of our interview, as I heard this Jesuit priest express only praise for Communism and only criticism for the actions of his Catholic colleagues. Although I knew the general principles of thought reform, I wondered just how this had been accomplished.
Father Simon was brought up in a hardworking middle-class fam- ily in a French provincial town. Since his father owned a small busi- ness enterprise, he now felt that "I was born on the wrong side of the fence. . , . My education was entirely on the capitalistic side. " He had learned in prison that "I lived from a salary taken from workmen," but defended his parents as having done the best they could, limited as they were by "the ideas of their surroundings. " Simon described the religious influences in his family as very strong: two sisters trained as nuns, and two uncles became missionaries. A conscientious boy who always "had the feeling that life was some- thing serious," he had wished to become a priest from the age of eleven, and had made his definite decision when he was fifteen. He attributed his religious inclinations to his mother's influence; his father--an austere, distant, and highly-respected figure--had
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 209
originally opposed his decision to enter the priesthood. As in the case of Father Luca, his mother's intercession helped him to carry it through.
He received extensive training in science, philosophy, and theol- ogy. This work included three years of study in the United States during his early thirties, and it is significant that he returned to Europe something of a convert to the American way of life, so much so that he sometimes irked his colleagues (several of whom I had spoken to) with his expression of his new allegiance, and his insistence that French science was nothing compared to ad- vanced American developments. He had retained these sentiments over the twenty years he spent teaching science in China; but they were soon overshadowed by his enormous attachment to China it- self. Although a distant and reserved man, he sought always to enter deeply into Chinese life. He organized scientific trips during which he traveled and camped outdoors with a small group from his uni- versity. "For two or three weeks . . . I lived entirely among stu- dents. . . . It made life more human . . . and the students found me as a man they did not know before. "
In other ways too, he tended to be different from and sometimes at odds with his colleagues. One described him as "very independ- ent in judgments . . . liked to be against things . . . enthusiasms strong but changeable . . . apparently cold, but really passionate. "
He was at the same time extremely diligent in his work, and utterly conscientious in his religious life. As one friend expressed it, "I often broke rules, but Simon never did. "
Thus, before his contact with the Communists, he was a man strongly susceptible to some forms of environmental influence, and at the same time capable of stubbornly resisting others. He possessed a powerful conscience and an accompanying susceptibility to guilt, both related to early family struggles; and much of Simon's life was involved with which influence he should follow as the "good" one, and which he should resist as the "bad. " In his various experiments with identity, however, it was his sense of being the conscientious enthusiast which prevailed over each of a number of different en- thusiasms.
During the early years of Communist rule, he was proud of being the only foreigner permitted to integrate his scientific work with the government program. At the same time, he was extremely criti-
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cal of the Communist movement, and strongly opposed the regime's attempts to spread its influence within his university. He expected to be arrested because he had been accused with others (falsely) of using a radio for espionage purposes.
Simon admitted to me that the early period of his imprisonment was "hard. " But he avoided any mention of specific brutality and claimed that he had been deprived of sleep for only one night. He preferred to "explain" the Communist approach ("According to their method they take advantage of the first shock"), and implied that their techniques were necessary because he had so extremely opposed them at the beginning. I was able to learn some of the missing details, however, from another European who had shared the same cell with Simon for a while: "Simon had been interrogated three days without sleep. They said he hadn't been giving any in- formation. The inspector, when alone with him, spat in his face ten times. " This same informant said that Simon had been un- usually stubborn in his resistance: "a daredevil. " In both versions, however, it was clear that Simon was extremely fearful of being shot.
He went then from extreme resistance to complete compliance, and his own story makes clear the psychological features of this reversal. Even after he no longer feared death, his desire to remain in China profoundly influenced his behavior:
I thought that I was one of those with the best chance to stay. I had received instructions from my superior to try to stay. I realized that if I did not change my mind, I would have no chance at all to stay. I decided I would try to see what was right, and if doubtful, I could try to adopt the Communist point of view.
Simon was helped along this path by a fellow Jesuit in the same cell who taught him how to begin his confession.
But he recognized that his own sense of guilt had played the most important part: "My position changed when I said, 'I am guilty'. " While unconscious guilt was undoubtedly present all along, his sense of being criminallyguilty developed after about one year, and was accompanied by a strong compulsion to confess. "I made a list in French . . . for my own use of ten points which I should never mention. . . . Sixmonths later I had told everything. . . . I was then ready to tell everything about myself and anyone else. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 211
His list had, of course, been his unconscious preparation for what was to come. When he made it he decided that "if I put together all these faults I had been accused of . . . I could say I was guilty. "
When I asked him what he had to feel guilty about, he first an- swered evasively, "We had plenty of things. " And then he did describe one of them--an occasion soon after World War II when Catholic chaplains from the American Army brought an intelligence officer to see Simon and some of his colleagues, "and then we told them plenty of things. " But, as if realizing that this might not be in itself so damning, he added, "What we did any foreigner would have done, but we should have been more careful. " Then, as if to justify further his guilt, he explained that "In jail we didn't ac- cuse only our crimes, but rather the intention of our crimes"; he went on to describe how he had contemplated (but had never carried out) telling an American missionary who was leaving de- tails about Communist work on an airfield, realizing that this in- formation might be passed on to an official American group.
I had no way of knowing whether this idea had really occurred to Simon before his imprisonment, or whether it was a product of the guilt-stimulating pressures of imprisonment itself. Either way, it was part of his need to find evidence of both wrongdoing and wrong-thinking so he could rationalize, in thought reform terms, his own psychological state: "Every time I found a crime I had committed, I was glad to find it. " But among a myriad of trivial self-accusations, the encounter with an American intelligence officer was undoubtedly a true source of psychological guilt, as it violated Simon's deepest sense of what a missionary should do and be.
His guilt established in his own mind, Simon moved on to the next step--complete enthusiasm and complete trust:
One of the prisoners suggested writing diaries--only about our change of mind. . . . Every day we gave the cell chief our diary. We had the feeling we were living in a glass house--but we had no bad feelings at all. Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government.
Simon's attainment of mutual trust and harmony with the Chi- nese realized a long-desired goal, a goal which he felt had before this always eluded him: "I never had a good chance to live among the Chinese except the last three years in jail. " During this period
? 212 THOUGHT REFOKM
he held nothing back from his colleagues and cellmates ("I was glad to get rid of all I had on my mind and to speak very frankly"), and his statements included extensive denunciations of the behavior of many of his colleagues, both in and out of jail,
He was transferred during his last year to a jail where he was permitted to do manual labor. His guilt had led to a feeling of tranquility: "I was more quiet. I thought I am guilty and deserve it. " Once he was happy in jail, his main fear was that he would soon be released. He knew that jail was a safer place for him than life in China on the outside; and contact with his own colleagues in Europe seemed least safe of all:
When I was in labor camp during the last year, I was glad to be there. I was afraid to be out, because if allowed to stay in China I would have much trouble. If I came out, there would be trouble with my Order. . . . When I received my sentence, I wrote immediately to the head of the court, "I do not ask for a reduction in the sentence, but I would like you to cross out the clause about being kicked out of the country. "
By this time, he was, more than any of my subjects, identifying himself with his reformers. He took pride in bringing others around: "There was one fellow we worked on for two full days. At first we couldn't get to him . . . but finally we did. " Much impressed with individual Communists, he set them up as his standard, and always compared himself unfavorably to them: "We worked hard--but could not beat them. . . . They worked all of the days, and had meetings at night. . . . And they were very enthusiastic about their work. " He could justify in his mind even their curbs upon religion: "They said that outside of jail there is religious freedom, inside no. . . . That was tough on us, but we had to follow regulations"; and he was grateful for a slight relaxation in this area: "At the end,
for instance, I was allowed to say my breviary. "
He emphasized that in all this he had become increasinglyim-
pressed with the sincerity of the Communist officials, and illustrated this with their attitude toward their false accusation about the radio:
At the beginning, I thought that this was a pretext to arrest me. They wanted to take over our university and used this as their pretext. Later I found they really believed it. They were in good faith. . . . Then they dropped it, and they believed me.
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 213
Thus he had, during the course of his imprisonment, run the gamut from opposition to merger: "When they called me at the beginning, it was a fight--at the end it was a chat with a friend. "
Simon related this story to me in a simple, straightforward manner, impressing me both with his conscientiousness and his naivet6. At times he seemed totally unaware of the degree to which he had been manipulated. But at other times, I felt that awareness of this manipulation--as well as of the inconsistencies of the Com- munist position--had intruded upon his consciousness, and that he was hard put to fend it off. This inner struggle became more evident as he told me of his experiences after his release.
Tense and agitated upon his arrival in Hong Kong, Simon had found himself in total disagreement with everyone and everything around him. His situation was aggravated by his compulsion to ex- press these antagonistic feelings:
I couldn't control myself . . . when I was in jail, I could read Chinese newspapers for an entire month with no reaction, but when I came out, after every paragraph, I jumped . . . when someone told me something I thought was wrong, I had to speak.
At that time, he was convinced that because of his "change of ideas" he would not be able to remain in the Jesuit Order: "I don't mean I thought I would leave, but that I might be kicked out. " He thought he might have to become a secular priest (one who be- longs to no special order) and "find a bishop who would take me. "
His Jesuit colleagues, however, felt differently. Appalled at his behavior and attitudes, but for the most part sympathetic to him as a person, they were intent upon tiding him over what they con- sidered to be a crisis and winning him back to a more acceptable set of views. One of them with whom I had talked in Hong Kong had even asked my advice about the problem. He had decided--partly in response to pressures from other colleagues and partly because of his own convictions--to apply to Simon what he called "shock therapy. " By this he meant confronting him with the disparaging material that had been published about him in Chinese Com- munist newspapers and magazines, including accusations and con- fessions of heterosexual and homosexual behavior. (Simon had been accused of committing a "sexual crime" [homosexual act] during his imprisonment; although this was probably a false accusation, it
? 2 1 4 THOUGHT R E F O R M
could well have touched off latent fears and impulses and stimulated a good deal of confession material. ) Simon's Jesuit friend had hesitated to use his "shock" approach because he had noted that on the few occasions when he had attempted to bring up the sub- ject of prison confessions, Simon had become silent and fearful. I felt he had good reason to hesitate, and advised him against the "shock therapy/' However, influenced by the fact that Simon was leaving for Europe in a few days, and believing that others in the Church might be less understandingabout the whole problem than he was, the Jesuit had disregarded my advice and gone ahead with his direct but gently-administeredconfrontation.
He felt at the time that his shock therapy had been effective, since Simon had responded with surprise and a certain amount of anger directed at the Communists. But like many therapists, shock or otherwise, he had been premature in his evaluation; for soon Simon overcame his resentment toward the Communists through a rationalized analysis of the situation, which he also gave to me:
The Communists have two different departments, justice and propa- ganda. Justice wants to know the truth. Propaganda wants to amplify everything. . . . For justice, I still have the document of condemna- tion . . . based on the true facts. . . .
Some expressions are rather ambiguous, but what they charged me of, I have admitted. . . . What they wrote in the newspapers [for propaganda] is entirely different.
It is possible, however, that this incident did play a part in Simon's gradual realization that the Communists were not com- pletely truthful:
That's one point on which I have changed a little. Then [when in prison] I had the feeling that the Communists never lied. I feel now that although there are more lies on the other side, the Communists also lie--although they are more clever and more skillful. . . . If the Communists only told the truth, it would be awful for us.
Despite this small concession, he remained acutely at odds with his fellow priests. He looked upon them as "reactionary," and they tended to view him as one who had been convinced (and deceived) by the Communists because he was "doctrinally unsound" in his Catholic theology. One priest used him to illustrate the point that it is the "technicians" among Catholic priests who are likely to be most affected by thought reform, rather than those who are more
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 215
strongly grounded philosophically. Another, who had been de- nounced in prison by Simon, referred to the latter's behavior as a "twist of conscience. . . . He is a very conscientious man, and when he reported against me he was being very conscientious in another way. "
The Jesuit organization seemed to have more tolerance for his point of view than Simon had anticipated; but he felt that in re- assigning him to a teaching position, they had expected him even- tually to "become normal again/' He made a point of expressing his Communist sympathies clearly to his superiors, and he finally reached a modus Vivendi with them in which they accepted his right to hold any beliefs he pleased as long as he did not proclaim them too loudly to the outside world. He accepted this restriction as part of the principle (emphasized by both the Communists and the Catholics) that an individual priest cannot separate his actions from his responsibilities to his order; at the same time he indicated that he would like to express his views publicly through writing or speak- ing "if I were free. "
He was--emotionally and intellectually--much more distant from his colleagues than before. He had always viewed himself as "rather cold toward other people/' and this isolation was increased "because I live with people who don't share the same idea. " When I asked him if he had been influenced by any of his colleagues since his return, he replied, "There couldn't be much influence because their ideas are so contradictory to mine. "
He was so much alone with his thoughts that his only oppor- tunities to express himself came during long automobile trips he made to preach in outlying areas. These trips were arranged by a local organization, and on them he found release in talking to the driver, usually a businessman volunteer: "I know they don't share my opinions, but it is very enjoyable for me. " Sometimes his com- panion, when he first heard that Simon had been through interest- ing experiences in China, would enthusiastically invite him to speak before a local club--to which Simon would reply, "Let us talk together for a few more minutes and then see whether you still wish me to speak before your group. " The invitation was never repeated. Simon concluded that "they don't want their members to hear that kind of stuff. "
Toward the end of our three-hour talk, he described to me his
? 2l6 THOUGHT REFORM
attempts to achieve an inner synthesis between his older Catholic and newer Communist ideologies. He claimed that this attempt had begun even before he was imprisoned, when he had envisioned a political party "entirely Communist but with Christian prin- ciples" (although at the time he supported his fellow priests against the encroachments of the Communist regime). Like other priests among my subjects, he felt that he had reinforced his own spiritual life through his imprisonment: "The fact of feeling guilty is good Christian humility/' But unlike the others, he believed that the Communists themselves possessed the Christian virtues ("I feel that most of the Communists are humble"), a strong expression of praise from a Catholic priest.
He claimed that through his experience he felt himself closer to the Catholic religion "because, in one way I am nearer the truth. " His facial expression became animated and enthusiastic as he de- scribed to me the way in which he had improved his inner life:
I have had more experience with introspection. With all of the methods of criticism we go very deep into the subconscious. I remember in jail . . . everyone told their faults against the discipline, then we decided to get deep into the reasons. Then others would say, "This and this is the reason/' We would say, "No, no, no--that's not it/' Then at night you would think they are right, and as soon as you realized this, the fault was corrected at once. . . . This is very important for the re- ligious life. . . . A very powerful tool.
I felt his alternation in this statement between first person sin- gular and plural, and the second and third persons, was more than a matter of a European speaking English (his English was, in fact, fluent), and really reflected his alternating images of himself as a member of the Communist-oriented group, as the target of its criticism, and as a spiritually-active European Catholic. He in fact emphasized that it was not possible to use this kind of group criticism in his present circumstances, and that he was forced to apply this "tool" himself--and so, in effect, assumesimultaneously all three identities. He believed that Communism and Catholicism should maintain their interchange of techniques and that Catholi- cism should seek to benefit from the Communist improvements "Lenin borrowed many things from religious orders, but amplified them a lot. . . . If we can get them back from Lenin, that is all right. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 217
Yet he could not avoid recognizing his inevitable conflict, as a Catholic priest, with the Communist creed. When I asked, for in- stance, if he were troubled by the problem of materialism--a point of bitter controversy, at least theoretically, between Communism and Catholicism--he replied, "No, but it means I can never be a Communist/' and went on to say:
My conflict with the Communists came when I said, "For me religion is first, Communism is second/' If I had been able to write a blank check and say that anything the Communists do about religion is OK, then I could have stayed. That much I could not have done. . . . I trusted them very much, but not that much. . . . If not for this prob- lem of religion I would have followed the Communist Party entirely, without any restriction.
He added that during his last month in jail he wondered, "Do I not go too far? " and then decided, "I shall never have an uncondi- tional surrender. I shall never sign a blank check. " Now he con- cluded, not without some sadness, that because of this unwilling- ness, "for the Communists I am still an enemy . . . since if you don't accept them entirely, they consider you an enemy. "
When I asked him whether he would consider such a black-and- white judgment on the part of the Communists to be at all unfair, his answer was what could be expected--but its implications were nonetheless striking:
No. To understand Communism you must compare it with Catholic belief. If with Catholic belief, you don't accept one article of faith, you are not a Catholic. If you don't sign a blank check, you are not a Catholic.
Simon had no objection to the demand itself. When I asked him whether he was willing to make this "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism, he replied:
Of course. . . . I like Communism and Catholicism, but Catholicism always comes first. In case of conflict, I will stay with Catholicism.
World politics were, of course, another matter. As far as Com- munist activities in general were concerned, Simon said, "I am not even against a revolution--of course as mild as possible, but you cannot always do anything about that. " And about the return of
? 2l8 THOUGHT REFORM
General de Gaulle to power during 1958, he offered a remarkably candid opinion:
W ell, give him a chance. See what he can do. I was rather against him at first because I thought he was reactionary. Then someone said that Moscow was not against him because they thought he would break NATO. Since then I have not been so much against him because Mos- cow had that opinion. If Moscow stands for de Gaulle, then I am for de Gaulle.
But in discussing thought reform, he made a statement far more significant than he realized:
The way you look at it depends upon whether you feel that their opin- ions are true or false. If you say they are false, then it is all brainwashing stuff. If you think them true, they help you. I saw cases of serious offences--even some real crimes--completely changed. . . . With the habit of introspection you can very quickly see whether someone is tell- ing the truth.
Here Simon, quite unintentionally, let his inner doubts out of the bag, implying with this slip that he and others like him were not guilty of "real crimes/' but of something else that must be dis- tinguished from them.
He ended the interview--just as he began it--with praise for the 'Very powerful" and "wonderful" thought reform methods, and denunciation of those Catholic priests who he felt had presented distorted views of Communist China.
Why did Father Simon go so far that his conversion strains the meaning of apparent? It is interesting to compare him with our other apparent convert, Miss Darrow. The two are very different kinds of people; and yet there are striking similarities in their emo- tional reactions. Both responded very strongly to the opportunity to merge with the Chinese people; both experienced an unusually strong sense of guilt, and a strong need to be absolutely sincere with their captors; both eventually achieved a greater harmony with their prison environment than with any they had previously known, and were loath to surrender it for the anticipated pain of "freedom. " This authoritarian priest shared with the liberal mis- sionary's daughter psychological traits characteristic for the ap- parent convert: strong susceptibility to guilt, confusion of identity,
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 1 9
and most important of all, a long-standing pattern of totalism. Simon's totalism had in fact always been much more prominent than,Miss Darrow's. As the conscientious enthusiast, he had shown a tendency to embrace totally a series of influences--Catholicism, American know-how, Chinese life, and then Chinese Communism. Unlike Miss Darrow, he had not rebelled from the religious in- fluences which helped to shape this totalism during his early life. He did not seek a liberal alternative; rather, in his "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism he was attracted toward the most au- thoritarian and uncompromising elements within a many-sided (but
always potentially authoritarian) ideology.
But within his identity of conscientious enthusiast were two
vying elements, the convert and the defier. As the former, he sought, and as the latter feared, total unity with an all-powerful force. He required a pattern of defiance in order to ward off the strong attrac- tions to continuous influences around him. Sometimes he would defy one first and convert to it later, sometimes convert to it first and then defy it; or on still other occasions, defy one strong in- fluence while converting to another. Thus he defied his father to convert to the priesthood (it would be interesting to know whether he had originally been at all defiant in his attitude toward religion), defied French influencein his conversion to America and Western influence in his conversion to China, defied both Catholic and American influences in his conversion to Communism, and then continued to defy Catholic pressures as a means of maintaining this conversion. Whether defying or converting, his was an all-or- none approach. This is symbolized in his repeated use of the term "blank check": for one who issues a "blank check" to another may be offering either everything or nothing, without specifying how much of himself he gives and how much he insists upon retaining.
As a conscientious Catholic priest and scientist, his total dedica- tion to missionary work, credal purity, truthfulness, and sincerity were basic to his affirmative self-image. But both the defier and the convert within him could interfere and become part of his negative identity; for underneath both of them was a profound inability to trust or to become intimate with other human beings. Each con- version was a quest for the trust and intimacy that had long eluded him; unable to experience them in ordinary human doses, he sought trust and intimacy on absolute terms. For him, both conversion and
? 22O THOUGHT REFORM
defiance were attempts to ward off inner feelings of aloneness, weakness, and helplessness.
In prison, he was first the defier (an unusually courageous one), and then the convert (an unusually loyal one). In both identities, his conscientiousness was outstanding; but his behavior also re- vealed the basic contradiction within his convert-defier pattern. His ideal of "unconditional surrender" was not fully attainable. He could not, after all, sign the "blank check. " He tells us that this was because he could not submit simultaneously and totally to two masters; and this is true enough. But it is also true that he could not--either then or before--submit totally to any master. Ulti- mately, the "unconditional surrender*' and the "blank check" were unrealizable ideals, as they so often are for those who seek them. For Simon, they had been an inspiring myth; but defiance, doubt, and mistrust eventually interfered in relation to both Catholicism and Communism.
In his post-prison years, Simon--despite his outward assurance-- was inwardly walking an emotional tightrope. Whatever his denials, he did continue to serve two emotional masters, and this is a con- siderable strain. Even more subject to totalism than Miss Darrow, he remained truer than she to his thought reform conversion. Three-and-a-half years after his release he was still unable to come to terms with the actualities of his experience; he felt the need to reconstruct thought reform events to make them more congenial and less brutal, and to emphasize his compliance rather than his resistance. He had to avoid the recognition of having been manipu- lated, or else minimize the manipulation and justify its usage.
Obviously all was not well with this last--and perhaps most profound--of Simon's conversions. He was not, after all, immune from the Catholic influences around him, nor from the forces of reality testing, nor from the voice of his own doubts. Evidence for this lies in his slightly more critical (though hardly very critical) attitude toward Communism, in his slips of the tongue, in his over- stated protestations. As with all true believers, his doubts were not easy to tolerate, since unconsciously he tended to see them as a lack of total sincerity on his part. Yet his doubts were constantly stimulated by the presence of his other (Catholic) master--that is, by Church officials and Catholic ideas. This accounts for some of the vehemence with which he criticized his fellow clergymen; he was
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 2 1
calling his defiant self into play in order to purge the doubts which threatened to "betray" his thought reform experience, and conse- quently overstating his praise for Communism.
It may be that in the long run he, too, will backslide. But the tenacity with which this Jesuit priest had held on to his Chinese Communist conversion was as impressive a reform result as any I witnessed, particularly since there was no environmental reinforce- ment for his thought reform views. To be sure, the unanimity of his colleagues' opposition served as a stimulus to his defiance of them; and some reinforcement was available, even if from a dis- tance, in the constant information about the Communist world reaching him through newspapers, magazines, and casual conversa- tions. But even after all of this has been said, Father Simon's case leaves one with a renewed respect for the emotional power of thought reform.
? CHAPTER 12
RECOVERY AND RENEW AL: A SUMMING UP
We have described in the last two chapters the
emotional trials of Westerners during their first few post-thought reform years. These were never easy, and they took many different personal forms, but the common pattern was one of recovery and renewal. There were certain basic tasks which they all faced, psychological principles to which they were all subject. Their common problems were mainly the result of the thought re- form emotions they had shared; but they were also related to an- other heritage common to all these men, that of the Westerner in China.
Mastery and Integrity
When the Westerners returned home, typically they found them- selves compelled to be active, preoccupied with thought reform in particular and with China in general, and unable to become im- mediately interested in their Western environments. It was as if they had some piece of psychological business to attend to before they could permit themselves the luxury of rest or could assume the responsibility of new involvements. This unrest represented the psychological need to re-enact a highly disturbing experience, and
2
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 223
is related to what Freud called the "repetition compulsion. " * It is an effort at mastery in which, as Erilcson has described, "The in- dividual unconsciously arranges for variations of an original theme which he has not learned either to overcome or to live with/' and deals with the stressful situation by "meeting it repeatedly and of his own accord. "2
As is also true of people put through many other kinds of painful experiences, these subjects were reliving their thought reform as a means of coming to terms with it. Their experience involved spe- cial emphasis upon problems of shame and guilt, and it was these emotions which they had in some measure to overcome. Otherwise they would be unable either to overcome or to live with their thought reform, and unable to recover their self-esteem. We may therefore describe their psychological task as mastery through res- toration of integrity.
Lecturing and writing about thought reform were particularly effective ways of achieving this mastery. By these acts the subject was in effect saying: "I am no longer the passive, helpless criminal and betrayer. I am an active, strong authority on a manipulative process which could affect any of you in my audience or reading public/7 Such retelling is the former prisoner's means of declaring his identity shift, his beginning disengagement from his own ex- perience.
However, after any great adventure, or even a commonplace oc- currence, the reconstruction can never reproduce exactly the ex- perience itself. The changed inner and outer circumstances and the passage of time must induce distortions. Truth is at best an ap- proximation, and for these men the need for altered reconstruction is likely to be great. The direction and the degree of distortion depended upon the Westerner's way of responding to thought re- form, his developing relationship with his new environment, and his long-standing psychological techniques for dealing with threats to his sense of integrity.
Bishop Barker's reconstruction, for instance, was the story of a clever and heroic man who made no concessions and who out- witted his reformers at every turn. I said of him that he had ex- tended his use of the mechanism of denial to the point of con- fabulation, because I knew that his reconstruction was inaccurate both in terms of actual events and attitudes towards those events.
? 224 THOUGHT REFORM
Such a distortion in self-representation was characteristic for ap- parent resisters: in order to maintain a sense of integrity, over the years they would build upon the heroic self-image, and "forget" events and emotions associated with their having been weak or deceived. While Bishop Barker was by no means completely free of inner doubts about his heroic self-image, he had been able to master the thought reform experience sufficiently to carry through his distortion rather effectively.
But there were apparent resisters to whom these patterns of denial and repression were dangerous. Another priest whom I saw in follow-up (he was not mentioned earlier) had, like Bishop Barker used denial and repression to reinforce the heroic image which others were ready to confer upon him. He too gave many crusading speeches, and impressed both his audiences and his colleagues with his strength, energy, and stature. Yet when I saw him, I noticed that his eyes expressed fear and agitation. His gaze resembled the "thousand-mile stare" characteristic of prisoners immediately after their release--and he was the only one of my subjects who looked this way three years later. For almost two hours this priest de- scribed his flawless adjustment to European life, denied emotional difficulties of any kind, and spoke of the enthusiasm which he was able to arouse during his lectures on thought reform. Then, in a suddenly lowered voice, he made this admission:
But one thing was strange. . . . For months after I came out, each time I saw a stairway in a house, I thought, "What a wonderful place to jump . . . to commit suicide. "
Underneath the show of strength he was a deeply troubled man who could not fully believe his own self-representation. His obses- sive thoughts of suicide and his outer signs of fear revealed under- lying patterns of depression and anxiety. His efforts at mastery could not still his inner self-accusations, and his need to idealize his behavior prevented him from coming to terms with his strong feelings of guilt. Although he demonstrated strength and effective- ness in many areas, he was having great difficulty restoring his sense of integrity.
Father Simon made use of similar mechanisms, but his distor- tions were in the opposite direction. His need was to justify his conversion to Communism and live up to his identity of the con-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 22 5
scientious enthusiast. This involved denial of brutality during his imprisonment, repression of antagonisms toward the Communists and of recent doubts, and rationalization to justify and explain Communist behavior.
FATHER SIMON:
THE CONVERTED JESUIT
In the course of my follow-up visits, I was intro- duced to a priest who had experienced prison thought reform, but who had not been a subject of my original Hong Kong study. A French Jesuit, he was teaching science at a small Catholic school near the Franco-German border. My interview with him was not, strictly speaking, a follow-up visit; but it proved to be an un- usually interesting encounter. This Catholic Father, three-and-a- half years after his release, was still seeing the world almost entirely through "reformed" eyes. He had come closer to a true conversion
experience than had any of my original subjects,
The interplay between Father Simon and the colleague of his
(also a subject of mine) who introduced us was a good indication of what was to follow. This other priest explained to Simon that I had tried to meet him in Hong Kong, but had been told that he
(Simon) did not wish to see me. Simon irately denied this, insist- ing that he had never been approached, and accusing his clerical colleagues in Hong Kong of preventing a meeting between us be- cause they were embarrassed by his views. (Actually, it is difficult to say just who had prevented me from seeing Father Simon in Hong Kong; it is quite probable that neither he nor his fellow priests felt very enthusiastic about my interviewing him. )
207
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In Europe, however, Simon was clearly interested in talking with me, A thin, tense man in his late fifties, he quickly gave me the impression that he had a great deal to say about matters which he did not feel free to discuss too openly in his present environment. Indeed, his first words were pointed expressions of criticism directed at fellow priests who published strongly anti-Communist writings or presented what were in his opinion distorted views of prison thought reform. And when I asked him how he felt about his im- prisonment, he answered without hesitation: "It was one of the best periods of my life. " Then he explained that thought reform was valid because it was effective: "People claim that the Com- munists tried to introduce false points of view into your brain-- but this could never work; it is only because they introduced true things . . . that it works. " He went on to say that, "As for free- dom of speech, I had more . . . in jail than I have right here," explaining that while he was in prison, "I accepted all of their points of view--political and economic, everything," then adding as some- thing of an afterthought, "except for a deadlock on the religious point of view. "
Father Simon wasted no time in making it clear just where he stood. I could not help feeling amazement during these first few minutes of our interview, as I heard this Jesuit priest express only praise for Communism and only criticism for the actions of his Catholic colleagues. Although I knew the general principles of thought reform, I wondered just how this had been accomplished.
Father Simon was brought up in a hardworking middle-class fam- ily in a French provincial town. Since his father owned a small busi- ness enterprise, he now felt that "I was born on the wrong side of the fence. . , . My education was entirely on the capitalistic side. " He had learned in prison that "I lived from a salary taken from workmen," but defended his parents as having done the best they could, limited as they were by "the ideas of their surroundings. " Simon described the religious influences in his family as very strong: two sisters trained as nuns, and two uncles became missionaries. A conscientious boy who always "had the feeling that life was some- thing serious," he had wished to become a priest from the age of eleven, and had made his definite decision when he was fifteen. He attributed his religious inclinations to his mother's influence; his father--an austere, distant, and highly-respected figure--had
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 209
originally opposed his decision to enter the priesthood. As in the case of Father Luca, his mother's intercession helped him to carry it through.
He received extensive training in science, philosophy, and theol- ogy. This work included three years of study in the United States during his early thirties, and it is significant that he returned to Europe something of a convert to the American way of life, so much so that he sometimes irked his colleagues (several of whom I had spoken to) with his expression of his new allegiance, and his insistence that French science was nothing compared to ad- vanced American developments. He had retained these sentiments over the twenty years he spent teaching science in China; but they were soon overshadowed by his enormous attachment to China it- self. Although a distant and reserved man, he sought always to enter deeply into Chinese life. He organized scientific trips during which he traveled and camped outdoors with a small group from his uni- versity. "For two or three weeks . . . I lived entirely among stu- dents. . . . It made life more human . . . and the students found me as a man they did not know before. "
In other ways too, he tended to be different from and sometimes at odds with his colleagues. One described him as "very independ- ent in judgments . . . liked to be against things . . . enthusiasms strong but changeable . . . apparently cold, but really passionate. "
He was at the same time extremely diligent in his work, and utterly conscientious in his religious life. As one friend expressed it, "I often broke rules, but Simon never did. "
Thus, before his contact with the Communists, he was a man strongly susceptible to some forms of environmental influence, and at the same time capable of stubbornly resisting others. He possessed a powerful conscience and an accompanying susceptibility to guilt, both related to early family struggles; and much of Simon's life was involved with which influence he should follow as the "good" one, and which he should resist as the "bad. " In his various experiments with identity, however, it was his sense of being the conscientious enthusiast which prevailed over each of a number of different en- thusiasms.
During the early years of Communist rule, he was proud of being the only foreigner permitted to integrate his scientific work with the government program. At the same time, he was extremely criti-
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cal of the Communist movement, and strongly opposed the regime's attempts to spread its influence within his university. He expected to be arrested because he had been accused with others (falsely) of using a radio for espionage purposes.
Simon admitted to me that the early period of his imprisonment was "hard. " But he avoided any mention of specific brutality and claimed that he had been deprived of sleep for only one night. He preferred to "explain" the Communist approach ("According to their method they take advantage of the first shock"), and implied that their techniques were necessary because he had so extremely opposed them at the beginning. I was able to learn some of the missing details, however, from another European who had shared the same cell with Simon for a while: "Simon had been interrogated three days without sleep. They said he hadn't been giving any in- formation. The inspector, when alone with him, spat in his face ten times. " This same informant said that Simon had been un- usually stubborn in his resistance: "a daredevil. " In both versions, however, it was clear that Simon was extremely fearful of being shot.
He went then from extreme resistance to complete compliance, and his own story makes clear the psychological features of this reversal. Even after he no longer feared death, his desire to remain in China profoundly influenced his behavior:
I thought that I was one of those with the best chance to stay. I had received instructions from my superior to try to stay. I realized that if I did not change my mind, I would have no chance at all to stay. I decided I would try to see what was right, and if doubtful, I could try to adopt the Communist point of view.
Simon was helped along this path by a fellow Jesuit in the same cell who taught him how to begin his confession.
But he recognized that his own sense of guilt had played the most important part: "My position changed when I said, 'I am guilty'. " While unconscious guilt was undoubtedly present all along, his sense of being criminallyguilty developed after about one year, and was accompanied by a strong compulsion to confess. "I made a list in French . . . for my own use of ten points which I should never mention. . . . Sixmonths later I had told everything. . . . I was then ready to tell everything about myself and anyone else. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 211
His list had, of course, been his unconscious preparation for what was to come. When he made it he decided that "if I put together all these faults I had been accused of . . . I could say I was guilty. "
When I asked him what he had to feel guilty about, he first an- swered evasively, "We had plenty of things. " And then he did describe one of them--an occasion soon after World War II when Catholic chaplains from the American Army brought an intelligence officer to see Simon and some of his colleagues, "and then we told them plenty of things. " But, as if realizing that this might not be in itself so damning, he added, "What we did any foreigner would have done, but we should have been more careful. " Then, as if to justify further his guilt, he explained that "In jail we didn't ac- cuse only our crimes, but rather the intention of our crimes"; he went on to describe how he had contemplated (but had never carried out) telling an American missionary who was leaving de- tails about Communist work on an airfield, realizing that this in- formation might be passed on to an official American group.
I had no way of knowing whether this idea had really occurred to Simon before his imprisonment, or whether it was a product of the guilt-stimulating pressures of imprisonment itself. Either way, it was part of his need to find evidence of both wrongdoing and wrong-thinking so he could rationalize, in thought reform terms, his own psychological state: "Every time I found a crime I had committed, I was glad to find it. " But among a myriad of trivial self-accusations, the encounter with an American intelligence officer was undoubtedly a true source of psychological guilt, as it violated Simon's deepest sense of what a missionary should do and be.
His guilt established in his own mind, Simon moved on to the next step--complete enthusiasm and complete trust:
One of the prisoners suggested writing diaries--only about our change of mind. . . . Every day we gave the cell chief our diary. We had the feeling we were living in a glass house--but we had no bad feelings at all. Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government.
Simon's attainment of mutual trust and harmony with the Chi- nese realized a long-desired goal, a goal which he felt had before this always eluded him: "I never had a good chance to live among the Chinese except the last three years in jail. " During this period
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he held nothing back from his colleagues and cellmates ("I was glad to get rid of all I had on my mind and to speak very frankly"), and his statements included extensive denunciations of the behavior of many of his colleagues, both in and out of jail,
He was transferred during his last year to a jail where he was permitted to do manual labor. His guilt had led to a feeling of tranquility: "I was more quiet. I thought I am guilty and deserve it. " Once he was happy in jail, his main fear was that he would soon be released. He knew that jail was a safer place for him than life in China on the outside; and contact with his own colleagues in Europe seemed least safe of all:
When I was in labor camp during the last year, I was glad to be there. I was afraid to be out, because if allowed to stay in China I would have much trouble. If I came out, there would be trouble with my Order. . . . When I received my sentence, I wrote immediately to the head of the court, "I do not ask for a reduction in the sentence, but I would like you to cross out the clause about being kicked out of the country. "
By this time, he was, more than any of my subjects, identifying himself with his reformers. He took pride in bringing others around: "There was one fellow we worked on for two full days. At first we couldn't get to him . . . but finally we did. " Much impressed with individual Communists, he set them up as his standard, and always compared himself unfavorably to them: "We worked hard--but could not beat them. . . . They worked all of the days, and had meetings at night. . . . And they were very enthusiastic about their work. " He could justify in his mind even their curbs upon religion: "They said that outside of jail there is religious freedom, inside no. . . . That was tough on us, but we had to follow regulations"; and he was grateful for a slight relaxation in this area: "At the end,
for instance, I was allowed to say my breviary. "
He emphasized that in all this he had become increasinglyim-
pressed with the sincerity of the Communist officials, and illustrated this with their attitude toward their false accusation about the radio:
At the beginning, I thought that this was a pretext to arrest me. They wanted to take over our university and used this as their pretext. Later I found they really believed it. They were in good faith. . . . Then they dropped it, and they believed me.
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 213
Thus he had, during the course of his imprisonment, run the gamut from opposition to merger: "When they called me at the beginning, it was a fight--at the end it was a chat with a friend. "
Simon related this story to me in a simple, straightforward manner, impressing me both with his conscientiousness and his naivet6. At times he seemed totally unaware of the degree to which he had been manipulated. But at other times, I felt that awareness of this manipulation--as well as of the inconsistencies of the Com- munist position--had intruded upon his consciousness, and that he was hard put to fend it off. This inner struggle became more evident as he told me of his experiences after his release.
Tense and agitated upon his arrival in Hong Kong, Simon had found himself in total disagreement with everyone and everything around him. His situation was aggravated by his compulsion to ex- press these antagonistic feelings:
I couldn't control myself . . . when I was in jail, I could read Chinese newspapers for an entire month with no reaction, but when I came out, after every paragraph, I jumped . . . when someone told me something I thought was wrong, I had to speak.
At that time, he was convinced that because of his "change of ideas" he would not be able to remain in the Jesuit Order: "I don't mean I thought I would leave, but that I might be kicked out. " He thought he might have to become a secular priest (one who be- longs to no special order) and "find a bishop who would take me. "
His Jesuit colleagues, however, felt differently. Appalled at his behavior and attitudes, but for the most part sympathetic to him as a person, they were intent upon tiding him over what they con- sidered to be a crisis and winning him back to a more acceptable set of views. One of them with whom I had talked in Hong Kong had even asked my advice about the problem. He had decided--partly in response to pressures from other colleagues and partly because of his own convictions--to apply to Simon what he called "shock therapy. " By this he meant confronting him with the disparaging material that had been published about him in Chinese Com- munist newspapers and magazines, including accusations and con- fessions of heterosexual and homosexual behavior. (Simon had been accused of committing a "sexual crime" [homosexual act] during his imprisonment; although this was probably a false accusation, it
? 2 1 4 THOUGHT R E F O R M
could well have touched off latent fears and impulses and stimulated a good deal of confession material. ) Simon's Jesuit friend had hesitated to use his "shock" approach because he had noted that on the few occasions when he had attempted to bring up the sub- ject of prison confessions, Simon had become silent and fearful. I felt he had good reason to hesitate, and advised him against the "shock therapy/' However, influenced by the fact that Simon was leaving for Europe in a few days, and believing that others in the Church might be less understandingabout the whole problem than he was, the Jesuit had disregarded my advice and gone ahead with his direct but gently-administeredconfrontation.
He felt at the time that his shock therapy had been effective, since Simon had responded with surprise and a certain amount of anger directed at the Communists. But like many therapists, shock or otherwise, he had been premature in his evaluation; for soon Simon overcame his resentment toward the Communists through a rationalized analysis of the situation, which he also gave to me:
The Communists have two different departments, justice and propa- ganda. Justice wants to know the truth. Propaganda wants to amplify everything. . . . For justice, I still have the document of condemna- tion . . . based on the true facts. . . .
Some expressions are rather ambiguous, but what they charged me of, I have admitted. . . . What they wrote in the newspapers [for propaganda] is entirely different.
It is possible, however, that this incident did play a part in Simon's gradual realization that the Communists were not com- pletely truthful:
That's one point on which I have changed a little. Then [when in prison] I had the feeling that the Communists never lied. I feel now that although there are more lies on the other side, the Communists also lie--although they are more clever and more skillful. . . . If the Communists only told the truth, it would be awful for us.
Despite this small concession, he remained acutely at odds with his fellow priests. He looked upon them as "reactionary," and they tended to view him as one who had been convinced (and deceived) by the Communists because he was "doctrinally unsound" in his Catholic theology. One priest used him to illustrate the point that it is the "technicians" among Catholic priests who are likely to be most affected by thought reform, rather than those who are more
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 215
strongly grounded philosophically. Another, who had been de- nounced in prison by Simon, referred to the latter's behavior as a "twist of conscience. . . . He is a very conscientious man, and when he reported against me he was being very conscientious in another way. "
The Jesuit organization seemed to have more tolerance for his point of view than Simon had anticipated; but he felt that in re- assigning him to a teaching position, they had expected him even- tually to "become normal again/' He made a point of expressing his Communist sympathies clearly to his superiors, and he finally reached a modus Vivendi with them in which they accepted his right to hold any beliefs he pleased as long as he did not proclaim them too loudly to the outside world. He accepted this restriction as part of the principle (emphasized by both the Communists and the Catholics) that an individual priest cannot separate his actions from his responsibilities to his order; at the same time he indicated that he would like to express his views publicly through writing or speak- ing "if I were free. "
He was--emotionally and intellectually--much more distant from his colleagues than before. He had always viewed himself as "rather cold toward other people/' and this isolation was increased "because I live with people who don't share the same idea. " When I asked him if he had been influenced by any of his colleagues since his return, he replied, "There couldn't be much influence because their ideas are so contradictory to mine. "
He was so much alone with his thoughts that his only oppor- tunities to express himself came during long automobile trips he made to preach in outlying areas. These trips were arranged by a local organization, and on them he found release in talking to the driver, usually a businessman volunteer: "I know they don't share my opinions, but it is very enjoyable for me. " Sometimes his com- panion, when he first heard that Simon had been through interest- ing experiences in China, would enthusiastically invite him to speak before a local club--to which Simon would reply, "Let us talk together for a few more minutes and then see whether you still wish me to speak before your group. " The invitation was never repeated. Simon concluded that "they don't want their members to hear that kind of stuff. "
Toward the end of our three-hour talk, he described to me his
? 2l6 THOUGHT REFORM
attempts to achieve an inner synthesis between his older Catholic and newer Communist ideologies. He claimed that this attempt had begun even before he was imprisoned, when he had envisioned a political party "entirely Communist but with Christian prin- ciples" (although at the time he supported his fellow priests against the encroachments of the Communist regime). Like other priests among my subjects, he felt that he had reinforced his own spiritual life through his imprisonment: "The fact of feeling guilty is good Christian humility/' But unlike the others, he believed that the Communists themselves possessed the Christian virtues ("I feel that most of the Communists are humble"), a strong expression of praise from a Catholic priest.
He claimed that through his experience he felt himself closer to the Catholic religion "because, in one way I am nearer the truth. " His facial expression became animated and enthusiastic as he de- scribed to me the way in which he had improved his inner life:
I have had more experience with introspection. With all of the methods of criticism we go very deep into the subconscious. I remember in jail . . . everyone told their faults against the discipline, then we decided to get deep into the reasons. Then others would say, "This and this is the reason/' We would say, "No, no, no--that's not it/' Then at night you would think they are right, and as soon as you realized this, the fault was corrected at once. . . . This is very important for the re- ligious life. . . . A very powerful tool.
I felt his alternation in this statement between first person sin- gular and plural, and the second and third persons, was more than a matter of a European speaking English (his English was, in fact, fluent), and really reflected his alternating images of himself as a member of the Communist-oriented group, as the target of its criticism, and as a spiritually-active European Catholic. He in fact emphasized that it was not possible to use this kind of group criticism in his present circumstances, and that he was forced to apply this "tool" himself--and so, in effect, assumesimultaneously all three identities. He believed that Communism and Catholicism should maintain their interchange of techniques and that Catholi- cism should seek to benefit from the Communist improvements "Lenin borrowed many things from religious orders, but amplified them a lot. . . . If we can get them back from Lenin, that is all right. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 217
Yet he could not avoid recognizing his inevitable conflict, as a Catholic priest, with the Communist creed. When I asked, for in- stance, if he were troubled by the problem of materialism--a point of bitter controversy, at least theoretically, between Communism and Catholicism--he replied, "No, but it means I can never be a Communist/' and went on to say:
My conflict with the Communists came when I said, "For me religion is first, Communism is second/' If I had been able to write a blank check and say that anything the Communists do about religion is OK, then I could have stayed. That much I could not have done. . . . I trusted them very much, but not that much. . . . If not for this prob- lem of religion I would have followed the Communist Party entirely, without any restriction.
He added that during his last month in jail he wondered, "Do I not go too far? " and then decided, "I shall never have an uncondi- tional surrender. I shall never sign a blank check. " Now he con- cluded, not without some sadness, that because of this unwilling- ness, "for the Communists I am still an enemy . . . since if you don't accept them entirely, they consider you an enemy. "
When I asked him whether he would consider such a black-and- white judgment on the part of the Communists to be at all unfair, his answer was what could be expected--but its implications were nonetheless striking:
No. To understand Communism you must compare it with Catholic belief. If with Catholic belief, you don't accept one article of faith, you are not a Catholic. If you don't sign a blank check, you are not a Catholic.
Simon had no objection to the demand itself. When I asked him whether he was willing to make this "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism, he replied:
Of course. . . . I like Communism and Catholicism, but Catholicism always comes first. In case of conflict, I will stay with Catholicism.
World politics were, of course, another matter. As far as Com- munist activities in general were concerned, Simon said, "I am not even against a revolution--of course as mild as possible, but you cannot always do anything about that. " And about the return of
? 2l8 THOUGHT REFORM
General de Gaulle to power during 1958, he offered a remarkably candid opinion:
W ell, give him a chance. See what he can do. I was rather against him at first because I thought he was reactionary. Then someone said that Moscow was not against him because they thought he would break NATO. Since then I have not been so much against him because Mos- cow had that opinion. If Moscow stands for de Gaulle, then I am for de Gaulle.
But in discussing thought reform, he made a statement far more significant than he realized:
The way you look at it depends upon whether you feel that their opin- ions are true or false. If you say they are false, then it is all brainwashing stuff. If you think them true, they help you. I saw cases of serious offences--even some real crimes--completely changed. . . . With the habit of introspection you can very quickly see whether someone is tell- ing the truth.
Here Simon, quite unintentionally, let his inner doubts out of the bag, implying with this slip that he and others like him were not guilty of "real crimes/' but of something else that must be dis- tinguished from them.
He ended the interview--just as he began it--with praise for the 'Very powerful" and "wonderful" thought reform methods, and denunciation of those Catholic priests who he felt had presented distorted views of Communist China.
Why did Father Simon go so far that his conversion strains the meaning of apparent? It is interesting to compare him with our other apparent convert, Miss Darrow. The two are very different kinds of people; and yet there are striking similarities in their emo- tional reactions. Both responded very strongly to the opportunity to merge with the Chinese people; both experienced an unusually strong sense of guilt, and a strong need to be absolutely sincere with their captors; both eventually achieved a greater harmony with their prison environment than with any they had previously known, and were loath to surrender it for the anticipated pain of "freedom. " This authoritarian priest shared with the liberal mis- sionary's daughter psychological traits characteristic for the ap- parent convert: strong susceptibility to guilt, confusion of identity,
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 1 9
and most important of all, a long-standing pattern of totalism. Simon's totalism had in fact always been much more prominent than,Miss Darrow's. As the conscientious enthusiast, he had shown a tendency to embrace totally a series of influences--Catholicism, American know-how, Chinese life, and then Chinese Communism. Unlike Miss Darrow, he had not rebelled from the religious in- fluences which helped to shape this totalism during his early life. He did not seek a liberal alternative; rather, in his "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism he was attracted toward the most au- thoritarian and uncompromising elements within a many-sided (but
always potentially authoritarian) ideology.
But within his identity of conscientious enthusiast were two
vying elements, the convert and the defier. As the former, he sought, and as the latter feared, total unity with an all-powerful force. He required a pattern of defiance in order to ward off the strong attrac- tions to continuous influences around him. Sometimes he would defy one first and convert to it later, sometimes convert to it first and then defy it; or on still other occasions, defy one strong in- fluence while converting to another. Thus he defied his father to convert to the priesthood (it would be interesting to know whether he had originally been at all defiant in his attitude toward religion), defied French influencein his conversion to America and Western influence in his conversion to China, defied both Catholic and American influences in his conversion to Communism, and then continued to defy Catholic pressures as a means of maintaining this conversion. Whether defying or converting, his was an all-or- none approach. This is symbolized in his repeated use of the term "blank check": for one who issues a "blank check" to another may be offering either everything or nothing, without specifying how much of himself he gives and how much he insists upon retaining.
As a conscientious Catholic priest and scientist, his total dedica- tion to missionary work, credal purity, truthfulness, and sincerity were basic to his affirmative self-image. But both the defier and the convert within him could interfere and become part of his negative identity; for underneath both of them was a profound inability to trust or to become intimate with other human beings. Each con- version was a quest for the trust and intimacy that had long eluded him; unable to experience them in ordinary human doses, he sought trust and intimacy on absolute terms. For him, both conversion and
? 22O THOUGHT REFORM
defiance were attempts to ward off inner feelings of aloneness, weakness, and helplessness.
In prison, he was first the defier (an unusually courageous one), and then the convert (an unusually loyal one). In both identities, his conscientiousness was outstanding; but his behavior also re- vealed the basic contradiction within his convert-defier pattern. His ideal of "unconditional surrender" was not fully attainable. He could not, after all, sign the "blank check. " He tells us that this was because he could not submit simultaneously and totally to two masters; and this is true enough. But it is also true that he could not--either then or before--submit totally to any master. Ulti- mately, the "unconditional surrender*' and the "blank check" were unrealizable ideals, as they so often are for those who seek them. For Simon, they had been an inspiring myth; but defiance, doubt, and mistrust eventually interfered in relation to both Catholicism and Communism.
In his post-prison years, Simon--despite his outward assurance-- was inwardly walking an emotional tightrope. Whatever his denials, he did continue to serve two emotional masters, and this is a con- siderable strain. Even more subject to totalism than Miss Darrow, he remained truer than she to his thought reform conversion. Three-and-a-half years after his release he was still unable to come to terms with the actualities of his experience; he felt the need to reconstruct thought reform events to make them more congenial and less brutal, and to emphasize his compliance rather than his resistance. He had to avoid the recognition of having been manipu- lated, or else minimize the manipulation and justify its usage.
Obviously all was not well with this last--and perhaps most profound--of Simon's conversions. He was not, after all, immune from the Catholic influences around him, nor from the forces of reality testing, nor from the voice of his own doubts. Evidence for this lies in his slightly more critical (though hardly very critical) attitude toward Communism, in his slips of the tongue, in his over- stated protestations. As with all true believers, his doubts were not easy to tolerate, since unconsciously he tended to see them as a lack of total sincerity on his part. Yet his doubts were constantly stimulated by the presence of his other (Catholic) master--that is, by Church officials and Catholic ideas. This accounts for some of the vehemence with which he criticized his fellow clergymen; he was
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 2 2 1
calling his defiant self into play in order to purge the doubts which threatened to "betray" his thought reform experience, and conse- quently overstating his praise for Communism.
It may be that in the long run he, too, will backslide. But the tenacity with which this Jesuit priest had held on to his Chinese Communist conversion was as impressive a reform result as any I witnessed, particularly since there was no environmental reinforce- ment for his thought reform views. To be sure, the unanimity of his colleagues' opposition served as a stimulus to his defiance of them; and some reinforcement was available, even if from a dis- tance, in the constant information about the Communist world reaching him through newspapers, magazines, and casual conversa- tions. But even after all of this has been said, Father Simon's case leaves one with a renewed respect for the emotional power of thought reform.
? CHAPTER 12
RECOVERY AND RENEW AL: A SUMMING UP
We have described in the last two chapters the
emotional trials of Westerners during their first few post-thought reform years. These were never easy, and they took many different personal forms, but the common pattern was one of recovery and renewal. There were certain basic tasks which they all faced, psychological principles to which they were all subject. Their common problems were mainly the result of the thought re- form emotions they had shared; but they were also related to an- other heritage common to all these men, that of the Westerner in China.
Mastery and Integrity
When the Westerners returned home, typically they found them- selves compelled to be active, preoccupied with thought reform in particular and with China in general, and unable to become im- mediately interested in their Western environments. It was as if they had some piece of psychological business to attend to before they could permit themselves the luxury of rest or could assume the responsibility of new involvements. This unrest represented the psychological need to re-enact a highly disturbing experience, and
2
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 223
is related to what Freud called the "repetition compulsion. " * It is an effort at mastery in which, as Erilcson has described, "The in- dividual unconsciously arranges for variations of an original theme which he has not learned either to overcome or to live with/' and deals with the stressful situation by "meeting it repeatedly and of his own accord. "2
As is also true of people put through many other kinds of painful experiences, these subjects were reliving their thought reform as a means of coming to terms with it. Their experience involved spe- cial emphasis upon problems of shame and guilt, and it was these emotions which they had in some measure to overcome. Otherwise they would be unable either to overcome or to live with their thought reform, and unable to recover their self-esteem. We may therefore describe their psychological task as mastery through res- toration of integrity.
Lecturing and writing about thought reform were particularly effective ways of achieving this mastery. By these acts the subject was in effect saying: "I am no longer the passive, helpless criminal and betrayer. I am an active, strong authority on a manipulative process which could affect any of you in my audience or reading public/7 Such retelling is the former prisoner's means of declaring his identity shift, his beginning disengagement from his own ex- perience.
However, after any great adventure, or even a commonplace oc- currence, the reconstruction can never reproduce exactly the ex- perience itself. The changed inner and outer circumstances and the passage of time must induce distortions. Truth is at best an ap- proximation, and for these men the need for altered reconstruction is likely to be great. The direction and the degree of distortion depended upon the Westerner's way of responding to thought re- form, his developing relationship with his new environment, and his long-standing psychological techniques for dealing with threats to his sense of integrity.
Bishop Barker's reconstruction, for instance, was the story of a clever and heroic man who made no concessions and who out- witted his reformers at every turn. I said of him that he had ex- tended his use of the mechanism of denial to the point of con- fabulation, because I knew that his reconstruction was inaccurate both in terms of actual events and attitudes towards those events.
? 224 THOUGHT REFORM
Such a distortion in self-representation was characteristic for ap- parent resisters: in order to maintain a sense of integrity, over the years they would build upon the heroic self-image, and "forget" events and emotions associated with their having been weak or deceived. While Bishop Barker was by no means completely free of inner doubts about his heroic self-image, he had been able to master the thought reform experience sufficiently to carry through his distortion rather effectively.
But there were apparent resisters to whom these patterns of denial and repression were dangerous. Another priest whom I saw in follow-up (he was not mentioned earlier) had, like Bishop Barker used denial and repression to reinforce the heroic image which others were ready to confer upon him. He too gave many crusading speeches, and impressed both his audiences and his colleagues with his strength, energy, and stature. Yet when I saw him, I noticed that his eyes expressed fear and agitation. His gaze resembled the "thousand-mile stare" characteristic of prisoners immediately after their release--and he was the only one of my subjects who looked this way three years later. For almost two hours this priest de- scribed his flawless adjustment to European life, denied emotional difficulties of any kind, and spoke of the enthusiasm which he was able to arouse during his lectures on thought reform. Then, in a suddenly lowered voice, he made this admission:
But one thing was strange. . . . For months after I came out, each time I saw a stairway in a house, I thought, "What a wonderful place to jump . . . to commit suicide. "
Underneath the show of strength he was a deeply troubled man who could not fully believe his own self-representation. His obses- sive thoughts of suicide and his outer signs of fear revealed under- lying patterns of depression and anxiety. His efforts at mastery could not still his inner self-accusations, and his need to idealize his behavior prevented him from coming to terms with his strong feelings of guilt. Although he demonstrated strength and effective- ness in many areas, he was having great difficulty restoring his sense of integrity.
Father Simon made use of similar mechanisms, but his distor- tions were in the opposite direction. His need was to justify his conversion to Communism and live up to his identity of the con-
? RECOVERY AND RENEWAL 22 5
scientious enthusiast. This involved denial of brutality during his imprisonment, repression of antagonisms toward the Communists and of recent doubts, and rationalization to justify and explain Communist behavior.
