" Offi- cially, they were just
supposed
to be against superstition and not against religion.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
He re- peatedly ignored his colleagues' advice to leave despite what they considered to be his precarious personal position.
The man who was imprisoned, then, was an effective and in- tegrated human being, one able to work and to love. Crucial to his identity was his sense of being a man of God, a representative of the Faith and of the Truth, a responsible official of the Catholic Church, a friend of the oppressed, a searching and open-minded scholar, a brother and father of Chinese youth, a lover of China and of the Chinese, and a foreign member of Chinese culture. But ever lurking in the background was another much more derogatory self-image, a view of himself as impure (sexually) and unhumble
(in his dealings with superiors). Also part of this negative identity, we suspect, were old feelings of weakness, as well as the fear of alienation from friends and colleagues. These negative and posi- tive elements were both included in his over-all identity of the liberal "Chinese" father confessor.
His liberalism was related to his past identity struggle: torn apart as a child by the conflict between his African and European selves, deeply attached and yet a bit unsteady in his family identifications, experimental and inquisitive since earliest childhood (even to the point of swallowing dirt), he had early learned to be receptive to
? 1O2 THOUGHT REFORM
the other person's convictions and way of life. With him, as with anyone truly receptive, this meant not just standing by with tol- erance, but actually becoming each of the things which challenged his sense of identity--whether African child, European schoolboy, or Catholic priest and missionary. Thus he became more "Chinese" than his colleagues, closer to and better loved by those whom he guided and instructed. At the same time, his capacity to under- stand and sympathetically enter into the other person's point of view made him more prone to moral conflict and indecisiveness. Such is likely to be the identity constellation and the dilemma of any "liberal," no matter what his cause.
Priests have been called "father-confessor" since the Church's early days. For each priest this title has a shared as well as a special meaning; in Father Luca's case, it symbolizes much of his character. He was even more the "father" than the average priest, since almost all of his professional career had been devoted to work with young- sters, and he liked to do this work best. He was a "confessor"-- as a priest, novice, naughty child (and later as a prisoner)--in all three meanings of the term: he made confessions, he heard con- fessions, and he also "avowed and adhered to his faith under perse- cution and torture without suffering martyrdom. "
Confession, then, had long been for him a personal style, even a way of life. It was not without its difficulties: the small boy was not always clear about what wrong he was expected to "confess"; the novice could not easily express his exact feelings. Whatever in- articulate and repressive forces worked against it, however, con- fession had served him well. Through it he had been able to face, and share with sympathetic colleagues, the disturbing feelings which had fed his negative identity. It had been especially important in subduing (although never fully conquering) his sexual urges and aggressive tendencies.
Nonetheless, the sense of evil which accompanied these sexual and aggressive urges could not easily be stilled. Confession helped to keep these feelings conscious and manageable (rather than in- accessible and more dangerous, as with Dr. Vincent); but it also required him to search out his own evil, to look constantly upon himself as one who is guilty. His susceptibility to guilt, present from early life, was thus ever stimulated anew. Managed reasonably effectively by his tie to the Catholic Church, his guilt was a point
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 103
of vulnerability for any new authority which might seek to manipu- late his loyalties; it was, in fact, the royal road to his negative identity.
Father Luca's complex adult configuration was largely the product of emotional compromise. In dealing with his father and all later authorities, he had alternated between submission and rebellion. He had, in a sense, defied his father in becoming a priest, and es- pecially in a small missionary order; but he was remaining within a Catholic ideology which his family held sacred. Moreover, he became, like his father, at the same time both a champion of the rights of "natives" and a loyal servant of a European institution. He also possessed a tenderness which--as his prison memories sug- gest--must have been derived from a relationship of love and in- timacy with his mother; a relationship which may have been responsible for much of his submissiveness, receptivity, and pen- chant for suffering.
In his ideological solution to his identity crisis, Father Luca (unlike Dr. Vincent) acquired a comprehensive if constricting view of the world, and a strict code of conduct for relations with other people; he took on a sense of loyalty and near-total submission to
an institution greater than himself. His concern was no longer simply, "Where do I stand? " and, "What can I do about my bad- ness? " Badness and commitment still had to be dealt with, but not on an individual basis. Instead, he asked himself, "How can I purify and humble myself in order to better serve the Church? How can I be more consistent in my life, and mean what I say and do? How can I, as a Catholic priest, be fully sincere? "
It is therefore not surprising that Father Luca objected strenuously to the judge's impugning his sincerity. He stated his position at the beginning--"a mistake or a matter of religion"--which made him, as he stood before the judge, both a man defending truth and a representative of a sacred institution. The fact that he had doubts about his own sincerity, at whatever level of consciousness, made him fight all the harder; one does not reveal inner weakness before the enemy. Moreover, by this same initial statement, he had de- clared his imprisonment a test of his sincerity; he assumed the posture of the confessor who is the defender of his faith against those who would persecute it.
The irony of his situation was that his reformers meant some-
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thing a little different by "sincerity": for Chinese Communist of- ficials, both in prison and out, to be sincere is to yield to them as representatives of the Way and the Truth, "Insincerity" or resist- ance is the one attitude which they will not tolerate, and they re- garded Luca's behavior as provocative. This, plus their prior identifi- cation of him as an enemy--he was not only a Catholic priest, but a leader of a militant Catholic organization--led to their use of force and brutality to a degree unusual even for a Chinese Communist prison. As on earlier occasions in his life, Luca could not grasp or articulate what he was expected to confess; and although the re- former's contradictory demands may have been mainly responsible for this, it is very likely that Luca's lifelong resistances to confes- sion also played a part, as he seemed to have much more difficulty than most other prisoners in reaching an understanding of the situa- tion. In any case, he experienced a more profound physical and psychological breakdown than did Dr. Vincent.
Father Luca's false confession reflected both a disintegration of his sense of reality and identity, and an outpouring of his sense of evil. His experience was like that of a man, who, troubled by feelings of guilt, dreams that he is a criminal being punished. Luca was a "criminal" being punished in jail, "dreaming" of having com- mitted the kind of crime of which he was accused--his dream work much assisted by his surroundings, and closely supervised by judge and cellmates. In a twilight state of fatigue, pain, and al- tered consciousness, he was both responding to the prison message and at the same time reverting to his own familiar confession idiom.
No other prisoner I encountered confessed more extensively than did Father Luca; nor did anyone else sustain for as long a period such a grossly false story. He could do this and even believe in his confession, not only because the environment encouraged this belief, but also because his confession had for him the ring of psychological truth. That is, it expressed "subversive" things about himself, albeit in the language of the Communist police system rather than that of the Catholic Church. It was an extreme version--a caricature--of his own negative identity. As an expe- rienced confessor (and a man who had done some writing) Father Luca could be creative, prolific, and convincing in using this carica- ture to develop his confession-novel.
The direct physical assault, coming at the height of the false con-
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 1 0 5
fession, showed a loss of control on the part of the Communist of- ficials. They had begun to check Father Luca's false confession, ap- parently after having believed a good deal of it, and had found it to be "insincere" beyond words--in both the conventional and their own special meaning of the term.
Luca himself, once injured (and physically punished), rose to impressive heights of courage and strength. He had given indica- tions of his will to survive even before the injury. His delusions had included fantasies of self-affirmation--of recovery, rescue, and return to priestly activities--along with elements of guilt. At that time, too, he could summon faith in the religious purpose of his suffering ("penance for my sins"). Crippled and helpless, he was able to reach more profoundly into his emotional being and remind himself of the most basic forms of trust he had known in the past: religious comradeship, earthly places, both beautiful and permanent, and most of all, sad songs which took him back to maternal love and tenderness. His identity collapse had been temporary; now he sought always to reaffirm that in himself which he most valued and could depend upon. And at the same time, he kept his inner ex- perience within his own religious idiom. His imprisonment was a continuation of his lifelong self-purification. His faith was a power- ful ally, one he would under no condition surrender: hence his dra- matic assertion that "to take off my religion it is necessary to take out my heart and to kill me"--both a statement of creed and a quashing of self-doubt.
This very creed and his devotion to the Church behind it led to his greatest pain during reform. As a "liberal" he had already been in conflict with "illiberal" (and militaristic) colleagues, with whom he was now accused of conspiring. As a "liberal," he could also "feel" the validity of some Communist objections to official and nonofficial Church activity. He was especially vulnerable to accusations that the Church did such apparently "good" things as helping the sick and poor for its own selfish reasons: this would be "insincerity" at its worst. But he was susceptible not only be- cause he was liberal; it was precisely in this issue that he found his guilt, both personal and existential, most exploited. A negative image here--of self and Church--was both intolerable and unavoidable.
Luca's quest for "sincerity," as well as his "Chineseness," served, toward the end of his imprisonment, to bring him into a position
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of harmony with the officials: all became increasingly "frank" and "sincere. " But it was sincerity at a price, and led him to the in- congruous position of "helping" a fellow-priest make a criminal "confession"--his furthest venture into "betrayal. " He was, to be sure, still "hearing confessions"'; but now "sincerely" in harmony with the opposition.
Yet this too was only partial and transient. Immediately upon release, he was identified by his religious colleagues once more as the dedicated Catholic priest, which he had never really ceased to be. He also faced the delicate problem of restoring his identity as a liberal confessor, deeply committed to an authoritarian Church. His identity flexibility required that he scrutinize the Communists, the Church, and himself. In his profound sense of shame and guilt over having betrayed the Church (and himself), he felt the need to both relive and reformulate his relationship to it. Thus the story of the "naughty little girl" converted to active Catholicism despite parental opposition retells his own experience in enter- ing the priesthood. His "liberalism" had obliged him to give a hear- ing to some of the Communist message; but this involved him much less than his personal, credal, Catholic search. Now, as before, he could deal with his conflicts within his religious framework.
He conveyed the feeling that his imprisonment had made him more open to others' influence, more submissive; these could be important changes, but as heightening of traits already present, rather than as new characteristics. Perhaps an even more profound upheaval for Father Luca was the need to surrender much of his "Chinese" self, leaving him in a state of mourning which began not with imprisonment, but after release. He gave me the feeling, however, that from his careful, painful, and conscience-ridden weighing of ideas and emotions, a somewhat remodeled, but still liberal (and not entirely un-Chinese) father-confessor was re-emerg- ing.
Professor Hermann Castorp: The Submissive Scientist
Let us now examine the experience of another man who falls into this general category of the obviously confused, yet responded quite differently from either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca. A biologist from Central Europe in his mid-fifties, Professor Castorp was intro-
? THE OBVIOUSL Y CONFUSED 107
duced to me by a member of his consulate in Hong Kong. Two or three of my other subjects who had met him in prison told me he had been "very progressive"; but when he came to see me just a few 'days after his release, he could best be described as "lost. " In addition to the typical post-imprisonment fear and suspiciousness, he was overcome by loneliness, and sought group protection when- ever he could: "Even when crossing the street, I waited for a few people and crossed with the group. " He welcomed the opportunity to talk things over with me, and so clearly enjoyed our three half- day sessions together that each time he was reluctant to leave. Yet despite his voluble answers to my questions, and his eagerness to prolong our talks, his manner was vague and distant, much like that of the stereotype of the "absent-minded professor. "
Both in his native Austria, and during his twenty-five years in China, Professor Castorp had lived the quiet and detached life of the scholar. A hard worker and a capable, well-liked teacher, he put a premium upon meeting--or even exceeding--the demands of others:
I have always had the tendency to satisfy people. . . . I have never wanted to displease anyone. If I am given work, I try to do better than what is expected. . . , If you give me a salary that is satisfactory, my entire energy is yours.
He attributed these traits to his "strongly Catholic" and "very conservative" Teutonic upbringing; to his stem and "sober" govern- ment-official father who, although he remained in the background in most family matters, had opinions which counted ("What will he think of me if I do something wrong? "); and even more to his "dictatorial" mother ("The kind of person other people submit to--even dogs listen to her") who directed everyone in the house- hold, bought all of Hermann's socks and underwear until he was twenty-two years old, and created an atmosphere within the home which ensured "that things must be done in a way that mother is pleased. "
In his schooling he worked actively to please his teacher; and dur- ing the years afterward, he continued to seek to please others, and avoid contention.
I didn't like to have the teacher angry at me. A driving force was to keep my teacher satisfied. This makes it happier for everyone, for him
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and for me. . . . I always try to find out what in the other person I could agree with. . . . I don't like people who conjure up big conflicts.
Similarly, he accepted without question the Catholic religion in which he was brought up. He was concerned much less with its dogma than with the loyalties which he felt to its moral principles, and to the family and Church organization around it: "I am the kind of man who must live in some kind of organization or society where I feel the need to do good. "
He thrived on the "simple cultured form of life" of the Youth Movement in which he participated, especially by its "clean," Puri- tanical emphasis, and its single-mindedness; "I like people with strong convictions who stick to them. "
But the one area in which he found active self-expression and which became his true "holy of holies," was science:
I am a scientist by conviction. I have been since very early in life. It is as an artist uses his art. I like to use my hands, my equipment, to ex- periment and to teach others.
He even defied his parents in embarking on this career, as they had a different profession in mind for him; but at the same time, he believed his scientific interests to be an inheritance from his maternal grandfather. He also felt that in his work--in his passion for research, his abilities as a teacher, his originality in construct- ing apparatus--he was, like his mother, a "leading spirit" whom others sought to follow.
He avoided considerations of philosophy and metaphysics ("The more you think about them, the more confused you are"), and had no concern with politics or with abstract ideological principles of any kind; what mattered to him was the operation of a system:
I am not interested in names--monarchy, democracy, dictatorship. 1 am interested in how things are actualized--how they work. I do feel there must be a factor of stability.
Coming to China at the invitation of a missionary university, he found conditions very agreeable to him in both his personal and professional lives. He was devoted enough to his strong-minded wife; but he readily tolerated long separations brought about by European medical treatments which her ailments were said to require, as
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 109
long as another equally forceful woman could be found to run his household. Never too drawn to the sensual side of life, he was passionately involved in his teaching and his research. He thrived upon the difficult working conditions, and especially enjoyed the feeling that his professional skills were indispensable. Moreover, he delighted in the slow pace of Chinese life, and in what he called the "spirit of compromise" of the Chinese people. He found himself readily blending with his environment:
It is very interesting how surroundings influence you. . . . The stu- dents had a certain way of eating. I began automatically to eat just like them. . . . I even began to call a dog in the Chinese way.
His evaluation of the political regimes under which he lived depended largely upon those around him. Thus he at first was im- pressed with the Nationalist Government "because I saw the en- thusiasm of the students"; later he shared with them a strong resent- ment of the Japanese invaders, but then he found "a few Japanese who were not bad people," explaining that "in everyone I can see something good. " Mostly, however, he was disinterested in the world about him except as it pertained to his work. He did not care for psychological probing, but "if someone told me something about myself, I always thought, probably he is right--there must be something in it. "
He continued his work after the Communists came to power; but when the new regime took over the running of his university, he decided to leave because "I thought I would not fit. " Several delays occurred in his getting an exit permit, followed by his unex- pected arrest.
His response in prison from the beginning was to confess every- thing he could about his own past actions, and avoid antagoniz- ing his captors. Compared to Father Luca and Dr. Vincent, the pressures applied to him were relatively mild; no chains, no hand- cuffs, and none of the persistently extreme accusation which leads to falsification. On his part, he made a consistent effort to adapt himself as well as he could to this difficult environment, rather than concern himself with moral or ideological issues. "It is hard to say how I felt. I cannot judge these things, although I can easily find a concrete course to take. "
His personal confession was not too greatly emphasized, and he
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was quickly exposed to re-education. To the hsiieh hsi sessions he brought the approach of a scientist:
I paid close attention. I wanted to find what it was about. Mine was the attitude of research.
His approach was made feasible by his captors' failure to make him, as they did most other Europeans, a special target. "They saw at once that I was harmless. If I talked a little, they didn't expect too much. " Moreover, he was ingenious in his ingenuousness.
From the very beginning I said what I thought and this made it easier for me. . . . By nature I am anti-revolutionary. I don't like everything turned upside down. So when the Communists said, "You are anti- revolutionary/' they were right and I admitted it. I said, "I am. " If you admit things openly, they do not make so much fuss about it, they simply preach to you. But the moment you tell them stories, they get mad.
But his "research" (he was, after all, a participant-observer) led him to accept as valid much of the "data. "
I began to understand many things that I did not understand before. . . . It was a logical system in itself--talking about land distribution, why the tenants were poor--about China's losses from the international imperialists--things I've never been interested in before. I saw for the first time how the Chinese themselves felt about these matters. My whole thinking about these problems was enlarged.
Nor could he disentangle himself from the bias of his teachers' jar- gon, although he recognized it for what it was: "Old China was bad, new China good, and America bad--it is an official kind of language. "
He could even begin to accept the Communist point of view about his own criminal guilt, although it was based only upon anti-Communist statements he had previously made: "From the way I talked before, I influenced others against the Communists --so from their point of view I am guilty. " But he was never able to develop a strong inner sense of sinfulness, and his cellmates fre- quently criticized him because he had no "feeling of guilt/' He thought that such a feeling was "too much to expect from a man, because the world is not a religious order, and their requirements
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 111
were too high. "
He viewed Communism as a religion, a point he made frequently
during our interviews, yet at the same time he managed to hold on to the general principles of his own Catholic faith. Here he once more made use of the scientist's approach.
I would emphasize the scientific explanation of the world, saying that there must have been a beginning, and therefore religion has a place. They would say, "This is a scientific religion, and it is all right.
" Offi- cially, they were just supposed to be against superstition and not against religion.
At the same time, his sense of involvement in the Catholic re- ligion was of profound importance in his holding on to his sense of identity.
I would always figure out whether it was Easter or some other Catholic holy day so that I could stick to their custom. . . . If I had no reli- gious background, it is possible that I would have committed suicide.
He was pleased by the more favorable treatment accorded him as he became increasingly viewed as a "progressive"; but he was disturbed by the moves from one cell to another which this shift in status brought about, "I disliked changing groups. I felt I be- longed to a group like a chicken belongs to its flock. " Moreover, after a period of time, he found his "research" less and less reward- ing:
After I understood the fundamentals, I began to get bored by it all-- then the main thing became avoiding trouble. . . . Ten hours a day is too much, you get overfed, and this kills off deeper interests.
But he always retained the strong need to please his captors, as well as an underlying wish to be free of them--reflected in a re- current dream which he had during his imprisonment.
I would dream I was allowed to go home for an afternoon. I didn't remember whether I was required to return at night or allowed to return the next day. I thought, "You are too stupid--you will do something wrong and the man will be very angry with you. "
In his associations to this dream, he relates it to his lifelong pattern of avoiding conflict through submission.
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I didn't want to displease the official, I would always give in in order to avoid conflict. . . . It was my duty to ask him when to come back and not to break the rule. . . . I have a feeling that I am this kind of person--who does things wrong and who forgets--this could happen to me, . . . I always must satisfy people.
After his release, his "lost" appearance reflected both his emo- tional and ideological confusion. Sometimes, like Vincent, he seemed to be longing for the security he had known in prison. At other times he would criticize the unfair practices of the Com- munists, but then temper his criticism, using the thought reform language: "Of course the people know this/7 Of his former jailers he said: "Objectively speaking they are wrong. But you can't help but have a respect for these men. They work hard and sacrifice and have a certain human value. "
In a personal sense, he was very labile in his emotions. He formed quick attachments to people he met in Hong Kong, especially if they had also just been in a Chinese prison. He was quick to weep when one of these friends left the Colony; he also wept just listen- ing to sad music. But he expressed an optimistic note despite his difficulties, recognizing his need to "absorb and repair," comparing himself to a "business which has gone bankrupt and now has to start up again. " He seemed on the whole less emotionally dis- turbed than either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca, and others among my subjects who knew him told me that they felt he had weathered the experience much better than they had.
One of his ways of dealing with his own confusion was to at- tempt to look at thought reform from a distance, discuss its general principles, its effectiveness, and its economy of manpower. At the same time, he would try to evaluate how useful the experience had been to him; his conclusions were ambivalent, but helpful to him in working out his feelings.
A few months would have been worth it--but not three years. . . . I am not converted so much that I go one hundred percent to their way --but what 1 have seen and learned is worth something.
He sought to maintain a fatalistic attitude toward his imprison- ment: "It can't be helped--like breaking a leg. . . . It wasa revolu- tion, and they had the guns and not I. " And to remain critical of both worlds: "I can't say that it was justice, but I can't say that
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 1 1 3
there is justice here in Hong Kong either. "
During the course of his stay in Hong Kong, however, he began
to be more critical of Communists, questioning much of what they had taught him, and especially condemning their police methods.
A person you know must tell all about you--they want to check every- thing. I dislike this police element of the state. I had the attitude of old China--that the best government is one that you don't see or feel at all. . . . There, from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, they control you.
During our last talk together, his words were again conciliatory rather than critical. About his own experience he said:
I don't like it; I have lost^too much. But when you go to a country like that, you must expect that these things can happen. . . , Who can I blame? The whole of China because it is so backward? The KMT [Nationalists] because it was so corrupt? The Communists because they could gain victory?
And about Communism in general:
Communism is good for the Chinese--for countries with primitive economic conditions--but I cannot imagine it for the West. . . . But if it makes the West more conscious of the need for social reform, then it has done some good.
He began to make active efforts to rearrange his personal life, seek- ing a new teaching position in the Far East, again in association with a Catholic missionary group. He realized that his concerns about ideological questions would become much less important to him once he got back to work: "When I find another job, things will be fixed up--then I won't talk about these other things any more/'
The patterns of Professor Castorp's early life, imprisonment, and post-release period suggest the identity of the submissive scientist, He had been consistently submissive in his attempts to please parents, teachers, Western and Chinese associates, his wife, prison officials, friends in Hong Kong who had shared his experience, and, during our interviews, me. Beginning with his parents, he
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could feel sure of love and protection only insofar as he complied with other people's wishes; compliance meant being open to their influence. Consequently, he was deeply influenced by thought re- form, and he retained more of its ideology than had either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca.
This is an apparent contradiction: a man most submissive and open to influence seems to be in the end least emotionally affected by thought reform. The contradiction disappears, however, if we recognize that people like Professor Castorp have the ability to hold on to what is most important, while seeming to surrender so much of themselves. Once he had become a scientist--his solu- tion to the identity crisis of adolescence--this identity became the most precious and the most creative part of his being. Science had for him some of the mystical appeal which medicine had for Dr. Vincent and the priesthood for Father Luca, because it enabled him to channel his energies and find his individual form of self-realiza- tion. It was the one area in which he could show defiance (whether to parents, wife, or existing intellectual principles), become a leader of men, and find a passionate meaning in life.
On the other hand, although being a scientist was the one thing that was specifically his, it also had deep connections with his early family identifications. He felt the scientist in him to be part of his maternal heritage, and he associated this powerful part of himself with his mother. Whatever their demands, his parents had transmitted to him a strong sense of commitment to family, religion, and nationality (the last more cultural than political). This sense of commitment contained the single-mindedness which he admired; and this single-mindedness--enhanced by a repressed sexuality--he brought to his own scientific work. Thus, when un- der fire, he could call upon both his Catholic religion and his scien- tific research attitude 2 for strength; it was not the dogma of either which mattered, but rather the sense of affirmation and the sur- vival techniques which both could supply.
Professor Castorp was also fortunate in the high status accorded the scientist in the thought reform environment. Indeed, the iden- tity of the scientist was one which Communist theorists always claimed for themselves. Thus, as long as he submitted on questions of ideology (which had never had great importance to him), they permitted him to retain what he held most sacred. He could re-
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 115
main the empiricist, and keep his gaze on the system, rather than look deeply into himself. To be sure, he could hardly maintain complete scientific accuracy in dealing with thought reform material. Nobody could. But by keeping relatively intact that part of himself dedicated to precision and truth, he could at least maintain a check upon the most gross distortions, and bring into play immediately following his release an unusually effective reality-testing mechanism.
The importance of the mild treatment which Professor Castorp received should not be overlooked. Less bludgeoned--physically and mentally--he did not experience guilt and shame as deeply as did both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca. Had his reformers been more severe, they might have tapped a good deal more guilt and shame in him, too: mild-mannered men like Professor Castorp are likely to feel guilty about the hostilities which they tend to repress. His post-release identity crisis was that of a dependent man deprived of his props, a single-minded man deprived of his raison tf&tre, a creative and a plodding man deprived of his materials and of his routine. Although his emotional balance had been disturbed, and although he had experienced more of a sense of evil than he realized, his basic identity structure had not been overturned. His tendency was clearly to return to his scientific work and let the ideologies take care of themselves.
General Patterns
There were, then, many different responses among the obviously confused. Most of the prisoners fell in this category, and its elements of confusion and search were present in some degree in everyone who experienced thought reform. But the obviously confused West- erners were distinguished by the fact that their confusion and search were conscious, and therefore openly dealt with, while the reactions of the apparent converts and the apparent resisters were more rigid and hidden. Yet even in this group, much of the reform experience --as well as the older emotions which it revived--had to be quickly repressed.
When I saw most of these people, they had set themselves the task of returning to what was essentially their previous identity while trying to come to grips with, rather than totally accept or totally reject, the influences they had just experienced. One expres-
? I l 6 THOUGHT REFORM
sion of this task was the conviction of most of them that certain reforms were necessary and desirable in the non-Communist world, if only to meet the Communist challenge. As Professor Castorp put it:
If there is rivalry between the Communists and the West for social reform, that is very good. . . . Maybe Communism's mission is, by its push and impact, to give special strength to social reform. I have the
impression that the W est should do this. If W estern Germany the living standard, East Germany will die a natural death.
raises
And a businessman, although committed to private enterprise, expressed similar sentiments:
I am in favor of a gradual evolution of social reform rather than Com- munist revolution. . , . But some means must come about in which the rich will be less rich and the poor less poor. . . . It may take hun- dreds of years.
These men had to express such broad convictions to buttress their personal reintegration into the Western world, to give some mean- ing to their escape from the thought reform influence. Having been made painfully aware of the West's (in many cases all too real) shortcomings, each required a sense of alternative to Communism which would include correction of some of these shortcomings. The stress they put upon economic reform may have been in part a use of the prison idiom; but their even greater stress upon the need to maintain personal freedom while accomplishing these reforms was certainly a rejection of the ideas of thought reform and an affirmation of their Western heritage. (It is perhaps unneces- sary to add that my emphasis of underlying psychological factors is not meant to imply that such attitudes toward the West are in- appropriate. 3)
For all of these reasons, the obviously confused Westerners tended to suffer post-release identity crises which were visibly severe-- partly because they had been emotionally stranded between the two worlds, and partly because they had brought to the surface emotions which in others remain buried.
? C H A P TE R 7
V ARIETIES OF RESPONSE:
APP ARENT CONVERTS
Apparent converts were those who made newspaper
headlines, who emerged from prison in a state loudly proclaimed as "brainwashed. " However one may deplore jour- nalistic sensationalism, there is no doubt that these people did undergo a startling personal change in their view of the world. To talk with one of them immediately after his arrival in Hong Kong was, to say the least, an impressive experience. They seemed to speak only in cliches, parroting the Communist stock phrases, and defending the Communist position at every point.
During my stay in Hong Kong, three such people appeared. One of them was a Jesuit priest, who will be discussed in Chapter 11; for reasons involving both his colleagues and himself, I was not able to meet him then. The other two were introduced to me, but the suspicious and defensive emotions engendered by their reform made them wary of talking with a psychiatrist, especially an American psychiatrist, and both refused to discuss their ex- periences with me. From my brief encounters with them, how- ever, and from what others--journalists and old friends from China living in Hong Kong--told me about them, I was able to obtain certain impressions about their behavior.
One of them repeated his stock phrases in an agitated manner,
"7
? I l 8 THOUGHT REFORM
proclaiming his "shame and remorse for the harm I have done to the Chinese people/' and praising the "real democracy of China" and the "free discussion" within the prison. But his extreme tension, as well as his need to protest too much--to repeat the cliches even when not asked--made me feel that he had serious, if unconscious, doubts about his position, and that the structure of his new identity was brittle. This judgment was borne out later on.
The other, a young woman, was quite different, and much more convincing. Rather than nervousness, she exhibited the euphoric calm of a religious convert. In quiet tones she told a friend that should her family and other people in America reject her and fail to understand her views, it would then be necessary for her to take her life, because "this would at least tell the people of the world about my being persecuted and reveal the truth to them. "
(One might speculate that her use of the word "persecuted" was an unconscious reference to her prison experience, but there was no doubt that she was at the time giving expression to an urge to martyrdom, and referring to the hostility which she anticipated --and sought--from the people at home. )
After meeting these two people, I wondered what psychological mechanisms were responsible for their being so much more affected by the reform process than anyone else I had seen. I learned more about the problem later, not from them, but from two others I interviewed after their return to the West: the Jesuit just men- tioned, whom I met three-and-a-half years after his release (my con- tact with him was thus both a first evaluation and a follow-up study); and another young woman I interviewed in Canada three months after her release, whose case is described below.
Jane Darrow: The Missionary's Daughter
A young Canadian teacher had emerged from more than four years of imprisonment with strong praise for her captors. She told reporters that the Communists had been justified in arresting her, that she had "passed information" to Western diplomats, and that she had confessed these crimes fully during her imprisonment. She admitted (rather reluctantly) that she had been in chains; but she said that her failure to confess the truth justified it. She spoke of the prison as a "place of hope" where "new people are made," at
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the same time denouncing the "war-mongering" and "germ warfare" of the Americans. A diplomat expressed the sentiments of most Westerners who met her when he described Miss Darrow as "badly brainwashed. "
Even back in Canada, three months later, Miss Darrow had reser- vations about talking with me, and our meeting was arranged only through the efforts of mutual friends. She was a rather attractive young woman in her midthirties, alert, tense, and unusually articu- late. She was immediately friendly, but at the same time suspicious, and inquired in some detail about who I was and what my purpose was in talking with her. She was also, however, eager to plunge into her story. This was the first time she had told it from beginning to end, and she obviously derived much emotional benefit both from the telling itself, and from the opportunity to discuss her com- plicated feelings with another person who knew something about her experience. During the ten hours we spent together, she re- mained enthusiastically absorbed in her detailed description.
She quickly expressed the opinion that her "Chinese" background had a great deal to do with her response. Born in China of Cana- dian Protestant missionary parents, she had spent more than half of her life there. She looked back very critically on her childhood attitudes toward the Chinese people: "I don't think I had any real feeling for them per se. . . . I liked living in China because life was comfortable"; and she emphasized the "satisfying sense of su- periority," and the "gunboat psychology" which she, as a Westerner in China, had known. Yet this attitude was far from the whole story, since a little later she told me of her deep affection for these same Chinese people: "I loved them tremendously. " When shewas sent to Canada for her secondary school and university education, however, she avoided mentioning her Chinese past, and tried to "hide from my background" in order to find "identity [the word was hers] with the group there. " But whether the foreigner in China or the "Chinese" girl in Canada, she felt she was different from those around her, and when later she returned to China as a teacher, and a student of Chinese culture, she began to be un- comfortably aware of her "lack of roots. "
She spoke of "serious tensions" in her family life; she usually found herself allied with her strong-willed and opinionated mother in a mutual impatience with her well-meaning, but ineffectual
? 12O THOUGHT REFORM
father. She had, early in life, rebelled against austere and dogmatic Protestant religious teachings. She always had difficulty coming to terms with the "iron-clad honesty" which her parents demanded, believing herself to fall far short of this ideal: "I bordered on cheat- ing and was not above the use of a lie. " Her legacy of susceptibility to guilt was, as one might expect, a strong and painful one; "I have always been very quick to feel guilty. " This reached the point where she let letters from her parents lie unopened for several months, because "every letter was a stab , . , and I did not want to read the reprimands. "
Always bright and much interested in the world about her, Jane became deeply concerned with social reform in both China and the West. She felt that missionary influences, as well as lifelong financial difficulties, affected her militant liberalism.
With my missionary background, I've always felt that something should be done to better the world. . . , My lack of economic security has been a driving force in my life. . . . I thought that society was man- made, and should be regulated in the interests of man.
When she returned to China as a teacher after the war, she was highly critical of the Nationalist regime, but at the same time had "an anti-Communist orientation. " She shared these views with Western and Chinese friends, and was in fact more comfortable in such intellectual and ideological matters than in purely social situations. She felt that a tendency to be too outspoken and critical had interfered with many friendships. In her relationships with men, in particular, she believed her forceful intellect to be a disadvantage, and sometimes wished she were "more of a powderpuff. " Always restrained in sexual matters, she was long aware of both discom- fort and unfulfilled longing in her response to masculine overtures.
The man who was imprisoned, then, was an effective and in- tegrated human being, one able to work and to love. Crucial to his identity was his sense of being a man of God, a representative of the Faith and of the Truth, a responsible official of the Catholic Church, a friend of the oppressed, a searching and open-minded scholar, a brother and father of Chinese youth, a lover of China and of the Chinese, and a foreign member of Chinese culture. But ever lurking in the background was another much more derogatory self-image, a view of himself as impure (sexually) and unhumble
(in his dealings with superiors). Also part of this negative identity, we suspect, were old feelings of weakness, as well as the fear of alienation from friends and colleagues. These negative and posi- tive elements were both included in his over-all identity of the liberal "Chinese" father confessor.
His liberalism was related to his past identity struggle: torn apart as a child by the conflict between his African and European selves, deeply attached and yet a bit unsteady in his family identifications, experimental and inquisitive since earliest childhood (even to the point of swallowing dirt), he had early learned to be receptive to
? 1O2 THOUGHT REFORM
the other person's convictions and way of life. With him, as with anyone truly receptive, this meant not just standing by with tol- erance, but actually becoming each of the things which challenged his sense of identity--whether African child, European schoolboy, or Catholic priest and missionary. Thus he became more "Chinese" than his colleagues, closer to and better loved by those whom he guided and instructed. At the same time, his capacity to under- stand and sympathetically enter into the other person's point of view made him more prone to moral conflict and indecisiveness. Such is likely to be the identity constellation and the dilemma of any "liberal," no matter what his cause.
Priests have been called "father-confessor" since the Church's early days. For each priest this title has a shared as well as a special meaning; in Father Luca's case, it symbolizes much of his character. He was even more the "father" than the average priest, since almost all of his professional career had been devoted to work with young- sters, and he liked to do this work best. He was a "confessor"-- as a priest, novice, naughty child (and later as a prisoner)--in all three meanings of the term: he made confessions, he heard con- fessions, and he also "avowed and adhered to his faith under perse- cution and torture without suffering martyrdom. "
Confession, then, had long been for him a personal style, even a way of life. It was not without its difficulties: the small boy was not always clear about what wrong he was expected to "confess"; the novice could not easily express his exact feelings. Whatever in- articulate and repressive forces worked against it, however, con- fession had served him well. Through it he had been able to face, and share with sympathetic colleagues, the disturbing feelings which had fed his negative identity. It had been especially important in subduing (although never fully conquering) his sexual urges and aggressive tendencies.
Nonetheless, the sense of evil which accompanied these sexual and aggressive urges could not easily be stilled. Confession helped to keep these feelings conscious and manageable (rather than in- accessible and more dangerous, as with Dr. Vincent); but it also required him to search out his own evil, to look constantly upon himself as one who is guilty. His susceptibility to guilt, present from early life, was thus ever stimulated anew. Managed reasonably effectively by his tie to the Catholic Church, his guilt was a point
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of vulnerability for any new authority which might seek to manipu- late his loyalties; it was, in fact, the royal road to his negative identity.
Father Luca's complex adult configuration was largely the product of emotional compromise. In dealing with his father and all later authorities, he had alternated between submission and rebellion. He had, in a sense, defied his father in becoming a priest, and es- pecially in a small missionary order; but he was remaining within a Catholic ideology which his family held sacred. Moreover, he became, like his father, at the same time both a champion of the rights of "natives" and a loyal servant of a European institution. He also possessed a tenderness which--as his prison memories sug- gest--must have been derived from a relationship of love and in- timacy with his mother; a relationship which may have been responsible for much of his submissiveness, receptivity, and pen- chant for suffering.
In his ideological solution to his identity crisis, Father Luca (unlike Dr. Vincent) acquired a comprehensive if constricting view of the world, and a strict code of conduct for relations with other people; he took on a sense of loyalty and near-total submission to
an institution greater than himself. His concern was no longer simply, "Where do I stand? " and, "What can I do about my bad- ness? " Badness and commitment still had to be dealt with, but not on an individual basis. Instead, he asked himself, "How can I purify and humble myself in order to better serve the Church? How can I be more consistent in my life, and mean what I say and do? How can I, as a Catholic priest, be fully sincere? "
It is therefore not surprising that Father Luca objected strenuously to the judge's impugning his sincerity. He stated his position at the beginning--"a mistake or a matter of religion"--which made him, as he stood before the judge, both a man defending truth and a representative of a sacred institution. The fact that he had doubts about his own sincerity, at whatever level of consciousness, made him fight all the harder; one does not reveal inner weakness before the enemy. Moreover, by this same initial statement, he had de- clared his imprisonment a test of his sincerity; he assumed the posture of the confessor who is the defender of his faith against those who would persecute it.
The irony of his situation was that his reformers meant some-
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thing a little different by "sincerity": for Chinese Communist of- ficials, both in prison and out, to be sincere is to yield to them as representatives of the Way and the Truth, "Insincerity" or resist- ance is the one attitude which they will not tolerate, and they re- garded Luca's behavior as provocative. This, plus their prior identifi- cation of him as an enemy--he was not only a Catholic priest, but a leader of a militant Catholic organization--led to their use of force and brutality to a degree unusual even for a Chinese Communist prison. As on earlier occasions in his life, Luca could not grasp or articulate what he was expected to confess; and although the re- former's contradictory demands may have been mainly responsible for this, it is very likely that Luca's lifelong resistances to confes- sion also played a part, as he seemed to have much more difficulty than most other prisoners in reaching an understanding of the situa- tion. In any case, he experienced a more profound physical and psychological breakdown than did Dr. Vincent.
Father Luca's false confession reflected both a disintegration of his sense of reality and identity, and an outpouring of his sense of evil. His experience was like that of a man, who, troubled by feelings of guilt, dreams that he is a criminal being punished. Luca was a "criminal" being punished in jail, "dreaming" of having com- mitted the kind of crime of which he was accused--his dream work much assisted by his surroundings, and closely supervised by judge and cellmates. In a twilight state of fatigue, pain, and al- tered consciousness, he was both responding to the prison message and at the same time reverting to his own familiar confession idiom.
No other prisoner I encountered confessed more extensively than did Father Luca; nor did anyone else sustain for as long a period such a grossly false story. He could do this and even believe in his confession, not only because the environment encouraged this belief, but also because his confession had for him the ring of psychological truth. That is, it expressed "subversive" things about himself, albeit in the language of the Communist police system rather than that of the Catholic Church. It was an extreme version--a caricature--of his own negative identity. As an expe- rienced confessor (and a man who had done some writing) Father Luca could be creative, prolific, and convincing in using this carica- ture to develop his confession-novel.
The direct physical assault, coming at the height of the false con-
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 1 0 5
fession, showed a loss of control on the part of the Communist of- ficials. They had begun to check Father Luca's false confession, ap- parently after having believed a good deal of it, and had found it to be "insincere" beyond words--in both the conventional and their own special meaning of the term.
Luca himself, once injured (and physically punished), rose to impressive heights of courage and strength. He had given indica- tions of his will to survive even before the injury. His delusions had included fantasies of self-affirmation--of recovery, rescue, and return to priestly activities--along with elements of guilt. At that time, too, he could summon faith in the religious purpose of his suffering ("penance for my sins"). Crippled and helpless, he was able to reach more profoundly into his emotional being and remind himself of the most basic forms of trust he had known in the past: religious comradeship, earthly places, both beautiful and permanent, and most of all, sad songs which took him back to maternal love and tenderness. His identity collapse had been temporary; now he sought always to reaffirm that in himself which he most valued and could depend upon. And at the same time, he kept his inner ex- perience within his own religious idiom. His imprisonment was a continuation of his lifelong self-purification. His faith was a power- ful ally, one he would under no condition surrender: hence his dra- matic assertion that "to take off my religion it is necessary to take out my heart and to kill me"--both a statement of creed and a quashing of self-doubt.
This very creed and his devotion to the Church behind it led to his greatest pain during reform. As a "liberal" he had already been in conflict with "illiberal" (and militaristic) colleagues, with whom he was now accused of conspiring. As a "liberal," he could also "feel" the validity of some Communist objections to official and nonofficial Church activity. He was especially vulnerable to accusations that the Church did such apparently "good" things as helping the sick and poor for its own selfish reasons: this would be "insincerity" at its worst. But he was susceptible not only be- cause he was liberal; it was precisely in this issue that he found his guilt, both personal and existential, most exploited. A negative image here--of self and Church--was both intolerable and unavoidable.
Luca's quest for "sincerity," as well as his "Chineseness," served, toward the end of his imprisonment, to bring him into a position
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of harmony with the officials: all became increasingly "frank" and "sincere. " But it was sincerity at a price, and led him to the in- congruous position of "helping" a fellow-priest make a criminal "confession"--his furthest venture into "betrayal. " He was, to be sure, still "hearing confessions"'; but now "sincerely" in harmony with the opposition.
Yet this too was only partial and transient. Immediately upon release, he was identified by his religious colleagues once more as the dedicated Catholic priest, which he had never really ceased to be. He also faced the delicate problem of restoring his identity as a liberal confessor, deeply committed to an authoritarian Church. His identity flexibility required that he scrutinize the Communists, the Church, and himself. In his profound sense of shame and guilt over having betrayed the Church (and himself), he felt the need to both relive and reformulate his relationship to it. Thus the story of the "naughty little girl" converted to active Catholicism despite parental opposition retells his own experience in enter- ing the priesthood. His "liberalism" had obliged him to give a hear- ing to some of the Communist message; but this involved him much less than his personal, credal, Catholic search. Now, as before, he could deal with his conflicts within his religious framework.
He conveyed the feeling that his imprisonment had made him more open to others' influence, more submissive; these could be important changes, but as heightening of traits already present, rather than as new characteristics. Perhaps an even more profound upheaval for Father Luca was the need to surrender much of his "Chinese" self, leaving him in a state of mourning which began not with imprisonment, but after release. He gave me the feeling, however, that from his careful, painful, and conscience-ridden weighing of ideas and emotions, a somewhat remodeled, but still liberal (and not entirely un-Chinese) father-confessor was re-emerg- ing.
Professor Hermann Castorp: The Submissive Scientist
Let us now examine the experience of another man who falls into this general category of the obviously confused, yet responded quite differently from either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca. A biologist from Central Europe in his mid-fifties, Professor Castorp was intro-
? THE OBVIOUSL Y CONFUSED 107
duced to me by a member of his consulate in Hong Kong. Two or three of my other subjects who had met him in prison told me he had been "very progressive"; but when he came to see me just a few 'days after his release, he could best be described as "lost. " In addition to the typical post-imprisonment fear and suspiciousness, he was overcome by loneliness, and sought group protection when- ever he could: "Even when crossing the street, I waited for a few people and crossed with the group. " He welcomed the opportunity to talk things over with me, and so clearly enjoyed our three half- day sessions together that each time he was reluctant to leave. Yet despite his voluble answers to my questions, and his eagerness to prolong our talks, his manner was vague and distant, much like that of the stereotype of the "absent-minded professor. "
Both in his native Austria, and during his twenty-five years in China, Professor Castorp had lived the quiet and detached life of the scholar. A hard worker and a capable, well-liked teacher, he put a premium upon meeting--or even exceeding--the demands of others:
I have always had the tendency to satisfy people. . . . I have never wanted to displease anyone. If I am given work, I try to do better than what is expected. . . , If you give me a salary that is satisfactory, my entire energy is yours.
He attributed these traits to his "strongly Catholic" and "very conservative" Teutonic upbringing; to his stem and "sober" govern- ment-official father who, although he remained in the background in most family matters, had opinions which counted ("What will he think of me if I do something wrong? "); and even more to his "dictatorial" mother ("The kind of person other people submit to--even dogs listen to her") who directed everyone in the house- hold, bought all of Hermann's socks and underwear until he was twenty-two years old, and created an atmosphere within the home which ensured "that things must be done in a way that mother is pleased. "
In his schooling he worked actively to please his teacher; and dur- ing the years afterward, he continued to seek to please others, and avoid contention.
I didn't like to have the teacher angry at me. A driving force was to keep my teacher satisfied. This makes it happier for everyone, for him
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and for me. . . . I always try to find out what in the other person I could agree with. . . . I don't like people who conjure up big conflicts.
Similarly, he accepted without question the Catholic religion in which he was brought up. He was concerned much less with its dogma than with the loyalties which he felt to its moral principles, and to the family and Church organization around it: "I am the kind of man who must live in some kind of organization or society where I feel the need to do good. "
He thrived on the "simple cultured form of life" of the Youth Movement in which he participated, especially by its "clean," Puri- tanical emphasis, and its single-mindedness; "I like people with strong convictions who stick to them. "
But the one area in which he found active self-expression and which became his true "holy of holies," was science:
I am a scientist by conviction. I have been since very early in life. It is as an artist uses his art. I like to use my hands, my equipment, to ex- periment and to teach others.
He even defied his parents in embarking on this career, as they had a different profession in mind for him; but at the same time, he believed his scientific interests to be an inheritance from his maternal grandfather. He also felt that in his work--in his passion for research, his abilities as a teacher, his originality in construct- ing apparatus--he was, like his mother, a "leading spirit" whom others sought to follow.
He avoided considerations of philosophy and metaphysics ("The more you think about them, the more confused you are"), and had no concern with politics or with abstract ideological principles of any kind; what mattered to him was the operation of a system:
I am not interested in names--monarchy, democracy, dictatorship. 1 am interested in how things are actualized--how they work. I do feel there must be a factor of stability.
Coming to China at the invitation of a missionary university, he found conditions very agreeable to him in both his personal and professional lives. He was devoted enough to his strong-minded wife; but he readily tolerated long separations brought about by European medical treatments which her ailments were said to require, as
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long as another equally forceful woman could be found to run his household. Never too drawn to the sensual side of life, he was passionately involved in his teaching and his research. He thrived upon the difficult working conditions, and especially enjoyed the feeling that his professional skills were indispensable. Moreover, he delighted in the slow pace of Chinese life, and in what he called the "spirit of compromise" of the Chinese people. He found himself readily blending with his environment:
It is very interesting how surroundings influence you. . . . The stu- dents had a certain way of eating. I began automatically to eat just like them. . . . I even began to call a dog in the Chinese way.
His evaluation of the political regimes under which he lived depended largely upon those around him. Thus he at first was im- pressed with the Nationalist Government "because I saw the en- thusiasm of the students"; later he shared with them a strong resent- ment of the Japanese invaders, but then he found "a few Japanese who were not bad people," explaining that "in everyone I can see something good. " Mostly, however, he was disinterested in the world about him except as it pertained to his work. He did not care for psychological probing, but "if someone told me something about myself, I always thought, probably he is right--there must be something in it. "
He continued his work after the Communists came to power; but when the new regime took over the running of his university, he decided to leave because "I thought I would not fit. " Several delays occurred in his getting an exit permit, followed by his unex- pected arrest.
His response in prison from the beginning was to confess every- thing he could about his own past actions, and avoid antagoniz- ing his captors. Compared to Father Luca and Dr. Vincent, the pressures applied to him were relatively mild; no chains, no hand- cuffs, and none of the persistently extreme accusation which leads to falsification. On his part, he made a consistent effort to adapt himself as well as he could to this difficult environment, rather than concern himself with moral or ideological issues. "It is hard to say how I felt. I cannot judge these things, although I can easily find a concrete course to take. "
His personal confession was not too greatly emphasized, and he
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was quickly exposed to re-education. To the hsiieh hsi sessions he brought the approach of a scientist:
I paid close attention. I wanted to find what it was about. Mine was the attitude of research.
His approach was made feasible by his captors' failure to make him, as they did most other Europeans, a special target. "They saw at once that I was harmless. If I talked a little, they didn't expect too much. " Moreover, he was ingenious in his ingenuousness.
From the very beginning I said what I thought and this made it easier for me. . . . By nature I am anti-revolutionary. I don't like everything turned upside down. So when the Communists said, "You are anti- revolutionary/' they were right and I admitted it. I said, "I am. " If you admit things openly, they do not make so much fuss about it, they simply preach to you. But the moment you tell them stories, they get mad.
But his "research" (he was, after all, a participant-observer) led him to accept as valid much of the "data. "
I began to understand many things that I did not understand before. . . . It was a logical system in itself--talking about land distribution, why the tenants were poor--about China's losses from the international imperialists--things I've never been interested in before. I saw for the first time how the Chinese themselves felt about these matters. My whole thinking about these problems was enlarged.
Nor could he disentangle himself from the bias of his teachers' jar- gon, although he recognized it for what it was: "Old China was bad, new China good, and America bad--it is an official kind of language. "
He could even begin to accept the Communist point of view about his own criminal guilt, although it was based only upon anti-Communist statements he had previously made: "From the way I talked before, I influenced others against the Communists --so from their point of view I am guilty. " But he was never able to develop a strong inner sense of sinfulness, and his cellmates fre- quently criticized him because he had no "feeling of guilt/' He thought that such a feeling was "too much to expect from a man, because the world is not a religious order, and their requirements
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were too high. "
He viewed Communism as a religion, a point he made frequently
during our interviews, yet at the same time he managed to hold on to the general principles of his own Catholic faith. Here he once more made use of the scientist's approach.
I would emphasize the scientific explanation of the world, saying that there must have been a beginning, and therefore religion has a place. They would say, "This is a scientific religion, and it is all right.
" Offi- cially, they were just supposed to be against superstition and not against religion.
At the same time, his sense of involvement in the Catholic re- ligion was of profound importance in his holding on to his sense of identity.
I would always figure out whether it was Easter or some other Catholic holy day so that I could stick to their custom. . . . If I had no reli- gious background, it is possible that I would have committed suicide.
He was pleased by the more favorable treatment accorded him as he became increasingly viewed as a "progressive"; but he was disturbed by the moves from one cell to another which this shift in status brought about, "I disliked changing groups. I felt I be- longed to a group like a chicken belongs to its flock. " Moreover, after a period of time, he found his "research" less and less reward- ing:
After I understood the fundamentals, I began to get bored by it all-- then the main thing became avoiding trouble. . . . Ten hours a day is too much, you get overfed, and this kills off deeper interests.
But he always retained the strong need to please his captors, as well as an underlying wish to be free of them--reflected in a re- current dream which he had during his imprisonment.
I would dream I was allowed to go home for an afternoon. I didn't remember whether I was required to return at night or allowed to return the next day. I thought, "You are too stupid--you will do something wrong and the man will be very angry with you. "
In his associations to this dream, he relates it to his lifelong pattern of avoiding conflict through submission.
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I didn't want to displease the official, I would always give in in order to avoid conflict. . . . It was my duty to ask him when to come back and not to break the rule. . . . I have a feeling that I am this kind of person--who does things wrong and who forgets--this could happen to me, . . . I always must satisfy people.
After his release, his "lost" appearance reflected both his emo- tional and ideological confusion. Sometimes, like Vincent, he seemed to be longing for the security he had known in prison. At other times he would criticize the unfair practices of the Com- munists, but then temper his criticism, using the thought reform language: "Of course the people know this/7 Of his former jailers he said: "Objectively speaking they are wrong. But you can't help but have a respect for these men. They work hard and sacrifice and have a certain human value. "
In a personal sense, he was very labile in his emotions. He formed quick attachments to people he met in Hong Kong, especially if they had also just been in a Chinese prison. He was quick to weep when one of these friends left the Colony; he also wept just listen- ing to sad music. But he expressed an optimistic note despite his difficulties, recognizing his need to "absorb and repair," comparing himself to a "business which has gone bankrupt and now has to start up again. " He seemed on the whole less emotionally dis- turbed than either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca, and others among my subjects who knew him told me that they felt he had weathered the experience much better than they had.
One of his ways of dealing with his own confusion was to at- tempt to look at thought reform from a distance, discuss its general principles, its effectiveness, and its economy of manpower. At the same time, he would try to evaluate how useful the experience had been to him; his conclusions were ambivalent, but helpful to him in working out his feelings.
A few months would have been worth it--but not three years. . . . I am not converted so much that I go one hundred percent to their way --but what 1 have seen and learned is worth something.
He sought to maintain a fatalistic attitude toward his imprison- ment: "It can't be helped--like breaking a leg. . . . It wasa revolu- tion, and they had the guns and not I. " And to remain critical of both worlds: "I can't say that it was justice, but I can't say that
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there is justice here in Hong Kong either. "
During the course of his stay in Hong Kong, however, he began
to be more critical of Communists, questioning much of what they had taught him, and especially condemning their police methods.
A person you know must tell all about you--they want to check every- thing. I dislike this police element of the state. I had the attitude of old China--that the best government is one that you don't see or feel at all. . . . There, from the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, they control you.
During our last talk together, his words were again conciliatory rather than critical. About his own experience he said:
I don't like it; I have lost^too much. But when you go to a country like that, you must expect that these things can happen. . . , Who can I blame? The whole of China because it is so backward? The KMT [Nationalists] because it was so corrupt? The Communists because they could gain victory?
And about Communism in general:
Communism is good for the Chinese--for countries with primitive economic conditions--but I cannot imagine it for the West. . . . But if it makes the West more conscious of the need for social reform, then it has done some good.
He began to make active efforts to rearrange his personal life, seek- ing a new teaching position in the Far East, again in association with a Catholic missionary group. He realized that his concerns about ideological questions would become much less important to him once he got back to work: "When I find another job, things will be fixed up--then I won't talk about these other things any more/'
The patterns of Professor Castorp's early life, imprisonment, and post-release period suggest the identity of the submissive scientist, He had been consistently submissive in his attempts to please parents, teachers, Western and Chinese associates, his wife, prison officials, friends in Hong Kong who had shared his experience, and, during our interviews, me. Beginning with his parents, he
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could feel sure of love and protection only insofar as he complied with other people's wishes; compliance meant being open to their influence. Consequently, he was deeply influenced by thought re- form, and he retained more of its ideology than had either Dr. Vincent or Father Luca.
This is an apparent contradiction: a man most submissive and open to influence seems to be in the end least emotionally affected by thought reform. The contradiction disappears, however, if we recognize that people like Professor Castorp have the ability to hold on to what is most important, while seeming to surrender so much of themselves. Once he had become a scientist--his solu- tion to the identity crisis of adolescence--this identity became the most precious and the most creative part of his being. Science had for him some of the mystical appeal which medicine had for Dr. Vincent and the priesthood for Father Luca, because it enabled him to channel his energies and find his individual form of self-realiza- tion. It was the one area in which he could show defiance (whether to parents, wife, or existing intellectual principles), become a leader of men, and find a passionate meaning in life.
On the other hand, although being a scientist was the one thing that was specifically his, it also had deep connections with his early family identifications. He felt the scientist in him to be part of his maternal heritage, and he associated this powerful part of himself with his mother. Whatever their demands, his parents had transmitted to him a strong sense of commitment to family, religion, and nationality (the last more cultural than political). This sense of commitment contained the single-mindedness which he admired; and this single-mindedness--enhanced by a repressed sexuality--he brought to his own scientific work. Thus, when un- der fire, he could call upon both his Catholic religion and his scien- tific research attitude 2 for strength; it was not the dogma of either which mattered, but rather the sense of affirmation and the sur- vival techniques which both could supply.
Professor Castorp was also fortunate in the high status accorded the scientist in the thought reform environment. Indeed, the iden- tity of the scientist was one which Communist theorists always claimed for themselves. Thus, as long as he submitted on questions of ideology (which had never had great importance to him), they permitted him to retain what he held most sacred. He could re-
? THE OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED 115
main the empiricist, and keep his gaze on the system, rather than look deeply into himself. To be sure, he could hardly maintain complete scientific accuracy in dealing with thought reform material. Nobody could. But by keeping relatively intact that part of himself dedicated to precision and truth, he could at least maintain a check upon the most gross distortions, and bring into play immediately following his release an unusually effective reality-testing mechanism.
The importance of the mild treatment which Professor Castorp received should not be overlooked. Less bludgeoned--physically and mentally--he did not experience guilt and shame as deeply as did both Dr. Vincent and Father Luca. Had his reformers been more severe, they might have tapped a good deal more guilt and shame in him, too: mild-mannered men like Professor Castorp are likely to feel guilty about the hostilities which they tend to repress. His post-release identity crisis was that of a dependent man deprived of his props, a single-minded man deprived of his raison tf&tre, a creative and a plodding man deprived of his materials and of his routine. Although his emotional balance had been disturbed, and although he had experienced more of a sense of evil than he realized, his basic identity structure had not been overturned. His tendency was clearly to return to his scientific work and let the ideologies take care of themselves.
General Patterns
There were, then, many different responses among the obviously confused. Most of the prisoners fell in this category, and its elements of confusion and search were present in some degree in everyone who experienced thought reform. But the obviously confused West- erners were distinguished by the fact that their confusion and search were conscious, and therefore openly dealt with, while the reactions of the apparent converts and the apparent resisters were more rigid and hidden. Yet even in this group, much of the reform experience --as well as the older emotions which it revived--had to be quickly repressed.
When I saw most of these people, they had set themselves the task of returning to what was essentially their previous identity while trying to come to grips with, rather than totally accept or totally reject, the influences they had just experienced. One expres-
? I l 6 THOUGHT REFORM
sion of this task was the conviction of most of them that certain reforms were necessary and desirable in the non-Communist world, if only to meet the Communist challenge. As Professor Castorp put it:
If there is rivalry between the Communists and the West for social reform, that is very good. . . . Maybe Communism's mission is, by its push and impact, to give special strength to social reform. I have the
impression that the W est should do this. If W estern Germany the living standard, East Germany will die a natural death.
raises
And a businessman, although committed to private enterprise, expressed similar sentiments:
I am in favor of a gradual evolution of social reform rather than Com- munist revolution. . , . But some means must come about in which the rich will be less rich and the poor less poor. . . . It may take hun- dreds of years.
These men had to express such broad convictions to buttress their personal reintegration into the Western world, to give some mean- ing to their escape from the thought reform influence. Having been made painfully aware of the West's (in many cases all too real) shortcomings, each required a sense of alternative to Communism which would include correction of some of these shortcomings. The stress they put upon economic reform may have been in part a use of the prison idiom; but their even greater stress upon the need to maintain personal freedom while accomplishing these reforms was certainly a rejection of the ideas of thought reform and an affirmation of their Western heritage. (It is perhaps unneces- sary to add that my emphasis of underlying psychological factors is not meant to imply that such attitudes toward the West are in- appropriate. 3)
For all of these reasons, the obviously confused Westerners tended to suffer post-release identity crises which were visibly severe-- partly because they had been emotionally stranded between the two worlds, and partly because they had brought to the surface emotions which in others remain buried.
? C H A P TE R 7
V ARIETIES OF RESPONSE:
APP ARENT CONVERTS
Apparent converts were those who made newspaper
headlines, who emerged from prison in a state loudly proclaimed as "brainwashed. " However one may deplore jour- nalistic sensationalism, there is no doubt that these people did undergo a startling personal change in their view of the world. To talk with one of them immediately after his arrival in Hong Kong was, to say the least, an impressive experience. They seemed to speak only in cliches, parroting the Communist stock phrases, and defending the Communist position at every point.
During my stay in Hong Kong, three such people appeared. One of them was a Jesuit priest, who will be discussed in Chapter 11; for reasons involving both his colleagues and himself, I was not able to meet him then. The other two were introduced to me, but the suspicious and defensive emotions engendered by their reform made them wary of talking with a psychiatrist, especially an American psychiatrist, and both refused to discuss their ex- periences with me. From my brief encounters with them, how- ever, and from what others--journalists and old friends from China living in Hong Kong--told me about them, I was able to obtain certain impressions about their behavior.
One of them repeated his stock phrases in an agitated manner,
"7
? I l 8 THOUGHT REFORM
proclaiming his "shame and remorse for the harm I have done to the Chinese people/' and praising the "real democracy of China" and the "free discussion" within the prison. But his extreme tension, as well as his need to protest too much--to repeat the cliches even when not asked--made me feel that he had serious, if unconscious, doubts about his position, and that the structure of his new identity was brittle. This judgment was borne out later on.
The other, a young woman, was quite different, and much more convincing. Rather than nervousness, she exhibited the euphoric calm of a religious convert. In quiet tones she told a friend that should her family and other people in America reject her and fail to understand her views, it would then be necessary for her to take her life, because "this would at least tell the people of the world about my being persecuted and reveal the truth to them. "
(One might speculate that her use of the word "persecuted" was an unconscious reference to her prison experience, but there was no doubt that she was at the time giving expression to an urge to martyrdom, and referring to the hostility which she anticipated --and sought--from the people at home. )
After meeting these two people, I wondered what psychological mechanisms were responsible for their being so much more affected by the reform process than anyone else I had seen. I learned more about the problem later, not from them, but from two others I interviewed after their return to the West: the Jesuit just men- tioned, whom I met three-and-a-half years after his release (my con- tact with him was thus both a first evaluation and a follow-up study); and another young woman I interviewed in Canada three months after her release, whose case is described below.
Jane Darrow: The Missionary's Daughter
A young Canadian teacher had emerged from more than four years of imprisonment with strong praise for her captors. She told reporters that the Communists had been justified in arresting her, that she had "passed information" to Western diplomats, and that she had confessed these crimes fully during her imprisonment. She admitted (rather reluctantly) that she had been in chains; but she said that her failure to confess the truth justified it. She spoke of the prison as a "place of hope" where "new people are made," at
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the same time denouncing the "war-mongering" and "germ warfare" of the Americans. A diplomat expressed the sentiments of most Westerners who met her when he described Miss Darrow as "badly brainwashed. "
Even back in Canada, three months later, Miss Darrow had reser- vations about talking with me, and our meeting was arranged only through the efforts of mutual friends. She was a rather attractive young woman in her midthirties, alert, tense, and unusually articu- late. She was immediately friendly, but at the same time suspicious, and inquired in some detail about who I was and what my purpose was in talking with her. She was also, however, eager to plunge into her story. This was the first time she had told it from beginning to end, and she obviously derived much emotional benefit both from the telling itself, and from the opportunity to discuss her com- plicated feelings with another person who knew something about her experience. During the ten hours we spent together, she re- mained enthusiastically absorbed in her detailed description.
She quickly expressed the opinion that her "Chinese" background had a great deal to do with her response. Born in China of Cana- dian Protestant missionary parents, she had spent more than half of her life there. She looked back very critically on her childhood attitudes toward the Chinese people: "I don't think I had any real feeling for them per se. . . . I liked living in China because life was comfortable"; and she emphasized the "satisfying sense of su- periority," and the "gunboat psychology" which she, as a Westerner in China, had known. Yet this attitude was far from the whole story, since a little later she told me of her deep affection for these same Chinese people: "I loved them tremendously. " When shewas sent to Canada for her secondary school and university education, however, she avoided mentioning her Chinese past, and tried to "hide from my background" in order to find "identity [the word was hers] with the group there. " But whether the foreigner in China or the "Chinese" girl in Canada, she felt she was different from those around her, and when later she returned to China as a teacher, and a student of Chinese culture, she began to be un- comfortably aware of her "lack of roots. "
She spoke of "serious tensions" in her family life; she usually found herself allied with her strong-willed and opinionated mother in a mutual impatience with her well-meaning, but ineffectual
? 12O THOUGHT REFORM
father. She had, early in life, rebelled against austere and dogmatic Protestant religious teachings. She always had difficulty coming to terms with the "iron-clad honesty" which her parents demanded, believing herself to fall far short of this ideal: "I bordered on cheat- ing and was not above the use of a lie. " Her legacy of susceptibility to guilt was, as one might expect, a strong and painful one; "I have always been very quick to feel guilty. " This reached the point where she let letters from her parents lie unopened for several months, because "every letter was a stab , . , and I did not want to read the reprimands. "
Always bright and much interested in the world about her, Jane became deeply concerned with social reform in both China and the West. She felt that missionary influences, as well as lifelong financial difficulties, affected her militant liberalism.
With my missionary background, I've always felt that something should be done to better the world. . . , My lack of economic security has been a driving force in my life. . . . I thought that society was man- made, and should be regulated in the interests of man.
When she returned to China as a teacher after the war, she was highly critical of the Nationalist regime, but at the same time had "an anti-Communist orientation. " She shared these views with Western and Chinese friends, and was in fact more comfortable in such intellectual and ideological matters than in purely social situations. She felt that a tendency to be too outspoken and critical had interfered with many friendships. In her relationships with men, in particular, she believed her forceful intellect to be a disadvantage, and sometimes wished she were "more of a powderpuff. " Always restrained in sexual matters, she was long aware of both discom- fort and unfulfilled longing in her response to masculine overtures.
