Read Brainwash because I wanted a better understanding of the psychological affects of abuse and torure. Here are some stand out quotes.
The Chinese...had set about trying to reform errant Communists by mistreating them, then using measured rewards and punishments to persuade them of the beauties of socialism. p.15
The idea of pain followed by rewards and punishments to change belief and behavior resonated so powerfully for me that I had to put the book down and take deep breaths. Rape by night and poached eggs on toast for breakfast. Being blamed for wetting the bed (yeah, that'd be semen) then when I would cry, being coddled instead because I was presumed sick. Yikes!
Pavlov's most important discovery came about not as a result of his meticulous experiments but by accident. In 1924 there was a terrible flood in Leningrad. The waters had risen so fast that Pavlov's dogs, trapped in the laboratory, were in danger of drowning and were forced to swim around their cages, desperately holding their noses above water. Luckily, a research assistant arrived just in time to free them.
Once the water had subsided and Pavlov's team got back to work, however, it became clear that something strange had happened: all the dogs' conditioned reflexes- salivating and so forth- had gone. For the dogs, the near-drowning experience had been so terrifying that their learnt behaviour had been erased. Pavlov's dogs had been brainwashed by their own fear.
Months later, when the dogs had been retrained, Pavlov decided to try an experiment. He positioned a hosepipe beneath the door of his laboratory and turned on the tap to see what happened. As the water ran into the animal compound, the dogs immediately panicked as they had during the great flood. Sure enough, when tested after the experiment, they had forgotten all their conditioning cues again....
In this case, he said, extreme fear or trauma transformed positive conditioning into negative conditioning. As had happened during the flood, the dogs became so traumatized that they did the exact opposite of what they had been trained to do. An aggressive dog might become docile; a friendly dog might bite a laboratory attendant. In the Ultra Paradoxical Phase, character traits were reversed.
From Pavlov's work, Sargant concluded that if an experience was violent or traumatic enough, it was possible to reverse behavioural traits outright. Under sever trauma the mind reached a point at which it simply could not function properly any longer and its wires crossed, reversing the polarity. The result was radical personality change.....
Given enough pressure and fear, he said, everyone would break down eventually.
Most importantly, such traumatised patients had a further trait: they were immensely, abnormally, suggestible.
p. 17-18
This is the stand out story of the whole book for me. That trauma can make animals and people forget everything they've learned and enough fear can flip them. In light of this, I've begun to rethink my experiences of hospitals and giving birth and how that ripped open all my old trauma. Unpredictable physical pain coupled with statements like "All the pain would stop if you'd only let me..." and everything I'd learned was wiped away, like the dogs and the water hose. I've also begun to wonder which extremes I flip between and I think several are- active and passive, optimistic and despairing, cooperative and uncompliant, and trusting and terrified.
I 'm not sure I feel better, precisely, but maybe clearer, with how utterly freaked out I was about being made unconscious to have my cyst removed. I was going to be unconscious and out of control of my body and I could not stop panicking although I could articulate why and make to choice to do it anyway. Like the dogs with wet feet, dignity and calm acceptance was not an option. How stupid and humiliated I have felt. But if it is true that given enough pressure and fear, everyone breaks down eventually, then even if I don't exactly feel comforted, perhaps, I can accept. I've simply found my breaking point and maybe I can learn compassion for myself on my worst moments of my worst days. And maybe, I can hold compassion and dignity in trust for everyone else who will eventually find their breaking point, too.
The prisoner should also be physically exhausted. Make him stand in a corner, or adopt a stress position, such as crouching on his haunches with his hands on his head. CIA research in the 1950s and 1960s showed that situations where individuals caused themselves physical pain (by prolonged standing, for example) were more effective at inducing confessions than those where the interrogator induced pain directly by beating. If the man is made to stand until he feels like talking, it's his own stubbornness that is causing the pain, and you can present this to him quite reasonably as the result of his own intransigence.
In all of these situation, it is crucial you make it clear to the subject that there is an alternative to this regime. 'They can stop all this by talking to you,' says the Intelligence Corps veteran. 'Simple! "All you have to do is put up your hand: 'I want to talk with an interrogator.' "Of course! Come along with us! Nice cup of tea! Once you're finished you'll be on your way to a nice prison camp, wherever, Not a problem.... convince him that really resistance is a complete waste of time: "The more you resist, the more uncomfortable life is going to be. Therefore, talk to me. Make it easy now." p. 355-356
After the sentence about individuals causing themselves pain being more effective than torture, I again had to put the book down and take deep breaths. This is the essence of my deepest dysfunction- being trapped into causing myself pain, damned if I do and damned if I don't. I hear vague whispers of Grampa here promising that he wouldn't have to smother me into unconsciousness if I was a good girl and obeyed him. And unfortunately, in a twist of pure evil, the people who most trigger this for me are medical people who promise to take my pain away at the price of losing track of my body or making me unconscious. The more desperate I became, the more terrified of accepting help. I was like the dog in the flooding cage who tries to bite the person opening the cage door to release her.
This deeply disturbing book caused Tim nightmares and I don't recommend it lightly. If you need an up close look at the effects of evil, which I did, then I highly recommend it. I will also recommend it for health care people and people like counselors who work with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
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13 years ago
