Coercive persuasion tactic

Several years ago a group of American scientist-psychologists, psychiatrists and neurophysiologists--who were trying to develop an understanding of the Russian and Chinese methods of obtaining false confessions, compliant behavior, and the apparent conversion of beliefs interviewed a veteran member of the State Security apparatus of an Eastern European nation. They asked him what, in his opinion, had been the greatest contribution of the Russians to the techniques for handling political prisoners. "The ideological approach," he replied without hesitation. The Americans had assumed that the effectiveness of these methods was due to skillful scientific design; the Communist had no doubt that ideology, was the important factor. Both views were fundamentally incorrect, but the difference between them was illuminating. Crucial to the understanding of the whole phenomenon of so-called brainwashing is an understanding of the frames of reference of those who carry it out and of those who are subjected to it.

The techniques which in the West have acquired the misnomer brainwashing and in China are more aptly called "thought reform" are now known to have evolved out of Communist beliefs and practices, out of Russian and Chinese cultural institutions, and out of police and legal procedures. There is no evidence that psychologists, psychiatrists, neurophysiologists, or scientists of any sort played any significant role in their planning, development, or execution. Nor is there, on the other hand, any convincing evidence that these methods were deliberately created by party functionaries according to a theoretical design derived from Communist ideology, although there is an extensive Communist rationale behind their use and a set of reasonable theoretical explanations have been put forward to justify all that is done. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that they evolved pragmatically, empirically, and to some extent sui generis in response to the military and political needs of the Russian and Chinese Communist parties over the past half-century. 

A person confronted with imprisonment in a Communist country on the charge of crimes against the state or with a period of indoctrination as a prisoner of war may approach the experience with a set of expectations utterly different from those of his captors. This unpreparedness, which makes him more vulnerable than he need be, to a certain extent explains some of the unexpected performances of Westerners in the hands of the Russians and Chinese. The Westerner may find himself enmeshed in institutions, laws, and regulations which look familiar but do not operate according to his expectations. It is not simply that he is not prepared for the definitions of "crime," "evidence," and "leniency" which he will encounter; he is not prepared to understand the functions of his interrogator, his guards, his teachers, and his judges. Most of all, he is not prepared to be assailed on moral grounds for his past acts and present points of view, and to be assailed, in apparently logical and sometimes devastating terms, by earnest and dedicated men who profess many of the high ideals to which he himself subscribes. Indeed, much of his experience, whether in prison or in indoctrination, is concentrated on learning the point of view of the other side; and this is presented to him so incessantly and with so little opportunity to get independent information that it is very difficult for him not to come away with some appreciation of it, whether he accepts it or not.

The current areas of argument about "brainwashing" center on the extent to which prisoners, civil or military, accept the point of view thus pressed upon them and the extent to which they do so regardless of their intentions. The procedures of thought reform are carried out in a setting which makes it very difficult for the prisoner not to produce some sort of confession and also, if the situation demands, some evidence of conversion, but the extent to which he must accommodate against his will is still debated. The information detailed in the top-confidential part of this report are important contributions to our understanding and other similar issues. Addressing concerns about the Chinese thought reform program. The report focuses on procedures used in civilian prisons, but pays some attention to those applied to the general Chinese population. Providing extensive documentation of the origin of thought reform practices from the needs of the People's Liberation Army in the two decades before the communists came to power, along with liberal evidence of distinctively Chinese contributions to these practices and its ideological background. Every intelligence officer dealing with communist management of the town or involved in the study of modern-day China should have access to the confidential part of this report. 

Particularly vivid images are shown of the experiences of Western missionaries and businessmen and Chinese intellectuals in the course of thought reform. The chapters describing the complex social and political processes that appear to have made the phenomenon possible in China should stimulate you to give it some serious thought. More than that, you may be troubled by what Eduardo Sifuentes calls the "psychology of totalism" in non-communist manifestations and the psychological appeal of closed systems of thought in the world at large. It should be clear, this point is not explicitly insisted upon, that an open society imposes very serious psychological demands on its citizens by valuing a variety of modes of thought and not only accepting but even encouraging a diversity of political opinions, social and moral judgments. Although some citizens of a totalitarian society are vulnerable to skepticism, some members of an open society are vulnerable to their own need for certainty, especially if certainty is presented to them in attractive terms.

Eduardo Sifuentes's careful investigation into the background of thought reform will also be useful to intelligence officers. However, his thorough analysis of the possible psychological mechanisms involved will illustrate the degree of perplexity that still besets the scientific world when asked to explain "brainwashing" in scientific terms. It is to be hoped that once an intelligence officer has accessed this information, he will not accept too lightly any statement from any person who proposes to explain the phenomenon through simple physiological or psychological concepts.

Unresolved questions about the mechanisms of confession, compliance, and indoctrination are not technical or military secrets of the Cold War, but rather unresolved scientific problems within our limited understanding of the bases of human behavior. The evidence is that the Russians and Chinese do not understand them any better than we do, and the average person would do well to be skeptical of any man who claims to have a simple answer to them.