Sour Grapes

Introduction

     There is an odd phenomenon that happens at the race track. When a gambler is deciding on a horse he’s very uncertain, he questions the logic of each choice and the potential for earnings based on which horse he stakes his money on. However, once a gambler has placed his money his anxieties evaporate. He becomes calmer, more confident in his choice than before he placed his bet. This is also true of people buying lottery tickets; confidence comes after the purchase, not before. As I noted in the first issue, this sort of feeling results from a need to be consistent and committed to the choice made. The gambler is more confident out of a feeling of loyalty to his choice even though there are no greater odds the gamble will pay off. Obviously this is foolhardy.

     Likewise, when a person wants something that turns out to be unattainable they will often decide that it really isn’t that good anyway. They write it off and conclude it wasn’t what they really wanted anyway. So it is that we console ourselves when what we want fails to come to us. “It wasn’t meant to be.” Sour grapes.   

     In stressful situations we often attach ourselves to things that offer us comfort. We want to feel good about ourselves and our prospects in spite of what our prospects actually are. This is reflected in the growing narcissism of our world today. “Are you an important person?” In the early 1950s, if you asked a teenager that question 12% would answer in the affirmative. The same question asked in 1989 found that 80% now answer in the affirmative. This is narcissism, people convinced of their own importance because they’re at the center of their own world.

     Such mental confusion arises in many different ways. Stockholm Syndrome and Cognitive Dissonance are two ways in which internal contradictions most often manifest themselves. These conditions come about by believing things that simply aren’t true. Regardless of the reality of any situation people tend to want to look at the world through rose coloured glasses. Due to mass media such states can actually be induced and applied on a large scale to affect the course of nations.

     It’s important to note that these things are not uncommon. Contradictory states of mind are an everyday occurrence that affects almost everyone. To go beyond such states we have to move beyond out independent subjective realities and move into the reality of the real world. Reality is not subjective, it is fixed, there may be different perspectives but we’re all looking at the same thing. In order to see we must move beyond our internal contradictions and learn to see the world as it is. Our odds don’t change because we’ve bet on a horse or bought a ticket – just as a thing does not become bad just because it’s unattainable. If we really seek the truth about anything we must seek it on no terms. If you seek knowledge on your own terms all you will find is what you want to be true, even if it isn’t the case.

Stockholm Syndrome

     On August 23, 1973, Jan Erik Olsson walked into a bank in Stockholm, Sweden and attempted to hold it up. The heist failed and quickly degenerated into a hostage situation which lasted for 6 days. Four hostages were taken and during the hostage crisis the hostages developed an emotional bond with Olsson even though he threatened their life and was responsible for their captivity.

     After the situation was resolved the hostages reported that they were not afraid of Olsson but feared the police instead. Some went on to defend him openly to the press and in court. He later developed a friendship with one of the former hostages. The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was coined after this incident to describe the seemingly odd behaviour of the hostages.

     Stockholm syndrome is a paradoxical psychological state wherein a hostage feels positive feelings towards their captor. Some question the validity of the syndrome in light of Stockholm case but it’s clear from other, everyday examples that this mental state is very real. I don’t imagine it’s in good mental health to positively identify with someone who is threatening to take your life.

     In February 1974, a year after the hold-up in Stockholm, heiress Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw (granddaughter of media mogul William Randolph Hearst) was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). She was held for ransom by the SLA who made monetary demands for her release.

     To the surprise of all, Patty Hearst announced only 2 months after her kidnapping that she had joined the SLA. She changed her name to “Tania” after one of Che Guevara’s comrades to better fit in with her new friends. She even participated in a bank robbery with other members of the group.

     When she was arrested in late 1975, nearly 2 years after her kidnapping she did not waver in her new beliefs. Calling herself an “Urban Guerrilla” she told her lawyer, “Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there.” Patty Hearst had come to identify with her captors more than the life they had taken her from. Members of the media such as Margaret Singer and Dr. Lifton claimed that she was a victim of mind control.

However, before the phenomenon was called “Stockholm Syndrome” in 1973 it was well known and understood, in fact the incident in Stockholm was only responsible for its name. In cases of human abuse and mistreatment it is most obvious; so much so as to almost seem a part of the human condition itself. Most poignant, perhaps are cases of familial violence and sexual assault.

In the case of domestic abuse, if one has an abusive partner they may become inordinately attached to that person and dependent upon them for emotional reinforcement and personal value. The abused party will often defend their abusive partner stating that their childhood was inordinately difficult or that they were abused when young.

Even in cases of sexual assault women will often defend their abuser. They claim that if they really didn’t want it they could have got out of the situation – this is especially true after a sexual assault committed by a friend or family member. This, combined with the fear that often accompanies being the victim of such a heinous act, may be why so many cases of abuse go unreported.

In Philippe Bourgois’ book, “In Search of Respect” the author relates tales from crack cocaine dealers in Spanish Harlem, those tales are often dark and horrifying. One case, relevant to us here, is the story of Candy, a 14 year old girl raped by a group of men. In Candy’s case (not at all unusual in her setting) she goes on to marry one of them and have 5 children by him – this is while he is dealing drugs, sleeping with other women and frequently beating her (in fact, Candy became pregnant 10 times with Ray but miscarried 5 times due to beatings). In spite of this Candy continued to proclaim her love for Ray, even defending him from inquisitive police. It goes to show how severe abuse cases can last for protracted periods of time, all while the victim protects their abuser.

In George Orwell’s work of fiction “1984,” the protagonist, Winston, lives in an oppressive totalitarian state which he tries to escape. He is eventually caught – a “thought criminal” – and taken to the “Ministry of Love” for interrogation. He is tortured and resists valiantly but in the end it was only a matter of time before he breaks. His final act of submission comes when he realizes with a flash of light, “I love big brother.” The transformation is complete – a free and independent individual is lost in a maze of paradoxical attachments to things he hates.

          The Ultra-Paradox

 When Pavlov conducted his famous experiments on dogs in the Soviet Union he may have discovered the cause of the Stockholm syndrome paradox. When his dogs underwent conditioning they were often put through intolerable stress. The result would sometimes be a shift in psychological state, the dog would look on things it formerly viewed as pleasant as bad and things formerly detested were seen as good. For example, a dog once loyal to a certain experimenter may become cold to him, even to the point of attacking him; and an experimenter the dog once shunned may become its new favourite. Stress can cause a polar change in feeling – negative becomes positive and vice versa.  In the case of Pavlov’s dogs, the stress induced in the dogs created a total shift in behaviour and outlook.

Pavlov called this the “ultra-paradoxical” phase of behaviour modification, when the perception of positive and negative are reversed. In periods of extreme stress (such as war) humans eventually enter a state of “protective inhibition” meant to help the mind cope with intolerable stresses. This creates a period of extreme suggestibility and the beliefs that a person acquires during this state often remain with him for the rest of his life.

     In the context of Stockholm syndrome this offers us a reasonable explanation why people tolerate abuse. From a psychological standpoint the shift in belief structure (positive and negatives) form a mental barrier to help the individual cope with stress. In essence it involves redefining what an individual thinks of as normal. The result is paradoxical because the victim bonds strongly to their abuser. Some psychologists feel this is a survival mechanism - that it is in the best interest of the abused to cooperate with their abuser.

     Some believe that the stress brought on by captivity causes this change in perception. The hostage taker – the initial source of the stress – becomes the giver of life. It is the captor who allows his hostage to live and this causes the hostage to mistakenly attribute the power of life over death as benevolence. The hostage may then become infatuated and attach themselves to their abuser or captor mistaking the absence of abuse or violence as an act of benevolence. In this way the abuser ceases to be the inflictor of harm and becomes the giver of life.

     But it is important to remember that captors and abusers do more harm than good. People are often killed by their captors and abuse is a nightmare that can haunt a person for a lifetime. Stockholm syndrome, while possibly useful in the short term is unequivocobally harmful in the long run. Whether it is protective or not, this is a negative state tantamount to mind control and must not be thought of as a good thing – it is a maladaptive state of mind.

              Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

     An extension to all this is a strange occurrence which occurs during the trials of serial murderers. Dr. Robert Hare of UBC notes that during a serial killer’s trial, a following will often develop around the murderer. In the case of Ted Bundy actual fan clubs and groups of women who adored him emerged. This was not only true of the very handsome Mr. Bundy but happens to most serial killers in highly publicised cases. Even more frightening is those serial killers whose crimes are of a brutal sexual nature are the most attractive to this kind of following.

     This is not Stockholm syndrome and represents an even stranger phenomenon. There seems to be a disconnect in the human mind in which a person believes, against all the evidence, that they have discovered some hidden and secret truth. They believe that the serial killer (or what have you) is misunderstood or benevolent and so flock to him like so many sheep to the slaughter.

     The cult of psychopath worship is more prevalent today than at any point in the past. Hollywood’s most glamorised stories are those of serial killers and every night there are television programs which focus on psychopathic killers. Only in a culture in which a serial killer becomes a celebrity upon arrest could this happen. The tragedy is, those who flock to and revere these men are often left in their path as victims. They pay the price for their indiscretions and false beliefs with their lives. After all when Canadian serial killer Peter Woodcock got parole, he and his parole officer committed a murder within an hour of Woodcock’s first day pass after 35 years in jail.

     Another case exemplifies how willing people are to go on believing something comfortable even when the evidence tells a more disturbing story. Ed Lopes, a killer from Illinois posed as a Baptist Minister in Washington State. He claimed to have a 15 year career as a mafia hit man working for “Murder Inc.” He claimed that he was personally counselled by Billy Graham and was saved from death row by the petitions of 350 prison inmates. It turned out that Lopes was a parole jumper from Illinois who had killed 2 women and stabbed a third. When he was found out as a liar did his congregation move on from the embarrassing and frightful ordeal? No, in fact they raised money for his bail!       

          When Prophecy Fails

When a belief or desire is threatened we often respond in counterintuitive ways. We often respond to a challenge to our beliefs by becoming even more devout to them. In the face of overwhelming evidence some people find a certain serenity in believing something that they, know, on some level, is not true. This paradoxical state full of apparent contradictions is known as “cognitive dissonance.” Perhaps the best explanation is an example.

In 1954, Leon Festinger and two associates from the University of Minnesota joined a doomsday cult in Chicago. They had studied history and were aware of a strange phenomenon in doomsday cults: the tendency to become more zealous and proactive after the doomsday has passed. Robert Cialdini notes that such a change in policy can be noted in many groups ranging from the 2^nd century Mantanists to Anabaptists in 16^th century Holland and the Millerites of 19^th century America. All these groups were inspired, not discouraged by the disconfirmation of unfulfilled prophecy.

The Chicago cult centered around a medium names Marian Keech who communicated messages from beings she claimed were from a far away planet who called themselves “Guardians.” Keech’s second in command was Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a local college physician with a fascination with mysticism, UFOs and the occult. Dr. Armstrong was more involved with proselytizing for the group while Keech gave them direction. The pair made a dynamic occult duo befitting the group’s needs.

As time went on the messages from the Guardians became increasingly apocalyptic. Keech told of a flood that would sweep the Western Hemisphere before destroying the whole world. For Keech’s followers however, there was a hope. Space men would come and take Keech’s followers up in a flying saucer 8 hours before the calamity hit earth. To add to the air of prophecy one of the Guardians “revealed himself” as the current embodiment of Jesus.    

Keech’s followers truly believed. Upon learning of the cataclysmic future of the world many gave up their jobs and possessions. Students gave up their studies and pursuits. In general, the whole group was collectively inactive. Those who came willingly were accepted into the group but there was no action taken to seek converts or spread their warning. The group even turned down numerous opportunities to speak with the media. 

The date finally came. Festinger and his associates watched the events unfold as the night went on. Earth was slated for destruction at 8am on December 21. Everyone present sat in anticipation waiting for the clock to strike midnight, when space men would come to save them. Some in the group chanted, others meditated; but when the clock drew close, everyone waited in silence. 12 o’clock came then went. The group endured what must have been a torturous silence.

Leon Festinger describes what followed:

“There was no talking, no sound. People sat stock-still, their faces seemingly frozen and expressionless... Gradually, painfully, an atmosphere of despair and confusion settled over the group... The believers mulled over their predicament and discarded explanation after explanation as unsatisfactory... They were all visibly shaken and many were close to tears... By now, too, most of the group were talking openly about their failure of the escort to come at midnight. The group seemed near dissolution.”

     The group seemed in shambles and was ready to collapse. Then something miraculous happened. Marian Keech received a message from the Guardians explaining what had happened that night. “The little group,” Marian said, “sitting alone all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction.”

     This explanation was not satisfactory to all, one left on the spot after hearing the explanation. Most remained faithful. The thing that crystallized the faith of all her followers was the order to make the explanation public. Keech got on the phone and called a newspaper detailing what had happened that night. Other followers followed suite contacting the press to inform them that Marian Keech’s little group had saved the world. The whole group was apparently overcome with a sense of urgency and had to tell the world about what happened.

     The group’s dynamic was forever changed after this event. They were no longer the passive bystanders they once were, they now sought converts and wanted to spread their message to the whole world.
     What the Chicago doomsday cult shows us is that people act in apparently irrational ways when their beliefs are threatened. In the case of the Chicago cult, the beliefs of the followers were actually made stronger by the failure of a prophecy to come to fruition. For members of the group, so massive was their commitment to the belief that anything else was intolerable. Dr. Armstrong told one of Festinger’s associates,

“I’ve had to go a long way. I’ve given up just about everything. I’ve cut every tie. I’ve burned every bridge. I’ve turned my back on the world. I can’t afford to doubt. I have to believe. And there isn’t any other truth.”

 

I’m inclined to wonder if those who believe the world will end in 2012 will yield to a similar explanation. Every gene-ration seems to have its date which comes and goes without a hitch (or a wagon for that matter). I think there will probably always be groups with dates like these, but they are a trap, and people are more than willing to fall into them.

          Transcendental Thinking – Beyond Reason

In his book, “Influence,” Robert Cialdini relates a story about a presentation of Transcendental Meditation that he and his friend, a professor of logic, attended.

Throughout the presentation his friend became more and more restless. When the presentation concluded and questions welcomed Cialdini’s friend raised his hand and disassembled the presentation one contradiction at a time. The presenters were floored and admitted that he made good points “requiring further study.” Embarrassed, the presenters closed.

To the surprise of both Cialdini and the presenters the conclusion was greeted with a rush of students eager to give their money away. Cialdini and his friend concluded that the students must have failed to understand the logical points made by the professor. Upon speaking to students after the presentation, however, they found that the opposite was true.

The students had understood the arguments perfectly. But they were, in fact, students with real problems who needed something to believe in. If Transcendental Meditation offered them a possible solution they would go for it even if they knew, rationally, that it couldn’t work. One student told Cialdini:

         

“Well, I wasn’t going to put down any money tonight because I’m really quite broke right now; I was going to wait until the next meeting. But when your buddy started talking, I knew I’d better give them my money now, or I’d go home and start thinking about what he said and never sign up.”  

Cialdini concludes that these were people who wanted to believe in Transcendental Meditation because it promised to solve their problems and fulfill their needs. By paying, it crystallizes a person’s belief in the thing and what it promises, from then on the person may justify themselves internally, “Well, I must believe because I’ve already paid.” In essence by “putting your money where your mouth is” you become more loyal to what you profess to believe. I think Cialdini could wrap this up best.

   “[B]ecause it is so typically in our best interests to be consistent, we easily fall into the habit of being automatically so, even in situations where it is not the sensible way to be. Nonetheless, even blind consistency has its attractions... Once we have made up our minds about an issue, stubborn consistency allows us a very appealing luxury: We really don’t have to think hard about the issue anymore... With our consistency tapes operating, then, we can go about our business happily excused from the toil of having to think too much.”

The Ball and the Feather

     One thing people may not realize is how often such paradoxical thoughts enter our heads. From our earliest days in school’s science classes we’re taught things that are paradoxical – things that may be true “scientifically” but have no application or are outright false outside of a laboratory.

     Take for example the question often asked in school science classes: What falls faster a feather or a bowling ball? The answer, in case you missed this lesson in school, is that they fall at the same speed. This is immediately paradoxical and blatantly false to any young student. It may be scientifically true, in a vacuum! But we do not live in a vacuum and so this is observably false in the natural world outside the lab. The result of this lesson is that is teaches the child to ignore their own perceptions and simply to believe what they’re told. This can pave the way for a lifetime of paradoxical and contradictory beliefs.

               

Today, we live in the age of cognitive dissonance. Not just children, but fully grown adults often hold contradictory beliefs. I’ve seen adults and children alike who are no longer incapable of discerning reality from fiction – they talk about fictional characters and television programs as if they were real. In a rather comical fashion I’ve seen fully grown men jump up and yell at their television sets – knowing (supposedly) that the characters cannot hear them – so why do they do this? Why do we have so much empathy and identify so strongly with something we know rationally isn’t real? Could it be that we really can’t tell the difference?

Furthermore I’ve talked to people who say they know that the food their eating is bad for them while they scarf it down – they insist that they know better while doing the thing. I was recently in an argument with a young man because he insisted that he knew his diet soda was bad for him. I insisted that if he really knew he would not be drinking it, now I’m not sure. It’s seems that people are perfectly capable of holding contradictory beliefs at once. George Orwell called it “doublethink” believing two things that can’t possibly go together.

The reason this is a very negative state is that it causes the person to adopt an unrealistic was of dealing with the world. Rather than dealing with problems or even thinking about them one can avoid them altogether by utilizing pre-established patterns of thought. People will believe something if it comes from a trusted source without thinking about it because they trust the source. For instance: Mercury is bad for you, this is generally accepted – Isaac Newton went mad from mercury poisoning. It is also generally accepted that vaccines prevent illness and promote good health. And it is moderately well known that most vaccines use a mercury based preservative. Regardless of this people will deny that there is any risk whatsoever in administering a vaccine even though people down through history have been well aware of their dangers (the Amish, for instance, refuse to vaccinate even though the practice is over a thousand years old).

      Political Consequences for Cognitive Dissonance

     Anyone you talk to will tell you that the government is corrupt. That’s a given. There’s “always a few bad apples” but “one bad apple spoils the lot.” Regardless of believing the government is corrupt, however, people also like to believe that government is a sort of babysitter; one who watches over us and protects us, a “Guardian Class” as Plato put it, or a “good shepherd” who fleeces and eats his flock. The Grandson of Charles Darwin, Charles Galton Darwin wrote

“If the only things that a government was required to do were what everybody, or nearly everybody, wanted, there would be no need for the government to exist at all... [Governments] have to coerce a minority – and indeed it may often be a majority – into doing things they do not want to do.”

     This may be disagreeable to some but that is the crux of cognitive dissonance. Of course people want lower taxes and more free services but, in government, the two things are in conflict with one another. People want to believe that the government is looking after them because is absolves them of any personal responsibility. Likewise the government wants people to be dependent on them because that gives the government maximum power. For both the rulers and the ruled it seems like a win-win situation. Hoffer wrote in the “True Believer” that people want, more than anything, to follow some cause because it absolves them of personal responsibility.

          “Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual. And as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies failure and frustration... We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, ‘to be free from freedom’.”

There is an intense liberation that comes with being totally dependent, and this can only lead to despotism. Orwell may have been speaking for the masses when he wrote “Freedom is Slavery,” it certainly was true of the people in his fantasy.

       Solzhenitsyn writes about this phenomenon in his epic expose of Stalin’s “Corrective Labour Camps.” In Gulag Archipelago he notes the tendency of the pedantic “loyalists” in the camps to express a feeling that, although their own imprisonment is unjust the other prisoners deserved their place in the camps.

The loyalists were those people most loyal to the tenets of communism and to Stalin himself. In the camps they would express their own distress but were absolutely convinced of the guilt of others in the camps. Because of their unwavering loyalty, the loyalists often found their place as “stoolies” passing on incriminating evidence of their cellmates (or manufacturing incriminating evidence) and passing it on to higher-ups in exchange for material benefits.

These Judas Goats sold out others who were unjustly detained for a few pieces of bread and justified themselves with fealty to their creed. Even though they were imprisoned unjustly they believed that the Soviet Government was infallible and so helped them incriminate others. Because they believed that the government was always right they were unable to act in a rational way when they were, themselves, unjustly imprisoned.           

How to Defend Yourself.

I recently watched a court case (in person, not on TV) in which a large amount of confusing and often emotionally charged evidence was given. Although the evidence was in favour of one party and the other appeared psychotic in comparison, the judge heard both sides of the argument and decided, based on the evidence, what the outcome should be. This quality, one of taking a rational approach even in the most seemingly obvious cases, I believe may be the key in avoiding muddled thinking.

     Robert Thouless, in his book “Straight and Crooked Thinking,” recommends reducing an argument to a neutral form by removing all emotionally charged words and viewing it in an objective manor. In argument, this may serve to help avoid irrational thinking.

     In the case of Stockholm Syndrome it’s more difficult. If you’re being abused it’s important to remember that the abuser is not a friend. In a hostage situation a certain amount of cooperation may be required, to be sure, but they are the source of danger. 

     This is not to say that affect and emotional appeals should be disregarded but it is important to keep a clear and objective mind throughout. We need to constantly be asking ourselves what makes sense and questioning everything around us, even those things we take for granted. To avoid dissonant thinking we must learn to see the contradictions and weaknesses in ourselves and learn to correct them.

              Final Thoughts

     Whether it’s identifying with your abuser or believing contradictory things it’s clear to see that humans are paradoxical creatures. At a B.C. Youth Police Network conference I attended as a school boy we were taught that victims are often the last to admit that they’ve been abused. They will ignore and pretend before they ever admit to being a victim and it is this lack of confronting unpleasant facts that allows such abuse to go on.

There is no easy escape from cognitive dissonance either, and that may in fact be its purpose – to consolidate thought and action. It serves a mental purpose that may be beneficial, it’s often seen by psychiatrists as a protective inhibition.  Regardless of mental function I think it’s important to realize that the personal and political consequences I have mentioned are not a fantasy. And today, the degree to which it is commonplace is quite literally dangerous.

     I’ve really only touched on the paradox of cognitive dissonance but I think the reader is likely to encounter it in everyday life and so fill in the blanks. I want to conclude with one of Aesop’s fable, this is perhaps the earliest observation of the phenomenon.

                                                  The Fox and the Grapes

One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch.  “Just the thing to quench thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”

Aesop’s conclusion reads:

“It is easy to despise what you cannot get.”

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References.

1.        Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D. – Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion

2.        Leon Festinger – When Prophecy Fails

3.        William Sargant – Battle for the Mind

4.        Charles Galton Darwin – The Next Million Years

5.        Eric Hoffer – The True Believer

6.        Robert Thouless – Straight and Crooked Thinking

7.        George Orwell – 1984

8.        Aesop’s Fables from the Harvard Classics Series

9.        Philippe Bourgois – In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

10.     Robert Hare – Without Conscience

11.     Solzhenitsyn – Gulag Archipelago Part III

12.     Lectures from Jeremy Wolfe at MIT available at OCW.MIT.EDU

13.     Mental Health Matters – MHM.com ?

14.     Alanwattsentientsentinel.eu

Further Reading

     I encourage anyone interested in these topics to look into Robert Cialdini’s book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” His book has become a handbook for salesmen and businessmen everywhere. Cialdini, himself, did his research for the book by going “undercover” to learn the trade secrets of various salesmen and others who depend on influence to garner money. He covers a broad array of subjects in his book.

     Festinger’s book, “When Prophecy Fails,” covers the phenomenon of doomsday prophecies and cult loyalty in more detail. Anyone interested in that should look to his book.
     Robert Thouless’ book, “Straight and Crooked Thinking,” is good for those who are interested in how language itself can be used to influence us. How emotional words can be used to colour our perception and the like. Another book on the same line is John Austin’s “How to Do Things with Words.”

 “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” – Joshua Reynolds

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Questions or comments? Contact me at:

TheStoicWatchmanNewsletter@hotmail.com

Also check out the blog at:

TheStoicWatchman.blogspot.com

Articles written by Thomas Dean

Physical Control of the Mind

         Introduction

     History is riddled with stories of unimaginable cruelty. Related to us from the Greeks is the story of Herophilus, the father of anatomy, who gained his knowledge by vivisection; the practice of cutting up live humans for scientific research. Prisoners and convicts were the most common subjects.

     In many ways we are mired by the ghosts of our past and these ghosts live with us today. In Nazi Germany, occupants of the concentration camps were tortured by all manner of horrific scientific experiments. The people interned at these camps were used as test subjects for everything from biological and chemical warfare to research into hypothermia.

     The research gained from the undeniably horrific studies of the Nazis remains of great use to us today. What we know about hypothermia and our treatments of it come almost entirely from work done by Nazi scientists. This same research is used today by the American military in the interrogation of detainees abroad.

In America, prisoners were used as test subjects for 90% of pharmaceuticals up until 1970. These tests even included the testing of hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.

     When the need arises for experimentation there is always a group that is singled out for testing. Today, we tend to see ourselves above our seemingly remote and barbaric past. We see it as a dark age of hopelessness and misery and the world today as infinitely better.

     What we must realize is that any hope we have today, any progress we seem to have made, has come at a great price some time in the past. Millions have died in the aspiration of “bringing mankind forward” and often for nothing. After all, everything Herophilus learned from vivisecting living men and their suffering was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned.

     All of this sets a dangerous precedent. The Hippocraic oath to do no harm has always been enigmatic. The question tends to become one of economics, whether it is better to save one life or at the cost of a single life to save many patients. If we look to our history we see that the medical barbarities are still with us today, and historically, doctors are only used to justify the cruelty.

        Bedlam

     Treatments for mental illness are a relatively new thing. What was done in the past is looked at today with a certain amount of shame and regret. Though the practice of lobotomy (surgical removal, alteration or damaging of certain areas of the brain) and electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) are generally looked down upon today – few realize they are still practiced.

     Historically, much of what took place inside the so called “lunatic asylums” was never known to the outside world besides the deranged screams emanating from behind barred windows. Today, however, what went on in these mental hospitals is legendary.

Ten Days in a Madhouse

     Nellie Bly, a young, aspiring journalist, was the first to expose the drama unfolding behind these closed doors. In 1887, she had herself committed to Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for Women. To do this, she went to a local boarding house and feigned amnesia and frightened the other women in the house by refusing to sleep and staring fixedly at the wall. Once committed, she gave up all appearances of insanity and acted as she would in everyday life.

     To the surprise of Nellie Bly, her newly sane behaviour did not convince the doctors. To her amazement, the saner she acted the more the doctors felt that she was a hopeless case. In her book titled, “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” Bly describes the inhumane treatment of the wards of the state.

Bly describes cruel nurses, atrocious food, icy baths, inadequate clothing and heating in the cells which often led to poor health among the residents. Icy baths were considered a sort of shock therapy at the time, intended to jar a patient out of psychosis. Not surprisingly it often did more harm than good. She writes

“What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? ... Two months would make [the patient] a mental and physical wreck.”

        Chemical Shock Therapy

     The advent of insulin in 1922 saved the lives of countless diabetics and continues to do so today. When introduced however, it was found to have an unexpected penchant for treating schizophrenia, especially in the early phases. It was found that massive amounts could be administered to create seizures that would facilitate the recovery from mental illness.

     The patient would be administered an overdose of insulin. This lowers blood sugar levels which are necessary for simple body functions and cognition; the result is called hypoglycaemic shock. The patient experienced confusion and excitement which gives way to a coma. The coma was allowed to persist for half an hour, then the patient would be given sugar intravenously after which he quickly recovers.

The seizures that resulted from overdoses would frequently make patients more manageable; this made the treatment popular in mental hospitals. The procedures were dangerous, however, because low sugar levels in the body can cause brain damage and death.

     Metrazol was another wonder drug. Created in 1934, this drugs purpose was to create seizures in a person to facilitate a mental recovery. The seizures which would result from metrazol were often so violent that patients would break bones during the episodes. The drug fell out of wide use because it was found that Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT, had a similar effect without so many of the brutal side-effects of metrazol.

The Electric Cure

     Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, was introduced to the world of abnormal psychology in the 1930s. It offered a new way to modify the behaviours of the patients suffering from mental disorders. The treatment was especially popular because of its tendency to pacify otherwise violent patients. In many cases ECT was used for control measures and punishment rather than as a treatment.

ECT works by passing an electrical current through a patient’s brain using electrodes placed on the head. The electrical current produces convulsions that cause a change in a person’s disposition. The current was thought to disrupt the physiological causes of mental illness in the patient’s brain. But even today, the reason for its efficacy is unknown.

ECT was used in a more primitive form some years before it came into wide use in the 1930s. After attending a demonstration by Benjamin Franklin in 1756, the famous Methodist minister, John Wesley wrote in his journal describing his excitement. He later wrote:

“I do not know of any remedy under heaven that is likely to do you so much good as the being constantly electrified.”

     Wesley reported in his journal that Franklin’s static machine could be used to cure all manner of illness and promote general good health. Wesley even self treated with the machine when he came down with a respiratory infection that would not allow him to preach.

     Since the 1930s the treatments have become increasingly robust but the principles remain the same. Electrical impulses in the brain to disrupt established patterns and make the subject more suggestible.

In the 1940s and 1950s the treatment was used like Wesley saw it, as a panacea. This treatment was used for many illnesses. Only “obsessional neurotic disorders” like OCD could not be treated with ECT as it tended to make the symptoms of neurotic illnesses worse.

     ECT was tested for effectiveness for brainwashing and mind control in the 1960s. The Allain Memorial Hospital in Montreal led research in this new direction with the funding of the CIA. Only after the tests were revealed did this research end, at least publicly.

Today ECT is still used in limited cases for the treatment of severe depression. It is felt that, in cases where suicide or irrevocable damage is a risk, it is better to use this treatment than to risk the death of the patient.

     From the days of Wesley onwards, ECT has been married with controversy. Since its wide use in the 1930s, doctors have denied that any long term damage results from the treatment while other groups have maintained that it immediately and permanently damages patients.

The medical community was almost unanimous in expressing the harmlessness of ECT until the year 2000, when the first longitudinal study was conducted of a large group of patients, both before and after treatment.

The study found that severe cognitive impairment often followed ECT treatments. IQ was reduced, amnesia occurred and, most notably, visual and verbal memory was shown to be significantly reduced. Ironically, some patients taking part in ‘self-report’ studies believed that their memory had actually improved after the treatments. Tests showed that the opposite, in fact, was the truth. Currently, at least 1 million people receive ECT every year.

The Clonic Tonic

     It was formerly believed that shock therapies, be it drug induced or electrically induced, would cause a state of extreme suggestibility. By inducing seizures, the patient becomes psychologically weakened with greatly reduced inhibitions. The patient can no longer resist the will of the therapist and gives into his view of the world.

William Sargant writes in his book, “Battle for the Mind,” that emotional collapse is critical to create a lasting change in the human mind. It was believed that in order to cure a patient of mental illness he must undergo a complete mental shift.

     Freud said that “affectless memories, memories without any release of emotion [are almost useless].” The psychotherapist must strive to create emotional tension in his subject and by releasing the tension, also relieve the psychotic symptoms of his patient.

     After an emotional collapse of any type, a person is extremely suggestible. In a mental health context this means that after emotional collapse a patient is open to suggestion and change. Old fears and habits can be washed away and replaced with new, socially acceptable behaviour.

     (Pavlov found that dogs formerly conditioned can be broken down and given new habits in much the same way as humans can. Through a trauma, be it punishment, castration, starvation, what have you – old conditioning can be washed away and new behaviour instilled. The changes are permanent and the dogs will carry such conditioning with them to the grave. I realise that human beings are not dogs but in the context of simple stimulus-response conditioning and behaviour modifications I feel the similarities are worth including.)

     It is for these reasons that therapists seek to cause a seizure in their patient. The patient must be thrown off balance emotionally and psychologically so that new behaviours may be implanted. Seizures and changes in the physiology of the brain are what are required and, as we’ve seen, there are many ways to bring them about.

The Good Doctor...

When Nellie Bly had herself committed to Blackwell’s Island she saw all that went on there. For all her actions and bravery she could change nothing. Conditions in the institutes may change but the patients were consigned to psychological oblivion. Insulin, metrazol and ECT could do little for many of the patients. As a result the families of the mentally ill were often forced to abandon them to the wards indefinitely.

     As time went on the populations in mental hospitals grew. In the 1930s, the crisis had reached a boiling point. An MD at the time, Dr Walter Freeman became overwhelmed by the number of mentally ill patients in state care. He wrote in his journal that he was “filled with a weird mixture of fear, disgust and shame.” The Grandson of the famous neurosurgeon William Keen, Freeman had aspirations of becoming a great doctor and set out to discover the source of mental illness.

He began by dissecting the brains of dead patients in the morgue of his hospital, looking for physical abnormalities that might be the cause. He found nothing. As Freeman’s research came to a close he came upon the work of a Portuguese physician, Dr Egaz Moniz. Moniz detailed the results of recovery in patients which had portions of the brain removed. In a process called “prefrontal leucotomy.” The surgeon would drill into the skull and scoop out portions of the frontal lobe in the brain. It was found that this could relieve the patient of anxiety, depression, aggression and a host of other emotions.

     In 1936, Walter Freeman and surgeon James Watts became the first Americans to perform a prefrontal leucotomy. The patient was brought to the operating room and anaesthetised. Dr. Watts drilled into the skull and severed the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain under Freeman’s direction. The procedure involved severing specific areas of “white matter” (neural tissue) in the brain while leaving “grey matter” (blood vessels and the like) intact.

As far as the doctors were concerned, their first patient was a success. Alice Hammatt suffered from insomnia, anxiety and depression and was facing institutionalization. After her operation she showed no signs of anxiety and was successfully released from care.

Freeman and Watts performed a number of procedures on other patients with varying results. Many of the patients regressed to their former behaviours after 6 months. Additionally, Freeman’s patients were often permanently incapacitated; they lacked energy, ambition, they acted in a childish manner and were “uninhibited” (meaning they would go about without cloths, eat massive amounts of food, drink excessive alcoholic, etc.). About one third of the patients treated were helped by the procedure. Another third were relatively unaffected by it. And about a third were made worse or permanently damaged by the procedure. Three percent died on the operating table or shortly following lobotomy.

     It’s important to note that lobotomy targets the frontal lobe of the brain, an area responsible for “executive functions.” Such executive functions include reason, planning, emotions, personality and understanding. A successful lobotomy has the effect of cutting these features off from the rest of the brain.

     Even with the mixed results, Freeman went on with the hesitant blessing of the medical establishment. At the time it was seen as inappropriate for a doctor to publicly challenge or criticise another physician. Any public resistance he would have had from physicians was effectively wiped away.

He came under fire from Freudian psychotherapists for the procedure but he remarked that psychotherapy could do nothing for the patients he was treating. Psychotherapists, after all, could do nothing for schizophrenics or patients with obsessional neurosis (OCD). Freeman maintained that his procedure would be used only as a last resort – it would be used only on patients where all other methods had been tried and failed.

     1946 marked a new era in Freeman’s treatment. After World War II, mental hospitals had an influx of patients coming out of military service abroad. Freeman developed a new technique for operating on the brains of mental patients. It would allow him to perform a lobotomy without the presence of a surgeon or anaesthesiologist and without an operating room. Freeman’s new procedure, called “transorbital lobotomy,” used an object similar to an ice pick (in fact, Freeman used actual ice picks for his first operations) which would be inserted between the eyelid and eye. The instrument would be placed against the orbital bone behind the eyes where the skull is thinnest and tapped through the bone with a hammer. Once inside the skull the instrument would be moved back and forth, like a windshield wiper, to sever connecting white matter while leaving blood vessels intact. This new procedure took 3 to 4 minutes to perform and allowed Freeman to lobotomize many patients in a single day. (Freeman’s personal record was 25 lobotomies in one day, a psychiatrist Freeman trained in the procedure once performed 75 lobotomies in one day.)

     With Freeman’s success he grew in notoriety as well. The Washington Star called lobotomy, “one of the greatest surgical innovations of this generation.” The New York Times called it “Surgery of the Soul.” In 1949, any remaining resistance to lobotomy was washed away when Egaz Moniz, father of the prefrontal leucotomy, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

     By this time, thousands of patients were being lobotomized every year. Psychotic symptoms were replaced with dull contentment. The sufferers of mental illness were pacified and mental hospitals were largely emptied of their patients.

     Freeman kept on with his procedure advocating it for an ever widening array of symptoms. The procedure he once claimed was one of last resort had become a procedure he would perform anytime, anywhere.

     One of Freeman’s later patients, a child named Howard Dully, was lobotomized because his step-mother claimed he was difficult and abnormal. Freeman’s report reads, “He objects to going to be bed, but then sleeps well, he does a good deal of daydreaming... I think it would be pretty much of a shame to wish Howard on anybody.” An earlier patient, Rosemary Kennedy, was sent to Freeman by her father because her behaviour was threatening to endanger the political career of her brothers. She never recovered from the operation and had to be placed in permanent state care.

     Freeman advocated the use of lobotomy for housewives who were “incapable” of tolerating domestic living. It was advocated for children who misbehaved or were hyperactive. By the end of his career, Freeman felt that practically anything could be treated with lobotomy.

The Pharmaceutical Revolution

     But Freeman’s time was short lived. In the 1950s, a host of antipsychotic drugs flooded the market and lobotomy fell out of grace. The medical establishment which once supported the procedure now abandoned it. One former supporter stated that lobotomy is “no more subtle than a gunshot to the head.”

     Chlorpromazine was the first antipsychotic to gain approval and wide used. It was originally marketed as “a chemical lobotomy,” a selling point at the time.

     Today the definitions of mental illness are so broad that almost anyone could be diagnosed with some mental illness. As a result, the “need” for new pharmaceuticals is on the rise.

     The result is that a greater number of people are medicated for mental condition now than any time in the past. The situation is so dire that two thirds of adolescents in foster care are on psychotropic drugs in the United States. State Legislator Marie Parente suggests, “The state may be motivated to label children as mentally ill because of the reimbursement checks they receive from the federal government, which compensates Massachusetts for half of all Medicaid expenditures.” Before pharmaceuticals were involved, mental treatments were reserved for the mentally ill, today anyone is fair game.

        Final Thoughts

     What’s important to realize is that those things that are presented to us as a method of last resort will eventually be used everywhere. ECT became widely used as a punishment and control measure in mental hospitals rather than for treatment. In Freeman’s case, a procedure that was initially used where all other methods have failed becomes treated as a cure-all. I was recently told a story of a girl going in to see a doctor to have a prescription filled. She mentioned that she had an upcoming dentist appointment and was nervous about it and the doctor wrote her a prescription for a month’s worth of Ativan, an addictive antianxiety drug.

     We must also question the ramifications of leaving so much social power in the hands of physicians. By granting a physician the power to medicate for mental illness we imply that the physician knows what normal is and has the right to enforce it. Historically, ethics and medicine don’t mix. In Nazi Germany physicians became “healers of the corpus of the race,” and were given the power of life and death; they didn’t hesitate to use that power. Today we give doctors power over the minds of men. They tell us what normal behaviour is, what normal thoughts are and they enforce this standard with a cornucopia of new pharmaceuticals.

     The cause of mental illness should also be considered. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey suggests that the reason for mental health problems is an inability to cope with the world as the patient sees it. It is a question of environment, then, and not just neural chemistry which is responsible for much of the mental illness seen today.

     The danger I see today is that almost everyone can be classified as mentally ill under current guidelines. Doctors have proposed that woman with symptoms of PMS should take Prozac as a means of alleviating their symptoms. With the BBC reporting that Prozac had been found in Britain’s water supply it paints a rather frightening picture; MP Norman Baker told the BBC it looked like “a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public.”

Arthur Koestler, the famous essayist and journalist, wrote that “self-assertive tendencies” (that is, acts of self preservation) were a mental illness inherent in the human race because they often lead to conflict. In “The Ghost in the Machine,” Koestler proposed that we are all victims of evolution and suggested a chemical means of remediation. To any free thinking individual, the spectre of physical control of the mind is one of the greatest nightmares of all.

“The human neocortex is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use...

“The conclusions, if we dare draw them, are quite simple. Our biological evolution to all intents and purposes came to a standstill in Cro-Magnon days. Since we cannot in the foreseeable future expect the necessary change in human nature to arise by way of a spontaneous mutation, that is, by natural means, we must induce it by artificial means. We can only hope to survive as a species by developing techniques which supplant biological evolution.” – Arthur Koestler

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References.

1. William Sargant – Battle for the Mind

2. Nellie Bly – Ten Days in the Madhouse

3. Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited

4. Arthur Koestler – The Ghost in the Machine

5. Lectures from Jack El-Hai at UC Berkeley

6. PBS.com PBS Documentary, The Lobotomist

7. Neuropsychopharmacology – The Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Community Settings

8. BMJ.com British Medical Journal – Patients’ Perspectives on Electroconvulsive Therapy: systematic review
9. Psychiatric Times – Concern About Psychotropic Drugs and Foster Kids by Stephen Barlas

10. Boston Globe – Report grim on teens after foster care

11. Ect.org – CIA Brainwashing Victims Seek Canadian Court Action

12. www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu

13. The Daily Mail – how a tiny dose of Prozac may help relieve the misery of PMS

14. BBC – Prozac ‘found in drinking water’

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Articles written by Thomas Dean