Summary of Joost A.M. Meerloo's The Rape Of The Mind

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The human mind is susceptible to political coercion. In 1933, the German Reichstag building was burned to the ground, and the Nazis arrested a Dutchman, Marinus Van der Lubbe, and accused him of the crime. Van der Lubbe was known by Dutch psychiatrists to be mentally unstable.
#2 The trial of van der Lubbe showed the world the danger of systematized mental coercion in politics. The world began to realize that the Bolsheviks had turned their old comrades into puppets, and that they were being systematically changed into sheep.
#3 During the Second World War, the Nazis forced confessions out of prisoners, and those who were resistant or did not comply were subject to further torture. We learned from this experience, and decided that it was better not to be in touch with one another, in order to avoid being betrayed.
#4 The Nazis used a variety of psychological strategies to break their prisoners, from torture to playing the coward, to confessing too much. I had to flee Holland after a policeman warned me that my name had been mentioned in an interrogation.

Sujets

• Général
• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 04 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669347897
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Joost A.M. Meerloo's The Rape of the Mind
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17 Insights from Chapter 18
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The human mind is susceptible to political coercion. In 1933, the German Reichstag building was burned to the ground, and the Nazis arrested a Dutchman, Marinus Van der Lubbe, and accused him of the crime. Van der Lubbe was known by Dutch psychiatrists to be mentally unstable.

#2

The trial of van der Lubbe showed the world the danger of systematized mental coercion in politics. The world began to realize that the Bolsheviks had turned their old comrades into puppets, and that they were being systematically changed into sheep.

#3

During the Second World War, the Nazis forced confessions out of prisoners, and those who were resistant or did not comply were subject to further torture. We learned from this experience, and decided that it was better not to be in touch with one another, in order to avoid being betrayed.

#4

The Nazis used a variety of psychological strategies to break their prisoners, from torture to playing the coward, to confessing too much. I had to flee Holland after a policeman warned me that my name had been mentioned in an interrogation.

#5

The history of torture is long and tragic, dating back to the medieval period. However, modern techniques of torture are not new. They have been used by tyrants and dictators for centuries to extort confessions for political propaganda purposes.

#6

The witch trials were intended not only to torture the witches, but also to torture the bystanders, who, though unconsciously, identified themselves with the victims.

#7

The brainwashing technique, known as menticide, is an elaborate ritual of systematic indoctrination, conversion, and self-accusation used to change non-Communists into submissive followers of the party.

#8

The brainwashee is subject to the unsteadiness of his own mind, which can produce different answers to repeated questions. He is also subject to the atrocities he suffers from without, as well as the atrocities he suffers from within.

#9

The third and final stage of interrogation is when the accused is trained to bear false witness against himself and others. He doesn’t have to convince himself any more through autohypnosis; he only speaks his master’s voice.

#10

The Schwable case is similar to the Mindszenty story in that it involves the influence of hypnosis on a military officer who is taken prisoner by the enemy. However, in the Schwable case, the colonel was subject to a form of treatment very different from what he had expected.

#11

The torturers can be outwitted, however. The only way to withstand an organized attack on the mind and will is to understand what the enemy is doing and outwit him.

#12

The Schwable case and the cases of other prisoners of war are tragic examples of menticide. They were victims of a subtle form of mental manipulation that can be just as dangerous as the direct assault.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The aim of the jailers is to change the behavior of their prisoners. They don’t speak about hypnosis or suggestion, but about human behavior and human government in a much more mechanical way. We must give more attention to their adoration of simplified Pavlovian concepts.

#2

The Russian Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments with a bell and a dog. He knew that salivation is associated with eating, and that if a dog was hungry, its mouth would water each time it saw food. He used this inborn reflex to develop in his experimental animal the salivating response to a stimulus that would not normally create it.

#3

The Pavlovian Front and the Scientific Council on Problems of Physiological Theory are two organizations under the Academy of Science dedicated to the political application of the Pavlovian theory. They believe that man can be conditioned and trained like an animal.

#4

The human mind is never satisfied with a simple recital of facts. As soon as it observes a set of data, it jumps into the area of theory and offers explanations, but the way a man sees a set of facts and the way he juggles them to build a theory is largely determined by his own biases and prejudices.

#5

The mind creates a connection between repeated simultaneous occurrences, and the body reacts to the connections the mind forms. The conditioned reflex is not necessarily permanently imprinted on the individual, but can gradually disappear if the stimulus is no longer present.

#6

We are all constantly being conditioned by our surroundings and the people around us. We can see this in the way our personalities are shaped, as well as in the way our bodies respond to certain stimuli.

#7

Pavlov made several discoveries about the brain that are relevant to brainwashing. He found that some animals learned more quickly when they were rewarded each time they responded correctly, while others learned more quickly when the penalty for not learning was a painful stimulus.

#8

Pavlov showed that all conditioning, no matter how strong it had been, became inhibited through boredom or the repetition of too weak signals. The bell could no longer arouse salivation in the experimental dogs if it was repeated too often or its tone was too soft. A process of unlearning took place.

#9

Human speech is also a conditioned reflex activity. We learn to think and speak in words, and these gradually condition our entire outlook on life and the world.

#10

The Pavlovian strategy is to repeat your assumptions and suggestions, and minimize the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the simple formula for political conditioning of the masses.

#11

The Pavlovian theory translated into a political method, as a way of leveling the mind, is the stock in trade of totalitarian countries. To taming people, they must be brought to a point where they have lost their alert consciousness and mental awareness.

#12

The conditioning process, which is the result of the Pavlovian strategy, takes place in the totalitarian countries. There, belief in Pavlovian strategy has become grotesque proportions, and the self-thinking, subjective man has disappeared. There is an utter rejection of any attempt at persuasion or discussion.

#13

The conditioning of the Soviet Union is very different from that of Western psychology.