he might receive another lecture at midnight , a third one at 2 a.m and even a fourth later . if , in class , a man objected to some statement he considered serious enough to justify this action , the entire class was made to stand until he abandoned his objection . next day he had to apologize both to the class and to the instructor , and for four or five days afterwards to repeat his self-criticism . the class , ordered to criticize him , obeyed : then he had to criticize his classmates . this was one of the principal methods of deliberately causing chaos in a group &apos;s relations . Dr Edgar H Schein &apos;s article the Chinese indoctrination process for prisoners of war gives a generalized picture of what happened to the average soldier from capture to repatriation . cruelty deliberately imposed on civilians was on the whole far less severe in the case of soldiers . in camp , prisoners were segregated by race , nationality and rank . no formal organization was permitted : some squad-leaders were appointed without consideration of rank , a method of getting at the individual . young or inept prisoners were put in charge of the squads , to remind everyone that former bases of organization had been destroyed . all friendships , emotional bonds and group activities were persistently undermined : all forms of religious expression prohibited . chaplains or others who tried to organize or conduct religious services were ruthlessly persecuted . there is no evidence that the Chinese used drugs or hypnotic methods , or offered sexual objects to elicit information , confessions or collaboration . some cases of severe physical torture were reported , but their incidence is difficult to estimate . Schein &apos;s conclusion is judicious : those who are attempting to understand brainwashing must look at the facts objectively , and not be carried away by hysteria when another country with a different ideology and with different ultimate ends succeeds in eliciting from a small group of Americans behaviour that is not consonant with the democratic ideology . in November 1956 , the American group for the advancement of psychiatry met to clarify the differences between Orwell &apos;s fantastic account and the real processes actually used in authentic cases . Dr Lifton said : brain-washing for our purpose no longer means anything specific , particularly in view of the manner in which it has been used in this country . among all the people he interviewed in Korea and Hong Kong no one who had been through the experience ever used the term , unless he had first heard it from a western source . but the process of szuhsiang-kai-tsao , translated as ideological remoulding , ideological reform or thought reform , is very much a reality . there were three stages of thought reform : ( 1 ) . the great togetherness . the individual soldier was helped to identify himself with a group . to his astonishment the newcomer was often welcomed warmly , with proffered handshakes and cigarettes . the aim was to give the impression of a climate of esprit de corps and optimism . to mobilize his thought , lectures , followed by discussions , were given . ( since the lectures lasted from two to six hours , a non-Chinese university teacher , accustomed to a fifty minutes &apos; limit , may wonder how much the average listener absorbed . sheer fatigue might increase suggestibility . ) there was , in the Chinese manner , much repetition . only about 5 per cent of the American army captives had received any college education , one aim of which is the formation and examination of concepts . at this stage , the prisoner was led to suppose that coercive manipulations of his thinking were morally uplifting and mentally harmonizing experiences . ( 2 ) . the closing-in of the milieu ( particularly the mental milieu ) . in ( 1 ) the prisoner &apos;s intellectual processes have been worked upon ; now comes the turn of the emotions . the object of study is now the learner , not the communist doctrine . he is made increasingly aware that his chief activities must be criticism - of others and of himself - and confessions : not only his ideas , but his underlying motivations , are carefully scrutinized . failure to achieve the correct materialistic viewpoint , proletarian standpoint and dialectical methodology is pointed out , and the causes for this deficiency carefully analysed . in time , students are infected by the compulsion to confess , vie to outdo each other in the frankness , completeness and luridness of their individual confessions . an advisory cadre helps the emotionally-disturbed student , by talking over his thought problems . the diagnosis of bodily troubles is apt to be reform-oriented and psychosomatically sophisticated ; you will feel better when you have solved your problems and completed your reform . and most students would need relief from inner tension and conflict . ( 3 ) . submission and rebirth . group discussion produces a thought-summary or final confession . it is to be a life-history , including a detailed analysis of the personal effects of thought reform , and of the confessor &apos;s class origin . nearly always the father is denounced , both as a symbol of the exploiting classes and as an individual . with the fair-mindedness of a good psychiatrist , Lifton comments that in our own milieu-manipulations we should do well to retain a certain degree of humility and to keep in mind the dangers of imposing our own values and prejudices too forcibly . in Britain and America , assertions are still made that the psychiatrist &apos;s aim is the patient &apos;s social adjustment ; even sometimes that non-adjusters can be shown up , by tests , to be neurotic , or worse . a report by the Rockefeller brothers &apos; fund ( news chronicle , June 25 , 1958 ) arraigns the public lassitude that has accepted without question an educational system dedicated mainly to turning out good little conformist Americans who , as Stringfellow Barr puts it , even when they have graduated from college ( famous institutions ) are unfamiliar with the ideas that are the stock-in-trade of western culture . the report warns of the dangers of an age of conformity and calls for the development of more creative individuals . we have seen that an important aim of working on the prisoner &apos;s mind is to stir up guilt and shame , which help him to prepare a formal confession . guilt-anxiety , says Lifton , consists of feelings of evil and sinfulness with expectation of punishment : of shame-anxiety , feelings of humiliation and failure to live up to the standards of one &apos;s peers or of one &apos;s internalized ego-ideal , with the expectation of abandonment . he suggests that we too might profitably examine some of our own concepts of guilt and shame . examples come readily to mind . diminution in the extent of clothing worn by both sexes in sports reduces the shame which fifty years ago would have been normal . since Hiroshima and the Nuremberg trials , war-guilt , which about 1922 weighed down many Germans too young to have fought in world war 1 , has now become the subject of cynical jokes . in this connection Lifton discusses the relation between language theory and behaviour . terms used in thought reform are morally charged - either very good or very bad - and take on a mystic quality . to psychologists attracted by the concept of patterns of culture the above account of thought reform is impressive because it shows that in all social orders its elements are present in varying degrees . at the conference , Professor Edgar H Schein spoke on patterns of reactions to severe chronic stress in American army prisoners of war of the Chinese . he selected observations throwing light on collaboration with the enemy . typical experiences of an American army prisoner of war were : the first phase , lasting one to six months , was capture , an exhausting march to North Korea , and severe privation in inadequately equipped temporary camps . the second was imprisonment for two or more years in a permanent camp . here , instead of the physical pressures in the first phase , chronic persuasion was applied to make the soldiers collaborate and to exchange existing group loyalties for new ones . the men reacted with the feeling that for these experiences of capture they had been inadequately prepared , both physically and mentally . they were not clearly aware of the kind of enemy up against them or , indeed , what they were fighting for . expecting death , torture or non-patriation , they were taken completely by surprise and felt that inadequate leadership of the UN command was to blame . understandably , therefore , a prisoner was inclined to listen without much scepticism to the communist explanation that , since the UN was an aggressor , having entered the war illegally , all UN military personnel were in fact criminals and could be summarily shot . the Chinese , however , considered the prisoner to be a student , capable of learning the truth . yet if he did not co-operate he could just be reverted to war-criminal status and shot . so a chronic cycle of fear-relief-new-fear was set in motion . the one-two week marches caused increasing apathy , facilitating systematical destruction of the prisoner &apos;s formal and informal group-structure . knowing that his own ranks contained spies and actual or potential informers , a man might eventually feel that he could trust nobody . Dr Schein considers that very few actual conversions to communism occurred , but that success in producing collaboration was greater . some collaborators perhaps believed - subsequent affirmation of this belief may have been rationalization - that they were infiltrating the Chinese ranks and obtaining information which , if they were released , would be useful to the US army . it is interesting and valuable to compare with the above accounts of army prisoners-of-war , a report by Professor Louis West on prisoners from the US air force . these were even less prepared for captivity , and their literal descent from the heavens into enemy hands must have given unusual possibilities of shock and astonishment . often they were injured before capture . the Chinese considered these as a distinct group , to be handled in ways differing from those regarded as suitable for soldiers ; e.g after February 21 , 1952 , responsibility for germ warfare was placed on airmen . it is important to note that of the air force returnees , 53 per cent had received some college education , compared with 5 per cent of army captives . as with the latter , the techniques employed produced debility , despondency and dread . but many airmen tried to incorporate in their confessions implausible material : details of weapons , speeds , altitudes , etc , which the interrogator , whose ignorance of technicalities they had estimated , would not detect but which , to any informed person , would appear palpably false . many people are inclined to speak of all public relations as ballyhoo or propaganda , perhaps overlooking the early meaning of the latter word ; even the significance , in England , of the second initial in S.P.G. . they are invited to consider the facts that when a prisoner &apos;s confession , or even his letter home , contained commies , it was suggested that Chinese people &apos;s volunteers should be substituted , and the only address to which any prisoner &apos;s relatives could send letters was c/o the Chinese people &apos;s committee for world peace . Dr Lawrence E Hinkle , in this symposium , suggests on the basis of extensive study that these conclusions can be accepted : the methods of the Russian and satellite state-police are derived from age-old police methods , many of which were known to the Czarist okhrana , and to its sister organizations in other countries . communist techniques , when their background is studied , remain police methods . they are not dependent on drugs , hypnotism , or any other special procedure designed by scientists . no scientist took part in their design , nor do scientists participate in their operation . the goal of the KGB - the present designation for the Russian state police - is a satisfactory protocol on which a so-called trial may be based . the Chinese have an additional goal ; the production of long-lasting changes in the prisoner &apos;s basic attitudes and behaviour . how could a prisoner-of-war resist such pressures ? Hinkle offers the following hints . since an important factor of indoctrination is the pupil &apos;s belief that his captor &apos;s control is omnipotent , he should try to maintain a secret private sense of psychological superiority . inside his group , he should develop communication methods excluding the captors and demonstrating their fallibility , e.g by using code words which appear complimentary - only to the guards ; by teaching them western games - with absurd twists of the rules and methods of play , and by inventing petty annoyances to guards forbidden to inflict physical punishment . ( it seems fair comment that for complete success this assumes high intelligence in the prisoner and obliging dimness in the guard . ) 