Psychological strategies of suppression and destruction of personality: yesterday and today

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today, in our society, mechanisms of suppression of the personality on the part of those who benefit from it can be traced. The mechanisms themselves were developed many years ago and were successfully used in Nazi Germany.

The Nazi system in 1938-1939 was focused on the "education" of slave power: ideal and obedient, not thinking about anything except the mercy from the owner, which is not a pity to be wasted. Accordingly, it was necessary to make a frightened child out of a resisting adult personality, to infantilize a person by force, to achieve his regression - to a living biomass without personality, will and feelings. Biomass is easy to manage, not sympathetic, easier to despise, and obediently slaughtered. That is, it is convenient for the owners.

Summarizing the main psychological strategies of suppression and destruction of personality, described in Bettelheim's work, IllumiCorp Russia has identified and formulated a number of key strategies that are, in general, universal. And in different variations, they were repeated and repeated practically at all levels of society. The Nazis only collected it all into a single concentrate of violence and horror. What are these ways of transforming personality into biomass?

Rule 1

Make the person do meaningless work. One of the favorite activities of the SS was to make people do completely meaningless work, and the prisoners knew that it did not make sense. Carrying stones from one place to another, digging holes with your bare hands, when the shovels were lying nearby. What for? "Because I said so!".

Today, most of our society is engaged in unnecessary work: dragging pieces of paper around the office, rewriting them, stamping sentences. And watching TV at home can not be called an important matter, but people devote most of their free time to this pastime. Psychologically, this behavior causes emptiness and depression.

Rule 2

Introduce mutually exclusive rules, violations of which are inevitable. This rule created an atmosphere of constant fear of being caught. People were forced to negotiate with the guards, falling into complete dependence on them. A large field for blackmail was unfolding: the guards could pay attention to violations, or they could not pay attention - in exchange for certain services.

Contradictory requirements are found today on every corner: at work, at school, at the institute.

Rule 3

Introduce collective responsibility. Collective responsibility erodes personal responsibility - this is a well-known rule. But in an environment where the cost of error is too high, collective responsibility turns all members of the group into overseers one after another.

Often, obeying a momentary whim, the SS man would give another senseless order. The desire for obedience eaten into the psyche so strongly that there were always prisoners who followed this order for a long time (even when the SS man forgot about it after five minutes) and forced others to do it. For example, one day a warden ordered a group of prisoners to wash their shoes outside and inside with soap and water. The boots were as hard as stone, and they rubbed at the feet. The order was never repeated. Nevertheless, many prisoners who had been in the camp for a long time continued to wash their shoes from the inside every day and scolded everyone who did not do this for negligence and dirt.

If today someone thinks differently than is customary in society (primarily in the media) he will immediately be christened an enemy, they will begin to insult, psychologically suppress and retrain him. Usually people with common sense suffer, that is, strong personalities who have their own point of view. This can be seen with the naked eye at the present time. Have you already washed your shoes with soap?

Rule 4

Make people believe that nothing depends on them. To do this, create an unpredictable environment in which it is impossible to plan anything and make people live according to the instructions, suppressing any initiative.

A group of Czech prisoners was destroyed in the following way: for some time they were singled out as "noble", entitled to certain privileges, they were given to live in relative comfort without work and hardships. Then the Czechs were suddenly thrown to work in a quarry, where there were the worst working conditions and the highest mortality, while cutting back on their diet. Then back - to a good home and light work, after a few months - back to the quarry, etc. No one was left alive. Complete lack of control over your own life, the inability to predict what you are being encouraged or punished for, knocking the ground out from under your feet. The personality simply does not have time to develop adaptation strategies, it is completely disorganized.

Today in our society there is a popular opinion that nothing depends on one person. This opinion creates a certain passive attitude. If you add here a sharp change in circumstances, a person psychologically breaks down.

In the days of the Nazis, the harshest daily routine constantly spurred people on. If you hesitate one or two minutes to wash, you will be late for the toilet. If you delay cleaning your bed, you won't have breakfast, which is already meager. Haste, fear of being late, not a second to stop and think … Excellent guards constantly urge you on: time and fear. You are not planning the day. You don't choose what to do. And you don't know what will happen to you later. Punishments and rewards went without any system.

Today the situation is similar, although not in such a harsh form. You run forward, hurry constantly, survive, do things and do not seem to notice that this is not your choice, but a choice imposed by society. You don't have a minute to stop and think about what you really want, and not what is needed and accepted!

Rule 5

Make people pretend they can't see or hear anything.

There was such a situation. An SS man beats a man. A column of slaves passes by, which, noticing the beating, turns their heads to the side and accelerates sharply, showing with all their appearance that they "did not notice" what is happening. The SS man, not looking up from his occupation, shouts "Well done!" Because the prisoners have demonstrated that they have learned the rule of "not knowing and not seeing what is not supposed to." And the prisoners have increased shame, a sense of powerlessness, and at the same time they involuntarily become accomplices of the SS man, playing by his rules.

Indifference is the main feature of a prominent representative of modern society. In totalitarian states, the rule "we know everything, but pretend …" is the most important condition for their existence.

Rule 6

Get people to cross the last inner line. “In order not to become a walking corpse, but to remain a human, albeit humiliated and degraded, it was necessary to be aware all the time where the line passes, because of which there is no return, the line beyond which one cannot retreat.

To realize that if you survived at the cost of crossing this line, you will continue a life that has lost all meaning."

Bettelheim gives a very graphic story about the "last line". One day the SS man drew attention to two Jews who were "skimmed". He forced them to lie down in a muddy ditch, called a Pole prisoner from a neighboring brigade and ordered them to bury those who fell out of favor alive. The Pole refused. The SS man began to beat him, but the Pole continued to refuse. Then the warden ordered them to switch places, and the two were ordered to bury the Pole. And they began to bury their companion in misfortune without the slightest hesitation. When the Pole was almost buried, the SS man ordered them to stop, dig him back up, and then lie down again in the ditch themselves. And again he ordered the Pole to bury them. This time he obeyed - either out of a sense of revenge, or thinking that the SS man would spare them too at the last minute. But the warden did not pardon: he stamped the ground over the heads of the victims with his boots. Five minutes later, they - one dead and the other dying - were sent to the crematorium.

Having abandoned the principles and inner values, a person sooner or later becomes a victim of violence.

The result of the implementation of all the rules: "Prisoners who have assimilated the constantly inspired thought that they have nothing to hope for, who believed that they cannot influence their position in any way - such prisoners literally became walking corpses …".

The process of turning into such zombies was simple and intuitive. At first, a person stopped acting of his own free will: he did not have an internal source of movement, everything he did was determined by pressure from the guards. They automatically followed orders, without any selectivity. Then they stopped raising their legs when walking, and began to shuffle in a very characteristic manner. Then they began to look only in front of them. And then death came.

People turned into zombies when they abandoned any attempt to comprehend their own behavior and came to a state in which they could accept anything, everything that came from the outside. “Those who survived understood what they didn’t realize before: they have the last, but perhaps the most important human freedom - in any circumstances to choose their own attitude to what is happening.” Where there is no relationship of its own, a zombie begins.