Came by friendline. This is a retelling of the experience of the concentration camps of Bruno Bettelheim and the Author - psychologist Ilya Latypov - I warmly recommend. However, I was shocked not only by the content of what was written, but also by the similarity with what is happening to us now. And this is perhaps exactly what scares me the most in the surrounding reality. Something is already absolutely relevant, something is not yet (or does it seem?).
Therefore, when copying, I threw out the entire German fascist entourage. While reading, think about it and try it on - if not on yourself, then on the people around you. And remember - personality deformation occurs imperceptibly. Therefore, it is also desirable to try on counteraction recipes (part 2).
Sources: Biomassing Personalities, Personal vs. System: Two Strategies
Part 1.
The Nazi system in 1938-1939 was not yet aimed at total extermination, although then life was not considered either. It was focused on the "education" of a slave force: ideal and obedient, not thinking about anything but mercy from the owner, which is not a pity to waste. 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 child or even to an animal, a living biomass without a personality, will and feelings. Biomass is easy to manage, it does not cause sympathy, it is easier to despise it and it will obediently go to the slaughter. That is, it is convenient for the owners.
Summarizing the main psychological strategies for suppressing and breaking the personality, described in the work of Bettelheim, I singled out and formulated a number of key strategies for myself, which, in general, are universal. And in different variations they were repeated and are repeated at almost all levels of society: from the family to the state.

Rule 1. Make a person do meaningless work.
Rule 2. Introduce mutually exclusive rules, violations of which are inevitable.
Rule 3. Introduce collective responsibility.
Rule 4. Make people believe that nothing depends on them.
Rule 5. Make people pretend they don't see or hear anything.
Rule 6. Make people cross the last inner line.

The transformation process is simple and clear. At first, a person stopped acting of his own free will: he had no internal source of movement left, everything he did was determined by pressure from outside.
People turned into zombies when they abandoned any attempt to comprehend their own behavior and came to a state where they could accept anything, anything, everything that came from outside. “Those who survived realized what they had not realized before: they have the last, but perhaps the most important human freedom - in any circumstances to choose their own attitude to what is happening.”

Part 2.
For every action there is a reaction. People tried to respond to the deforming pressure of the system of destruction of personality. It turned out differently. When comprehending the strategies of resistance, one can note two of their main lines, which sometimes intersected, but more often went apart. They can be conditionally called “organism survival strategies” and “self-preservation strategies”. And again - they are quite universal, and in different variations they appear wherever a person encounters a system that is trying to grind him.
(Copy only the second strategy)
Strategies for preserving one's "I": the main goal is to maintain a sense of oneself, not to become an empty shell.

Rule 1. Find meaning in what is happening.
Rule 2. Have a future perspective.
Rule 3. Do not change yourself as much as possible.
Rule 4. Always do something on your own and on your own initiative.

Any system based on the etching of human content from a person benefits from an attempt to preserve itself as an organism, since in the implementation of this strategy, people become allies of the system. But will we have the courage to follow a different strategy, and can we blame those who did not have enough strength?

Four... your attention descends one more step back and into your personal time... allow yourself to go as far into your past as you need to now... where are you?

This is an excerpt from a regression I did on a very unusual state in which one of my clients was for a long time, until he turned to me for a clue. He's been afraid for as long as he can remember. In the happiest periods of life, fear turned into indistinct anxiety and smoldered without causing great suffering. During periods of exacerbation, it was so great that it was not possible to leave the house. But for some time now, some incomprehensible absent-mindedness, the inability to concentrate, a feeling of fragmentation of the personality has been added to the fear. It became even more difficult to disagree with something, to defend your point of view. In general, any opposition, which had previously been given with great difficulty, began to cause bouts of indistinct anxiety or even acute fear. And vice versa - obedience and consent in a strange way alleviated the condition. It gave the impression of a slow dying of the personality, its dissolution in someone else's will.

It was decided to look for a clue in the past using the regression method. As expected, the "personality killer" was found and exposed. The elementary school teacher did not want to complicate her life with subtle pedagogical delights and love for the pupils. Instead, she screamed heart-rendingly at the children in case of the slightest disobedience or fault. Needless to say, her idea was a success. Over time, the first-graders completely lost the desire to invent, speak, do something on their own, and in general to do something, except for fulfilling the requirements of the teacher. And they also settled in a steady fear of the slightest mistake or fault, because the reprisal was unchanging and cruel.

But if some children endured troubles stoically, then others such a setting of the "learning process" led to serious injuries. In the regression of the young man who approached me, one detail surfaced. Once at school he had a stomach ache, and he told the teacher about it. The teacher was absolutely confident in the simulation, so, as always, she began to yell and even put the boy on public display, in the hope that he would become ashamed and stop pretending. However, he didn't stop. My stomach hurt more, and the pain was mixed with screams and threats... Now it's hard to say whether it was fear from pain or pain from fear. But one way or another, somewhere deep in the subconscious, a chain sat down: disobedience - pain in the stomach - cry - fear.

Since then, the boy began to fear that his stomach would hurt at school, and he would again be punished against the backdrop of pain. And, as if confirming his fears, the stomach from time to time began to be felt - slowly whine, pull, respond with spasms to attention to itself. The world around him began to gradually narrow down to a small area inside the peritoneum, the condition of which occupied the boy much more than study and relationships with peers. Then other fears began to appear - to say or do something “wrong”, to sweat, blush ... There was no longer a primary school teacher, who was replaced by more sane teachers, but fear firmly settled inside.

As a result of this - you can’t say otherwise - the murder of a person, an adult guy was formed who does not have any personal convictions and is not able to defend even his most elementary rights. What to do with it? Build a personality from scratch. Only it is unlikely that it will be possible to do this fully - sensitive periods are missed. Of course, psychotherapy to some extent will help solve the problem, but the delay in personal development will inevitably make itself felt always.

The incident I have described is perhaps the most tragic and striking. But he is far from the only one. With slight variations in the personality of my future clients, nursery nannies, kindergarten teachers, elementary school teachers killed. Therefore, I want to urge all parents to be extremely careful in choosing people who will influence the psyche of their children at a tender age. Do not joke with the health of your own child, letting things take their course. It is necessary to carefully control the actions of all adults who form the future personality.

For every action there is a reaction. People tried to respond to the deforming pressure of the system of destruction of personality. It turned out differently. When comprehending the strategies of resistance, one can note two of their main lines, which sometimes intersected, but more often went apart. They can be conditionally called “organism survival strategies” and “self-preservation strategies”. And again - they are quite universal, and in different variations they appear wherever a person encounters a system that is trying to grind him.

Organism Survival Strategies: The main goal is physical survival.

Rule 1. Become an elite.

Break into the elite: more opportunities for their own survival, more opportunities to help "their own". Become a "kapo" - a warden from among the prisoners.

“The chiefs from among the prisoners could use their position to alleviate the plight of their comrades, but in order to remain“ in office ”, they had first of all to serve the SS ... Often this ended up being superior to the SS in tough nitpicking ... To save themselves, their friends and members of their group, the elite had to sacrifice other prisoners.” Any measures were considered acceptable, even sending groups competing for survival to their deaths.

Another moment connected with an attempt to play by the rules of the SS: the slightest visible softening of the attitude towards prisoners led to an immediate removal from power. Therefore, the struggle for a place in the elite slowly but surely led to the deadening of emotionality and to insensitivity to the increasing assimilation of the "elites" to the SS. Power - even in such a meager amount - like Tolkien's Ring - corroded people and turned them into ghosts. That is, the SS.

Rule 2. Estimate your "importance" for the Gestapo as highly as possible: this way you will preserve your self-respect.

It is difficult for a person to come to terms with the fact that he is an insignificant worm, which does not cost anything to crush with a Nazi boot. People tried to maintain their self-respect through the idea that the Nazis were very afraid of them, and that is why they were arrested. The very fact of the arrest was considered a clear sign of the danger of those arrested for the entire Hitler regime. So did the communists, and the socialists, and the liberals. But the SS did not think so. For them, all these people were just a faceless biomass. And they were not afraid of them.

Rule 3. Take what is happening to you as atonement for your mistakes.

Some people have grasped at the idea of ​​redemption: their present suffering will atone for all the sins and mistakes of both the past and the future. This was not limited to religious people. In the unbearable conditions of the concentration camp, any behavior unworthy of a person could be justified with the help of such a phrase: "I cannot be normal when I have to live in such conditions." This phrase and its variations were repeated after the theft of food from a neighbor, and during the beating of others by some prisoners ... Such a familiar phrase ... “We are not like that, this is life ...”. This survival strategy, like the attempt to break into the elite, led to the disintegration of the personality, as it removed from it any responsibility for what it does. However, for a while it allowed to reduce the terrible emotional stress caused by one's own clearly not plausible behavior.

Rule 4. Cut emotional ties.

“An SS man comes with a big bag of mail, and reads the names of the prisoners who received the letters. Having finished the transfer, he, with the words “now you pigs know that you have received mail,” burns the entire bag.

In such conditions, it is easier to get rid of emotions and not make new emotional connections. Isolate, close, harden. The body was preserved, but the personality continued to shrink and deform. This process was the same for both prisoners and guards, they were bound by a powerful destructive psychological field.

An example of maximum, absolute alienation is the business correspondence of Auschwitz. Bruno Bettelheim cites several excerpts from letters from the Farburn chemical trust to Auschwitz.

"Due with alleged experiments with new sleeping pills, we would be grateful to you for providing some number of women... “We have received your reply, but we consider the price of 200 marks for a woman to be excessive. We offer no more than 170 marks per head… We need about 150…” “We got 150 women ordered. Despite their emaciated state, they will suit us. We will inform you about the progress of the experiment ... "Tests have been carried out. All subjects died. Soon we will get in touch with you regarding the new batch.”

Rule 5. Go into dreams and fantasies.

Flight into fantasy is one of the most common means of dealing with severe emotional trauma. So, at the end of the 19th century, among the American Indians, who lost their ancestral land and self-respect as a result of wars with the whites, the doctrine of the “Dance of the Spirits” spread, the adherents of which said that, thanks to a special dance, time would go back. Grass will grow again in the now plowed prairies, and again free herds of buffalo will trample it, erasing all traces of the presence of whites ...

The prisoners soared in dreams almost continuously, gradually losing contact with the real world. Rumors constantly spread about the improvement of conditions of detention or about the imminent release. These were real daydreams. So, Viktor Frankl recalls how one day the head of the block in Auschwitz told him about a prophetic dream in which he was promised that liberation would come on March 30th. On March 31, when the release did not come, the headman died ... After another disappointment, a wave of deaths passed through the camps.

Rule 6. Believe in the special disposition of the SS.

It's a version of "Stockholm Syndrome". The prisoners were looking for signs of the special location of the SS officers towards them. Like, among them there are good people, but they are forced to hide a good attitude. It came to the point that situations when one of the SS men, entering the barracks, wiped his shoes on a floor cloth, were interpreted as a secret sign of this SS man's contempt for Nazism (because other officers did not wipe their shoes). This faith is close to dreams and fantasies, it gave hope, which was very difficult to destroy. But when it collapsed, people died.

All of these strategies have one thing in common: they were all associated with an attempt to adapt the personality to the conditions of the external environment. And inevitably the environment won, crushing the personality into a shapeless piece, sooner or later ...

Were there any riots? Rarely. Known rebellion of the twelfth Sonderkommando (prisoners working in gas chambers) in Auschwitz. The prisoners in these teams understood that not a single habitual adaptation strategy works, everyone is destined for the same fate, and no merit counts. They understood this because the first task of the newly created Sonderkommando was the cremation of the bodies of the previous team, destroyed an hour or two earlier. And this team of 853 people, with a fury of despair, without any hope, shortly before their own end, rebelled and claimed the lives of 70 SS men, completely disabling one crematorium, and damaging almost all the others. There were few of them.

Organism preservation strategies worked poorly. Other strategies "worked" - saving one's self. They were often combined with adaptation (after all, no one canceled the goal of survival), but often conflicted with them. So, the Nazis failed to break Janusz Korczak. They tried to force this great man to cross his own inner line, beyond which there is no return to self-respect. Sending 200 children, who were raised by a teacher, to the Treblinka death camp, the commandant suggested that Korczak not go there. "What is it?!" shouted the commandant. "Korczak with the children," they told him... When the children were already in the carriages, the commandant asked the doctor if he had written Little Jack's Bankruptcy. “Yes, but is it to some extent connected with the dispatch of the echelon?” - “No, I just read your book as a child, a good book, you can stay, doctor ...” - “And the children?” - “Impossible, the children will go.” - “You are mistaken,” the doctor shouted, “you are mistaken, children first of all!” and slammed the car door behind him.

Korczak went to the gas chambers with the children, and when the gas evaporated, before the eyes of the SS men and Sonderkommandos appeared dead, but not surrendered Korczak. And the dead children hugged him.

This is an extreme situation when a person is faced with a choice: to preserve himself as an organism and kill his inner self, retaining only a shell, or to die as an organism, but to the very end to preserve himself ... There have always been people who chose death ... But there were also survivors, not betrayed themselves. In many ways, V. Frankl wrote on their behalf.

Strategies for preserving one's "I": the main goal is to maintain a sense of oneself, not to become an empty shell.

Rule 1. Find meaning in what is happening.
Not the highest, divine, meaning, but personal. Frankl found it: he turned his stay in a concentration camp into exploring the limits of the human psyche. He became a researcher who observed human behavior in the field. Such a position not only gave meaning to what was happening, but also allowed me to psychologically step back from the daily nightmare, without becoming emotionally stale to the limit. And it was not an escape into dreams and fantasies, contact with reality was maintained.

Rule 2 Have a perspective future.
"Those who do not believe in the future, their own future, died in the camp." The property of extreme stress: the whole consciousness of a person is fixed on what is happening now. Past and future disappear. There is only a nightmarish present, it is infinite, and this undermines all strength. It is extremely important to think about what will happen AFTER. Frankl thought about how to write a book about the suffering of prisoners, about what benefits it could bring. He was directed to the future, beyond the horizon of the present ... Plus indestructible interest in life: how will it all end? You will always have time to die (run away, quit ...). And to see the intermediate end of the story - no.

Rule 3. Do not change yourself as much as possible.
“If you are asked about something, you should answer as truthfully as possible, but it is better to remain silent about what is not asked.” This is Frankl. Bettelheim also agrees with him in absentia, who was saved by the same truth about himself and his condition, but while maintaining self-control.

Rule 4. Always do something on your own and on your own initiative.
Don't let the outside world become the only source of your activity... These can be little things: exercises in the morning when you get up 10 minutes earlier than the general rise. Teeth cleaning. Shaving. Or some other "little thing". Their psychological meaning: this is the type of activity that you choose YOURSELF and VOLUNTARY. If you have this activity disappears - write wasted. You are biomass...

These are some very simple rules. However, following them is often many times more difficult than the most sophisticated schemes for preserving the body ... Any system based on etching from a human of human content, an attempt to preserve oneself as an organism is beneficial, because in the implementation of this strategy, people become allies of the system. But will we have the courage to follow a different strategy, and can we blame those who did not have enough strength?

So what is a person? This is a being who always decides who he is. This is the creature that invented the gas chambers. But this is also a creature that walked into these cells, proudly straightening up, with a prayer on its lips. V. Frankl.

For them to become accommodating. Many of us know how to manipulate people's behavior with positive emotions, but the "dark side" is just as intriguing.

Even if a person is not going to use these techniques, he is unlikely to pass by the article "How to psychologically crush a person." The desire for destruction is as natural as the good ways of mankind.

Many rulers built their policy precisely on the fact that they made the population complaisant, instilling fear. Society becomes weak and depressed, which means it can be controlled.

Today you will learn what methods of pressure exist, several tactics used by the KGB and other special services, I will offer you some books if you want to deepen your knowledge, and I will also give you a couple of useful tips for those who are going to use all these techniques. Generally, .

Strategies

There are many directions in the field of psychological pressure on the enemy, and I would like to talk about the main directions.

Physical-psychological influence

The first strategy involves the physical impact, and only then the mental one. This is one of the most unfavorable ways, in some manifestations its use is illegal, but nevertheless it is used in practice, which means that I cannot but mention it.

First, a physical effect is manifested in relation to a person. For example, in a fight. After he felt the superiority of the opponent, they begin to “break” him psychologically. It is no longer so important what exactly the person says, he suppresses the interlocutor more and more deeply, causes panic fear in him and makes him complaisant.

This is one of the most unfavorable methods, since the "victim" is only interested in one thing - by any means available for this. He may, in order not to contact the aggressor, try to influence him with the help of law enforcement agencies or in some other way involve third parties.

Books

If you want to learn a little more about methods of psychological pressure in order not to become a victim or to apply some technologies yourself, before I move on to useful recommendations, I will offer you several books on this topic.

The first one belongs to the Legendary Bestsellers series. It's about the book The Psychology of Influence by Robert Cialdini: what means exist, commitment and consistency, reciprocity, . This guide contains softer tricks than I described in this article. The reader will get much more benefit from them, and why - I will tell a little later.

Another book that can help you solve all your problems without calling the other person names or making them emotional with silence is How to Outsmart Anyone: A Practical Guide by William Poundstone. Both of these books can be downloaded from LitRes.

We do not always succeed in the manipulative techniques that he uses. However, each person has an innate identification of such situations. A long stay in stress, acts destructively and a person seeks to get rid of this pressure.

We must not forget that in such cases it is almost impossible to predict the behavior of a particular person. No matter how you plan, he can do something completely different. It depends on many properties of the psyche that cannot be predicted. Behavior may not be rational or logical.

Strive to use positive methods of influence and communication to avoid unexpected situations. Don't forget to also subscribe to my blog. See you again.

90% of schoolchildren will not be successful people, they will live the life of losers. Our society is under the overwhelming hypnosis of the matrix and cannot understand the obvious truths. The education system is hopelessly outdated. 90% of unhappy people are more than just a LOT. If the mineral water factory produced 9 out of 10 bottles of dirty water, the management would definitely be sent to prison.

Thousands of schools every year "produce" people who will live unfulfilled, lonely, poor. Why is this happening?

The causes of today's evil must be sought in the past. The modern school was established 200 years ago. This institution responded to certain needs of the industrial age. At that time, production was rapidly developing in England. New factories, banks, factories appeared. To serve them, millions of thoughtless, obedient performers were needed - a kind of biorobots. Then a system was founded that was contrary to common sense, the nature of the child, evolution.

An ideal program for creating robots that are the gears of a large business.

We know that children love to play. So learning happens ten times faster than at a desk. Children have a lot of energy. They love to laugh, run, jump. The school punishes children for any manifestation of emotions, cheerfulness, curiosity. There can be no talk of any development of the personality, both physical and spiritual-intellectual. Our pedagogy is built in such a way as to destroy individuality, personality, to deprive the child of his opinion.

A few reasons why school is harmful:

1. Modern science has proven that a child learns effectively only when he makes mistakes. The school does everything to develop in children the fear of mistakes. For incorrect answers, they are punished, they put a deuce. In the future, these unfortunate people are afraid to try new things, to experiment, to make mistakes.
2. There are only 2 answers in the tasks - correct and incorrect. Thus, children begin to see the world as flat. Many problems, in fact, may have thousands of correct solutions.
3. Children don't have time to think. The modern learning process is built in such a way that the child is constantly loaded with stupid, meaningless work. Previously, during the heyday of philosophy, the teacher brought students to the river bank and gave them the task to think. They could argue and think for several days. Only by meditating in silence can we develop our mind.
4. Modern school kills one of the innate instincts- desire for knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci didn't go to school. Only through this he was able to develop and maintain a thirst for knowledge. All his life he made brilliant discoveries, remaining a student. Da Vinci's inventions were 500 years ahead of their time. Most students, having received diplomas, stop studying forever. They hate this process. For the rest of their lives they remain spiritually disabled.
5. All the knowledge that is given in a school with violence and humiliation of a person for 11 years can fit on a five dollar chip, they are worth nothing. The world is developing rapidly. Information becomes outdated and becomes useless. Only the ability to self-learn is valuable, which is exactly what is not taught.

Most people no longer ride donkeys, no one uses pigeon mail. Reality has changed. Only the feudal-industrial system of education remained the same.

Dear grandparents, mothers and fathers, if someone has the opportunity to transfer a child to an out-of-school education, give your child a happy life, take him out of school without hesitation.

It is difficult to imagine a greater evil than school. Criticizing school education, in no case do I want to offend exceptional people, teachers from God. Even in this school hell, they have enough courage and love for children, to give them knowledge, to inspire them for future achievements. But these are, unfortunately, exceptions that only emphasize the rule.

Dear friends, develop awareness, curiosity in yourself.