Word: hysterias
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There are no moments in this production when we feel that Allan is looking at himself in the same way that we look at him, none of the quiet self-denigration that marked Woody Allen's film. In its stead, we find hysteria bordering on lunacy, which appeals neither to our intellect nor to our sense of humor...
Around the country, hundreds of parents have been driven to near hysteria by changes in their convert children's behavior and by reports of brainwashing. They are filing suits and banding into anti-Moon groups. Some parents have even resorted to abduction. In many cases they use "Deprogrammer" Ted Patrick, who for a fee conducts counter brain washing of cultists...
...somewhat particularistic and historically insignificant questions. But if these specific cases can shed light on the entire McCarthy period, if the Freedom of Information Act can help explain the FBI's method of investigation in two cases which contributed so much to the creation of a national anti-communist hysteria, then clearly Weinstein's research and that of Hiss and the Meeropols will not simply serve to satisfy a historical curiosity. The means by which the investigative arm of the Justice Department obtained information during this period, certainly one of the darkest in American history, the pressures--personal or political...
...that the area of judgmental truth will be entered. Did the Rosenbergs and the FBI have different reasons for lying? What are the distinctions between a young couple distorting the truth in a cold war climate to save their skins, and a government agency trying to whip up national hysteria and conjure up a scapegoat for Soviet military advances and for American intervention in Korea? Truths about guilt or innocence, in the most specific and legalistic sense of the words, may be hard to come by. Truths about the entire period, about the manipulation of the national consciousness by branches...
After reading Patty's affidavit, other experts are skeptical about her account. Chalmers Johnson, a University of California political scientist who has studied brainwashing, doubts that Patty was ever as strongly influenced as she claims. "She may have been driven into hysteria and even into a catatonic state after her kidnaping," Johnson says, "but she was not brainwashed. No one can persuade me that Cinque [S.L.A. Chief Donald DeFreeze] was bright or skillful enough to brainwash anyone...