Word: pavlovic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...bombed civilians in World War II. From his evidence that the strongest-willed soldier would collapse if battle stress were sufficiently prolonged, Dr. Sargant took a flying leap to the conclusion that virtually any man's mind, if it cracks, will follow one of the behavior patterns that Pavlov thought he saw in dogs. At first, says Sargant, the mind seems to equalize all stimuli and reacts with the same intensity to a bomb attack or the squeal of a mouse. Second, it may go into a "paradoxical phase," and respond more vigorously to weak, unimportant stimuli than...
Quakers Shakers. Raised as a good go-to-meeting Methodist, Psychiatrist Sargant examined the dramatic conversions made by Methodism's Founder John Wesley, decided that they fitted Pavlov's pattern. After early failures, Wesley turned his back on appeals to the intellect, made a frank and crude assault on the emotions. He preached so eloquently and graphically of the horrors of hell-fire.and brimstone that the wayward among his hearers found the prospect an unbearable stress, says Dr. Sargant. He quotes Wesley as describing meeting after meeting at which the penitent burst into tears, cried aloud, sweated profusely, shook...
...Pavlov's conditioned-reflex theory (a dog regularly fed at the ringing of a bell will eventually salivate at the mere sound, even though no food is offered) was only the beginning. In later work, which got little attention in the West, Pavlov sought to prove that dogs are of four temperamental types, "strong excitatory," "lively," "calm imperturbable, or phlegmatic," and "weak inhibitory."* Further, he developed an elaborate theory of both positive and negative conditioned responses, which appear in varying patterns when a dog is subjected to unendurable stress ("trans-marginally stimulated"). A dog usually breaks down...
...eternity in the fiery pit) more than torture itself to stupefy an accused so that he readily confessed his heresy. Sargant glibly equates this with Communist techniques for extorting confessions and brainwashing and credits Russians and Chinese Reds with having refined their methods after a study of Pavlov...
There is no evidence either that the latter-day Reds have applied Pavlov's principles to their practices in extorting confessions or making brainwashed conversions. Many experts believe that confession and conversion should not be lumped, that confessions involve different emotional mechanisms. (Another distinction: confessions and temporary conversions are common and easily obtained; true, long-lasting conversions are difficult and more rare.) An exhaustive study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Manhattan Drs. Lawrence E. Hinkle and Harold G. Wolff-based on hundreds of intensive studies of escaped and repatriated prisoners from Eastern Europe and China and with...