(Minghui.org) Not long ago, the Minghui website exposed the existence of a so-called “psychological counseling room” in the women's prison in Beijing. Actually, this is where the guards subject detained Falun Gong practitioners to brainwashing sessions under the guise of “counseling sessions.”
Different from more commonly used methods to torment practitioners, this “psychological counseling” makes use of current theories in psychology, subjecting practitioners to insidious mental torture. Conventional counseling aims to foster the healing of injured hearts and minds, whereas the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) psychological counseling intends to destroy the victim’s mind and soul. While the latter may not result in visible injury, it causes profound and thorough damage.
The CCP’s counseling usually goes like this: As soon as a practitioner is sent in, a prison staff member gives her a psychological test. They use several books of questions to get information from the victim. These wide-ranging questions are carefully designed to elicit information about a person’s personality, mindset, education, and social life, providing a thorough picture of the victim’s characteristics. The brainwashing “experts” then use this information to their advantage.
The next step is to implement their “important research findings” to confuse the victim’s thinking and instill warped notions into her head. The attempted “reform” of the victim is like a CCP-flavored revolution targeted at the deepest part of her soul.
Conventional psychological counseling helps the patient to rid of mental confusion or disordered thinking and thus solve psychological problems. The CCP’s psychological counseling, however, causes the victim to develop mental disorders and drives her to the brink of a mental collapse. The following four tactics are usually used by brainwashing “experts” to achieve their goals.
1. Hints: They ask the victim to close her eyes to recall a certain event. During the process, they keep hinting to her that she has mental problems, until she eventually feels that something is indeed wrong with her.
2. Separation: The victim is kept alone in the counseling room, with no access to anyone besides the perpetrators. This kind of separation from the rest of the world makes her feel lonely, terrified, depressed, and desperate. In the end, she may become disoriented and begins to doubt herself.
3. Threats: The victim is told that her continued cultivation will sabotage Dafa and destroy her family, causing tremendous mental pressure and anguish.
4. “Carrot and Stick:” The perpetrators secretly instigate other inmates to humiliate and abuse the victim. When she is about to collapse from the abuse, the perpetrators show up and shower her with empathy and tender care. She may then manifest “Stockholm syndrome,” developing trust and empathy for the perpetrators and eventually agree to give up her belief in Dafa.
All of these tactics are intended to confuse and destroy the victim’s mental clarity and will. Since not every tactic works perfectly for each person, the “experts” use them in combination to achieve the best result.
The brainwashing experts have developed and mastered numerous methods to drive people to the point of mental collapse. Besides physical torture and forced drug administration, other kinds of mental abuse are also used on practitioners. Below are just a few examples.
Around-the-clock monitoring: The victim’s every move, facial expression, sleep, and even the use of restroom is under close watch 24 hours a day. Such mental bombardment exerts tremendous pressure on the victim, who often succumbs after a period of time and becomes disoriented.
Humiliation: The victim is stripped naked, and the guards write defamatory words either directly on her body or on paper that is then taped to her body. This often drives the victim to a mental collapse.
Sleep deprivation: An average person will usually have hallucinations after three days without sleep. Sleep deprivation of 10 or 15 days will further shake her will and confuse her.
When all of these tactics are used, the victim might lose her mind at any time. Psychological studies have shown that, when a person is on the verge of a mental breakdown, the only way to survive is to be firm about relying on one's own way of thinking. However, if such thinking is compromised by external hints or misguidance, she will lose control of her mind and other messages will then take over. By that point, the victim will begin to believe things she used to doubt and will develop faith in completely untrue things. This is the theory that underlies the CCP’s brainwashing efforts.
The CCP’s psychological counseling is insidious because it can control a victim’s mind and make it appear that a practitioner gave up her belief willingly. Outright violence is by no means as misleading and deceitful as the CCP's “psychological counseling.”
In order to prevent psychology from being misused or abused for purposes of inflicting harm, the World Psychiatric Association has developed codes of conduct for its practitioners to follow. Two examples include the Declaration of Madrid (http://www.ups-spa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Madrid_Declaration_2005.pdf) and Declaration of Hawaii (http://codex.vr.se/texts/hawaii.html).
However, the CCP pays no attention to such codes of conduct and flagrantly abuses the field of psychiatry.
The harm that such “counseling” does is immeasurable. Physical abuse can result in tremendous psychological damage, but it still cannot compare to the harm done as a result of the CCP’s brainwashing. Those who stay firm to their belief despite tyranny often say, “You can destroy my body, but you cannot confine or destroy my soul.” However, the CCP’s psychological counseling makes it nearly impossible to retain your own mind.
The Chinese Communist Party seeks to exert extreme mental control over its victims and, indeed, over the entire country.
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Category: Brainwashing
