SOUNDLESS IN SOLITARY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-04491A000100090002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 26, 1999
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 1, 1971
• Content Type: OPEN

CPYRGHT
CPYRGHTApproved For Release 1999/09/07 : CIA-RDP78-04491A000100090
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An uttc; !y Silent coil, first devised
by iho Chinese f or brainVwrashing,
May have dramatic potential for
medical cures and mental
expancfion
by Colin Wilson
25x1A
CPYRGHT
I',(" quietest place in the world is
not the middle of the Sahara desert
on a still day, or the top of Mount
Everest ; it is a basement room in a
building at Princeton University, New
Jersey, with. walls so carefully padded
and insulated that no sound or vibration
can penetrate. When the light is turned
off, it is like being in outer space. It is
known as "the black room". It is also the
most powerful instrument for brain
washing ever devised.
The American composer John Cage
told rno an. interesting story about the
black room. When he spent a few hours
in the one at Harvard, he was surprised
that he could still hear noises. When he
carne out, he asked the engineer what
they were. "Doscribe thorn", said the
engineer. ,"Ono was a high-pitched
whining, the other a low rumbling.11
"The whining noise was the sound of
your nervous system. The rumbling was
the sound made by the blood in your
veins."
71 he Nazis were fond of using solitary
confinement to soften up political
prisoners. When used on intelligent
prisoners, it was often more effective
than torture. Stalin added various
psycl-,ological refinements to extort
"public confessions" during the mass
trials in The mid-1930s. But it seems to
have bean The Chinese who first grasped
tl-,u potential of the black room for
?t )rain.vashing". They even invented the
void (hsi' nao = wash-bruin) to de-
cribe their attempts to indoctrinate
)risoners during the Korean war. (I
uspect they have' some psychological
emus working for the military, because
hey also made another' amazing dis-
:ovory during the Korean war: that
xactly 5% of all prisoners had loador-
ualitips. If you removed that 5% from
he rest of the prisoners, the other 95%
ecarne so docile and tractable that
hey could be left without guards,- and
o one would try to escape. This
iscovery helps to explain why there
ere almost no escapes of prisoners
uring the Korean war.)
All this is still top-secret material, and
inco I do not have the confidence of the
I.A. I am not sure when the Chinese
ound out about the black room), But at
ome point they seen) to have )lade the
iscovery that if prisoners were placed
n total darkness and silence, they
oftened up very quickly, and became
(together more "persuadable". The
anadian Defense Research Board asked
no of the most eminent of modern
lsychologiSts, Donald Hebb, to in-
estigato the question. And so the first
'black box" was set up at McGill
niversity in Montreal.. Hobb's black
ox was misnamed, because it was
ctually lit; a more correct term is
Ianechoic chan{ber" (from) a Greek
'ord meaning deafness). And it was at
his point that Princeton decided to go
he whole hog, and build a black room
o efficient that it would have shut out
he sound of a steam hammer working
ight outside, or a jot taking off.
CRAVING VANISHES
Most of the room is occupied by a bed.
here is also a lavatory, and some kind of
safe containing food and drink.
Students were paid-to come and sleep
in it, and describe what it was like. And
most immediately, some curious para-
oxes began to appear. Most people
ould fall asleep fairly quickly, and
leap for a long time-sometimes. 40
tours or more. When they woke up,
hey usually felt fine-in fact, better than
hey had felt in years. Three people who
vent into the black room with bad colds
ame out two days later without the
lightest trace of a cold. Two men
suffering from poison ivy sores wore
used in about the same period of time;
hat is more, they seem to have
xherioi cad no temptation to scratch
homselves., Habitual heavy smokers
ound that they experienced no craving
or a cigarette in the black room.
For sonic reason not fully understood,
he black room can cure minor illness in
remarkably short time ; illnesses that
ould 'normally last for a week,. may
iisappear in as little as 10 hours. To
orne extent, this may be due to the
Hence; most people never, experience
1.
25X1A9a
total rest durin ' their W1 old adult life.
The black room { allo?A,s ev n Life s~,b-
COf1SCiouS to go to steep. But E::part ,or,l
that, it also scents likely that total
silence has a kind oshock effect. It
seoms so strange, so cerio, that old
habits forget to nag.
STAYING POWER ANDS>fUPIDI Y
And now conies oneT of the odds
paradoxes. Stupid people can stt
10 minutes. Even those who rnanagcd
to stay in found it all unexpectedly
nerve-wracking. It was fine for The first
few hours: they lay There and thoug;?:t
about all kinds of things, ar;d most
Subjects found they Could think far more
clearly in the black room. (These trait .i
effectswore so good that students V ouki
go into the black room just before ex-+ms,
because they found that it clarifiod ti,::
mind and enabldd them to rccali
everything they'd learned during the
semester.) But evbrybody knows wi at
happens when you've been thi k rig won!
for an hour or two- perhaps setting out
on tf train journey or a long drive : 'a
point comes when the brain gets tired'.
You want to relax, to get up and go for
coffee, switch on the radio, pick up a
newspaper. In the black room, you just
have to he there. And the mind goes
grinding on, recalling W. B. Yeas's
phrase about "the old mill of the mind,
Consuming its rag and bone". it is'
impossible to switch it off. You can't go
to sleep, because you've just slept for
twice as long as usual. Besides, you're
not physically tired. And this is the point.
where the panic begins to build up. it is
like lying awake with insomnia, when
your left foot itches, and you scratch it,
and then the right. foot itches, then the
itch moves up toyouur knee, then your
back...
ATTHE MERCY OF YOUR MIND
It is clear why stupid people can
stand the black room longer then intelli-
gent people: intelligent people have
greater powers of auto-suggestion.
Instead of taking it all calrnly, They bean
to worry and develop nervous tensions.
(Do you notice that now I am talking
about itching, you are beginning to
itch ... ?) Some of them became con-
vinced that the temperature regulator
had gone wrong, and the room was
getting hotter and hotter. At which.,
point, they reached for the panic
button.
Oddly enough, animals don't scorn to
mind the black room at all ; they just tie
there, and sloop, and wonder what the
holl 'it's 'al l about .. .
Now it should be clear why the black
room is soy effective in brainwashing.
Because it leaves you cons,'Vetcly at the
picq- aru
25X1A
Approved For Release 1999/09/07 : CIA-RDP78-04491A000100090002-3
 Approved For Release 1999/09/07 : CIA-RDP78-04491A000100090002-3
111 , c.'y of your own mind. The ?two men have boon a monastery, but that
suffer rl , from poison-ivy rah said ilhey solution is no longer practicable.
h As soon as ! read about the black
tL;il t rlllll i., the Itcihillg, I)ecauss it gave
Uieill oimlething to think about besides room ooxporirnents, I saw that they wore
the. awful nlonotonv of silence and attacking the same problcrn. The quali-
(:o ncs s. If you stay in the black room ties the Outsider needs to survive are the
long enough, it destroys the mind with quelitics needed to survive in the black
boredom. Because boreeclom, if you roorn ; a mont ,~ toughness and self-
tilihf: about it, is a condition of tension. Sufflcmncy, the refusal to "panic. And
if you are on a long train journey, a point this in turn suggested a fascinating
coin(,, where you lose interest in the idea : that if black rooms were as com-
scenery and the rllagazines, and even in mon as psychiatrists' consulting rooms,
the dining- c:ar. You just wish you were "Outsiders" could train themselves to
.arc ady at your destination. You tap your stay in then) for longer and longer
eet, you yavA'n, you walk out in the periods, and could develop the kind of
c:crrdo(, and as the Hours drag by, you strength they need to cease to be
gat a feeling of constipation. Not just alienated misfits. The black roorn might
,physical constipation, but a feeling that become the 20th century equivalent
The Mind itself is beginning to?seizo up. of 'the monastery, but altogether more
i'!iyr tai constipation Often dotes result, Of ffective.
i suspect this is a matter of the mind But the central problem remained :
influencing the body.) how could you train a man to withstand
This is why the black room is so the black room ? You can train a man to
terrifyingly effective as a brain-washer. become physically tough by putting him
it all ij) ifies ordinary boredom into a con- through a commando assault course.
dill >n of agony. Even in the friendly But that depends on a series of
circuillstances of laboratory research, it challenges. ?he black room is all anti
s b,:0 enough. But if a man felt himself challenge: pure monotony. A Jamos
si,rroundod by hostility in an -enemy Bond would go to pieces in the black
t.ount y, it would 6000rnO Worse than room within a few clays. All Einstein or a
i1;,+ 3C,al pain. Under such strains; the Beethoven would stand a better chance
would begin to drift apart, like a of surviving it.
raft on a rough sea. The art of brain -
12 [DAYS IS Tf iE I_hM!T
washing is to catch the subject before .---------_-----------___,-_---------------_--_--
the c anlage is too serious. A few friendly I used the problem as the center of a
wo ds from the interrogator, the sooth- novel--called The Black Room. The
assurance that everything is going to situation is as follows: somewhere in
be alright, and the, prisoner is eager to central Europe, a spying organization
tell everything 118 knows ... has been brainwashing spies from both
Ever since I learned about those sides-east and west--?-and using ahem
experiments in the early 1960s, I' have as double agents. All the intelligence
boon fascinated by the black room networks of the world are anxious to
problem. The reasons had nothing to do find then) and destroy them. The ideal
with politics or brainwashing. I had method would be to train their own men
alwm's been obsessed by the men I to withstand the black room, and hope
caiied "Outsiders". people who felt that the enemy will kidnap one of there
str