384 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



and ready to let the whole world know that the extorted confession 

 was repudiated by the defendant. 



According to Hinkle and Wolff (1956) this is primarily due to 

 the fact that the prisoner's life pattern is so systematically disorgan- 

 ized and impoverished, that finally the interrogator becomes the one 

 and only person with whom the prisoner is permitted to have anything 

 resembling a close and meaningful relationship, which — we assume — 

 gi'atifies the prisoner's otherwise completely frustrated "primary affect 

 hunger" (Levy, 1937). Thus, the prisoner actually comes to love the 

 interrogator, who is the only person with whom he is permitted to 

 interact. Hence, in order to keep the relationship with this one person 

 unimpaired, the prisoner will confess anything and everything, will 

 accept the interrogator's ideology, will persuade himself that he is 

 guilty as charged and will literally clamor for punishment in order 

 to alleviate his induced guilt feelings. In other words, like the willing 

 victim of the Mohave witch, the brainwashed prisoner comes to love 

 his tormentor and craves to become his victim. 



It will be objected, of course, that the brainwashed prisoner responds 

 in this manner only because he is systematically isolated from others 

 and because his life pattern is systematically disorganized and impov- 

 erished by his jailers,*^ whereas the victim of the Mohave witch is 

 not isolated from human contacts and is not, at least at the start, in 

 fear of his life. This objection disregards several important matters. 



(1) A primitive who falls ill, for no obvious reason, tends to become 

 quite panicky. Thus, Kroeber (1952) rightly contrasts the matter-of- 

 fact manner in which a primitive bandages a minor wound with liis 

 panic when the cause of his illness is not obvious to him.*^ 



(2) The belief that one is bewitched sometimes does not precede 

 illness, but follows it (e.g.. Case 44). Likewise, even though the Se- 

 dang Moi believe that it is very risky to visit the Keungao lowlanders, 

 who are great witches,^" they do not begin to think that they were 

 bewitched in the course of their last visit to that tribe until they begin 

 to feel ill. Now, while it is possible to assume that they often begin 

 to feel ill simply because the thought that they might be bewitched was 

 present in the back of their minds all along, in one case at least it seems 

 probable that this thought did not occur to a Sedang, who had recently 

 visited the Reungao, until he developed an earache — perhaps be- 

 cause of the change of altitude, and the temporary blocking of his 



** Current research shows that perfectly normal subjects placed In a tank of warm 

 water, and cut off from most external stimuli, rapidly begin to hallucinate (Bexton et al., 

 1054; Heron et al., 1953; Lilly, 1956 a, 195G b). For the relevance of this finding to 

 brainwashing, see Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 195C. 



" A Sedang Mol girl went into shock — her lips blue, her pulse threadlike, etc. — when 

 she realized that she was constipated ... a condition rare In that area (Devereux, 

 MS., 1933-34). 



*o Needless to add, the Reungao say the same thing about the Sedang. 



