My goal in this chapter is to analyse through established psychological principles how torture-based mind control programming is installed and exerts continued control over victims. It is painfully humbling to study mind control. The secrets of how it “works” are buried deeply in the minds of survivors whose mental registration of the process was originally impaired by torture, drugs, smoke and mirrors, and dissociative processes, both defensive and effected by abuser manipulation, and whose capacity to later recall and reveal this trauma is limited by terror, abuser subterfuge, and the capacity of the therapist to bear witness to such calculated abuse. Further complicating this study is the variation in methods and forms of mind control reported by survivors. I will present patterns I have observed for further exploration.
My primary data is my work with survivor clients, depth interviews of other survivors, including many psychologist-survivors, interviews with colleagues treating survivors, and written accounts by survivors, most of whom I have interviewed and found credible. I am particularly indebted to Dr Hans Ulrich Gresch, German psychologist, cold war mind control survivor, and author of a book on mind control (Gresch, 2010), for his generous correspondence with me on his experiences as a victim and his insights into mind control as a scholar.
Working definition of torture-based mind control
I define torture-based mind control as the systematic application of (1) acute torture, including pain, terror, drugs, electroshock, sensory deprivation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimu- lation, and near-death, and (2), conditioning, including coercive hypnosis, directives, illusions (staged tricks, film, stories), spiritual threats, manipulation of attachment needs, and classical, operant, and fear conditioning, to coerce victims to form altered mental states, including (a) hyper-attentive blank slate (tabula rasa) mental states that arise spontaneously in response to perceived threat to physical survival, and are completely attuned to external stimuli, ready to do whatever is needed to survive; (b) self-states that spon- taneously form in response to threat to psychic survival, that is, levels of mental anguish that exceed the tolerance of all previously existing ego states, and that are mentally registered apart (dis- sociated) from previously existing ego-states; (c) ego-states that develop more gradually through conditioning, all three of which are subjected to “programmer” strategies to define, control, and “install” within them perceptions, beliefs, fear, pain, directives, information, triggers, and behaviours, to force victims to do, feel, think, and perceive things for the purposes of the programmer, including execution of acts that violate the victims’ volition, princi- ples, and instinct for self-preservation, and to cause ego-states that usually have executive control of mental functions (the host, front, or apparently normal personality) to have no conscious memory for the torture, conditioning, programming, controlled ego-states, or executed programmed behaviours. (Note: In the field of “torture- based mind-control”, this term is generally synonymous with “torture-based” or “trauma-based”, followed by “mind control programming” or “programming”.)
My proposed definition refers to both self-states and ego-states. Self-state is the broader term, including self-states that have minimal sense of self or self-agency, such as torture-induced fragmentary self-states that register pain and terror internally, largely separate from higher cognitive processing and with a bare sense of “me”. Ego-state refers to a self-state with significant self-identification and self-agency, often referred to as an alter, dissociated identity or person- ality in the literature on dissociative identity disorder (DID).
The term “host” refers to the ego-state that is usually experi- enced as “me”, that usually spends the most time in executive control of mental functions and behaviour, and that is more aware of benign circumstances than past or present trauma. Some individuals have more than one host or “front” ego-state. In the literature on dissociative disorders, the term “host” is also often referred to as the apparently normal personality (ANP) (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006).
The term “executive control” refers to the implementation of mental functions, otherwise known as “executive functions”, that enable goal-directed thought and behaviour, including self-aware- ness, motivation, volition, initiation, planning, purposive action, and self-regulation, which relies on monitoring, shifting, inhibiting, and self-correcting, functions primarily attributed to the frontal lobes, specifically the prefrontal cortex (Lezak, 1995).
Torture-based mind control is practised by individuals and groups who seek to maximally control and exploit others, particularly children. Included are practitioners of abusive religious rituals (e.g., Satanism and abusive witchcraft), organized crimes against children (child pornography, prostitution, and trafficking), and groups with political, military, and espionage agendas.
Survivors commonly report torture using electroshock, spinning, isolation, confinement (cages, coffins, etc.), sexual abuse, beatings (especially to the head), hanging or pulling with ropes and chains, suffocation, drowning, being held over fire, blinding or flashing light, forced ingestion of blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc., hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, submersion in ice water, drugs to induce paralysis, pain, confusion, amnesia, etc., application of snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, etc., and being forced to perform or witness abuse, torture and sacrifice of people and animals.
Mind control phenomena reported by survivors
Survivor accounts are the primary source material on torture-based mind control. Critics say this is untrustworthy data. However, torture is criminal internationally, and its effects cannot be directly studied. Clinicians assess the reliability of survivor accounts based on narrative coherence, goodness of fit between symptoms and reported history, diagnosis of a trauma disorder, differential diag- nosis (Lacter & Lehman, 2008), and from multiple sources of corrob- oration from other survivors.
I have reviewed three lengthy written narratives about torture- based mind control:
- Svali (pseudonym): How the cult programs people (1996);
- Trish Fotheringham: Patterns in mind-control: a first person account (2008) (Fotheringham reports not having read any
other survivor accounts when she wrote her chapter);
- Anonymous survivor: Kabbalah-training (provided by a thera-
pist colleague, 2008).
Although these three accounts are very different, each includes abuser aptitude testing of newborns, training infants to dissociate, bonding infants to trainers, destroying all sources of comfort, tor- ture to induce blank-slate self-states (Fotheringham described this in interviews, not in her chapter), developing and categorizing self- states by colour, spinning torture, all-seeing eyes, suicide programming, programming using illusions such as film, and staged dramas to create internal landscapes (or inner worlds).
Some of the strongest corroborative evidence for mind control is a 2007 internet survey in which 1471 people from at least forty countries responded as survivors to the Extreme Abuse Survey (EAS) (Becker, Karriker, Overkamp, & Rutz, 2007).
The following list of reported mind control phenomena incor- porates a sampling of the EAS findings.
- Torture to induce the formation of receptive/programmable dissociated self-states. Of 1012 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “My perpetrator(s) deliberately created/pro- grammed dissociative states of mind (such as alters, personal- ities, ego-states) in me,” 640 (63%) said “Yes.”
- Torture to influence the host with no conscious awareness. The host experiences unexplained behavioural compulsions to perform particular behaviours, and programmed self-states take executive control to follow programmed directives, unbe- known to the host.
- The perception of “structures”, that is, mental representations of objects, usually inanimate, in the body or internal landscape in the mind. Often-reported structures include buildings, walls, containers, grids, computers, and devices of torture. Structures often serve organizational purposes for program- mers, such as containing groups of self-states that serve partic- ular functions, storing files of information, serving as barriers (walls, caps, seals) to separate groups of self-states, and hiding deeper levels of programming and structures. Dissociated self- states perceive themselves as trapped behind, within, or attached to structures, often reliving the pain, suffocation, elec- troshock, etc., used to “install” the structure.
- Perceived explosive devices, electroshock wires and devices, and vials capable of releasing toxins and drugs, in the body of specific self-states, or in the internal landscape, to control behaviour.
- Perceived internal monitoring devices to watch or “read” and transmit thoughts, e.g., all-seeing eyes, microphones, and microchips.
- The perception of internal programmers, abusers, demons, and human spirits, to watch and control the victim. Of 996 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “Perpetrators have on at least one occasion made me believe that external entities/ spirits/demons had taken over my body,” 530 (53%) said “Yes.”
- Novel torture and near-death torture, including anoxia, brachycardia, and cardiac arrest due to suffocation, electrocution, freezing, drowning, etc., to induce tabula rasa program- mable states to form. Of 1109 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “Near drowning experience caused by perpetrators,” 565 (51%) said “Yes.”
- Torture, especially electroshock, to “anchor” (set deeply) programming in the unconscious mind. Of 1119 EAS respon- dents who replied to the item: “My memories of extreme abuse include electroshock” 558 (50%) said “Yes.”
- Programming beginning in the first two, three, or four years of life serving as a foundation for later programming. Of 975 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “I was subjected to government-sponsored mind control experimentation at birth through 2 years,” 139 (14%) said “Yes.”
- Programming to punish the victim when any self-state threat- ens to disobey abuser directives, especially to never remember or disclose their abuse, including flooding the victim with anxiety, pain, spinning or drugged sensations, illness, self- harm, and suicidality. Some survivors develop an awareness that these experiences are not their own reactions, but originate in programming. Of 997 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “I have experienced self-destruct programming installed in the event I began to remember the programming”, 565 (57%%) said “Yes.”
- Self-states programmed to perform particular roles, such as soldier, courier, assassin, cult leader, etc., and skills, such as speaking a foreign language, flying an aircraft, remote-view- ing, and sexual behaviour. On the EAS, 175 respondents reported mind control programming through which they were trained to become assassins and 203 respondents reported mind control programming designed to develop psychic abili- ties.
- Self-states programmed as tape-recorders and computers to store information.
- Self-states programmed to report in to handlers by phone and to assure ongoing abuser-contact.
- Anti-therapy programming causing victims to feel “stuck”, unable to speak, hear, or remain awake, to create chaos, to be acutely suicidal, and to disbelieve all memories. Of 1097 EAS respondents who replied to the item about having suicidal thoughts immediately before traumatic memories surface, 737 (68%) said “Yes.”
- Programmed stimuli, for example, hand signals, words, tele- phone rings or tones, that trigger self-states to experience fear or to perform behaviours unbeknown to the host.
- Programme codes to access self-states, to install, reset or acti- vate programmes, to turn on back-up (fail-safe) programmes, to erase (remove) programmes, to “set off” explosive devices and to release toxins. Of 967 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “One or more of my alters had access codes”, 332 (34%) said “Yes.”
Clinical observations of mind control phenomena in victims
I have observed the following indicators of torture-based mind control:
- Clients suddenly switch, in response to internal or external cues, to automaton-like self-states, with stiff posture, glazed- over eyes, inability to hear or respond, then begin to walk or drive to a phone or destination, with full amnesia in the host for the time in that state. Of 963 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “I have (or have had) at least one robot alter”, 270 (28%) said “Yes.”
- Four clients reported the identical code to “remove” the same kind of programme, including about ten characters (details omitted for security and confidentiality) with the same prefix or suffix with spelling variations. This code is not in books or on the internet. These people lived in distant regions. I also observed individuals report very slight variations of a code for another kind of programme.
- Proper removal codes “disappear” a structure; slightly incorrect codes fail. I have witnessed clients experience enormous relief when a proper removal code caused a structure to “vanish”.
- Identical abuser names and titles, not in books or the internet, reported by geographically distant survivors.
- I have observed injuries, such as large scars, electroshock burns, and dislocated limbs that I believe were not self- inflicted, and that were consistent with reported programming torture.
- When clients recall and work to resolve torture-based mind control, they regularly experience acute fear, suicidality, urges to self-harm, dizziness, sleepiness, feeling drugged, jerking as if being electro-shocked, urges to stop therapy, and robotic-like statements of “I must have made it all up,” or “I want to go home” (meaning to return to the abusers).
- Strong fear and startle responses to the phone ringing and extreme sensitivity to indoor lights.
- Great consistency in reports of programming over time. Present recollections match rediscovered journal-writing, art, sand trays, etc., from as many as ten years earlier.
- Clients experience marked symptom relief as programming is made conscious and resolved.
Historical evidence
In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA’s MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities, new memories, and responses to hypnotic access codes. In 1972, then- CIA director Richard Helms and Gottlieb ordered the destruction of all MKULTRA records. A clerical error spared seven boxes, contain- ing 1738 documents, over 17,000 pages. This archive was declassi- fied through a Freedom of Information Act Request in 1977, though the names of most people, universities, and hospitals are redacted. The CIA assigned each document a number preceded by “MORI”, for “Management of Officially Released Information”, the CIA’s automated electronic system at the time of document release. These documents, to be referenced throughout this chapter, are accessible on the Internet (see:
http://abuse-of-power.org/modules/content/ index.php?id=31). The United States Senate held a hearing exposing the abuses of MKULTRA, entitled “Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research into behavioral modification” (1977).
Of 1000 EAS respondents who replied to the item: “Secret government-sponsored mind control experiments were performed on me as a child”, 257 (26%) said “Yes,” and 219 of those 257 remembered seeing perpetrators wearing white doctors’ coats. Of 451 respondents to the Professional Extreme Abuse Survey, seventy-one professional helpers from at least six countries reported work with survivors reporting government mind control experimentation.
Psychological mechanisms underlying programme installation and function
What psychological capacities and mechanisms do programmers manipulate to effect mind control?
The dissociative disorders field has established that DID is associated with chronic, intense, early abuse, often involving a combination of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, frequently including profound neglect, family violence, and a generally chaotic home environment (Chu, Frey, Ganzel, & Matthews, 1999; Draijer & Langeland, 1999; Ogawa, Sroufe, Weinfield, Carlson, & Egeland, 1997; Putnam, 1997; Pynoos, Steinberg, & Goenjian, 1996; Ross, 1995; van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996). However, responses to acute torture are very different from responses to chronic trauma.
It is also well known that amnestic barriers separate the experience of trauma-bearing self-states, also known as “emotional parts” (EPs), from the awareness of the host (ANP) (Nijenhuis & den Boer, 2007). But how does this inform us on how programmed self-states can effect specific emotional and behavioural responses in the host in mind control victims? Furthermore, what psychological mechanisms allow programmers to “install” directives, codes, structures, harm-producing devices, internal programmers, malevolent entities, and files of information in their victims? How can the mind accurately register such complex information during mental states impeded by torture? How can programming be achieved in the first few years of life? Might torture somehow enhance the mind–brain’s capacity to encode information and store it in pristine form?
Incorporating current knowledge on trauma and dissociation, I will explore some of the psychological processes that begin to answer these questions. Some of these mechanisms are well evidenced and some are more theoretical and hypothetical.
Dissociation: use of torture to induce and exploit dissociative processes
A synthesis of survivor accounts suggests that the central psycho- logical mechanism that permits mind control programming to be effected is that extreme torture can force a victim’s psyche to form new, readily programmable self-states, separated from the front personality by programmed amnestic barriers, that can be exploited to “hold” and “hide” directives, skills, and information. The condi- tions that appear to most reliably yield new programmable states are (1) application of torture in the preschool years or to already dissociation-prone individuals, and (2) application of forms of torture that victims have not yet learned to endure, such as novel or extremely prolonged torture.
Some of these self-states are developed into ego states that have the capacity for executive functions, often beginning with the assignment of a name and specific function, followed by extensive conditioning to (1) develop desired skills, (2) learn cues to access and control the ego state, and (3) develop barriers to keep all memory of this abuse from the host. Other induced dissociative states are used for more internal functions, such as holding pain, terror, information, and representations of structures to serve purposes in the inner world.
Is this the stuff of science fiction? Historical and psychological evidence demonstrate otherwise.
USA mind control projects
Declassified CIA documents provide a historical record of MK- ULTRA projects that manipulated amnestic and dissociative states.
MORI 017395 states that Subproject 136 (1961) would use drugs and hypnosis to induce and control dissociative states, including multiple personality disorder, and would use “psychological tricks”, reward, punishment, and electroshock to control behaviour, including that of children.
MORI 090527 (1951)
http://abuse-of-power.org/modules/ content/index.php?id=31http://michael-robinett. com/declass/c000.htm details an experiment that successfully placed two girls in “very deep trance”, and used post-hypnotic coded words to make them carry and activate a bomb, followed by instructions for absolute amnesia.
Gresch (personal communication, 2010) reports that he and other children were programmed to be suicide bombers in the 1960s in what was probably a NATO project (including the CIA) to defend West Germany against the Warsaw Pact with tactical nuclear weapons, including portable “Special Atomic Demolition Munitions” (never actually deployed). Gresch reports that the children were programmed to lie in wait in foxholes, ready to detonate these “mini-nukes” against Soviet tanks that were to be manoeu- vred into “killing zones”.
MORI 190713 (1955), “Hypnotism and Covert Operations”, discusses placing the “conscious mind in a state of suspended animation” to make subjects “have amnesia both for the fact of having been hypnotized and the origin of whatever new idea or impetus to action has been implanted in his unconscious mind”.
In an article in the Providence Evening Bulletin of 13 May 1968, George Estabrook, described as a former consultant for the FBI and CIA, is quoted as stating, “the key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multi-personality” (Ross, 2000, p. 162).
Tien
Psychiatrist H. C. Tien developed electrolytic or electricity/ love therapy (ELT) in the early 1970s (Tien, 1974). Tien discovered that torture, particularly electroshock, combined with directives, can “erase” a patient’s original identity, beliefs, and name, and replace these with an identity, beliefs, and name chosen by the “therapist”, congruent with the process of torture-based mind control.
Cameron
In the 1950s, Ewen Cameron, MD, of Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University in Montreal “treated” non-consenting patients, most probably diagnosed with schizophrenia, in what inarguably amounted to torture. Between 1957 and 1960, MKULTRA funded this research (Weinstein, 1988).
Cameron’s treatment had two phases. In the “depatterning” phase, for fifteen to thirty days (sixty-five days in some cases), patients were administered massive doses of LSD and electroshock, usually combined with prolonged, drug-induced sleep, to ulti- mately induce a “tabula rasa” state and “complete amnesia” for one’s life (Cleghorn, 1990; Marks, 1979; McGonigle, 1999). The “psychic driving” phase followed, sixteen hours a day for several weeks. Patients were forced to listen to endless loop taped descrip- tions of their painful past and inadequacies, sometimes accompa- nied by shocking their legs to intensify the negative effect, followed by, for two to five weeks, listening to tapes describing how they wanted to get well and the behaviours to facilitate this, such as becoming self-assertive (an interesting irony) (Marks, 1979).
Harvey Weinstein (1988), psychiatrist and son of a victim, aptly describes Cameron’s work as “a wholesale attempt to erase minds and reprogramme” subjects (p. 147), assisted by MKULTRA.
In both Cameron’s “treatment” and in mind control, torture, primarily electroshock, is applied to induce a tabula rasa state, followed by attempts to develop a brand-new persona.
Use of electricity to modify soldiers’ behaviour in the First World War
Electroshock was used by military psychiatry to eradicate unwanted behaviour in soldiers since at least the First World War. The goal was to override soldiers’ “weakness”, such as “hysterical pseudo-paralysis”, to get them back to the front (Fassin, Rechtman, & Gomme).
Noteworthy were French neurologist, Clovis Vincent, who “boasted of regularly obtaining rapid results after what he termed a ‘merciless struggle’ between the patient and doctor” (ibid., p. 48), and German physician Fritz Kaufmann; his “Kaufmann cure” involved application of powerful alternating currents to paralyzed limbs (Rejali, 2009, p. 136).
Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Neutra (1920), treated soldiers with “fiercely painful faradic [electric] currents” in 1914, and claimed that over 100 psychiatrists applied these methods since the beginning of the Great War. Neutra reasoned that war hysteria is a subconscious conflict between the instinct of self-preservation and patriotism or morale. He believed that if hysterical behaviour becomes associated with pain produced by the electroshock, the subconscious is going to search for a better solution.
The same basic psychological mechanism is used in much mind control. The dissociated fear of torture is greater than the fear of executing the self-endangering behaviour desired by the programmer. Although we may never have evidence of torture-based mind control directly evolving from military electroshock treatments, I believe the likelihood is high.
Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov is most famous for his discovery of classical conditioning based on research with dogs. Pavlov presented a warning signal (the conditioned stimulus), such as a bell, and shortly after (e.g., five seconds), gave the dogs an unconditioned stimulus (such as food). The warning signal then produces a conditioned reflex, such as “food excitation” (e.g., salivation).
Lesser-known is that Pavlov also used electroshock as a warning stimulus. We now understand this as a form of fear conditioning, the basis for kinds of mind control that rely on victim responses of fear and pain to programmed external and internal cues (discussed later).
Still less known is that Pavlov also studied the effects of overwhelming stress on the dogs’ prior conditioning (Pavlov, 1941; Sargant, 1957).
In the Leningrad flood of 1924, water seeped under the laboratory door and Pavlov’s dogs nearly drowned, swimming in “terror with heads at the tops of their cages” (Sargant, 1957, p. 17). Many lost all prior conditioning. Pavlov described the dogs as dissociating cortical and subcortical mental activity, and being in a state of hypnosis, similar to some human “mental disease”. Pavlov surmised that in severe trauma, “the brain might be wiped almost clean, at least temporarily, of all the conditioned behavior patterns recently implanted in it” (Sargant, 1957, pp. 16–17). With months of patient work, Pavlov reconditioned most dogs. Then he let a trickle of water run under the laboratory door and the dogs all panicked and were re-traumatized, again losing all prior learning. Pavlov’s observations parallel survivors’ reports of tabula rasa states forming in mind-control torture: all prior learning is lost, “wiped clean”, and a trauma trigger reactivates the trauma state.
Sargant
British psychiatrist William Sargant is probably best known for his work on “acute war neurosis” (“battle fatigue”, “shell shock”) with Second World War soldiers (1957). In addition, he directly studied the effects of overwhelming stress on humans, as Pavlov did with dogs.
Sargant compared “war neuroses” to Pavlov’s “experimental neuroses” in dogs. He observed stress-induced “states of greatly increased suggestibility” in combat soldiers (ibid., pp. 24–46), as well as in people who had undergone prolonged emotional and physiological stress in sudden religious conversion and political/ ideological brainwashing.
Sargant claimed that the immediate effect of severe stress in humans and animals is “usually to impair judgement and increase suggestibility” (ibid., p. 82). He imposed severe stress on patients so that “some of the new abnormal patterns may disperse, and the healthier ones can return or be implanted afresh in the brain”, much like Cameron. Sargant also applied similar stressors, including states of fear and anger, insulin shock, electroshock, and prolonged drug-induced sleep, up to fourteen or fifteen days, in a “sleep treat- ment ward” (Freeman, 1987).
Sargant and Cameron both had espionage ties, Sargant to British Secret Intelligence (Sargant, 1957), Cameron to the CIA (Thomas, 1989, p. 208, 1998). Sargant and Cameron had met several times (Thomas, 1998) and may have been friends (Collins, 1988, p. 42). Sargant had also met with Gottlieb, director of MKULTRA (Thomas, 1998).
Snapping and cult indoctrination as dissociative processes
Conway and Siegelman, in Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change (2005) explain that ceremonial rituals for cult indoctrination, including repetitive chanting, meditation, suggestion, sometimes food and sleep deprivation and infliction of pain, finally result in a “snap”:
an experience that is unmistakably traumatic . . . Sudden change comes in a moment of intense experience . . . an unforeseen break in the continuity of awareness that may leave them detached, with-drawn, disoriented—and utterly confused. The experience itself may produce hallucinations or delusions or render the person extremely vulnerable to suggestion . . . [p. 5]
This experience conforms to mind control survivor reports that extreme abuse, isolation, sleep and food deprivation, sensory and ideological bombardment, and fear-inducing illusions, suddenly induce the formation of a suggestible mental state that are receptive to new ideologies.
The ancient Greek initiation ritual into the “Greater Mysteries” incorporated elements of sentencing the initiate to death, amnesia- producing drugs, rebirth, and renaming to erase prior memory and induce receptiveness to the formation of a new identity (Graves, in Sargant, 1957, pp. 194–195).
Ritual abuse survivors describe the same steps in rebirth, initiation, and marriage rituals: terror, pain, helplessness, and fear of demonic forces, followed by methods to induce amnesia, including drugs, followed by “rebirth” as a member of the group, provision of a new name, a ceremony to marry the “convert” to the group’s deity, and a formal claim or announcement of belonging to the group.
Historical accounts of cult indoctrination, Tien, Cameron, Pavlov, Sargant, and First World War electroshock “treatment” of soldiers, and MKULTRA documents citing knowledge of inducing and manipulating amnestic and dissociative states, all support survivor accounts of overwhelming stress inducing the sudden formation of suggestible mental states. Our current knowledge of dissociative processes helps to tie this all together.
Torture in early childhood to induce a dissociation-prone psyche
Torture-based mind control, by most survivor reports, begins before four years of age, usually by age two, to make the psyche dissociation-prone and to serve as a foundation for later programming.
Young children have a greater capacity to enter trance states than older children and adults, allowing for dissociative, self-hypnotic responses to overwhelming stimuli (Putnam, 1997).
Peterson (1991) explains
Developmentally natural dissociative activities in tandem with primitive defense mechanisms may lead a child to block off painful memories using a dissociative process . . . Without a person’ conscious volition, a pattern of protective dissociations may begin to develop, creating newly established and increasingly distinct parts of self, encapsulated in time, and memory segments that are unavailable to the rest of that person’s consciousness. [p. 153]
Fotheringham (2008) explains that a “pattern of protective dissociations” was natural for her:
“I,” the primary person . . . was not aware of these alternate identi- ties or their pieces of “my” life. It seemed natural for life to be broken into chunks . . . so “lost time” went unnoticed. Since conti- nuity was unknown, there was no sense of discontinuity . . . my brain’s way of coping with difficulties was “wired in”—simply create another alter! [p. 499]
Putnam (1997) views DID as a developmental failure to integrate the discrete, state-dependent, aspects of self that are normal in young children into a cohesive sense of self. Support for this view is found in Blinder’s (2007) review of the research and neurobiology on the development of an autobiographical self. B
linder concludes that prior to four years of age, a child’s sense of self is more disjointed than cohesive, and that an autobiographical self emerges at around four years of age as a function of the child’s “ability to hold in mind multiple representations of the world simultaneously”.
Gresch believes that programmers understand that the personality lacks cohesion in early childhood, and that they begin abusing victims very early, “to hamper any real personality development to replace it with a subhuman structure, to be used like a programmable robot” (personal communication, 2009).
After the fourth birthday, a relatively coherent sense of self helps protect against formation of fully separate self-states.
Once a “pattern of protective dissociations” has developed, programmers can use torture to induce new dissociative self-states to form, then “build” the behavioural repertoire of these self-states through conditioning, training, hypnotic suggestion, etc. Dissociation-proneness keeps these self-states maximally segregated from each other. Even in adolescence and adulthood, new self-states can be induced to form in dissociation-prone individuals, a capacity exploited by programmers.
Dissociative responses to chronic and acute trauma
What allows suggestible, malleable, self-states to form in response to severe stress? Much of this can be understood by distinguishing the nature of dissociative responses to chronic, lower-intensity trauma from responses to acute, higher-intensity trauma.
In response to chronic, lower-intensity trauma and shame- evoking trauma, self-states are likely to form and remain dissociated largely as a function of an active mental effort of the relatively non-traumatized self to shield itself from awareness of painful or unacceptable memories, thoughts, feelings and motives.
This is the mechanism of self-state formation emphasized by Dell (2009). Dell contends that dissociated self-states are formed by “dissociation-potentiated repression”, the defensive use of repression in individuals with substantial self-hypnotic or dissociative ability.
Thus, such dissociative self-states are born, in large part, by an act of self-agency, are more cortical than subcortical, and have the active organizing purpose of coping with the trauma that precipitated their formation.
These trauma-bearing self-states are also likely to remain dissociated from the relatively non-traumatized self by way of an ongoing mental defensive effort to disown the unacceptable. Some of these self-states “hold” knowledge of trauma that is intolerable to the host. Some are skilled at managing physical pain. Some may defensively identify with abusers and reject the self. Some may be internal self-helpers (ISHs).
Having formed to protect the self, I believe that these ego states are somewhat less susceptible to mind control, and, in some cases, successfully elude detection by the abusers. In contrast, in response to acute and higher-intensity trauma, the victim is likely to react more reflexively and instinctually. These responses probably largely derive from subcortical mechanisms that activate very quickly in response to perceived threat to physical or psychic survival, vs. purposeful, slower, cortically mediated mental activity (LeDoux, 1996). Some of these responses involve hyper-arousal, including fight/rage, flight/panic, and sympathetic nervous system arousal. Some involve hypo-arousal, including immobilization/freezing, passive submission, numbing, derealization, depersonalization, impaired attention and cognition, and lowered heart rate, breath rate, and muscle tone. These states are more a function of intense emotional and physiological states taking precedence over cognitive coping strategies as the trauma occurs, than the psyche’s efforts to extrude intolerable knowledge from awareness (van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996).
A third response to high-intensity trauma, perhaps only a reaction to perceived immediate threat to life, combines elements of hypo- and hyper-arousal. This state is characterized by sudden and surprising calm, absence of fear or pain regardless of the extent of injury, intensely focused attention, sensory hyper-acuity, mental quickness, and an expanded sense of time (Dell, 2009; Heim, 1892).
Mind control survivors report that self-states formed in response to high-intensity trauma arise spontaneously due to a break in self-agency, and are mentally registered apart from the other self-states from their inception. Accordingly, they remain dissociated from the host with less mental effort than self-states formed defensively. They intently focus on accommodating their abusers. Some remain internally “fixed in space and time”, reliving the pain and terror that provoked their formation (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, & Steele, 2006). Some perceive the pain and terror of the trauma they endured as “normal”, the only reality they know.
The model of “structural dissociation of the personality” of Steele, van der Hart, and Nijenhuis (2009) is close to what I believe occurs when self-states form in response to high-intensity, acute trauma, such as torture. Their model emphasizes that traumatic material is registered differently and apart from benign experience, as it occurs. They contend that an ongoing integrative deficit results in a structural dissociation of the personality, and only secondarily is this division a result of a psychological defence. They posit that when individuals experience aversive stimuli, such as a major threat, mental and behavioural “action tendencies” are activated to avoid or escape the threat. Such experience is registered in “emotional parts” of the personality, a separate psychobiological system than that employed to approach attractive stimuli and adapt to daily life, the “apparently normal parts of the personality”. If over- whelming trauma occurs to a child, or if a primary attachment figure is frightening, this hinders the otherwise normal developmental progression towards integration of the two psychobiological systems. The host’s phobic avoidance of traumatic memory held in emotional parts maintains the division, which probably involves a preconscious mental effort, a psychological defence.
States formed in response to high-intensity trauma are more rudimentary than self-states formed with less intense trauma. Some have a limited sense of “me-ness”. Many are only “fragments”. Both can develop an increased sense of self over time. For example, self-states formed in response to a particular kind of abuse tend to take executive control whenever that abuse is reapplied, and can have an autobiographical self within those episodes, including experiencing themselves as the age of the body at the last episode of that abuse.
Programmers use rudimentary self-states to construct personae to perform desired functions. Gresch (personal communication, 2008) explains that a young child’s immediate response to torture is to enter a survival-driven state of hypnotic heightened attentiveness and suggestibility that is ultra-receptive to learning. Thus primed, this state may be exploited in limited ways, such as “fragments” trained to obey commands or perform circumscribed behaviours to avoid punishment. Or, this state may be further aug- mented through a long-term “torture-hypno-conditioning process”, to carry out more complex executive functions. Terror controls this type of self-state long-term, in that it is stuck, “unable to leave the torture chamber in its own mind”.
In many cases, survivors discover self-states that appear moti- vated to serve their own needs, to later discover that programmers deliberately orchestrated their organizing purpose. For example, some ego-states see themselves as powerful or believe themselves to be “chosen” for some honoured position, but they are amnestic for the early, severe abuse, that forced their formation and kept them controlled. Genuinely human needs motivate such parts, but they are not born of psychological defence; they are deliberately induced to form, then conditioned and manipulated.
I believe that practitioners of torture-based mind control have a depth understanding of all of these kinds of dissociative states, calculatingly induce some types to form, limit some to holding pain and terror, condition some to perform executive functions of more complexity, manipulate “self-created” ego states to the degree that they can, all to exploit the unique properties of each to the fullest.
Torture to induce formation of self-states
Mind control survivors report that their abusers understand well that torture induces a dissociation-prone psyche to form new programmable self-states, and calculatedly torture victims for this purpose.
Carol Rutz, mind control survivor and author of A Nation Betrayed (2001), believes that existing self-states tend to “come up” in sequence from older to younger, to distribute the burden of torture being applied, until finally a defenceless baby appears, less capable of using the mind to cope, and more programmable (personal communication, 2009).
Many survivors claim that sophisticated abusers recognize that a new self-state has arisen when the child no longer reacts with terror or pain to the torture. This new state is immediately named and given directives. Abusers may also “install” the perception of entities and structures. These messages, entities, and structures become paired with pain and terror in the new trauma-bound state, which has no cognitive capacity to process or reject any of this input. This all remains dissociated from the host.
In this vignette, Rutz and her two-year-old self-state, “Little Girl”, recount programming at age four, designed to form a new self-state, “Samantha”. After administering a “truth drug”, the doctor says:
“Come forth little one—I need to know your name!”
Then the doctor says, “Who else?”
He knows we’s lyin so he makes our body jump and hurt real bad. We got lectricity going through us.
“Shadow, our name is shadow.”
Now they want to know who Shadow is.
Shadow gotted made at Grandfathers’ before we came here [describes ritual that induced the formation of Shadow].
Now they knows all our names. If ya knows our names—ya got power and control. They says theys gonna give us special numbers. Later Dr No, the lady Doctor says, “We are gonna help you, little girl, not to have any more pain. You don’t have to feel it ever again.”
“They’s gonna make Samantha come . . .”
(Intense electro-shock was delivered in order to allow my mind to dissociate and create Samantha who would never feel pain. In the future, whenever I was put through a tortuous painful experience, Samantha would automatically be the alter who took over the body and she would hide the memory and the pain from the rest of the system . . .).
“Back, just let the memories go back”
That be what the doctor tellin us alright. [Rutz, 2001, pp. 17–18]
In 2009, I asked Carol Rutz to help me understand how Samantha could both “never feel pain”, yet “hide the memory and pain from the rest of the system”. She explained,
“Samantha” took the pain and hid it from the rest of the system. So she really did feel pain, even though the lie [by the abusers] was that she would not. So, she “complied” and consciously believed she did not feel pain, but she did hold the pain, less consciously. The rest of the system did not feel pain. “Little Girl” certainly believed Samantha did not feel pain, and that was important because she was one of the main presenting alters. Whenever a situation occurred where pain was administered the alter, Samantha came out and encapsulated the pain.
“Blank slate” programmable mental states
Many survivors report that in response to prolonged, especially novel, torture, victims suddenly stop resisting and enter a paradoxically calm, pain-free, highly receptive and programmable mental state. They describe a psychophysiological mental state, not a state with a sense of identity. An anonymous survivor (2008) described this as “kind of like a memory stick for a computer. Not a fragment—just an object waiting to be written on.”
Fotheringham (2008) explains that novel torture reliably elicits such states:
Do a new form of torture. If it is a familiar form of torture, it will just default to the one who is programmed to take that . . . A new part forms . . . totally linked to self-defense and self-protection . . . constantly looking outward to know what to do to stay safe . . .
Gresch (personal communication, 2008) describes this process:
To evoke a “blank slate”, the torture must proceed until the victim stops resisting, beyond any feigned compliance, beyond the point of genuine obedience and submission, until the victim finally surrenders all personal intention, and then the programmers push even further, and achieve their goal, the blank slate state . . . The victim is calm and receptive. This is the physiological reaction to torture if applied in the right way . . . Your last chance for survival depends on receptiveness to everything the situation commands of you . . . The victim reaches a state in which it is extremely suggestible, in an extremely hypnotic state, ready to accept every- thing . . . They can implant a so-called “personality”, actually a script of personality, in this highly receptive ultra-learning state.
Gresch explained (personal communication, 2009) how this newly formed state does not experience pain or terror, yet is ultimately controlled by pain and terror in the moment and long-term:
This new state does not register in consciousness the painful torture that precipitated its formation, yet less conscious pain and terror continually fuel its receptivity and hyper-attention. Though disso- ciated states segregate this experience as it occurs, it is registered to some degree as a whole in the mind/brain. The programmed infor- mation is preserved intact, with little deterioration over time, largely through an associational neural network connecting it to the preceding pain and terror.
Dell (2009), in a recent synopsis of the literature on “peri- traumatic dissociation”, provides support for survivor accounts of tabula rasa states forming in response to life-threatening trauma. He explains that in response to perceived threat to life, people auto- matically enter a state of “absence of pain, absence of fear, a calm state of mind, a slowing of time, accelerated thought, clear think- ing, heightened sensory perception, and a heightened ability to execute motor skills with precision and confidence” (p. 762). Dell describes this response as “situation-specific”, “task-oriented”, and lasting “only as long as that life-threatening situation lasts” (p. 761). He calls this “evolution-prepared dissociation”, in that “perception is immediately adjusted and instantly tuned to the most survival-relevant aspects of the environment” (p. 760). Such a mental state would make torture victims highly receptive to programming.
Support for this phenomenon is found in the work of Albert Heim, who documented the experience of survivors of near-fatal falls in 1892. Heim found that 95% of fall victims experienced a mental state of “heightened sensory and ideational activity, and without anxiety or pain” (p. 135), the same mental state described by torture-based mind control survivors. Heim said of his own near-fatal fall, “my thoughts and ideas were coherent and veryclear, and in no way susceptible, as are dreams, to obliteration” (p. 134). Heim noted that hearing was the last sense to be lost. The ability to hear in near-death situations and enhanced memory acuity would both facilitate the objectives of mind control.
Psychological impact of naming new self-states
Assignment of names to self-states is central to mind control, as it was to Tien’s electrolytic love therapy. Abusers quickly assign names to define new self-states, such as “Evil”, or “Lolita”. Self- states tend to perceive themselves as belonging to whomever named them. If the programmer delays in assigning a name, and the self-state can name, it may be able to elude the trainer. Names allow programmers to call self-states forward. Survivors often guard the names of self-states to prevent their being summoned.
Gresch (personal communication, 2009) explains,
“The art of mind control is the art of controlling attention”. Names are a means for programmers to manipulate this attention. He explains,
Names combined with code phrases trigger the execution of programmed mental mechanisms, that is, thoughts, emotion, and behavior, in compliance with programmer instructions, fueled by fear conditioning. For example, if somebody says “I am your god, Peter Munk, one two three”, a programmed self-state based on a modified prototype of “Peter Munk,” a character in Wilhelm Hauff’s fairy tale, “Das kalte Herz,” [1858] will be activated. Peter Munk is unemotional, obedient, lacking in self-awareness, and motivated to avoid torture. This alter has been torture-hypno- conditioned to execute a number of mental actions, including (1) to activate Hugo, an other alter, to take the pain if Munk is tortured, (2) to report any access to the programmer, and (3) should any intention to resist programming enter the conscious mind, the image of a “pillar of power” will appear, the words will be heard in a threatening manner in the inner ear, the mind will be flooded with depression, and the conscious mind will feel a compulsion to once again be obedient to relieve the depression.
Gresch explained how this programming involving the “pillar of power” was effected:
The “pillar of power” was a magical object in the inner world of the “alter”, Peter Munk, which symbolized the concentrated power of the perpetrators. Peter Munk was instructed to imagine the pillar of power with his inner eye. He was then told to image that he was trying to pass the pillar of power, and to give a sign with his hand when he was about to do this. When he gave the sign, he was electro-shocked through an electrode fastened to his penis. The programmer commanded, “You shouldn’t try to betray me. Look! I now allow you to recognize that we have attached measuring sensors to your head. We have recorded the brain waves when you are trying to pass the pillar of power. We know what you are doing”. It doesn’t matter whether the perpetrators really were able to manage this. What counts was that Peter Munk believed it.
Polyvagal theory
What neurobiological mechanisms account for the formation of highly programmable self-states and mental states in response to torture? Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (1995, 1999) provides some clues. The vagus nerve is the longest of ten cranial nerves and is critical in responding to threat. Porges specifies two distinct branches of the vagus nerve in mammals: (1) The smart vagus, the phylogeneti- cally newer, ventral branch, and (2) The vegetative vagus, the phylo- genetically older, dorsal branch.
In response to threat, the smart (ventral) vagus first deploys the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), activates socially affiliative behaviour with the same species, that is, help-seeking, and main- tains relative calm. If this cannot effectively manage the threat, it shifts its strategy to fight or flight, mediated by the sympathetic ner- vous system (SNS). If fight or flight cannot adequately cope with the stressor, the vegetative (dorsal) vagus activates, inhibiting the heart via the PNS, yielding a “shut-down” of behaviour, tonic immobility, freezing, death-feigning, or submission to the threat. This reptil- ian/amphibian response may be considered a dissociative response (Beauchaine, Gatzke-Kopp, & Mead, 2007), perhaps similar to “evolution-prepared dissociation” as described by Dell (2009).
I corresponded with Porges in 2008 to determine whether the dorsal vagal responses of submission or paralysis may relate to mental states induced to form under torture, and whether such states might be receptive to encoding information, that is, being programmed. Porges explained that “a physiological state, in part, mediated by the dorsal vagal complex might promote dissociative states”. Porges also said that he believes that dorsal vagal states are mediated, in part, by oxytocin, a hormone important in pair bonding and social memory, and that this might yield strong bonds to the perpetrator (an other critical element in programming). He said that dorsal vagal states might facilitate one-trial learning, a rapid, relatively indelible conditioned response, closely connected to fear conditioning. He said that learning in this dorsal vagal state “may be disconnected from the experience and this may form the basis of a different personality structure”. He was careful to add that these hypotheses, and how they relate to states of calmness, remain to be tested.
Thus, the dorsal vagal threat response may contribute to a calm, receptive state, perhaps similar to Dell’s “evolution-prepared dissociation” (2009), that may be highly receptive to encoding information via one-trial learning and to bonding to the abuser, and information encoded in such states may become stored in a “differ- ent personality structure”, all responses advantageous for mind control.
Introjection of abusers and programmers
Most clinicians in the dissociative disorders field agree that internal representations of abusers are commonplace in DID, and that these are usually self-states who have taken on the demeanour of fright- ening abusers. Psychological mechanisms that drive the formation of “abuser self-states” include many variants of identification with the aggressor. Their “masks” often conceal young, trauma-bearing states. Many mind control survivors also report discovering self- states who were programmed to take on abuser characteristics in order to control other self-states.
Many survivors also perceive within them internalized pro- grammers, witchcraft spirits, and entities that are not self-states at all. These are experienced as “foreign bodies” installed in mind control. I believe that programmers often intentionally “install” repre- sentations of themselves in mind-control torture. Gresch (personal communication, 2009) explains,
The victim must execute the orders of the programmers when they are not present. So they try to “implant” themselves into the mind of the victim . . . Through torture, the perpetrators switch off the critical mind of the victim . . . All of the torture-enhanced faculties are exclusively fixed to the commands of the programmer, just like in hypnosis. This is much more than obeying—it is introjecting the perpetrators . . . The generic abuser maltreats the victim to satisfy his needs. But the mind controller uses torture and pain to trans- form the psyche of the victim.
Above, Carol Rutz described the torture-driven formation of “Samantha”. The next day, Rutz explains that, using drugs and hypnosis, Gottlieb created twin self-states specifically for govern- ment mind control: “Baby”, who was told it lived in “Neverland”, and “Guy” to live in “Shadowland” (Rutz, personal communica- tion, 2009). Then Gottlieb commanded, “The genie appears when Neverland is opened. Remember, I am your master and I am the genie” (Rutz, 2001, p. 19). Although survival-driven attachment needs are at play here, I believe that the internalization of this Gottlieb–genie must be understood as a foreign body, a psycholog- ical introject, not a self-state.
Many survivors also describe rituals in which witchcraft abusers “placed” parts of their “spirits” inside of them, usually in specific self-states, through the transfer of body fluids and substances. “Attached spirits” are perceived to internally repeat the controlling messages first spoken in rituals, such as, “You belong to me”, “You will obey me”, etc. Commonly, such abusers also “attach” their deities to strengthen the spirits’ effects. Affected self-states may also perceive that the abusers captured parts of their own spirit to hold captive within themselves. Even if the host views such “transfers” as impossible, self-states formed and indoctrinated in the “theology” of these abusers generally perceive them as very real, and the impact is devastating, as they feel inhabited by these “attached” entities.
Programming the unconscious mind
Many survivors report that programmers ultimately seek to install mind control beneath the level of all self-states in what their programmers called the “unconscious mind”.
The CIA document MORI 190713, “Hypnotism and covert operations” (1955) explains that an “operator” can use hypnosis to place the “conscious mind” in a state of “suspended animation” to “reach and affect the unconscious mind directly”, to “successfully” “transplant ideas and motives”, that are felt to be one’s “own free will”, with post-hypnotic amnesia for the hypnosis.
This document explains the powerful compulsion to follow hypnotically placed dictates:
Let us suppose that a good hypnotic subject has entered the deepest stage of hypnosis. If the operator then suggests, “After I awaken you, you will have no recollection of what has occurred. Further- more, exactly 1 hour after you are awakened you will go to the near- est telephone and dial (any number). To whomever answers you will say (any message),” in all likelihood the subject will do just that . . . If the subject after awakening remembers or is told that he has been given a post-hypnotic suggestion, what it is, and when it will become operative, he still will experience the greatest difficulty in resisting it. Almost the only way in which he can obtain release from an almost intolerable feeling of discomfort is to carry out the post- hypnotic suggestion as given him; or, alternatively, have the sug- gestion removed under hypnosis. For what has been created is very similar to, if not identical with a compulsion neurosis. [ibid., p. 8]
Survivors report that the unconscious mind is accessed in lengthy near-death torture by a complete breach of self-agency after all self-states have been taxed beyond endurance, before the victim can create another self-state, before the victim loses physical consciousness, or occasionally in the moments between two pre- existing states taking executive control. One psychologist-survivor explained (2009): “When you have an alter, you are fortified. You are motivated to protect the self. The space in between alters is when they can get to the unconscious mind.”
Survivors report that, once accessed, the mind is “laid bare” and records information with no ability to process, question, or reject input. It has no self-awareness, no emotion, no ability to act on its own behalf. It “believes”, or, more accurately, “takes in whole”, what it is told or shown. This is when programmers reportedly “install” much foundational programming, especially structures to organize the system of self-states.
Survivors report that structures are installed using commands and illusions. A child, having previously been shown a model of a building, may be told, “The building we showed you is in your mind”. The programmer may project a grid on a child’s chest, then command, “The grid is in your chest”, “Go inside the grid”. The programmer might put a button on a child’s navel and command that the button detonates a bomb if the child ever remembers. These commands and illusions become paired with the torture applied immediately before and after.
Steve Oglevie, mind control consultant (personal communication, 1996 to 2006), explains that this causes the structures, illusions, and commands to be perceived to be as real as the torture itself. Schwartz (2000), in a chapter largely devoted to mind control in his book, Dialogues with Forgotten Voices, explains:
[T]he power of all statements made during and immediately after abusive episodes while the victim is in an altered state will be enhanced by the absence of an operative critical consciousness (Conway, 1994) and by the indelible connection with intense fear, intolerable anxiety, or mind-shattering dread. [p. 318]
Because programming “installed” in the unconscious mind was never consciously registered in any self-state, it is usually more “deeply buried”.
Blank-slate mental states and the “unconscious mind” are simi- lar, but not identical. Victims report that programmers use the unconscious mind as a writable memory chip to store information, and use blank-slate mental states to develop self-states that can take executive control to serve abuser functions.
Massive memory storage
MKULTRA was interested in the use of hypnosis for enhanced memory storage and retrieval. MORI 190713 (1955) states:
Post-hypnotic suggestions . . . have been known to endure for years. The image that comes to mind is a blackboard on which a message will endure until erased or blurred by time. [p. 9]
. . . a hypnotized person can recall past events with astonishing clarity and detail, in many cases when he does not realize with his conscious mind that he “remembers”. [p. 19]
. . . One’s memory for detail under such conditions appears to be boundless. [p. 21]
Enhanced memory capacity is critical to much mind control, including memory for lengthy codes, secret information storage, enhanced skills, etc. Can human memory be enhanced to this degree?
Many survivors report that intelligent infants are selected for mind control programmes. And many survivors report having eidetic recall.
Many survivors also report training for acute memory and sensory skills, including being punished, often with electroshock, for failing to remember, failing to discriminate between similar stimuli, and failing to perceive low-grade stimuli. MORI 017395 (1961)
http://abuse-of-power.org/modules/content/index.php?id =31http://michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm states,
Learning studies will be instituted in which the subject will be rewarded or punished for his overall performance and reinforced in various ways - by being told whether he was right, by being told what the target was, with electroshock etc. [p. 6]
Gresch (personal communication, 2009) explains,
Like many victims, I was “programmed” with the tape recorder metaphor. I was trained to remember complex semantic informa- tion . . . If I failed, I was tortured . . . Application of torture causes the programmed information, programmed “post-hypnotic” cues to retrieve the information, and the pain and terror of the torture to be paired together and subconsciously isolated in ultra-long-term memory .
The capacity of the mind for vast information storage is supported by cases of hypermnesia and “hyperthymestic syndrome” (Parker, Cahill, & McGaugh, 2006; Tammet, 2007). I believe that programmers have learned to combine torture- based conditioning and the use of high-intellect victims to access and exploit a capacity for hypermnesia that may exist in many people.
Programming the host
Survivors report that extensive programming is done to develop a front/host personality who behaves “normally” and is amnestic for the abuse and the existence of programmed self-states. In “successful” programming, the host is shell-like, lacking much sense of self. It functions like a chameleon, adapting to the demands of each setting. Clinically, it suffers alexithymia, derealization, and depersonalization.
Survivors with shell-like hosts may be more likely to have had foundational programming in infancy. This often includes a divi- sion in the psyche between (1) the “normal” side, amnestic for the abuse, often associated with the daytime and right side of the body, and (2) the side entrenched in the abuse, often associated with the night-time and the left side of the body.
In some survivors, the host has some substance, depth, and emotional range. It is more of an agent of self motivated by genuine needs, curiosity, etc. In this case, dissociative barriers between the host and programmed parts may have formed largely through defensive processes, rather than exclusively by programmer design. Although such hosts are usually initially amnestic for their torture and relatively traumatophobic, they are usually more motivated to approach trauma material than shell-like hosts.
The interface of programmed self-states and the host
Two main mechanisms appear to control the interface between programmed self-states and the host: (1) specialized programmed self-states control “switching” of executive control between programmed self-states and the host, and (2) the pain and terror of programmed self-states flood the personality system when the host or other self-states violate programming (see next section).
Pierre Janet’s famous case of Lucie illustrates this first mechanism. Janet hypnotized Lucie to carry out post-hypnotic suggestions. Lucie executed these, but forgot doing so immediately afterwards. Lucie was also amnestic for being hypnotized. In contrast, Adrienne, Lucie’s second “hypnotic personality”, recalled everything that happened while Lucie was hypnotized, and claimed that she executed the post-hypnotic suggestions without Lucie’s knowledge (Dell, 2009, pp. 715–716). In successful mind-control, the host functions much like Lucie. The host is unaware of programmed parts or the directives they execute, but key programmed parts are aware of the host and largely control it, as did Adrienne.
Gresch (personal communication, 2009) explains that his controllers relied on three mechanisms: (1) a front façade, unaware of the abuse and other self-states, (2) a system of obedient robotic self-states, and (3) isolation of the “kernel”, the essence of his orig- inal self, which the programmers knew they could not extinguish, so must isolate. Obedience by all self-states was ensured by Peter Munk, “the mediator”, who believed that his controllers monitored his brain waves and would detect any intention to disobey. If resis- tance to any directive entered consciousness, programmed parts would re-experience their torture, pain would flood into conscious- ness, and the “front” would feel compelled to perform as directed.
Unconscious implicit memory for trauma and fear conditioning
Torture-based mind control relies on the capacity to induce victims to re-experience their torture should they violate programme direc- tives, while ensuring that the host remains amnestic for the source of his/her distress. Well-established psychological mechanisms explain how this “works”.
LeDoux (1996, 2007) provides extensive neurological and psychological evidence for two long-term memory systems: (1) an explicit memory system that is more conscious, cognitive, and verbal, and (2) an implicit memory system that is more unconscious, emotional, and non-verbal. LeDoux’s research reveals that implicit, unconscious memory of pain and fear “may represent an indelible form of learning” (p. 204). In post-trauma responses, “stimuli associated with the danger or trauma become learned triggers that unleash emotional reactions in us” (LeDoux, 1996, p. 150). LeDoux calls this form of classical conditioning “fear conditioning”. Fear conditioning appears to be fundamental to how torture- based mind control “works”.
LeDoux’s research shows that emotional information is largely subcortically mediated by the amygdala in responses engineered for survival—fast, largely automatic, and unconscious. In contrast, cortical responding is slower, conscious, and allows for mental flex- ibility, decision-making, and execution of one’s will in choosing how to respond.
LeDoux (1996) explains that much emotional learning, espe- cially fear conditioning, “operates independently of conscious- ness—it is part of what we called the emotional unconscious” (p. 128). The largely unconscious “emotional system” more strongly affects the conscious cognitive system than vice versa. Thus, “people normally do all sorts of things for reasons they are not consciously aware of (because the behavior is produced by brain systems that operate unconsciously)” (p. 33); “. . . we are often in the dark about why we feel the way we do” (pp. 52–53).
Survivors report that programmers intentionally use torture and drugs to attempt to block victims’ capacity for conscious cognitive processing. They then fear-condition trauma-bound self-states. Then, fear-conditioned responses are automatically executed outside of conscious, cognitive awareness.
Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele’s (2006) theory of structural dissociation dovetails neatly with LeDoux’s model of fear condi- tioning. In their model, EPs have a very limited sense of self, largely restricted to re-experiencing trauma. They store amygdala-medi- ated emotional and sensorimotor memories of terror and perceived threat, and are often fixated in past trauma with little awareness of passage of time.
Both models help us understand torture-based mind control, which relies on storage of memory for noxious emotional and somatic states in the subconscious implicit memory system of trauma-bearing EPs, and leakage of these implicit memories into the consciously experienced emotions, sensations, thoughts, impul- ses, and behaviours of ANP(s). When programming is working “well”, ANPs remain “in the dark” about the derivation of these noxious responses in the torture-conditioning of EPs.
Conditioned “triggers”, such as an abuser’s voice, hand signals, etc., induce uncontrolled fear and pain in the ANP. Similarly, fail- ure to perform in ways that avoided pain and terror by the EP, such as compliance with directives, induces a powerful need in the ANP to perform the conditioned behaviour.
It is clearly advantageous for programmers to “place” fear- driven programming in the largely unconscious amygdala and to bypass the conscious, will-based cortex. Accordingly, program- mers maximally fear-condition the amygdala-bound implicit memory system, largely within trauma-bearing EPs, to induce auto- matic responding, and maximally block cortical cognitive process- ing to attempt to eradicate critical thinking and assertion of free will.
Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning, that is, the use of reward and punishment to increase or decrease behaviours, is a mainstay of mind-control torture, usually applied to condition the behaviour of specific self-states. In this example of programming of almost unfathomable cruelty, Gresch (personal communication, 2008) provides an example of punishment with a twist—by proxy. Another victim is killed to train his “mediator” personality to properly allocate memories, to remember what the abusers want him to remember and to forget what they want him to forget:
The flower game: Forget me and forget-me-not: A perpetrator confronts the child with a list of common words like cow, flower, chair, or so. Every word is connected with “forget me” or “forget- me-not”. The list becomes longer and longer. The child is punished if he/she remembers or forgets the wrong words. Then the day of the big test comes. Target child is not tested, but another, expendable child. The test is staged as a ritual, maybe a Satanic ritual. When the tested child makes a mistake, the master of ceremonies kills this expendable child with a knife in front of the eyes of the target child.
Drug effects
MKULTRA drug experimentation on unwitting subjects is extensively documented (Ross, 2000; Scheflin & Opton, 1978; Thomas, 1989; Weinstein, 1988) including extensive evidence of testing drug effects on suggestibility, hypnotic states, psychophysiological stress responses, amnesia, and as truth serums for interrogation (e.g., MORI 017441, 144686, 190713).
Mind control survivors report extensive use of drugs to induce sedation, immobility, trance, and suggestibility, to induce dysphoric states (anxiety, nausea, pain) to punish resistance, to induce forma- tion of self-states, and to bring victims to near-death, to block the formation of memories, and to create amnesia. Drugs that induce pleasure are used to reward compliance: “Sometimes they give you drugs that let you experience hell, sometimes they give you heroin” (Gresch, 2009).
Many survivors recall programming to make them perceive the presence of vials of mind-altering substances in their bodies that will be released into their bloodstream or brain if they violate pro- gramme injunctions. Particular self-states are often programmed to remain fixed in sedated or hallucinatory drugged states, and pro- grammed to take executive control when victims begin to remem- ber, or risk disclosing, their abuse. These form the basis of much anti-therapy programming.
The impact of electroshock
Electroshock may be the most common form of torture reported by mind control survivors. It appears to have two primary uses, to produce amnesia and to induce pain. MORI ID 146342 (1951) reveals:
[a psychiatrist . . . a fully cleared Agency consultant] . . . stated that using this machine [Reiter] as an electroshock device with the convulsive treatment, he felt that he could guarantee amnesia for certain periods of time and . . . for any knowledge of use of the convulsive shock.
[The doctor] stated that . . . lower current . . . produced in the individual excruciating pain and . . . the individual would be quite willing to give information if threatened with the use of this machine.
Electroshock to the head sufficient to cause loss of consciousness and motor convulsions results in retrograde amnesia for the shock and preceding ten minutes (Shorter & Healy, 2007). None the less, there is evidence that the fear associated with the shock remains (Fox, 1993), as in fear conditioning. It follows that shock might cause programming to be registered fairly indelibly, albeit unconsciously.
Tien and Cameron used electroshock to respectively “erase” and “depattern” the mind. Post-electroshock, both found the mind more receptive to suggestion, consistent with survivor reports.
Many survivors report extensive use of electroshock to condition behaviour and to induce new self-states to form, often to their genitals and extremities.
Gresch (2009, personal communication) states, I was tortured with electricity most of the time. Most survivors will probably report electric torture at the genitals . . . The perpetrator has a hand gear with which he can lead electricity to the penis or vagina of his victim.
Shock level is easily modulated. Threats to increase shock, promises to stop, etc., ensure compliance. It is easily classically conditioned to neutral stimuli that can be used as triggers. An electrician explains,
The mental portion of shock is so intense . . . My cell phone vibrates and I get a fear reaction. It contracts the whole body. I can’t think of any other form of torture that would give a torturer any more control.
Coercive hypnosis and manipulation of the imagination
Survivors report that hypnosis is the basis of much mind-control. MKULTRA documents provide extensive evidence of CIA interest in covert, coercive hypnosis
(1) to block conscious processing and induce amnesia
(2) to induce dissociative states
(3) to make individuals execute “unethical actions”, combined with drugs, after. electroshock, during sleep, with auditory and visual stimuli, and after physical duress such as forced wakeful states, and
(4) to create post-hypnotic assassins
(MORI ID 144686, 017395, 017441, 190691, 190713). Estabrooks, one of the MKULTRA doctors, “publicly acknowledged the building of Manchurian Candidates” (Ross, 2000, p. 159).
Research has shown that one type of highly responsive hypnotic subject, the “amnesia-prone” individual, is likely to have been abused as a child and to have dissociative symptoms (Barber, 2000). Mind control survivors are dissociation-prone, amnesia-prone, and fear-conditioned to submit to their trainers. Receptiveness to hypnosis “involves the intentional evocation of a special state characterized by focused attention” (Putnam & Carlson, 2002). Survivors are primed for states of intense, narrow attention to environ- mental cues to ensure survival. A psychologist-survivor (2008) explains, “Fear focuses attention intensely, and survival information is encoded deeply.”
Rutz (2003) explains that her programming was eventually accomplished with hypnosis alone:
All the programming that was done to me by the CIA and Illuminati was trauma-based using things like electroshock, sensory deprivation, and drugs. Later the trauma wasn’t necessary, only hypnosis accomplished with implanted triggers and occasional tune-ups . . .Rutz reports that Gottlieb, her programmer, also induced new self- states, “Baby” and “Guy”, to form through hypnotic commands unaccompanied by torture.
Preschool children often make little distinction between reality and fantasy, actual events and pretend play. Programming begun in early childhood exploits their magical thinking and high hypnotiz- ability. Programmers know that fantastic perceptions and beliefs “implanted” in the first four years of life will “stick”, especially if “installed” in self-states dissociated from the host. Effects are enhanced by dependence on the programmer, “attaching” ominous entities, models, hallucinogens, and use of film.
This vignette illustrates the suggestibility of a frightened young child. Until she remembered this event, she was paralysed by the sight of maggots:
[T]here was beating and rape at the [abusers’ house] that generally ended with the body having to clean up the rotten fruit [with maggots]. There was the same basic message . . . every time. They told her the maggots were the first sign they knew the body was talking. They [abusers] would send that to the body. It was the first warning . . . “The truth of speaking out carries on the wings of the flies”. Then, the flies would bring back the warning . . . They said, “Flies are not of nature; they are witnesses to death, that’s what creates the maggots, to eat the dead body.”
Survivor Lynn Schirmer (2008, personal communication) explains use of story characters to develop self-states:
Elements of the Wizard of Oz movie were used in programming, especially the bit (in my case) about having no brain. Generally this was used to remind major alters inside of their limitations, that they can’t access certain parts or memories, and calls up programming that induces a hazy air-headed feeling. They actually played the little Tin man song in the lab room.
Much programming relies on illusions and films, often com- bined with torture and drugs to increase suggestibility. Programmer goals in staging these events include making self-states perceive
(1) that their abusers have magical power, usually over life and death
(2) that a harmful object or entity was installed
(3) that the victim was tortured, as in the film/drama
(4) that the victim behaved as in the film, for example, sexual films to build sexual alters, concentration camp films to form prisoner or torturer alters
(5) that others were killed due to victim disobedience
(6) that the victim harmed or killed others
(7) that personalities have died
(8) that the victim has powers of astral travel and psychic assassination.
Many survivors report being drugged, strapped to an elec- troshock device, and forced to watch a film that shows a child with similar features strapped to the same device. Victims believe they are watching themselves. One survivor described a camera point- ing at her to further cement the illusion. Terror and helplessness are compounded because no movement or vocalization effects the “self” in the film.
Many survivors who initially believed they were tortured in Nazi concentration camps later realized that these memories were black and white and that a number flashed at the beginning of the memory. They then realized that they were forced to watch a Second World War Nazi film.
In her Kabalah-Training Document, this anonymous survivor describes her programmers’ tricks:
The perpetrators believe that when the eyelids are closed the light that is seen through them confuses the mind making it unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. You can tell them they have been abducted by aliens and tell them what they are seeing in the alien ship. You can tell them that they have had surgery, and that a device for keeping track of them is hidden under their scalp. You can tell them that the eye of Lucifer has been placed in their stomachs to keep an eye on them . . . As long as a small cut or scar of some kind is done at the same time, they will believe the eye of Lucifer has been placed in their stomachs to keep an eye on them, and they will believe it forever.
Survivor Patricia Baird Clark (2001) describes use of models and hypnosis to install her inner world:
. . . a child may be . . . shown a castle . . . She spends several days in the castle going through painful, terrifying rituals in many of the rooms. She is forced to memorize the castle’s entire layout. There will be a small replica of the castle much like an architectural model . . . Once this has been memorized, she is subjected to magic surgery. A tiny replica of the castle is shown to the child and she is told that it is being placed inside. The castle is now “within” . . . In this person’s inner world she can now walk through the rooms and this castle has become as real to her in the spiritual dimension as it had been in the physical world. In subsequent rituals . . . the alters formed will be assigned to live in various rooms. These rooms are guarded by demons and booby traps are placed in strategic places so there is no escape . . . These castles have cold, dark dungeons filled with rats and snakes along with torture rooms . . .
Manipulation of attachment needs
Fear-driven attachment to one’s abusers is endemic to severe abuse. Van der Kolk (1989) explains, “. . . children in particular, seek
increased attachment in the face of external danger . . . When there is no access to ordinary sources of comfort, people may turn toward their tormentors” (p. 396).
In extreme abuse, appeasing the abuser subverts all self-advo- cacy. Schwartz (2000) explains, “The shocking absence of any anger at the perpetrators is entrenched and stays intact, as though prolonged immersion in sadistic abuse and extreme trauma bond- ing have almost completely reversed the self-protection system of the survivor” (p. 314).
Most mind control survivors recall their programmers developing bonds with key ego states beginning in the first few years of life as long-term tools of control, often designating themselves as “Daddy” or “Mummy” of particular ego states. Carol Rutz recalls Sidney Gottlieb telling her new alter, “Baby”,
“I am you mammer and your papper. You love only me, and I am the only one who loves you. I feed you and hold you, and you are mine alone” . . . Our baby part grew to love and depend on “Daddy Sid” as her only source of love and nourishment. From that day forward, a deep bonding took place . . . No matter what experiment he was to make me a part of, I would love and remain loyal to the man who my baby alter considered sole supplier of the basics of life, food, and love. [Rutz, 2001, p. 19]
A psychologist-survivor (2009) explains the readiness of newly formed states to bond to abusers:
The newly formed tabula-rasa state will naturally attach to the abuser. This is a survival-based physiologically driven bonding response. If the abuser says; “You are Samantha, I am your Daddy, I love you, you belong to me, you will come when I call,” this is taken in uncritically. Consistent with object relations and attachment theory, Gresch believes that identity develops within significant relationships. For self-states induced to form within torture, the significant other is the programmer. Accordingly, it defines itself by the interactions within that moulding process, whether that be stories, hypnotism, torture-based conditioning, etc. By design, it has no motives of its own, except to avoid torture through complete submission to the abuser.“Good cop–bad cop” and intermittent reinforcement are also used to build bonds. Children “excuse” and dissociate massive amounts of abuse to earn a pittance of highly “conditional” love.
Svali explains, The child is left alone, for . . . hours, to an entire day as the child grows older. If the child begs the adult to stay, and not leave, or screams, the child is beaten . . . The trainer will then “rescue” the child, feed and give it something to drink and bond with the child as their “saviour”. [1996]
Svali (ibid.) explains that her abusers conditioned babies to associate nurturing and attention with night-time and rituals, and abandon- ment with daytime, a time of no rituals, so that the infant “eventu- ally will associate cult gatherings with feelings of security”.
Bonds of romantic love are also exploited, including ritual marriages between ego states and key abusers. Two children are sometimes married to exploit each child for long-term control of both. Such “weddings” often include exchange of bodily fluids to “attach” the spirits of each child to the other.
Programmers understand that genuine loving bonds are a great threat to ongoing control. The need for love may override the fear of torture, helping victims break free. So, sophisticated abusers seek to extinguish all hope for love. Protectors may be impersonated, or drugged and brought to events, to make them appear as abusers.
Set-ups are used to destroy trust in law enforcement and child protection. One victim was made to believe that fire sirens meant that her abusers were watching. Police sirens played during abuse, and abusers in police uniforms, further cement fear. Many abuser groups include actual police officers.
Psychotherapy may be the greatest threat to programming. Many survivors report that when they begin therapy, their abusers intensify their programming to reinforce “Don’t remember–Don’t tell” programming and to bolster “reporter” self-states to monitor any threats to programme integrity.
Exploitation of defensive identification with the aggressor
Mind control victims are essentially hostages, dependent on their abusers for their lives. Accordingly, ego states usually form who deny their own needs and identify with their abusers (Frankel & O’Hearn, 1996). Such ego-states may align with ideologies of their abusers (Stockholm Syndrome), including “national security” and spiritual ideologies, and often terrorize other self-states internally. Programmers build on these defensive and survival responses, with characteristic pre-meditation, to serve their own ends.
Svali (1996) explains,
Many trainers will put themselves in the person, over the internal programmers or trainers . . . The survivor may be horrified to find a representative of one of their worst perpetrators inside, but this was a survival mechanism . . . The survivor may mimic accents, mannerisms, even claim the perpetrator’s life history as their own. Ritual abuse and mind control victims are usually forced to harm others as soon as physically able. Toddlers are made to “kill” animals, even if their hands must be forced. “Claims” or names designating them as “Murderer”, “Evil”, etc., “cement” these beliefs in targeted self-states.
No-win double-binds force victims to believe they freely “chose” to abuse others.
Survivor Lois Einhorn, PhD (2006), explains,
I continually face “choices” as my parents ask me unanswerable questions: “Do you want to be hit or hit your sister?” “Do you want to have darts thrown at your front or throw them at your sister’s front?” “Do you want to have a wire hanger put in you or do this to an animal?” . . . Through being hit with a switch, we play, “How high can we make my little tushi jump?” My father, mother, and sister each take turns and keep score. If my sister loses, she is hit further. [p.4]
Rage is manipulated to form abuser alters. Many survivors report being subjected to days-long torture to induce rage-filled parts to form, who are then trained as soldiers or warriors.
Svali (1996) explains:
. . . The child is severely beaten, for a long period of time, by the trainer, then told to hit the other child in the room, or they will be beaten further. If the child refuses, it is punished severely, the other child is punished as well, then the child is told to punish the other child. If the child continues to refuse, or cries, or tries to hit the trainer instead, they will continue to be beaten severely, and told to hit the other child, to direct its anger at the other child. This step is repeated until the child finally complies . . . The child will be taught that this is the acceptable outlet for the aggressive impulses and rage that are created by the brutality the child is constantly being exposed to.
Many abuser groups falsely promise key ego states that if they are loyal and obedient, they will eventually attain positions of power and reduced abuse. Most survivors have ego states who believe they were “chosen” for priest and priestess positions. These ego states are often amnestic for much of their early abuse, and only later realize that positions of power in their abuser group are only earned by “being able to take more pain” than other members.
Many abuser groups ultimately seek to develop individuals who consciously choose to be abusers. In the following description, Kernberg (1994) explains that the antisocial personality develops in a world of sadistic persecutors. This accurately depicts the world of mind control victims:
The antisocial personality proper may be conceived as a charactero- logic structure so dominated by hatred that primitive, split-off idealizations are no longer possible, the world is populated exclusively by hated, hateful, sadistic persecutors, and to triumph in such a terrifying world can only occur by becoming oneself a hateful persecutor as the only alternative to destruction and suicide. [p. 701]
Svali (1996) explains that her abusers subjected children to “betrayal programming” to squelch all loving bonds and to create a world limited to “hated, hateful, sadistic persecutors” to yield an antisocial psychic structure, a “willing” persecutor. Young children were given “saviours”, only to have these adults later betray them. Children were given so-called “twins” with whom to develop close bonds, only to be later forced to hurt or kill that “twin”.
Schwartz (2000) explains that addiction to power is the outcome in such sub-cultures:
Those who have not been personally exposed to those extremes may be unable fully to appreciate the compelling, corrupting, degenerative spiral of extreme power obsessions. History has shown that once an individual or group becomes inflated with power (Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, the Duvaliers, Stalin, to name a few), a pattern of extravagant sadism, wanton cruelty, and irrational and ultimately self-destructive binges of exhibitionistic violence leads to eventual explosion or collapse. History has yet to reveal that these same diabolical dynamics are at work outside the context of war and politics—in perpetrator groups inflicting their power on children worldwide in the form of unimaginable abuse. [p. 319]
Manipulation of “free will” and “the spirit”
The concepts of “free will” and “the spirit” diverge from the more traditional psychological concepts discussed thus far. However, many mind-control survivors report that the will and spirit were the most sought-after prizes of their abusers.
Gresch (personal communication, 2009) explains that program- mers go to great lengths to get victims to submit to their will:
The goal of mind control is total obedience. But, the absolute sover- eign of the inner world is the individual. A human being can’t be totally obedient unless he or she has decided to be. So the torturer must make his victim believe that total obedience is the best choice . . . An artfully tailored system of mechanisms subconsciously links every idea to resist with the experience of annihilating torture.
Victims of espionage-based mind control describe most of their programmers as strict behaviourists and brain scientists who exclusively seek control of the mind and will.
Abusive cults also seek to control the spirit. This survivor recounts use of drugs, hypnosis, formal “claims” and “attacments” to “trap” her spirit: “He drugged me. He said that he put my heart [spirit] in a chest with a lock. He put his heart over my heart, and said, ‘Your heart is mine, my heart is yours, I hold the key to your heart.”
Survivors of both espionage and ritual groups commonly report “anti-God” programming. Faith in a loving God provides hope and support, both threats to mind control. Programmers mix torture and illusion to induce fear of God. Some victims report electroshock by the “hand of God”. Many victims are programmed to invert all Judeo-Christian terms, to reverse “God” and “Satan”, love and hate, and all prayers. Victims commonly experience aversions to God, religion, and houses of worship. In sophisticated witchcraft abuse, a full half of the self-state system may reject God as a threat.
Both technological and spiritual programmers manipulate victims into defining themselves as shameful, evil, and unworthy of belonging anywhere but in the abuser group.
Fotheringham (2008) explains that her abusers’ Catch-22 set-ups left her with “soul-dead- ening shame”:
At age 5, the death and dissection of a kitten was proof of the black soldier alter being able to “stomach the job,” and at 6, a test proving “family loyalty” forced a choice for the dark blue alter between letting my little brother get hurt or letting our pet rabbit suffer and die . . . [A]ny capitulation in such double-bind situations left me with crippling, soul-deadening shame, guilt, powerlessness and helplessness, especially in the presence of people with authority or “good, decent people.” [p. 507]
This psychologist-survivor (2009) describes the Machiavellian tactics used to make her feel aligned with the devil:
They put me in a wooden casket and buried me . . . I heard the sound of shovels full of dirt hitting the top of the casket in a rhythm. Then I heard nothing. It was pitch-black dark. It was hard to breathe because there was dust in the air. Then, it goes blank. I believe I passed out from terror, lack of air, and believing I was dead . . . Then, I heard a sound and it was faint, then louder, then finally a shovel hitting the casket . . . I was yanked out by the same person who buried me. He said that people do not come back from the dead unless they make a deal with the devil, and he laughed in a sneering way. Then he said I had a choice. He said, “Get back in the casket, or do X.” This happened many times. The things I had to do to stay out of the casket were horrible, including sexual acts using animal parts, and hurting other people and animals. If I would not do as he said or get in the casket willingly, he would force me into the casket with spiders. When I came out, he said that I was not bitten because spiders do not bite people with bad blood. If I did the abuse he ordered, he said, “Look what you did, you are just like us, you are as evil as us, if you ever tell anyone, they will know you are as evil as us.”
The “soul-deadening shame” of recalling the harm done to others is the point where many survivors abandon their healing journeys, a trap intentionally set by programmers. Schwartz (2000) explains that in victims who were made to harm others, “Iden- tifying with abusers’ ideologies and motivations not only sustains attachment [to abusers], but allows victims to endure excruciating, otherwise intolerable guilt and shame” (p. 299). Defensive dissociation of the excruciating pain of facing that one harmed another human being may be the greatest driving force behind the compulsion to repeat evil in general.
Continued in chapter 3.
