There's just one huge problem with this theory: even if you do return people to the infantile state, there's one thing everyone agrees about that theoretically constructed state: that people, when in it, can't tell the truth from fiction. Michael Pollak
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You should look over the manual and see what you think. They deal with the above objection by saying that the point isn't to reduce people to an infantile state, because apathy sets in. The preferred state is found some where above apathy, but below the subject's normal abilities to resist. (I would add, in the case of totalitarian terror, or prison, or long term detention however, apathy is the preferred outcome.)
Most of it was pretty convincing to me. Also remember that the methods were preparation for interrogation and didn't deal with interrogation as such.
So, add both parts up. The basic outline of the process is trauma, disorientation, confusion (to induce to regression) followed by questioning, questioning, questioning, which usually leads to compliance. Just repeat the same steps as necessary and pretty soon you get what you want.
Beyond preparations for questioning there is a whole world and art of interrogation: police and detectives, FBI, CIA, prosecutors, lawyers doing depositions. All these people are experts at getting out whatever information needed in questioning. They can and do break people down all the time, find out what they know, expose lies, ferret out knowledge and re-construct events, people's relationships, guilt or innocence and all sorts of other things. In some respects it is a very normal business.
Let's take the hostile deposition as an example of how to do an interrogation. I've been through several of these, so this is mostly personal experience. I am going to exaggerate, but basically this is the way these things work.
Every aspect of the rooms, lighting, temperature, seating, supply of amenities like water, tolite, and breaks, plus time and location are all controlled by your enemy. The purpose of the deposition is supposed to be to get at the truth of something and collect evidence. In fact the point is to destroy the truth, destroy the credibility of your testimony and destroy evidence by destroying you.
The questions, particularly the timing, scope, the apparently random and searching nature of the questions, the neutral or dis-believing pretense of the questioners, their seeming confusion and pretended inability to understand some answer, their use of contradictions in your `versions' which don't exist---which they, themselves have created, the repetitions, the circumlocution, the obviously trivial and petty nature of many questions, the attempts to work every angle of the same basic question that has already been answered over and over, then the use of the angles as the means to point to contradictions in `different' `versions', endless and meaningless verbal traps that set you up as a liar, and the extreme of tedium and tension are all orchestrated to position you in a subjugated and compliant position---and they all work very well to that effect. To be deposed, to be interrogated by detectives or FBI agents who are experts at manipulating human nature is an experience nobody should miss.
There is also a basic concept as well as a process. The idea is to use the person's own emotional state against them. In effect, make them their own tormentor.
Everybody has emotional reactions to these situations. From the interrogators point of view these reactions are the key to how to conduct the questioning. The basic idea is to use whatever the subject's normal reactions are, against them, so that their own emotions and their ability and inability to control them are the source of the torment. It's a little difficult to understand how this works unless you've had this technique used against you in a systematic and deliberate fashion.
How to explain it? As an interrogator you look for reactions and test them to see how they work. You figure out how to evoke them and assuage them, how to turn them on and turn them off. You manipulate this on-off aspect, all the time you are questioning, often about trivial matters that have little to do with content you are seeking. When you figure out how to turn on and turn off the emotive system of the interrogatee, then you can use it against them. You can frustrate their ability to control their own reactions so that these reactions no longer match the immediate question or circumstance. You can force them to lie about trivial and already known information just to cover the `truth' of their own reactions and some earlier supposed lie on some equally trivial matter, then expose them to their own contradiction and lies---which you have forced them to create on their own. They go crazy trying to work their way out of it. No matter what they say, they face a lie they have created and have to admit in order to cover some other lie they also created. (Of course you have created all these lies through the questioning---not them) If you want too, at some point you can begin leading the subject into your `version' and get them to support it with their own eagerness to escape some earlier contradiction they thought they made, but in fact which they have been trapped into creating for themselves. (I am telling you this shit is mind boggling)
These sorts of traps destroy the subjects emotional control, which in turn ruins their critical judgment independent of whatever is at issue. Pretty soon they can't keep track of what is true and what is a false. They think their job is to keep focused on what is true (or what they might really be lying about). But that's a mistake. The more they try to keep focused on what is true (or try to hide), the more you can destroy them by showing it is unbelievable, it isn't true, can't be true---and since they have contradicted themselves already this is just another one of those times. So even if what they say is in fact true, they can no longer really adhere to it as sincerely as they want. They will argue in frustration that `you' don't understand. That's also a mistake. Their emotional reactions are taking over and tormenting them. Now you turn them off at the height of their frustrated annoyance and let it simmer, by moving on to supposedly `new' territory. Of course you are headed right back to building up the same emotional self-destruction all over again via a different route.
There are additional considerations. For example most of the `truth' may probably be known and understood and (probably) most interrogations are used to confirm, reject, or fill in additional information, or may be completely unrelated to what the subject thinks is at issue. Most subjects are probably blind to the purpose, intention or motive, and blind to interrogator's state of knowledge. As an interrogator your subject will not know what you know, while you probably already know most of what they know. So it doesn't matter too much that the subject loses track of what is fact and what is fiction. More importantly, they are losing control of themselves. (Part of the regression process is losing emotional control) Your job is to sort out what's probably true or false (probably later)---but you make them thrash back and forth until they can't sort it out any more for themselves. If you are careful and keep track you can usually re-construct what really is truth from what is most likely false, plus you collect all sorts of details that may come in handy later.
And there is something else that most people don't realize at all. Few people have listened to themselves on tape or have read in writing what they said in answer to extended questioning. In other words, most people don't know what they are saying a lot of the time. They think they know, but that is much different from reading it. Plus, most lies are so transparent they are laughable. Interrogators, cops, and lawyers understand all this very well.
Anyway, most people starting off fresh, calm and awake can't take more than a few hours of this sort of thing. If you add some trauma and disorientation and the person is not expecting to be questioned, the effect is overwhelming.
CG