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Quakers Shakers. Raised as a good go-to-meeting Methodist, Psychiatrist Sargant examined the dramatic conversions made by Methodism's Founder John Wesley, decided that they fitted Pavlov's pattern. After early failures, Wesley turned his back on appeals to the intellect, made a frank and crude assault on the emotions. He preached so eloquently and graphically of the horrors of hell-fire.and brimstone that the wayward among his hearers found the prospect an unbearable stress, says Dr. Sargant. He quotes Wesley as describing meeting after meeting at which the penitent burst into tears, cried aloud, sweated profusely, shook all over, and often fell into stuporous states. This final stage seemed to fit both Pavlovian theory and modern psychiatric observation—that a patient usually collapses exhausted after a soul-wringing catharsis which is achieved by reliving an emotionally damaging experience.
Psychiatrist Sargant sees these quick conversions under great emotional stress almost anywhere. He believes that every important conversion recorded in the New Testament (most notably that of Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of Christians, to Paul the Apostle) was of this type. In modern times, thinks Sargant, many conversions to and from Communism (e.g., Arthur Koestler's carefully recorded experiences) followed the pattern. So, too, did religious and pagan dedications among Voodooists in Haiti, among some tribes on the west coast of Africa, among the Quakers (says Sargant, because they "shook and trembled before the Lord"), among the lamas of Tibet and among U.S. revivalists, including those who induce frenzies by the handling of venomous snakes.
As Sargant sees it, the Inquisition used fear (i.e., of immediate torture or of eternity in the fiery pit) more than torture itself to stupefy an accused so that he readily confessed his heresy. Sargant glibly equates this with Communist techniques for extorting confessions and brainwashing and credits Russians and Chinese Reds with having refined their methods after a study of Pavlov.
Safety in Humor. Can any man be safe from involuntary confession or conversion? A few may, says Dr. Sargant guardedly. But not the "average man" or the well-adjusted extravert—he is already a conformist and will be more suggestible than other subjects. Neither does it do any good to be openly hostile; by the ultraparadoxical reaction, the most violent anti-Communists are as susceptible to brainwashed conversion as those originally friendly to Communism. The man best able to resist, says Dr. Sargant, is likely to be a husky, phlegmatic type with a good sense of humor.