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Sargant's Battle for the Mind has been extravagantly praised, not by fellow psychiatrists but by big-name laymen and critics, e.g., Philosopher Bertrand Russell, Los Angeles Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy, Critic V. S. Pritchett, Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr ("fascinating and profound"). Actually, plausible though it sounds, Sargant's thesis is based on shaky premises. He accepts uncritically the Pavlovian view that the brain and nervous system are something "which man shares with the dog and other animals." In effect, the human brain, probably because of its greatly enlarged cerebrum and vastly multiplied nerve junctions, is different in quality as well as quantity from that of even the higher apes. As a Pavlovian, Sargant sees all the phenomena he describes as "physiological" though obviously they depend on emotional reactions, with physical changes present only in some of them.
There is no evidence either that the latter-day Reds have applied Pavlov's principles to their practices in extorting confessions or making brainwashed conversions. Many experts believe that confession and conversion should not be lumped, that confessions involve different emotional mechanisms. (Another distinction: confessions and temporary conversions are common and easily obtained; true, long-lasting conversions are difficult and more rare.) An exhaustive study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Manhattan Drs. Lawrence E. Hinkle and Harold G. Wolff—based on hundreds of intensive studies of escaped and repatriated prisoners from Eastern Europe and China and with former Red inquisitors who have "come over"—showed that modern techniques of political persuasion behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains are simply an extension of time-honored methods used by cops and thought-controllers for centuries. The few refinements recently added are probably the result of studying past experience, not of applying Pavlov. But in the battle for his own mind, Psychiatrist Sargant has surrendered to Pavlov without a struggle.
*Paralleling Hippocrates' division of human temperaments into choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic.