PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SCIENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice Edited by Laurens Schlicht Carla Seemann Christian Kassung carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture Series Editor Sherryl Vint Department of English University of California Riverside, CA, USA carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de This book series seeks to publish ground-breaking research exploring the productive intersection of science and the cultural imagination. Science is at the centre of daily experience in twenty-first century life and this has defined moments of intense technological change, such as the Space Race of the 1950s and our very own era of synthetic biology. Conceived in dialogue with the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this series will carve out a larger place for the contribution of humanities to these fields. The practice of science is shaped by the cultural context in which it occurs and cultural differences are now key to understanding the ways that scientific practice is enmeshed in global issues of equity and social justice. We seek proposals dealing with any aspect of science in popular culture in any genre. We understand popular culture as both a textual and material practice, and thus welcome manuscripts dealing with representations of science in popular culture and those addressing the role of the cultural imagination in material encounters with science. How science is imagined and what meanings are attached to these imaginaries will be the major focus of this series. We encourage proposals from a wide range of historical and cultural perspectives. Advisory Board Mark Bould, University of the West of England, UK Lisa Cartwright, University of California, US Oron Catts, University of Western Australia, Australia Melinda Cooper, University of Sydney, Australia Ursula Heise, University of California Los Angeles, US David Kirby, University of Manchester, UK Roger Luckhurt, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK Colin Milburn, University of California, US Susan Squier, Pennsylvania State University, US More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15760 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Laurens Schlicht · Carla Seemann · Christian Kassung Editors Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice Perspectives on its Epistemologies, Technologies, Modes of Subjectivization, and Cultural and Political Dimensions in the Twentieth Century carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Editors Laurens Schlicht Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation Universität des Saarlandes Saarbrücken, Germany Carla Seemann Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation Universität des Saarlandes Saarbrücken, Germany Christian Kassung Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Humboldt University of Berlin Berlin, Germany Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture ISBN 978-3-030-39418-9 ISBN 978-3-030-39419-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Hellwig, Albert 1929. Okkultismus und Verbrechen. Berlin: Hanseatischer Rechts- und Wirtschaftsverlag This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Contents 1 Introduction Laurens Schlicht and Carla Seemann 1 Part I Technology and Mind Reading: Perspectives on Media and Occult Practices 2 3 4 5 Electrical Potential: Mind Reading as Collaborative Action Melissa M. Littlefield 19 The Omega Factor: The Revival of Telepathy in the 1970s Roger Luckhurst 43 Visualizing Thoughts: Photography, Neurology and Neuroimaging Anthony Enns 63 How Stage Magic Perpetuates Magical Beliefs Christine Mohr and Gustav Kuhn 93 v carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de vi CONTENTS Part II 6 7 8 9 10 11 Reading and Interpreting the Criminal Mind: Practices of Policing and Political Control The Idea of Reading Someone’s Thoughts in Contemporary Lie Detection Techniques Larissa Fischer Reading the Criminal in the Austrian School of Criminology: Unveiling the Deviant Character Through Measurement and Intuitive Introspection Christian Bachhiesl Reading Children’s Minds: Female Criminal Police and the Psychology of Testimony, ca. 1920–1944, the Cases of Maria Zillig and Berta Rathsam Laurens Schlicht Mind Reading Through Body Language in Early Spanish Criminology and Juridical Psychology Annette Mülberger “Talk to Each Other—But How?” Operative Psychology and IM-Work as “Micro-Totalitarian Practice” Martin Wieser A New Look for Psychology: Reading the Political Unconscious from the Authoritarian Personality to Implicit Bias Michael Pettit 109 139 163 191 223 247 273 Index carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Notes on Contributors Christian Bachhiesl is a Lecturer at the University of Graz, curator of the Hans Gross Museum of Criminology and vice director of the University Museums of Graz. His publications include papers, edited volumes and books on the History of Science, especially the history of criminology. His book Zwischen Indizienparadigma und Pseudowissenschaft (2012) combines history of science with philosophy of science. In the last years, he extended his research to central aspects of historical epistemology, e.g. the role of intuition in science (Intuition und Wissenschaft, 2018). His approach is an interdisciplinary one. His latest publications deal with greed and corruption in antiquity (Gier, Korruption und Machtmissbrauch in der Antike, 2019) and with the role of chance and serendipity in science (Zufall und Wissenschaft, 2019). Anthony Enns is an Associate Professor in English and Media Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work on esoteric media practices has appeared in such journals as communication+1, continent, Radio Journal, The Senses and Society, and Culture, Theory and Critique as well as the anthologies Picturing America (2006), Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology (2008), The Ashgate Research Companion to Victorian Spiritualism and the Occult (2012), Vibratory Modernism (2013), and Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural (2019). vii carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Larissa Fischer studied sociology, German literature and cultural studies at the Universität Konstanz. She has been working on her Ph.D. on the cultural implications of lie detection procedures in practice and research in Germany since 2017. She is a research assistant in the DFG project “From Polygraph to Brain Scan” at the Universität Hamburg and since 2019 at the RWTH Aachen. Christian Kassung is Professor of Cultural Techniques and History of Knowledge at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2007, his professorial dissertation was on the pendulum and its meaning for the history of knowledge. He is Vice Director of the “Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques” and Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity”. Since 2018, he is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Gustav Kuhn is a Reader in Psychology at Goldsmiths University of London, and the director of the MAGIC (Mind Attention & General Illusory Cognition) lab. He obtained his D.Phil. at Sussex University, UK, after which he was awarded a Wolfson post-doctoral Fellowship at Durham University. Kuhn applies an interdisciplinary approach to studying human behaviour and cognition, and his efforts include, but are not limited to using magic to study a wide range of psychological questions, around consciousness, attention, perception, magical beliefs, deception, free will. The MAGIC-lab strongly encourages an interdisciplinary approach that allows us to bridge the gap between the real-world knowledge acquired by magicians and the sciences (Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science…). In collaboration with Christine Mohr he has been exploring how people interpret different types of magical events, and the impact that this misinformation has on people’s beliefs. Melissa M. Littlefield is a Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on contemporary and historical intersections between neuroscientific technologies, science fiction, and popular media. Littlefield’s most recent book, Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) concerns the emergence of mobile, user-centred EEG devices and the popular and scientific discourses that fuel their distribution and use. She is also the author of The Lying Brain: Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction (University of Michigan Press, 2011) and co-editor (with Jenell Johnson) of The Neuroscientific Turn: Transdisciplinarity in carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix the Age of the Brain (University of Michigan Press, 2012). Littlefield has co-edited the Society for Literature and Science’s journal, Configurations, since 2013. Roger Luckhurst is Professor of Modern Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of The Invention of Telepathy 1870–1901 (2002) and several other books, including Corridors: Passages of Modernity (2019). Christine Mohr is a Full Professor in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Before that, she was a lecturer, then senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, UK. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Previously, she studied Psychology at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Today, her research focuses on i) human beliefs, and ii) the relationship between colour and affect. In the domain of humain belief, she is studying the cognitive, neuropsychological, and personality correlates of magical and paranormal beliefs. She performs studies in the laboratory aimed at determining the mechanisms that can explain, at least partially, the extent to which people vary in their beliefs. More recently, she started to work with Dr. Gustav Kuhn on human beliefs using magic. They launched a comprehensive research program which is described in their current contribution. Annette Mülberger is Professor at the Heymans Institute (University of Groningen) and director of the research group Theory & History of Psychology. Until 2019 she had been teaching at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she directed the Centre for History of Science (CEHIC) since 2016. She is a member and former president of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences. Her publications include papers, edited monographic issues and books dealing with a historical perspective on the debate about the limits of science, replication crises in psychology, and mental testing. Her book on the history of spiritualism and parapsychology in Spain was published in 2016 (Los límites de la ciencia, Madrid: CSIC). For more information see Academia.edu. Michael Pettit is a Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has published widely on the history and public understanding of psychology in journals such as The American Historical Review, Social Studies of Science, Isis, BioSocieties among others. His first book was The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS (University of Chicago Press, 2013). He is currently working on a history of psychology since the cognitive revolution. Laurens Schlicht is a Research Assistant at the chair of “Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation” of Saarland University. From 2016 to 2019 he worked at the chair of history of knowledge and cultural techniques (Christian Kassung) of HumboldtUniversity, Berlin. His Ph.D.-thesis, defended in 2016, focused on the group of the Société des observateurs de l’homme (1799–1804) and on the question of how the human mind has been made an object of empirical research. His research interests are the history of the human sciences with a focus on the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century France. He is currently working on a history of the use of psychological knowledge in police contexts, especially the Female Criminal Police in Germany, 1900–1945. Carla Seemann is Research Assistant at the chair of “Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation” of Saarland University. She studied at the Department of Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and was co-worker of the research project “Mind Reading as Cultural Practice”. Her research interests are the history of psychology and the use of psychological knowledge in political and social contexts. Currently, she is working on her Ph.D. project on peace research in France and Germany in the post-war era. Martin Wieser is Assistant Professor for Theory & History of Psychology at the Sigmund Freud University Berlin. With a background in Psychology, Philosophy and the History of Science, his research focuses on the use and function of images in psychology, the history of psychology in national socialism and, most recently, the integration of psychological knowledge in the state security of the GDR. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de List of Figures Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Bowl of molasses experiment (Source Robert Collyer, Psychography, or, the Embodiment of Thought; with an Analysis of Phreno-Magnetism, “Neurology,” and Mental Hallucination [Philadelphia: Zieber and Co., 1843], 31) Photograph of the od (Source Karl von Reichenbach, Odische Begebenheiten zu Berlin in den Jahren 1861 and 1862 [Berlin: E. H. Schroeder, 1862], n.p.) Biometric device (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, Les vibrations de la vitalité humaine: Méthode biométrique appliquée aux sensitifs et aux névrosés [Paris: Baillière, 1904], 6) Luminous peas extracted from my forehead (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible [Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913], 204) The portable radiographer (Source Fernand Girod, Pour photographier les rayons humains: Exposé historique et pratique de toutes les méthodes concourant à la mise en valeur du rayonnement fluidique humain [Paris: Bibliothèque générale d’édition, 1912], 149) Effluvia from an electrified hand resting on a photographic plate (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible [Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913], 222) 66 67 69 71 72 73 xi carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de xii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 4.9 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5 Fig. 7.6 Fig. 7.7 Fig. 7.8 Fig. 7.9 Digital effluvia (Source Jules-Bernard Luys and Émile David, “Note sur l’enregistrement photographique des effluves qui se dégagent des extrémités des doigts et du fond de l’oeil de l’être vivant, a l’état physiologique et a l’état pathologique,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances et mémoires de la Société de biologie 4, no. 10 [1897]: 516) The first bottle (Source Louis Darget, Exposé des différentes méthodes pour l’obtention de photographies fluido-magnétiques et spirites: Rayons V [Vitaux] [Paris: L’Initiation, 1909], n.p.) Untitled (Source Ludwig Tormin, Magische Strahlen: Die Gewinnung photographischer Lichtbilder lediglich durch odisch-magnetische Ausstrahlung des menschlichen Körpers [Düsseldorf: Schmitz and Olbertz, 1896], 1) Hans Gross (1847–1915) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) “Geometrical identification” (Hans Gross: Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, Polizeibeamte, Gendarmen u.s.w., 2nd edition [Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1894], 228) Drawing documenting a crime scene, ca. 1900 (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) Adolf Lenz (1868–1959) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) The prisoner Josef Streck (Lenz, Grundriß der Kriminalbiologie, 226) Envelope containing the documents of the criminal-biological examination of Josef Streck, 1927 (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) Ernst Seelig (1895–1955) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) Ernst Seelig’s apparatus for the registration of expression, based on an apparatus designed by Otto Löwenstein (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) Table with curves showing the reaction of a person examined by the apparatus for registration of expression (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 74 76 77 141 142 145 148 151 152 153 155 156 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5 Mira’s monotonometer (Source Emilio Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 2a ed. [Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1945], p. 171) Two patterns registered with the help of the monotonometer (Source Mira 1945, p. 174) An experimental subject doing the PMK test (© Annette Mülberger) Lineogram of the PMK test. a pattern sheet. b tracings of a “normal” and psychologically balanced person. c a mentally ill person of 43 years who had killed one person and attempted to kill another (Source a Archive for History of Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, picture taken by Annette Mülberger. b Mira [1945, p. 303]. c Mira [1945, p. 317]) Zig-Zag-lining of the PMK test. a pattern sheet. b an adult with high educational level (“elite personality”). c a schizophrenic patient (Source a Archive for History of Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, picture taken by Annette Mülberger. b Mira [1945, p. 99]. c Mira [1945, p. 109]) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de xiii 206 207 209 209 210 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Laurens Schlicht and Carla Seemann Most contemporary German encyclopaedias have recognized the shows of the American mentalist John Randall Brown (1851–1926) as the beginning of the phenomenon of “mind reading.”1 In this specific sense, mind reading in its simplest form was considered “the art of finding a hidden object, in which the seeker, blindfolded, grasps a knowing ‘medium’ by the hands and guides him or her during the search. It is based on the observation of the muscle contractions of the medium, which occur when the right path is taken” as the German encyclopaedia Brockhaus tells us in 1911.2 The explanatory scheme of the unconsciously exposed muscle contractions of the medium, provoked by mental images and thus also called “ideomotor movements,” was considered “proven” by William Preyer’s “palmograph”—an apparatus to detect the smallest muscle contractions of the hand—as a German philosophical dictionary puts it in 1907.3 L. Schlicht (B) · C. Seemann Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany e-mail: laurens.schlicht@uni-saarland.de C. Seemann e-mail: carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_1 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 2 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN In 1886, William Preyer (1841–1897), professor of physiology at Jena University, formulated in “The Explanation of Mind Reading” (Die Erklärung des Gedankenlesens ) the necessity to prove mind reading scientifically and therefore to transfer it from the context of popular entertainment to the realm of natural science.4 Preyer wanted to demonstrate that mind reading was a simple and trainable technique and rejected its interpretation as “magnetic rapport” (magnetischer Rapport ) or “mental radiation” (psychische Strahlung )5 stemming from the rather spiritistic contexts of mesmerism. In his view, mind reading was simply a physical process during which a certain mental image of an object was unconsciously translated into an automatic muscular reaction which allowed the mind reader in the above-mentioned constellation to be guided to the hidden object.6 He wanted to visualize the muscular contraction related to a specific mental image with his palmograph which “translated” involuntary movements of the arm—caused physically (by breath or pulse) or psychophysically (by mental images)—graphically into a curve. With his apparatus, he aimed to substantiate that “the muscle contractions occurring independently of mental activity have a uniform character, whereas the others do not.”7 There existed alternative interpretations of mind reading at the same time. For example, Max Dessoir (1867–1947), one of the leading figures of Berlin Psychological society, in the same year wrote “On the History of Mind Reading” (Zur Geschichte des Gedankenlesens ),8 in which he reported on observed phenomena which in his eyes could not be explained by the theory of ideomotor movements, that is, by the observation and measuring of unconsciously exposed muscle contractions. In contrast to this theory, Dessoir was only interested in a form of mind reading he called “supernatural thought transmission without bodily contact.”9 He argued that the most desirable version of mind reading was a thought transmission which transferred mental pictures over any distance. Dessoir demarcated his own approach from two other categories of mind reading: firstly, the one practised by show masters who in his view just used trickery; secondly, the physiologist model represented by Preyer and others.10 In contrast to both, Dessoir aimed at an experimental scene in which all conscious or unconscious transmission of thoughts through one of the bodily senses had to be excluded.11 Therefore, he also had to slightly change the experimental setting: the subject functioning as receiver of the thought-image left the room while the name of an object was written on a piece of paper which was shown to the members carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 3 of the experimental group. The latter had to concentrate mentally on the object when the receiver came back into the room so that the receiver could see the image in his or her own imagination.12 The reception of these mental images in Dessoir’s sense could also be refined in order to extend the distance of transmission or the complexity of the objects to be transmitted (so, for example, in more advanced settings the attribute of the will [Willensantriebe] or more abstract impressions of the senses could be transmitted as well). The quoted actors can be regarded as exemplary figures in a network of practices of and reflections on mind reading. They illustrate the variety of topics dealt with by scientists, show masters or mediums related to this practice. Mind reading, thereby, presented itself as a new field of enquiry for disparate forms of practices and soon it became important for these actors to set their boundaries. In the above-described discussion, one of the central demarcation lines was the question as to what forces constitute our psychical universe. Mind reading stimulated exactly these questions of scientific ontology. We want to give only one example from the field of psychology: Karl Marbe, experimental psychologist and professor at Würzburg University.13 As a relatively new academic discipline, at the beginning of the twentieth century, psychology had to protect its claim for scientificity and therefore was particularly vigilant with regard to any putative threat. Marbe wanted to show that indeed mind reading, the ability to know someone’s thoughts without her or him telling explicitly, existed and even formed an integral part of our everyday life, but had nothing to do with any occult or spiritual ability or force. Therefore, Marbe conducted a number of experiments to test the ability of his students in mind reading, aiming to prove the superfluity of any occult or spiritist ability when it comes to literally “reading” people’s minds; in other words, using any kind of resource outside the universe of known scientific techniques or objects was completely unnecessary because for him true mind reading was not supernatural, but a mundane, natural skill. Show masters, as Marbe claimed, have used either simple tricks to feign the ability of mind reading or, conscious or not, used simple predictive knowledge stemming from statistical inference.14 One type of experiments conducted by Marbe therefore basically consisted in testing if some types of events which appeared to occur randomly in effect showed some regularities. For example, he used an epidiascope (a kind of projector) to present his students a number of cards and invited each to remember just one of them.15 He wanted to know if the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN cards remembered were in fact distributed randomly or if there was some repeatable structure. The result of this experiment was that there indeed existed preferences for some cards. People would usually choose the ace to remember, then high numbers, then the jack, queen, king, etc., evidence for what he called the “Gleichförmigkeit des psychischen Geschehens,” the uniformity of mental events.16 Marbe claimed that the effect of this uniformity could even be increased by the force of suggestion. With his theory of uniformity, Marbe challenged two fields of knowledge, which in his view had been harmful: theories of a collective “spirit,” like the spirit of the “Volk” or of an era, and any type of parapsychological or occultist explanation of the link between two individual spirits. For Marbe, stage performers presented “mind reading” using an array of different techniques, more or less simple tricks, like the statistical inference, a refined ability to detect the smallest muscle movements. With reference to the famous Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), Marbe tells in an autobiographical text of 1945 that he himself had successfully reproduced these show tricks of “mind reading” based on previously agreed secret signs.17 Mind Reading as Contest Zone The previous examples may illustrate that through the concept of mind reading, seemingly separate fields of practice and knowledge became connected—for example, interrogation practices and occultist séances, statistical knowledge and stage magic, neuroscience and popular media. On a conceptual level, “mind reading” became a possibility for building a shared reference for a socially and epistemically heterogeneous group of actors and practices. The concept of mind reading was open enough to give the actors involved enough latitude to fill it with new content. At the same time, the concept was sufficiently clearly delineated to serve as a point of focus for epistemic and social controversies.18 This conceptual fuzziness was the result of groups of very different social and epistemic reputation delineating the meaning of this concept each in their own way, in order to negotiate ontological, epistemological or social issues at stake (see below). In history, sociology and philosophy of science, similar phenomena have often been analysed based on the work of Ludwik Fleck.19 Inspired by historical epistemology, this kind of research posed the question of how actors with different backgrounds working on the same object can actually carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 5 communicate with each other. At times, this communication can be simplified by defining central joint interests or points of contention through a common conceptual reference. When the actors referred to mind reading, we assume that they referred to exactly such a weakly defined field of possible points of contention (like the legitimacy of breaking into the thoughts of others, the desirability of a widespread use of mind reading or forms of its technical realization). One argument of this research was that concepts too rigidly defined prevent rather than promote communication and innovation processes. For instance, Ilana Löwy analysed the case of immunology, wherein she proposed to analyse “loose concepts” that may even remain imprecise throughout their life cycle and thus enable the building of what Peter Galison has called a “trading zone”20 or, as Löwy adds, a more stabilized “pidgin zone,” which unites different professional groups: “On the social level such ‘permanently imprecise’ concepts may moreover favour the development of ‘federative’ experimental approaches and may facilitate the long-term maintenance of loose coalitions of institutional alliances between pre-existing professional groups.”21 We assume that, analogous to the description of experimental systems, the negotiation of political and social challenges is often grouped around such permanently imprecise concepts. They serve to define the political, social or epistemic differences that are at the centre of these debates.22 Apart from the fact that mind reading was a concept that was referenced in order to enact such differences, it also fulfilled the function of transferring knowledge about the objects in question. In this way, these “loose concepts” build zones for trading knowledge but also take part in the struggle over the legitimacy of forms of knowledge and knowing, thereby creating what one could call “contest zones.” The case of mind reading is such a contest zone, creating a space of discourse and practice that was structured by disagreement over vital political, social and epistemic values. In this sense, as also Löwy emphasizes, the imprecise character of concepts is not a transitory phenomenon, at least as long as the kinds of disagreement connected to it continue to exist. Different groups aimed at interpreting mind reading in line with their own political, social or epistemic aims. Starting from 1900, when Alfred Binet (1857–1911) had published his famous De la suggestibilité,23 the works of other scientists following his research and, before that, the reception of the famous show masters of the late nineteenth century who staged mind reading, several elements came to be coupled in reflections carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN on mind reading. While the historical configurations of these elements continually changed, these elements themselves remained and continued to migrate through various societal fields. “Mind reading,” as the chapters of this volume show, is starkly connected to reflections on modern subjectivities and, connected to that, on technologies of protecting and reading other people’s minds. Consequently, the essential demarcation lines are grouped around: (a) these questions of the construction and organization of modern subjectivity, that is, how people conceived of themselves as parts of different national, regional, gender-related, scientific, or social groups; (b) a fascination for techniques of mind reading, either with or without instruments, and a reflection on the effects of such techniques on subjectivities; (c) a fear of the possibilities associated with mind reading and a reflection on the causes of such possible effects; (d) a deeper consideration of the nature of the individual and collective consciousness and of the kinds of forces that constitute the universe; (e) an attempt to distinguish science from non-science; and (f) a productive practical reevaluation of technologies of mind reading. We can find these aspects of mind reading in nearly all of the relevant fields of practice or knowledge: psychophysiology, statistics and psychology (including the prediction of human behaviour in behavioural sciences), criminology and criminal psychology, hypnotism, occultism, parapsychology, psychoanalysis, cinema and literature. When researching contemporary newspaper articles with reference to “mind reading,” one will find the same kinds of hopes and anxieties, with special emphasis from large corporations such as Facebook or Google on the development of “big data,” while in earlier times the fear of statistical surveys which possibly would cover all strata and aspects of the population was fixated rather on the knowledge of the state. Subjectivities: Ever since actors from different fields of knowledge offered techniques to supposedly read one’s mind, people have been fascinated by them. They felt the powerful potential of techniques to know other’s intentions, fears or secret plans. On the other hand, today, these techniques are discussed in the medical realm as forms of treatment for people who cannot express themselves other than through technical devices that recognize their intentions through, for example, scanning their brain or eye movements.24 Initially, the ability to read someone’s mind alluded to the fundamental prerogative of any subject of the bourgeois state to be the possessor of his or her own thoughts. Therefore, this carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 7 modern subject also had the right to keep his secrets, and the distribution of competences between the state and, since the eighteenth century, its citizenry became increasingly defined by the stabilisation of a space called the “private sphere.” Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918) offered reflections on this topic, arguing that in modern societies citizens define their power through the possibility, ability and legitimacy of possessing and keeping secrets.25 Conversely, techniques to pilfer the secrets of both individuals and organisations are threatening within this scheme of subjectivity and, on a societal level, destabilizing, like, for example, the detective skills of the protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories, Sherlock Holmes.26 In Simmel’s view, one could literally define different types of societies through the lens of the collective treatment of secrets.27 Furthermore, he believed that he was witnessing a development towards an ever more rigidly defended private sphere, while the publicity of the public was becoming ever more mandatory: “In fact, it seems as if the affairs of the general public are becoming more and more public, those of individuals more and more secret.”28 In contexts within which constructions of free and self-determined human beings form the hegemonic layer of subject constructions and within which possessing one’s own thoughts is a constitutive element of this “self,” techniques of “mind reading” must appear as particularly threatening and precisely for this reason fascinating. Thus, one can say that in these constellations “mind reading” always touches on the fragile figure of the modern subject. On the one hand, it evinced the possibility of forming bonds of empathy between subjects; on the other, exactly these bonds could entail the possibility of losing control over oneself. While this is true on the level of the individual, it becomes even more pressing on the level of the political and collective subject. Connected to this anxiety with regard to the integrity of the individual subject was a fear concerning the integrity of the political subject. Here, the question of mind reading was very closely linked to that of mind control. Well-known motion pictures treated this kind of concern regarding political collectivity, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari directed by Robert Wiene (1920). These filmic interventions addressed what modernity had formulated as a challenge for any political organisation that aimed at fulfilling its two goals to, on the one hand, create a home for the liberal subject and, on the other hand, form administrative schemes to control and predict the behaviour of these subjects.29 The figure of the mind carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN reader and/or mind controller embodies the fear of the possibility that the subject might not be free, or that there might exist uncontrollable forces enabling people to intrude on one’s private thoughts. Thus, an implicit discursive possibility of any of these modern governmental systems was that reading and predicting people’s minds would also lead to controlling them, a thesis which Siegfried Kracauer strongly advocated in From Caligari to Hitler by equating Adolf Hitler with Caligari, the figure from the famous motion picture.30 Connected with this imagination of the almighty mind reader and controller was the concern for the integrity of being human. In response to this concern, many texts from the beginning of the twentieth century contain attempts to create other concepts of being a subject, to which Kracauer also contributed. In his essay on the detective story (Der DetektivRoman), he even went so far as to render the secret a constitutive element of really and fully being human. For him, the secret constituted a metaphysical or even mythical, religious experience which could not fully be described or explained. The fact that Kracauer made the secret such a central part of his social ontology shows that it was precisely this experience that he felt was necessary for a truly humanistic society. On the other hand, the disappearance of the secret was a fundamental danger of modernity itself. For in Kracauer’s view, the disappearance of the secret prevented people from maintaining their necessary connection with the higher sphere of being (Seinssphäre). The figure of the detective occupied an intermediate position and was able to mediate between the different spheres. For Kracauer, however, the secret remained the essential key to real humanity. The detective was able to illustrate that within the sphere of law secrets could be uncovered with the help of a mechanical rationality. This made it all the more clear that secrets that were more existential in nature remained which could not be solved in this way. The detective thus became a melancholic figure, as he could only solve problems he had understood to be not existential. In Kracauer’s reading, the fascination of mind reading based on the reading of bodily traces would thus make visible merely the emptiness of modernity, which withdrew itself from the real essence of human being, highlighted by the detective’s work through its profound absence.31 While Kracauer’s contribution to the issues of modern selfhood is only one of many, it illustrates the conceptual efforts to create for the subject an inviolable centre which would remain intact even when famous mind readers like Sherlock Holmes attempted to invade the boundaries of the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 9 subject. Another option was to accept and even embrace the entanglement of any member of the organism of the state, thereby giving up on and contesting the safe space of modern individuality. Notably agents of the state themselves had to offer some legitimising discourse sanctioning their acts of intrusion. Sometimes, these attempts at legitimisation took the form of the foundations of a new political ontology. In Police and People (Polizei und Volk [1926]), a highly ranked police officer, Ernst van den Bergh (1873–1963), to cite just one example, argued for his theory of the “people” (Volk) as an organism with different functions, one of which was the police. In his view, in order to work smoothly, these functions had to be integrated into a “Volksstaat ” (people’s state), within which the police function would then organically be integrated. A “mental link” (seelischer Zusammenhang ) would connect all functions of this people’s state.32 Within schemes like this, the necessity of keeping one’s own thoughts secret and to define oneself as a possessor of one’s own thoughts appeared to be less important; it was deemed more important to be integrated into a community defined by a common “spirit.”33 In the narrower sense, mind reading has always offered options to reflect on the question of what kinds of forces could actually exist; could there, for example, be some hitherto unknown force or connection between two spirits? Already during the Scientific Revolution scientists referred to these new and fascinating possibilities as “occult” forces,34 and also in the discourse on “mind reading,” people were interested in these “occult” aspects of the universe, for the most part focusing on accounting for these forces in a scientifically valid way.35 And today, institutions like the Institut métapsychique international in Paris (its motto being: “Le ‘paranormal,’ nous n’y croyons pas. Nous l’étudions ”) are interested in these kinds of questions.36 In addition to being a reflection on social cohesion and on individual liberty, different experiments carried out by those institutions address the question of what kinds of objects we can expect and conduct research on. At the turn of the twentieth century, the discussion about the types of things that existed in the world was the order of the day. In a period in which new kinds of forces had been discovered, like the X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen, and old kinds of forces were questioned, like the gravitational force, and radio waves started to conquer the world, ontological openness was normal.37 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN In addition, these ontological considerations were also part of a struggle over a legitimate understanding of the world. Some would use experiments in “mind reading” as arguments against what they called “materialism” and thus to prove that there exist more entities in the world than in the allegedly materialist world view. For example, Max Lustig published experiments on mind reading in which he claimed that they would prove that materialism was wrong, that there existed more kinds of connections between human beings than mere physical forces.38 For writers like Lustig, the “occult” forces presented a way to counter the fear of materialistic emptiness by revealing a universe of still unexplored ontological possibilities. While these kinds of reflections had multifaceted reverberations in many fields, they created new spaces of agency for some actors. One of these fields where “occult” phenomena were discussed vividly was the legal sphere, especially in the prosecution of crimes, because there, jurists or police officers had to decide positively whether the alleged occult practices were to be taken seriously. Uwe Schellinger and Michael Schetsche have shown for the case of “psychic detectives” in Germany that the relation of the police to these actors was persistent and ambivalent, since in some cases, the police did not evidently exclude the possibility of some kinds of inexplicable or as yet unknown forces. One of the fields of interest for the police was criminal telepathy, which has been explored in various forms by the police and legal experts since the 1920s onwards. Schellinger and Schetsche quote one of the main figures of Vienna’s “Institute for Criminal Telepathic Research,” which existed for some months in 1921, Ubald Tartaruga, who said that telepathy has always been an important factor “in criminology and forensic services, and that we have to regard it as the imperative of our time to collect these experiences, to sift them, to bring them into a logical system and to turn them into a branch of criminology to be called ‘criminal telepathy.’”39 Judges like Albert Hellwig developed expertise with regard to exactly these cases and one can follow his cautious scepticism with regard to the indicted telepaths, mind readers, palmists, etc.40 Indeed, it was a matter of cautious scepticism, for Hellwig did not want to exclude the possibility of criminal telepathy, mind reading and other marginal practices from the outset either. Mind reading was defined by police officers as a gift of empathy on the one hand, while on the other hand always maintaining a connection with possible supernatural forces.41 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 11 In some form or other, reflections on and practices of mind reading also stimulated a debate on the frontiers of the mind. If some extrasensory contact between two or more minds was possible, was it, then, not the case that indeed the borders of the individual mind had been drawn too narrowly? Was the individual mind nothing other than the expression of a more general phenomenon, a world spirit? On the other hand, if an apparatus could help to read our minds, was then the mind more than a simple machine? The complex machinery and tools of deception developed to perform mind reading thus fulfilled also the task of drawing a demarcation line between man and machine, to reserve a place for the inexplicable and therefore to open up a space within which a “mind” could still exist, at least through its definition as the negation or privation of all positive propositions. Romanist Winfried Wehle has aptly called this an effort “to form a centre, but not to occupy it,” the “affair of the heart” of the “modern subject.”42 Finally, it is a striking phenomenon that mind reading tended to generate a passion for new technological objects or new applications of familiar ones. From the nineteenth century onwards, this phenomenon has on the one side inspired working instruments to help or to literally read minds. We know from the research of Melissa M. Littlefield, Ken Alder and Cornelius Borck that the development of mind reading, of the EEG and of lie detectors is strongly interconnected.43 Partially inspired by the ability of skilled mind readers to discern the slightest muscle contractions, physiologists, psychologists and other scientists continually developed and improved experimental set-ups to detect and record bodily expressions. One central tool developed in this context was the self-writing machine of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904). As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have shown, this self-writing machine marked a specific understanding of objectivity, according to which human evaluation should ideally be eliminated.44 Also Christian Kassung has demonstrated that these apparatuses were, more or less explicitly, defined by the attempt to reproduce, objectify and improve the human capabilities of mind reading.45 The development of the discourse and practice of mind reading is characterized by a remarkable stability of the contest zone. With regard to the development of technologies for mind reading, actors continually referred to this bridge concept and then developed tools for registering more or less reliable data to make statements about the content of the mind. In carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 12 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN this way, the concept of “mind reading” has kept its spectacular dimension and, as a “loose concept” in Löwy’s sense, still opens up the social, ontological, epistemic and political issues described above. ∗ ∗ ∗ By focusing on the concept of “mind reading,” we want to offer a contribution to the study of the complex interactions between epistemic, political and social ideals. We want to thereby contribute to the ongoing discussion about the margins of science and the processes that help to shift, fix or put into question these boundaries. The following chapters stem from an interdisciplinary discussion held in Berlin in March 2018 and are enriched by contributions that we are happy to have attracted for the volume. The first section deals with the wider societal functions, meanings and techniques of mind reading. Melissa M. Littlefield offers a reflection on the collaborative aspects of mind reading based on the “Brainwave Symphony” project (2015) and another by the company Multimer, related to city planning. Roger Luckhurst, focusing on the BBC TV drama The Omega Factor, investigates the revival of mind reading in the 1970s, alongside new forms of parapsychological research. Anthony Enns investigates the use of images, photography of the mind and corresponding ideas of objectivity in neuroscience and neurology. Christine Mohr and Gustav Kuhn offer a reflection based on their own psychological experiments as to how far the experience of stage magic can have an impact on the belief in magical phenomena. The section “Reading and Interpreting the Criminal Mind” is devoted to means of mind reading in the juridical sphere and in the sphere of policing. Larissa Fischer investigates contemporary German discourses on and practices of lie detection. Christian Bachhiesl focuses on the rather theoretical aspects of early criminology, with an emphasis on the Austrian school and the practices of making the mind visible. Laurens Schlicht analyses the interrogation techniques of Germany’s Female Criminal Police in the 1920s and 1930s and the psychology of testimony. The last three contributions relate the discussion of mind reading to the problem of political control and totalitarianism. Annette Mülberger delves into the Spanish case and analyses the practices of mind reading which unfolded carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 13 against the background of the reception of Cesare Lombroso. And Martin Wieser studies the so-called “operative psychology,” a branch of psychology explicitly developed for the Ministry for State Security of the GDR. In his contribution, Michael Pettit examines the mind-reading practices of American political psychologists from the Cold War to the present day. He begins with an analysis of the New Look movement of the 1940s and then explores the revival of the New Look approach in the digital age. Notes 1. Kirchner’s Wörterbuch der philosophischen Grundbegriffe, 5th ed., s.v. “Gedankenlesen” (Leipzig: Dürr, 1907). 2. Brockhaus’ Kleines Konversations-Lexikon, 5th ed., s.v. “Gedankenlesen” (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1911). 3. Kirchner’s Wörterbuch der philosophischen Grundbegriffe, 5th ed., s.v. “Gedankenlesen” (Leipzig: Dürr, 1907). 4. William T. Preyer, Die Erklärung des Gedankenlesens nebst Beschreibung eines neuen Verfahrens zum Nachweise unwillkürlicher Bewegungen (Leipzig: Grieben, 1886), v. 5. Ibid., 4. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 4. 8. Max Dessoir, “Zur Geschichte des Gedankenlesens,” Sphinx 1, no. 4 (1886): 253–259. 9. Ibid., 258. 10. Ibid. 11. Max Dessoir, “Übersinnliche Gedanken-Übertragung nach den Untersuchungen der Society for Psychological Research,” Sphinx 1, no. 2 (1886): 107. 12. Ibid., 107–108. 13. Karl Marbe, “Über das Gedankenlesen und die Gleichförmigkeit des psychischen Geschehens,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. I. Abteilung: Zeitschrift für Psychologie 56 (1910): 241–263. For an overview of Marbe’s work see Annette Mülberger, La Aportación de Karl Marbe a La Psciologia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1994). 14. See Marbe, “Über das Gedankenlesen”. 15. Ibid., 244. 16. Karl Marbe, Die Gleichförmigkeit in der Welt. Untersuchungen zur Philosophie und positiven Wissenschaft (München: Beck, 1916), 41. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 14 L. SCHLICHT AND C. SEEMANN 17. Karl Marbe, Selbstbiographie des Psychologen Geheimrat Prof. Dr. Karl Marbe in Würzburg (Halle: Buchdruck des Waisenhauses, 1945), 23. 18. In this sense, it is comparable to the “boundary object” of Leigh Star and James Griesemer, which are described as “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites,” Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects. Amateurs and Professionals in Berkelev’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 387–420, here 393. 19. Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). 20. Peter Galison, Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago [u.a.]: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 21. Ilana Löwy, “The Strength of Loose Concepts—Boundary Concepts, Federative Experimental Strategies and Disciplinary Growth: The Case of Immunology,” History of Science, no. 30 (4): 371–396, here p. 373. 22. Similar analyses have been offered for the political sphere. Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau have used the phrase “empty signifier” to point to concepts that are at the centre of political struggles but for exactly that reason cannot be clearly defined, because the goals of different interest groups referring to that concept are so contradictory. See Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony & Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London and New York: Verso, 1985). 23. Alfred Binet, La Suggestibilité (Paris: Schleicher Freres, 1900). 24. There are a lot of publications in that field; as an example for the connection between functional imaging and “mind reading” see Helen L. Gallagher and Christopher D. Frith, “Functional Imaging of ‘Theory of Mind’,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 2 (2003): 77–83. 25. Georg Simmel, “Das Geheimnis. Eine sozialpsychologische Skizze,” Der Tag 626 (December 10, 1907). 26. See Siegfried Kracauer, Der Detektiv-Roman. Ein philosophisches Traktat (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). 27. Georg Simmel, Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908), 343. 28. Ibid., 276. 29. Peter Wagner, “Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency. The Birth of Social Science as Empirical Political Philosophy,” in The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity. Conceptual Change in Context, 1750–1850, eds. Johan Heilbron, Lars Magnusson, and Björn Wittrock (Dordrecht: Springer, 1998), 241–263. 30. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 1 INTRODUCTION 15 31. Siegfried Kracauer, Der Detektiv-Roman. Ein philosophisches Traktat (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). 32. Ernst van den Bergh, Polizei und Volk. Seelische Zusammenhänge (Berlin: Gersbach, 1926), 10–11. 33. A good overview with an interesting discussion about the restructuring of the German cultural landscape is given by Johann Chapoutot, La révolution culturelle nazie (Paris: Gallimard, 2017). 34. Keith Hutchinson, “What Happened to the Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution?,” Isis 73: 233–253. 35. Ibid. 36. “We do not believe in the paranormal. We study it”, https://www. metapsychique.org/bulletin-metapsychique-nouvelle-serie/ (seen 30th July 2019). 37. See for example Falk Müller, “Zur Medialisierung von Geist und Materie in der viktorianischen Wissenschaft,” in Medialisierungen des Unsichtbaren um 1900, eds. Susanne Scholz and Julika Griem (München: Fink, 2010), 79–100, https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9783846747872/ B9783846747872-s007.xml. 38. Max Lustig, Das Gedankenlesen. Das Zweite Gesicht (Leipzig: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft Albert Otto Paul, 1914), 3. 39. Quoted in Michael Schetsche and Uwe Schellinger, “‘Psychic Detectives’ auch in Deutschland? Hellseher und Polizeiliche Ermittlungsarbeit,” Die Kriminalpolizei 25 (2007). 40. See Albert Hellwig, Okkultismus und Verbrechen. Eine Einführung in die kriminalistischen Probleme des Okkultismus für Polizeibeamte, Richter, Staatsanwälte, Psychiater und Sachverständige (Berlin: Langenscheidt, 1929). 41. See for example Hans Schneickert, Kriminaltaktik, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kriminalpsychologie, 5. umgearb. Aufl (Berlin: Springer, 1940), 246. 42. Winfried Wehle, “Kunst und Subjektivität. Von der Geburt ästhetischer Anthropologie aus dem Leiden an Modernität – Nodier, Chateaubriand,” in Geschichte und Vorgeschichte der modernen Subjektivität, eds. Reto Luzius Fetz, Roland Hagenbüchle, and Peter Schulz, vol. 2 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1998), 901–941, here 931. 43. Borck, Hirnströme; Melissa M. Littlefield, The Lying Brain. Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011); and Ken Alder, The Lie Detectors. The History of an American Obsession (New York: Free Press, 2007). 44. Lorraine Daston, and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 81–128. 45. Christian Kassung, “Self-Writing Machines: Technology and the Question of the Self,” Communication +1 4, no. 1 (2015): 1–17. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de PART I Technology and Mind Reading: Perspectives on Media and Occult Practices carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 2 Electrical Potential: Mind Reading as Collaborative Action Melissa M. Littlefield In Alfred Bester’s 1953 novel The Demolished Man, social order is kept through the collective work of ESPers—a subsector of the population who have the ability to read minds. All ESPers are not equal in their telepathic ability, but they can be found employed at all levels of society—from secretaries to police detectives. They communicate with ease, detect unacceptable thoughts, thwart crimes before they are ever committed, and collaborate in social and professional settings. At one ESPer party, the mental conversation is described as “a weaving, ever-changing, exhilarating design”1 : “The wives were arguing violently in sine curves. @kins and West were interlacing cross-conversation in a fascinatingly intricate pattern of sensory images.”2 And during a police investigation, the ESPers even create a telepathic dragnet in which “the TP Band crackled as comments and information swept up and down the line of living radar in which [the lead detective] occupied a central position.”3 I begin with Bester’s ESPers because my chapter addresses what are colloquially M. M. Littlefield (B) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States e-mail: mml@illinois.edu © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_2 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 19 20 M. M. LITTLEFIELD known as “brainwaves”—their emission, collection, and potential use for collaborative work. In one respect, “brainwaves” are a shorthand for the brain’s electrical signals (neural oscillations known as alpha, beta, gamma and delta waves), which can be recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. In another respect, “brainwaves” have taken on a life of their own, as both products and producers of what I call brainwave ideologies. In other words, the use of the term helps materialize a phenomenon that cannot be seen with the naked eye and creates a market for their collection, interpretation, manipulation and use-value. If we can visualize and quantify these unseen electrical forces, we may also be able to better control and utilize them. In this chapter, I focus specifically on human electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that collects electrical signals from the brain. Once collected, these signals can be modelled through algorithmic interpretation and made useful for and applicable to myriad purposes. Brought into being by Hans Berger in the 1920s and 1930s, EEG has had a profound impact on the ways that we understand brain activity. Most of the “brainwaves” in popular culture are a result of this technology’s visualization of electrical brain signals.4 Alfred Bester’s ESPers are electrical mind readers, for example, described as “duellists fencing with complicated electrical circuits.”5 Most of us cannot communicate or collaborate telepathically, but through a variety of EEG headsets that collect data about the brain’s electrical signals, various advocates posit the potential for brainwave-based social work. Mobile EEG headbands, hats and helmets are relatively new to the consumer market (some are still only prototypes), and yet they have already coalesced into a recognizable phenomenon to meet a particular consumer demand for what I call instrumental intimacy. In my book, Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control (JHUP 2018), I explore a number of these EEG wearables that are marketed as tools for improving sleep, relationships, athletic performance and learning, while I also interrogate the desire for instrumental intimacy or mechanistic guidance. EEG wearables are becoming the latest instruments through which we recognize our states of mental arousal and attempt to control ourselves more efficiently. Unlike Bester’s ESPer police force, these devices ostensibly leave the social discipline to us. But like Bester’s ESPers, they also have the power to aggregate data collection and forward particular analytic agendas. As EEG moves out of the laboratory and into carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 21 our bedrooms, boardrooms and automobiles, EEG wearables have rewritten the brain’s electrical activity as both an individual’s responsibility and a potential collaborative tool. In this chapter, I explore the electrical potential of EEG wearables as collaborative data tracking devices through two examples: Multimer, a mapping company that uses human signals to address questions of urban planning; and a collaborative “Brainwave Symphony” promotion for Sense8, a Netflix original television series. I argue that both projects rely on brainwave ideologies to illuminate the electrical potential of aggregating data for political and artistic purposes, even and especially when practices of data aggregation are elided with discourses of collaboration. I first provide a bit of background about human signal collection—and EEG specifically—then I discuss the Multimer project and the Sense8 symphonic promotion. Harvesting Human Signals A myriad of (psycho)physiological human signals has been used to affect social and political work. From complex forms of collection and application, such as the polygraph, to simpler forms, such as heart rate monitors, the body has been broken down into measurable elements that, once recognized, can be made into valuable components of larger sociopolitical programming and control. Through the creation of various technological tracking metrics, in particular, the body has come to ostensibly “speak for itself” in some very telling and interesting ways. But, these technologies and the signals they track could easily be characterized as bringing into being the very things they claim to simply measure. Human signals are rarely—if ever—easily translatable or self-evident. The examples I use in this chapter rely on EEG, which was first quantified in the 1920s by Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist, who recognized that electrical signals could be detected on the scalps of his patients, and that these signals were coming from the brain beneath.6 A believer in the power and reality of telepathy, Berger also hoped to someday discover a Hirnspiegel or brain mirror—it has been suggested that EEG was a stepping stone en route to this dream. I will not linger on Berger’s biography, experiments or reputation here, as one can find this information elsewhere.7 Rather, I want to bring Berger’s conceptualizations about EEG to the fore, particularly because his work constructed the brain’s energies as visualizable and open to manipulation. Before Berger’s work, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 22 M. M. LITTLEFIELD the brain’s electrical activity had only been seen in animal experiments8 ; it was assumed that the human brain was too complex for such measurement.9 When Berger was able to record and visualize human brain signals, first with a string galvanometer and later an oscillograph, he rocked the psychiatric and broader scientific communities. Moreover, Berger was the first to note that the brain’s electrical signals were open to direct manipulation with, for example, the simple opening and closing of the eyes: when the subject was at rest (with eyes closed), Berger recorded a wave he called “alpha”; when the subject was awake (with eyes open), Berger recorded a wave he called “beta.” What we now call “brainwaves ” were literally oscillographic waves recorded during Berger’s experiments. These humble theoretical and practical beginnings have had a lasting impact on the ways we conceptualize and attempt to utilize electrical signals from the brain. In the twenty-first century, we are no longer limited to laboratory experiments with gelled caps and a medley of wires running between scalp and machine. We now have wearable EEG technologies that are portable, mobile and manufactured in a number of configurations.10 And yet, the origin story of EEG continues to be relevant to the ways we theorize and utilize the data gathered from such devices. Via smartphone apps, through direct colorization of the headgear itself, or as haptic signals, EEG wearables rely on some form of data visualization to make them useful to researchers and consumers. When rendered visible, the brain’s electrical activity appears more open to manipulation and utilization, as small changes in stimuli can create noticeable differences in readable output. Both of the EEG wearable-based projects I discuss in this chapter seek to capture the brain’s data—including its subtle variations—not for manipulation of the subjects themselves, but for use in aggregated experiments. For Multimer, this entails the potential (re)construction of a built environment based on the aggregation of human signals collected from pedestrians, cyclists and motorists; for the “Brainwave Symphony,” this involves the formation of a collaborative, brainwave-based musical score that mimics the telepathy of the show’s plot and serves as a theme song for each episode. As unique as each project sounds, they both fit into a broader spectrum of human signal usage for social work—and play— that includes things like Bio Mapping and Bio Art. Whenever we put human signals to work for us—whether for internalized or externalized carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 23 purposes—we should consider the practices, expectations and general ideologies that inform our decision-making process, from data collection to conceptualization to consumption. For examples of these issues in action, I draw from disagreements between the subfields of Urban Emotion Mapping and Bio Mapping, both of which look to human signals as a means to reinterpret cityscapes.11 First, the collection of human signals for aggregate projects invites debate about the role of human interlocutors as data gatherers. At one end of a complex, experimental spectrum, human participants are considered to be wells from which data can be mined; at the other end, they are integral characters in a larger narrative. To Urban Emotion mappers, the human body is an excellent, mobile “sensing element” that allows urban planners to extract “a new and human-centric perspective”—data that can be used to create a “human sensor network,” which serves as a “new information layer for planners.”12 According to Zeile et al., the end goal of Urban Emotion Mapping is “correlating the measured and extracted emotions in order to provide urban planners with additional insights into the complex human-city relationships.”13 In short, Urban Emotion is often characterized as working in line with city planning for the purpose of improving urban landscapes. This type of data collection is not without its critics. Christian Nold, a bio-mapper, distinguishes his own Bio Mapping projects, including his Emotional Cartography (2009), from Zeile et al.’s method by arguing that in Urban Emotion “technology was not a way of staging emotion, but a way of harvesting it.”14 Nold is responding to what he sees as the utilitarian nature of Zeile’s zeitgeist, finally arguing that, “this vision aims towards a kind of cybernetic democracy where the public function as ‘sensors’ that makes public-planning an objective and rational process. Thus, sensing emotion and perceptions become a way of replacing politics and disagreement.”15 Nevertheless, Urban Emotion research provides some powerful tools and data sets for city planners who want to include public input (without the potential messiness of robust public involvement). Which brings me to my second point: as with its collection, the basic conceptualization of human signal data can affect the experimental design and desired outcomes of an experiment. Nold conceptualizes human signal data as neither fully quantitative nor qualitative, noting that “Bio Mapping does not accept a split into objective measurement and subjective human interpretation.”16 His own Bio Mapping projects are often aimed carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 24 M. M. LITTLEFIELD at aggregating and mapping human signals that he associates with emotion, affect and arousal to specific places via data gathering and narrative feedback loops. In his most recent publication on the topic, he discusses the “iterative process” of his own version of map making, noting that “designing the map and translating it became a collective process with the participants.”17 He describes the process as a much more complex intermingling of place, space, emotion and community, noting that there may not ever be a simple one-to-one correspondence between a data signal (EEG, ECG, GSR, etc.) and an emotional state. He argues that his Greenwich project, for example, allowed the participants to compare the arousal data among other group members who had all seen the same event […] which led the group to discuss where ‘emotion’ might be located, whether inside their minds, their body, as social relations with others or in the external environment. In these discussions, the participants described a blurring of mind and body, inside and outside, individual and group where it was hard to tell these categories apart. In this way, the project acted to stage a lively intertwining of emotion, where the environment was affecting people, while they were also affecting others in the environment.18 Here, human signals are not meaningful until they are interwoven with larger, communal narratives that make them legible not despite, but because of their difference and complexity. For this reason, among artists and theorists, Bio Mapping projects have been described as producing “affective geographies”19 ; but more to my point they have also been characterized as creating a “communal emotional surface”20 and as fashioning “collaborative cartographies.”21 The ideal of collaborative mapping may not always be a desired reality for city planners, which brings us to my third point: the consumption of human signal data can illustrate the ambiguity of its translation. Nold’s experiences as a bio-mapper are useful here as well: at the tail end of one of his commissioned data collection experiments, he notes that there was a discrepancy between what the city council members were willing to consider and what the citizens, participants and politicians wanted: “When we tried giving an emotion map to the council, this resulted in them exhibiting it in their building, yet without taking any further action on the issues identified on the map. The problem was that the maps talked about urban life in an unfamiliar language of emotion and significant events.”22 Here, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 25 the translation of human signals into usable data for a particular collective (city councillors) results in problematic (in)action: it’s what turns the data into “art” worthy of exhibition, but unworthy of action. Nold’s example is a good reminder about the ways that human signal collection can result in untranslatable, problematically translated or multiply translated results that are neither self-evident nor obviously useful before—and sometimes even after—they have been translated into data. Even as I use Nold’s experience to make a point about the complexity of human signal translation, it is important to remember that data as art is not necessarily a negative by-product of human signal mapping. Indeed, Bio Art of all kinds often purposefully makes use of the slippage between expectations for and translations of human signals to show us something new about ourselves and/or our environments. As I explore in a later section, the “Brainwave Symphony” for Sense8 could be classed among the many Bio Art projects that seek to materialize and utilize human signals for the creation of artistic pieces. In contrast to both Urban Emotion and Bio Mapping, Bio Art often repurposes human biodata for alternative purposes, rather than mapping it onto the surface from which it was gathered. Work in this vein might include data projects such as “Pulse of the Nation,”23 “We Feel Fine,”24 “Things We Have Lost”25 and “Conductar.”26 In each case, human signals help to create the reason for and the contours of artistic projects that move data around, out of their generative context(s) and into other frameworks. In “Things We Have Lost,” for example, participants were asked to imagine lost things while their brain’s electrical activity was recorded. Later, those recordings were used to set images of various lost things at specific places around the city. Viewable with a smartphone and a specific app, the “Things We Have Lost” artistic installation changed the cityscape to more viscerally include the people and things that were seen or felt to be absent. In this way, Bio Art moves human signals around and applies them to novel purposes that reinvent our environments. Bio Art can also transform our understandings of the individual within a larger collective. At Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina, for example, “Conductar” offered participants the chance to walk the city streets while wearing an off-the-shelf brainwave monitor. As the electrical activity of an individual’s brain was recorded, it was turned into electronica and each individual’s tracks were laid on top of other participants’ recordings, creating a collective soundscape for the city. As the artists explain, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 26 M. M. LITTLEFIELD We wanted to try to create a new way for people to be expressive musically by using their brainwaves. […] When people go out and they wander Ashville with the brainwave sensor on, they’re composing this original, generative score at exactly where there’re walking and that track they’re making is laid down on those exact GPS coordinates […] We wanted to make an installation that turned the entire city into something that people could see and hear … Each person will naturally sort of go a different route and lay down a different track and as they do they are creating this collective sound scape on the city.27 Here, an artistic rendering of human signals creates a collaboration that remaps a city sonically, in a way that does not necessarily map onto specific mapping initiatives. Instead, it is about reimagining urban participation and experience through the collection and redistribution of human signal data. This broader spectrum of human signal projects illuminates several key theoretical debates and practical issues that inform their enactment and distribution. They provide a useful backdrop for the following discussion of two data aggregation projects that rely specifically on EEG: Multimer’s city mapping venture and the “Brainwave Symphony” for Sense8. In each case, human signals do not speak for themselves; instead, they are woven into a fascinating narrative about how data manipulation can affect definitions of collaborative, social work. Mental Mapping for Commerce: Multimer In 2014, Arlene Ducao and Ilias Koen founded Multimer, a company focused on using “human experience insights to inform design decisions.”28 To put it plainly, Multimer tracks and aggregates (primarily EEG) data gathered from human bodies; by processing this data through various algorithms they offer insight into how city spaces function for multiple kinds of users.29 Multimer relies on MindRider, an EEG-based helmet developed by Ducao while she was a student at MIT. The helmet is fitted with an off-the-shelf EEG wearable and can be worn by cyclists as they navigate city streets. Measuring the brain’s electrical activity, the wearable allows Ducao, Koen and their team to create maps of cities that illustrate “hot spots” and “sweet spots”—places where riders are stressed or focused and places where riders are relaxed.30 Since its 2014 inception, MindRider has evolved into various EEG models that can be worn carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 27 by not only cyclists, but also pedestrians and motorists.31 This expansion of wearables and data sets allows Multimer to argue that “by measuring the ‘rider experience’ along with the ‘pedestrian experience’ and ‘driver experience’ Multimer quantifies the ‘city experience’.”32 According to this logic, the “city experience” is largely accessible through data collection devices that can visualize the unseen human signals populating the city. Moving beyond “hot spots” and “sweet spots,” the company now promises to help “professionals in real estate, retail strategy, and advertising” by offering a “high-resolution tool for complex location decisions.”33 Their slogan is “Better Decisions Based on Human Signals.”34 In this section, I focus on the definitions and characteristics of these human signals as available aggregate data sets for collaborative action. Multimer’s focus on “human signals” to provide information to specific corporate or community entities, to affect change in cityscapes or workplaces or to gauge interest in various urban features, brings us back to the brainwave ideologies with which I began. While they could (and perhaps will) expand their signal collection beyond EEG, their current efforts focus on EEG and ostensibly make the brain’s electrical activity visible and usable by third parties.35 Perhaps most tellingly, Multimer characterizes their data not as electrical activity, but as brainwaves: on their website, which is full of maps highlighting “best” locations for various shops and business ventures, “The data is brainwave information”36 ; their “first biosensor, MindRider, specifically collects brainwave data”37 ; and their collection practices are based on “measuring the brainwaves of riders.”38 In each case, brainwaves serve as scientific ethos, bridge the gap between electrical activity and algorithmic interpretation and distinguish Multimer’s approach as seemingly novel: one that taps into the brain itself, an organ that many associate with decision-making. As in Christian Nold’s Bio Mapping projects, early participants in MindRider data collection often reflected on their rides as a means to round out the data set. However, instead of ultimately producing a narrative or a staging of bio-signals that speaks back to the technologies and methods used for their collection, Multimer currently characterizes its data sets as strictly quantitative, rendering harvested data as a layer through which to better read the city’s landscape. “Multimer is a quantitative way to measure information that was previously only qualitative […] With Multimer’s high-resolution data that operates at the human scale, you can eliminate the proxy measures you already use to gauge carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 28 M. M. LITTLEFIELD human choices and activity. Save time and money with Multimer.”39 Here, “proxy measures” are unnecessary and perhaps incomplete or problematic. As Otniel Dror and Brenton Malin have argued, mechanical interlocutors free researchers from encountering emotions, feelings and subjective positions that might spoil the so-called objectivity of their data.40 Like many of the psychophysiological instruments that came before them, EEG wearables ostensibly assume users will produce more accurate data that allow places, spaces and even brains to “speak for themselves.” Moreover, Multimer makes their case for the collection of data as a collaborative action, one that would not be possible without sensors that can detect the human signals we can’t see with our naked eyes. Their ad copy reads: One of the things that makes us human is that we care about what other humans experience. And we want to use the experience of other people to inform our decisions. But most of our decisions about place—whether we’re looking for an apartment, a place to set up shop, or a place to broadcast our message—are based on a limited awareness of people in that place. What if you could enhance your decisions with hard, quantitative data of human experience? With Multimer, now you can.41 Assumptions abound, but perhaps the most telling is the idea that the most useful and complete information comes from extracted data, which can be aggregated and rendered, essentially, more useful. In a Multimer gridded image of Manhattan, the caption on the left reads: “Millions of people move through cities every day, leaving behind all kinds of human signals”; on the right, another reads: “Using cutting edge biosensor technology, Multimer helps you make decisions based on these human signals.”42 In this case, human signals are likened to a perceptible trail left behind for anyone who has the technological capacity to read the markings. Humans need not be present for their data to have a presence. Finally, we might look to the evolution of Multimer data analysis: from “hot spots” and “sweet spots” to more pointed categorizations used by particular factions of the consumer market. On their website’s main page, Multimer includes several maps and images with callouts such as “A Best Place for A Large Store: 5th and 36th.”43 On a more complexly keyed map, captioned “Multimer: Human Signal Data - Aggregated + Categorized,” we are told that “this map shows the aggregated, categorized brainwave data from dozens of riders and runners. Colour schemes ‘A’ carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 29 & ‘M’ show different categorization thresholds.”44 Beyond the fact that this statement makes explicit the power of various algorithms in parsing data, the map itself has four colorations: red for “powerful,” yellow for “stimulating,” purple for “fascinating” and blue for “restorative.”45 In Instrumental Intimacy, I spend some time exploring the use of colourcoding for and by EEG wearables, noting that colours are often used by EEG wearable manufacturers, even as they have particular cultural connotations. But I would also like to make a secondary point here: the terms used to categorize these colours are equally important. In this case, the terms are drawn—as the map’s key indicates for us—from those “used on real estate sites.”46 In the text that accompanies this particular map, Multimer goes on to say more about its categorical distinctions: We categorize this data to show the areas of the city that are the most: • restorative, where people are the most open-minded • fascinating, where people are the most interested in their surroundings • stimulating, where people are the most excited • powerful, where people are paying the most attention.47 Here, data aggregation provides a feedback loop to describe particular electrical activity as linked to specific kinds of (problematically global) human experience. Based on electrical activity collected with modified, but nonetheless low channel EEG wearables, we have moved from categories of oscillation (alpha, beta, gamma, delta) to indicators of mood, and finally to action: where people are most open-minded, interested, excited or attentive. It is quite a leap, but one that can and has been subtly made through the aggregation of EEG data. Unlike the Bio Mapping of Christian Nold’s projects, which often “explore what emotion can do in relation to the urban environment rather than trying to define what it is,”48 Multimer appears more interested in defining a usable emotional landscape rendered from brainwave data. Closer to the goals of Zeile and colleagues, we might say that “the longterm goal is to develop a new information layer for planners, in which a visualization of the measured spatial perception is possible. These visualizations allow conclusions about human behaviour in an urban environment and enable a new citizen-centered perspective in planning processes.”49 Here, the “citizen-centered perspective,” which may appear to carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 30 M. M. LITTLEFIELD have collaborative potential, is neither subjective nor narrated, but technologically extracted. That the city contains untapped data is not a new idea; nor is it novel to imagine revolutionary possibilities in our mapping practices. Indeed, I hear Multimer’s goals echoing much older sentiments about our image— or better yet, collective imagination—of a city. I have written about MindRider’s links to psychogeography and Guy Debord’s dérive elsewhere; here, I am more interested in the collaborative than in the revolutionary. For that purpose, we might look to Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (1960). There, Lynch argues that, There seems to be a public image of any given city which is the overlap of many individual images. Or perhaps there is a series of public images, each held by some significant number of citizens. Such group images are necessary if an individual is to operate successfully within his environment and to cooperate with his fellows. Each individual picture is unique, with some content that is rarely or never communicated, yet it approximates the public image, which, in different environments, is more or less compelling, more or less embracing.50 In this description, ideals of collaborative mapping come to the fore, including “the overlay of many individual images.” And, as he suggests in an earlier section, “each individual creates and bears his own image, but there seems to be substantial agreement among members of the same group. It is these group images, exhibiting consensus among significant numbers, that interest city planners who aspire to model an environment that will be used by many people.”51 The question, then, is no longer whether we have the technological power to create such “group images”—and this was a big question for Lynch’s time—but how we create and to what end we put these “group images.” Who is included in the studies? Will all data be weighed equally or relatively? And who has access to the data? These may be more salient questions to pose Multimer and other companies using human signals to create and control information about our cities. Multimer may be a relatively young company, and yet the theories, practices and challenges behind its human signal mapping are familiar, as are the brainwave ideologies that underlie its process and products. And, as I have illustrated, they are not the only group interested in mapping carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 31 EEG data onto cityscapes—but they may be the most instrumental. Multimer is interested in projecting brainwaves outward to create communal cartographies that display aggregate data in usable form. Their goal is to remap the city with an overlay of human signals that tell a curated story; their data is conceived of, collected, and consumed as if it were transparently self-evident. And yet, both the history of urban planning and the legacy of brainwave ideologies would encourage a more complex interpretation of their data and their deliverables. Selling a “Brainwave Symphony” If Urban Emotion and Bio Mapping afford a particular lens for collaborative mind reading, the larger umbrella of Bio Art projects provides some novel inroads for considering both the collaborative potential of EEG wearables and the discursive production of collaboration as a goal for these technologies. Thus, my next example, the Sense8 “Brainwave Symphony,” appeals to the ideals of collaborative “mind reading” that I have been discussing, but in slightly altered form. In 2015 Netflix began airing Sense8, a science fiction television show in which the cast of eight main characters have an extrasensory connection to one another despite their wide geographic separation. They appear to share knowledge, skills, empathy and even memories; within the television show, these connections are made visible as characters from vastly different places in the world appear in the same spaces, speak to one another face to face (even while their physical bodies are miles apart), offer assistance and collaborate on various projects. Created by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, the show aired for two seasons, garnered some critical acclaim, and was ostensibly cancelled only because high production costs outweighed audience size. As a promotional move between seasons, Straczynski worked with the production company Tool (Beltrone) and Trust, a communications collective, to create a promotional “Brainwave Symphony” for Sense8, composed of the electrical activity from eight individuals’ brains. The experimentally derived composition became the show’s theme song as well as the basis for a larger promotional campaign. Beginning from this paradoxical mix of advertisement and experiment, my analysis takes a closer look at both the video campaign and the experimental design itself. My goal is to illustrate how Sense8’s experimental advertising campaign both constructs and illuminates our desires for mechanistic mind reading (even as the show itself is invested in more carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 32 M. M. LITTLEFIELD organic, telepathic, ESPer-like connections). Moreover, I argue that the “Brainwave Symphony” is largely a nominal undertaking that relies on the power and reputation of EEG—and brainwave ideologies—but does not necessarily (need to) make use of the actual technology. Although Sense8 is built around telepathic connections, it does not always deal explicitly in brainwaves; and yet, promotional materials characterize the symphony experiment as a brain-centred project: “Fans’ Brains Were Linked, Just as on the Show.”52 In forums, fans refer to the symphony as “brainy music.”53 And UPROXX’s coverage insists that “if you know anyone watching Sense8, you should let them know that the theme song is made out of brainwaves immediately.”54 Among the press coverage, there is largely agreement that the symphony is a product of brainwaves—even as they are referred to as “random,”55 “repurposed”56 or “actual.”57 But brainwaves themselves are described as capable of being “transformed,”58 “used,”59 “composed”60 and “synthesized”61 — in other words, they are material objects that can be manipulated. This rhetoric belies the fact that Trust engineered the “Brainwave Symphony” to be sold as both experiment and advertising campaign. In an Adweek.com article, Gabriel Beltrone goes so far as to title his piece “Netflix Transforms Viewer Brainwaves into Music to Promote Telepathy Show.”62 And Engadget.com’s coverage reports that “the team scanned the brains of eight volunteers as they were shown psychedelic images specifically crafted to elicit an emotional response.”63 The latter evokes functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain scans, rather than the less visual EEG data that was actually gathered. One report even refers to “researchers,”64 as if this were a sanctioned scientific experiment using human subjects. Sometimes referred to as “fans” or “viewers,” the experimental “participants”65 were also described as the stand-ins for the eight characters from the show and as “strangers.”66 According to Trust’s website about the project, “Fans of the show took to forums, video comment sections and social media to share their overwhelming excitement for the ‘Brainwave Symphony’ project. Even one of the experimental participants, Brett Candace, entered the conversation to share her experience.”67 Alongside a headshot, Candace’s advertorial comment reads, “This was simultaneously one of the coolest and weirdest shoots I have ever been on—the song came out so amazing!!”68 In short, those covering the “Brainwave Symphony” rely on mixed discourses of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 33 experiment and ad campaign—and this speaks to the ways and means that Straczynski and Trust composed their undertaking. Aside from the media coverage of the symphony, Trust produced both a “Trigger” video (which ostensibly illustrates some of the stimuli to which participants were exposed) and a Netflix campaign video69 (which is a kind of behind-the-scenes, “making of” venture). The latter twominute video layers scenes from Sense8, with footage of the “Brainwave Symphony” experiment—which apparently (and aptly) takes place in a theatre—and images of MRI brain scans, computerized data analysis, and voiceovers from Straczynski and a technologist involved in the project. This smorgasbord of images is overlaid with electronica music: What we eventually understand to be the symphony itself. If you have the opportunity to watch the video (which is readily available on the Internet), you might note a few interesting features: the language used to describe the brain, its structure, function and various properties—including Straczynski’s voiceover cliché that “neurons that fire together wire together”; the choice of “scientific” images such as anatomical brain scans taken with MRI (and not EEG) or the use of artistic renderings of synapses “firing” between neurons; and the visual translation of brainwaves into musical notations, which renders the eight participants’ data as independent “tracks” and as free-floating information to be selected at will. Each of these features should alert viewers to the ways that this “Brainwave Symphony” is being actively fashioned—not as experiment, but as advertising campaign. But the elements of science and technology are a shorthand for added legitimacy and are meant to move viewers to excitement, anticipation and participation. We feel, as the video suggests in its final moments, that we are about to “witness the power of eight strangers united as one.”70 Indeed, in the promotional clip, the participants are invited to “collaborate to create something using just their minds.” Or, as one headline puts it, “This Sense8-Inspired Brainwave Symphony Turns Telepathy into Music.”71 There are at least two issues to draw your attention here. First, there is the claim that making music with one’s mind is a novel creative practice. Whether music emerges from one’s mind or body is not an issue I wish to address here, but it is important to note that the advent of brainwave ideologies in the 1930s and 1940s helped to quantify and biologize various phenomena—such as thinking, creativity, learning—as electrical phenomena taking place in the brain. A 1949 cartoon, for example, uses the tag line “some day we may make music simply by thinking it up.”72 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 34 M. M. LITTLEFIELD Here, ideas of artistic creation are reborn in terms of brainwaves, as the tag line continues: “band leader Raymond Scott thinks brainwaves alone can do the trick.”73 The accompanying article goes on to quote Scott as saying: “Brains put out electrical waves. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some day it were possible to do away with lines in music, such as writing it out and playing the notes. You’ll just be able to think it. […] Imagine fastening electrodes to your head, inviting some people to your home and then thinking your music.”74 In the Sense8 experiment, it would seem that Scott’s prophetic vision came true. Yet in the Sense8 “Brainwave Symphony,” we do not see a group of people making music in any traditional sense. Instead, the promotional video focuses on individuals experiencing stimuli while the electrical activity of their brains is reported directly to the EEG wearable attached to their head. Even so, and this is the second issue to notice: discourses of collaboration abound in an attempt to connect the participants. We might note the use of the term “symphony,” which implies the collaborative work of an orchestra made up of many parts, all working in unison. As Straczynski explains in the video, “You lay them over each other, as we did with the show, going from one person to two to four to eight, allowing a larger psychological symphony to emerge.”75 As a promotional stunt, the Sense8 “Brainwave Symphony” is meant to mimic the foundational assumptions of the television show: that connection equals the potential for collaboration. However, when we look to the algorithms that dictate what collaboration is and how collaboration works, another story emerges. Within the context of the “Brainwave Symphony,” what is happening is aggregation and not necessarily human-to-human collaboration.76 This shift requires that we think about experimental design for a moment. According to Trust, the communications collective that created and promoted the symphony, this was an “experiment which collected brain scans of several fans whose responses to psychedelic imagery and other prompts helped craft a collaborative sonic opus.”77 But consider that the eight participants were individually exposed to stimuli that “were designed to elicit certain psychological responses”; and that “the machine then read the participants’ alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and theta waves, combining them into music using a specific formula.”78 Indeed, “the symphony was conceived of like ‘a jazz chart where the structure of the overall tune is defined and followed, but the individual performances aren’t known carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 35 until they happen, they’re improvised in the moment’.”79 The participants do not see each other or interact; only their data is aggregated. Formulas, structures and stimuli are all used in concert to elicit, translate and represent “brainwaves” within a controlled experiment. Perhaps Fastcompany.com’s coverage of the “Brainwave Symphony” says it best: “it may not exactly be telepathic communication leading to seamless creative collaboration, but ‘we made this with our brains’ will still sound pretty cool–especially if the eight people who participated say it in unison.”80 This statement echoes the 1949 musical brainwave cartoon, but it also draws our attention to differences between purposefully speaking in “unison,” having a mechanical algorithm produce data “aggregation,” and working in “collaboration.” Each is a powerful tool for collective work, but the combination of which we do not actually see in the “Brainwave Symphony.” The rhetoric of the Netflix campaign video may imply that we are listening to the brain itself, that the technicians are “allowing a larger psychological symphony to emerge” or that “there is something almost musical in the way the brain works. It is a symphony on its own terms”81 ; but the gap between “almost musical” and the structure of the formulated symphony is wide indeed, and manipulated from design to execution to final product. In the symphony’s promotional video, for example, the data appears on the screen as musical notes that are then moved up or down to create usable sound. The editing makes it looks as if they are sliding into place, but from an experimental perspective, this would be a major manipulation of the data! And yet in this context, the freedom to move data points is precisely what allows a symphony to emerge. A Daily Dot article explains this process, quoting Netflix as explaining that “we provided the rhythm section and the song flow, but the individual melody points are taken from our participants’ brainwaves as a form of improvisational performance.”82 Or, as John Brownlee puts it, “in other words, while the majority of Brainwave Symphony was specifically composed, certain variables in the melody ended up being controlled by the brainwave patterns of the Symphony’s human subjects.”83 The same article goes on to describe this process as “a little bit of a cheat”84 and in so doing, they have hit the proverbial nail on the head. The brainwaves do not provide a finished and final symphony of their own; through the process of design and creation, brainwaves are brought under control, rendered usable and useful. Indeed, we might say that the collaboration carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 36 M. M. LITTLEFIELD of people, musical scores and instrumentation actually has little to do with the collected EEG data. What’s perhaps most interesting about this example is not its relative success or failure as an EEG experiment, but instead the underlying idea that EEG might facilitate collaborative artistic projects. I say underlying idea because in this case, EEG was only—and need only be—nominally employed in the creation of the “Brainwave Symphony.” We know this to be true for several reasons: first, the headsets featured in the Netflix campaign video are off-the-shelf models known to use one to three channels for data collection. This small number of electrodes often produces data riddled with noise (eyelid blinks, environmental sound, heartbeats and overhead electrical lines, among other disruptors); it is unlikely that the information collected is from the brain’s electrical activity, or that it is laboratory-grade EEG data. Second, and as I have already indicated, the EEG data (whatever its quality) was only used as manipulated counterpoints in a largely pre-arranged symphony. And finally, the scientific images and language used in the campaign are mixed—sometimes referring to EEG, sometimes to MRI or even more vague and clichéd understandings of neural plasticity—making it unclear whether EEG need necessarily be the centrepiece of this experimental advertisement. However, there is one exception: EEG’s “discovery” in the 1920s and its propagation and acceptance over the following decades has helped to create the very brainwave ideologies which power the “Brainwave Symphony”— including its collaborative, electrical potential. As an experiment, the “Brainwave Symphony” may not measure up, but as an advertisement, it certainly succeeds at making Sense8’s telepathic connections into an imagined reality. That it does so through brainwaves is a testament to the power of the brainwave ideologies of visualization and manipulation in popular culture—particularly because the show itself makes few references to brainwaves (with the exception of a brain-centred helmet in a few choice scenes). Indeed, even as the project appears to focus on its sonic elements, the symphony is a powerful visualization of brains (ostensibly) working in harmony to create something greater than the sum of their parts. As with Multimer, the “Brainwave Symphony” focuses its attention not on the manipulation of individual brains, but on the power of the brain’s electrical impulses to have effects on the world. In the aggregate, the symphony seems to sing, brainwaves make the impossible possible—including forms of telepathic communication. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 37 Concluding Thoughts Brainwave ideologies help to craft electrical brain activity into human signals that can be used in the service of larger projects. However, and as I have illustrated throughout, rendering the brain’s electrical activity visible is achieved through a series of choices: What is worth representing? What kinds of representations have we deemed technically possible or impossible? What parts of the data will users see and interact with? How will the designers shape those representations? As we create various representations of brainwaves, we are constructing knowledge and narratives about the brain—its data, its rhythms, its potential for manipulation. We are bringing into being the very things we claim to be only measuring. Moreover, and in the examples I’ve discussed, the language of interactive collaboration overdetermines this particular process of data aggregation, bringing the construction and “fixing” of a particular set of variables into relief. In the “Brainwave Symphony,” EEG is in the service of what seems to be an innocuous, sanguine artistic goal and in the case of Multimer, EEG data aggregation has the potential for a collaborative civic intervention. However, it does not require very much creativity to imagine alternate uses for either kind of orchestration. Which brings us back to Bester’s ESPers. In the world of The Demolished Man, society-wide mind reading has led to some fairly positive things: less crime, more transparency in government, opportunities for better therapeutic intervention. But it has also led to deeper stratification, less freedom, and more surveillance. Mind reading dragnets are great for catching criminals, and perhaps they would be helpful for urban planning, but do we want to bring these capabilities into our bedrooms, boardrooms and automobiles? As EEG wearables invade the consumer market, we might feel as if our main question should be what are “the implications of creating technologies that can record, visualize and share with each other our intimate body-states?”85 But we would do well to ask another kind of question: What exactly do we think we are measuring? To what end? How have brainwaves been constructed as material artefacts with collaborative potential? Are EEG wearables reading anything at all—including our minds? carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 38 M. M. LITTLEFIELD Notes 1. Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (New York: Vintage Books, 1996 [1953]), 33. 2. Ibid., 35. 3. Ibid., 162. 4. Interestingly, the term brainwave was used prior to EEG to signify an idea. I write about the transition from these more general brainwaves to their electrically charged counterparts in Instrumental Intimacy. PostBerger—and the validating experiments of Adrian and Matthews (1934), there is a significant shift in both the popular and scientific use of the term as brainwave gradually comes to stand in, specifically, for the brain’s electrical activity. 5. Bester, The Demolished Man, 33. 6. Hans Berger published his work on human electroencephalography between 1929 and 1938. These fourteen papers have been translated by Peter Gloor (1969) and Berger’s life, work and historical context have been discussed at length by Cornelius Borck and David Millett in their various papers on the subject. 7. Cf. for example Peter Gloor, Hans Berger: On the Electroencephalogram of Man. Preface by Herbert H. Jasper (New York: Elsevier, 1969); David Millett, “Hans Berger: From Psychic Energy to EEG,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44, no. 4: 522–542; Cornelius Borck, “Electricity as a Medium of Psychic Life: Electrotechnological Adventures into Psychodiagnosis in Weimar Germany,” Science in Context 14, no. 4: 565–590. 8. See the work of Richard Caton, Adolf Beck, Vladimir Neminsky, and Napoleon Cybulski, for example. 9. Cf. for example Peter Gloor, Hans Berger: On the Electroencephalogram of Man. Preface by Herbert H. Jasper (New York: Elsevier, 1969); Robert Kaplan, “The Mid Reader: The Forgotten Life of Hans Berger, Discoverer of the EEG,” Australian Psychiatry 19, no. 2: 168–169. https://doi.org/ 10.3109/10398562.2011.561495. 10. At the time of this writing, two of the primary companies producing wearable EEG headgear for consumer applications include Emotiv and NeuroSky. InteraXon is another such company and produces a wearable called Muse. Also, there are a number of laboratory-grade EEG wearables that are not as readily available to the consumer market, such as iBrain’s NeuroVigil. 11. While I characterize these two sub-fields as “young” because of their appearance within the past two decades, I also want to recognize that psychogeographic mapping of city spaces has a much longer history. We might look most obviously at the derive, for example, or psychogeography more generally. I speak to these backgrounds in the larger book project carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 39 (Melissa Littlefield, Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018]), but there are plenty of other guides, for example Merlin Coverley’s Psychogeography (2006). Peter Zeile et al.,“Urban Emotions: Benefits and Risks in Using Human Sensory Assessment for the Extraction of Contextual Emotion Information in Urban Planning,” in Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, ed. Stan Geertman et al. (Springer, 2015), 209–225, here 210. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-319-18368_11. Ibid., 213–214, author’s emphasis. Christian Nold, “Bio Mapping: How Can We Use Emotion to Articulate Cities?” Living Maps Review 5: 1–16, here 10. Ibid. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 6. Elisa Giaccardi and Daniela Fogli, “Affective Geographies: Toward a Richer Cartographic Semantics for the Geospatial Web,” AVI’08, May 28– 30, 173–180. Christian Nold, “Introduction. Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self,” in Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self, ed. Christian Nold (www.emotionalcartography.net), 3–13, here 7, author’s emphasis. Panagiotis Mavros, “Emotional Urbanism” (MS thesis, Edinburgh College of Art, 2011), 32, author’s emphasis. Nold, “Bio Mapping,” 8. Alan Mislove et al., “Pulse of the Nation,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://mislove.org/twittermood/. Jonathan Harris, and Sepandar Kamvar, “We Feel Fine,” accessed September 30, 2019. http://wefeelfine.org. John Craig Freedman, “EEG AR: Things We Have Lost,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com/eeg-arthings-we-have-lost/. Odd Division, “Conductar: Moogfest Documentation,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://vimeo.com/120638648. Vimeo. 2015. “Conductar: Moogfest Documentation.” https://vimeo. com/120638648. “Crunchbase,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.crunchbase. com/. According to their website, “Multimer grew from Arlene Ducao’s graduate work at MIT, was incubated as part of the MIT E14 Fund, and was accelerated in the SOSV- and BMW-sponsored Urban-X program” (Dukorp, “Multimer: Better Decisions Based on Human Signals,” accessed September 30, 2019. dukodestudio.com/mindriderdata/). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 40 M. M. LITTLEFIELD 30. Ducao published her first iteration of MindRider data overlays in MindRider Maps Manhattan (Brooklyn: DuKorp, 2015). This book is a collection of mash-up maps in which MindRider data is combined with available city data on a number of topics, including automobile/cyclist collisions. Within Multimer’s portfolio, MindRider Maps Manhattan is now settled among a number of other “case studies” included on their website. 31. What began as a group of cyclists charting the streets of Manhattan and creating mapped reasons for social change has now shifted into a larger conglomerate with potential case study projects in several cities, including London and Paris. They have partnered with IBM, Harley Davidson, The Associate Press, UN-Habitat and Zillow to test their human signal wearables and algorithms in multiple situations. 32. DuKorp, “Multimer.” 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. It is worth noting that as Multimer moves out of the city and into the boardroom and the real estate market in their more recent “case studies,” they have refocused their discourse, preferring instead the language of “human-centered experience” (multimerdata.com). By making such a move to speak less to the brain and more to the human signal, Multimer has made room to expand the range of technologies beyond EEG. 36. DuKorp, “MindRider: Tracks Your Mental Experience,” accessed September 30, 2019. http://categorized.multimerdata.com/. 37. DuKorp, “Multimer.” 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. See Otniel Dror. “Seeing the Blush: Feeling Emotions,” in Histories of Scientific Observation, eds. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, 326– 348. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Brenton J. Malin, Feeling Mediated: A History of Media Technology and Emotion in America. New York: New York University Press. 41. Dukorp, “Multimer.” 42. Ibid. 43. DuKorp, “MindRider: Tracks Your Mental Experience,” accessed September 30, 2019. http://multimerdata.com/. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Nold, “Bio Mapping,” 14. 49. Zeile et al.,“Urban Emotions,” 210. 50. Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Boston: MIT Press, 1960), 40. 51. Ibid., 7, author’s emphasis. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 2 ELECTRICAL POTENTIAL: MIND READING AS COLLABORATIVE ACTION 41 52. Alexandra Jardine, “Binge-Watchers’ Brainwaves Power a Symphony Promoting Netflix Shows’ Sense8’,” AdAge, August 3 (2015). https://adage. com/creativity/work/sense8-brainwave-symphony/42907. 53. Trust, “Case Study: Netflix Sense8 ‘Brainwave Symphony’,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.trustcollective.com/netflixs-sense8brainwave-symphony/. 54. Mark Shrayber, “The ‘Sense8’ Theme Music Was Created from Actual Human Brainwaves.” Uproxx, August 1 (2015). https://uproxx.com/ tv/sense8-theme-music-brainwaves/. 55. John Brownlee, “Netflix Designed a Symphony from Random Brainwaves,” FastCompany, July 30 (2015). https://www.fastcompany.com/ 3049223/netflix-designed-a-symphony-from-random-brainwaves. 56. Mufson, Beckett, “Listen to a Song Made from Repurposed Brainwaves,” Noisey: Music By Vice, July 29 (2015). https://www.vice.com/en_us/ article/gvwd4q/listen-to-a-song-made-from-repurposed-brainwaves. 57. Shrayber, “The ‘Sense8’ Theme Music.” 58. Gabriel Beltrone, “Netflix Transforms Viewer Brainwaves into Music to Promote Telepathy Show,” AdWeek, August 6 (2015). https:// www.adweek.com/creativity/netflix-transforms-viewer-brainwaves-musicpromote-telepathy-show-166259/. 59. Lucas, “These Scientists Made Original Music Using People’s Brainwaves,” YourEDM, July 30 (2015). https://www.youredm.com/2015/ 07/30/these-scientists-made-original-music-using-peoples-brainwaves/. 60. J. E. Reich, “Composing a Brain Symphony for the Waschowski’s Sci-Fi Drame ‘Sense8.’” TechTimes, July 29 (2015). https://www. techtimes.com/articles/72901/20150729/composing-brain-symphonywachowskis-sci-fi-drama-sense8.htm. 61. Andre Tarantola, “Netflix Synthesizes a Brainwave Symphony for ‘Sense8’,” Engadget, July 29 (2015). https://www.engadget.com/2015/ 07/29/netflix-synthesizes-a-brainwave-symphony-for-sense8/?ncid=rss_ truncated. 62. Beltrone, “Netflix Transforms Viewer Brainwaves.” 63. Tarantola, “Netflix Synthesizes.” 64. Lucas, “These Scientists Made.” 65. Kasia Pilat, “Netflix Turned People’s Brainwaves into the ‘Sense8’ Theme Music,” Dailydot, July 31 (2015). https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ netflix-sense8-brain-waves-symphony-music/. 66. Dan Solomon, “Netflix’s ‘Sense8’ Makes Beautiful Music Out of the Brainwaves of 8 Strangers,” FastCompany, July 30 (2015). https://www. fastcompany.com/3049250/netflixs-sense8-makes-beautiful-music-outof-the-brainwaves-of-8-strangers. 67. Trust, “Case Study.” 68. Ibid., author’s emphasis. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 42 M. M. LITTLEFIELD 69. Netflix, “Sense8 Brainwave Symphony,” July 25 (2015). https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=HMH4VFY6cFk. 70. Ibid. 71. Jessica Cariaga, “Watch: This ‘Sense8’-Inspired ‘Brainwave Symphony’ Turns Telepathy into Music,” IndieWire, July 29 (2015). https:// www.indiewire.com/2015/07/watch-this-sense8-inspired-brainwavesymphony-turns-telepathy-into-music-59911/. 72. “Composer Predicts—One Day You’ll Be Able to Just ‘Think’ Music.” 1949. The Washington Post L3. 73. Ibid. 74. “Composer Predicts—One Day You’ll Be Able to Just ‘Think’ Music,” The Washington Post L3 (1949). 75. Netflix, “Sense8 Brainwave Symphony,” accessed September 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMH4VFY6cFk&t=62s. 76. If I had more time and space, it would be interesting to broaden the definition of collaboration here to an STS, ANT perspective that could discuss human–machine collaboration and any number of other actors involved in the setup and execution of this experiment. 77. Trust, “Case Study,” author’s emphasis. 78. Ibid., author’s emphasis. 79. Nathan McAlone, “Netflix Composed a Symphony By Combining the Brainwaves of Eight Strangers,” Business Insider, July 31 (2015). https:// www.businessinsider.com/netflix-symphony-combines-brainwaves-ofeight-strangers-2015-7. 80. Solomon, “Netflix’s ‘Sense8’ Makes Beautiful Music.” 81. Netflix, “Sense8 Brainwave Symphony,” July 25 (2015). https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=HMH4VFY6cFk. 82. Pilat, “Netflix Turned People’s Brainwaves.” 83. Brownlee, “Netflix Designed a Symphony.” 84. Ibid. 85. Nold, Emotional Cartography, 9. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 3 The Omega Factor: The Revival of Telepathy in the 1970s Roger Luckhurst I argued in my study The Invention of Telepathy that the act of coining the term in 1882 by Frederic Myers required thinking through as a highly overdetermined moment. This tele-pathos or distant touch is a complex knot (to use Bruno Latour’s metaphor) that braids together several very diverse disciplinary knowledges. These entangle different discursive domains specific to the 1880s that are difficult to unravel: a distinct, conjunctural constellation of the cultural, theological, technical, technological, ethical, political and scientific, with subsets of the biological, physical, chemical, neurological and the psychological. Telepathy emerged in the vanishing points of energy physics and in new models of dynamic rather than deterministic psychology, in the phase space of theoretical hesitations symptomatic of paradigm shifts, just at a moment when the electrical revolution was transforming and accelerating the quotidian experience of late nineteenth-century modernity. What Frederic Myers—a poet, R. Luckhurst (B) Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK e-mail: uble037@mail.bbk.ac.uk © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_3 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 43 44 R. LUCKHURST classicist, educationalist and co-founder of the British Society for Psychical Research—bound into and mobilized in “telepathy” was and remains daunting to disentangle. Perhaps what is most impressive is the ability of this concept-formation to survive its initial peculiar conditions and become embedded in many cultures. In this chapter, I want to argue for another moment of conjuncture in the cultural history of telepathy. In the 1970s, there was a major flowering of new lines of evidence, sensational new phenomena and new conceptualizations of telepathy after decades of relatively stable research models that had been consolidated by J. B. Rhine’s laboratory routinization of parapsychology and statistical studies of extrasensory perception (ESP) at Duke University in the 1930s. There are four major strands I want to single out in this new conjuncture. In physics, a renewed interest in the detection of high energy fields and communication technologies prompted a return to bio-physical models and explanations for telepathy, particularly in a brief but intensive period of research in the laboratories of the Soviet Union. In psychology, there was an emergence of new paradigms as the dominance of behaviourism waned. Leading figures of humanistic psychology, such as Stanley Krippner, incorporated research into telepathy as part of a more expansive, holistic concept of the self. This approach clearly abutted onto ideas of self-fashioning in the counterculture, which could often be sympathetic to syncretic beliefs that normalized psychical phenomena, because such “peak experiences” (in Abraham Maslow’s language of humanistic psychology) outflanked the narrow instrumental rationality of so-called Western science. At the same time, a revival of science fiction and horror in fiction and film often focused on the concept of telepathy as either utopian promise or dystopian threat. At the peak of the Cold War, in a moment of economic instability in the West from 1973 to 1979, typically considered to be a structural crisis of capitalism, psychical research seemed to offer to some an empowering mode of self-transformation. “Parapsychology” was joined by a host of new coinages, including the term psychotronics. The first International Conference on Psychotronic Research met in Prague in 1973, and the Czech team proposed the new term as a study of the “bionics of man,” a new kind of “technology of the psyche.”1 Psychotronics was less the passive recording of spontaneous, anomalous phenomena that concerned parapsychologists and more an active, self-potentializing “technology of the self,” fully in tune with the Zeitgeist.2 Let’s begin to fill out the elements of this conjuncture in more detail. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 45 Psychotronic Technologies In 1968, the Conference of Technical Parapsychology was held in chaotic circumstances in Moscow. It was cancelled by the Communist Party authorities even as international delegates arrived. The conference, denounced in the official Communist Party organ Pravda, was eventually allowed to continue as an unsanctioned event. The conference released in public a batch of extraordinary information about extensive parapsychological research in the Soviet Union that had been conducted since the post-Stalin thaw had allowed a return to the telepathic research that had earlier flowered in the 1920s (early Bolshevism always had sciencefictional elements). In his last years, the eminent Soviet physiologist Leonid Vasiliev recalled telepathic experiments from 1922, and began new laboratory research in 1959, publishing several studies up to his death in 1966. The English translation of Vasiliev’s Experiments in Mental Suggestion appeared in 1963. In this brief window of renewed investigation, Soviet physicists conducted electromagnetic research into electrical force-fields around living bodies. In 1961, Semyon Kirlian at the Kazakh State University reported that he had photographed vibrant electromagnetic patterns of living bodies caught at very high frequencies.3 Many reproduced the Kirlian photographic method: some called them “electroauragrams,” claiming finally to have discovered the technical means to detect the aura long claimed to envelop the body but hitherto only seen by mediums or sensitives. In 1972, the American radiation physicist Richard Dobrin also claimed he had discovered a way of recording invisible radiation from the human body. This “Human Energy Field” was another scientific rendering of the mystical aura. In adjacent fields, biologists produced rival devices that were meant to detect the broadcast of biological plasma beyond the body, perhaps the basis for what B. B. Kazhinsky called in 1962 “biological radio communications.”4 These material records were the underpinnings for startling new theories. Distant telepathic communications between laboratories in Moscow and Leningrad (between subjects Nikolaiev and Kamensky) had allegedly been proved in tests in 1963. Film of the notorious psychokinetic medium Ninel Mikhailova (“Kulagina”), who spent twenty years in laboratories moving objects apparently by mental power alone, was also released at the 1968 conference. Edward Naumov, the leading spokesman of this new Soviet science, claimed that this new field of “bio-information” carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 46 R. LUCKHURST was leading to “machines capable of monitoring, testing, and studying ‘ESP.’”5 So-called Sergeyev detectors (named after the parapsychologist Dr. Genady Sergeyev) became common technical apparatuses in laboratories. The Cold War implications, never far away, were that if a fugitive and unreliably spontaneous form of telepathy could be harnessed and technologized, this psychical channel could be weaponized and transform the super-power stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction. Had the Americans trailed telepathic communications with submarines in the late 1950s? Had an accident on a Soviet submarine in 1963 been the result of a psychical experiment? In an odd mirroring effect, the American military-industrial complex ramped up funding to this research area, leading in 1978 to an umbrella programme called “Project Star Gate,” which brought together diverse avenues of experimental research. This military programme (given the comic treatment in Jon Ronson’s popular investigative book, The Men Who Stare at Goats [2004]) was propelled in part by the sudden public end of any official sanction of parapsychological research in the Soviet Union, suppressed for its suspicious, “idealist” tendencies. This suppression had already begun by the 1968 Moscow conference, and by 1974, Edward Naumov had been imprisoned for accepting lecture fees in the West, where he continued to speak publicly about proscribed sciences. In a febrile Cold War era, silence was read as ominous secrecy, and there is no doubt that rumours of militarized parapsychology that continued to circulate were part of the tactics of deliberate mystification and disinformation on both sides of the Iron Curtain, as has been documented in the realm of UFO sightings in the same era.6 In 2013, most of the Project Star Gate files were declassified and published, although the inevitable redactions foster only frenzied speculations about the psychic truths hidden in the occluded portions.7 This speculative climate proved conducive to a whole range of new psychotronics—technologies that seemed to possess a psychical supplement. Every modern electrical technology has produced an occult double, from the entwinement of Spiritualist rapping and telegraphy in the 1840s, via the spectral “extras” caught by spirit photographers in the 1870s to the imbrication of telephony and telepathy in the 1880s, and of psychism and wireless telegraphy and, later, television.8 New technologies of the 1960s were no different, and as these filtered into everyday life they seemed to carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 47 conform to Arthur C. Clarke’s famous Third Law, first explicitly formulated in 1973, that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”9 So, for instance, after the arrival of the first Polaroid instant camera to use Colorpack film in 1963, the American bellhop and psychic Ted Serios became famous for his alleged ability to use it to take “thoughtographs,” impressions imprinted directly from his brain onto Polaroid film. The first study of Serios by professor of psychiatry Jule Eisenbud was released in 1967. It was exposed as fraud in the same year and again spectacularly by the debunker James Randi on primetime TV in 1973, although Serios’ career continued for another twenty years.10 In 1959, the Swedish artist Friedrich Jürgenson claimed to capture “surviving discarnate personalities” while doing field recordings using reel-to-reel tape. Konstantin Raudive, also in Sweden, began his own researches with the new portable analogue tape recorders in 1964, collecting his findings in Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead (1968, translated into English in 1971). “Raudive Voices” would shortly be formalized as Electronic Voice Phenomena, apparently meaningful messages captured in the white noise of analogue tape decks from the ambient environment or in the dead spaces of radio spectra.11 In the medical arena, the ensemble of new machines brought together in the Intensive Care Unit to improve critical medical treatment in the early 1960s prompted in a few short years the redefinition of death in 1968 from the cessation of the heart to “brain death,” and also regularized new technical devices for recording brain activity.12 Parapsychologists adapted this machinery, resulting, for instance, in the use of EEG measurements at the Dream Laboratory of the Maimonides Medical Centre in experiments begun in 1964, in which medical researchers claimed to have proved the existence of dream telepathy across successively larger distances.13 Increasing survival of dire medical situations prompted new research into the intense psychic and spiritual experience of being declared dead yet returning to life. In 1975, Raymond Moody’s best-selling collection of case studies, Life After Life, started to codify an experience shortly to be termed “Near Death Experiences.” In 1973, the American security state began to fund experiments at the Stanford Research Institute by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff on a technique of projective visionary experience that might once have been called astral travel but was now termed “Remote Viewing.” The programme carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 48 R. LUCKHURST (eventually folded into the Star Gate Project) offered the sensational possibility of spying on Cold War enemies by psychic infiltration. Both this American security state project and Soviet experiments in this area were openly documented in the public domain almost immediately, suggesting a pattern of deliberate broadcast. Puthoff and Targ published the controversial article, “Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding” in Nature in 1974, and Soviet researches were openly detailed in popular books such as Martin Ebon’s Psychic Warfare, which traced the origins of Soviet and US Navy interest in psychotronics back to the late 1950s.14 Ebon’s idea of a “psychic arms race”—a soft psychotronics that shadowed all that intercontinental ballistic hardware—saturated the popular culture of the time. Had Jimmy Carter’s strange behaviour following his attendance at the SALT II treaty talks in Vienna been the result of a psychic attack by the Soviets? This swirled in public discourse particularly after the first appearance of Uri Geller on British television in October 1973, which became a global sensation. Geller was a figure who seemed to offer observable and reproducible instances of psychokinesis. He fit into the popular stereotype of the exotic foreign mesmerist, the Jewish Svengali figure fixed by George du Maurier’s 1894 best-seller Trilby who could hypnotize and command at a distance. Geller was ubiquitous in the media, conducting large-scale telepathic and psychokinetic experiments through the medium of television (as a child, I remember putting old watches and spoons in front of the television for one of these tests, with disappointingly negative results). At the same time, Geller was being seriously tested in university laboratories—in 1974, for instance, he was the subject of a series of experimental tests conducted at my own college, Birkbeck, University of London, by Professor John Hasted in the physics department, using Geiger counters and gaussmeters to try to pin down the “Geller effect.” Hasted—a firm believer in psychokinesis—reported that Geller had degraded the structure of crystals in a sealed unit by telepathic or telekinetic means.15 The technological ensemble of the respected physics lab could be turned into a psychotronic apparatus. The New Age: Magic or Terror? The physics professor and psychical researcher Charles Panati proclaimed in his survey, Supersenses: Our Potential for Parasensory Experience: “The computer age began in the 1950s, the space age in the 1960s and the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 49 psychic age began in the 1970s.”16 Such epochal claims match the sort of rhetoric familiar with pronouncements of the “Age of Aquarius”— an astrological formulation forever associated with the hippy movement through the opening song of the 1967 musical, Hair. Paul Heelas defines New Age culture as a syncretistic critique of Western instrumental rationality, and itself a product of modernity, which could incorporate a wide range of different occultural beliefs, scientific theories and theological traditions.17 It could stretch from the somewhat embellished immersive anthropology of Carlos Castaneda’s psychedelic journey into Yaqui shamanism and the psychedelic esotericism of Terence McKenna, via the more holistic self-actualization of the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, and back into the fringes again with the entirely fabricated lost history of alien visitations to ancient cultures propounded in endless bestsellers by Erich von Däniken.18 An expansive critique of Western science often took aim at what Ivan Sanderson called its blinkered “protective disbelief,” and this made psychical research an exemplary field for these borderland terrains.19 For some of the advocates of parapsychology in the 1970s, there was an open connection made to the dissenting philosophy of the counterculture. Stuart Holroyd’s Psi and the Consciousness Explosion, published in 1977, placed parapsychology as part of a “new gnosis” for a new epoch. Holroyd argued that “faculties that have been fettered and inhibited by the rigid orthodoxies of the bourgeois life-style and the materialistic values that sustain it will freely flourish.” As emergent signs, he listed examples of an openness to mystical experience, telepathic communication, psychic healing and the fusion of mind and matter exemplified by biofeedback research. In the same argument, Holroyd directly linked the counterculture to “its allied experimental science, parapsychology.”20 But this outflanking of orthodox, “square” science was not only found in popular books. In certain research institutes and university departments, science and the counterculture met directly. Timothy Leary moved quickly from his Harvard laboratory to the Californian psychedelic scene in 1963, becoming a spokesman for a host of far-out researches into mind-expanding hallucinogens. The dolphin expert John Lilly dropped LSD with dolphins on the way to creating the mind-expanding water isolation tank, where cross-species communication and all manner of psychical experiences might occur. Similarly, the psychologist Abraham Maslow forsook a university psychology department for the Esalen Institute at Big carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 50 R. LUCKHURST Sur, where his humanistic theories of self-actualization and “peak experience” converged with the counterculture. Psychical research was one of these “groovy sciences” of the era, a place where science could re-enchant the world rather than conduct the narrow, punitive disenchantment outlined as its principal task by Max Weber.21 Where the New Age often spoke in the language of the sublime, placing telepathy as an instance of the experience of expanded consciousness, the rumours of nefarious state programmes for the militarization of parapsychological research and the feverish speculation about psychotronic technologies no doubt fed into a decidedly paranoid psychical turn in popular horror film and fiction in the 1970s. Horror film had one of its richest and most complex peaks after 1968, mainstreamed by Hollywood studios after the success of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, and finding a new subcultural energy in the vicious political critique of George Romero’s shocker, Night of the Living Dead, declared to have the “force of art” by the leading film critic Robin Wood.22 The telepathic tinge to 70s horror ranged similarly from high to low culture. The work of ostentatious auteurs included Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), a dazzling rendition of Daphne du Maurier’s tale of a man too insensitive to his own psychical abilities that he fails to understand he has foreseen his own death. Don’t Look Now used the temporal disorientation of montage to reproduce fugitive psychical experiences via flashbacks, visual rhymes and flash-forwards. Roeg’s film suggested that there was something intrinsically telepathic about the grammar of film itself. This was also true of Stanley Kubrick’s rendition of telepathy in his adaptation of Stephen King’s horror The Shining (1980), as I’ve argued elsewhere.23 Brian de Palma’s Carrie (1976) and The Fury (1978) both concerned violent psychokinetic abilities. Carrie associated psychokinesis with the poltergeist activities surrounding a traumatized girl reaching puberty, a highly active area of psychical research in the 1970s (as in, for example, the notorious haunting associated with two young girls in Enfield, investigated by the Society for Psychical Research between 1977 and 1979).24 The Fury placed it inside a plot about a government conspiracy to weaponize psychical powers. The film Firestarter (1984), based on yet another Stephen King novel, about a young girl with pyrokinetic powers, did the same thing, taking her on the run against the dark forces of the security state. David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981) shifted this conspiracy to his typical terrain of anonymous Big Pharma corporations pursuing rogue research, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 51 in this case a group of telepaths created by experimental drugs administered in pregnancy. Another cluster of horror films at the end of the 1970s associated states of coma or brain injury with telepathic or other psychical powers. In Jack Gold’s The Medusa Touch (1978) it becomes apparent that a man lying in a coma is able to reach out and kill psychokinetically, a plot repeated in The Sender (1982). Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (published as a novel in 1979 and filmed later in 1983) centres on a man with precognitive abilities that develop from brain injuries and years in a coma. The weirdness of the comatose state—investigated and stabilized by medical technology—was one of the key cultural markers of the uncannily mobile threshold of life and death in the 1970s, with new medical categories trying to mark out this interval. The Persistent Vegetative State was coined by Bryan Jennett and Fred Plum in 1972.25 The enigmas of that state were made famous by the case of Katherine Anne Quinlan. Quinlan slipped into an apparently brain-dead state in 1975. In 1976, after a high-profile legal wrangle, her father was successful in being granted the legal right to turn off her respirator. Instead of the expected rapid decline, Quinlan’s breathing stabilized without mechanical assistance and she lived on, in a twilight state, never leaving her coma until her death ten years later, and so becoming a crisis of biomedical category. Sensational plots about psychical powers surrounding medical coma states followed the familiar supplemental logic I’ve outlined here of the occult doubling of technology. In science fiction, telepathy and “psi” powers had been a common trope since the late nineteenth century. This strand has been termed “psience fiction” and the 1970s featured a particularly rich moment in this sub-genre.26 The famous editor of Astounding Science Fiction, John W. Campbell, died in 1971, but since the late 1920s, when he studied at Duke University, Campbell had been a strong supporter and collaborator of the ESP laboratory set up there by J. B. Rhine. In 1953, Campbell wrote a long letter to Rhine placing his science fiction magazine in the service of ESP research. “Give me time, sir! I’m in your business too!”27 This was three years after Campbell had given substantial space to L. Ron Hubbard’s new technique of mental enhancement, “Dianetics” (which became, for tax purposes, the religion of Scientology a few years later). In 1969, Campbell was still harping on this theme and edited the anthology 14 Great Tales of ESP, with a resounding introduction affirming the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 52 R. LUCKHURST centrality of psi to science fiction. There was considerably more ambiguity about telepathy in Robert Silverberg’s impressive and melancholic novel, Dying Inside (1972), which focused on a telepath experiencing the stuttering and failing of his psychic power. Joanna Russ’s And Chaos Died (1970) was also an innovative experimental take on the subjective experience of acquiring psychic powers after an alien encounter. Psychical powers are ambiguous at best in Philip Dick’s stories, with telepaths and precogs often marginal and oppressed social misfits. This was one of Dick’s repeated themes, but powerfully worked out in his novels Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) and Ubik (1969). As Andrew Butler, an historian of 1970s science fiction has noted, the genre abutted oddly into pseudo-scientific and paranormal researches throughout the decade.28 As Erich von Däniken uncovered the “chariots of the Gods,” Charles Berlitz published a whole chain of speculative investigations from The Bermuda Triangle (1974) to The Philadelphia Experiment (1979). While sceptical science fiction writers and critics tried to dismiss this lurch towards fringe beliefs (the science fiction satirist John Sladek published his withering New Apocrypha in 1974), the whole genre was suffused with the impact of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which mixed up psychical powers, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the Roswell conspiracy and government cover-ups in a heady brew of special effects cinema. A “special edition,” released in 1980, further amped up this reach for the spectacular sublime. In a weird feedback loop typical of these margins, the film itself became wrapped up in conspiracy theories: Was the film a depiction of the allegedly true human-alien exchange programme, Project Serpo, started by the American government in 1965? Close Encounters certainly helped embed an obsession in alien abduction and reports of anomalous psychical powers associated with contacts with UFOs for at least another twenty years. One historian has characterized television culture in the 1970s as providing “a reassuring form of cultural continuity,” but that was not the case in British television.29 There was a flowering of programmes that contributed to this dark conjuncture. These arguably had more cultural impact, as television had reached into virtually every home by the early 1970s, and its intrusion into the domestic space was often discussed by cultural conservatives like Jerry Mander in terms of malign or uncanny influence, particularly on children.30 Theories about TV’s hypnotic, psychical power emerged with the technology in the 1920s, and reached its apotheosis in the 1970s.31 Nigel Kneale’s TV film, The Stone Tape carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 53 (1972), was about an electronics company accidentally discovering a way of recording the haunting, psychical traces of traumatic events left in buildings. There was a group of occult-tinged Plays for Today on BBC television that were about temporal collapse or psychic links across deep historical time, whether it was Alan Clark’s remarkably obtuse Penda’s Fen (1974), which linked a sexually confused teenage boy in the 1970s to the last pagan king in England in communicating a message of cultural miscegenation and sexual dissidence, or John Mackenzie’s adaptation of Red Shift (1978), Alan Garner’s novel that suggests odd psychic connections that cut across Roman Britain, the English Civil War, and the life of two struggling present-day teens in the economically depressed north. The unnerving coldness and cruelty of the series Sapphire and Steel (1979–1982), full of stark metaphysical conundrums and psychical tortures, have made it cult viewing, an emblem of what cultural critic Mark Fisher has called a distinctive late 1970s atmosphere of cancelled futures and “hauntological” eeriness.32 There was also a grouping of children’s fictions that dealt with similar odd mental states, perhaps inspired by the saturation of school reading lists with John Wyndhams’s tale of the persecution of telepathic and other mutant children, The Chrysalids (1955). Whether it was Tomorrow’s People (a series about mutant psychic children that ran 1973–1979), The Changes (a post-apocalyptic Britain where a polite middle-class school girl and a group of Sikhs survive a technological catastrophe, from 1975) or The Children of the Stones (a pagan-tinged series about the Avebury stone circle, from 1977), there was a significant heightening of the cultural trope of the psychically sensitive child. Strange to think, but Uri Geller even appeared on the BBC’s flagship children’s TV programme Blue Peter in 1974. The mainstream success of the films The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) added a demonic twist to the parapsychological phenomena associated with children. In 1980, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, the first of three TV programmes hosted by the famous science-fiction author, aired to huge popular appeal with its compendium of weird natural phenomena, legends of the yeti, Bigfoot, and giant krakens, but also mysteries of what Clarke called “the third kind,” in which he included telepathy, psychokinesis and poltergeists. Clarke, a science fiction writer and one of Britain’s leading popular science communicators from the late 1950s on, hugely authoritative for his futurological predictions of communication satellites and personal computers, consistently gave credence to telepathy as a plausible carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 54 R. LUCKHURST scientific marker of human evolutionary advance, much as Frederic Myers had done in the 1880s. At the end of Clarke’s classic novel The City and the Stars (1956), it is not nuclear weapons that prompt the galactic Overmind to contact humanity, but rather breakthroughs in psychical research. Telepathy here is a wild human power that escapes the limits of the planet and requires mentoring. A year before the Clarke programme, the BBC had launched The Omega Factor. The series, scripted by Jack Gerson (and published also as a novel), neatly condensed many of the aspects of the psychotronic 1970s that I have been outlining here. In ten episodes, it details how an investigative journalist is recruited to a secret government organization, “Department 7,” which explores unexplained psychical phenomena. It is called the “Omega Factor” because, as its security service head explains, this is “The last letter of the great alphabet. The End. In this case the end of scientific knowledge. We are asking you to go further than that end. Beyond the end. To the Omega factor and further.”33 The journalist Tom Crane is in Edinburgh to chase down a notorious occultist with an ability to exert his malign will on others by supernatural means (a figure evidently based on Aleister Crowley). It transpires that Crane has his own psychical abilities, however, and repressed memories from the onset of puberty when he was associated with violent poltergeist activity. As his psychical abilities bloom again, various elements of the security state vie for control. The series occupies the uncanny valley between natural and supernatural explanations, featuring rooms of psychologists, computer technicians and sceptical deep state servants, but also spectacular demonstrations of occult and psychical power. The episodes of the series are clearly indebted to several instances of parapsychological research from the time. Indeed, Department 7 may be an echo of the alleged existence of “Special Department 8” at the Institute of Automation and Electrometry in the USSR’s Science City in Siberia, which was tasked with trying to isolate “psi particles.” Crane’s disturbing dreams of his brother are directly taken from the experiments in dream telepathy conducted by Stanley Krippner in Brooklyn. The use of target photographs to explore telepathic projection repeat the method of the Moscow/Leningrad experiments. The novelization is full of passing references to contemporary researches—Krippner and Ullman’s Dream Telepathy (1973), and to the work of Robert Ornstein, who explored the expansive power of Eastern meditation methods in The Psychology of Consciousness (1972) and The Mind Field (1976). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 55 The Omega Factor also memorably staged the kind of malignant psychical attacks that the British occultist Dion Fortune claimed could be pursued by powerful magicians in Psychic Self-Defence (1930). Indeed, so powerful were some of these sequences that the series became the subject of a formal complaint to the BBC from Mary Whitehouse, the figurehead of the conservative Christian moral majority organization, The National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. Whitehouse complained about “the increasing references to the supernatural and to witchcraft” on the BBC, but she regarded The Omega Factor as “thoroughly evil” and “far and away the worst in my experience.” In a follow-up letter to the Controller of BBC Scotland, Whitehouse expressed particular concern not just about the “occult” storyline and violations of the BBC’s Code on Violence, but also scenes involving “mind control and hypnosis.” Citing medical authority Dr. David Waxman, Whitehouse warned of “the dangers of unprofessional hypnosis” being represented on television.34 In an odd way, conservative theories of the power of televisual representation to induce agentless imitation, particularly in children, actually suggest a kind of hypnotic or even telepathic power inherent in the medium. No wonder Whitehouse was concerned. Yet on the precise point that The Omega Factor had demonstrably violated pre-watershed codes of violence the BBC agreed and apologized, and the series was cancelled and never re-aired again (it was only released on DVD twenty-five years later).35 Roy Wallis’s contemporaneous study of the ideology of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association concluded that it was a symptom of crisis, “a movement of cultural fundamentalism which seeks to reassert traditional values in the face of massive cultural change.”36 Might this proposition also be extended to the evident peak of parapsychology in the 1970s? Can we historicize this whole conjunctural moment as the symptom of something larger? Periodizing Peak Psi This sketch has detailed the specific conjuncture of parapsychology and popular culture in the 1970s. The inevitable question that follows is why this became such a significant moment. At the most abstracted level, one way of reading this efflorescence would be as epiphenomenal cultural symptoms, as the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson has proposed. Jameson argues in his essay, “Periodizing carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 56 R. LUCKHURST the 60s,” that the “long” 1960s runs between 1959 (the Cuban revolution) and 1973 (the oil crisis). This was followed by a “short” 1970s, opened by the economic crisis of 1973, followed by the severe disturbances that began to unsettle the post-war consensus of the Keynesian, liberal democratic social model, and closing with the election of Reagan and Thatcher in 1979.37 In this account, the short 1970s is an interregnum that produces a set of morbid symptoms (as Antonio Gramsci once said of a different historical moment). Jameson’s historicism encourages a reading of “homologies” across deliberately diverse discourses—in his case semiotics, institutional critique and Third World nationalism—to establish a notion of “1960s-ness.” Could the burst of parapsychology in the 1970s form part of a similar attempt to “diagnose” the crisis of the 1970s? In fact, Jameson’s periodization technique borrows from Ernst Mandel’s book Late Capitalism, which first appeared in 1972 (translated into English in 1975). Mandel’s thesis was about a structural economic crisis brought about by accelerations produced by technological innovation, a final stage that made capitalism late because it completed the saturation of all levels of the base and superstructure with technological rationality. In passing, near the end of his study, Mandel sees as a dialectical product of this situation what he calls “the spread of irrationalism, and the regression to superstition, mysticism and misanthropy which accompany the alleged victory of ‘technological rationality’ in late capitalism.”38 This might explain the emergence of a host of psychotronic technological doubles in the 1970s. But Mandel’s stance is a typical Marxian investment in a scientific materialism that measures itself against competing accounts that are discarded as either mystification or actual mysticism, a tendency that ran from Friedrich Engels denouncing rival utopian dreamers to Theodor Adorno’s bad-tempered comments in “Theses Against Occultism,” which he denounces as “the metaphysic of dunces.” “Mystical rays,” Adorno thundered, were merely “modest anticipations of technical ones.”39 Jameson has also professed his annoyance with “renewed theoretical dabbling in the occult.”40 This kind of interpretation necessarily remains entirely exterior to the symptom that it diagnoses, since it understands the object of analysis to be merely sunk in self-alienated ideological blindness. It does not recognize the cultural work of occultism as having any role in historical analysis as other than a morbid symptom. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 57 A more sympathetic historical account might interrogate the countercultural challenge to instrumental rationality that opened across several fronts in this era. Research into new forms of telepathic communion might thus be seen in homology with New Ageism, anti-psychiatry, holistic therapies, drug research, post-structuralist anti-philosophy, neoprimitivism, occultism, renewed investment in versions of non-Western esotericism, such as Transcendental Meditation, and the emergence of various forms of “romantic protest,” from ecological protest to the New Pagan movement announced by Tony Kelly in 1971 in his “Pagan Musings” manifesto, and even including the avant-garde resistance to cybernetic instrumentalism typical of, say, Jean-Luc Godard’s anti-cinema of the late 1960s onwards.41 This is a deliberately eclectic list from a period that is in the end hard to grasp through reductive homologies. But if the surge in psychical research in the 1970s is read as one part of the emergence of these alternative technologies of the self in response to a pervasive sense of Western decline, then this might help explain why parapsychology took such a prominent place in the cultural landscape. This still remains a disenchantment thesis; however, dependent on Max Weber’s notion that scientific modernity’s task is to “disenchant the world.” It seeks to decode and convert the “irrational” into treatable symptoms of a historicist diagnostic, just as, significantly, the discipline of history was entering in the 1970s a mode of crisis about the authority of its discourse.42 The characterization of modernity as a mode of disenchantment or objective demystification has been challenged by both Charles Taylor and Alex Owen, who have headed a recent wave of scholarship on twentieth-century religious and occult revivals, in which the convergence of parapsychology and popular culture could be regarded as contributions to forms of secular magic or re-enchantment.43 So, what if there were instead a way of figuring this psychotronic moment as an intrinsic if phantasmatic part of an extended notion of an emergent technological ensemble in the 1970s? One way of posing this question is to ask: Is there a “Discourse Network 1975” that could include psychotronics as something other than the deluded double of rational modernity? In his Discourse Networks 1800/1900, Friedrich Kittler proposed a technological episteme to be a general “network of techniques and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store and process relevant data” that would then link together at a different level of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 58 R. LUCKHURST abstraction “pedagogy, poetry and philosophy … media technology, psychophysics, and literature.”44 Many studies of nineteenth-century spiritualism and psychical research have built on Kittler’s proposition in Gramophone Film Typewriter that “Technological media turn magic into a daily routine.”45 Particularly productive in this context might be John Durham Peters’ recent book, The Marvelous Clouds, a prehistory of the digital ecology that cuts across wildly different disciplinary contexts to create what he calls a “weird media theory” in which media is seen as “infrastructural” or “environmental”—“as part of the habitat, and not just as semiotic inputs,” and which can bind together whales, the weather, the Internet and God.46 As I’ve proposed, all post-industrial electrical technologies have produced their own occult supplements. My thesis would be that the renewed interest in mind-reading and psychical tele-effects in the 1970s is a theoretical formation built from the same technological components that are coming together at the same moment to form the first stages of a global digital network, from satellite communications, emergent mobile telephone systems, and the ARPANET, the military forerunner of the Internet. Culture in 1970s, for Jameson, is full of instances where this emergent “world system” stumbles into representation through plots about conspiracies, hidden totalities, and secret networks.47 In this emergent ecology, to quote John Durham Peters, “only that which is networkable exists at all,” a dispensation in which “wiring precedes being.”48 This underpinning infrastructure of interconnected or networked being makes telepathy a powerful figuration of the potentialities of this emergent system. It is significant that it was in laboratory experiments in 1974 and 1975 that the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton began to use the Ganzfeld technique, the whole field technique of sensory deprivation to isolate variables in the experimental subject’s sensorium, and to claim that, finally, this was a rigorous and replicable test-bed to prove the existence of telepathy once and for all.49 The Ganzfeld technique borrowed from Gestalt psychology from the 1930s, although it was only used in psychology labs from the 1960s, extending to parapsychology in the 1970s. The Ganzfeld, the whole field, is a powerful emblem for the growing awareness of situatedness or “Enframement” (to use Heidegger’s term) in complex technological environments, or the increasing entanglement of the natural and the cultural, the perceived acceleration of cybernetic carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 59 and digital systems long before the Internet came into being in its current form. Just a few years later, in 1981, the maverick biologist Rupert Sheldrake theorized the notion of “morphic resonance” in his book A New Science of Life, another form of occult field theory that theorizes new forms of interconnection at the cellular level. The innovations in psychical research in the 1970s—all these new techno-scientific ways of framing mind-reading—make it part of an articulation of the problem of the field or matrix. It is in this extraordinary phase of the digital network’s development that telepathy becomes thinkable again. Soon enough, as the digital revolution unfolded in actuality in the 1980s and these networks reordered everyday cultural life into what Manuel Castells called the “space of flows,” telepathy retreated again, moving back into the cultural fringes once more.50 Notes 1. See the “Czech Manifesto,” published as Appendix C in Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, PSI: Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (London: Sphere, 1970), 405. Psychotronics as a “technology of the psyche” is explored in Martin Ebon, Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983). 2. In his 1982 seminar, Michel Foucault argued that analyses of the power that shaped subjects also needed to examine the “technologies of the self,” which he sketched out as the way selves “effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conducts, and way of being.” Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, eds. L. Martin, H. Gutman and P. Hutton (London: Tavistock, 1988), 18. 3. The original essay, S. D. Kirlian and V. K. Kirlian, “High Frequency Currents and Photography,” was translated into English for Kirlian Electrophotography, ed. Paul Sauvin (Washington, DC: Mankind Research, 1973). 4. An English translation of B. B. Kazhinsky’s 1962 Biological Radio Communications was undertaken by the Foreign Technology Division of the U S Air Force Systems Command in 1963, and is now de-classified in full at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/415676.pdf. 5. Naumov, cited in Ostrander and Schroeder, PSI, 26. 6. See Mark Pilkington, The Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychic Warfare, and UFOs (London: Constable, 2010). 7. See Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha, eds., The Star Gate Archives: Reports of the United States Government Sponsored Psi Program, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 60 R. LUCKHURST 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 1972–1995: Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972–1984 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2018). One of the Army officers in charge of the remote viewing experiments at Project Star Gate, David Morehouse, published Psychic Warrior: Inside the CIA’s Stargate Program: The True Story of a Soldier’s Espionage and Awakening (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Several of the experimental subjects have also published accounts, including Joseph McMoneagle, Memoirs of a Psychic Spy: The Remarkable Life of U.S. Government Remote Viewer 001 (Newburyport: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2006). For commentary, see Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). See Arthur C. Clarke, “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of the Imagination,” in 1974 revised edition of Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (London: Gollancz, 1974), 39. Jule Eisenbud, The World of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” Studies of an Extraordinary Mind, (New York: Morrow, 1967). The photographs were reframed as works of art in the exhibition “Psychic Projections/Photographic Impressions” at the University of Maryland–Baltimore in 2011. See “Ted Serios and Psychic Projections,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20 (2011). www.chronicle.com. See D. J. Ellis, “Listening to the ‘Raudive Voices,’” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 48 (March 1975): 31–42. Death was redefined by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School in 1968. For the cultural impact of this shift, see Roger Luckhurst, “Bio-Medical Horror: The New Death and the New Undead,” in Technologies of the Gothic in Literature and Culture, ed. J. Edwards (London: Routledge, 2015), 84–98. See Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner and Alan Vaughan, Dream Telepathy (London: Turnstone Books, 1973). See Targ and Puthoff, “Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding,” Nature 251 (1974), 602–607. See also Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies (1977); Martin Ebon, Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983). See John Halsted, The Metal Benders (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Charles Panati, Supersenses: Our Potential for Parasensory Experience (London: Cape, 1975), 12. Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). The term “occulture” was developed by Christopher Partridge in his The ReEnchantment of the West: Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture and Occulture (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 3 THE OMEGA FACTOR: THE REVIVAL OF TELEPATHY IN THE 1970S 61 18. Carlos Casteneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan first appeared in 1968. The study of Terence McKenna’s experiences, alongside those of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick make up Erik Davis’s High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies (London: Strange Attractor/MIT Press, 2019). Von Däniken’s Chariot of the Gods appeared in 1968 and was translated into English in 1969, with a series of almost annual sequels published over the next ten years. 19. Ivan Sanderson, “Introduction” to Ostrander and Schroeder, PSI, 8. 20. Stuart Holroyd, Psi and the Consciousness Explosion (London: Bodley Head, 1977), 11–12. 21. Details from this paragraph are taken from several essays in David Kaiser and W. Patrick McCray, eds., Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation and the American Counterculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 22. Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 23. Roger Luckhurst, The Shining (London: Palgrave/BFI Classics, 2014). 24. See Guy Lyon Playfair, This House Is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist (New York: Stein and Day, 1980). 25. Bryan Jennett and Fred Plum “Persistent Vegetative State After Brain Damage: A Syndrome in Search of a Name,” The Lancet, April 1 (1972), 734–737. 26. Damien Broderick, Psience Fiction: The Paranormal in Science Fiction Literature (Jefferson: McFarland, 2018). 27. John Campbell to J. B. Rine (November 23, 1953), The John W. Campbell Letters, ed. P. Chapdelaine et al. (Franklin: A. C. Projects, 1985), 229. 28. Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012). 29. Edward D. Berkowitz, Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 218. 30. Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: Harper, 1978). 31. See Stefan Andriopoulos, “Psychic Television” in his Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media (New York: Zone Books, 2013), 139–158. 32. Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures (Winchester: Zero, 2013), in particular the essays in the section “The Return of the 70s,” 49–95. 33. Jack Gerson, The Omega Factor (London: BBC Books, 1979), 25. 34. Letters, Whitehouse to H. A Hetherington (July 12, 1979) and to Patrick Ramsey (August 6, 1979). University of Essex, Albert Sloman carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 62 R. LUCKHURST 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. Library, NVALA Archives, Box 38, BBC/Mary Whitehouse correspondence, 1979. My thanks to the archivist Nigel Cochrane for seeking out these references. For further commentary, see also Andrew Shenton, “Sixes and Sevens: The Prisoner and the Omega Factor Compared,” Foundation 105 (2009): 18–31. Roy Wallis, “Moral Indignation and the Media: An Analysis of the NVALA,” Sociology 10, no. 2 (1976): 292. Fredric Jameson, “Periodizing the 60s,” Social Text 9/10 (1984): 178– 209. Ernst Mandel, Late Capitalism. Translated by Joris de Bres (London: Verso, 1975), 503. Theodor Adorno, “Theses Against Occultism,” in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. Translated by. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1974), 240 and 242. Fredric Jameson, The Modernist Papers (London: Verso, 2007), 269. See Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb and the Greening of Britain and Tony Kelly, “Pagan Musings,” in The Paganism Reader, eds. Chas. S. Clifton and Graham Harvey (London: Routledge, 2004), 300–304. Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe appeared in 1973 and began a long dispute about the role of narrative in historiography. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). For commentary on popular culture, see Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Michael Saler, As If: Literary Enchantment and the Pre-History of Virtual Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Translated by M. Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 369–370. Kittler, Gramophone Film Typewriter. Translated by G. Winthrop-Young and M. Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 35–36. John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 29 and 34. See Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (London: BFI, 1992). Peters, The Marvelous Clouds, 26. See Daryl J. Bem and Charles Honorton, “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer,” Psychological Bulletin 115, no. 1 (1994): 4–18. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy Society and Culture, Vol. 1: The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 4 Visualizing Thoughts: Photography, Neurology and Neuroimaging Anthony Enns As scientific knowledge became institutionalized and specialized in the nineteenth century, there were several disciplines devoted to the study of the mind, including psychology, psychiatry, phrenology, physiology, psychophysics, psychotechnics and even psychical research. These disciplines focused on different aspects of the mind using different scientific instruments and methodologies, yet they were all concerned with the common problem of how to produce objective evidence of fundamentally subjective phenomena. While some scientists were convinced that an objective understanding of the mind could only be achieved by studying the physiological structures of the brain, others maintained a strict division between the body and the mind by conceiving of consciousness as an invisible force superadded to the body, which could not be fully explained in terms of physiological processes. While the materialist model of consciousness gradually replaced the vitalist model,1 nineteenth-century neurologists A. Enns (B) Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: Anthony.Enns@Dal.Ca © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_4 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 63 64 A. ENNS often attempted to reconcile these competing approaches by conceiving of consciousness as a material yet invisible force that was distributed throughout the brain and could even extend beyond it. As this chapter will show, the integration of these competing approaches often relied on the photographic apparatus, which provided a new scientific practice as well as a new conceptual metaphor for understanding the mind, as thoughts were increasingly understood as material yet invisible forces that emanated from the brain and that could be impressed directly onto photographic plates. On the one hand, this practice clearly resembled the kinds of materialist theories developed by physiologists, as it similarly represented an attempt to register and record visible traces of previously invisible psychic phenomena and it was similarly based on the idea that psychic phenomena were manifestations of physical forces. On the other hand, it also challenged the concept of cerebral localization (the notion that cognitive processes were linked to particular areas of the brain) by conceiving of the mind as an energy field and of mind reading as the transfer of energy—an idea that more closely resembled the kinds of vitalist theories promoted by mesmerists and mediums. The practice of “thought photography” thus allowed nineteenth-century neurologists to integrate the materialist and vitalist models of consciousness by blurring the boundaries between visibility and invisibility, materiality and immateriality, and objectivity and subjectivity. As historians often note, the photographic apparatus was seen as an ideal tool for scientific research at this time because it embodied what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison refer to as “mechanical objectivity.”2 First, photography was understood as both a pictorial medium, which recorded and preserved visual impressions, as well as a graphic medium, which registered and measured physical phenomena, as photographs were considered indexical signs that had a material connection to the objects they represented. Photography also reinforced the idea that visual perception was inherently subjective and unreliable, as photographic plates could register the existence of material forces that remained invisible to the eye, and the automatic functioning of the photographic camera allowed it to capture images without human intervention, which seemed to eliminate any possibility of error or manipulation. In other words, nineteenth-century neurologists conceived of the photographic apparatus as an ideal mind reader not only because it was believed to be capable of registering and recording previously invisible thoughts but also because it seemed to allow these carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 65 thoughts to register and record themselves, which was seen as an assurance against fraud or deception. The following chapter will argue that this history remains relevant today because it raises important questions concerning the reliability of neuroimaging technologies and their claims to provide objective evidence of psychic phenomena. It also remains relevant because the practice of thought photography was explicitly designed to challenge the reductive tendencies of neurophysiology, which is a problem that continues to plague contemporary neuroscience. Despite their acceptance of the material basis of cognitive processes and their embrace of new optical media, for example, nineteenth-century neurologists often challenged the idea of cerebral localization, and their arguments bear a striking resemblance to contemporary critiques of neuroscience as a form of “neophrenology” that is unable to capture the essence of consciousness because it places undue emphasis on the physiological structures of the brain. The practice of thought photography thus exposes the limitations of neuroimaging technologies while at the same time offering an alternative model of consciousness that more closely resembles contemporary discussions of “distributed,” “extended” or “embodied” cognition. The emergence of a new photographic model of consciousness can be traced back to the invention of the daguerreotype, which was immediately employed as a metaphor to explain the transmission of thoughts. For example, British physician Robert Collyer claimed that it was possible to transmit mental images between minds, and he explicitly described this phenomenon as a photographic process: “I was obligated to embody the image[s]…in my own mind, before they could be recognized by the recipients; whose brain during the congestive state was so sentient that the impression was conveyed to the mind similar to the photographic process of Daguerre.”3 Collyer thus argued that the practice of “thoughtreading” or “psychography” was based on the same scientific principles as photography, and he demonstrated this parallel during public lectures by asking a member of the audience to sit facing a somnambulist (someone in a mesmeric trance) and gaze into a bowl of molasses (or any dark fluid), which would reflect the sitter’s mental images into the somnambulist’s mind (see Fig. 4.1).4 During these performances the bowl thus functioned as both a reflecting lens, which focused the sender’s thoughts, and a developing tray, which enabled their visualization. This practice also led to the invention of “phreno-mesmerism”—a new scientific theory that sought to integrate the materialist and vitalist models of consciousness by carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 66 A. ENNS Fig. 4.1 Bowl of molasses experiment (Source Robert Collyer, Psychography, or, the Embodiment of Thought; with an Analysis of Phreno-Magnetism, “Neurology,” and Mental Hallucination [Philadelphia: Zieber and Co., 1843], 31) arguing that the physiological organs of the brain could be activated by an invisible “nervous force” that emanated beyond the brain itself.5 German chemist Karl von Reichenbach subsequently claimed that magnets emit an invisible fluid called “od” or “odic force” and that the brain is “also gifted and imbued with the delicate potentiality of Od.”6 However, Reichenbach’s theories were dismissed by the scientific establishment due to “the absence of any general odoscope or odometer which anyone might use, and so prove its existence.”7 In the early 1860s, Reichenbach attempted to develop such an “odoscope” by theorizing that a photographic apparatus would allow the invisible force to register and record itself. Instead of using a lens, however, he placed his hand (the most external part of the nervous system) directly onto a photographic plate covered with a piece of pasteboard in which geometrical shapes were cut. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 67 The shapes were clearly visible in the resulting images, which Reichenbach interpreted as scientific proof of the existence of od (see Fig. 4.2).8 Like Collyer, therefore, Reichenbach conceived of thought as an invisible yet material force, and he argued that the photographic plate could register and record this force because of its heightened sensitivity. He also sought to reconcile this discovery with the claims of nineteenth-century phrenologists by arguing that the odic force activated the physiological organs of the brain, which implied that vitalism was entirely consistent and even foundational to the materialist model of consciousness.9 In the late 1860s, British journalist James Knowles attempted to update this theory by arguing that “no brain action can take place without creating a wave or undulation (whether electric or otherwise) in the ether.”10 He also argued that these “Brain-Waves [proceed] from every Fig. 4.2 Photograph of the od (Source Karl von Reichenbach, Odische Begebenheiten zu Berlin in den Jahren 1861 and 1862 [Berlin: E. H. Schroeder, 1862], n.p.) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 68 A. ENNS brain when in action,” as every brain is “a centre of undulations transmitted from it in all directions through space.”11 While the concept of “brain waves” later became associated with wireless technology,12 it was initially linked to photography because these cerebral undulations were understood as comparable to light waves: “Why might not such undulations, when meeting with and falling upon duly sensitive substances, as if upon the sensitized paper of the photographer, produce impressions, dim portraits of thoughts, as undulations of light produce portraits of objects?”13 Like Collyer and Reichenbach, therefore, Knowles conceived of thoughts as invisible yet material waves that could be registered and recorded by the brain in the same way that photographs register and record light. His theory received additional support from British physicists Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait, who similarly argued that “every thought that we think is accompanied by a displacement and motion of the particles of the brain, and…these motions are propagated throughout the universe.”14 Stewart and Tait also claimed that these motions could be impressed onto light waves and that “continual photographs of all occurrences are thus produced and retained.”15 In other words, the ether was understood not only as a communication medium that facilitated the transmission and reception of “brain waves” but also as a storage medium that registered and recorded them in the form of photographic images. The first electrophysiological conception of the brain was introduced in 1870, when German anatomist Gustav Fritsch and German neurologist Eduard Hitzig demonstrated that muscular contractions could be induced when particular areas of the brain were stimulated with electricity.16 These experiments suggested that the brain operated like an electrical apparatus, which was confirmed and further developed by British neurologist David Ferrier, who identified the functional specializations of various areas of the cerebral cortex.17 In 1875, British physician Richard Caton developed a device that could translate the electrical currents in the exposed brains of monkeys and rabbits into visible wave forms, and these results were seen as confirmation of Ferrier’s theory of cerebral localization, as “the electric currents of the grey matter appear to have a relation to its function.”18 In the 1880s, Polish physiologist Adolf Beck also developed a device to measure the electrical currents in the exposed brains of rabbits and dogs, and he became famous for locating the visual cortex.19 The data generated by the first electroencephalograms was thus used to reinforce the materialist model of consciousness, although scientists at the time were unable to produce permanent recordings of these electrical signals.20 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 69 The discovery of the electrical nature of neural activity inspired several new devices to register nervous impulses, such as French neurologist Hippolyte Baraduc’s “biometer.” Baraduc began conducting electrophysical experiments at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in the 1880s, and in one of these experiments he noticed that his right hand attracted the needle of a magnetometer and that his left hand repelled it (see Fig. 4.3). In 1891, he revealed his discovery in a report submitted to the Académie des Sciences, in which he claimed that these “biometric” readings represented scientific proof of the existence of an invisible yet material force that was inhaled and exhaled by the nervous system.21 He also theorized that this device could be used as a diagnostic tool, as the readings would indicate the presence of various nervous illnesses. In the case of neurasthenia, for example, the right hand would move the needle 30 degrees and the left hand would move it 20 degrees, while in the case of neurosis the right hand would move the needle 30 degrees and the left hand Fig. 4.3 Biometric device (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, Les vibrations de la vitalité humaine: Méthode biométrique appliquée aux sensitifs et aux névrosés [Paris: Baillière, 1904], 6) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 70 A. ENNS would move it 0 degrees.22 French neurologist Paul Joire later developed a similar device to register and measure this nervous force, and he concurred that “this force is found to be modified in various maladies of the nervous system” and that “the observation of these modifications will be of very great utility for the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of these illnesses.”23 Following the invention of electrography,24 Baraduc realized that the photographic apparatus could function as a more highly effective biometer, as photographic plates were also capable of registering and recording invisible forces emanating from the nervous system. These photographs were first published in his 1896 book The Human Soul, which described the process as follows: The plate receives, very slowly, no longer by the solar ray, but by an electrovital current (wind, breeze) or simply by a direct emission, no longer, the exterior light of the object, but what is called its internal light …. To produce this image, the condensing apparatus, the lense is not necessary…[as the process is] not governed by laws of refraction and inflected foci; it is a law peculiar to this vital force, to our soul of life, of directly graphing itself.25 In other words, Baraduc argued that this “electro-vital current” could impress itself directly onto a photographic plate, so it was sufficient to place the plate to one’s forehead without any intervening lens (see Fig. 4.4). Baraduc even constructed a “portable radiographer” that consisted of a small case containing a plate that could be fixed to the forehead with a headband (see Fig. 4.5).26 Like his biometer, this device was also intended as a diagnostic tool, and Baraduc’s photographs can thus be understood as part of the larger effort among neurologists at the Salpêtrière to produce a catalogue of visual representations of pathological conditions.27 Other researchers soon began to replicate these experiments. For example, Russian physician Jacob von Narkiewicz-Jodko developed a similar apparatus that consisted of a Rumkorff coil, a Crookes tube and a photographic plate. Patients were instructed to hold a wire connected to the coil in one hand while placing the other hand on a photographic plate, and “an electric flow was given off which recorded itself on the photographic film” (see Fig. 4.6).28 The resulting images were identical to the electrographs taken by German photographer Hermann Schnauss carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 71 Fig. 4.4 Luminous peas extracted from my forehead (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible [Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913], 204) and French artist Etienne Léopold Trouvelot, yet Narkiewicz-Jodko interpreted the discharges around the fingertips as evidence of a “nervous force.”29 Like Baraduc, he also interpreted these photographs as visible manifestations of internal psychic states, as he believed that the photographic apparatus could visualize the forces of sympathy and antipathy. If the hands of two people were electrographed, for example, antipathy would be indicated when a diffused light appeared between the tips of the fingers and sympathy would be indicated when the emanations from the fingertips intermingled. In the course of his experiments with hypnosis, French neurologist Jules-Bernard Luys noted that his patients often claimed to perceive coloured fluids emanating from bodies.30 In an effort to determine carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 72 A. ENNS Fig. 4.5 The portable radiographer (Source Fernand Girod, Pour photographier les rayons humains: Exposé historique et pratique de toutes les méthodes concourant à la mise en valeur du rayonnement fluidique humain [Paris: Bibliothèque générale d’édition, 1912], 149) whether these emanations had a physical origin, he asked his patients to place their fingertips on photographic plates, and he interpreted the resulting images as scientific proof of the existence of a material yet invisible fluid emanating from the nerves (see Fig. 4.7). When he presented these findings to the Société de Biologie in Paris in 1897, he added that the photographic registration of these fluids reflected the patient’s psychological symptoms, as a photograph produced by a hysterical woman did not register any emanations, while the emanations were particularly active in the case of a lethargic patient.31 While scientists disagreed as to carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 73 Fig. 4.6 Effluvia from an electrified hand resting on a photographic plate (Source Hippolyte Baraduc, The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible [Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913], 222) the underlying cause of this phenomenon,32 Luys’ photographs were evidently quite persuasive, and some editors actively encouraged neurologists to explore their potential significance.33 Baraduc also interpreted German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of “X-rays”34 as further evidence of the existence of an “electro-vital current,” as X-ray photographs allegedly demonstrated “the faculty which carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 74 A. ENNS Fig. 4.7 Digital effluvia (Source Jules-Bernard Luys and Émile David, “Note sur l’enregistrement photographique des effluves qui se dégagent des extrémités des doigts et du fond de l’oeil de l’être vivant, a l’état physiologique et a l’état pathologique,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances et mémoires de la Société de biologie 4, no. 10 [1897]: 516) this invisible light had of lighting up the cavity of the body by illumining or by exciting, so to speak, the intimate and interior light of the fluidic body.”35 While X-ray photographs looked very different from Baraduc’s images, as they depicted internal bone structures rather than psychic carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 75 states, they were thus nevertheless understood as recordings of an interior light that was generated by an invisible force superadded to the body. The discovery of X-rays also inspired a retired French soldier named Louis Darget to produce a series of photographs that revealed a new invisible force called “vital rays” (or “V-rays”).36 Like Baraduc’s images, these photographs were similarly based on the premise that thoughts constituted a material yet invisible force that could impress itself directly onto photographic plates, yet Darget updated this idea by describing the process in terms of phosphorescence: “When a human soul emits a thought…it causes the phosphorus within the brain to radiate and the rays are projected outside.”37 Darget’s theory was clearly inspired by Röntgen’s discovery that the presence of X-rays caused phosphorus material to glow, and it incorporated this discovery into the photographic model of consciousness by speculating that thoughts must cause similar particles in the brain to glow, which would allow them to be registered and recorded on photographic plates. Darget’s images also resembled X-ray photographs in that they marked a shift from abstract to pictorial representation. For example, his first photograph supposedly represented the bottle at which he was staring before he placed his forehead directly onto the plate (see Fig. 4.8): “It seems that the bottle-shape I was deliberately maintaining in my brain was projected onto the plate, that, luminous, it left the brain, passing through the cranium in the manner of X-rays.”38 Instead of simply registering and recording phosphorescent activity in the brain, therefore, this photograph was understood as a visual manifestation of the thought that initiated the phosphorescent reaction—a practice that soon became known as “thought photography.”39 Like Baraduc’s images, these photographs were also intended to be used for diagnostic purposes, as Darget claimed that nervous illnesses resulted from either a deficit or a surfeit of “V-rays.” In the words of one journalist, “the effluvia will never flow in the same way from a morbid organism as from a healthy one; the functional disturbance of the mechanism has repercussions on the outflow of forces. If this discovery, as yet at an embryonic stage, is confirmed, it will mean a radical revolution in diagnostic science.”40 The use of photography to record the emanations of radioactive substances was seen as further confirmation of thought photography, although the term “radiation” had long been used to describe the transmission of thoughts. For example, the concept of “cerebral radiation” first appeared in English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley’s 1876 book The Physiology of Mind,41 and it was later popularized by American inventor Edwin J. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 76 A. ENNS Fig. 4.8 The first bottle (Source Louis Darget, Exposé des différentes méthodes pour l’obtention de photographies fluido-magnétiques et spirites: Rayons V [Vitaux] [Paris: L’Initiation, 1909], n.p.) Houston, who similarly described thought as a material yet invisible force emanating from the brain: “Cerebral energy, or energy thus expended in producing thought, is dissipated by imparting wave motions to the surrounding ether, and such waves are sent out in all directions from the brain.”42 Houston also theorized that “if thought radiations or waves partake of the nature of light, then it would seem among the remote possibilities of science to obtain…a photographic impression of such thoughtwaves on a suitably sensitized plate.”43 This theory seemed to be corroborated by French physicist Henri Becquerel’s discovery that uranium salts emitted an invisible radiation that produced images on sealed photographic plates,44 which offered a convincing explanation for the underlying mechanism of thought photography.45 Becquerel’s discovery also inspired German physician Ludwig Tormin to replicate Reichenbach’s experiments from the 1860s. In his 1896 book Magical Rays , for example, Tormin described an experiment using a photographic plate holder with a cross cut in its draw slide. After placing his hand on the holder, the plate was developed and the cross was clearly visible (see Fig. 4.9).46 Like carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 77 Fig. 4.9 Untitled (Source Ludwig Tormin, Magische Strahlen: Die Gewinnung photographischer Lichtbilder lediglich durch odisch-magnetische Ausstrahlung des menschlichen Körpers [Düsseldorf: Schmitz and Olbertz, 1896], 1) Houston, therefore, Tormin concluded that the nervous system emitted an invisible radiation that could be impressed directly onto photographic plates. Proponents of thought photography like James Coates frequently argued that “a consideration of what are now called ‘Becquerel rays’ brings us into a realm of invisible energy,”47 which “partakes of all the bodily, mental, and psychical conditions of the person or persons from whom [it is] emanating.”48 Over time, however, Coates gradually shifted carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 78 A. ENNS his emphasis from “Becquerel rays” to “N-rays,” which “proceed from the human organism and…fluctuate according to one’s state of health and mental activities.”49 N-rays were reportedly discovered in 1903 at the University of Nancy (“N-ray” was short for “Nancy ray”) by French physicist René Blondlot, who claimed that these rays were comparable to “the radiant properties of uranium, discovered by M. H. Becquerel,”50 and that it was “possible to utilize photography to reveal their presence and study their action.”51 French physicians Arsène d’Arsonval and Augustin Charpentier subsequently claimed that N-rays represented a form of neural energy that emanated from the brain,52 and French physicist Edmond Rothé developed a method of photographing variations in phosphorescence due to the influence of N-rays, which could be used to diagnose various nervous illnesses.53 Russian psychiatrist Naum Kotik even argued that “the thoughts of one person can be transferred to another through N-rays”54 and that these “brain rays” could impress themselves directly onto photographic paper.55 Like X-rays and Becquerel rays, therefore, N-rays promised to provide a concrete scientific explanation for thought photography,56 which served to reconcile the vitalist and materialist models of consciousness. The existence of N-rays was eventually disproven by American physicist Robert W. Wood,57 and neurologists subsequently abandoned the practice of thought photography. In the early twentieth century, British physician Walter Kilner introduced a somewhat similar practice using a screen that consisted of two glass plates stained with a dicyanin solution that could visualize the “auras” of patients. Like many of the scientific instruments developed by nineteenth-century neurologists, this screen was also promoted as a diagnostic tool, as nervous illnesses allegedly altered the size, colour and shape of these auras: “If the theory be correct that the sources of the Aura are forces generated within the body, and that their action upon the ether is the cause of their visibility, it is reasonable to expect that these forces will not be exactly the same in health and disease.”58 While this screen was reportedly used to diagnose patients at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, Kilner’s research was dismissed by the scientific establishment,59 and the visualization of auras remained a fringe practice. These devices were eventually replaced by German psychiatrist Hans Berger’s electroencephalograph (EEG), which was widely accepted as a more accurate and practical method of visualizing thoughts. The acceptance of this new scientific instrument was largely due to the fact that carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 79 it could provide more precise measurements of the electrical currents in the brain. Its results were also seen as more objective because they were consistent with the known laws of physics and their explanation did not depend on the discovery and verification of previously unknown natural forces. It is important to note, however, that this invention was a direct result of Berger’s interest in psychical research. In his diary, for example, he reported a case of “spontaneous telepathy” that occurred when he was nineteen years old,60 and historians note that “this telepathic experience initiated Berger’s decision to explore the relation between physical and psychical events.”61 He initially attempted to measure neural activity by recording changes in the flow of blood to the brain, yet these changes “failed to capture meaningful information about the most important process in Berger’s model of brain function, namely the transformation of energy in the cerebral cortex.”62 Berger then turned to the work of German physiologist Max Verworn, who theorized that psychic states were linked to the transfer of energy in cortical tissue. This theory led Berger to conclude that “precise measurements of the cortical energy converted into heat and electricity” would enable him to “calculate the energy converted into conscious perception, emotion, thought, and perhaps even mental telepathy.”63 Like thought photography, therefore, the EEG was similarly designed to visualize the material yet invisible forces emanating from the brain, which could potentially provide scientific proof of the legitimacy of psychic phenomena. The first account of Berger’s invention was published in 1929,64 and journalists quickly embraced the idea that the lines it produced represented “the language of the operating brain.”65 As one journalist claimed: “Today, the brain still writes secret signs. Tomorrow, we will probably be able to read neurological and psychiatric diseases in it. And the day after tomorrow, we will start to write our first honest letters in brainscript.”66 However, scientists were initially sceptical of Berger’s discovery due to his involvement in psychical research and his rejection of cerebral localization. As David Millett explains, “Berger’s thermodynamic approach to brain function transcended…contemporary debates on the structural architecture of cerebral function,” as “he articulated a compromise between these positions that emerged out of his EEG work.”67 This compromise was dismissed by German physiologists like Jan Friedrich Tönnies, who attacked Berger for having “never carried out his recordings with the question of localization in mind.”68 Berger was thus considered an amateur because he rejected the theory of cerebral localization, but in carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 80 A. ENNS 1932 a group of scientists working at Oskar Vogt’s brain research institute in Berlin developed an improved version of the EEG called the “neurograph,” which inspired English electrophysiologist Edgar Douglas Adrian to replicate Berger’s experiments and verify his results.69 Berger was subsequently invited to present his invention at the International Congress of Neurological Sciences in London in 1935, and scientists from Harvard Medical School demonstrated his device at the annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology later that year. Despite the fact that his invention was gradually accepted by the scientific establishment, Berger continued to reject a purely materialist model of consciousness, and the popular press often drew comparisons between EEG readings and thought photographs. In his coverage of the first American demonstration of Berger’s “thought recorder,” for example, one journalist described thoughts as “waves” that “change with the various mental and physical states of the individual,” and he claimed that EEG readings represented “pictures” of these waves, as the device converted the “electrical currents generated by mental processes…into telltale, visible patterns.”70 The EEG thus replaced the photographic apparatus as the primary tool for studying the mind because it provided a model of consciousness that was more firmly grounded in the physiological structures of the brain, yet it also seemed to challenge this model by demonstrating that neural activity was distributed throughout the brain and that thoughts were material yet invisible forces that emanated beyond it. Although the EEG gradually replaced the photographic apparatus as the primary tool for studying the mind, there was renewed interest in “auras” in the post-war period, when Russian electrical engineer Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina developed a new method of photographing this invisible force, which became known as “Kirlian photography.”71 Psychical researchers also resurrected many of the claims made by nineteenthcentury neurologists, as they frequently argued that these photographs represented scientific proof of the existence of Reichenbach’s “odic force” and that they could be used to “diagnose all kinds of illnesses long before they manifested as physical disorders.”72 Despite the fact that this practice was endorsed by American psychologist Thelma Moss, a professor at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles, and that it was reportedly employed by American physician David Sheinkin to diagnose mental illnesses at Rockland State Hospital in New York,73 it was never treated as a topic of serious scientific inquiry. It was carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 81 also fundamentally different from thought photography, as the invisible forces that it registered and recorded were understood not as manifestations of internal psychic states but rather as evidence of a generalized life force inhabiting all living things (including vegetation). The recent development of new neuroimaging technologies, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has inspired a tremendous resurgence of interest in the visualization of thoughts. In the 1990s, for example, three new scientific journals were dedicated to the study of neuroimages (Journal of Neuroimaging, NeuroImage and Human Brain Mapping ), and American neuropsychiatrist Nancy Coover Andreasen predicted that these images would enable a new psychopathology that directly linked the functional organization of the brain to the workings of the mind.74 British psychologist Adrian Raine also claimed that PET scans revealed a significant reduction in the development of the prefrontal cortex among convicted murderers, and he later coined the term “neurocriminology” to describe a new scientific discipline that involved “the application of the principles and techniques of neuroscience to understand the origins of antisocial behavior.”75 In the 2000s, British neuroscientists John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees published their preliminary research on the use of fMRI to record cognitive processes, which they described as a form of “brainreading.”76 Neuroscientists also argued that neuroimaging technologies could be used to diagnose and treat a wide range of illnesses, including addictions, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress and schizophrenia, and some even suggested that they could enable telepathic communication. As American neuroscientists Marcel Just and Tom Mitchell explain: “Telepathy is communication across a distance. Well, we can already go a few millimeters. It’s just a matter of time before we can go thousands of miles.”77 Contemporary neuroimages are thus informed by many of the same goals as nineteenth-century thought photographs, yet they are fundamentally different in terms of their material form and their underlying assumptions. Unlike thought photographs, for example, fMRI images are visualizations of computer-generated data concerning the flow of blood in the brain, which is believed to correspond to neural activity. Instead of representing the direct inscription of invisible thoughts, therefore, these images are conceived as statistical predictions of what a patient might be thinking carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 82 A. ENNS based on previously recorded hemodynamic activity. Furthermore, neuroscientists frequently point out that hemodynamic activity is only indirectly related to neural activity, as some neurons might require less blood than others and smaller groups of neurons could perform more significant functions than larger groups.78 As Greek neuroscientist Nikos K. Logothetis argues, “fMRI is not and will never be a mind reader.”79 Despite the fact that contemporary neuroimaging technologies are designed to reinforce a materialist model of the mind, the images they produce are thus mediated by human operators, who arbitrarily choose which physiological features should be considered valid indicators of cognitive functions. Neuroimaging technologies have also been criticized as a form of “neophrenology” because they are similarly based on the principle of cerebral localization.80 Some researchers, like American neuroscientist Carl Schoonover, embrace the idea that phrenology “guides us to this day— only the coordinate system has shifted to indicate positions within the brain rather than on the skull.”81 Others, like Chinese psychologist Yan Bao and German neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel, argue that “an uncritical use of new imaging technology may open the door to a new kind of old fashioned phrenology, i.e., looking at specific areas only and neglecting the interconnectivity of a neuronal network.”82 In other words, some contemporary neuroscientists seek to locate neural activity in specific regions of the brain, which replicates the materialist approach used by nineteenth-century phrenologists, while others insist that this approach is fundamentally misguided, as it is more important to study the connections between these various regions. German historian Frank W. Stahnisch similarly notes that “a critique of functional neuroimaging as a form of neophrenology can be seen as valid in so far as it remains a critique of the reductionism implied in many interpretations of modern neuroimaging studies,”83 and American neuroscientist Russell A. Poldrack emphasizes that “there is no simple one-to-one mapping between psychological states and activity in specific brain areas.”84 Contemporary neuroimaging technologies are thus based on a model of the mind that is directly opposed to the idea of “distributed,” “extended” or “embodied” cognition,85 and some neuroscientists have challenged this model in ways that resemble the arguments made by nineteenth-century neurologists. The history of thought photography also shows that neuroimaging technologies do not simply function as objective scientific instruments; carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 83 rather, they convert or translate natural phenomena into visual representations that are highly artificial and subject to interpretation. In other words, the practice of thought photography not only challenged the materialist model of consciousness, which was becoming increasingly dominant in the field of neurology, but also exposed the limitations of the scientific paradigm of mechanical objectivity on which this model was based. Despite the claims made by nineteenth-century neurologists, who described these images as scientific proof of the existence of material yet invisible forces emanating from the brain, this practice actually revealed a change in the understanding of objectivity itself and the ways in which it could be achieved, as American historian Jennifer Tucker explains: Contrary to what we might expect about scientific photography, disagreement over photographers’ practical expertise, interpretive skills, and powers of judgment suffused scientific and popular discussions about photography…. Objectivity, it seems, was in the eye of the beholder.86 Photography curator Corey Keller similarly argues that “the faith once placed in the human eye has today been replaced by a near-total dependence on technologically inflected vision, resulting in a disconnect between seeing and knowing so pervasive that it goes almost entirely unacknowledged.” Keller thus questions “our willingness to trust the visual data produced by such imaging technologies,” as scientific images are never purely objective or value-neutral.87 Like thought photographs, contemporary neuroimages are considered to be visualizations of previously invisible thoughts, yet the devices used to create these images clearly shape the way they are understood. Indeed, the mind only exists as an object of knowledge through the technologies and techniques used to study it—in terms of both the material practices they enable and the conceptual metaphors they inspire—and it can thus be seen as part of an experimental apparatus that effectively produces the phenomena it seeks to register and record. German historian Nicolas Pethes also notes that this problem first became apparent through the practice of thought photography, which sought to “produce material traces from immaterial sources and thus create an ‘epistemic thing’ through the agency of a material device.”88 While these images seem “unscientific from today’s point of view,” they reveal “the closely woven network between scientists, publicists, media technologies and discursive carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 84 A. ENNS orders that […] is still active today.”89 Thought photographs remain relevant, in other words, because contemporary neuroimages are similarly presented as objective realities when they are actually cultural constructions, and the institutional and technological networks that sought to legitimize these photographs in the nineteenth century are largely the same as the networks that seek to legitimize neuroimages today. What Pethes’ argument overlooks is that the practice of thought photography was ultimately rejected by the scientific establishment due to the fact that it challenged the materialist model of consciousness—a model that continues to dominate the field of neurology as well as the contemporary practice of neuroimaging. While thought photography was partly informed by an understanding of consciousness as a material force that inhabited the physical body, it also incorporated aspects of vitalist philosophy by imagining that this invisible force was distributed throughout the brain and could even extend beyond it, which supposedly explained the underlying mechanism of mind reading. Despite the fact that thought photography is no longer recognized as a legitimate scientific practice, it thus offers a valuable critique of contemporary neuroimaging technologies by illustrating the limitations of mechanical objectivity as well as the reductive tendencies of neurophysiology, which still remain a subject of heated debate. Notes 1. Studies conducted by German neuroanatomists Franz Gall and Carl Wernicke and French neuroanatomists Pierre Flourens and Paul Broca, among others, concluded that cognitive processes were linked to particular areas of the brain, which challenged the idea of consciousness as an extra-corporeal spirit. Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal and English neuroanatomist Sir Charles Sherrington provided even more detailed information concerning the circuitry of the brain, which further reinforced the idea that cognitive processes were inherently physiological. For more on the convergence of mind and brain, see David M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London: Routledge, 1968); John C. Eccles and Alexander G. Karczmar, eds., Brain and Human Behavior (New York: Springer, 1972); John C. Eccles, The Understanding of Mind (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973); Marc Jeannerod, The Brain Machine: The Development of Neurophysiological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Patricia S. Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 85 2. See Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007); Kelley Wilder, Photography and Science (London: Reaktion Books, 2009). 3. Robert Collyer, Psychography, or, the Embodiment of Thought; with an Analysis of Phreno-Magnetism, “Neurology,” and Mental Hallucination (Philadelphia: Zieber and Co., 1843), 30. 4. Ibid., 31. 5. Ibid., 5–23. 6. Karl von Reichenbach, Physico-Physiological Researches on the Dynamics of Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, Crystallization, and Chemism, in their Relations to Vital Force. Translated by John Ashburner (London: Hippolyte Baillière, 1850), 265–266. 7. Karl von Reichenbach, Letters on Od and Magnetism. Translated by. F. D. O’Byrne (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1926), 92. 8. Karl von Reichenbach, Odische Begebenheiten zu Berlin in den Jahren 1861 und 1862 (Berlin: E. H. Schroeder, 1862), n.p. For a discussion of the scientific debates surrounding these images, see Rolf H. Krauss, Beyond Light and Shadow: The Role of Photography in Certain Paranormal Phenomena. Translated by Timothy Bell and John Gledhill (Tucson, AZ: Nazraeli Press, 1995), 21–26. 9. Reichenbach, Physico-Physiological Researches, 266. 10. James T. Knowles, “Brain-Waves: A Theory,” The Spectator 42 (1869): 135–137, here 136. The concept of the “ether” can be traced back to the writings of British physicist Thomas Young, whose wave theory of light was based on the premise that a “luminiferous” (light-bearing) substance “pervades the Universe.” Thomas Young, “On the Theory of Light and Colors,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 92 (1802): 12–48, here 14. 11. Knowles, “Brain-Waves,” 136. 12. For more on brain waves and wireless technology, see Anthony Enns, “Psychic Radio: Sound Technologies, Ether Bodies and Spiritual Vibrations,” Senses and Society 3, no. 2 (2008): 137–152. 13. Knowles, “Brain-Waves,” 136. 14. Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait, The Unseen Universe or Physical Speculations on a Future State (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875), 156. 15. Ibid. 16. Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig, “Über die elektrische Erregbarkeit des Grosshirns,” Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin 37 (1870): 300–332. 17. David Ferrier, Functions of the Brain (New York: Putnam, 1876). 18. Richard Caton, “The Electric Currents of the Brain,” British Medical Journal 2 (1875): 278. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 86 A. ENNS 19. Adolf Beck, “Die Bestimmung der Localisation der Gehirn- und Rückenmarksfunctionen vermittelst der elektrischen Erscheinungen,” Centralblatt für Physiologie 4 (1890): 473–476. 20. The first photograph of “brain waves” was reportedly produced by Russian physiologist Vladimir Pravdich-Neminsky in 1913. See Jacob Empson, Human Brainwaves: The Psychological Significance of the Electroencephalogram (New York: Stockton Press, 1986), 4. 21. “Correspondance,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences 113 (1891): 291–300, here 300. 22. “Biométrie,” Revue encyclopédique 26 (1892): 77. 23. Paul Joire, Psychical and Supernatural Phenomena: Their Observation and Experimentation. Translated by Dudley Wright (London: William Rider and Son, 1916), 416. British astrophysicist Frederick John Marrian Stratton reportedly tested Joire’s device and concluded that the results were due to the influence of body heat. See F. J. M. Stratton and P. Phillips, “Some Experiments with the Sthenometer,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 12 (1906): 335–339. 24. The term “electrography” was coined by Czech physicist Bartholomew Navrátil, who invented the process in the 1880s. For a description of his experiments, see Karl Wilhelm Wolf-Czapek, Angewandte Photographie in Wissenschaft und Technik (Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft Zweigniederlassung, 1911). 25. Hippolyte Baraduc, The Human Soul: Its Movements, Its Lights, and the Iconography of the Fluidic Invisible (Paris: Librairie Internationale de la Pensée Nouvelle, 1913), 33. 26. Fernand Girod, Pour photographier les rayons humains: Exposé historique et pratique de toutes les méthodes concourant à la mise en valeur du rayonnement fluidique humain (Paris: Bibliothèque générale d’édition, 1912), 149. See also Clément Chéroux, “Photographs of Fluids: An Alphabet of Invisible Rays,” The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, eds. Clément Chéroux and Andreas Fischer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 114–124, here 118. 27. As Albert Londe, head of the Salpêtrière’s photography department, explained: “It is a question…of preserving the durable trace of all pathological manifestations.” Albert Londe, La photographie médicale: Application aux sciences médicales et physiologiques (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1893), 64. See also Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière. Translated by Alisa Hartz (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 29–66. 28. Albert de Rochas, L’Extériorisation de la sensibilité (Paris: Chamuel 1895), 45–46. 29. Marius Decrespe, L’Extériorisation de la force nerveuse et les Travaux de M. de Narkiewicz-Iodko (Paris: Chamuel, 1896), 39. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 87 30. Jules-Bernard Luys, “De la visibilité par les sujets en état hypnotique des effluves dégagés par les êtres vivants,” Annales de Psychiatrie et d’Hypnologie dans Leurs Rapports avec la Psychologie et la Médicine Légale 2 (1892): 321–323. 31. Jules-Bernard Luys and Émile David, “Note sur l’enregistrement photographique des effluves qui se dégagent des extrémités des doigts et du fond de l’oeil de l’être vivant, a l’état physiologique et a l’état pathologique,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances et mémoires de la Société de biologie 4, no. 10 (1897): 515–519. 32. For more on this debate, see Krauss, Beyond Light and Shadow, 28– 30; Peter Geimer, Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions. Translated by Gerrit Jackson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 84–88. 33. Ludwig Jankau, “Neues über das Reichenbach’sche ‘Od,’” Internationale photographische Monatsschrift für Medezin 4 (1897): 98. 34. Wilhelm Röntgen, “Über eine neue Art von Strahlen,” Aus den Sitzungsberichten der Würzburger Physik.-medic. Gesellschaft Würzburg (1895): 137–147. 35. Baraduc, The Human Soul, 77. 36. See Louis Darget, “Exposé des différentes méthodes pour l’obtention de photographies fluido-magnétiques et spirites: Rayons V (Vitaux),” L’Initiation 84, no. 10 (1909): 1–21. 37. Qtd. in Charles Proth, La photographie transcendantale: les êtres et les radiations de l’espace (Paris: Librairie Nationale, 1908), 31. 38. Louis Darget, “Photographie des radiations psychiques,” Le Spiritualisme moderne 3, no. 2 (1899): 18–20, here 18. 39. British photographer W. Ingles Rogers introduced the term “thought photography” to refer to the direct impression of thoughts: “When we recall an image or scene from memory it is evident that we excite certain electrical conditions that transmit force of the kind we recognize as light, and which is doubtless the highest modification of that element. This transmission, or projection (call it what you will) is evidently […] capable of exciting certain sensible surfaces (such as photographic plates) into chemical action.” W. Ingles Rogers, “Can Thought Be Photographed? The Problem Solved,” Amateur Photographer 23, no. 595 (February 28, 1896): 186. While Rogers was evidently unaware of the experiments conducted by French neurologists, his work was immediately translated into French, and Baraduc and Darget’s images were subsequently referred to as “thought photographs.” See Ingles Rogus [sic], “Photographie de la pensée,” PhotoGazette (February 25, 1896): 72–74; Guy Tomel, “La photographie de la pensée,” Le Monde illustré 2047 (June 20, 1896): 430–431. 40. Marius Decrespe, “L’Invisible et la photographie,” Photo-Revue (October 1, 1896): 47. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 88 A. ENNS 41. Henry Maudsley, The Physiology of Mind (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876), 317. 42. Edwin J. Houston, “Cerebral Radiation,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 133, no. 6 (1892): 488–497, here 489–490. 43. Ibid., 494. 44. See Henri Becquerel, “Sur les radiations invisibles émises par les corps phosphorescents,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences 122 (1896): 501–503. 45. Thought photographs were also frequently described as “radiographs.” See, for example, Albert de Rochas, Les Frontières de la science (Paris: Librarie des sciences psychologiques, 1902), 1: 98 and Girod, Pour photographier les rayons humains, 63. 46. Ludwig Tormin, Magische Strahlen: Die Gewinnung photographischer Lichtbilder lediglich durch odisch-magnetische Ausstrahlung des menschlichen Körpers (Düsseldorf: Schmitz and Olbertz, 1896), 18. 47. James Coates, Seeing the Invisible: Practical Studies in Psychometry, Thought Transference, Telepathy, and Allied Phenomena (London: L. N. Fowler, 1906), 28. 48. Ibid., 30. 49. James Coates, Photographing the Invisible: Practical Studies in Spirit Photography, Spirit Portraiture, and Other Rare but Allied Phenomena (London: L. N. Fowler, 1911), 3. 50. René Blondlot, “N” Rays: A Collection of Papers Communicated to the Academy of Sciences. Translated by J. Garcin (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1905), 52. 51. Ibid., 61. 52. See Arsène d’Arsonval, “Les radiations N,” Bulletin de l’Institut général psychologique 3 (1903): 25–30; Augustin Charpentier, “Nouvel exemple d’adaptation physique entre un excitant naturel (vibration sonore) et l’organe percepteur central,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences 138 (1904): 1540–1541. 53. Edmond Rothé, “Essai d’une méthode photographique pour étudier l’action des rayons N sur la phosphorescence,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences 138 (1904): 1589–1591. 54. Qtd. in Mikhail Agursky, “An Occult Source of Socialist Realism: Gorky and Theories of Thought Transference,” The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 247–272, here 250. 55. Naum Kotik, Die Emanation der psychophysischen Energie: Eine experimentelle Untersuchung über die unmittelbare Gedankenübertragung im Zusammenhang mit der Frage über die Radioaktivität des Gehirns (Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 1908), 80–101. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 89 56. See also Mary Jo Nye, “N-Rays: An Episode in the History and Psychology of Science,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 11, no. 1 (1980): 125-156. 57. Robert W. Wood, “The N-Rays,” Nature 70, no. 1822 (1904): 530–531. 58. Walter Kilner, The Human Atmosphere or the Aura Made Visible by the Aid of Chemical Screens (London: Rebman, 1911), 147. See also Hereward Carrington, The Story of Psychic Science (London: Rider and Co., 1930): 123–131. 59. Several scientists attempted to replicate Kilner’s experiments, but the results were “entirely negative.” “The Human Atmosphere,” British Medical Journal 1, no. 2662 (January 6, 1912): 21–22. 60. Hans Berger, Psyche (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1940), 6. 61. Jonna Brenninkmeijer, Neurotechnologies of the Self: Mind, Brain and Subjectivity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 48. 62. David Millett, “Hans Berger: From Psychic Energy to the EEG,” Perspectives on Biology and Medicine 44, no. 4 (2001): 522–542, here 528. 63. Ibid., 529. 64. Hans Berger, “Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen,” Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 87 (1929): 527–570. 65. Cornelius Borck, “Electricity as a Medium of Psychic Life: Electrotechnical Adventures into Psychodiagnosis in Weimar Germany,” Science in Context 14, no. 4 (2001): 565–590, here 584. 66. Walter Finkler, “Die elektrische Schrift des Gehirns, Die Zickzackkurve der Menschenseele—Bahnbrechende Versuche eines deutschen Psychiaters,” Neues Wiener Journal (July 4, 1930): 7. 67. Millett, “Hans Berger,” 540. 68. Jan Friedrich Tönnies, “Die Ableitung bioelektrisher Effekte vom uneröffneten Schaedel,” Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie 45 (1933): 155. 69. See Stanley Finger, Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 239–258; Cornelius Borck, “Recording the Brain at Work: The Visible, the Readable, and the Invisible in Electroencephalography,” Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 17, no. 3 (2008): 367–379. 70. William Laurence, “Electricity in the Brain Records a Picture of Action of Thought,” New York Times (April 14, 1935): 1, 32. 71. Semyon Davidovich Kirlian and Valentina Khrisanovna Kirlian, “Photography and Visual Observations by Means of High-Frequency Currents,” Journal of Scientific and Applied Photography 6 (1961): 397–403. 72. Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 196–209. 73. Thelma Moss, The Probability of the Impossible: Scientific Discovery and Explorations in the Psychic World (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), 58. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 90 A. ENNS 74. Nancy Coover Andreasen, “Linking Mind and Brain in the Study of Mental Illnesses: A Project for a Scientific Psychopathology,” Science 275, no. 5306 (1997): 1586–1593. 75. Adrian Raine, The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime (New York: Patheon, 2013), 8. 76. John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees, “Decoding Mental States from Brain Activity in Humans,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7 (2006): 523– 534. 77. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, dir. Werner Herzog (Magnolia Pictures, 2016), film. 78. See David J. Heeger and David Ress, “What Does fMRI Tell Us About Neuronal Activity?” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3, no. 2 (2002): 142– 151; Nikos K. Logothetis and Brian A. Wandell, “Interpreting the BOLD Signal,” Annual Review of Physiology 66 (2004): 735–769. 79. Nikos K. Logothetis, “What We Can Do and What We Cannot Do with fMRI,” Nature 453, no. 7197 (2008): 869–878, here 869. 80. See, for example, William R. Uttal, The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001); Steven F. Faux, “Cognitive Neuroscience from a Behavioral Perspective: A Critique of Chasing Ghosts with Geiger Counters,” Behavior Analyst 25 (2002): 161–173; Michael Hagner, Der Geist bei der Arbeit: Historische Untersuchungen zur Hirnforschung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). 81. Carl Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century (New York: Abrams, 2010), 38. 82. Yan Bao and Ernst Pöppel, “Anthropological Universals and Cultural Specifics: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in Cultural Neuroscience,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 36, no. 9 (2012): 2143– 2146, here 2144. 83. Frank W. Stahnisch, “The Language of Visual Representations in the Neurosciences: Relating Past and Future,” Translational Neuroscience 5, no. 1 (2014): 78–90, here 86. 84. Russell A. Poldrack, The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 22. 85. For more on these concepts, see Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19; George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 86. Jennifer Tucker, “The Social Photographic Eye,” Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible 1840–1900, ed. Corey Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 37–49, here 48. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 4 VISUALIZING THOUGHTS: PHOTOGRAPHY, NEUROLOGY … 91 87. Corey Keller, “Sight Unseen: Picturing the Invisible,” Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible 1840–1900, ed. Corey Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 18–35, here 35. 88. Nicolas Pethes, “Psychicones: Visual Traces of the Soul in Late Nineteenth-Century Fluidic Photography,” Medical History 60, no. 3 (2016): 325–341, here 326. 89. Ibid., 327. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 5 How Stage Magic Perpetuates Magical Beliefs Christine Mohr and Gustav Kuhn Living in social communities necessitates well-functioning social interactions which rely on cooperation and trust. However, in addition to these positive attributes, our interactions are often riddled with deception. For instance, we all lie frequently.1 We start to develop the art of lying from around two years of age,2 and this form of deception seems to relate to the development of our social cognitive abilities.3 Sure, deception can have many harmful consequences, but it may also act as a social lubricant which facilitates our social life.4 For instance, we often engage in deception to protect or advantage both ourselves personally and others. Doing so might spare ourselves as well as others from embarrassment, disapproval, conflict or hurting others’ feelings.5 Overall, living together seems to imply that we try our best to understand, influence and control C. Mohr (B) University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland e-mail: christine.mohr@unil.ch G. Kuhn Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK e-mail: g.kuhn@gold.ac.uk © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_5 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 93 94 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN each other’s minds, not always using the most morally defensible methods. Our attempts to understand, influence and control each other’s minds imply that we are dealing with social interactions that involve at least two people, a sender and receiver. The sender tries, for example, to convince the receiver of an intended reality. Here, the sender aims for maximum control over what the receiver should think and experience. But does a sender achieve this aim, and, if so, in which way? To tackle such questions, we have to look at both what the sender is doing and how the receiver is reacting. Over the past five years, we started to explore such questions making use of the art of magic.6 Magicians are extremely successful in shaping receivers’ reality through deception.7 In our research, we want to know whether and to what extent receivers integrate the information provided by senders, and how it influences their beliefs and reasoning about such influences and mind control. In this chapter, we will concentrate on mind-over-mind routines. According to Subbotsky,8 most magical phenomena can be categorized according to two key dimensions: mind-over-matter and mind-over-mind routines. Mind-over-matter routines involve magical effects in which the magician manipulates the physical properties of an object through some form of magical essence. For example, the magician may cast a spell to make a rabbit appear from a hat, a coin disappear, or a ball levitate. Mindover-mind routines, on the other hand, deal with magical phenomena that occur in a person’s mind. For example, the magician may use magical powers to “read” a person’s mind or “predict” a person’s choice. Magicians refer to these popular types of magic tricks as mentalism, and the individuals performing them are known as mentalists.9 We focus on mind-over-mind routines, because the extent to which the receiver accepts the sender’s desired reality is not due to a real event or fact, but due to pure deception. There is no scientific evidence to assume that such mind control is possible. And yet, many, though not all, people believe that others can take control of their or other people’s minds. Common examples are individuals who are supposedly able to predict what the future will bring (precognition), to remotely convey information (telepathy) or make contact with deceased persons (mediumship). Thus, taking again the example of mind-over-mind routines, a magician (sender) pretends (deception) to convey a fake reality to a receiver. The receiver can now accept this fake reality or question it (the deception works or fails). Moreover, the acceptance of the fake reality might depend on the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 95 pre-existing attitude or belief system of the receiver. By looking at such studies, we can learn something about psychological variables that explain the efficiency of deception in interpersonal interactions. Studying the Success of Deception: Mind-Over-Mind Routines Studies that used mind-over-mind routines had various goals. Consistent across studies is the use of magicians’ skills to improve our understanding of how people think and reason about impossible (fake) events, and how their initial attitudes and beliefs are important in this respect. This research mainly intended to use magic to expose participants to supposedly psychic events10 or a pseudo-psychological demonstration.11 Thus, these studies did not claim to study deception, but their underlying method is based on deception. Almost exclusively, these studies were performed in the classroom or in group sessions. Exceptions are the studies by Hergovich,12 who tested participants individually, and Wiseman and Morris (1995; the latter tested some participants individually in Study 2).13 No information was given on the testing settings in Russell and Jones.14 Consequently, people would almost always experience magic routines together, either via live video or in written format. As far as we are aware, Marcuse and Bitterman published the first relevant study in 1944.15 These authors were concerned about the high interest their American peers showed in psychic phenomena. They stated that this “interest is by no means limited to the uneducated or the less intelligent, but is manifested by a representative cross-section of the population ranging from borderline psychotics to ‘distinguished physicists’ and ‘eminent Boston physicians.’”16 Worried about their peers’ low level of scepticism, the authors reported on an experiment in which they first provided an apparently critical lecture lamenting the current scientific scepticism towards psychic phenomena. Subsequently, they provided “facts” on neuroscientific, anatomical differences in people with and without psychic abilities. In the experiment, students were introduced to two people showing such apparent differences. The two people performed magic routines “depicting” telepathy, precognition and having a guiding spirit materialize. After the routine, students answered the following question: “On the basis of the evidence presented how many of you are now convinced of the reality of psychical phenomena?”17 ; 70–80% answered affirmatively. Also, when asked afterwards to indicate their beliefs before and carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 96 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN after the performance, an increase was recorded in all participants, apart from those who were already sceptical at the beginning. The authors hoped that the debunking (disclosing that the performances were staged) after the study would foster the students’ critical thinking (which was not tested in this study). In 1980, three relevant publications appeared.18 Benassi, Singer and Reynolds tested how the framing of mind-over-mind routines would influence the likelihood of accepting a psychic explanation. In their first study, a magician (Craig) presented the same performance to different groups of students. The groups were either informed that the performance was performed by a psychic, a weak magician or a strong magician. Craig performed three simple routines of which one was a mindover-mind routine (predicting numbers that were chosen by others) and two mind-over-matter routines (moving matter between places, bending an object). After each routine, Craig asked students to “Take a few minutes to write down any comments, opinions, or reactions regarding what you’ve seen.”19 Coding these responses, the authors concluded that in all framing groups, over 50% endorsed a psychic explanation. Yet, the percentage increased from the group that received information on strong magic, to weak magic, to psychic. In two subsequent studies, the authors provided a written description of Craig’s performance. The authors aimed to investigate whether the availability of alternative information or preexisting beliefs explained participants’ psychic explanations and change in explanations. After the written description of Craig’s performance, the authors provided additional information to test whether and in which way participants revised their former answers. Interesting in itself, “Most subjects ascribed psychic powers to Craig on the basis of a written description of his performance.”20 Having been offered alternative explanations, some participants reduced the extent to which they explained the demonstration through psychic explanations. Also, many participants appreciated that Craig’s performance could not be distinguished from a genuine psychic event, and yet, remained on average convinced that the current performance was likely genuine. The two studies by Jones and Russell from 1980 are less detailed, but clear in their objective, i.e. understanding selective learning as assessed through recall performance. In their first study (Russell and Jones 1980),21 the authors presented fake abstracts of a journal article, either supporting or negating the existence of extrasensory perception (ESP). A week before seeing the abstracts, participants completed a paranormal carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 97 belief questionnaire. After having read the abstracts, participants provided information on their mood (self-reporting anxiety, hostility and depression) and their recollection of information given in the journal abstract. The authors observed that both believers and sceptics of ESP reported enhanced negative mood (the authors also refer to negative emotional arousal), but only if they had been confronted with belief-disconfirming information. Therefore, sceptics reported more of a negative mood when having read the abstract confirming ESP, while believers reported more of a negative mood when having read the abstract disconfirming ESP. In addition, believers recalled less information when being in the group in which the abstract disconfirmed ESP. Finally, several believers in ESP recalled the content of the belief-disconfirming abstract so that it confirmed ESP, i.e. their initial beliefs. The subsequent experiment aimed to understand the impact of beliefdiscrepant and belief-consistent ESP demonstrations more directly, i.e. assessing participants’ reactions after live exposure to a mind-over-mind performance.22 After completing a paranormal belief questionnaire (a week earlier), in which they had to indicate the extent to which they believed in ESP, participants were asked to comment on witnessing a telepathic exchange (one performer “reading” unrevealed cards that had been drawn by the other). Participants had either been allocated to a condition in which performance accuracy was above chance or at chance level. After the performance, participants indicated whether they considered that ESP or deception had occurred, and reported on their attitude change. Also, they participated themselves in a precognitive task (predicting cards), so that they could have an idea of their own ESP abilities. Results showed that believers and sceptics endorsed the occurrence of a paranormal event when performance was above chance, but only believers endorsed the occurrence of a paranormal event when the performance was at chance. The same pattern was observed for attitude change. Also, irrespective of their group allocation, believers expected ESP to occur, while sceptics did not. Yet, none of the participants thought that the performance was rigged. Overall, the authors concluded that believers do not learn from new information but rather respond according to their existing beliefs, while sceptics respond according to current experiences. The authors suggested that a sceptic might easily become a believer, because discrepant information would be processed and retained. On the other hand, a believer might not easily become a sceptic, because any debunking effort may be misperceived or remembered incorrectly. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 98 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN In 1995, Wiseman and Morris reported on two experiments in which the authors investigated what participants observed and recalled from supposedly psychic experiences. Here, we report on what was consistently done and found in both experiments. The authors showed participants videotapes of “pseudo-psychic feats,”23 namely mind-over-mind routines (e.g. card prediction) and mind-over-matter routines (e.g. fork bending). Afterwards, participants rated how paranormal the events were and answered recall questions before they were told that the videotape demonstrated magic tricks. Finally, participants answered to a second set of recall questions. At both time points, recall questions were designed so as to be important or unimportant concerning the success of the magic routine. Believers rated performances as more paranormal than sceptics. Moreover, before the performances were debunked, sceptics recalled more important information than believers, but believers recalled an equal amount of important information as sceptics after the debunk. No differences occurred for unimportant information. In line with Jones and Russell,24 Wiseman and Morris concluded that their results “would indicate that, when assessing psychic claimants, Goats can go against their natural bias, whereas Sheep cannot.”25 Here, goats refer to sceptics, and sheep to believers. Hergovich reported on two experiments in which he tested the impact of suggestibility and paranormal belief on the interpretation of supposedly psychic events.26 In the first study, a performer pretended to telepathically identify a card that had been selected by a participant who had just shuffled the deck. The author reported that participants viewed the demonstration as more impressive and less likely based on fraud when they indicated either higher paranormal beliefs or higher hypnotic suggestibility. To test whether these results occurred due to different levels of expectations in believers and sceptics, the author reported on a second study, in which participants saw two demonstrations. Half of the participants were informed that they would see a conjuror, while the other half were informed that they would see a psychic. The author reported that believers as compared to sceptics yielded a higher willingness to explain what they saw in paranormal terms, to exclude the possibility of fraud. Also, participants reported being more amazed when what they saw confirmed their beliefs, i.e. sceptics were more impressed by a well-performed conjuring routine, while believers were more so by an apparently successful psychic event. These effects occurred regardless of whether they were carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 99 told they would see a conjuror or a psychic. Interrogative suggestibility, on the other hand, showed no significant influence in this second study. These studies show that observers had a high likelihood of endorsing a mind-over-mind event as a genuine psychic event. The likelihood was higher for participants already high in paranormal beliefs. For believers more so than sceptics, attempts to counter such explanations seemed inefficient, suggesting that once a bias for paranormal explanations has been formed, little will do to change it. These studies, however, have not shown that such an event caused an increase in beliefs. Marcuse and Bitterman asked participants after the performance to indicate what they assumed to have believed before and after the performance.27 The remaining studies did not assess beliefs before and after the performance. Continuing along the tradition of these previous studies, a series of recent studies targeted causality more directly.28 Mohr, Koutrakis and Kuhn had a performer select a volunteer from the classroom.29 This volunteer was given pieces of paper and asked to write on each the name of someone she knows, including one person who is deceased. The performer claimed to use his spiritual powers to contact this dead person and determine the paper marked by the name of the deceased person. The performer succeeded. Participants completed a paranormal belief questionnaire before and after the performance. Moreover, this being a within-subject design, half of the participants were informed in writing that they would see either a psychic or a conjuror. After the performance, participants indicated to what extent they explained the performance in psychic, conjuring and religious terms. Results did not show that beliefs as such increased after the performance. Rather, higher paranormal beliefs prior to the performance were associated with a higher likelihood of psychic explanations and a lower likelihood of conjuring explanations after the performance. Religious explanations were rare. In this study, framing was efficient, because the conjuror group showed higher conjuring explanations than psychic explanations, and vice versa, the psychic group showed higher psychic explanations than conjuring explanations. Yet, overall, the level of psychic explanations was not very high, suggesting that today’s students might be more sceptical than those tested in earlier studies. Or, the magic routine might not have been very powerful. Indeed, some participants reported after the debriefing that they were not very convinced by the performance. In the next series of studies, Lesaffre et al. tested this paradigm further.30 First, the authors required that the meaning of the framing was carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 100 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN actually processed, i.e. participants had to summarize the framing information in their own words.31 Moreover, the authors enhanced the paranormal nature of the performance, i.e. the performer was a medium making contact with the dead person of a confederate, who had joined Gregory (the performer) on stage. These changes were implemented across three studies. Important here, the studies again found no increase in paranormal beliefs after the performance. Yet again, the higher the participants’ pre-performance beliefs, the more likely were psychic explanations after the performance. Equally important, higher psychic explanations and lower conjuring explanations were obtained after the researchers increased the paranormal nature of the event. A third of the participants seemed utterly confused; they indicated both having seen a conjuring event and having seen a psychic event, although these two explanations should be mutually exclusive. Finally, we found no framing effects, no matter whether participants were told that they would see a conjuring or a psychic event. In the same year, Lan et al. presented an experiment in which the performer used a mind-over-mind performance, this time not being of a psychic, but a pseudo-psychological nature.32 The performance concerned a simple magic routine, in which the performer had to predict in which hand a volunteer held a coin. Importantly, the performer claimed to be using suggestion, psychology, microexpressions and muscle reading to determine which hand held the coin. Before and after the performance, participants answered questions on their belief in suggestion, personality-based predictions, microexpressions, muscle reading (i.e. ideomotor) and mind reading (psychological principles questions). Half of the students were informed in writing that they would see either a psychologist or a conjuror. After the performance, participants indicated to what extent they would explain what they experienced in psychological, psychic, conjuring or religious terms. Regarding this pseudo-psychological performance, participants were very convinced that the event was due to psychological abilities, to some extent to conjuring abilities and to a very minor extent to psychic or religious abilities. Moreover, participants showed an increase in beliefs in psychological principles (i) used here and (ii) that can be used more generally. After the demonstrations, the authors found that endorsement of these psychological principle questions was associated with a higher likelihood of a psychological explanation. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 101 Conclusions on the Success of Deception: Commonalities from Mind-Over-Mind Routines We observed commonalities across studies and inferred how the mindover-mind routines impacted receivers’ acceptance of deception.33 A very common observation was that receivers who already had enhanced paranormal beliefs (believers) were more likely to explain mind-over-mind events as being of genuine paranormal nature than those who were initially sceptical. Also, believers as compared to sceptics seemed unable to accommodate belief-disconfirming information, instead going along with what they had believed all along. Sceptics, on the other hand, also endorsed the occurrence of a paranormal event, but only after having seen information that would support such a conclusion. Based on these latter observations, one could suggest that this information-based behaviour by sceptics implies that supposedly psychic events influence sceptics more strongly than believers. Of additional interest, the role of framing (cover story) seemed minor. In two out of five studies, framing impacted receivers’ explanations and beliefs.34 The other studies found that the cover stories had no impact on the receivers’ explanations and beliefs.35 Potentially, the mind-over-mind routines were in these cases so powerful that they overran the framing information. Lesaffre et al., indeed, observed a highly attentive and affectively engaged (sad, empathic, angry) audience.36 Such routines might act like backward masks on preceding events,37 namely the information provided in the cover story. Independent studies would support this suggestion. For instance, Thibault et al. put participants with attention and hyperactivity difficulties in an inert brain imaging scanner.38 They were told “that the ‘brain machine’ was inactive, and that we would ‘use it as a suggestion’ that would ‘help their brain heal itself’.”39 Participants’ parents reported significant improvements in participants’ difficulties at follow-up. This research group also conducted an open-label neurosuggestion experiment, meaning, parents were extensively briefed regarding the inert nature of the MRI scanner.40 Nevertheless, parents continued to ask what was “wrong” with their child’s brain. Important to these studies, researchers told their participants that they pretended to perform a real brain scan. Yet, they had behaved during the fake brain imaging session as if they conducted a real brain imaging session. Seemingly, this event was so convincing to participants that they forgot that the experiment involved a fake machine and procedure. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 102 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN Finally, studies that assessed participants’ beliefs before and after the mind-over-mind routine found no change in overall beliefs. A priori, we had expected an increase in beliefs.41 Potentially, we found no increase because we looked at general belief rather than beliefs that are more event specific. Wiseman and Morris, for instance, compared opinions and recall for their mind-over-mind and mind-over-matter performances, separately, i.e. looking at belief change for ESP items in the former case and for psychokinesis items in the latter case.42 Also, Lan et al. observed that the experience of a pseudo-psychological mind-over-mind routine did not change participants’ beliefs in such pseudo-psychological principles per se.43 Yet, participants reported enhanced beliefs that such principles were used in the current performance, and that these principles could be used more generally. General Conclusion We reviewed empirical studies that investigated whether and how individuals accept deceptive information. More specifically, we wanted to know whether and how senders can influence receivers’ minds when using deception. We profited from studies using the art of magic—an art that is by default based on deception. We concentrated on mind-over-mind routines because these routines specifically target mind control. If we and others conclude that findings from such mind-over-mind routines generalize more widely, i.e. beyond these routines, we would suggest the following testable principles. Principle 1: Whatever the topic a sender wants to convince the receiver about, receivers are likely to show a confirmation bias.44 In other words, if a receiver already believes in the event the sender is conveying, this event will also be explained in such terms, whether this event is true or fake. Thus, an already believing receiver is unlikely to even take the current information into account. On the other hand, receivers who are sceptical about what they are seeing are likely to take the current information into account. This difference in believers and sceptics could entail that deceptive information might influence sceptical, critical thinkers more strongly than those with pre-set opinions. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 103 Principle 2: Depending on the attention- and affect-grabbing potential of what is conveyed to receivers, any type of pre-event information is likely overridden. Pre-event warnings or explanations might have no impact as to if and how a person processes the conveyed information. For deception, a sender might feel morally and ethically absolved by having provided pre-warning information before engaging in deception. Yet, the fact that this information is being overridden makes the sender’s behaviour equally questionable as compared to when having given no such pre-warning. If true, debriefing procedures in experimental settings have to make sure that the deceptive nature of the experiment has been understood. Principle 3: Depending on the topic, people’s beliefs in what they experienced might increase, but only when beliefs are very close to the actual experience.45 Yet, this observation originates from studies looking at short-term effects. It remains possible that further belief generalization occurs over a longer time period. Acknowledgements This report was supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (number 100014_162370, principal investigator CM). We are very thankful to Matthew L. Tompkins (Oxford, UK), who advised us on articles reporting on mind-over-mind routines and who provided a critical reading of an initial draft of the current manuscript. Notes 1. Bella M. DePaulo, “The Many Faces of Lies,” in The Social Psychology of Good and Evil, ed. Arthur G. Miller (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 303–326. 2. Angela Evans and Kang Lee, “Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children,” Developmental Psychology 49, no. 10 (2013): 1958–1963. 3. Jennifer Lavoie et al., “Polite, Instrumental, and Dual Liars. Relation to Children’s Developing Social Skills and Cognitive Ability,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 41, no. 2 (2017): 257–264. 4. Aldert Vrij, Detecting Lies and Deceit. Pitfalls and Opportunities (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2008). 5. DePaulo, “The Many Faces of Lies.” 6. Christine Mohr, Lise Lesaffre, and Gustav Kuhn, “Magical Potential. Why Magic Performances Should Be Used to Explore the Psychological Factors Contributing to Human Belief Formation,” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 53, no. 1 (2019): 126–137. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 104 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN 7. Gianna Cocchini, Toni Galligan, Laura Mora, and Gustav Kuhn, “The Magic Hand. Plasticity of Mental Hand Representation,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 71, no. 11 (2018): 2314–2324; Landry Olson et al., “Simulated Thought Insertion. Influencing the Sense of Agency Using Deception and Magic,” Consciousness and Cognition 43 (2016): 11–26; E. Subbotsky, Magic and the Mind. Mechanisms, Functions, and Development of Magical Thinking and Behavior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Lise Lesaffre, Gustav Kuhn, Ahmad AbuAkel, Deborah Rochat, and Christine Mohr, “Magic Performances. When Explained in Psychic Terms by University Students,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 2129, for some recent examples. 8. Subbotsky, Magic and the Mind. 9. Olson et al., “Simulated Thought Insertion.” 10. Victor A. Benassi, Barry Singer, and Craig B. Reynolds, “Occult Belief. Seeing Is Believing,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 19, no. 4 (1980): 337–349; Andreas Hergovich, “The Effect of Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations as Dependent on Belief in Paranormal Phenomena and Suggestibility,” Personality and Individual Differences 36, no. 2 (2004): 365–380; Warren H. Jones and Dan Russell, “The Selective Processing of Belief Disconfirming Information,” European Journal of Social Psychology 10, no. 3 (1980): 309–312; Lesaffre, “Magic Performances”; F. Marcuse and M. Bitterman, “A Classroom Demonstration of Psychical Phenomena,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 39 (1944): 238–243; Christine Mohr, Nikolaos Koutrakis, and Gustav Kuhn, “Priming Psychic and Conjuring Abilities of a Magic Demonstration Influences Event Interpretation and Random Number Generation Biases,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 1542; Dan Russell and Warren H. Jones, “When Superstition Fails. Reactions to Disconfirmation of Paranormal Beliefs,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 6, no. 1 (1980): 83–88; Richard Wiseman and Robert L. Morris, “Recalling Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations,” British Journal of Psychology 86, no. 1 (1995): 113–125. 11. Yuxuan Lan, Christine Mohr, Xiaomeng Hu, and Gustav Kuhn, “Fake Science. The Impact of Pseudo-Psychological Demonstrations on People’s Beliefs in Psychological Principles,” PLoS ONE 13, no. 11 (2018): E0207629. 12. Hergovich, “The Effect of Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations.” 13. Wiseman and Morris, “Recalling Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations.” 14. Russell and Jones, “When Superstition Fails.” 15. Marcuse and Bitterman, “A Classroom Demonstration of ‘Psychical Phenomena’.” 16. Ibid., 238. 17. Ibid., 241. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 5 HOW STAGE MAGIC PERPETUATES MAGICAL BELIEFS 105 18. Benassi et al., “Occult Belief”; Jones and Russell, “The Selective Processing of Belief Disconfirming Information”; Russell and Jones, “When Superstition Fails.” 19. Benassi et al., “Occult Belief,” 339. 20. Ibid., 343. 21. Russell and Jones, “When Superstition Fails.” 22. Jones and Russell, “The Selective Processing of Belief Disconfirming Information.” 23. Wiseman and Morris, “Recalling Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations,” 114. 24. Jones and Russell, “The Selective Processing of Belief Disconfirming Information.” 25. Wiseman and Morris, “Recalling Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations,” 123. 26. Hergovich, “The Effect of Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations.” 27. Marcuse and Bitterman, “A Classroom Demonstration of ‘Psychical Phenomena’.” 28. Mohr et al., “Priming Psychic and Conjuring Abilities”; Lesaffre et al., “Magic Performances”; Lan et al., “Fake Science”; see also Mohr et al., “Magical Potential.” 29. Mohr et al., “Priming Psychic and Conjuring Abilities.” 30. Lesaffre et al., “Magic Performances.” 31. See also Benassi “Occult Belief.” 32. Lan et al., “Fake Science.” 33. We appreciate that some of these studies had aimed to answer additional questions. Yet, we consider them too specific to contribute to a common understanding of findings across studies. 34. Benassi et al., “Occult Belief”; Mohr et al., “Priming Psychic and Conjuring Abilities.” 35. Lesaffre et al., “Magic Performances”; Lan et al., “Fake Science.” 36. Lesaffre et al., “Magic Performances.” 37. See also Marissa Knight and Mara Mather, “Reconciling Findings of Emotion-Induced Memory Enhancement and Impairment of Preceding Items,” Emotion 9, no. 6 (2009): 763–781. 38. Robert Thibault et al., “Treating ADHD with Suggestion: Neurofeedback and Placebo Therapeutics,” Journal of Attention Disorders 22, no. 8 (2018): 707–711. 39. Ibid., 708f. 40. Samuel P. Veissière, Jay A. Olson, Michael Lifshitz, and Amir Raz, “Neurosuggestion Improves Self-Regulation in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Feasibility Study,” Lecture, 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Chicago, 2017. 41. Mohr et al., “Magical Potential.” 42. Wiseman and Morris, “Recalling Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations.” 43. Lan et al., “Fake Science.” carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 106 C. MOHR AND G. KUHN 44. Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias. A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175–220. 45. Emily Pronin et al., “Everyday Magical Powers. The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, no. 2 (2006): 218–231. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de PART II Reading and Interpreting the Criminal Mind: Practices of Policing and Political Control carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 6 The Idea of Reading Someone’s Thoughts in Contemporary Lie Detection Techniques Larissa Fischer Introduction When we talk about mind reading techniques, we refer to a sociohistorical phenomenon that can be linked to a magic-like power, to a specific knowledge of human nature, and to the idea of a specific psychic medium. The underlying desire of these imagined techniques has always been to gain insight into the true nature of another person’s thoughts. This idea sparks great hopes, but it is also associated with great discontent because the mind is perceived as something very valuable that makes people what they are—especially for the modern subject. The most prominent ability that has held up best in popular culture is the idea of telepathy, a gift that enables people to read the minds of others. In Perry Rhodan, one of the best-known science fiction series in German-speaking countries, which has been published for over 50 years, telekinesis is one of the essential so-called psi-skills. The characters who have this ability use it to spy on but also to empathize with others. One L. Fischer (B) RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany e-mail: lfischer@soziologie.rwth-aachen.de © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_6 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 109 110 L. FISCHER of the very early stories describes how the mighty figure of the mouse beaver uses its power: Gucky interfered with Bully’s mind. Then he could understand the other man’s bad mood and forgive him generously, which was not his style otherwise. ‘Well, that’s what it looks like up there. No wonder you’re already afraid, Mr. Bull,’ he said dryly. […] With this remark, however, the mouse beaver had openly admitted that he was involved in Bully’s thoughts, and that was strictly forbidden.1 In this Cold War-related and thus very technocratic science fiction universe, interfering with the thoughts of others is—following a popular topos that is widespread in the sci-fi world—a natural consequence of genetic mutation, but without consent it is forbidden. This allows a conclusion to be drawn about general social concerns relating to insight or access to the world of others’ thoughts, especially during the Cold War, when covert service projects like the CIA’s MKUltra experimented with various techniques and substances to control consciousness. In this example from popular culture, the thought is personal property, and this becomes apparent in the face of a technology that can access the mind, even if fictional. When we talk about the ideas and concepts people have about the mind and reading the mind, there are of course scientific approaches trying to grasp this phenomenon on an individual level. Concepts of Theory of Mind (ToM) and social cognition as core principles of social communication are constantly being investigated in psychology and anthropology.2 David Premack and Guy Woodruff used the term Theory of Mind for the first time in their 1978 study to describe the ability of empathizing with the mental states of self and others. The term “theory” refers to the kind of techniques used to observe states “that are not directly observable and one uses these states anticipatorily, to predict the behaviour of others as well as one’s own.”3 So humans are, to a certain extent, able to “read the minds” of others in terms of theorizing the mind of self and others. Thus, detecting the deceptive behaviour of others in a “natural” way is part of these ToM skills as well. The very recent study of Suzanne Stewart and colleagues shows, for example, that the capacity to detect deception correlates with both emotional intelligence (EI) and ToM, as certain people have the ability to perceive and decode the emotional states of others as well as to reason cognitively about other’s behaviour.4 Stewart et al. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 111 also argue that training for ToM skills could make it easier for certain professions to deal with potential liars.5 Coming at the question from the opposite perspective, a study by Xiao Pan Ding et al. on the ToM abilities of young children shows that ToM control training causes a lasting ability to deceive even when the child has never shown deceptive behaviour before.6 Thus ToM abilities appear to be central for both lying and for the ability to detect the lie. Because thoughts are an invisible phenomenon, it also seems comprehensible that imagining a medium or technology giving access to the mind of a person has been part of cultures of technical improvement. In fact, these ideations and expectations can be understood as future-oriented visions that materialize in texts, technology or other artefacts and help to structure their realization in advance.7 Visions of mind-reading materialized in and shaped by actual technologies have changed their form several times, starting with the brain mirror or encephaloscope imagined by the surgeon Eduard Albert in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century.8 The possibility of taking a photograph of the human mind at that time was discussed by those involved in parapsychological experiments.9 The beginnings of the polygraph, which later became popular as the lie detector, followed about twenty years later as a combination of individual medical instruments for measuring psychophysiological parameters. In 1924, the first brain wave measurements of the human brain with electroencephalography (EEG) were made.10 And today, we can already look back at the implementation of modern neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI. In recent decades, knowledge about the structure and function of the human brain has grown rapidly, and the relocation of neurobiological findings into fundamental philosophical questions has also provided a variety of explanatory approaches. One of the paradigmatic questions that remains to be addressed in neurophilosophical debates is how to reveal the truthfulness of a person’s statement. Inspired by the insightful analysis of Melissa Littlefield, this chapter is based on the thesis that there are persistent assumptions associated with the various lie detection technologies. Taking the United States as an example, Littlefield emphasizes how “[…] brain-based lie detection technologies are not immune to nor have they resolved the practical and ideological conundrums that informed lie detection at the turn of the twentieth century.”11 In the following, I want to elaborate how lie detection in Germany has always been associated with an obscure expectation carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 112 L. FISCHER of reading someone’s thoughts and how modern neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI led to a shift in the way lie detection is perceived. The imagined possibilities that come to life in the neurosciences are to some extent the result of expectations related to and raised by this discipline, like the prospect of generating new knowledge on the frontier of this scientific field. These expectations are also linked to a prospective knowledge of the neuronal characteristics of the “lying brain.” This in turn leads, per my argument, to a more or less conscious awareness of the limitations of actual knowledge available in the neuroscientific field, which also emanates into the public perception of lie detection technology and shapes the desires and aspirations surrounding it. Karin Knorr Cetina grasps the coexistence of knowledge and ignorance with the concept of “negative knowledge,”12 which gave the present analysis a fruitful impulse, since this concept is neither limited to a “strategic ignorance”13 of facts nor to their complete non-knowing,14 but addresses the very “knowledge of the limits of knowing.”15 The strength of this concept lies precisely in acknowledging that negative knowledge can potentially be turned into positive evidence, if, for example, in the research process the recognition of errors provokes new approaches or if previously rejected information suddenly becomes relevant.16 Taking into account the sociological perspective on the scientific production of knowledge, including what Knorr Cetina calls liminality or negative knowledge, I will borrow this science studies approach to examine and contrast both the jurisprudential and scientific hypotheses of lie detection.17 In this chapter, I seek to shed light on the interconnections between the concrete practice of and research on lie detection technology and the broader popular idea of getting access to someone’s thoughts and feelings. I first explore the genesis of the science of understanding lies and the development of lie detection in applied psychology research laboratories in the United States and Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Second, on the basis of an analysis of court decisions on the use of the polygraph in Germany and of the German legal foundations of lie detection, I will show how the German legal system has treated lie detection procedures as a machine-supported access to the mind in the context of lie detection from the 1950s until today. Third, it will be part of my analysis to work out how in science the detection of lies in the context of neuroscientific procedures has gained new relevance, even though the findings are hardly used in practice. And this is despite the fact that some neuropsychologists additionally use the classical measuring parameters of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 113 the polygraph even today. Thus, in the last section insights into the perspectives and aspirations of the researchers will complement those implied by judicial practice.18 On Understanding the Lie and Its Detection What is the meaning of “lying”? First and foremost, lies are inextricably linked to moral judgement. However, in ancient Greece lying was inseparable from the ideas of fiction, fallacy and poetic expression, all of which were covered by the term ψευ6oζ (pseudos ). Today, ευ6oζ is translated as “pseudo,” “lie” or “untrue,”19 but in the former sense it was not necessarily related to negative or immoral behaviour.20 It was only Plato’s critique of rhetoric and poetry that claimed to distinguish the true from the untrue, but nevertheless the term maintained an association with both falsehood and wisdom. With the birth of Christianity, the lie was then largely stylized by Augustine as the basic vice of human beings.21 Thus, lying out of self-interest became not only a culpable offense but also, according to Augustine’s teachings, something that would lead to the loss of eternal life.22 This moral condemnation continues into Kant’s philosophy of the metaphysics of manners (“Metaphysik der Sitten”) when he concludes that “by a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.”23 In this judgement of the Enlightenment there is an addition: the lie is not just reprehensible, but also hurts the lying person as a subject of responsibility for itself and its actions. The first efforts to measure lies and guilt were made by the ancient Egyptians when after the death of a person, their guilt was calculated according to the weight of the heart.24 The central organ here that was responsible for dishonesty and also for thinking in general was not the brain, but the heart.25 From the Middle Ages to the early modern period, deception detection in Europe was based on the methods of the Ordeal, which meant, for example, that the accused had to apply his tongue to hot iron. When it burned, he was guilty and put to death, because the dryness of the tongue was interpreted as a sign of lying.26 A physiological characteristic that also emerged in the Middle Ages was the measurement of the pulse. The Persian physician Ibn Sina already described in the eleventh century that the change of the pulse could also indicate that someone was concealing information. So the detection of deception has always been a matter of the detection of physical reactions.27 This basic assumption that lying requires some physical effort, which can then be carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 114 L. FISCHER measured, is still valid today for methods and new technological developments for truth verification such as polygraph testing, thermographic or expressional facial reading, deception detection via PET or fMRI, and others. Even if from a socio-psychological as well as a linguistic point of view lying constitutes an indispensable part of social intelligence,28 the understanding of lying as a counter-principle to truthfulness in Western societies is to this day shaped by a Christian worldview. Lying as the “conscious utterance of an untruth with the intention to deceive”29 violates our more or less implicit social dictum of truth, can even be punishable, and is the object of every interrogation practice. The classic device for lie detection is the polygraph, which has been used as a lie detector since the beginning of the twentieth century. The first so-called lie detection tests emerged in the United States within the instrument-based experiments on the cognitive and emotional state of others. The subject was a key interest in the laboratories for applied psychology in the early twentieth century.30 The idea that a mental state is observable in bodily reactions was the major focus in the laboratory work of William Moulton Marston, who is known as the inventor of the first lie detection test. Working in the environment of Harvard’s experimental psychology department established by Hugo Münsterberg, Marston was following Münsterberg’s ideas about applied psychology. Furthermore, Marston was following up on Münsterberg’s theory “that psychological states and emotions manifest themselves in and through the body.”31 This period of the general exploration of consciousness and the human psyche coincides with the development of the polygraph machine. Marston created a basis for experiments on lie detection with his theory of “deceptive consciousness” (1917, 1920). Marston was particularly interested in exploring the correlation between blood pressure and deception,32 which, some years later, was used and technically incorporated into the “Polygraph-Machine” by the police officer John Larson.33 Now, in the present day, various physiological parameters such as breathing deeply, skin conductivity, pulse or blood pressure as indicating an increased level of stress and delayed response to certain questions are associated with the assumption that the truth unconsciously makes itself apparent in the body even when it is consciously suppressed. In this assumption, it is already assumed that telling the truth is a “natural” human behaviour and that lying is a deviation; this is a fundamental paradigm that is still valid today carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 115 for various approaches to lie detection.34 While in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century research into the detection of lies was carried out in technically equipped laboratories, in the Germanspeaking countries only isolated experiments were undertaken. The Italian psychologist Vittorio (1913) experimented with psychophysiological features of lying at the University of Graz, and Karl Gustav Jung and Max Wertheimer also discussed the usefulness of such measurements for the forensic field.35 While neither the experiments of European psychologists such as Jung, coming from the field of psychoanalysis,36 nor experimental psychology, nor lie detection techniques by criminologists such as Cesare Lombroso37 were ever taken up in a sustained way in forensic practice, the field of “applied” psychology newly founded in the United States appeared to be much more practice-oriented. The final invention of the lie detector did not happen in scientific labs but in US police investigation practice, supported by John Larson and Leonarde Keeler.38 It was accompanied by media attention, which led to a discussion about the abolition of the violent enforcement of confessions, the so-called third degree in police work.39 As part of the professionalization programme of the police, several senior police officers embraced “the ‘science’ of lie detection to overcome problems with the third degree.”40 However, although claims were made about a professionalization of interrogation techniques, a curious development can be seen in the professional circles of known polygraphists. For one thing, Keeler was very interested in magic tricks and incorporated his findings into the usage of the already established number test, which is still the pretest for the polygraph process today.41 This process, also known as a stimulus test, is intended to familiarize the polygraphist with the person’s reactions, to adjust the instrument, to tune the test person into the procedure and above all to create confidence in the functioning of the test procedure.42 Even though this pre-test in Germany is not based on trickery, it gains its reliability through the high comparability of the responses in this test, which is not the case in the much more fragile actual test procedure afterwards. Since the difference of these proceedings is not transmitted to the suspect, it can be identified as a specific construction of the belief in the device. Beyond this overlap between the play with deception and polygraph testing, it must also be mentioned that the study of polygraph testing also took place in a scientific context in which researchers played with the boundaries of what was deemed scientifically possible. Marston, for carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 116 L. FISCHER example, offered a scientific definition for the basic emotions with regard to his specific feminist theory of the superiority of female traits. As Geoffrey Bunn shows, Marston’s belief in the positive effects of dominance and submission was just as integral to his conviction of female authority as his belief that justice could be done by the polygraph.43 Another interesting and more recent example from this field of polygraph testing is the founder of the CIA’s Lie Detector School, Cleve Backster. In addition to his development of the standard method of polygraph testing for the US authorities, the polygraph was eventually transferred into the field of parapsychology and telepathy following his apparent findings from experiments with his dragon tree: a plant connected to the polygraph electrodes for measuring skin conductivity caused some noisy recordings when a “(plant-)murderer” was present. For Backster, the plant’s increase in electrical resistance therefore must signal some special primary sensory abilities, as its “emotional stress” is supposedly registered when the person does no more than think of an evil act.44 From a scientific view, the “totally unscientific discontinuity of logic” of Backster’s conclusion can be seen as part of anti-intellectual tendencies in the United States of the late 1960s.45 Even though Backster’s studies have no scientific evidence, the idea that plants react to thoughts is taken up by the media even to this day.46 Until the early 1950s the polygraph didn’t show up in German courts or any other German authority. During the Weimar Republic in Germany, there had been constant criticism of violent police practice and the partisanship of the judiciary.47 However, in the course of the political escalation leading up to 1933, every development towards a more humanistic interrogation practice was turned into its opposite. During National Socialism, developments in legal psychology came to a halt. Many scientists emigrated, were murdered or imprisoned.48 The introduction of polygraph testing in German courts in the form of a published judgement took place in 1953 at the Regional Court [Landgericht] Zweibrücken.49 Back then the polygraph was seen by the Court as a machine that produced inadmissible evidence; the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) stated that polygraph testing violated man’s freedom of will and was thus a violation of human rights. This harsh criticism contrasts with the perception of the polygraph in the United States as a more humane instrument, and can be seen as a rejection of instruments of power that recalled the assaults and medical crimes of the National Socialists. It shows both a criticism of torture methods and also a more general carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 117 scepticism about technology and its empowerment over man. Locating the device in the context of a police interrogation highlights the polygraph’s power to act and the intimidating arrangement and materiality of the testing procedure: the test subject is connected to an apparatus by means of sensors on his hands and arms and straps around his chest. His body is completely observed by machine and expert during the interrogation. Keeping in mind this notion of the polygraph as it was understood by the German court of that time, we now turn to court decisions on the polygraph from 1954 onwards. Who May Read Mind and Soul? Polygraphs in German Courtrooms In the post-war period, the question of the admissibility of polygraph expert opinions in German courts has been part of the question of the democratization of the legal system. The polygraph, as an apparatus for assessing statements, was the subject of much debate over the question of what principles of human dignity apply to individuals within a judicial framework.50 In 1954, the German Federal Supreme Court explained in a groundbreaking judicial decision: The polygraph aims to obtain more and different “statements ” from the accused than those he would have obtained during the usual interrogation, including those which he makes unwillingly and which he cannot make without the device. In addition to the conscious and deliberate answers to the questions, the unconscious also “answers,” without the accused being able to prevent it.51 This means that the emergence of inner human processes must be judged with “caution,”52 which is not guaranteed by the indiscriminate and inherently repressive nature of the polygraph machine. In this view, the polygraph is not able to proceed with caution because the measurable processes are declared to be deeper processes originating from the unconscious, and thus give an indication of what is going on in the mind. These phenomena are not accessible through bare human observation, and because only the machine brings them to light, such evidence is inadmissible. Ensuring the protection of the autonomous subject is a central concern in the German legal debate on human dignity in the 1950s, and finds its way into the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court a carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 118 L. FISCHER few years later with the so-called Objektformel.53 This formula states that the human being must not be degraded to an object, since its status as a subject would then be threatened. In 1954, the individual was already conceived as a subject that has to be protected from technology—and thus from the polygraph—that measures its inner life in terms of the soul or mind: Such insight into the soul of the accused and his or her unconscious emotions violates the freedom of decision and execution of the will [Willensentschließung und -betätigung ] (§ 136 a StPO) and is inadmissible in criminal proceedings.54 The attribution of the subject’s agency is less central than the emphasis on the soul that comes to light by means of the body. This is frequently claimed in court decisions up to the 1990s and is also echoed in later decisions in the same terms. This notion of the soul as an object worth protecting and an expressive object, one that is veiled by the human body, implies not only the existence of a distinct language of the unconscious that gives insight in the soul. In this court decision of 1954, the court also treats the apparatus as having its own agency, which can reveal movements of the human soul and thus draw conclusions from the subject’s thoughts in a manner beyond bare human capacity. Even if the test procedure itself is a cooperation of expert, test subject and polygraph forming a sociotechnical ensemble,55 for the court the autonomy and mind controlling abilities of the apparatus are the main focus and thus problematized. What happens here is an attribution of autonomy to the machine, which does not exist within the individual elements that contribute to the realization of the test procedure.56 We find the same attribution of agency when the court evaluates the judge’s task of finding the truth. Thus, in contrast to the machine, the judge is permitted to do more: with prudence, restraint and knowledge of human nature the court can take into account the conscious and unconscious expressions, which usually emerge at the trial. These rather rough sensory impressions of daily life are not equal to those which are gained by measuring unconscious and hidden bodily processes and are then used for the interpretation of the soul.57 Along the separation between the inadmissible mechanical readout and the permitted physical analysis of the judge,58 a distinction is drawn carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 119 between (1) the expressions recognizable by humans and (2) those that only emerge with the aid of the machine. These attempts to differentiate between the registration of expressions by judges and machines have repeatedly been the subject of dispute, right up to more recent court decisions. As an entity representing the court, the judge is trusted to evaluate the truthfulness of the answer by his knowledge of human nature alone, on the basis of the physical signals sent by an interviewee as to whether he is telling the truth. Remarkably, here the judge’s natural ability to read the truthfulness of others is directly compared to the agency of a machine, without questioning the extent of either of the two abilities. This “illusion” of attributing all agency to one actor59 is part of the judicial construction of the polygraph as a mind-reading machine that goes beyond the “natural” mind-reading techniques of judges. There is no doubt that the polygraph is able to give insight into the soul of a person and thus to deduce the formation of his thoughts. Whether the procedure is valid and scientifically tenable is not called into question here. Rather, it is the authorization for the production and interpretation of the impulse of the unconscious that is up for debate and determines who may produce and use certain knowledge. The polygraph is indeed the executive element in the interpretation of the inner impulses of the unconscious, but the medium is first and foremost the human body, measured by the machine. In 1954, the relationship of the human body to the soul is determined along a classical Cartesian separation between the physical and the spiritual, whereby the machine has access to the latter. Not just the soul is sacralized by the subject’s right to hide its innermost being, but this legalistic sacralization also determines the physical condition of the accused with regard to an inner core of humanity that is the secret of every human. The definition of the subject here accords with an essential definition of the natural person with his body and mind. Here we see an interesting reference regarding the constitution of the juristic subject to its position as a natural person. This constitution presupposes a specific subjectivation of the individual in the legal context.60 The individual here is not to be submitted to a technology as an external object, but is to be subjected to his or her own unconsciously confessing body. The attribution of the subject’s agency is less central here than the emphasis on the inner space that has to express itself through the body. Thus, as Margaret Gibson points out in her analysis of the polygraph as a truth machine, once connected to the polygraph apparatus the body becomes “a specific site of knowledge carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 120 L. FISCHER and information processing” which is monitored, imaged, translated and recorded by the machine.61 This notion of the translational power of the machine with respect to the body’s interior becomes effective in the early jurisprudence on polygraph testing and lasts until 1998. The body is thus declared a place “of secret, private and invisible thoughts,”62 which must be protected from the truth-reading machine. Moreover, not merely is it impossible for the body to lie, “the body also tells the ‘truth.’”63 The idea of the confessing body, which is already established in the court decision of 1954, attains increased significance from the 1980s onwards. In the course of a number of trials related to suspected abuse in the 1990s, the discussion about the admissibility of polygraph tests in court proceedings was revived and received attention again in jurisprudence.64 In these court decisions, the rather philosophical arguments made on the basis of the protection of the human soul and the unconscious are enriched with more and more mechanical descriptions of the polygraph procedure and the function of the psychological expert.65 Finally, in 1998 the BGH announced a revision of the 1954 court decision and dispelled the concerns that the polygraph would read to unveil the soul: Furthermore, a voluntary test does not allow insight into the soul of the accused. It records and registers physical side effects like a kind of “magnifying glass” and makes these unconscious utterances visible. It is not the machine that decides about truth and untruth, but the expert through his interpretation of the reactions.66 On the one hand, this statement shows that the polygraph becomes an integral part of the practice of expert assessment in court, which consists of an ensemble of machine, interviewee, expert and judge. That the psychologist is explicitly emphasized here as an expert may be connected with the fact that in the course of the 1980s, legal psychology was able to establish itself as a separate field of expertise, meaning that its protagonists finally gain more acknowledgement as experts in court.67 On the other hand, from now on the polygraph doesn’t unveil the secrets of the human soul anymore but, more than ever before, the body is declared to be a medium of self-articulation whose codes can be captured by a decoding machine like a technological “magnifying glass.” This goes hand in hand with the judicial construction of a primarily biopsychological object of research that can be detected, rather than a morally charged carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 121 question of honesty. Since the court decision of 1998, there has been increasing reference to the cognitive state of the subject.68 Even when one court stated in 2000 that you still “cannot really look into people’s minds,”69 henceforth insight into the human mind is thought of as access through “body data” or “biosignals,” with the prospect that it will be possible to “measur[e] brain waves.”70 This shift from the notion of the human soul talking through the body to the idea of the human mind being expressed by the body has to be seen in relation to the idea of the brain as an information processing system, which became relevant with the emergence of modern neuroscience during the late 1990s.71 Even if the polygraph remains contested after 1998, its threat to human rights has vanished. From now on, it is the scientific foundations of the procedure are called into question, rather than its ethical parameters. This opens up new possibilities of practical application for polygraphs, but also for other methods of lie detection. By making its reactions magnifiable, countable and legible, the body becomes an object of science. Furthermore, the polygraph declared as a magnifying glass becomes a paradigmatic model for further technological developments in the neurosciences of the near future. Mind Reading as Science? Lie Detection in the Neuropsychological Laboratory As mentioned at the beginning, the judicial debate refers regularly to the scientific immaturity of truth assessment procedures such as polygraph testing. But at the same time, there is no active exchange between (neuro)psychological research and the legal field. However, since research in Germany in the field of deception detection takes place almost exclusively in the laboratories of experimental neuropsychology research, it is indispensable to take a look at the further development of neurotechnological access to lying. The inclusion of deception detection in the research agenda of the neurosciences is mainly due to the fact that neuroscience is the first discipline to see itself as reaching beyond the traditionally defined terrain of the natural sciences and to make the investigation of consciousness processes one of its tasks.72 Since this has been the subject of research in the humanities and social sciences up to now, translation difficulties have arisen between the humanities and modern neuroscientific approaches to the subject, which are also apparent in deception detection carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 122 L. FISCHER research and knowledge communication by those working in the field. One interviewee explains using the example of morality: If a brain area is actually active within the framework of a controlled experiment, I usually already know what this area is usually used for. But neuropsychologists often lack the language to explain in simple terms what this network function is. […] In fact, we know that in experiments that also involve the moral evaluation of images, a certain area is active. But that is not the “moral area.” That is simply the difficulty of the verbalization of network processes.73 As has already been stated from epistemological and linguistic perspectives, neuroscience faces the problem of a missing mentalistic terminology in order to correctly describe their phenomena.74 But neuropsychologists identify both the difficulty of translating within the scientific field, and also a huge barrier in the possibility of transferring knowledge from research into practical fields because of differences in language and approaches. Another researcher interviewee stated the problem as such: “I sometimes find it difficult to communicate between the different disciplines within science […]. But I feel that when you talk to practitioners, it becomes very difficult.”75 Even if none of our interview partners was convinced that their test methods were ethically harmless and that they should be introduced without fail, they speak of an untapped potential in methodology.76 Several researchers emphasized that precisely because the methods currently in use are not very advanced, scientific progress in this regard will be important. This would at least make it possible to replace the older and inferior procedures like polygraph testing. They have great doubt about the future of the subject matter and practical use of their research results, because the topic is sometimes seen as unscientific within the scientific community and there is a lot of popular mystification about it. The following observation is a good example: There is a certain scepticism from science. I also think that certain disciplines sometimes feel that you are dealing with a field that at first seems unscientific, and this scepticism continues, for example, in terms of financing possibilities, i.e. third-party funding, that you would not get for something like that.77 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 123 A strategy to overcome what experts in the field see as misunderstandings of the polygraph is shown by their consistent avoidance of the terms “lie detection” and “lie detector.” For example, one neuroscientist who works with the polygraph decided to actively escape the unscientific associations such phrases evoke with a policy on terminology: I’m trying to avoid that word [lie detection], and I’m trying to get it out of people’s heads, too. Because what is associated with it in people’s minds usually comes from television or from some abusive pseudodetection method that has no quality at all and is really more about being spectacular than being scientific.78 At the same time, however, another neuroscientist who has also experimented with the polygraph mentioned that he himself had—apart from the polygraph—a passion for magic tricks, also in connection with his use of the number test: “It may have a non-psychological origin, but I’m not sure. Because I also used to do magic tricks - you’ll laugh - in the past.”79 Even though convincing the test-subject of the instrument’s efficacy was always part of the psychological experiment, the proximity of the magical to the detection of lies seems to appear with some regularity in the interests of its protagonists. At least the impression remains that, as in Marston’s work on deceptive detection, the subject does not detach itself from a connection to “fringe” or “junk science.”80 This, as Ken Alder points out, might have to do with the fact that the polygraph, even if used in science, was not born of science81 but developed right from the start as an application for police interrogation in the United States and became a subject of fiction. However, studies of brain imaging-based approaches to lie detection on an international level are seen to be very promising, both with regard to their future use in court82 and as an intra-disciplinary argument for the implications of new methods such as brain-pattern recognition analysis.83 Current experiments on neuroscientific methods of lie detection are based on the tradition of the psychophysiological credibility assessment that conscious lying also means additional effort in the brain,84 since the true answer must be suppressed. In an fMRI measurement, the visualization of a change in blood flow indicates increased activity and thus effort in specific brain regions, which in turn are distinguished from those characteristics that are associated with true statements. This kind of brain imaging-based lie detection promises a scientifically valid procedure carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 124 L. FISCHER that is supposed to make its specific understanding of a “lie” visible within the imaged brain. What you see, then, is that the false statement leads to increased activity, especially in the prefrontal and parietal cortex. That is to say, the brain is more active when you lie than when it tells the truth. And I think you can make that a rule of thumb.85 As in polygraph measurements, neuroimaging lie detection is thus based on the same assumption found in polygraph measurements, namely that telling the truth provides the baseline and the “normal” and that lying is the exception. This concise expression in this statement draws a line between the subject that is lying on and the brain telling the truth. Thus, we see the continuation of the idea of the “body as confessional,”86 that is, committed to truth, even if in this case that formulation is transferred onto the brain. Neuroscientists assume that the conscious hiding of information can be seen in deviant activity in certain brain areas. It is then defined and interpreted as “lying” when “there are always longer response times with lies compared with the truth, and stronger prefrontal activity with lies.”87 Another basic assumption that has continuity in the transition to cerebral methods is the notion of the remembering body, as something that can be hooked up to a technological application to extract the truth. One interviewee said: “there’s something the body remembers that’s inaccessible to us. And that would need to be verified.”88 During the legal discussion about the use of polygraphs in court, it had already become apparent that the aim of the procedure was to read the truth of the body most directly in order to be able to circumvent the subjective answer of the interviewee. This goal is even more noticeable in the neuroscientific approaches, because there is a more direct access to the brain as the control centre of the body. It is striking that neuroscientists address the brain as an acting entity. Thus, they refer to either a body as a “remembering medium” or a brain as a “storage” device that lies or talks, that “tells the truth” or that “says: I recognize.”89 The agency that is granted to the body in the psychophysiological access with the polygraph is given instead to the brain by neuroscience. Thus, the brain emerges as the representative of subjective truth and becomes the actor of the scientific ensemble. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 125 As already mentioned, there is another approach via fMRI deception detection that works on the recognition of objects and should therefore be independent of physiological reactions during lying. Advocates of the so-called multivariate pattern recognition analysis (MVPA), or simply ‘brain decoding,’ promote this other approach, which is based on complex algorithmic evaluations. They argue, for example, that their decoding methods offer the prospect of being able to convict criminals based on their brain activity while looking at images relevant to the crime, and this without specifically inducing psychophysiological stress reactions: “Instead of identifying physiological markers for deception, one requires physiological markers that indicate whether a particular piece of information is known to the subject.”90 Thus, behind the various neuroscientific imaging methods for the recognition of lies is the hope that it will no longer be necessary to fall back on the physiological reactions of the vegetative system as indicators, but rather become possible to measure lies where they arise and make them visible.91 Here it is a matter of a direct exposure of the lie via the recognizing brain, regardless of the stress or exertion level of the person, but nevertheless by way of increased activity in a certain area of the visual cortex. The neuroscientists we spoke to working on and with decoding methods do not show any inhibitions about the term “mind reading,” or “reading” in general, although in the literature some neuroscientists seek to avoid or differentiate the terminology “brain reading” and “mind reading.”92 In fact, the very advanced approaches to multivariate pattern analysis, presented as a way to (re)construct the language of the brain out of fMRI data, are expressed in terms of “reading thoughts from brain activity.”93 In particular, neuropsychological studies dealing with the decoding of thoughts refer to this method as “brain reading” or “brain decoding” not only in the public representation of research but also within the scientific community. Strictly speaking the term refers to a technique in which a decoder is trained algorithmically so that it can recognize certain patterns in the brain scan and even reconstruct them visually.94 Moreover, the decoding method is one possible procedure to detect whether somebody is telling the truth or not. The prospect of being able to detect concealed information in the liar’s brain is promoted by neuroscientific research groups as something that will provide a method that doesn’t need any conscious reaction or attempt to lie on the part of the suspect. This “brain reading” approach reads the mental signals directly from the brain: carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 126 L. FISCHER Nobody has to lie. Of course, you can… “Did you see that gun, yes or no?” Of course, you can also ask. But you don’t really know that. You just have to show the picture. And the crucial point is then, […] actually, if you show the picture, you would expect that the pure memory signal that is retrieved is independent of the fact that you ask the person a question.95 More than any other neurotechnology, the MRT scanner gives the impression of enabling direct access to the human brain. After all, the activation processes of the neuronal system can be made directly visible here, which allegedly guarantees the directness of what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison call “mechanical objectivity.”96 Even though the fMRI image is produced via a database logic rather than mechanically,97 the statement above referring to a pure memory signal is characterized by the idea that the scanner generates a truth that is free of subjective human influence. The subject thereby stays completely passive, and the technology makes the brain “speak” for itself. Returning to the metaphor of the magnifying glass from jurisprudence, here the connection can be made with a unifying vision of the objective machine that reaches into both the courtroom and the neuroscience laboratory. One of the judges we spoke to emphasized the advantages of the polygraph, especially in modern judicial evidence production where not just physical damage plays a role, but also the will itself, in the following way: [In former times in these kind of cases] it used to be violence […]; [a] leg was gone, I had scratches, injuries, it was clear. But today I only have the will. The head is against it, and I would like to be able to measure that. I would also like to be able to prove that. And not only with statements. Because what the mouth speaks does not have to be what the brain thinks. And I want to intervene where the brain thinks. At the source.98 The notion of the brain as a source of truth, which is also evident in the polygraph procedure, is a motif that spans all the lie detection technologies discussed here. Even though the “source” that is accessed with either the polygraph or fMRI is fundamentally different, there is the common attribution of entering into an inner core. In the psychological polygraph test, the behaviour of the body reveals what the person thinks, and if he or she lies the thought remains invisible but is still surmised by putative experts. In the case of neuronal access, on the other hand, it is a matter of attributing behaviour like deception to a particular activity pattern of the brain. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 127 But despite the different notions of behaviour, the “source” of a lie, and the scope of its interpretation, the unifying motif is the machine as a “magnifying glass” and provider of access to either the body or the brain as a quantifiable object. The basic assumption is the same: “The dream of a machine that stands outside culture, history and society, and can grasp the subjective processes of truthful or lying speech is an ideal form of objective science.”99 And in both cases the machine itself becomes a detective and a knowing authority that—in a way that cannot be entirely explained—compensates for the limitations of knowledge. The imagination continues to treat loyalty or truthfulness as something that is ultimately readable as a physical manifestation and by the machines as graphically detectable.100 At this stage, when neuropsychology promises to provide direct access to a pure sign in the brain, an important step of translation is omitted: by equating the scientifically graspable with the essential process of thinking thoughts,101 two essentially different things, brain activity and a mental act, are ontologically connected. In the words of Michael Hagner, this is accompanied by the element of the uncanny: The uncanny is to be sought neither in our daily experience - to which we have immediate access - nor in the activity of the brain itself - which we can measure - but rather in the space between them, the logic of which is hidden from us and from the measuring devices.102 Since its early days the polygraph has always been understood as a “spectacular science.”103 Compared to the polygraph, the neuroimaging methods appear as scientific and materialistic methods that deliver objective results. However, it is precisely the claim to realize mind reading that presupposes a process that goes beyond the limits of knowledge in terms of its production and logic. But, whereas polygraphs are based on the assumption of a confessing body and a knowing machine, neuroscientific approaches to mind reading start at a higher level. The MRI scanner does not just magnify. While it doesn’t augment the body’s reactions in order to read lies, it is supposed to make the thought itself appear, whereupon active lying becomes obsolete. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 128 L. FISCHER Conclusion One could hear thoughts as little as one could smell pictures, feel sweetness and bitterness, taste distance and closeness.104 As has been shown in the analysis of court decisions, German jurisprudence exhibits a traditional idea of the polygraph as a truth machine. Thus, the machine is not only exaggerated in its autonomy but is also demonized to the exact extent that the judge is granted a natural ability and knowledge to assess the truthfulness of a statement. The machine doesn’t have this implicit or intuitive ability of knowing what the truth is or not. In the early court decisions, the soul and the unconscious are the subject of the debate about the detection of lies, but the subject is still granted a sacral space in which even its thoughts remain its property. With an increased determination of the human body as a calculable object of science, however, an integration of the polygraph as part of a socio-technical ensemble, shared with the psychological experts and the judge, occurs. The polygraph, seen as a magnifying glass, now is in the hands of the human expert. Even if it is still viewed critically, the possibility of its further technological transformation is opened up. Included in the neuroscience research programme, lie detection has surfed on the wave of innovation in this new discipline. The concept of lies and their characteristics in the body have remained the same. The lie is still seen to require an extra effort, but the confessing body is replaced by the confessing brain. As Nicolas Rose concisely notes: “while psychology’s proxies for mind reading […] were so often criticized and even parodied […] the proxies used by the brain imagers […] largely slipped unnoticed into the background. An objective and materialist technology for ‘reading the mind’ now seemed to be possible.”105 Even if neuroscientists are strategically trying to detach deception detection research from its connection to the spectacle of the lie detection machine, the magical is still present and profits from the limits of knowledge about the actual procedure of the machine. Instead of the vision of an autonomous lie detector, the MRT scanner becomes a mind reading machine reaching a higher level of neurological obscurity. Due to a lack of “mentalistic terminology”106 that would allow an adequate scientific description of phenomena formerly shaped by philosophy, neuroscience seems to be limited to a reductionist usage of metaphors in the word field of mind reading. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 129 Furthermore, by ontologically linking the notion of a mental act, such as lying or recognizing, with that of the brain’s activation pattern, it is difficult to realize the linkage to the magical and uncanny. In the court decisions, the soul was exposed through the body, while in the neuroscientific laboratory, the brain steps out as a thing that speaks and confesses. This reductionism and simultaneous concealment of the technological processes that lead to a result about truthfulness seem to nurture the belief in a mind reading machine. In relation to lie detection procedures, both jurisprudence and neuroscientific research are united by a common belief that is only possible by the acceptance of limited knowledge: in principle, although not yet completely, it is possible to read the human mind. The technologies for lie detection are not seen as mere scientific instruments. In particular, the continuity of the idea of mechanical objectivity leads to a mystifying vision of a psychic machine that can also be suspected of controlling thoughts. It is thus equally connected with feelings of fascination and the uncanny. However, as has been shown, the vision of reading others’ minds is not per se a technological one, as one might assume with respect to modern neuroscience. Rather, this vision is based on an attribution of natural human sensory skills, such as the judge’s capacity to evaluate the truth. Even though the polygraph has already been declared as magnifying glass, this ability to read minds finds an actual technological equivalent in the MRT scanner, which can legitimize its access to body and brain through scientific objectivity. As mentioned at the beginning, mind reading, imagined as a technique that gives access to the other’s thoughts, is imagined as a certain ability of either a machine or a gifted person. There are concepts in social psychology that can be understood as mind reading processes to a certain extent. ToM approaches describe the ability to access others’ feelings and thoughts by imitating or empathizing with others. In these approaches, however, a natural empathy with the counterpart is just as immanent as the natural limits of this human ability and knowledge. Mind reading in terms of an extra natural sense, like the telepathy imagined in Perry Rhodan, is and stays an extremely attractive topos but impedes an adequate description of mental processes. Acknowledgements This research was supported by German Research Foundation (grant no. 320725678). In particular, the analysis of jurisprudence was developed in close cooperation with my colleague Bettina Paul, for which I carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 130 L. FISCHER express my deepest gratitude. I would also like to thank Torsten Voigt for his constant and constructive support. Notes 1. Kurt Brand, Perry Rhodan 137: Sturm auf die Galaxis, 137th ed. (Perry Rhodan, 1975), 48f., author’s translation. 2. Theories about these abilities today are divided into two main approaches. On the one hand, there is the theory-theory, where Theory of Mind is the cognitive ability to predict and explain behaviour in a manner similar to a scientific theory. The simulation perspective, on the other hand, represents a more biological perspective emphasizing the socializing processes of empathy and the individual’s mirroring of others’ behaviour, convictions and feelings. Several studies have used neuroimaging technologies in attempts to resolve these opposite approaches and show that both cognitive and affective processes are involved in ToM abilities; see, for example, Carruthers 1996; Churchland 1998; A. I. Goldman, “In Defense of the Simulation Theory,” Mind & Language 7, no. 1–2 (1992): 104–119; Suzanne L. K. Stewart, Clea Wright, and Catherine Atherton, “Deception Detection and Truth Detection Are Dependent on Different Cognitive and Emotional Traits: An Investigation of Emotional Intelligence, Theory of Mind, and Attention,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 45, no. 5 (2019): 796. 3. David Premack and Guy Woodruff, “Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1, no. 4 (1978): 515–526, p. 525. 4. Xiao Pan Ding et al., “Theory of Mind Training Causes Honest Young Children to Lie,” Psychological Science 26, no. 11 (2015): 1812–1821. 5. Stewart et al., “Deception Detection,” 805. 6. Ding et al., “Theory of Mind,” 1820. 7. For the notion of vision and expectation, see Mads Borup et al., “The Sociology of Expectations in Science and Technology,” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 18, no. 3/4 (2006): 286; Nik Brown, Brian Rappert, and Andrew Webster, Contested Futures: A Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2000). 8. See Michael Hagner, “Mind Reading, Brain Mirror, Neuroimaging: Insight into the Brain or the Mind?” in Psychology’s Territories: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives from Different Disciplines, eds. Mitchell Ash and Thomas Sturm (Psychology Press, 2007), 291. 9. Michael Hagner, Der Geist bei der Arbeit. Historische Untersuchungen zur Hirnforschung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 233. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 131 10. See Cornelius Borck, Hirnströme. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Elektroenzephalographie ( Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005), 197. 11. Melissa Littlefield, The Lying Brain. Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 142. 12. Karin Knorr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 63ff. 13. For further concepts of the non-knowledge in terms of strategic ignorance, there are various approaches within Ignorance Studies, see, e.g., Linsey McGoey, “Strategic Unknowns: Towards a Sociology of Ignorance,” Economy and Society 41, no. 1 (2012): 1–16. 14. Ann Kerwin calls this complete lack of knowledge the “unknown unknowns” which means that one does not know about the “unknown,” see Ann Kerwin, “None Too Solid: Medical Ignorance,” Knowledge 15, no. 2 (1993): 179. 15. Korr Cetina, Epistemic Cultures, 64. 16. Cf. Ibid., 63. 17. By “borrowing” I mean not just the use of the concept out of the scientific into legal context. It should also be noted that in her analysis of the epistemic culture in high-energy physics, Karin Knorr Cetina defines her concept of “negative knowledge” not as a deficiency or non-knowledge, but more as a requirement. In my analysis, however, the concept of limited knowledge is alienated to the extent that it also problematizes the actual limitation of knowledge production in the case of lie detection technologies. 18. The reason for the historically wide range and heterogeneity of the material lies in the fact that the field of lie detection in Germany has a marginal status; the legal principles have not been fundamentally renewed since 1954 and are therefore still referred to in jurisprudence today. Since the field is a common subject area but is strictly separated by discipline, it was of particular value for the present analysis to contrast the scientific field with the legal field. 19. This is according to Google translator: https://translate.google.com. For a comprehensive elaboration of the interconnection of fiction and lying and its transformation with its translation into the Latin “mendacium,” see Martin Hose, “Fiktionalität und Lüge,” Poetica 28 (1996): 260ff. 20. See Dietzsch in his “Small history of the lie”: Steffen Dietzsch, Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Lüge (Leipzig: Reclam, Leipzig, 1998), 24–26. 21. See ibid., 32. 22. Ibid., 35. 23. See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary J. Gregor (Original work published 1797; Cambridge University Press, 1991), 225–226. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 132 L. FISCHER 24. Jan Assmann, “Das Herz auf der Waage. Schuld und Sünde im Alten Ägypten,” Schuld, eds. Tilo Schabert and Detlev Clemens (München: Verlag Wilhelm Fink, 2002), 123. 25. See Ahmed A. Karim et al., “Zur Neurobiologie des Lügens,” Neurobiologie forensisch-relevanter Störungen: Grundlagen, Störungsbilder, Perspektiven, ed. Jürgen Müller (Kohlhammer Verlag, 2009), 139–140. 26. Paul V. Trovillo, “History of Lie Detection,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 29, no. 6 (1939): 850–851. 27. Ibid., 140. 28. See, among others, Victoria Talwar and Kang Lee, “Social and Cognitive Correlates of Children’s Lying Behavior,” Child Development 79, no. 4 (2008): 866–881. 29. See Hans Rott, “Der Wert der Wahrheit,” Kulturen der Lüge, ed. Mathias Mayer (Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 9; author’s translation. 30. See Ken Alder, “America’s Two Gadgets: Of Bombs and Polygraphs,” Isis 98, no. 1 (2007): 6. 31. Littlefield, The Lying Brain, 52. 32. William M. Marston, “Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 2, no. 2 (1917): 117–163. 33. John Larson, “Modification of the Marston Deception Test,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 12, no. 3 (1922): 390. For further explanations see also Littlefield, The Lying Brain, 36f. 34. For a comprehensive historical overview of lie detection, see the classical work of Paul V. Trovillo, “A History of Lie Detection,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931–1951) 29, no. 6 (1939): 848–881. 35. See Stephan Schleim, Gedankenlesen: Pionierarbeit der Hirnforschung (Hannover: Heise, 2007), 23f., or Denis Köhler and Katrin Scharmach, “Zur Geschichte der Rechtspsychologie in Deutschland unter besonderer Betrachtung der Sektion Rechtspsychologie des BDP” (2013), 457. 36. Silvan Niedermeier, “‘The Only Torture Involved Is Self-Induced’: Zur Geschichte Des Lügendetektors in Den USA” Wahrheit Und Gewalt: Der Diskurs Der Folter in Europa Und Den USA, ed. Thomas Weitin (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010), 227–29. 37. Margaret Gibson, “The Truth Machine: Polygraphs, Popular Culture and the Confessing Body,” Social Semiotics 11, no. 1 (2001): 65. 38. Ken Alder, “America’s Two Gadgets: Of Bombs and Polygraphs,” Isis 98, no. 1 (2007): 127. 39. Niedermeier, “‘The Only Torture Involved’,” 223ff. 40. Richard A. Leo, Police Interrogation and American Justice (Harvard University Press, 2009), 82. See also the analysis of the polygraph as a “third-degree machine” by Geoffrey C. Bunn, “Spectacular Science: The Lie Detector’s Ambivalent Powers,” History of Psychology 10, no. 2 (2007): 159ff. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 133 41. As Ken Alder writes, “[…] all his life, Keeler continued to practice sleight-of-hand tricks and magical acts.” See Ken Alder, The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession (New York: Free Press, 2007), 56. 42. Thus, the test person connected to the apparatus is asked to select a number in a given range. In the subsequent query of the individual numbers, the test person should deny in each case that this is the number selected by him. 43. See Geoffrey C. Bunn, “The Lie Detector, Wonder Woman and Liberty: The Life and Work of William Moulton Marston,” History of the Human Sciences 10, no. 1 (1997): 95; see also: Bunn, “Spectacular Science,” 166. 44. Arthur W. Galston and Clifford L. Slayman, “The Not-So-Secret Life of Plants: In Which the Historical and Experimental Myths About Emotional Communication Between Animal and Vegetable Are Put to Rest,” American Scientist 67, no. 3 (1979): 338–341. 45. See ibid., 337. The experiments of Backster could not be replicated for decades. Arthur Galston and Clifford Slayman describe Backster’s erroneous conclusion as follows: “At this point there took place a totally unscientific discontinuity of logic. Without investigating the recording conditions to identify the sources of unexpected noise and drift, Backster jumped to the conclusion that because the plant record resembled in a single respect human records obtained during emotional reaction, the plant must have been experiencing something like human emotion. This is a classical semantic confusion of identity, roughly equivalent to arguing that because the face of the full moon displays dark patches resembling a human face, there must be a real man in the moon.” Ibid., 340. 46. For some media reports, see Xaver Frühbeis, “Die Gefühle des Drachenbaums,” Deutschlandfunk (2 February 2006). https://www. deutschlandfunk.de/die-gefuehle-des-drachenbaums.871.de.html?dram: article_id=125409; Michael Pollan, “The Intelligent Plant,” The New Yorker (16 December 2013). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ 2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant; “Cleve Backster Talked to Plants. And They Talked Back.” The New York Times (21 December 2013). https://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/ cleve-backster/. 47. Robert Zagolla, Im Namen der Wahrheit: Folter in Deutschland vom Mittelalter his heute, 1., Aufl. (Berlin-Brandenburg: be.bra, 2006), 129. 48. Ibid., 457. 49. BGH, Urteil vom 16.2.1954 – 1 StR 578/53 (LG Zweibrücken), NJW 1954, 649 (beck-online). 50. Carolin Stenz, “‘Demokratisierung’ des Strafprozesses? Der ‘Lügendetektor,’ der Entlastungsbeweis und die Reform des Strafverfahrensrechts carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 134 L. FISCHER 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. zwischen Demokratisierung und Liberalisierung (1975-1983),” Rechtskultur 3 (2014): 48. BGH, Urteil vom 16.2.1954 – 1 StR 578/53 (LG Zweibrücken), NJW 1954, 649 (beck-online); author’s translation and emphasis. Ibid., author’s translation. The formula taken up by the 1959 judgement (in BVerfGE 9, 89 (95)) is based on the sentence, “Human dignity is affected when the human being is degraded to an object, to a mere means, to a justifiable greatness,” from Günter Dürig, “Der Grundrechtssatz von Der Menschenwürde: Entwurf Eines Praktikablen Wertsystems der Grundrechte aus Art. 1 Abs. I in Verbindung Mit Art. 19 Abs. II Des Grundgesetzes,” Archiv des Öffentlichen Rechts 81 (N.F. 42), no. 2 (1956): 127; author’s translation. BGH, Urteil vom 16.2.1954 – 1 StR 578/53 (LG Zweibrücken), NJW 1954, 649 (beck-online); author’s translation and emphasis. Here, I refer to a concept introduced by Wiebe Bijker, who points out that “The technical is socially constructed, and the social is technically constructed - all stable ensembles are bound together as much by the technical as by the social.” Wiebe E. Bijker, “Do Not Despair: There Is Life After Constructivism,” Science, Technology & Human Values 18, no. 1 (1993): 125. For a very constructive and applicable approach to the analysis of distributed and gradualized agency, see Werner Rammert, “Distributed Agency and Advanced Technology,” Agency Without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2012), 98– 112; Werner Rammert and Schulz-Schaeffer, “Technik Und Handeln: Wenn soziales Handeln sich auf Menschliches Verhalten und technische Artefakte verteilt,” Können Maschinen handeln?: Soziologische Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Mensch und Technik (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002), 11–64. BGH, Urteil vom 16.2.1954 – 1 StR 578/53 (LG Zweibrücken), NJW 1954, 649 (beck-online); author’s translation and emphasis. Ralf Kölbel, “Zur Problematik der strafprozessualen Körperhermeneutik,” Goltdammers Archiv für Strafrecht 153 (2006): 483 ff. Rammert, “Distributed Agency and Advanced Technology,” 90. Doris Schweitzer offers a fruitful proposal for how to use subjectivation theory for the analysis of the legal person. See Doris Schweitzer, “Die Subjektwerdungen der juristischen Person Subjektivierungstheoretische Überlegungen zur rechtlichen Personalisierung von Kollektiven,” Jenseits der Person, eds. Thomas Alkemeyer, Ulrich Bröckling, and Tobias Peter (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018), 175–94. Gibson, “The Truth Machine,” 66. Ibid., 67. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 135 63. Katja Franko Aas, “‘The Body Does Not Lie’: Identity, Risk and Trust in Technoculture,” Crime, Media, Culture 2, no. 2 (2006): 145. 64. Max Steller, “Psychologische Diagnostik - Menschenkenntnis oder Angewandte Wissenschaft?” Psychologische Begutachtung Im Strafverfahren: Indikationen, Methoden Und Qualitätsstandards (Darmstadt: Steinkopff, 2005), 9. 65. Considerations and explanations of the measurement took place in the course of the 1990s and were partly included in subsequent judgements of 1998, such as: LG Düsseldorf, decision of 09.10.1998 - VI 14/98, 648, in StV 1998, 647 - 649 (Issue 12). 66. AG Demmin, Zweigstelle Malchin, Urteil vom 07.09.1998 (94 Ls 182/98), JurPC Web-Dok. 176/1998, Par. 40; author’s translation and emphasis. 67. The Section of Legal Psychology [“Sektion Rechtspsychologie”] was founded in 1978 as part of the Association of German Psychologists, whereupon in 1985 the Section was finally admitted to the German Society of Psychology, see Köhler and Scharmach, “Zur Geschichte der Rechtspsychologie in Deutschland,” 458. 68. BGH, Urteil vom 17.12.1998 – 1 StR 258/98 –, juris, Rd. 26; BVerwG, Beschluss vom 31.07.2014 – 2 B 20/14 –, juris, Rd. 2; AG Bautzen, Urteil vom 26.10.2017 – 42 Ds 610 Js 411/15 jug –, juris Rd. 45. 69. AG Bremen, Beschluss vom 25.04.2000 – 61 F 0734/99, abgedruckt in STREIT 4/2000, S. 177. 70. BGH, Urteil vom 17.12.1998 – 1 StR 258/98 –, juris, Rd. 26; AG Bautzen, Urteil vom 26. 10.2017 – 42 Ds 610 Js 411/15 jug –, juris Rd. 51. LG Düsseldorf, Beschluss vom 09.10.1998 – VI 14/98, 648 (in StV 1998, 647 - 649 (Heft 12)). 71. As Cornelius Borck points out, in the course of his EEG studies in the 1950s Norbert Wiener had already cultivated the techno-centric relationship between working processes of computer and brain. See Cornelius Borck, Hirnströme. Eine Kulturgeschichte Der Elektroenzephalographie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 298. 72. See Peter Hucklenbroich, “Gedankenlesen mittels Neuroimaging? – Zur Wissenschaftstheorie bildgebender Verfahren in Medizin und Neurowissenschaft,” Visualisierung und Erkenntnis. Bildverstehen und Bildverwenden in Natur-und Geisteswissenschaften, eds. Dimitri Liebsch and Nikola Mößner, 1., 1. (Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2012), 270–271. 73. Researcher, Int07, 231; author’s translation and emphasis. 74. Hucklenbroich, “Gedankenlesen mittels Neuroimaging?”; Frederic Gilbert, Lawrence Burns, and Timothy Krahn, “The Inheritance, Power and Predicaments of the ‘Brain-Reading’ Metaphor,” Medicine Studies 2, no. 4 (2011): 229–44. 75. Researcher/b, Int03, 227; 10; author’s translation and emphasis. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 136 L. FISCHER 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. Researcher, Int03, 172; author’s translation and emphasis. Researcher/a, Int03, 226; author’s translation and emphasis. Researcher, Int02, 5; author’s translation and emphasis. Researcher, Int07, 36; author’s translation and emphasis. See both Geoffrey C. Bunn, “The Lie Detector, Wonder Woman and Liberty: The Life and Work of William Moulton Marston,” History of the Human Sciences 10, no. 1 (1997): 114, and Littlefield, The Lying Brain, 10. Alder, “America’s Two Gadgets,”135. Daniel D. Langleben and Jane Campbell Moriarty, “Using Brain Imaging for Lie Detection: Where Science, Law, and Policy Collide,” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 19, no. 2 (2013): 222–234. See, for example, John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees, “Decoding Mental States from Brain Activity in Humans,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, no. 7 (2006): 523; Kendrick N. Kay et al., “Identifying Natural Images from Human Brain Activity,” Nature 452, no. 7185 (2008): 352–355; Mart Bles and John-Dylan Haynes, “Detecting Concealed Information Using Brain-Imaging Technology,” Neurocase 14, no. 1 (2008): 82–92. Sean A. Spence et al., “Speaking of Secrets and Lies: The Contribution of Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex to Vocal Deception,” NeuroImage 40, no. 3 (2008): 1411–1418. Researcher, Int17, 15; author’s translation and emphasis. Gibson, “The Truth Machine,” 72. Researcher, Int16, 114; author’s translation and emphasis. Researcher, Int02, 246; author’s translation and emphasis. For example: Researcher, Int02, 246; Researcher, Int17, 15; 23; 86; 87; author’s translation and emphasis. Mart Bles and John-Dylan Haynes, “Detecting Concealed Information Using Brain-Imaging Technology,” Neurocase 14, no. 1 (2008): 87. Schleim, “Gedankenlesen,” 110. John-Dylan Haynes, “Brain Reading: Decoding Mental States from Brain Activity in Humans,” Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics, eds. J. Illes and B. J. Sahakian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For further information see also: Nikolas Rose, “Reading the Human Brain: How the Mind Became Legible,” Body & Society 22, no. 2 (2016): 13. Researcher, Int17, 49; author’s translation and emphasis. See, for example, Kendrick N. Kay et al., “Identifying Natural Images from Human Brain Activity,” Nature 452, no. 7185 (2008): 352–355; Yoichi Miyawaki et al., “Visual Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity Using a Combination of Multiscale Local Image Decoders,” Neuron 60, no. 5 (2008): 915–929. Researcher, Int17, 43; author’s translation and emphasis. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 6 THE IDEA OF READING SOMEONE’S THOUGHTS … 137 96. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison define mechanical objectivity as a scientific virtue that emerged in the late nineteenth century with the advent of photographic and autoprint images in the natural sciences. The idea here was that these methods “let nature speak for itself” and are free of human subjectivity. See Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity, 3. (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 120. Even though in the twentieth century mechanical objectivity was supplemented by the “trained judgement” (ibid., 311) of experts interpreting data and images, mechanical objectivity still plays a central role when it comes to the explanation of brain-imaging methods or results. 97. Sarah de Rijcke and Anne Beaulieu, “Networked Neuroscience: Brain Scans and Visual Knowing at the Intersection of Atlases and Databases,” Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited, eds. Catelijne Coopman et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 132. 98. Judge, Int26, 169; author’s translation and emphasis. 99. Gibson, “The Truth Machine,” 65. 100. Ibid., 63–64; author’s translation and emphasis. 101. See Hucklenbroich, “Gedankenlesen mittels Neuroimaging?” 270. 102. Hagner, “Mind Reading, Brain Mirror, Neuroimaging,” 298. 103. Bunn, “Spectacular Science,” 156–178. 104. Wim Vandemaan, Perry Rhodan 2533: Reise in die Niemandswelt: Perry Rhodan-Zyklus ‘Stardust’ (Perry Rhodan, 2010), 27; author’s translation. 105. Rose, “Reading the Human Brain,” 9f. 106. Hucklenbroich, “Gedankenlesen mittels Neuroimaging?” 282. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 7 Reading the Criminal in the Austrian School of Criminology: Unveiling the Deviant Character Through Measurement and Intuitive Introspection Christian Bachhiesl At the end of the nineteenth century, criminology had been developed as an unaffiliated branch of the academic landscape (although it always remained linked to a certain degree to penal law, due to its normative dimension1 ). At the beginning of the twentieth century, criminology was institutionalized in its practical variant (R. A. Reiss founded his Institut de police scientifique, a spearhead in criminalistics research [in modern terminology: forensic science], in Lausanne in the year 1909)2 as well as in its theoretical variation (H. Gross founded the K.k. Kriminalistisches Universitätsinstitut, later on named Kriminologisches Universitätsinstitut, in Graz 1912; this institute combined practical work in criminalistics with theoretical criminological research).3 So criminology was established as C. Bachhiesl (B) University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: christian.bachhiesl@uni-graz.at © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_7 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 139 140 C. BACHHIESL an autonomous scientific discipline, and with it, the object of criminological research, the criminal, was defined as a particular phenomenon that had to be explored by means of natural science, legal science and the humanities.4 In this short examination of criminological epistemology and methodology, we will focus on the Austrian School of Criminology founded by Hans Gross (1847–1915) and later represented by Adolf Lenz (1868–1959) and Ernst Seelig (1895–1955). Each of these criminologists followed an epistemological and methodological path sui generis for reading the criminal mind. The comparison of their scientific perspectives and research practices will show that neither the exact methodology of the exact sciences nor the intuitive research strategies of irrational “scientific countercultures” lead to the result the criminologists were convinced to be able to achieve: the objective and certain knowledge of the criminal character. Between Exact Science and Everyday Psychology---Hans Gross Let us start with Hans Gross (see Fig. 7.1): this “founding father” of scientific criminology is a characteristic representative of the positivistic criminal science at the turn of the twentieth century. I want to show that, on the one hand, Gross wanted to rely only on truly scientific methods geared to the paradigmatic standards of the natural sciences, primarily (classical) physics and evolutionary biology—that is, criminological research should generate hard facts. Even if Hans Gross was aware of the dangers of errors and mistakes,5 he considered his insights as facts. On the other hand, so my argument, Gross had internalized the older standards of premodern erudition he considered to be inexact and inadequate for modern criminology.6 And, no different than anyone else, he was driven by political and ideological premises he was not always conscious about. So in his research he wanted to produce mere facts but framed them with moral and ideological judgements; his confidence in the exactitude of his methods inadvertently opened the door for speculations and intuitions. Gross framed the facts he researched in a manner that was unconsciously and unreflectively hypothetical, with no attempt to verify suppositions he never questioned in the first place. This epistemological self-assurance caused what I call oblivion of scepticism, as I have argued elsewhere.7 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 141 Fig. 7.1 Hans Gross (1847–1915) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) With the Austrian School of Criminology, Hans Gross, already a pioneer in both criminalistics and criminology, furthered his ambitions in attempting to integrate the two fields. Criminalistics—the practical clearing up and prevention of criminal cases—focused on the interpretation of the material traces of violent crime. In his Manual for Examining Magistrates, Gross gives detailed instructions for the finding, securing and analysis of diverse material traces like blood, fingerprints and hair; these were considered facts that procure exact knowledge about criminal acts and carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 142 C. BACHHIESL persons. An example of this fact finding by exact measurement is the socalled geometrical identification, a method for detecting suspicious people (see Fig. 7.2): three vertical and a dozen or so horizontal lines are drawn over the portrait photograph of an arrested suspect, following a specific pattern: the three vertical lines are drawn through the centre of the pupils Fig. 7.2 “Geometrical identification” (Hans Gross: Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, Polizeibeamte, Gendarmen u.s.w., 2nd edition [Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1894], 228) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 143 of the eyes and through the middle of the nose bridge; the first horizontal line is drawn through the centre of the pupils, the others follow in a regular distance. Then exactly the same lines are drawn on a copy of an old photograph of a registered criminal (which has to be reproduced in exactly the same scale as the newer photograph); next, the two photos are cut in two along the vertical axis, and the left half of the new photo and the right half of the older one are joined together. Thus, if the horizontal lines meet up, the identity of the person in question is ascertained. It is a method that requires an exacting mode of operation and appears to produce objective facts—on the face of it. In a similar way, Gross extended this exact fixation of the physical appearance to the fixation of psychical characteristics. He tried to integrate criminology into forensic practices, and the former was framed by Gross’ unexamined assumptions, thus distorting the efficacy of his praxis, if not outright effectively foreclosing any possibility of veracity, as we will see by the following. Hans Gross was convinced that traces and measurement do not only provide material facts but also information on the habits, intentions, emotions and the mental and social state of suspect persons. For example, if one finds bloody fingerprints on the underside of a table board he suggested that the person that left these marks belongs to the lower classes, since those people clean their dirty hands by touching the underside of a table.8 And when analysing footprints, one should take care of the increments: if the distance between two steps is exceptionally long, the person leaving the marks probably is a railway employee (since they are used to walking between the rails on the railway cross-sills) or a professional soldier; short distances between the marks would point to a hunter who habitually makes short and gentle steps in order to avoid cracking branches.9 Likewise, from the form and position of blood stains and splatters conclusions concerning the movements and the emotional condition of a suspect can be drawn; even today, the morphology of blood traces is still a forensic standard method.10 But Gross took into account also the intentions of invertebrates: if it is necessary to take blood-soaked earth to the laboratory (for examining the blood), before putting the soil into a pot one always has to take a heavy stone or iron bar and pound it on the area of stained ground to remove earthworms—because they love blood; if left in the soil sample in the pot, they would consume the blood and leave nothing for analysis.11 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 144 C. BACHHIESL All these considerations and instructions are helpful and seem reasonable, but do they really represent exact scientific standards? They mirror professional experience and careful observation, but do not fulfil the requirements of a strict methodological approach as it was defined by classical physics and other natural sciences at Gross’ time. This fruitful but rather inexact form of perception and analysis shows up in Gross’ considerations as well as in their results. A drawing documenting a crime scene may serve as an example (see Fig. 7.3): from the differing sizes of the victims, it is clear the picture is not to scale, but does represent a general overview of the situation, and the perspective view of the room on the lower half of the sheet is rather a fugitive sketch than an objective depiction. That might be sufficient for arguing in the law court, but it is far away from the target of exactitude and objectivity. This combination of programmatic scientific method, professional experience and the quasi-psychological empiricism that is used by any person in everyday life characterizes not only the evaluation of material traces but also the interpretation of the words and body language of suspects and witnesses. Gross understood the necessary scepticism of the investigator—witnesses and suspects lie and fib and deceive themselves. Personal testimony is far from objective. But Gross did his best to find out the objective kernel of a testimony by way of psychological investigation. He presented the results of his psychological considerations in a book that first appeared in German language in 1898 under the title Criminalpsychologie. Here he reflects the psychic activities of judges as well as witnesses and suspects. His own observations made in his practice as a judge are the basis for his arguments, which he always wants to buttress with relevant scientific as well as literary works. Gross used Charles Darwin’s study on expressions and emotions,12 newer as well as older psychological works, philosophical books and even widespread proverbs as interpretation aides. The mix of practical empiricism and literary embedment makes the Criminal Psychology appear as a true treasure trove for the explorers of human communication. Never listen to the words alone, one of Gross’ maxims, means always having an eye for the bodily expression, for the outward expression of mental states: “Every state of consciousness has its physical correlate,” says Helmholtz, and this proposition contains the all in all of our problem. Every mental event must have its corresponding physical event in some form, and is therefore capable of being sensed, or known to be indicated by some trace. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 145 Fig. 7.3 Drawing documenting a crime scene, ca. 1900 (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) Identical inner states do not, of course, invariably have identical bodily concomitants, neither in all individuals alike, nor in the same individual at different times. Modern methods of generalization so invariably involve danger and incorrectness that one can not be too cautious in this matter. If generalization were permissible, psychical events would have to be at least as clear as physical processes, but that is not admissible for many reasons.13 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 146 C. BACHHIESL So Hans Gross seemed to be aware of the dangers of ascertaining the truth by psychological means. Regarding the above passage, one might think that he was cautious on pronouncing hard psychological facts; he seemed to be aware that reading the psyche of a criminal is not the same as detecting physical causal relations.14 Nevertheless, Gross was frank and incisive about psychical factors that he believed revealed some truth, even if never directly stated by the subject. For instance, there was the example in Gross’ work of a female witness who was very talkative and came across to him as being entirely disingenuous. However, for Gross, “[o]ne of the most difficult tasks of the criminalist who is engaged in psychological investigation is the judgement of woman,”15 because women are so different from men, and so “we men totally lack avenues of approach [to a woman’s nature].”16 But he is convinced that his methods allow him to find out the truth behind the dubious words; he can read it out of the hands of the witness, and in this case, the womanhood of the witness is beneficial: The masculine hand is generally too heavy and slow, clearly to exhibit the more refined movements; these are fully developed only in the feminine, particularly in the hands of vivacious, nervous, and spiritually excitable women. The justice who observes them may read more than he can in their owner’s words. The hand lies in the lap apparently inert, but the otherwise well concealed anger slowly makes a fist of it, or the fingers bend characteristically forward as if they wished to scratch somebody’s eyes out. Or they cramp together in deep pain, or the balls of the four other fingers pass with pleasure over the thumb, or they move spasmodically, nervously, impatiently and fearfully, or they open and close with characteristic enjoyment like the paws of cats when the latter feel quite spry.17 The man who warned of inadmissible generalization had no problems to integrate rather general stereotypes of female character traits that were common at his time into his psychological examination. Stereotypes also play a decisive role in Hans Gross’ remarks on gypsies, who in his view were always suspect of any crime but murder, since for murder they were too cowardly.18 In his time, thoughts like these mirrored the then dominant form of political correctness, and his confidence in the scientific character of his work may have contributed to the circumstance that Hans Gross may not have been conscious of the ideological freight his examinations carried. But from a scholar who comes back to the dangers of rash conclusions and improper generalizations again and again and who carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 147 is questing for facts and objective, hard knowledge, one might expect a little more diligence, even on the level of pre-scientific eruditeness. Intuitive Introspection---Adolf Lenz According to Hans Gross, measuring an object (be it a material trace left on a crime scene or a suspect’s character trait) meant correlating that object with a scaling quantity that was fixed by scientists with the help of exact methods and thus had to be considered as objective. Measurement was more than producing a relation between numbers and empirical entities and processes19 ; it meant materializing and externalizing properties of the object that were hidden in the object and not easily observable, quantifying qualities, so to say. Here, we cannot go into that wide field of epistemological problems circling around the question of whether there exist constraints on knowledge or not,20 but we put on record that, following Gross’ assumption, measurement directly leads to objectivity. Therefore, Hans Gross measured what could be measured and relied on mere measureless observation only if quantification was not possible at all. But his epistemological ideal was the materialization and quantification that was the common standard in the natural sciences. Adolf Lenz (see Fig. 7.4), the successor of Gross as director of the Criminological Institute at the University of Graz from 1916 to 1938, followed completely different epistemological guidelines. To him, the methods of the exact sciences only led to meaningless abstraction and away from the knowledge that was truly important—not knowledge of something but knowledge as a part of life as a holistic process. So it is quite consequential that Lenz did not practise simple criminology but “criminal biology,”21 by which he meant a holistic form of research that did not rely on teachable and learnable methodical rules but on immediate intuitive insights. One cannot tell how this intuitive insight can be gained, because that would presuppose that intuition could be abstracted and argued, which in Lenz’ eyes is not the case. For Lenz, intuition can be practiced but not taught; it is an immediate act of experience and an element of living one’s life, the researcher’s own life as well as the examined subject’s life. This sounds more esoteric than scientific, but it was the only way, Lenz believed, that led to relevant knowledge. In Lenz’ own words: The “assumption” [or “viewing,” a form of intuitive empathy, Ch.B.], a special psychic act, is a performance that cannot be further dissolved. It carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 148 C. BACHHIESL Fig. 7.4 Adolf Lenz (1868–1959) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) means “putting oneself” into another person’s experience or personality as a whole. It has nothing to do with the representational registration of the details of another person’s experience. Firstly, it is rather a sensual perception by seeing, hearing, touching; then it fades to an inner view of the mental essence. In a broader sense this viewing happens when we witness another person’s experience. This is more than a simple “logical interpretation” of a foreign event; it is an act of co-experience. On the basis of the facial expression, gesticulation, keeping, tone and acting of another person we co-experience a psychical process of this person by tying in carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 149 with our own experiences under collaboration of our phantasy. We use this method in the biological examination; this means that we enwrap ourselves in the physical and psychical form [Gestalt] of a criminal and co-experience by its symbols the general psychic contexts that cannot be exploited by representational registration.22 This kind of gathering knowledge was based on the holistic theories of philosophers and scholars who were opposed to the exclusive rationalism of modern natural science (and sometimes to modernity as a whole)23 ; however, only Ludwig Klages, Richard Müller-Freienfels, Carl Gustav Carus or Ernst Kretschmer shall be mentioned here. These thinkers emphasized a loss of pertinence of rational logic and the natural sciences; what really matters cannot be recognized by rational means alone, since life itself was not merely rational. So intuition shall play an essential role. Adolf Lenz tried to transform these epistemological considerations into a practical method for examining the criminal temperament/mindset in order to define his or her “personality’s guilt,” and ultimately who should be liable for the criminal potential of their biological endowments (and not only for their criminal affections actualized in the crimes they had committed). To find out the degree of a given personality’s potential guilt, direct introspection was accompanied by measurement of the body—but not in order to relate the numbers generated by it to other relevant items or to quantify and materialize this psychical quality named “personality’s guilt” (as Gross would have done it). Rather, Lenz’ intention was to complete the intuitive insight by broadening its empirical basis. The human personality appears in psychical as well as in physical manifestations, so it also can be read out of the body. If one taps into another personality by intuition, direct and all-embracing knowledge of this person, according to Lenz, is the result.24 The problem is: since intuitive insight cannot be taught and learned but just done, nobody can control it. There exist no abstract criteria that define good or bad intuition; one has to rely on it without being able to argue why. This radically individual intuitive insight is rather an arbitrary production of just-so-stories than a scientific method (which by definition should be rationally comprehensible and revisable). Even if an intuition may be correct (which sometimes is the case), it comes suddenly and is not disposable any time the researcher needs it; intuition may be a mode of cognition, but it is not a standardizable scientific method.25 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 150 C. BACHHIESL So it is not astonishing that the results achieved by Adolf Lenz in the intuitive manner sometimes sound astonishing: the muscle-bound shoulders and arms but small hips and thin legs of an imprisoned criminal were thought to mirror a psychic “oppositeness” that was directly correlated with delinquency; the disequilibrium in the physical appearance indicated a parallel disequilibrium within the psyche.26 And Lenz judged of another prisoner, a Viennese thief and burglar named Josef Streck, that his criminal character was the outcome of a bizarre individuation that led him to social crankiness; that his personality was heterogeneous, predisposed to extremes and extroverted; that the antisocial structure of Streck’s personality inhibited his adaptation of socially acceptable behaviour; and that his vegetative hedonism led to the unrestrained satisfaction of his top level requirements for the pleasures of life—these are the results of Lenz’ intuitive insights into the personality of Josef Streck.27 If his method would work, the reader should be able to reassure Lenz’ judgement of Josef Streck’s personality when he carefully regards the photograph of the latter’s physical appearance (see Fig. 7.5). Adolf Lenz had no doubt about the validity of his intuitive insight, yet as a professional scientist he should have noticed that his intuitions were not stable and changed in regard to their contents: for instance, at one time, Streck seemed to represent the “exalted” type of criminal, and yet at another time, the “antisocial” type. On the envelope that contains the documents of the criminal-biological examination of Josef Streck, both these characteristics were written down by Lenz one upon the other and both words were struck out (see Fig. 7.6). Finally, Lenz made up his mind and decided that Streck was antisocial after all; none of this indicates an unambiguous, intuitive fact-finding process. Streck had written letters to Lenz and other addressees (e.g. the priest taking care of the prisoners) which were full of witticisms and deliberate provocations, and during the criminal-biological examinations, his behaviour sometimes was impudent and disrespectful. Taking this into account, the criminologist’s final shift from the rather friendly classification “exalted” to the harsh “antisocial” may be comprehensible; the question of whether this intuitive insight represents the standards of incorruptible science remains unsettled. One might wish not to be judged by the methods of holistic criminal biology. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 151 Fig. 7.5 The prisoner Josef Streck (Lenz, Grundriß der Kriminalbiologie, 226) Instrumental Lie Detection and Registration of Expression---Ernst Seelig When Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany in March 1938, the new masters took over the universities, too, and immediately started to bring the academic institutions into line and use them as instruments for the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 152 C. BACHHIESL Fig. 7.6 Envelope containing the documents of the criminal-biological examination of Josef Streck, 1927 (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) propagation and academic legitimation of their ideology. In the course of this Nazification, they removed the scholars not compliant to their ideology from their academic positions. Adolf Lenz was one of them; he was forced to retire some months before the date of his pensioning. Lenz was not only a scholar, but also a politician; as a member of the Bundeskulturrat, he had been a high representative of the Austro-fascist government led by Kurt Schuschnigg. Because of this political background, the Nazis did not hesitate to dispose of him; he was replaced by his previous assistant, Ernst Seelig (see Fig. 7.7), who as a young man had been a student of Hans Gross and now quickly became a member of the NSDAP. Seelig continued the criminal-biological examinations, although he talked no more about intuition and insight. His agenda was a natural-scientific one, and to him criminal biology now was part of the exact sciences, even if he did not change his methodology much in the way the criminals were examined, except adding some psychological tests.28 The addition of a table documenting the kin, the “Sippe,” of the examined person and the extension of the biological examination from criminals to socalled persons of mixed race who wanted to marry against the general interdiction by the Nuremberg racial laws were consequences of criminology’s subservience to the Nazi ideology, as happened with many other carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 153 Fig. 7.7 Ernst Seelig (1895–1955) (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) academic fields. In many cases, this politicization replaced scientific methods with ideological specifications but did not per se change the scientific methods.29 Unlike Lenz, Seelig did not favour holism and returned to the exact standards propagated by Gross. But the everyday psychology of Gross was too close to the intuitive insights that Lenz had tried to achieve, so Seelig aimed for the externalization of the mental states of examinees by using the help of instruments.30 He could tie in with experiments undertaken by the experimental psychologists at the University of Graz. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 154 C. BACHHIESL Alexius Meinong had built up an experimental-psychological laboratory where his staff developed instruments for the measurement of psychic experiences, for example an instrument for measuring one’s sense of time or memory. In the early 1920s, one of Meinong’s assistants, the Italian Vittorio Benussi, had developed an apparatus that was designed to find out whether a person is telling the truth. (Benussi had no direct criminological purposes in mind but did fundamental research that should be the basis of continuative applied research, conducted by specialists of interested disciplines.)31 The examined person would sit in an armchair and had to report the numbers, letters, and pictures depicted on a card. But when this card was marked with a star, the person was meant instead to make up numbers, letters, and pictures—in other words, the examinee was requested to lie. With the help of a kymograph, the researcher measured the examinee’s breathing rate; the result was: the time between breathing in and out was shorter when a person lied. Seelig tried to apply this method to the questioning of suspects. But when asked if the suspect knew a certain person or did act in a certain way, the answer mostly was a short yes or no. This is far less complex than the quick invention of numbers, letters and pictures, so the breathing rate did not change, and Benussi’s apparatus was not suitable for criminological purposes. But Seelig did not give up; he turned to an apparatus developed by the German psychiatrist Otto Löwenstein in order to find out if the tremor from which many shell-shocked Word War I veterans were suffering was physically or psychically caused. Seelig adapted this apparatus, named it “apparatus for the registration of expression” (“Apparat zur Ausdrucksregistrierung ”) and started his experiments: the examinee would sit on a chair with arms and legs in leather loops and wearing leather strips around the belly and the chest; a kymograph registered the movements of the extremities and the breathing movements of the torso (see Fig. 7.8). By interpretation of the curves produced by this early polygraph, it was possible, according to Seelig, to find out if an examinee had experienced certain emotions, which psychical dispositions characterized him, if he was more or less suggestible, and if he suffered from amnesia (see Fig. 7.9). A direct measurement of the truth of the examinee’s statements was not possible with the help of this instrument, but after finding out the dispositions of a person, for example concerning his sense of hearing, his suggestibility and his vegetative (i.e. autonomic nervous) reactivity, the criminologist could draw his conclusions on the reliability of a suspect’s or a witness’s testimony. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 155 Fig. 7.8 Ernst Seelig’s apparatus for the registration of expression, based on an apparatus designed by Otto Löwenstein (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) In the late 1920s, Seelig was convinced that the necessary methodical reliability as well as the legal requirements for the forensic use of his apparatus for the registration of expression were given, at least if the examined person gave his consent to the procedure. But in the course of the 1930s, when the Nazis gained power in Germany in 1933 and took over Austria in 1938, Seelig’s interest in this instrument decreased. This may have been due to the Jewish background of Otto Löwenstein, the original designer of the apparatus, who fled from Germany in 1933 and, via Switzerland, migrated to the United States, where he became an expert for ophthalmology, i.e. medical eye research; Löwenstein specialized in pupillography or pupil research. Seelig may have considered that for a career in Nazi Germany, a Jewish basis of a research strategy was not conducive. After World War II, Seelig stated that the technical problems of lie detection were still not solved and that lie detection in general was of minor importance.32 Even with the help of instruments, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 156 C. BACHHIESL Fig. 7.9 Table with curves showing the reaction of a person examined by the apparatus for registration of expression (© Hans Gross Kriminalmuseum, Universitätsmuseen der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 157 the materialization and quantification of internal qualities did not work; the measurement of the criminal dimension of a person’s feelings and thoughts was not as simple as Seelig incipiently had considered. Epistemological Conclusions The criminologists presented in this article aspired to discover the motivations, emotions and intentions of criminals; they wanted to be able to pin down and recognize mental states of criminological and forensic importance: they were reading the criminal. In order to hit this target, they used different methods, mirroring the scientific spirit of their particular time: Hans Gross tried to transport the exactness of natural-scientific measurement into his everyday psychology that focused on the interpretation of facial expression and gestural phenomena. Gross was convinced that his method worked, even if he conceded that it was not exact enough for fulfilling strict scientific standards. Adolf Lenz was not convinced of strict scientific standards anyway; he aimed at the holistic account of the criminal personality by intuitive insight, a sort of immediate participation in the mental life of the examined person. What sounds strange and pseudoscientific to us was the only promising method according to Lenz. But from a historical-epistemological view, his holism led to epistemic arbitrariness. And Ernst Seelig used the help of an early polygraph to find out the truth hidden within the suspect’s soul (as it was called anciently) or brain (as it is called now). But the shift of at least a part of the process of obtaining knowledge to a machine did not lead to better results. The criminologists wanted to find hard facts—factual knowledge should be the basis of their science, not what they called the dubious smattering as it is produced by the today so-called soft or uncertain sciences,33 i.e. the academic branches (like the humanities or depth psychology) that do not accord with the methods of natural sciences. If criminologists like Hans Gross referred to representatives of the humanities, they usually chose scholars that aimed at transferring the natural-scientific methods into humanities, like H. T. Buckle for example, who tried to discover the deterministic laws of history.34 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 158 C. BACHHIESL But how can the hard facts be found? The answer Hans Gross and his followers gave was: by measuring. This was the methodological credo of classical physics (before relativity and quantum theory extended uncertainty even into physics). One might sum up Hans Gross’ position as follows: every phenomenon, physical or psychical, can be brought into a shape that can be measured, and what was measured once can be fixed as a hard fact or, in Gross’ terminology, as part of the “realities.” And among the “realities of our profession” the “human being itself” was considered “indeed its most important object.”35 Well, maybe the facts these researchers sought cannot be defined as hard. Sure, there are some facts here—a criminal mostly has a certain intention and certain emotions. But these are interior facts that cannot be measured directly—in some way they are unobservables like the particles and strings of modern physics. Here it is, the old problem with all qualia: the criminologist can only find indications for these personal, interior facts; for him, the fact itself is not available for direct observation.36 But even if it were—a recorded fact must also be interpreted. The target of the criminological exploration of the criminal personality—direct and immediate insight into the mental constitution of a person—echoes the promises of current brain research and genetics: the total deciphering of man. But these decipherers should be aware of the difference between interpretandum and interpretatio; they see what they see, but this must not necessarily be taken for what is really there. Of course, brain researchers and geneticists can generate mental and physical states37 —but this is just an argument for the creative power of science, not for its epistemological validity. To be able to create a new reality does not mean that the old reality has been understood. The new reality created by the historical criminologists directly concerned the examined individuals and, indirectly, the society that criminology helped shape. The new reality that neuroscience and genetics are promising calls into question what we used to call personhood. The quest for facts produces facts—science, understood this way, is not an instrument for finding the truth but for destroying it and replacing it with something else. Thus, facts are not recorded but produced by science. But the object about which we wanted to know the truth is gone, then. Is this the outcome of the modern cultural project called science? Maybe epistemological modesty would have been the better way. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 159 Notes 1. Gal Hertz and Christian Bachhiesl, “Hans Gross und die Normativität der kriminalistischen Wahrheitsfindung.” myops 35 (München: C. H. Beck, 2019), 34–43. 2. Julia Kappler, “Rudolf Archibald Reiss, Hans Gross und ihr Leben im Dienste der Kriminalwissenschaft.” Archiv für Kriminologie 243 (Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 2019), 111–125. 3. Christian Bachhiesl, Gernot Kocher and Thomas Mühlbacher, eds., Hans Gross—ein ‘Vater’ der Kriminalwissenschaft. Zur 100. Wiederkehr seines Todestages (Wien: LIT, 2015). 4. Imanuel Baumann, Dem Verbrechen auf der Spur. Eine Geschichte der Kriminologie und Kriminalpolitik in Deutschland 1880 bis 1980 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006); Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology1880–1945 (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, eds., Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 5. The difference between errors and mistakes is outlined by in Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, “Fallibility and its Cultures—Introduction.”; Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, eds., Errors and Mistakes: A Cultural History of Fallibility (Firenze: Sismel, 2012), VII–XIII, VII: “Errors (Ger. Irrtum, Fr. erreur, It. errore) are false lines of thought in the process of gaining knowledge, whereas mistakes, or malpractice (Ger. Fehler/Kunstfehler, Fr. faute, It. fallo/svista), are failed actions arising due to inattention, chance or clumsiness.” Gross picks out errors and mistakes as central themes in: Hans Gross, Criminalpsychologie (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1898), 4, 222–226, 291–304; Hans Gross, Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, Polizeibeamte, Gendarmen u.s.w. (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1893), passim. 6. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the debate, whether traditional formal law instruments or the principles and methodological standards of the then flourishing natural sciences were more important to criminology and criminal law, culminated in the so-called controversy of schools (‘Schulenstreit’): the “classical school” wanted to defend the genuine normative character of penal law, the “modern school” wanted to change penal law into a sort of natural science. See: Therese Stäcker, Die Franz von Liszt-Schule und ihre Auswirkungen auf die deutsche Strafrechtsentwicklung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 160 C. BACHHIESL 7. A detailed discussion of Hans Gross’ epistemology and methodology can be found in Christian Bachhiesl, Zwischen Indizienparadigma und Pseudowissenschaft. Wissenschaftshistorische Überlegungen zum epistemischen Status kriminalwissenschaftlicher Forschung (Wien: LIT, 2012), 169–190. 8. Gross, Handbuch, 452. 9. Ibid., 427. 10. Ross M. Gardner and Tom Bevel, Practical Crime Scene Analysis and Reconstruction (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2009), 107–130. 11. Gross, Handbuch, 460–461. For the significance of blood traces in early criminology, see Christian Bachhiesl, “Blutspuren. Zur Bedeutung des Blutes in der Kriminalwissenschaft um 1900.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 33, 1 (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2010), 7–29. 12. Charles Darwin, The Expressions and the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872). 13. Hans Gross, Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students. Translated by Horace M. Kallen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1911), 42. 14. For Gross’ understanding of causality, see Christian Bachhiesl, “Naturgesetz und Menschenwerk. Epistemologische Überlegungen, ausgehend vom Geschichts- und Kausalitätsverständnis des Kriminologen Hans Gross.”; Christian Bachhiesl, Sonja Maria Bachhiesl and Johann Leitner, eds., Kriminologische Entwicklungslinien. Eine interdisziplinäre Synopsis (Wien: LIT, 2014), 277–307. 15. Gross, Criminal Psychology, 300. 16. Ibid., 301. 17. Ibid., 104. 18. Gross attends a complete chapter of his manual to the gypsies, see Gross, Handbuch, 223–241, see also Bachhiesl, Zwischen Indizienparadigma und Pseudowissenschaft, 158–168. 19. For the meanings of measurement, see Klaus Mainzer, “Messung.”; Jürgen Mittelstraß and Gereon Wolters, eds., Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2004), 862–864. 20. Christian Bachhiesl, “Zeit für ein neues Ignorabimus? Über Erkenntnisgrenzen in der Wissenschaft.” Christian Bachhiesl, Sonja Maria Bachhiesl, and Stefan Köchel, eds., Die Vermessung der Seele. Geltung und Genese der Quantifizierung von Qualia (Wien: LIT, 2015), 385–421. 21. For the general history of criminal biology, see Oliver Liang, Criminalbiological Theory, Discourse, and Practice in Germany, 1918–1945 (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1999); Jürgen Simon, Kriminalbiologie und Zwangssterilisation. Eugenischer Rassismus 1920–1945 (Münster et al.: Waxmann, 2001). 22. Adolf Lenz, Grundriß der Kriminalbiologie. Werden und Wesen der Persönlichkeit des Täters nach Untersuchungen an Sträflingen (Wien: Julius Springer, 1927), 19.—Translation by the author. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 7 READING THE CRIMINAL IN THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL … 161 23. Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 24. A detailed analysis of Adolf Lenz’ criminal biology can be found in Christian Bachhiesl, Zur Konstruktion der kriminellen Persönlichkeit. Die Kriminalbiologie an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2005). 25. Christian Bachhiesl, “Erkenntnismodus oder Methode? Wissenschaftshistorische Überlegungen zum epistemischen Stellenwert der Intuition.” Christian Bachhiesl, Sonja Maria Bachhiesl and Stefan Köchel, eds., Intuition und Wissenschaft. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2018), 351–394. 26. Lenz, Grundriß der Kriminalbiologie, 71. 27. Ibid., 224–229. The story of Josef Streck and his criminal-biological examination is told in Christian Bachhiesl, Der Fall Josef Streck. Ein Sträfling, sein Professor und die Erforschung der Persönlichkeit, 3rd ed. (Wien: LIT, 2019). 28. The changes in criminal biology conducted by Seelig are described in Christian Bachhiesl, “Das Jahr 1938 und die Grazer Kriminologie. Gebrochene Kontinuitäten in einer aufstrebenden Wissenschaftsdisziplin.” Historisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Graz 38/39 (Graz: Medienfabrik, 2009), 93–120. 29. For the political involvements of the Austrian School of Criminology, see Christian Bachhiesl, “1914–1934–1944–1954: Kriminologische Viererjahre. Wegmarken der Grazer Schule der Kriminologie.” Historisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Graz 44 (Graz: Medienfabrik, 2015), 241–266. 30. A more detailed description of Seelig’s experiments can be found in Christian Bachhiesl, “The Search for Truth by ‘Registration of Expression’— Polygraph Experiments in Graz in the 1920s.” European Polygraph 7 (Kraków: Krakow University, 2013), 55–68. 31. For Meinong’s experimental psychology and Benussi’s psychological research, see Mauro Antonelli, Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology: New Ideas of a Century Ago (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2018). 32. Ernst Seelig, Lehrbuch der Kriminologie, 2nd ed. (Graz: J. A. Kienreich, 1951), 241–242. 33. Bruce Mazlish, The Uncertain Sciences (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1998). 34. Fritz Stern and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Moderne Historiker. Klassische Texte von Voltaire bis zur Gegenwart (München: C. H. Beck, 2011), 175– 189; Bachhiesl, “Naturgesetz und Menschenwerk,” 279–288. 35. Gross, Criminal Psychology, 135. 36. These problems are extensively discussed in Bachhiesl, Zwischen Indizienparadigma und Pseudowissenschaft, 202–319, with references to the consulted epistemological literature. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 162 C. BACHHIESL 37. An overview over of the potentials and dangers of neuroscience can be found in James Giordano, ed., Neurotechnology: Premises, Potential, and Problems (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2012). See also Roland Benedikter, James Giordano, and Kevin Fitzgerald: “The Future of the SelfImage of the Human Being in the Age of Transhumanism, Neurotechnology and Global Transition.” Futures 42, 10 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2010), 1102–1109. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0016328710001801?via%3Dihub. I want to thank Dr. Thomas Kriza (Coburg, Germany) for indicating this literature and discussing these problems. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 8 Reading Children’s Minds: Female Criminal Police and the Psychology of Testimony, ca. 1920–1944, the Cases of Maria Zillig and Berta Rathsam Laurens Schlicht On 3 January 1944, police departments across the Reich received a circular from Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police (RFSSuChdDtPol.).1 In unprecedented detail, the circular regulates the treatment of children and youths by the police. The description of the interrogation of children and youths, which ideally should be carried out by female officers, is very precise. With regard to the actual interrogation, the circular states: The children and youths should first of all be induced to provide a calm and coherent narrative of the facts. If they deviate from this, trivial questions regarding the issue at hand must be employed to lead them L. Schlicht (B) Institut für Romanische Kulturwissenschaft und Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany e-mail: laurens.schlicht@uni-saarland.de © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_8 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 163 164 L. SCHLICHT back to the narrative. At the end of the narration every necessary additional question should be asked. Only then should a protocol for the files be drawn up. […] In the wording of the questions as also in the conduct everything should be strictly avoided which could suggest to the interrogated a certain answer (questions like: “Was the man wearing a black hat?” but also: “What kind of hat was he wearing?”, if it is not certain that the man had a headdress at all—so-called leading questions).2 The circular’s regulations are the outcome of a boundary work between different scientific and state agents (police, jurists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers) that already had a history dating back forty years. Thus, actors from the state administration and from psychology, psychiatry and related disciplines had long since begun negotiating who could legitimately evaluate the credibility or truth of children’s testimonies. During this process, psychology as an academic discipline gained a place in the legal system and installed an evaluation framework for testimonies, known as the psychology of testimony (Aussagepsychologie), that still exists today, albeit much transformed. This chapter focuses on the specific configuration and demarcation strategies between women in the police—more precisely the Female Criminal Police (FCP)—psychological knowledge, and the scientific and administrative object of the child and youth in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s (in the following I will, for the sake of shortness, mostly speak of “children” when the sources say “children and youths”). I want to focus on the techniques proposed and employed by psychologists and female police officers to determine the truth of children’s statements in court hearings and police interrogations. I will argue that these techniques and the supporting reflective discourses have been structured, first, by assumptions about the interrogator and the interrogated, that is, the “woman” and the “child,” respectively. Secondly, both psychologists and the FCP sought to secure their own expertise in the evaluation of child testimonies and thus also open up new career fields where psychology and police work intersected. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 165 Female Criminal Police The comparatively small field of reflections on interrogation technique (Vernehmungstechnik) became a locus for discussing techniques of “reading” minds, techniques of empathy (Einfühlung ) but also rather more formalizable techniques, like the psychology of testimony (Aussagepsychologie) and of types (Typenpsychologie), as well as the interrogation techniques of judges from the 1920s onwards. As with other sectors of state administration, the police aimed at rendering its practices more professional and scientific in the early decades of the twentieth century.3 Particularly, police officers writing about interrogation technique regularly referred to psychological knowledge. If one believes Moritz Liepmann (1869–1928), interrogation technique became increasingly professionalized in the 1920s. Liepmann was the first professor of criminology at Hamburg University, an important actor in the discussion about the reform of criminal law, and, beyond that, vividly interested in psychological questions. On the occasion of the conference for police schools in Hamburg in 1921 (Reichs-Polizeischul-Konferenz), Liepmann decried the lack of basic education among the Reich’s police officers and called for their moral and scientific improvement.4 With regard to interrogation techniques, he told his listeners: It is not easy to give an exhaustive description of an observed situation. In order to do this, one must be well informed of the manifestations, causes and symptoms of criminal acts in order to separate the essential from the insignificant. It is even more difficult to clarify how the incident was presented in the perception of another person: the psychology of perception and testimony requires great skill. In our big cities, Berlin, Hamburg, etc., we have now officers who master the difficult art of interrogation. But in the small towns, in the countryside, things are still often in a sorry state. The officers must learn in exhaustive training how to obtain a sound, reliable statement: that the witness must first be allowed to speak in peace, that the interrogated is to be treated kindly and with all due caution. Lying is by no means always a sign of guilt, but often a means of escape stemming from unfounded anxiety.5 Further, in line with his argument for interrogation as a skill requiring much subtlety, he emphasized that the interrogation of children was especially difficult, a “particularly fine art,” because one had to be especially careful not “to ask something into the child.”6 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 166 L. SCHLICHT For this new field of professionalized practice, the founding of new institutions became possible and different actors staked their claims. For everything that had to do with children, as Christoph Sachße and others demonstrated, women who hitherto had performed charity work increasingly demanded payment and formal training.7 This was on the one hand due to a socioeconomic restructuring of German society and on the other a concrete outcome of World War I, during which many charitable bourgeois women had lost the economic basis for their volunteer work. As a result, these women who before had carried out their work unpaid left a vacuum which had to be filled. Moreover, these historic circumstances provided a strong basis for women’s movements to demand the improvement of working conditions and training for women.8 Besides social work, where women made up the overwhelming majority of professionals until the end of World War II, one new field of practice for women was police work. From the mid-1920s onwards, women increasingly secured a place within police departments both as part of the “Gefährdetenpolizei” and as criminal police officers. Before I further develop my argument, it is necessary to underline that under National Socialism the FCP both practically and discursively contributed to the Reich’s racist policies towards children. The abovequoted circular is formatted by the same social techniques used in other bio-political systems during NS, aiming at keeping pure the Volkskörper and building upon the priority of the Volksgemeinschaft before the individual member.9 The ongoing research on female offenders during the National Socialist era likewise highlights the contribution of FCP officers in organizing the so-called Jugendschutzlager (youth camps), in Uckermark, Moringen and Łódź (Litzmannstadt), built in 1940 and 1942, respectively, which have been judged to be concentration camps by research; in Uckermark, Charlotte Toberentz of the FCP with the rank of “Kriminalrätin” was in charge of the camp.10 As Edward Dickinson has demonstrated at length, the extinction policy of National Socialism, here directed at adolescents, had been an extreme form of pre-existing ideological and praxeological elements: “In fact, what made Nazi policy different – again, with the crucial exception of ethnic racism – was above all the extraordinary and uncompromising radicalism of the Nazi regime, the open-ended, unhinged, hyperlogical dynamic that it created.”11 In fact, the hygienic or social planning attitude towards criminal policy was not limited to a particular political spectrum. Also carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 167 the leftist jurist Gustav Radbruch in a 1927 Sozialistische Monatshefte article titled “Sozialismus und Strafrechtsreform” (Socialism and Criminal Law Reform) described both crime and punishment as societal events that were part of the “self-healing of the ill social body,” which, for him, was identical to a socialistic perspective on crime and punishment.12 Within this hygienic perspective on criminal policy, the evaluation of the “personality” of an offender—in a biological and sociological or psychological perspective—became highly relevant, because it was crucial to know whether he belonged to the group of the incorrigible or to the group of the corrigible.13 In the case of the Jugendschutzlager, this practice of a cartography of the population and the “neutralization” of the “unfit” were combined with the racial classification of children as “Jews,” “gypsies” (“Zigeuner”) and “criminals” (which in criminal biology at the time had also been discussed as related to heredity and “criminal Stämme”). The functionality of female police as both Gefährdetenpolizei (police for the endangered) and Kriminalpolizei (criminal police) implied also this scission in the preventive bio-political practices of keeping the people’s body clean and of retroactively pursuing crimes and supporting existing criminal cases. FCP were given two domains: Gefährdetenpolizei—a mixture of police and social work—and the investigation of crimes.14 If and how the prosecution of crimes might also be interpreted within the larger framework of a bio-politics of the people’s body would be the subject of a much more extensive discussion.15 Apart from the professionalization of child and youth welfare and the concomitant systematic registration of relevant populations, administrative systems also posed the question of how officers of the state could create an emotional bond with children, in order to, for example, generate knowledge about family and youth milieus. This is exactly the epistemic space where FCP came into being. It was created before the background of a moderate bourgeois women’s movement, psychological knowledge and the professionalization of social work.16 Women were first employed by the police at the beginning of the twentieth century as social workers (usually, Henriette Arendt is mentioned as the first or one of the first, hired as a police assistant [Polizeiassistentin] in Stuttgart in 1903). They carried out welfare activities and also led interrogations to some extent. Some German states then made a profession out of these rather uncoordinated activities in the latter half of the 1920s which led to the establishment of several models for the integration of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 168 L. SCHLICHT women into police departments, working in different employment relationships, as “Gehilfinnen” (helpers) and “Polizeiassistentinnen” (police assistants), but increasingly also as officers in the various departments for the investigation of crimes. The latter were then called “Weibliche Kriminalpolizei”—FCP—and had their own police departments with female leadership.17 In Baden, Sachsen, Preußen and Hamburg, female police were introduced in 1926 and 1927. FCP officers became involved in criminal processes that involved children in any way, whether as witnesses or as suspects. The officers had to have training in social work (Wohlfahrtspflegerin) and additional training as police officers. A key argument both of women’s movements and of the FCP for the necessity of establishing a special police unit concerned the need for more care in the interrogation of children. The legitimizing discourse here underlined genderspecific abilities, claiming that women had an innate aptitude for dealing with children and therefore could better obtain and judge the truth of children’s testimony. Reading the statements of members of women’s associations or FCP officers in newspapers of the time, one might be astonished by the homogeneity of their structure and the lack of dissent, which was very common at least in the 1920s. For instance, Elga Kern (1888–1957), a publicist with a special interest in the woman question, met the establishment of Berlin Women’s Commissariat in 1927 with the claim that a man “unfortunately usually has no innate talent at all for researching the female and child psyche” and that the “innate aptitude” of a woman for becoming a “criminalist” would soon come to light.18 Based on the reforms of criminal and youth law (Jugendgerichtsgesetz) in 1923, which called for giving greater credence to the “unique psycho-physical nature of the perpetrator” in more detail, Kern hoped that the educational aspect of jurisdiction and police work, i.e. educating the criminal instead of merely punishing him, would be prioritized, and the criminal procedure would unfold a “moral influence on the criminal.”19 Moreover, Kern sought to defend the existence and professional prerogatives of FCP. In publications hostile to such activity, police work was often regarded as inappropriate for women. Against these narratives, Kern emphasized that “womanly dignity” would not suffer from prosecuting crimes.20 According to a female criminal officer in Württemberg, in cases where children had important information to offer for the investigation of a crime, prompt action, tactfulness and empathy (Einfühlungsvermögen) were highly important. Very often, FCP officers therefore dealt with cases from § 1763 of the Reichsstrafgesetzbuch (penal code, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 169 RStGB), which covered instances of child abuse.21 In these cases, as one female officer argued, a mixture of experience and professionalism was indispensable: A complete immersion into the soul life of the child, a great deal of tact, years of experience in this sacred field and a comprehensive knowledge of the law are indispensable, for she must be familiar with all phases of sexual processes and aberrations in order to be able to separate the true from the fictitious, the possible from the impossible, during such interrogations.22 Psychology As the above-quoted newspaper articles expound, one of the most important facets of FCP fieldwork was children’s interrogations and the evaluation of the credibility of children’s statements in cases of Serious Lewd Acts (§ 1763 RStGB). In the above-cited 1944 circular about the treatment of children in police custody, this latter function—the evaluation of credibility—was excluded from the scope of FCP work in favour of the credibility assessment of judges, who, since the beginning of the twentieth century at the latest, worried that they could be deprived of an inherited field of expertise.23 Since the beginning of the century, jurists, physicians, psychiatrists and the police had negotiated for the right to generate legitimate knowledge about children and youth and to determine their credibility on a social, epistemic, and administrative level. As Edward Dickinson has shown at length, one important reason for the development of child welfare programs in the nineteenth century was the disintegration of rural communities and their social organization. As an expression of this process of social and economic reorganization, young working people in particular were perceived as “wayward” (“verwahrlost ”), and the state had increasingly begun to address this perceived problem. At the end of the nineteenth century, German welfare policies sought to replace or regulate those of the church, and the control and education of the youth more and more became a matter of state action.24 In this context of bureaucratization and professionalization, the assessment of the credibility of children’s testimony also became an option for new disciplines to create novel procedures under the guise of professional scientific dignity. From the perspective of psychology, one important event in this process was the publication of Alfred Binet’s La suggestibilité in 1900.25 Here, Binet claimed carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 170 L. SCHLICHT that children’s statements were especially easy to influence with the force of suggestion. In Germany, experiments like Binet’s inspired a continued research branch on statements (Aussagen), carried out both by jurists and by psychologists.26 The most influential experiments with regard to children were carried out by female psychologists, but only acquired prestige through subsequent work by their male colleagues or superiors (who were not necessarily intentionally taking advantage of sexist norms, with some even consciously trying to avoid such distortions). The most important experiments on children’s lies were carried out by the psychologist Franziska Baumgarten (1917) and the psychologist and teacher Maria Zillig (1930s), who both applied an array of experimental techniques in school classes, both referring to William Stern’s experiments.27 Zillig’s experiments in particular repeated and consolidated a widespread opinion about children’s statements in the practice of expert testimonies: that children’s statements are dangerous especially in cases of statements about sexual topics. The overall dangerousness of children’s statements became further aggravated when it came to children from proletarian milieus, especially female children. Some discussants in the wider field of the psychology of testimony have even claimed that the testimony of children should be forbidden in court proceedings, but such an extreme position has always remained an absolute minority opinion. A decision of the Reichsgericht from 14 February 1911 declared: “The law declares no one incapable of being heard as a witness, in particular it draws no age limit.”28 In actual practice, psychologists at court based their opinion on the inspection of the files, mostly the reference files of the defence, unlike psychiatrists who could interrogate their objects of expertise directly. Karl Marbe (1869–1953), professor at Würzburg University and the professor, advisor and friend of Maria Zillig, was one of the psychologists most active in the field of expert testimonies regarding the credibility of children’s statements during the 1920s and 1930s.29 In 1929, he published an article on a rare exception and described how he carried out experiments in the context of a court case of “Blutschande” (incest). Marbe claimed here that “probably for the first time a representative of normal psychology had the opportunity to give an experimental opinion on the intelligence and credibility of an adult girl.”30 He used the experience of Zillig and, based on her work and on the work of others, carried out carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 171 experiments on personality, memory, suggestion, intelligence and credibility (following Bernstein-Bogdanoff), thus openly demonstrating the strength and sophistication of psychological expertise. However, if one studies the expert testimonies conserved in Marbe’s papers at the AdolfWürth-Zentrum of Würzburg University, the rupture between experimental and statistical sophistication and the prosaic reality of daily business at the court becomes apparent. Within the overall structure of these expert testimonies, the widespread subject construction of the wayward proletarian child is reproduced in the very text of the testimony. Against the background of industrialization and the questioning of traditional role models, German society’s elites perceived the “Verwahrlosung ” (waywardness) of the youth as a threat to the cultural status quo, as a symptom of the decline of their set of values. Whereas in the beginning “Verwahrlosung ” designated a physical state, according to Dickinson its meaning was transformed in the middle of the nineteenth century: poverty now was defined not as a cause of waywardness, but inversely spiritual waywardness became the cause of poverty and physical waywardness.31 This image of spiritual waywardness, with a special emphasis on the supposedly excessive sexualization of the proletarian youth, also structured the scientific ascription of credibility. In psychological expert testimonies or testimonies of teachers before court, children in poor milieus were mostly seen as wayward and therefore less credible. It is not implausible when Udo Undeutsch (1917–2013), himself an influential psychologist in this research field after World War II (and also one of the most important advocates of the lie detector), estimated in 1954 that by far most of the psychological expert testimonies on the credibility of children had had a negative result.32 Displaying a strong tendency to connect gender and class attributes, moral inferiority and falseness (Lügenhaftigkeit ), these testimonies therefore often evaluated the credibility of a concrete statement based on an assessment of the overall character, like in this testimony about an underage girl in a case against a member of the church: People like Müller [name changed] are not suitable as witnesses in court according to the general opinion of psychologists. Those who are as prone to lying (lügenhaft) as she is, are not afraid to lie as witnesses as well. A characterologically as inferior a person as she does not shy away from a testimony that leads a man to misfortune, especially if she has a certain interest in his conviction.33 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 172 L. SCHLICHT In another case, from 1937 (when he was 68 and already retired), Marbe let himself be convinced to help with a testimony. In the following correspondence, he specified the conditions under which he would be able to argue against the credibility of a witness: If everything unfavourable contained in your file against witness Maier [name changed] is correct, and if it can also be shown by me that Maier is a morally inferior and therefore probably also mendacious person, it should nevertheless hardly be possible on the basis of the file to prove that she actually testified against better knowledge in the case in question. This would only be possible if it could be proved that Maier had a special interest in it and has brought forward unfavourable arguments against the accused.34 It is not surprising that Marbe’s expert testimonies do not exhibit the same level of sophistication as his scientific publications. Firstly, it was usually the defender who requested such a testimony to exonerate the accused. Secondly, Marbe addressed a juridical and not a scientific public, so the choice of language and the way arguments were presented certainly had to be adapted. Against this background, Marbe also reflected on the specific logic at court, and in a 1935 letter concerning a clergyman accused of abuse, Marbe specified that Zillig would technically be a good fit, but as a woman she would perhaps appear less credible than a man.35 In his expert testimony, the construction of the lying and sexually fantasizing subject, usually construed as the female child, formed an important resource for legitimizing mostly negative judgements of children’s testimony. It seems that usually courts followed Marbe’s opinion, since in a case from 1933 he complained in a retrospective that the court sentenced a physician for abusing an underage patient. The court had based its judgement on a medical expert witness and especially on its own capacity to judge the credibility of witnesses based on “personal impression,” and had thus judged the psychological examination of the witness as dispensable.36 The court, as Marbe complained three days after the decision of the Landgericht, thus ignores the entire results of the psychology of witness statements, that I presented in my report and assumes exactly the position that the courts had, and had to have, forty years ago. It thus ignores categorically the relevant scientific psychology. Without wanting to offend the court’s right carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 173 to independent consideration of evidence,37 I nevertheless have to note that this point of view is impossible today.38 This quote shows that at least Marbe acted upon the assumption that usually courts should respect the results of psychological research, even if in this case it led to a rupture with the power of the judge to decide independently. This demonstrates that at least by 1933 an accomplished professor of psychology could be indignant when the court did not take into account psychological expertise. Even if the actual practice of psychological expert testimony was not yet very widespread, jurists, lawyers and the criminal police embraced their categories and included them in their practice. How exactly this comparatively strong effect of psychological categories can be explained both historically and sociologically remains a topic of research.39 For example, categories like “Lügenhaftigkeit,” meaning a constant and probably inborn tendency to lie, a concept that already existed historically, thereby became part of a scientific discourse about the structure and interpretation of “character.” Especially the characteristic of “Lügenhaftigkeit ” became a central psychological tool to link class attributes to moral ones. Zillig’s Experiments on Children’s Lies The experiments Marbe referred to in his expert testimonies were composed of an array of already existing techniques. Most importantly, the works of his student Maria Zillig were almost always referenced by Marbe. Especially important here was the development of the psychology of testimony and experimental tests for moral understanding (“sittliche Einsicht ”). Zillig’s major works on children’s lies were published in the 1930s and rested on experiments with children in school as well as those who had been institutionalized. Zillig herself was from a typical family of the educated middle classes, the “Bildungsbürgertum,” in Würzburg. Since there was no adequate schooling for girls in Würzburg she had to finance private lessons in order to be able to study at university. For her, work as an experimental psychologist, which she continued to carry out on weekends while working as a teacher, and contrary to her work in school, provided her self-fulfilment and pride.40 Other than the FCP officers quoted below, her work with children did not constitute any realization of a gender-specific ability, but rather the pragmatic option women had in Bavaria at the time. In a typescript conserved in the papers of her brother carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 174 L. SCHLICHT Winfried Zillig—a famous composer and student of Arnold Schönberg— she complains in a bitter tone about her gender-related constraints in Bavaria: The Bavarian primary school teacher had to live celibate. If she got married, she received a small compensation and had to leave service. These conditions, ultimately a restriction of women’s fundamental rights, were possible as long as there was a surplus of male teachers in elementary school; they relaxed in the National Socialist state, since Hitler needed a lot of new blood to carry out his plans.41 To be able to carry out experiments and have access to the Würzburg Institute for psychology during her lifetime constituted an important part of Zillig’s self-image, and she therefore aimed not to underline her “womanliness” but rather to emphasize scientific values like objectivity and the depersonalization of scientific results—a stance which Franziska Baumgarten also took.42 In her experiments on children’s lies, Zillig used an array of techniques like statistical evaluation, self-reports, experiments with suggestions, individual and mass experiments, etc. For psychologists, lying could be treated as a normal phenomenon and therefore also experimental studies on lying were possible. For Zillig, lies were omnipresent: most of the pupils at school lied, a view with which Marbe, in his expert testimonies, concurred.43 Further, she agreed with Baumgarten that very often children’s lies presented a social function, especially with regard to children compensating for their physical inferiority before adults. This inclination to lie or to tell the truth could then be regarded as the result of a countable number of experimental reactions pupils showed: for example, if a child lied in seven out of nine experiments, they could, in Zillig’s eyes, be regarded as “lügenhaft,” generally inclined to lying. To give just one example of a test Zillig used: every pupil gets an envelope with different objects (like candy or a small picture), which he could take home with the warning not to damage the objects. He then gave back the envelope the following day, thinking that the teacher (Zillig) would not know which envelope was taken by which pupil. However, a hidden number allowed Zillig to attribute every envelope to a pupil. In a subsequent conversation, she asked the pupils if they had given back everything as required and therefore created an opportunity to lie for those pupils who in fact did damage to the objects. As with the other experiments’ results, here Zillig encountered a state of amorality among pupils that she found carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 175 disquieting. Unlike Baumgarten, she did not enrich her diagnosis with a detailed consideration of the different functions of lies in socially distinct groups even if she took into account differences in social standing.44 Zillig performed similar investigations with the pupils of a “Rettungsanstalt ” (an institution for destitute under aged persons) in Würzburg in southern Germany. Here, the pupils lied more often in cases with a certain probability for profit, while they lied less often in cases where the odds were high that deception would be discovered.45 Zillig was at least ambivalent with regard to a moralistic interpretation of lying. In principle, she exhibited scepticism towards an overly moralistic interpretation, as had Baumgarten before her. Unlike Baumgarten, she nevertheless reserved a place for morals in her work, inasmuch as she posed the question of the connection between morality and “Lügenhaftigkeit ” and designed experiments based on investigating “moral insight.” The result of these experiments was that indeed “L-children” (“L-Kinder,” the children that exhibited a tendency to lie) had more negative character traits; they were, for example, greedy and unpopular among classmates.46 Again, unlike Baumgarten, who interpreted this as a result of a threatening social situation, Zillig belied her own analytical depth at that point and reproduced typical bourgeois attitudes towards “L-children” in her description. She thereby presented an experimental result for the widespread thesis (e.g. as presented by Georg Simmel) that lying would disrupt social cohesion, would render the organization of life in more complex societies difficult or impossible and therefore formed a threat to society.47 For her, the unpopularity of “L-children” must be seen in this interpretative scheme: The unpopularity of L-children in class is not unfounded: these children often disrupt the community of the class through gossiping, rudeness, thievery, and obstruct the progress of instruction through laziness and inattentiveness. School behaviour and school diligence are very much in need of improvement among the L-children.48 As indicated, Baumgarten’s results in her 1917 publication differed, insofar as she interpreted the lie within the Nietzschean framework of the morals of master and slave, claiming that lying is for the child a tool to defend their sphere of individuality.49 On the first page of her book, she distances herself from the “Christian idea of the imperfection of human nature”.50 Beyond that she also criticized the assumption of a correlation carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 176 L. SCHLICHT between a low level of intelligence and “moral inferiority” and emphasized a rather different widespread assumption, namely that successfully lying implies a logical ability, an achievement of intelligence, to create an ideally realistic state of the world in thought which differs from the actual state of the world.51 With the connection between psychological theories about children’s lies and the actual practice of determining the truth of children’s statements in court, psychologists created a challenge for other professions related to children. Apart from the competition with psychiatrists, the dialogue with the criminal police about this question became an important characteristic. The Case of Berta Rathsam In the periodical Kriminalistische Monatshefte (Criminalistic Monthly, from 1938 onwards Kriminalistik), Berta Rathsam was the most prevalent author when it came to children’s lies. She was a criminal police officer, became the first woman employed by the police of Regensburg in June 1927 and perfectly exemplifies the subject construction between social work, psychology and police work, which was vital for FCP. In addition, her papers conserved in Regensburg City Archives offer a clear picture of how she conceived of herself and her work.52 At least in her articles, she always emphasized the experience of police fieldwork. Like other officers of FCP as well, Rathsam deviated from the general mistrust with regard to children’s statements and attributes this attitude to a lack of practice: It is easy to deduce from this, that children’s statements are simply useless. But it is illogical to know that mistakes are made and only then consult an expert witness who collects the sources of error in an expert opinion […]. As a third person, the expert witness will always lag behind the errors. The only way to reduce the sources of error to a minimum is not through psychological experts, but psychologically trained officers.53 In Rathsam’s eyes, these “psychologically trained officers” were exactly the officers of the FCP. She thus wanted to use the expert system of the psychology of testimony as a legitimizing resource, but at the same time provide arguments for the inadequacy of the evaluation of children’s statements by psychologists. Accordingly, she mirrors the twofold aim of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 177 the emancipatory direction behind the foundational phase of the FCP, to underline an innate ability of women while at the same time reserving a professional place for women in the administrative structure of the police.54 Psychologists, in Rathsam’s opinion, were always late; children’s statements were in principle as good as adults’, but children were indeed more easy to confuse and to lead on the wrong track. The “psychological officers” Rathsam mentions would therefore be trained in psychological techniques and in the practical interaction with children. The officer would be able to establish a “rapport” and “mental contact” with children and could also translate this contact into a protocol usable in court.55 In her publications one can follow this combination of practice and science also on the level of style—Rathsam, who was active as a writer in Christian periodicals and also from the beginning published verse, wrote in a style that merged these two sides of her practices. Hence, she exemplifies exactly the type of “Christian” morals that Baumgarten criticized, when she connected lying with a moral error. While assuming the subject construction of the innocent child, the child that lived before sin, she always stressed the empathic character of the interaction between officer and child. Therefore, interrogation became a matter of commitment for the entire personality of the officer, profiting from the “rapport” between interrogator and interrogated. As a result, the situational description of interrogation became sometimes suggestive and was formulated in a literary style: Interrogating children is not simply an acceptance of the information provided by the child. There is a little more to it. It means unlocking the secrets of trust, tracking down hidden paths into the source of a child’s fear, a child’s language, a child getting lost.56 Diverging from the psychology of testimony, which based its judgements very often on the notion of the sexually wayward proletarian child, Rathsam instead reproduced the picture of the innocent child, the child that had to be protected from a compromising, dangerous environment.57 For her, interrogation was a “serious game for truth”58 that could not completely be formalized, but had to instead be based on the innate essence of the woman, and was therefore indelibly joined with the womanly and motherly body. In this sense, in her autobiographical text she commented on the conference of the Commission for Female Police (Kommission für weibliche Polizei) of the International Alliance of Women carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 178 L. SCHLICHT (Weltbund für Frauenstimmrecht und staatsbürgerliche Frauenarbeit ), which convened with the Working Group of Female Police Officers (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Polizeibeamtinnen) in Berlin in June 1929. In her pseudo-autobiographical unpublished text, Letters of a Criminalist (Briefe einer Kriminalistin), she further accentuates her gender-specific argumentation: But this alignment with men, this attempting to compete with him in strength, the leaving of the female character – this is the step towards the ridiculous. And because many see in the female police only the ‘policewoman,’ they are enemies of the movement. […] Particularly in police work, women have to respect very narrow boundaries. It is a small area in the police. That is where the woman belongs. Absolutely the woman. But she must never cross this narrow field.59 For cases under § 1763 RStGB, when FCP officers were involved, they also wrote up a testimony of credibility which followed the transcript of the interrogation. In the files conserved in Regensburg, one can see that Rathsam in fact fulfilled this duty with a very careful attitude and wrote expert opinions of up to one page, while there also existed FCP officers who wrote only a few lines, summarizing their impression of the child.60 Her papers furthermore suggest that she took the recommendation for interrogation practices serious; she thus took field notes about the character of children and was mindful in interrogating children in circumstances which did not frighten them more than necessary. In her publications, in her practice, and in her self-description, she therefore worked on fulfilling her goal to comply with the exigencies of the special laws for children and youths of the 1920s and therefore tried to combine the production of a truth during interrogations with the principle of education in juvenile courts. There as well, she displays the juvenile court and its aides as a community in the service of the youth: As a very young social welfare worker I was a juvenile court helper and know the needs not only of the investigating officer, but also of the other side. I was allowed to learn a lot from an old juvenile court judge. His sessions were decidedly not a miniature of the big courts. They were a thing of their own; they were designed for the young persons. It was a small working group where pathos and dishonesty would have had no place. Especially at the juvenile courts it is very important that none of the participants is idle, but does his bit of solid and serious work; then a lot carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 179 can be gained from the JGG [Jugendgerichtsgesetz, juvenile court law] in real help for young people.61 In her theory, that women could more easily attach to children and form some emotional bond, in order to know the truth of their statements, Rathsam complied with the more general discussion about interrogation techniques within the police. For officers of FCP, the handbook of the public prosecutor Franz Meinert (Munich) on interrogation technique— Vernehmungstechnik (1939)—was recommended. Meinert, however, was not specifically interested in the interrogation of children in his book and simply claimed that women and children could be influenced more easily, which is why one had to omit leading questions.62 More specifically, the “committee for the psychology of testimony” (Ausschuss für Aussagepsychologie) at the Institute of the Leipzig Teachers’ Association (Institut des Leipziger Lehrervereins ) presented an extensive reflection on interrogation practices with children, and also worked together with the police headquarters in Leipzig and with the renowned Institute for Psychology of the University of Leipzig.63 Like in these reflections on interrogation technique, also the discussion in the Kriminalistische Monatshefte always underscored the importance of the personality of the interrogator. Referring to Meinert’s book, Werner Dietrich, probably working at Institut des Leipziger Lehrervereins, underlined the importance of a fast initial interrogation.64 And Hans Salaw, criminal police officer at Berlin headquarters, underscored the relevance of experience: “The ability to carry out an appropriate interrogation of interviewees in accordance with all requirements is, to a large extent, indisputably the result of practical experience which cannot be taught.”65 The position of the FCP with regard to psychology, especially the psychology of testimony, could therefore profit from an existing discourse within the police on the relevance of direct experience with human beings on the street. It profited furthermore from the professionalization and bureaucratization of the administration,66 and the creation of professions for women. In the more specific context of the institutionalization of German women’s movements, the foundation of the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) was an important event, as Christoph Sachße argues, since it formalized the interaction between different women’s associations, and it explicitly excluded the socialist tradition.67 In the course of the 1920s, the moderate wing of the BDF gained in importance and the construction of the woman that it presented was more and more accepted. This carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 180 L. SCHLICHT moderate wing saw the claim for equal rights of men and women as a rather negative thing (“Gleichmacherei”) and opted for the strengthening of the “essence” of the woman, for her emotionality against a manly “rationality.”68 In the administrative organization, this duality of gender characteristics was mirrored by the organization of a service in the bureau carried out by men and by women in field service.69 While this is true for the administrative organization of social work, its gender-related characteristics were also accepted in Rathsam’s Letters of a Criminalist. She was addressing here a lyrical “You” and said about her profession: It is just a terribly difficult and serious profession. But it is very close to life, to the sources, to the roots. It is an insight into the connections, a hunch of the last inexplicabilities. I need a profession which goes deep. I have a little bit of a grave nature, you know that, despite all my ‘soul of song.’70 As demonstrated above, FCP worked on their self-definition in this respect and tried to demarcate themselves from both too much professional distance (which characterized psychologists) and too much empathy (social workers). As agents of truth, FCP tried to seize the middle ground between experimental psychology and fieldwork and give themselves the statute of a womanly agency with a gender-related advantage, which was at the same time based on science (psychology and pedagogy), formatted by serious police work and therefore not in danger of being easily distracted and confused by feelings. Conclusion The discursive field of the practice of and reflection on children’s interrogations stabilized in the 1920s. During that period also, the intellectual devices to generate and discuss knowledge on children’s interrogations were developed and produced a mixture of the reproduction of psychological knowledge (sometimes sociological as well), the discussion of the legal framework, reports of experiments, and, above all, an adaptation of the argumentation in cases from the field of law. The “case” became the central divide in expounding whether the argument fitted the legal exigencies, had a connection to reality and could be treated within the framework of the code of criminal procedure. Often in cases of §1763 , when it came to accusations of child abuse, the assessment of such cases rested on carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 181 the interpretation of testimonies. Through the professionalization of both police and social work and the foundation of new scientific devices for these professions, also new types of claims became possible and provided the ground for the FCP (Weibliche Kriminalpolizei, FCP) and psychologists to struggle for a place in criminal proceedings. In this chapter, I have pointed to two different models to determine the truth of children’s statements. The model of FCP, as represented by Berta Rathsam, connects social work, police work and psychology. For Rathsam, a psychologically trained, female officer, she had to invest her empathy (Einfühlungsvermögen) in order to establish a “rapport” with the child and thus be able to assess the truth of the child’s statement. By underlining a model of “the woman” as being naturally apt to form emotional bonds with children based on the “womanly” ability to experience to child’s fears and hopes, and claiming the scientific and administrative training of FCP, Rathsam therefore argued for a threefold demarcation of FCP against other truth agencies involved in criminal procedure: as compared with psychologists, FCP were more emotional and had a direct contact to children, investing their motherly or womanly ability to create a bond to children. Relative to social workers, FCP were more professional and had not only pedagogic training, but also schooling and practice in professional police work and everyday involvement with that culture. In their quality as police officers, people employed as FCP therefore could use their psychological and police knowledge to assess the quality of a statement and to conserve it in a way that was useful before court. Thirdly, in comparison with their male colleagues within the police, FCP officers relied on a refined knowledge of child and youth psychology. FCP therefore defined themselves in the field of children’s interrogations as exactly the agency of executive authority, which had the indispensable empathy for creating a bond with the thoughts of citizens. FCP presented this emotionality as particularly instrumental in generating knowledge about the thinking of children; the police therefore had a distinct interest in combining the exigencies of rationalizing control over citizens and the creation of an ethos of emotionality. The latter came to bear in the interrogation of citizens and, as shown in this chapter, was especially relevant in the case of children’s interrogations. In Rathsam’s self-description, as also in the selfdescription of other actors working with children, the cleavage between the “file” and the emotional investment was again and again narrated and formed an essential part of the construction of a professional persona for carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 182 L. SCHLICHT the FCP. When it comes to the question of how FCP aimed to read children’s minds, they could resort to scientific reflections on practices of interpreting gestures and other bodily signs, which, in discussions among psychologists and police officers, were sometimes explicitly referred to as the spectacular shows of “mind readers.” In that sense, the renowned Hans Schneickert, at that time still “Rechtspraktikant ” in Munich and later chief of the Berlin police records department (1914–1927), as early as 1903 wrote an article on “mind reading.” Here, he claimed that unlike the mock mind reading of a show master, the “psychological mind reading” (the ability to guess the thoughts of a person) would form an indispensable presupposition for any communication and especially for those of police officers.71 This kind of emotional bond to children and youths during interrogations and also during the control of supposedly deviant subjects was, as indicated in the introduction, only one part of FCP work, which also contributed to the bio-politics of the Nazi state, especially by contributing to the Jugendschutzlager Uckermark. Both kinds of practice formed central elements of the practice of FCP—creating an emotional bond based on formalized knowledge and contributing to the racist politics of extinction during the Third Reich. The psychology of testimony in its practices in court proceedings provided a different model of determining the truth of children’s statements. Inspired by the awareness of a socioeconomic restructuring of society, Karl Marbe explicitly feared that classical role models incorporating the values of a society whose moral integrity he perceived as threatened could be weakened. Therefore, he took a rather defensive stance when it came to charges against teachers, priests and other traditional authority figures. Psychological expertises as exemplified by Marbe and the experimental work of Zillig furnished statistical and experimental evidence discrediting the credibility of children’s statements. According to Udo Undeutsch, this situation changed only in the 1950s, and he himself claimed to be the first who changed the dominant psychological opinion, declaring that children’s statements about moral misconduct should be taken as true rather than false: I will dare to say that in the case of testimonies implying that the witness is the victim of a moral offence, credible testimonies are the rule as long as they concern individual witnesses and not groups of witnesses. I must add that this is the first time that this sentence has been pronounced in public by a psychologist.72 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 183 Ten years later, Ursula Panhuysen repeated the break with regard to the credibility of children’s statements in cases of § 1763 , here criticizing the practice of a (female) expert from the field of depth psychology: Sexual fantasy rarely dominates children to such an extent that they can no longer distinguish between real and imagined experiences. The fact that the depth-psychological, i.e. in this case the sexual-psychological evaluation, led the expert to deny the credibility of all three children suggests that the assessment of the overall personality of the witnesses was made dependent on their knowledge of sexual matters.73 The truth scenes74 established by FCP officers and by psychologists can describe two aspects of epistemic techniques and subject constructions which were part of juridical processes. For the socio-historical reconstruction of such constellations, more work is needed, especially for the interface between human sciences, public and welfare administration (especially administrative practices), and jurisdiction. This would provide the basis for an analysis of an array of different techniques to establish bonds of empathy between agents of the state and its subjects and to determine the latter’s truthfulness. Abbreviations BDF—Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine FCP—Female Criminal Police (Weibliche Kriminalpolizei) NSV—National Socialist People’s Welfare (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt) RFSSuChdDtPol.—Reichsführer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei RMBliV—Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preuß. Ministers des Inneren RStGB—Reichsstrafgesetzbuch, penal code of German “Reich” Notes 1. A gloss on abbreviations used can be found at the end of the paper. 2. Ministerialblatt des Reichs- und Preußischen Ministeriums des Innern, no. 5 (February 2, 1944). Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German quotations into English are the author’s. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 184 L. SCHLICHT 3. With regard to the professionalisation of social work and its connection with women’s movements, see Christoph Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf: Sozialarbeit, Sozialreform und Frauenbewegung, 1871 bis 1929 (Weinheim/Basel/Berlin: Beltz, 2003); with regard to administration see Lutz Raphael, Recht und Ordnung. Herrschaft durch Verwaltung im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2000); with regard to the police see Christian Knatz, “Polizei in der Weimarer Republik: Orientierungssuche zwischen Tradition und Modernisierung,” in Die Polizei der Gesellschaft: Zur Soziologie der Inneren Sicherheit (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2003), 19–36. 4. Hamburgische Polizei-Beamten-Zeitung 11, no. 10–11 (August 1, 1921), 150. 5. Ibid., 153. 6. Ibid. 7. Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf, 162–182. 8. Christoph Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland. Band 2: Fürsorge und Wohlfahrtspflege 1871 bis 1929 (Stuttgart et al.: Kohlhammer, 1988), 202–210. 9. As an overview of criminal politics under the Weimar Republic and National Socialism, see Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher: Konzeptionen und Praxis der Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Christians, 1996); Hans-Christian Harten, Die weltanschauliche Schulung der Polizei im Nationalsozialismus (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2018). 10. See for example Martin Guse, “Die Jugendschutzlager Moringen und Uckermark,” in Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Band 9: Arbeitserziehungslager, Ghettos, Jugendschutzlager, Polizeihaftlager, Sonderlager, Zigeunerlager and Zwangsarbeiterlager, eds. Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (München: Beck, 2009), 100–114, here 101, 105; Katja Limbächer et al., eds., Das Mädchenkonzentrationslager Uckermark (Münster: Unrast, 2005); Dieter Schenk, Auf dem rechten Auge blind: Die braunen Wurzeln des BKA (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001), 298; with regard to the Jugendschutzlager see also Manuela Neugebauer, Der Weg in das Jugendschutzlager Moringen: Eine entwicklungsgeschichtliche Analyse nationalsozialistischer Jugendpolitik (Mönchengladbach: Forum Verlag Godesberg, 1997); Jörg Wolff, Jugendliche vor Gericht im Dritten Reich: Nationalsozialistische Jugendstrafrechtspolitik und Justizalltag (München: Beck, 1992), 217. 11. Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 241. 12. Gustav Radbruch, “Sozialismus und Strafrechtsreform,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 33 (1927): 523. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 185 13. See Gustav Aschaffenburg, Das Verbrechen und seine Bekämpfung. Kriminalpsychologie für Mediziner, Juristen und Soziologen, ein Beitrag zur Reform der Strafgesetzgebung (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1903). 14. Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, 109. 15. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1991); Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–79, ed. Michel Senellart (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); for a discussion of historical literature on bio-politics, fascism, and democracy, see Edward Dickinson, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy. Some Reflections on Our Discourse about ‘Modernity,’”Central European History 37, no. 1 (2004): 1–48. 16. There are some articles on the history of the FCP and, apart from the self-legitimizing book of Friederike Wieking, few monographic treatments of the subject; see Ursula Nienhaus, “Nicht für eine Führungsposition geeignet …”: Josephine Erkens und die Anfänge weiblicher Polizei in Deutschland (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1999); Bettina Blum, “Zwischen ‘Mütterlichkeit’ und Männerersatz. 100 Jahre Frauen in der deutschen Polizei,” in 100 Jahre Frauen in der deutschen Polizei. Dokumentation eines Symposiums im Geschichtsort Villa ten Hompel, Münster, eds. Alfons Kenkmann and Christoph Spieker (Münster: Förderverein Villa ten Hompel, 1984), 23–86; Erica Fairchild, “Women Police in Weimar: Professionalism, Politics, and Innovation in Police Organizations,” Law & Society Review 21/3 (1987): 375–402; Friederike Wieking, Die Entwicklung der weiblichen Kriminalpolizei in Deutschland von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Lübeck: Verlag für polizeiliches Fachschrifttum, 1958). 17. Female Police were introduced during the British occupation of Cologne in 1923, see Fairchild, “Women Police in Weimar.” On 5 February 1926 the Prussian Inner Ministry defined the field of activity for FCP. In 1927, Prussia saw 59 female police officers (Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, no. 621 [December 8, 1927]) and also the exams of the first six Kriminalsekretärinnen (the first rank in the criminal police). In 1928, FCP existed in 10 cities: Altona, Barmen-Elberfeld, Berlin, Breslau, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Halle, Hannover, Magdeburg, and Köln, while training took place in Frankfurt and Berlin. In 1930, Prussia had 98 female officers; in 1932, there existed already 109 women employed by the criminal police in Prussia (one female Kriminalpolizeirat, 12 female Kriminalkommissare, 64 female Kriminalbezirksserketäre, 32 female Kriminalsekretäre). The most important decrees for the organization of FCP in the time of the NS stem from 1937, when the whole organization of the police became homogenized: Amtliche Verfügung des Reichsjustizministers über den Jugendstrafvollzug, January 22, 1937; decree 16. July 1937 (RMBliV. 1937, S. 1152) and the circular of Heinrich Himmler (RFSSuChdDtPol.) “Neuordnung der weibl. Kriminalpolizei” (Reorganization carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 186 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. L. SCHLICHT of Female Criminal Police) of November 24, 1937 (RMBliV, 1927, no. 48). Elga Kern, “Das erste Frauenkommissariat in Deutschland,” Frauenwelt und Frauenleben, Beilage zur Saarbrücker Zeitung, (March 6, 1927). Ibid. Ibid. For a sociological overview of the juridical discussion and comments on women’s movements see Michael Schetsche, Das sexuell gefährdete Kind. Kontinuität und Wandel eines sozialen Problems (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1993). Kriminal-Oberkommissarin Betd, “Weibliche Polizei in Württemberg,” Die Frau, no. 5, (March 13, 1929). With regard to the psychology of testimony, this kind of boundary work has endured to the present day. See for example Wolfgang Pfister, “Was ist seit BGHSt 45, 164 geschehen?” Forensische Psychiatrie, Psychologie, Kriminologie 1 (2008): 3–11; Udo Undeutsch, “Beurteilung der Glaubhaftigkeit von Zeugenaussagen,” in Forensische Psychologie ( = Handbuch der Psychologie, vol. 11), ed. Udo Undeutsch (Göttingen: Verlag für Psychologie, 1967), 26–181. See Edward Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 12–22. See also Detlev Peukert, Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung. Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Jugendfürsorge 1878–1932 (Köln: Bund, 1986); Christoph Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland. Band 2. Alfred Binet, La suggestibilité (Paris: Schleicher Frères, 1900). For the history of psychology of testimony see Heather Wolffram, Forensic Psychology in Germany: Witnessing Crime, 1880–1939 (Cham: palgrave, 2018); Ursula Panhuysen, Die Untersuchung des Zeugen auf seine Glaubwürdigkeit. Ein Beitrag zur Stellung des Zeugen und Sachverständigen im Strafprozeß (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1964); Udo Undeutsch, Die Entwicklung der gerichtspsychologischen Gutachtertätigkeit (Göttingen: Verlag für Psychologie, 1954). Franziska Baumgarten-Tramer 1917, Die Lüge bei Kindern und Jugendlichen. Eine Umfrage in den polnischen Schulen von Lodz (Leizig: Ambrosius Barth, 1917 [= Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, hg. von William Stern und Otto Lipmann]). Maria Zillig, “Einstellung und Aussage,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 106 (1928): 58– 106; Maria Zillig, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Kinderlüge,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 114 (1930): 1–84; Maria Zillig, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Glaubwürdigkeit von Kindern,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 119 (1931): 311–371. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 187 28. Quoted in Paul Plaut, Der Zeuge und seine Aussage im Strafprozess (Leipzig: Georg Thieme, 1931), 64. Here, Plaut refers to an expert of children’s diseases at Berlin University, Adolf Baginsky (1843–1918), who advocated that children should be excluded as witnesses before court. 29. There is a limited amount of work on Marbe. The most extensive and careful work on Marbe is Annette Mülberger, “La aportación de Karl Marbe a la psicologia. Un enfoque crítico” (Ph.D. diss., University of Barcelona, 1994); see also Annette Mülberger, “Teaching Psychology to Jurists. Initiatives and Reactions Prior to World War I.,” History of Psychology 12, no. 2 (2009): 60–86; Annette Mülberger, “Karl Marbe und die Anwendung der Psychologie im Rechtswesen vor dem ersten Weltkrieg,” in Psychologie als Argument in der juristischen Literatur des Kaiserreichs, ed. Mathias Schmoeckel (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), 132–152. 30. Karl Marbe, “Ein experimentelles Gerichtsgutachten über Intelligenz und Glaubwürdigkeit eines erwachsenen Mädchens,” Archiv für Kriminologie 85, no. 1 (1929): 1–13, 1. 31. Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare, 11. 32. Udo Undeutsch, Die Entwicklung der gerichtspsychologischen Gutachtertätigkeit (Göttingen: Verlag für Psychologie, 1954), 10. 33. Expert testimony from Karl Marbe, Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, U11. 34. Letter from Karl Marbe, Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, K1 3019516, letter from June 12, 1937. 35. Letter from Marbe to the lawyer Warmuth, March 12, 1935, Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, Korrespondenz. 36. Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, U11, envelope “Gutachten zum Prozess Fasel,” judgement of August 15, 1933 of Landgericht Wuppertal. 37. “Unabhängige Beweiswürdigung.” This defining characteristic of the German criminal procedure accords the judge the right to interpret the evidence presented during the trial “freely,” meaning that he was not bound to any procedural regulation to formulate his decision. See Ingo Müller, “100 Jahre Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit. Zum hundertsten Geburtstag der STPO am 1.2.1977,” Kritische Justiz 10, no. 1 (1977): 11–28. 38. Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, U11, envelope “Gutachten zum Prozess Fasel,” “Psychologische Würdigung des Urteils der 5. FerienStrafkammer des Landgerichts Wuppertal,” August 18, 1933. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 188 L. SCHLICHT 39. Ian Hacking, “Making up People,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, eds. Thomas C. Heller et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 222–236. 40. In her CV, she mostly complains about her work as a teacher and also in her letters to her brother, she repeatedly lamented the deplorable state of morals and education in school, e.g. “Mich hat die erste Schulwoche sehr geschlaucht; 60 14–15 jährige Mädels, aus Bildungslücken zusammengesetzt und mit den läufigen Formen gesellschaftlichen Lebens erst vertraut zu machen,” Letter from Maria to Winfried Zillig, June 6, 1946, Staatsbibliothek München, papers of Winfried Zillig, Ana 516.B.VI.1.c— M 1/3. 41. Staatsbibliothek München, papers of Winfried Zillig, CV of Maria Zillig, Ana 516 F.I.1, p. 12. 42. In an autobiographical sketch, Baumgarten tells how she once met her big ideal Marie Curie in Paris. She asks Curie if she should do something more useful, like social work, but Curie replied that if a woman had any talent for science she should pursue it, Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv, Bern, papers of Franziska Baumgarten, E-A-5c/1-10. 43. Zillig, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen,” 312; Expert testimony of Marbe with regard to the Case Fasel, Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, papers of Karl Marbe, U11, envelope “Gutachten zum Prozess Fasel”. 44. Zillig, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen,” 11–12. 45. Ibid., 31–32. 46. Ibid., 59. 47. Georg Simmel, “Zur Psychologie und Soziologie der Lüge,” in Individualismus der modernen Zeit. Ausgewählt von Otthein Rammstedt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008 [1899]), 83–94, 88. 48. Zillig, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen,” 60–61. 49. Franziska Baumgarten-Tramer, Die Lüge bei Kindern und Jugendlichen: Eine Umfrage in den polnischen Schulen von Lodz (Leizig: Ambrosius Barth, 1917). For the world-creation theory of lying see also Simmel “Zur Psychologie und Soziologie der Lüge.” 50. Baumgarten-Tramer, Die Lüge, 1. 51. Ibid., 78–79. 52. Stadtarchiv Regensburg, papers of Berta Rathsam. 53. Berta Rathsam, “Noch einmal: psychologische Sachverständige?” Kriminalistische Monatshefte 11, no. 1 (1937): 5–9, 6. 54. See for social work Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf. 55. Rathsam, “Noch einmal: psychologische Sachverständige?” 7. 56. Berta Rathsam, “Problematische Kinderaussagen,” Kriminalistik. Monatshefte für die gesamte kriminalistische Wissenschaft und Praxis 14, no. 10 (1940): 109–111, 109. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 8 READING CHILDREN’S MINDS: FEMALE CRIMINAL POLICE … 189 57. Ibid., 110. 58. Rathsam, “Problematische Kinderaussagen,” 110. 59. Stadtarchiv Regensburg, Papers of Berta Rathsam, box 3, typescript “Briefe einer Kriminalistin,” 111–112. 60. See, for example, three cases conserved in Staatsarchiv Leipzig, 20031 Polizeipräsidium Leipzig, Nr. 3364 (1939–1940), 17; Nr. 7924, 20114— Landgericht Leipzig, Nr. 6892, 17. See Stadtarchiv Regensburg, Papers of Berta Rathsam, box 14. 61. Stadtarchiv Regensburg, Papers of Berta Rathsam, box 14, date unclear. 62. Franz Meinert, Vernehmungstechnik (Lübeck: Verlag für polizeiliches Fachschrifttum, 1939), 132. 63. See Richard Wetzel, “Zur Technik der Kindervernehmung vor Polizei, Staatsanwaltschaft und Gericht,” in Pädagogisch-Psychologische Arbeiten aus dem Institut des Leipziger Lehrervereins, vol. 18, ed. Felix Schlotte (Leipzig: Verlag der Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1930), 135–192. 64. Werner Dietrich, “Zur Technik der Erstvernehmung,” Kriminalistik 16, no. 10 (1942): 109–111. 65. Hans Salaw, “Psychologische Gesichtspunkte zur Vernehmungspraxis,” Kriminalistische Monatshefte 9, no. 4 (1935), 79–83, here 79. 66. Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf, 9. 67. Ibid., 95. 68. Ibid., 96. 69. Ibid., 252. 70. Stadtarchiv Regensburg, Papers of Berta Rathsam, box 3, typescript “Briefe einer Kriminalistin,” p. 47. 71. Hans Schneickert, “Über Gedankenlesen,” Archiv für KriminalAnthropologie und Kriminalistik 12, no. 2–3 (1903): 241–251, here 248. 72. Undeutsch, Die Entwicklung der gerichtspsychologischen Gutachtertätigkeit, 10. Cf. also Günter Blau, Der Strafrechtler und der psychologische Sachverständige. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 78, no. 1–2 (1966): 153–183, 165, who criticizes what he considers an exaggerated faith in the psychological expert opinions of Undeutsch. 73. Ursula Panhuysen, Die Untersuchung des Zeugen auf seine Glaubwürdigkeit: Ein Beitrag zur Stellung des Zeugen und Sachverständigen im Strafprozeß (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1964), 100. 74. Bernhard Kleeberg and Robert Suter, “‘Doing truth.’ Bausteine eine Praxeologie der Wahrheit,” Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 8, no. 2 (2014): 211–226. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 9 Mind Reading Through Body Language in Early Spanish Criminology and Juridical Psychology Annette Mülberger Introduction In the historical context of the nineteenth century, the modern subject became defined as a person possessing civil rights. Among them was the individual’s right to have a private sphere, which included religious beliefs, domestic life and one’s own subjectivity.1 Subsequently, new sciences such as psychology and criminology were established as scientific fields and professions. One of their goals was to explore the human mind. This included “mind reading,” a term I use here to refer to the psychological practice of discerning hidden thoughts, motives, attitudes and feelings of another person. Although psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists did not A. Mülberger (B) Theory & History of Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: a.c.mulberger@rug.nl Centre for History of Science (CEHIC), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_9 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 191 192 A. MÜLBERGER use this phraseology to describe their professional activity, they nevertheless often dedicated great effort towards exposing the secret intentions of their subjects. The techniques developed by these professionals for reading the mind were both empowering and problematic, because they offered a way to invade the private sphere. Often the psychological practice of mind reading was undertaken on (or through) the “outside,” on the subject’s physiognomy. Examining the body to gain knowledge about a person’s well-being or mental state is part of an enduring physiognomic tradition. Lavater’s physiognomy and Gall and Spurzheims’s phrenology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are good historical examples and it was thanks to these developments in the nineteenth century that the body became “legible.”2 Also, William Preyer’s attempt of 1886 to develop a technique of mind reading based on the registering of tiny, involuntary movements of the arm with the help of his palmograph is part of this tradition (see Chapter 1). In the present chapter, I explore similar techniques applied on the body used by Spanish experts, working in the field of criminology and juridical psychology and how they tried to gain knowledge about a person’s mental predisposition towards delinquency and crime. Historians have already dealt with the emergence of criminology3 and the history of forensic or juridical psychology.4 The rise of these areas of expertise took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the emphasis in jurisdiction moved from examining and punishing crime towards getting to know and rehabilitate the criminal. In contrast to the rich literature on Lombroso and criminology, a very limited number of historical works deals more specifically with the history of juridical psychology in Spain. Carpintero and Rechea summarized the ideas of some authors,5 while Belén Jiménez followed the Foucauldian approach, exploring the discursive formation and psycho-sociological construction of criminal subjectivity in Spain.6 Jiménez found in the scientific publications of the nineteenth century a transition from a “scholastic model”7 to a “liberalist model.” The turn implied a change in the way the aetiology of crime was explained; more precisely, it was a turn away from moral criteria towards the psychological. She interprets this as a move towards an exploration of the “inner part” or subjectivity of the human being.8 Despite its unquestionable value, Jiménez’s genealogical study is vague in many regards, leaving open questions. One main incognita is in regard to how the Spanish criminologists following the new approach carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 193 gained access to the interiority of a person and the question of what their apparent mind-control methods and techniques were. Thus, my research tries to shed light on precisely this neglected issue. I examine body registers promoted and used by Spanish scholars at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century to detect a person’s psychological tendency towards delinquent and criminal behaviour. In this sense, their methods consisted in psychological techniques aimed at mind reading. But why then did they focus on the body? Which bodily characteristics and actions were considered useful hints in judging a person’s or a group’s inclinations towards crime and deception? How were they registered and how were the registers interpreted? My aim here is to explore the procedures appropriated and invented by two Spanish scholars and how their techniques were expected to “trace” an inclination towards crime and fraud, viewed as hidden mental “abnormality.” Historiography confers a crucial role on what was called the “Positive School” (Scuola Positiva), founded and presided over by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian psychiatrist of Jewish origin, and his two most wellknown students, Raffaele Garofalo and Enrico Ferri. They promoted “criminal anthropology” as a new field that linked criminology, penology, psychology, psychiatry and anthropology. The Italian positivist school became known for minting the phraseology around the “criminal type” (Lombroso) and the “born criminal” (Ferri). The terms designated a devolved (“degenerated”) and uncorrectable human being, whose atavistic traits were said to be recognizable by the clinical eye pre-emptively, that is, even before his behaviour revealed such traits.9 Thus, Lombroso equated savages,10 physically and psychologically, with criminals, both defined as semi-animal human beings whose most salient characteristic was their inability to control their (animal, brutal and antisocial) instincts. Despite the fame of his thesis about the born criminal, in their studies Lombroso and his followers took into account different factors in determining delinquency, such as education, climate, local population density and economy.11 Starting in the 1830s, Adolphe Quetelet’s social statistics had evidenced certain regularities in the appearance of criminal behaviour within a given population: the numbers pointed to places where delinquency was more frequent and to the months of the year when this behaviour carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 194 A. MÜLBERGER increased.12 Such regularities had strengthened the idea among criminologists to think of crime as a natural phenomenon. Additionally, the improving identification techniques exposed the high level of recidivism. Similarly, Lombroso expected to find a pattern or indicator for the socalled tendency towards crime, mainly based on the physical and mental constitution of the person, once a sufficient amount of detailed anthropometric measurements on each offender and social-statistical data had been gathered. For Lombroso and his followers, criminal or deceitful intentions had to be deduced from “objective and empirical facts,” which were supposed to offer scientific insights into the workings of the criminal mind. Lombroso’s mind reading was based on cranial and facial asymmetries, prognathism, the shape of the ears, the distance between the toes and the person’s sensibility and intelligence.13 Bodies were measured, sketched, photographed and displayed. Graphic instruments such as the craniograph produced inscriptions from skulls, their size and form telling the story of the body’s own dangerousness.14 Sensitivity and muscular force were investigated with techniques some historians have considered as having been close to torture.15 The anthropological study of tattoos, handwriting and speech, among other signifying patterns, was practised and promoted by Lombroso and his followers. Handwriting was particularly important in distinguishing a born criminal from a lunatic or other kinds of mental alienation such as alcoholism or paralysis (these two illnesses, for example, were supposed to be detectable through tremulous handwriting). Additionally, they collected information about the offender’s personal background, such as age, profession, marriage, place of origin and if he or she was a member of an organized group. In practice, the interpretation of these registers turned out to be extremely difficult. Researchers had to make sense of a mass of information without clear hints about the way these data were supposed to relate to each other and reveal the causes of criminal behaviours. Becker observed that this was a general problem in the field of criminology in which so many different experts produced more evidence than could be integrated into a specific discursive formation.16 Nevertheless, Lombroso himself was quick in making sense of collected data, asserting that assassins, for example, were recognizable thanks to their large lower jaws, pale faces, thick black hair and widely spaced cheekbones. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 195 Nowadays Lombroso’s work and theories are still of great interest to historians as can be seen by the recently emerging revisionist scholarship17 and are often used as examples of some of the absurd outcomes of positivist science. For example, the historian David Horn considers Lombroso’s voluminous treatise (L’uomo delinquente) published 1876 an example of the “messiness of science-in-the-making.”18 Stephen Jay Gould’s dismissal is even more severe, calling it “the most ridiculous example of anthropomorphism ever known.”19 But by the end of the nineteenth century, many of Lombroso’s contemporaries had already begun to note that his writings displayed contradictions and mistakes. They considered his ideas eccentric and his research curious.20 He received the strongest attacks from French sociologists, especially Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904). Tarde, who followed Durkheim’s approach, opposed the biological explanations of crime forwarded by the Italian criminologists. In his anthropological studies, he argued that the psychological tendency of imitation is responsible for human behaviour and, therefore, responsible for criminal acts.21 Moreover, he rejected Lombroso’s equation of savages with criminals, at least with regard to speech patterns and other anthropological and psychological habits. At the same time, there is no doubt that Lombroso remains the most influential criminologist who ever lived. Knepper summed up the resulting paradox, asking how the person promoting the most laughable ideas about crime ever published was able to initiate a worldwide movement for the study of criminology.22 To answer this question, Knepper mentions several factors, two of which seem to me the most crucial: first, Lombroso’s work is numerous and varied, offering a wealth of inspiring (even if ambiguous and inconsistent) material and theories; thus, there are “multiple Lombrosos,”23 each with something to say to various audiences. Second, he appealed to the public because he expressed his ideas in dramatic-emotional language and promoted them in a tactile way through exhibitions and museums. His criminal monsters offered splendid material for both the literary and popular imagination. Even his critics who simplified and often even caricaturized his work contributed to his reputation by drawing attention to his theories and conferring upon him the credentials of a founder of a new science. Additionally, Becker observed that Lombroso’s style of thought was very appealing because the inclusion of Darwinian concepts was perceived as progressive, and by using this methodology, experts were able to put the blame for the high level of recidivism not on the prison system in particular or criminal policy in carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 196 A. MÜLBERGER general (which would require a much greater effort and more profound reorientation of values), but on the mental and physical constitution of those deemed to be criminals.24 Under the influence of the Italian criminologists together with French degeneration theory, historians diagnosed a historical development characterized by the scientization of the social, the medicalization of penal law and the naturalization of deviant human behaviour. Criminality was now viewed in connection with mental insanity and degeneration, a condition that could be detected at an early stage, in the form of “abnormality.” Abnormality was supposed to be diagnosed by a professional with medical and anthropological training. New taxonomies linked criminality to mental insanity. The metaphor of the “jurist in white” succinctly expressed the successful penetration of medical and psychological expertise into the courtroom and the conflict that emerged between juridical and clinical competencies (Entscheidungsmacht ).25 I will start by presenting the studies developed at the first laboratory of criminology in Madrid and the studies undertaken by its director, Rafael Salillas y Panzano (1854–1923) during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Salillas became one of the most active, original and prestigious experts, promoting criminology as a psychological and anthropological science.26 He was well connected within the international network and highly acknowledged domestically and abroad. For example, Lombroso himself cited his work, and in 1906 he was named honorary president of the fourth International Conference on Criminal Anthropology in Turin. Furthermore, I will take a look at the first Spanish textbook on juridical psychology (1932), authored by the psychiatrist and psychologist Emilio Mira y López (1896–1964) and widely read among jurists. It offers some insights into the current techniques employed in both court and prison for reading the minds of offenders and suspects. Additionally, the 1945s edition included an original personality test, proposed by Mira for measuring any person’s hidden criminal tendencies. The works of Salillas and Mira represent crucial landmarks in the history of criminology and juridical psychology in Spain. At the same time, they are only a small part of the work undertaken at the time.27 The techniques I deal with in my research are based on the psychological examination of the individual criminal body as well as the study of the verbal expression of a “social (criminal) body,” a term I use to refer to Salillas’ study of marginalized groups. Despite their differences, the joint analysis of these two Spanish authors, Salillas and Mira, is justified by the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 197 similarities in their epistemological approach. They were both physicians working at university and, I will argue, heirs of the new scientific project originally called “criminal anthropology,” which had earlier been practised by the Italian positivists. Their mind reading techniques were based on a materialist-biologist view of the mind-body relation. Their political agendas were in line with a progressive and socialist ideology28 envisaged by intellectuals who sought to reform and modernize Spanish society. In their historical setting, Salillas and Mira opposed a conservative-Catholic tutelage, based on the theory of free will and a purely moral interpretation of human behaviour, which was still widespread in Spain throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Techniques of Mind Reading in Early Criminology Anthropometry of the Criminal Body For the Spanish context, historians of medicine have insisted on the key role the work of the Italian positivists played in setting an agenda for technical and empirical research on crime and the criminal.29 After the liberal revolution of 1868, positivist science and republican ideas had started to agitate debates among Spanish scholars. Between 1880 and 1910 the works of the Italian criminologists, together with French degeneration theory, had a strong influence, profoundly shaping juridical-legal reform.30 Politically, the reformers were republicans, entertaining liberal and democratic ideals, or even socialists. Among this group was the jurist and pedagogue Francisco Giner de los Rios, the psychiatrist and neurologist Luis Simarro (a colleague of Ramon y Cajal) and their disciples and co-workers, namely Salillas and the jurist Pedro Garcia Dorado Montero, to mention the most important. They were linked to the krausist philosophy and correctionalist penology31 as promoted by the Institución Libre de Enseñanza in Madrid. In 1888 Salillas held a famous talk at the Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico in Madrid in which he underlined the need to acknowledge the contributions of the Italian criminologists and their thesis about the biological determinism of criminal behaviour.32 In order to gain scientific knowledge about the criminal, Salillas insisted on the need to develop “criminal psychology,” aimed at the study of the offender’s psychological characteristics, motives and way of life. In his opinion, this was the only way to distinguish, on scientific grounds, to what extent behaviour had carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 198 A. MÜLBERGER taken place freely or been urged by an inner (biological) need or exterior (social) influences. His talk triggered intense debates among intellectuals, which soon would be enhanced by the public confrontation of psychiatrists against lawyers and theologists in the public press when discussing the judgement of sensationalistic criminal cases.33 Forensic expert reports in court trials of that time point out and describe craniums, ears and other physical signs or stigmas of the degenerateness of criminal suspects.34 At this time, Salillas gained the nickname “little Lombroso”35 and successfully promoted the creation of the first public juridical psychiatric clinic in Spain.36 Maristany has underlined the cautious appropriation of Lombroso’s work by Spanish psychiatrists: on the one hand, they did not embrace fully his theories as they seemed too radical, but on the other, they eagerly incorporated the new vocabulary, his “modern” methods and the new role of the physician as “master” or assessor of jurisdiction.37 In 1899 Salillas was put in charge of the first and newly created laboratory for criminology, linked to Giner’s professorship in Philosophy of Law at Madrid University. There he and his colleagues38 would undertake research and read the works of the Italian criminologists, which they studied with a critical eye, conscious that Lombroso’s empirical exploration of the criminal body consisted in a rather chaotic and frenetic collection of empirical data. Summarizing the thoughts of his father, Gina Lombroso herself had tried to justify the investment of collecting a wealth of anatomical and personal characteristics, referring to the complexity of the distinction between the criminal human type and the normal citizen and thus the need for as much information gathering as possible. The diagnosis could not rely on one atavist stigma or salient feature but implied a quantitative accumulation of symptoms because Lombroso wrote, “[i]n normal individuals we never find that accumulation of physical, psychic, functional, skeletal anomalies in one and the same person.”39 Thus, despite the unequal value of characteristics, Lombroso adopted an accumulative (quantitative/statistical) strategy to distinguish the “normal” from the “abnormal”: the more particular (deviant) characteristics the examined body exhibited, the higher or stronger would be the mental disposition of this person to commit crime. Thus, the wealth of collected empirical material was viewed as more useful pieces for the construction of scientific (i.e. objective and durable) criminological knowledge than the traditional (metaphysical) discourses on human differences and morals in former juridical treatises. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 199 Salillas thought that this was a reasonable procedure. He profusely cited Lombroso’s and his followers’ registers, although he never undertook such anthropometric measurements himself. For him, with criminology as a new-born science without any previous systematic empirical research or knowledge, this was the only way to gather reliable information about the phenomenon of the criminal act. He described the process, metaphorically, as a search for lost objects. It was a way to look desperately for clues, which he expected to appear: in the outer habit, in the organic conformations, in the functional modes, in the centres and in the conductors of sensitivity and affectivity, in the word, in the writing, in the revealing and expressive countenance, in the attitudes, in all traces of life imprinted in one act, in all the characters of the organic history that turn the anatomical amphitheatre into a library, the scalpel into a leaf cutter and the corpse into a book.40 Thus, despite the sounded criticisms, Lombroso’s differential psychology proved to be inspiring and instrumental in the hand of Spanish positivist psychiatrists such as Salillas and his colleagues at the Institución Libre who wanted to expand the domain of their academic field by introducing the new science of criminology, a science that would help them to pursue a reformist and socialist political agenda for their country. Deciphering the ‘Social Body’: The Vocabulary of the Mischievous Mind Criminal tendency was also studied collectively. Anthropologists and criminologists of the nineteenth century believed in the existence of an intimate relationship between a society and its language. Oral (and written) language was supposed to exhibit the sociological, psychological and philological properties of the community and could, therefore, be analysed for mind reading. Lombroso was interested in criminal organizations and their speech habits, the jargons used among their members.41 He observed that their communication differed mainly in vocabulary. They altered the meanings of words and invented onomatopoeias such as “tuff” for a pistol and “tic” for watch. Sometimes, an object received its name from one of its attributes, such as “jumper” for a kid. For Lombroso, the reason for introducing such new words and semantic transformations was the delinquents’ attempt to elude police investigation. Additionally, he considered carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 200 A. MÜLBERGER the jargon of delinquents to be similar to primitive languages, that is, the way humans communicated in prehistoric times. Such a view fitted with his equation of criminals (especially assassins) with savages, already mentioned above. Salillas did similar anthropological studies on marginalized and criminal groups living in Spain, namely Romani people (then called “gypsies”) and groups of bandits.42 Like Lombroso his research was based on the idea that there exists a correspondence between social life and the functioning of the criminal mind. First, he confirmed some of Lombroso’s observations about criminal jargon, such as the predominance of onomatopoeias and the great number of lexical substitutions. Moreover, he found among these substitutions many expressions based on sensorial (visual) representations and personifications of inanimate objects. Instead of considering them as versions of primitive (prehistoric) languages as Lombroso did, Salillas sided with Tarde in considering the criminals’ jargons as derived from “ordinary” language.43 The main idea of Salillas’ collective psychology was that the “confraternal personality evidences itself through their own words which characterize feelings and qualities, indicating preferences, disgust or mockery.”44 Thus, he registered the specific terms and expressions used by groups of delinquents, trying to find out their meanings and historical-philological origins. Nevertheless, it is important to note that many examples listed in his book were extracted from Spanish literature. Apart from some visits to prisons, Salillas seemed to have learned more about the criminal way of life by consulting popular books of Spain’s “siglo de oro” tradition, such as Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (1605) and Guzmán de Alfarache written by Mateo Alemán (1599). The latter stands out for its use of the Spanish literary style called the “novela picaresca.” Alemán’s book narrates the life of a miserable young man of extremely modest origins and the fortunes and misfortunes he encounters within a spiteful social environment. Thereby, he gives a psychological and anthropological insight into the life of this “poor swindler” (“humilde pícaro”), a perfect anti-hero figure. His life exhibits no moral values and no sense but represents just an epic wandering driven by hunger. Within a miserable and brutal world, he can survive only through fraud and deception. As the protagonist moves through the underworld and consorts with groups of bandits, the book includes plenty of vulgar expressions and jargons used by these groups in Spain. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 201 As an example of specific words, Salillas presents the expression “rufián,” meaning a man that dominates others and takes advantage of his position in a dishonest or abusive way.45 Among various lexical transformations, he identified the word “caida,” which for the criminal meant offending someone,46 while in ordinary language it is simply “the fall” (the noun of “to fall”); the word “shamelessness” was exchanged for “serenity”; cleverness was called “chanza” (a word meaning literally jokes or fun); and for mockery or cheating they used the expression “tiro” (which means “shot”). Finally, one of the most notorious changes was “white” referred to someone naïf and stupid, while the skilful and clever were called “black.”47 For some words, Salillas was able to theorize about the reasons for the substitutions. For example, in the case of “black” the word refers to something dark, occult, hidden. It evidences that these people appreciate delusions and delinquent (hidden) actions. Moreover, the dichotomous categories of black and white divide the members of society into two groups: those who cheat and those who are cheated.48 In this way, the vocabulary expresses, following the Spanish criminologist, the mischievousness (picardía) and satisfaction these people feel when they manage to cozen someone. Salillas observed that “the specific [verbal] expressions expose in a condensed way all the mischievousness (picardia) of this social group.”49 He considered such word-constellations as black–white as a “psychological nucleus,” evidencing the affective modality of the group whose life rests on delinquency and crime. He supposed that these people, lacking moral consciousness, even enjoyed committing frauds and crimes.50 Depending on the crime, he divided them into three groups: the “manualists” (specialized in stealing), the extortionists and the “suggestionists” (who cheat on other people). Nevertheless, his psycho-philological analysis did not imply a clear demarcation or opposition between the delinquent character of marginalized groups and that of the members of “ordinary society”; neither did he mark any difference between the Spanish way of life of the sixteenth century and that of the nineteenth. In his later works, Salillas would develop his psycho-philological analysis further. He now called his approach “nomad psychology” resulting in psycho-sociological studies on nomads (“gypsies,” bandits and “pícaros ”).51 He grouped them together under the name of “hampa,” an idiosyncratic Spanish expression referring to groups exhibiting nomadic as well as “parasitic” behaviour. His psychology consisted in equalizations, carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 202 A. MÜLBERGER considering “hampa” equal to “gypsiness,” and to parasitism, criminality and nomadism as well. Nevertheless, the behaviour of the hampa was not exclusive to bandit groups and “gypsies” but could be, on a lower level, found throughout Spanish society at large. Thus, he told his fellow countrymen that the “hampa behaviour” reveals “our own constitutional way of being.”52 He was especially keen on pointing out other socially parasitic (but non-criminal) groups, such as aristocrats, wandering students (tuna), military personnel and representatives of the Catholic Church,53 all groups that made their living demanding a share of the material resources produced by others through hard work (in agriculture or industry). At the same time, hampa-delinquents troubled the life and property of sedentary citizens. Most of them were citizens working in the countryside or in the factories, viewed by Salillas as the “pillars” of society. His psychological analysis included strong criticism to various social groups, including the way the state administration and official institutions worked, very much in line with denunciations voiced by other authors at that time, such as the prison guard Concepción Arenal (1896).54 Salillas’ negative description of bandits overlapped partially with that of Ferri’s, and for Ferri carelessness (“imprevoyance”) and vanity were the two dominant characteristics of the criminal.55 Lombroso’s description of “gypsies” was even more negative. In his “Criminal man” he declared them: “an entire race of criminals with all the passions and vices common to delinquent types: idleness, ignorance, impetuous fury, vanity, love for orgies, and ferocity.”56 Historically, this bigotry was not new. Across Europe, the criminalization of ethnic groups such as gypsies merely continued a long tradition of racism and xenophobia. In encyclopaedias of the eighteenth century, such as Zedler’s (1731/1754), gypsies were described as lazy and sly (durchtrieben) people. It was believed that in any given population of gypsies there thrived plenty of “thieves, assassins, rogues (Spitzbuben), and other varieties of scum” (loses Gesindel ).57 Despite the similarities in the descriptions, the causal explanation of criminal and delinquent behaviour varied. Salillas demarcated his point of view from those of others, defining Quetelet’s work as sociological, Morell’s approach as psychiatric and the contributions of the Italian positivists (Lombroso, Ferri and Garofalo) as anthropological. In contrast, he defined his own point of view as psychological and followed the socialist political orientation, close to the early ideology of Ferri and the criminologist Napoleón Colajanni. Colajanni became a strong defender of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 203 the idea that social conditions either directly or indirectly caused most crimes.58 Thus, Salillas considered groups such as “gypsies” and bandits to be composed of humans suffering physio-psychological problems. He attributed their behaviour not to some atavistic traits but to the unstable (nomad) way of life, a life that was mainly characterized by poverty, which meant, above all, suffering hunger. In the long run, the lack of nutrition would cause neurasthenic exhaustion and a hereditary injury in the form of degeneration. Psychological traits such as carelessness, indifference, and mischievousness were signs of an underlying “biological principle that states that the evolution of personality is really the evolution of nutrition.”59 Spain in the nineteenth century still constituted a country in which hunger and bad nutrition were clearly predominant features in the life of many citizens living under the old regime in the countryside or in the impoverished neighbourhoods of industrializing cities. Human beings living under these circumstances were compelled to fight for their existence. Through what the upper classes viewed as criminal behaviour, was often a desperate attempt to arrive at vital resources at any cost. Managing Criminality Through Juridical Psychology Techniques of Bodily Mind Reading in Mira’s Textbook on Juridical Psychology (1932) The author of the first textbook on juridical psychology published in Spain was the well-known Catalan psychologist Emilio Mira y López (1896–1964), a member of the Barcelonian Biological School led by Ramón Turró and August Pi-Sunyer. As a physician working for the municipality of Barcelona, he soon got to know the miserable living conditions in the outskirts of the city. This experience led him to advocate applied science (i.e. a science aimed primarily at improving the living conditions of the citizens). He organized hygiene campaigns and supported the left-wing party Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya.60 He worked as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Barcelona and became a well-known expert in applied psychology, more precisely in psychotherapy, psychopedagogy and psychotechnics. The latter kind of psychology, together with anthropometry, was intensively practised at the Institute for Professional Guidance of Barcelona, an institution he had worked at since carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 204 A. MÜLBERGER 1919 and then directed between 1926 and 1938. During that period, he gave lectures on psychology at the faculty of law at the University of Barcelona. After several semesters, he decided to publish his collected lectures as a Textbook of Juridical Psychology (1932). In the first pages of his textbook, Mira established a demarcation between “philosophical psychology” and “scientific psychology,” the latter being “a science that offers at least the same guarantees of seriousness and efficiency as the rest of biological disciplines”61 (Mira 1945, p. 7). Scientific psychology observes and experiments with the “psychic phenomena,” understood as: “the group of facts that constitute, subjectively, our internal experience and which are considered from an objective point of view as manifestations of the global functioning of the human organism, or, stated differently, as actions performed by a person.”62 Mira’s holistic and inclusive approach needed the combination of different methods to study the complexity of the human being, understood as a “psychobiosocial being.”63 Already in his definition, the primacy of the positive scientific aspiration of his undertaking becomes clear and was based on an objective psychology, approaching the study of subjectivity through the body. Mira called this methodological approach “extrospection,” literally: “looking (inside) from the outside.” Contrary to “introspection,” it was defined as an “objective study” of human actions on three levels: verbal, muscular and glandular. As a psychiatrist, Mira used for the assessment of innate or fixed behavioural characteristics and inclinations Kretschmer’s bio-typology,64 which assumed that a person’s bodily constitution would predispose them towards a certain “temperamental reaction.” Thus, Mira declared: “most human beings are variants of the ‘normotype’”65 and therefore could be classified in one of four categories: (a) asthenic (thin, small, weak); (b) athletic (muscular, large–boned); (c) pyknic (stocky, fat); and (d) dysplastic (bodily disproportionate). By examining the bodily structure of a person and attributing it to one of these types, it was also possible to appreciate criminal tendencies. Following Mira, it was through the body constitution, “that dangerousness and the different asocial and antilegal tendencies achieved their primal expression.”66 In the field of criminology and juridical psychology assuring true testimonies and detecting deception were important issues. A physiopsychological technique expected to offer some support in this task was carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 205 the study of momentary psychological reactions registering a psychic disturbance on regular bodily functions or actions. Mira mentioned in his textbook the registering of a sudden disturbance in regular bodily functions such as blood pressure, breathing and the galvanic reflex as a sign of emotional reactions taking place during the hearing of a list of words (the Jung-Abraham-Rosanoff word-association test). He also advocated the use of lie detectors based on a combination of several such registers.67 The method was not new. The technique of registering changes in the physiological recording for detecting deception during interrogation had been used in criminology since the nineteenth century. An instrument used for this purpose was the “volumetric glove,” a plethysmograph measuring changes in blood pressure in the hand. It was used by Lombroso, Ferri and other criminologists in the 1880s to determine the participation of individuals suspected of theft.68 The historian and philosopher of science Cornelius Borck has explored the way the plethysmograph was used in the nineteenth century as a graphical method measuring blood volume changes in relation to psychic processes, such as pain, pleasure, touching, hearing and mental arithmetic.69 Paraphrasing the logic of the experiments undertaken by the German neurologist Hans Berger in the 1920s, Borck observed: “the physiologically inexplicable and yet correctly recorded trace gave evidence of extraphysiological causation.”70 Borck explained the reason why Berger assumed such a paradoxical logic by referring to his dualist mindbody conception. Berger became obsessed (idée fixe) with psychic activity expressing itself in the form of disturbances within perfectly regular physiological recordings. Nevertheless, the use of the technique in the hands of Lombroso and his followers in the nineteenth century, as well as later similar lie detector procedures advocated by Mira and others in the twentieth century, shows that the interpretation of graphically registered disturbances as attributable to emotional reactions was not limited to scientists adopting a dualist stance. It fitted also with a holistic and materialist approach, interpreting bodily reactions as occurring parallel to inner mental processes. A similar, alternative way to prove the level of sincerity of the testimonies included in Mira’s textbook was a technique based on recording a series of muscular movements. It had been developed by the Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria (Aleks´andr L´uri, 1902–1977). The carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 206 A. MÜLBERGER subject had to execute a regular, rhythmic movement up and down, tapping with one finger of the right hand on a pneumatic membrane (connected to a Marey drum). Using this method, a “motor expression” is obtained which adopts the form of regular curves (similar to waves) (Luria 1929, 1932).71 His experiments using the word-association method evidenced the sensitivity of this technique to register a psychological disturbance which appears when subjects try to inhibit their immediate verbal reaction. In this case, the curve would become irregular. Inspired by Luria’s method, Mira developed a technique with the help of a graphic device he invented, called a “monotonometer” (“monotonómetro”). The subject was asked to take a pencil and begin, from left to right across a sheet of paper, a continuous line-drawing up and down within a vertical span of eight centimetres, following the tick-tock of a metronome (see Fig. 9.1). Fig. 9.1 Mira’s monotonometer (Source Emilio Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 2a ed. [Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1945], p. 171) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 207 After one minute, while the area limits were removed and the metronome was stopped, the subject was asked to go on repeating her own movements, as regularly and monotonously as possible. Meanwhile, the subject (sometimes these were suspects) had to sincerely answer various questions without stopping or altering the regularity of her linedrawing. But certain questions were expected to trigger some emotional reaction, producing a disturbance in the pattern (see the shortening of the tracings on the right part in Fig. 9.2 graph B) if the individual had something to hide. For Mira the great advantage of his method was the fact that it worked even if the subject tried to hide their emotional reaction. In this case, he explained, “it is a proven fact that […] the intervention of the will in the performance of automatic movements will only result in disturbing them.”72 Fig. 9.2 Two patterns registered with the help of the monotonometer (Source Mira 1945, p. 174) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 208 A. MÜLBERGER Muscular In-Tensions: Criminological Uses of Mira’s Personality Test In 1935, at the Institute for Professional Guidance, Mira started to experiment with muscular movements with the aim of designing a personality test, based on his experiences with different psychotechnical methods such as the already mentioned monotonometer and an instrument called “axiestereómetro” he developed during the Civil War to measure spatial orientation of pilots. When Franco’s troops entered Barcelona in January 1939, he went into exile, first to France and then to London, where he stayed for a short period of time after the psychiatrist Charles Myers managed to raise sufficient funding for him. Finding himself in such a difficult situation, he worked hard to get his new personality test published. When the second edition of his textbook appeared in 1945, it included his personality test, thus promoting its use in the fields of forensic medicine and criminology. The so-called Myokinetic Test73 relied on the idea that “every [reaction from a] ‘mental attitude’ is accompanied by a certain ‘muscular attitude’” and “every intention corresponds to a change in muscular tone, tending towards the realization of the intended reactions while, at the same time, inhibiting the contrary ones.”74 The procedure consisted of a person sitting and tracing with a pencil a line already drawn on a sheet of paper and doing so repeatedly, without pausing or resting the hand (see Fig. 9.3). The instruction started with: “We are going to explore the precision and security of your movements in order to deduce from them the state of your nervous system.”75 At first, the experimental subject could look at his or her own tracings. After several ups and downs, the experimenter put a piece of cardboard before the face to block the subject’s visual control. Thus, the tracings usually start to deviate from the original pattern (see Figs. 9.4a, b, c and 9.5a, b, c). Mira studied the direction of these deviations and thereby deduced different personality traits, such as aggressiveness towards the self or others, intra-tension and extra-tension, and being energetic (elated) or weak (depressed). The non-dominant hand was supposed to express the deeply habitual tendency (also called his or her “constitutional attitude”), while the dominant expressed his or her current tendency. In his textbook, Mira presented his test as a new technique able to determine the dangerousness of a person. It offers, he stated, “with the help of a simple and quick technique, the possibility to obtain an objective criterion not only of the current aggressiveness of any person, but also his carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 209 Fig. 9.3 An experimental subject doing the PMK test (© Annette Mülberger) Fig. 9.4 Lineogram of the PMK test. a pattern sheet. b tracings of a “normal” and psychologically balanced person. c a mentally ill person of 43 years who had killed one person and attempted to kill another (Source a Archive for History of Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, picture taken by Annette Mülberger. b Mira [1945, p. 303]. c Mira [1945, p. 317]) carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 210 A. MÜLBERGER Fig. 9.5 Zig-Zag-lining of the PMK test. a pattern sheet. b an adult with high educational level (“elite personality”). c a schizophrenic patient (Source a Archive for History of Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, picture taken by Annette Mülberger. b Mira [1945, p. 99]. c Mira [1945, p. 109]) or her potential aggressiveness, […] whether mentally ill or supposedly normal.”76 The level of potential aggressiveness was measured through the angle and size of the deviation towards the front on the sagittal plane of the non-dominant hand. The same deviation on the other hand would indicate the current level of aggressiveness.77 Thus, he stated: “The danger of hyper aggressiveness will be greater the more intense the egocentric deviation observed in both hands.”78 Moreover, uncontrolled drives, typical of passionate criminals and “vicious addicts”, would also be detectable through the test, more precisely through the irregularity of the length and strength of the tracings. Mira based his diagnostic on a great number of parameters (primary and secondary deviations, the measurement of length and angles of inclination of each tracing, etc.; see Mira 1979). Among other subjects, he examined with his test sixteen convicted murderers in Cordoba, Argentina to measure the deviation of their tracings.79 On the whole, the personality test was relatively successful in the highly competitive market of psychological testing at the time. It was translated into several languages, such as English, Spanish, German and French,80 and was promoted and commented on by Pertejo (1943) and others. For decades it became part of the standard psychological testing for obtaining a driver’s licence in Brazil (Muiños 2002). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 211 Nevertheless, it was probably not much employed in the field of criminology and jurisdiction because, contrary to his own presentation, the test was technically rather sophisticated. Apart from the lineogram and the Zig-Zag-lining, the test included additional sheets with different forms (circles, Us, etc.). It also required the use of specific furniture, as well as a considerable portion of patience and expertise. It took at least two sessions to perform all the tracings. After that, the examiner had to undertake detailed measurements of the different lengths and the grade of inclination of the tracings and laborious calculations to get indexes. To deduce a psychodiagnostic based on these indicators was not an easy task. Final Discussion: Reading Criminal Propensity Through Bodily Characteristics and Actions Encouraged by Comtes’ positivist aspiration for science to predict and “foresee,” and after obtaining social statistics about the high rates of recidivism, positivist psychiatrists and criminologists in the nineteenth century turned their attention towards prevention. Within a civil society increasingly obsessed with security81 their aim was to protect law-abiding citizens by assessing the threat of dangerous traits deemed to be prevalent among certain individuals. This implied a turn towards the search for empirical (scientific) facts expected to aid in the judgement of a person’s tendency towards delinquency and crime. How can the psychological characteristic of a behavioural tendency towards crime be scientifically determined? Questioning the subject directly was unfeasible because any given “suspect” was expected to dissemble or cheat. Techniques of mind reading were based on a distrust in the sincerity of the speech acts of criminals. The expectation of being deceived made interrogating the subjectivity of the experimental subject, via verbal communication or introspection, seem futile and misleading.82 Spoken words in personal conversation were supposed to be under conscious control and could therefore be easily manipulated, while bodily traits and actions (including tracing and verbal habits), on the other hand, were supposed to offer useful clues into the hidden intentions of the criminal mind. The body would confess what the mouth would not. Thus, Lombroso’s and other criminologists’ mind reading techniques that have been mentioned in the present study were mainly practised through a “psychological reading” of the body. Anatomical characteristics and bodily expressions were frenetically noted, measured and fixed. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 212 A. MÜLBERGER The observations were often based on anthropometrical measures taken on the “docile bodies” of prison inmates, and corpses.83 As can be seen through our research on Salillas and Mira, on the living body, additional qualitative observations about movements and actions such as speech and line-drawing were considered of key interest. Thus, the criminologist and the psychologist contributed to the social construction of a moralized body, a disciplined body whose actions were psychologically and morally judged. Researchers working in Spain such as Salillas felt inspired by Lombroso and other Italian positivists and were excited by the project of establishing a professional field of criminology in Spain, as a new (progressive) science. Salillas and his colleagues used profusely degenerationist and Lombrosian terms to evaluate the dangerousness of offenders. At the same time, they were critical. Lombroso’s effort to collect a mass of empirical data did not blind them towards the erratic way their predecessor pursued his research and drew his conclusions. Nor did they accept, for example, the equation of the modern criminal with the savage or prehistoric human.84 In this respect, they agreed with French sociologists of the time, such as Tarde. Both Salillas and Mira attempted to expand medical science while reducing the dominance of the Catholic Church and the scholastic credo of free will in the field of jurisprudence. Thus, politically they represented the most radical and left-wing (socialist) medical sector. Salillas wanted to introduce to Spain criminology as psychological science, offering an empirical basis for legal reform and fostering the creation of juridical psychiatric clinics. It was precisely the production of “the criminal body,” as an object of knowledge dependent on technical registers and mathematical calculations that allowed the reconfiguration of criminology as a scientific undertaking. Imbued by positivist faith, knowledge obtained through this new anthropological and psychological practice was considered to be prejudice-free and, therefore, superior to the metaphysical discourses of traditional legal documents. Following a similar trend, Mira fostered a field called “juridical psychology,” through which he wanted to expand the domain of his scientific field, psychology, and prove its usefulness for society, mainly within juridical and criminological practice. As mentioned above, both Salillas and Mira adopted a materialist stance, dealing with criminality understood as a global psychological phenomenon which expresses itself through individual and social “ways of being” and can be objectively delineated by examining the body and its actions. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 213 Regarding the question of which bodily characteristics and actions were considered useful hints for evaluating the psychological propensity for criminal or deceptive behaviour, we can now answer that they were, basically, of two types: a persistent innate disposition and a current (emotional) reaction. In the first group anatomical characteristics, verbal behaviour and muscular movements constituted three ways to analyse the mind, while in the second group variables such as variations in blood pressure, volume and tension as well as breathing and the psychogalvanic reflex were considered revealing. Again, in this second group, muscular movements played a crucial role. In general, the criminological techniques of mind reading represent a kind of differential psychology aimed at detecting deceptive testimony, mischievousness, aggressiveness and other behaviour considered dangerous and antisocial. Nevertheless, Lombroso’s approach shows that “normality” and “abnormality” were not divided into dichotomous or antagonistic categories, but vaguely defined through a quantitative accumulation of anatomical symptoms, anthropological characteristics and deviations in manual performance. Salillas developed his research on mind reading by collecting typical expressions used by marginalized groups in Spain, namely gypsies and bandits. He detected some idiosyncratic expressions commonly used by them, explaining their meaning on two levels: What they immediately signified and what the use of such expressions revealed about that culture’s mental and social life. He viewed marginalized groups composed of mischievous and careless people, whose way of being was determined by their way of life characterized by nomadism and poverty. Becker listed four factors considered as causes for criminality at that time: accidents during gestation, social environment, inheritance and alcoholism or other illnesses such as syphilis.85 Thus, Salillas’ perspective seems a curious strategy, in attributing criminality to the nomad way of life that was expected to cause in the body a biological deficit in nutrition, which would be responsible for a psychological state of mind urging criminal behaviour. Salillas’ psychological reflections on the origin of criminality were often considered by some of his contemporaries, such as Dorado Montero, as complex and vague, but, at the same time, also very original and profound.86 Contrary to other criminologists, he did not present “gypsies” and groups of bandits as a counter-society, opposed to the world of lawabiding citizens. In his view, all Spanish people have a certain tendency carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 214 A. MÜLBERGER towards developing the key hampa-characteristic, namely mischievousness (picardía). Due to the nomadic way of life, among certain groups the criminal and morbid tendency of mischievousness would appear more strongly and frequently than within members of ordinary society. On a social level, he made a sharp differentiation between productive workers (farmers, industrial labour, artisans, etc.) and “parasite citizens” (a differentiation which implied a social critique of the aristocracy, the clergy, the military, wandering students, bandits and other social groups). Thus, Salillas’ critical attitude towards Spanish society is connected to a general uneasiness with regard to their own country and culture that had spread among intellectuals towards the end of the nineteenth century. The political crisis provoked by the loss of Spain’s last colonies overseas, induced a pessimistic view87 and a revival of social critique that had already been outlined already centuries before in the “novela picaresca.” In the work of Mira in the 1930s, on the contrary, bodily constitution and regularity of physical movements would be the criteria for evaluating pathological propensities or deceptive mental states. In the 1940s Mira developed his personality test and promoted its use in the field of criminology. His contribution would occur several decades later than Salillas’, at a time when the industrialization of cities such as Barcelona was underway. That contribution included the detection of a violent attitude (aggressiveness towards other persons) on two levels, as a persistent trait and as current disposition (depending on the hand used). Thus, deviance would no longer be detected in the use of slang and coded idioms (Salillas) but in a sudden irregularity in line-tracings and in the erratic tracing of markings in Mira’s Miokinetic Psychodiagnostic Test (PMK). It is easy to see in Luria’s tapping, Mira’s monometric measurement and the PMK the influence of the taylorist management of industrial labour implemented at the time. Thanks to his work as psychotechnician at the Institute for Professional Guidance in Barcelona Mira knew these procedures well. Just like in Lombroso’s and others’ analyses of handwriting, regularity was highly valued. The more the individual was able to expose his or her inner nature through regular (controlled) and precise muscular movements, the more useful this person would be as a machine-like worker, adapted to the production pace at any factory. Thus, the tendency towards violent behaviour would be confessed by the “in-tensions” of the hands. The hand was at that time still an essential tool not only for daily work but also for crime, be this in the form of theft, smuggling, cheating or cruel violence. Male violence (including carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 215 attacks) would be based on the use of knives, pistols and hand-bombs. A regular, mechanical person constituted an entity whose reactions could be foreseen, regulated, adjusted and, above all, controlled. It was a useful piece in a productive society. The measurement of regularity and preciseness in human reaction actually had started before, with the reaction-time experiments by astronomers in the nineteenth century. To the question concerning the reasons why certain anthropological, clinical and psychological techniques were developed and adopted by scientists, the standard literature in the history of medicine refers to power dynamics among social groups within a divided society. Following the Foucauldian tradition, historians of medicine such as Álvarez-Úria, Campos, Martínez-Pérez, and Huertas attributed to Spanish psychiatrists and criminologists a hidden agenda.88 At a time of social unrest, they argued, it consisted of taking advantage of their social status for developing criminological techniques that would be instrumental in controlling and subordinating members of the dangerous working class. They were said to have done this using mainly two interrelated strategies: a tutelage via the medicalization of society and a systematic pathologization of “the other,” that is, the criminal (including the disobedient worker). Among historians of psychology, Foucault’s interpretation gave rise to a considerable number of genealogical studies on the management of subjectivity in contemporary society. Within this tradition, Nikolas Rose’s Governing the Soul (1990) outlined the increasingly key role psy-sciences played throughout the twentieth century for the management of the self. Governmentality, he argues, needs social statistics and psychological technology to control citizens’ behaviour. By this means, the necessary calculations are obtained through a process of inscription, which translates crime, delinquency, insanity and pauperism into tables, graphs and other material traces. In liberal democracies, the government acts at a distance or indirectly, operating through what Rose calls “techniques of the self.”89 Nevertheless, the techniques used in the criminologist works cited here were not “techniques of the self” in Rose’s sense of the term, which referred to “the elaboration of certain techniques for the conduct of one’s relation with oneself”90 ; rather, these early criminological techniques “inscribed” the psychological trait of deceit or criminality into the human body of the “other”. Finally, as Pettit has rightly pointed out, psychologists demanded full transparency from the interrogated, while psychologists had their own carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 216 A. MÜLBERGER hidden motives.91 The procedure evidences a main problem most psychological interventions have with not informing the experimental subject about the real aim of the assessment, nor the way his or her actions will be interpreted or classified. Thus, the techniques of mind reading in the field of criminological practice reviewed here were based on the hypothesis of mutual distrust: the scientist expected the mischievous mind of the delinquent to cheat and, therefore, felt legitimized in cheating his own subjects. As outlined above, the scientist ignored the suspect’s speech (subjectivity) but examined exclusively his or her body. This would only work if two assumptions were accepted: (a) that keeping the mind focused on speech or impairing vision, this would unable the suspect to control his or her body movements; and (b) that these uncontrolled body movements would give hints with regard to personality traits, hidden intentions and the current or latent level of aggressiveness. In this sense, the Miokinetic Psychodiagnostic Test (PMK), as psychological assessment, acquired a nearly symbolic meaning: subjects blinded by the experimenter, trying to follow the line (with their drawing), while the body’s “natural in-tensions” were taking them astray (out of the marked line). Acknowledgements This research is part of the project “History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern Catalunya (19th and 20th Century)” supported by the AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya) (2017 SGR 1138). I thank Carla Seemann, Violeta Ruiz, Judit Gil, Albert Bayona and Laurens Schlicht for their useful comments on a previous version of the chapter. Notes 1. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London: Free Association Books, 1999). 2. Michael Shortland, “Skin Deep: Barthes, Lavater and the Legible Body,” Economy and Society 14, no. 3 (1985): 273–312; Nicole Rafter, “The Murderous Dutch Fiddler: Criminology, History and the Problem of Phrenology,” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 1 (2005): 65–96; Michael M. Sokal, “Practical Phrenology as Psychological Counseling in the 19thCentury United States,” in The Transformation of Psychology: Influences of 19th Century Philosophy, Technology, and Natural Science, ed. Christopher D. Green, Marlene Shore, and Thomas Teo (New York: American Psychological Association, 2001), 21–44. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 217 3. See, for example, Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell, eds., Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Tom Daems, “On the Origins of Criminology,” European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice 14, no. 1 (2006): 115–125; David Arthur Jones, History of Criminology: A Philosophical Perspective (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); Paul Lawrence, “The Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, ed. Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 17–37; Ruth Ann Triplett, The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology (Hoboken: Wiley, 2018). 4. See, for example, Curt Bartol and Anne-M. Bartol, “History of Forensic Psychology,” in The Handbook of Forensic Psychology, ed. Allen K. Hess and Irving B. Weiner (New York: Wiley, 1999), 3–23; Annette Mülberger, “Teaching Psychology to Jurists: Initiatives and Reactions Prior to World War I,” History of Psychology 12, no. 2 (2009): 60–86; Heather Wolffram, Forensic Psychology in German-Speaking Europe: Witnessing Crime, 1880– 1939, 1st ed. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 5. Heliodoro Carpintero and C. Rechea, “La psicología jurídica en España: su evolución,” in Fundamentos de la Psicología jurídica, ed. Miguel Clemente (Madrid: Pirámide, 1994), 65–98. 6. Belén Jiménez Alonso, “La construcción psico-sociológica de la ‘subjetividad marginal’ en la España de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX” (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2010). 7. Jiménez refers to authors working under the influence of Mercier’s neothomistic stance (see Jiménez Alonso, “La construcción psicosociológica,” chapter 11, 2010). 8. Ibid., 459. 9. David Horn, The Criminal Body: Lombroso and the Anatomy of Deviance (New York: Routledge, 2013). 10. Savages as a category of human included for Lombroso not only humans from prehistoric times but also children and members of African and Indian tribes as well as all kinds of marginalized groups. 11. Cf. the English summary of Lombroso’s work by his daughter: Gina Lombroso, Criminal Man: According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911). 12. Peter Becker, “Researching Crime and Criminals in the 19th Century,” in The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology, ed. Ruth Ann Triplett (Oxford: Wiley, 2018), 32–48. 13. Cesare Lombroso, L’uomo delinquente studiato in rapporto alla antropologia, alla medicina legale ed alle discipline carcerarie (Milano: Hoepli, 1876). 14. David Horn, The Criminal Body: Lombroso and the Anatomy of Deviance. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 218 A. MÜLBERGER 15. Becker, “Researching Crime and Criminals in the 19th Century.” 16. Ibid. 17. Jonathan Dunnage, “The Work of Cesare Lombroso and Its Reception: Further Contexts and Perspectives,” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies 22, no. 2 (2018): 5–8. 18. Horn, The Criminal Body, 13. 19. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1981), Spanish ed. (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), 136. 20. Paul Knepper, “Laughing at Lombroso: Positivism and Criminal Anthropology in Historical Perspective,” in The Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Criminology, ed. Ruth Ann Triplett (Oxford: Wiley, 2018), 51–66. 21. Gabriel Tarde, La criminalité comparée (Paris: Alcan, 1886). 22. Knepper, “Laughing at Lombroso,” 52. 23. Ibid., 64. 24. Becker, “Researching Crime and Criminals in the 19th Century,” 42. 25. Miloš Vec, “Die Seele auf der Bühne der Justiz. Die Entstehung der Kriminalpsychologie im 19. Jahrhundert und ihre interdisziplinäre Erforschung,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 30, no. 3 (2007): 235– 254. 26. Andrés Galera Gómez, “Rafael Salinas: Medio Siglo de Antropología Criminal Española,” Llull 9 (1986): 81–104; Maria Dolores Fernández Rodríguez, El pensamiento penitenciario y criminológico de Rafael Salillas (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1976). 27. Information about other contributions can be found in Jordi Bajet i Royo, “La psicología jurídica: pasado y presente de su breve historia,” Anuario de Psicología Jurídica, no. 2 (1992): 9–16; Heliodoro Carpintero, Historia de la psicología en España (Madrid: Pirámide, 2004); Amelia Gutiérrez and Heliodoro Carpintero, “La psicología del testimonio: La contribución de Francisco Santamaría,” Revista de Historia de La Psicología 25, no. 4 (2004): 59–66. With regard to psychoanalysis, a recent extensive historical research has been undertaken by S. Levy, “Psicoanálisis y defensa social en España (1923–1959)” (Universidad Complutense, 2018). 28. For information about the socialist ideology of Spanish physicians of that time see Fernando Álvarez-Uría, Miserables y locos: medicina mental y orden social en la España del siglo XIX (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1983). 29. See, for example, Álvarez-Uría, Miserables y locos; Ricardo Campos, José Martínez Pérez, and Rafael Huertas García-Alejo, Los ilegales de la naturaleza: medicina y degeneracionismo en la España de la rstauración, 1876– 1923 (Editorial CSIC-CSIC Press, 2000); Ricardo Campos, “La construcción del sujeto peligroso en España (1880–1936): El papel de la psiquiatría y la criminología,” Asclepio 65, no. 2 (2013): 017; Ricardo Campos carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 219 and R. Huertas, “Lombroso but No Lombrosians? Criminal Anthropology in Spain,” in The Cesare Lombroso Handbook, ed. Paul Knepper and P. J. Ystehede (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 309–323; José Luis Peset and Mariano Peset, Lombroso y la escuela positivista italiana (Madrid: CSIC, 1975). See Fernando Álvarez-Uría, Miserables y locos: medicina mental y orden social en la España del siglo XIX (Barcelona: Tusquets Editor, 1983); Ricardo Campos, José Martínez Pérez, and Rafael Huertas García-Alejo, Los Ilegales de la naturaleza: medicina y degeneracionismo en la España de la Restauración, 1876–1923 (Editorial CSIC, 2000); Luis Maristany, “Lombroso y España: nuevas consideraciones,” Anales de Literatura Española, no. 2 (1983): 361–381; José Luis Peset, Ciencia y marginación: sobre negros, locos y criminales (Madrid: Crítica, 1983); José Javier Plumed Domingo and Antonio Rey González, “La introducción de las ideas degeneracionistas en la España del siglo XIX. Aspectos conceptuales,” Frenia. Revista de Historia de La Psiquiatría 2, no. 1 (2002): 31–48. Based on the philosophy of the German idealist Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. In the Spanish juridical field and legislation the work of his follower Röder was very influential. In the 1870s and 1880s a translated edition of his important books on law and his theory about crime and penalty were published. For more information on this, see Heliodoro Carpintero and Cristina Rechea, “La psicología jurídica en España: su evolución,” in Fundamentos de la psicología jurídica, ed. Miguel Clemente (Madrid: Pirámide, 1994), 65–98; Angel C. Moreu, “Psicopedagogía y ciencia jurídica en la España de finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX,” Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza 56 (2004): 61–76. Rafael Salillas, La Antropología en el derecho penal (Madrid: Imprenta de la Revista de Legislación y Jurisprudencia, 1888). Luis Maristany, “Lombroso y España: nuevas consideraciones,” Anales de Literatura Española, no. 2 (1983): 361–381. Ricardo Campos, El caso Morillo: crimen, locura y subjetividad en la España de la Restauración (Madrid: Frenia/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2012). Maristany, “Lombroso y España: nuevas consideraciones,” 368. Alfonso Serrano Gómez, Historia de la criminología en España (Madrid: Dykinson, 2007). Maristany, “Lombroso y España: nuevas consideraciones.” Bernaldo de Quirós and Llanas and Llamas Aguilaniedo were part of the team. Rafael Salillas, “Laboratorio de criminología,” Revista General de Legislación y Jurisprudencia 48, no. 96 (1900): 332–358. Gina Lombroso, Criminal Man, 48–49. Rafael Salillas, “El capitán clavijo (proceso mental),” La España Moderna 7, no. 79 (1895): 29. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 220 A. MÜLBERGER 41. Cesare Lombroso, L’uomo delinquente. 42. Rafael Salillas, El delincuente español: el lenguaje (estudio filológico, psicológico y sociológico) (Madrid: Librería de Victoriano Suárez, 1896). 43. Salillas, El delicuente español: El lenguaje (Estudio filológico, psicológico y sociológico con dos vocabularios jergales) (Madrid: Librería Victoriano Juárez, 1896). 44. Salillas, El delincuente español, 150. 45. Ibid., 149. 46. Ibid., 150. 47. Ibid., 151. 48. Ibid., 151–154. 49. Ibid., 156–157. 50. Ibid., 155. 51. Rafael Salillas, El delincuente español: hampa y lenguaje (Fragments of His Two Books) (Introduction and Editor: Miranda, M. J.) (Madrid: CSIC, 2004 [1898]), 92. 52. Ibid., 90. 53. Serrano, Historia de la criminología en España. 54. Concepción Arenal, “Psychologie comparée du déliquant,” Revue Pénitentiaire, no. 5 (1886): 646–655. 55. Ferri cited in Tarde, La criminalité comparée. 56. Gina Lombroso, Criminal Man, 140. 57. Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste, vol. 62 (Halle and Leipzig: Zedler, 1732), 522. 58. Susan A. Ashley, Making Liberalism Work: The Italian Experience, 1860– 1914 (Westport, CT [u.a.]: Praeger, 2003). 59. Salillas, El delincuente español, 89. 60. Annette Mülberger and Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela, “Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas: Emilio Mira y López y la revolución social,” Dynamis: Acta Hispanica Ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam 27 (2007): 309–332. 61. Emilio Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 2a ed. (Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1945), 7. 62. Ibid., 8. 63. Ibid., 23. 64. The German psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer (1888–1964) developed in the 1920s his constitutional theory (Konstitutionslehre) and doctrine about human character which was very influential in Europe and beyond. His types indicate the kind of psychosis a person would tend towards (following the classification of Kraepelin). 65. Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 29. 66. Ibid., 29. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 9 MIND READING THROUGH BODY LANGUAGE … 221 67. In 1911 Henry Goddard used the galvanometer to detect changes in the body’s electrical currents, which he correlated with emotional arousal, but admitted that he could not tell the kind of emotion the subjects were feeling. For more on this and on the emergence of the psychiatric typology of the “pathological liar” and the lie detectors fabricated in the United States by Larson and Marston in the 1920s and 1930s see Michael Pettit, The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 68. Gina Lombroso, Criminal Man; Enrico Ferri, Sociología Criminal (Madrid: Centro Editorial de Góngora, 1908 [1888]). 69. Cornelius Borck, “Writing Brains: Tracing the Psyche with the Graphical Method,” History of Psychology 8, no. 1 (2005): 79–94. 70. Ibid., 83. 71. Alexander Romanowitsch Luria, “Die Methode der abbildenden Motorik bei Kommunikation der Systeme und ihre Anwendung auf die Affektpsychologie,” Psychologische Forschung 12, no. 1 (1929): 127–179; Alexander Romanowitsch Luria, The Nature of Human Conflicts or Emotions, Conflict and Will: An Objective Study of Disorganisation and Control of Human Behaviour (New York: Liveright Publishers, 1932), see, for example, curves on p. 126 and p. 29. 72. Mira, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 2nd ed., 172. 73. Prueba miokinética, abbreviated PMK, see Emilio Mira y López, “Myokinetic Psychodiagnosis: A New Technique of Exploring the Conative Trends of Personality,” Proceeding of the Royal Society of Medicine 23, no. 173 (1939): 173–194. 74. Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 297–298, highlighting in the original. 75. Ibid., 301. 76. Ibid., 300, highlighting in the original. 77. Mira distinguished between two trends in the drawings: What he called the “egocífugo” and the “egocípeto” trend. The first resulted from the use of extensive and the second from flexure muscles. For a complete explanation of the evaluation of the test see Emilio Mira y López, Psicodiagnóstico Miokinético (P.M.K.) Manual (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1979); free accessible on http://www.miraylopez.com/Libros/Psicodiagnostico% 20miokinetico.pdf; for a German translation see Myokinetische Psychodiagnostik, trans. Klaus Hasemann (Bern and Stuttgart: Huber, 1965) and on a statistical study with a digitalized version of the test see Rubén Muiños Martínez, El Psicodiagnóstico Miokinético: Desarrollo, Descripción y Análisis Factorial Confirmatorio (University of Barcelona: Doctoral Dissertation, 2002). 78. Mira y López, Manual de Psicología jurídica, 320. 79. Ibid., 316. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 222 A. MÜLBERGER 80. See Mira, Montserrat on http://www.montserratmira.com/MyL%20Blau. pdf. 81. Cf. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1st American ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977). 82. Pettit (The Science of Deception) worked out the mutual influence between criminology and psychoanalysis in the United States. 83. Nevertheless, access to these bodies was often not that easy. At times access to dead bodies was denied, as was taking pictures of convicted offenders. Criminologists often needed the cooperation of directors of asylums, hospitals and orphanages (see Horn, The Criminal Body). 84. Rafael Salillas, “Laboratorio de criminología,” 339. 85. Becker, Researching Crime and Criminals in the 19th Century, 40. 86. Serrano, Historia de la criminología en España, 163. 87. See, for example, the ideas of regeneracionistas like Costas and the “generación del 98” in literature. 88. Álvarez-Úria, Miserables y locos Medicina mental y orden social; Campos et al., Los ilegales de la naturalça; Campos, La construcción del sujeto peligroso. 89. Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996/1998). 90. Ibid., 29–30. 91. Pettit, Science of Deception, 7–8; see also chapter 5 on lie detectors. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 10 “Talk to Each Other—But How?” Operative Psychology and IM-Work as “Micro-Totalitarian Practice” Martin Wieser Introduction In the Soviet countries, the death of Stalin marked the dawn of a new era of intelligence work. Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech,” which was held at the 20th congress of the Communist Party in February 1956, denounced the “Cult of Personality” of Stalin’s reign as well as the execution, persecution and deportation of thousands of so-called counterrevolutionaries from the 1930s onwards.1 The decade to follow came to be known as the “Khrushchev Thaw,” a period which saw an unprecedented opening up of Soviet politics in terms of trade, education, culture, literature and media as well as the release of millions of prisoners from Gulags. Although this phase only lasted until Khrushchev was ousted by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964 and even though Soviet citizens were far from M. Wieser (B) Sigmund Freud University Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: martin.wieser@sfu-berlin.de © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_10 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 223 224 M. WIESER being granted unconditional rights of freedom of expression, travelling or access to foreign press, the “Thaw” still had a lasting impact on many levels of the political and social life of the Soviet Union. One of these areas was intelligence work. Alexander Zinoviev, one of the most outstanding critics of the Soviet system, described this new system of suppression and warfare, the “war of the future,” with the following words: Remember what I say to you, the inspirer said. We are going to create such a network of agents in the West that even in a thousand years, historians will wonder how we managed to paste together such a magnificent building out of shit. If we win the war of the future — and we have to win it — it won’t be thanks to our tanks and rockets, but thanks to our agents. The war of the future will be a war of spies. And we are their true soldiers and generals.2 While Stalin was eager to publicly demonstrate his power by means of show trials, persecution, physical torturing and the deportation of millions of supposed “counter-revolutionaries” to Gulags, the “Thaw” resulted in a transformation of how political power was exerted and how the “war of spies” was conducted in the Soviet countries. Since the socialist parties in the Eastern Bloc aimed to avoid any danger of losing their political dominance by allowing the growth of democratic structures within their countries, while at the same time refraining from openly exerting physical violence (as they could result in painful economic sanctions from the West), new means of repression were needed from the 1960s onwards, means which depended on the proper use of spies and agents as the “true soldiers and generals” of the Cold War. During the last months of the Second World War and in the following years, officers of the KGB had played an important role in the instalment of secret services in the occupied countries of Eastern Europe. Although the numbers of foreign KGB supervisors declined after the middle of the 1950s, the structure, function and methods of all communist secret services remained strongly oriented towards the KGB. All over the Eastern Bloc, intelligence agencies were conceived as the “shield and sword” of the governing socialist parties, as they were supposed to protect the socialist order against any suspected enemies—whether they came from the West or from inside. Beyond these commonalities, however, a closer look shows that the size, methods, structure and nomenclature of the intelligence organizations in Eastern Europe showed considerable variations.3 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 225 Since a transnational comparison of intelligence work in post-Stalinism is beyond the scope of this paper, in the following, I will focus on one specific secret service in Eastern Europe, the Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, commonly abbreviated as MfS), and analyse how the transformation of repression techniques was implemented in intelligence work in the GDR from the 1960s until the fall of the Iron Curtain. As far as is known today, the MfS was the only secret service in Eastern Europe which systematically integrated psychological knowledge and practices in an institution that was set up specifically to fulfil this task. After providing a short overview of the history and function of this institute of “Operative Psychology,”4 I will focus on one specific element of operative-psychological practice which has received very little attention so far: How to “win over” unofficial informants and build up a stable and emotional relationship between the officer and the informant. In the eyes of the psychologists working for the MfS, this problem represented the key to gathering reliable intelligence and anticipating any supposed attacks against the socialist order of the GDR. After the analysis of this specific type of “relationship work,” I will introduce the concept of “micro-totalitarian practice” in the last section of this chapter, a category which is supposed to shed light on the link between power, politics and interpersonal relationships from a historical-psychological perspective. A Short History of “Operative Psychology” in the GDR In 1965, the Institute of Operative Psychology (henceforth abbreviated as OP) was founded as part of the section “Marxist-Leninist basic education” at the Juridical Academy (Juristische Hochschule or JHS) in Potsdam, near Berlin. Historically, the JHS was a successor of the “School of the MfS” (1951–1955) and the “Academy of the MfS” (Hochschule des MfS, 1955–1965) neither of which was officially listed as a university in the GDR. Like the JHS, the Institute of OP existed until the dissolution of the MfS in 1990.5 Although the graduates of the JHS were officially designated as “diploma lawyers” or “political scientists,” the curricula of the JHS clearly show that the graduates of the academy were specifically trained for their deployment in the secret service. While the MfS counted about 91,000 members in 1989,6 the total number of students of the JHS was estimated to be about 13,300, including graduates of the technical college (“Fachschulstudium”) as well as distance carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 226 M. WIESER learners.7 Only a small number of intelligence officers, mostly those who were supposed to take leading positions later on, were allowed to enter the JHS. Within four years, students of the “academic direct curriculum” (Hochschuldirektstudium) had to acquire knowledge about the basics of Marxism–Leninism, law, “political-operative work,” Operative Psychology and IM-work, and they had to undergo military training. From 1970 on, additional courses and specialized curricula were offered that varied from 18 months to three years.8 In the 1960s, over 80% of the members of the MfS had no more than an elementary school education and less than two per cent had a university degree.9 The lack of education of the personnel of the MfS had historical reasons: during its founding years, the MfS had recruited its members primarily based on their political-ideological affiliation (e.g. former resistance fighters, members of the communist party), not their technical skills, job experience or education. As the MfS continually grew in size over the years, it was in need of leading personnel as well as experts in various technical and “operative” areas. The JHS was specifically designed to solve this problem—but it was not just an institution designed for the dissemination of knowledge and the ideological streamlining of members of the MfS. Since 1965, the JHS offered a doctoral programme, which was supposed to give the “elite” of its members the possibility to advance and refine the knowledge and practice of the MfS by means of research. The remnants of this research, that was carried out on behalf of the State Security and counted 174 Doctoral theses10 and 3.721 diploma theses,11 can be found today at the Stasi Records Agency. Although these works vary extensively in size, scope and quality (many featured two or more authors), they had one thing in common: they were all supposed to offer new perspectives on the “frontier” of day-to-day operative work. The primary task of the JHS was to prepare its students for the practical challenges of intelligence work, such as leadership and technical skills, the collection of information, the identification and observation of suspected “hostile-negative” persons, techniques of interrogation and “disintegration”12 of “class enemies” and the acquisition of unofficial informants. This type of practical knowledge became increasingly important in the context of the post-Stalinist era. While the “old fighters” often relied on methods of physical torture they had experienced themselves under imprisonment in Nazi Germany, the new generation of intelligence officers were supposed to fulfil their duty in a more sophisticated and unobtrusive manner. The institutionalization of Operative Psychology at carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 227 the JHS has to be understood within this historical context—it was supposed to create, maintain, disseminate and improve a body of applied knowledge that made intelligence work “cleaner,” more efficient and less physically violent. The importance of this “academization” of intelligence work is connected to the fact that visible traces of physical violence on the bodies of citizens who escaped to the West and told their stories to the press could pose a serious threat to the struggling economies of the Eastern countries. By signing the Helsinki Accords in 1975, the leaders of the socialist party promised to respect human rights (such as freedom of conscience, thought and belief) in exchange for the transfer of goods and technology from the West. From this point in time, any proofs of systematic breaches of human rights could result in economic sanctions from the West. As far as is known today, the GDR was the only socialist state which did not just implement psychological knowledge in intelligence work or employ individual psychologists, but maintained a whole institution that was supposed to adapt intelligence work to the new political context. The Institute of OP started out with a staff of four in 1965 and continually grew to ten members in 1989 (roughly proportional to the growth of the total number of members of the JHS, which almost tripled its members from 245 in 1965 to 726 in 1989). Sixteen persons who worked at the institute have been identified so far, seven of whom had been studying psychology on behalf of the MfS at one of the public universities of the GDR in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden or Jena, before they entered the JHS.13 The material they compiled for their students (study books, manuscripts, case examples, etc., which vary in length from a few pages to several hundred) have been archived since 1990 at the Stasi Records Agency (Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-Unterlagen), together with more than two hundred diploma theses and dissertations that were concerned with psychological topics. The subject matters of these texts range from general introductions to psychological topics and concepts (e.g. perception, motivation, emotion, personality) to very specific psychological aspects of the daily work of the secret service. Some texts frequently cite from published sources (mostly psychologists from the GDR and the USSR and classic works from Marxism and Leninism, but not exclusively), while others do not include any references at all. A strong focus is put on the practical application of operative-psychological knowledge, and many texts illustrate the introduced concepts with case examples from intelligence work. The psychologists who worked at the JHS were not just carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 228 M. WIESER researchers and teachers: as they were also officers who were frequently deployed in the “field,” they were well acquainted with the everyday difficulties and challenges of intelligence work. When reading through these manuals, it seems like standards of scientific research (e.g. methodological transparency and formal consistency) have played a relatively minor role, but a strong concern for practical issues as well as the aim to create guides and manuals which were as exhaustive and detailed as possible becomes apparent. Before this material is analysed in detail, a few remarks about the state of research on the history of OP should be considered. Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the annexation of the Ministry of State Security by citizens of the GDR, the existence of the Institute of OP came to public knowledge. Newspapers reported on the “misuse of psychology” and its application as a “tool of repression.”14 A film documentary titled The Black Box (Der schwarze Kasten) that reconstructed the biography of a former member of the institute was screened in cinemas in 1992.15 Shortly after that, the first publications about the history of OP appeared, mostly written by psychologists and/or former victims of OP.16 Public interest waned at the end of the 1990s, and very little research has been published after that, until recently.17 One aspect of OP that attracted a particularly high degree of public attention was practices of “disintegration,” which was an umbrella term for various techniques that were supposed to counter any supposedly oppositional activities. In early 1976, the MfS compiled an internal guideline on how to use this set of techniques,18 which included disseminating rumours, sowing distrust within oppositional groups and sending anonymous letters that blamed citizens for “immoral behaviour” or included faked photography. Further “operative measures” included criminalizing individuals (e.g. revoking driver’s licences), “staging the failure” of students at school or university, relocating workers to other parts of the country, and many other kinds of punishment.19 In contrast to established methods of repression and persecution (e.g. direct warnings, interrogation, imprisonment, judicial condemnation, etc.), victims of disintegration were supposed to remain unaware of who was persecuting them, and why. The overall goal of disintegration was, as the dictionary of State Security stated, “the fragmentation, paralysis, disorganization and isolation of hostile-negative forces.”20 As practices of disintegration were supposed to be performed anonymously, they were often carried out with the support of an unofficial informant (“Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter,” commonly abbreviated as IM), whose carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 229 deployment was prepared and supervised by an intelligence agent. While “disintegration” came to be a popular synecdoche for the whole system of political persecution and repression in the GDR in the reunited Germany, the relationship between the guiding officer and the unofficial informant received relatively little attention in comparison.21 The material that was produced by the psychologists of the JHS, however, shows that this relationship, which formed a necessary precondition for the successful application of disintegration techniques, was regarded as highly important: based on an analysis of about one hundred archived study books, the problem of how to “win over” an IM and how to establish a long-term relationship between the guiding officer and the IM was in fact elaborated in much more detail than techniques of “disintegration.” In the following, I will present a first analysis of some recurring motives and concepts that defined a successful and “promising” relationship between an IM and their guiding officer in the eyes of the members of the Institute of OP. The “IM System” in the GDR As in all other countries that were occupied by the Soviet Army during and after World War II, the secret service in the GDR maintained a network of secret informants, “persons of trust,” “contact persons,” “owners of conspiratorial apartments” and other citizens who would secretly cooperate with the MfS. With a population size of about 16 million citizens, the mass surveillance of the population of the GDR could not have been achieved solely by the ever-growing apparatus of the MfS. Despite the extensive use of technical means to monitor written correspondence, wiretap telephone lines, bug apartments and working places and shadow citizens,22 the MfS’s system of surveillance was still dependent on the IM, whose constant supply of information represented a key component for the identification and “operative processing” of dissident persons as well as citizens who planned to escape to the West. Starting out with about 5000 in 1950, the number of IM quickly grew to an early high of about 108,000 in 1962. In the next three years, numbers declined to about 92,400. During the reign of Erich Honecker, the numbers of IM reached an all-time record of over 200,000 in 1975 and from then on stabilized at around 175,000 until the collapse of the GDR.23 The rise and fall of the numbers is explained by the fact that IM who did not appear useful was frequently sorted out by the MfS. The categorization of a person as an “IM,” however, has to be interpreted with caution, since the quantity carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 230 M. WIESER and quality of intelligence that was provided by the IM varied to a large extent, depending on their ability and willingness to access and forward sensitive information. As a rule, IM had to sign a handwritten document that acknowledged their cooperation with the MfS, but they were not (or only to a very small extent) informed on how the information that had been provided by them was later used by the MfS. Altogether, the “IM system” was a pillar of the work of the MfS in fulfilling its mission as the “shield and sword” of the socialist party. How to “win over” an IM, therefore, was a task of eminent importance for the MfS, as officers could make a career out of the information they gathered from their IM, and it comes as no surprise that the psychologists who worked for the MfS devoted many hundreds of pages to this topic. Before going into the analysis of the processes described in these training booklets, one should bear in mind that what we find here represents an “ideal type” of the MfS’s work—these descriptions are not to be understood as unvarnished reports about the actual practice of the secret service, but as guidelines or models of how the senior officers should work from the perspective of their psychological lecturers. It should be added, however, that the practices that are described in the training booklets of OP have been developed and modified on the basis of operative practice and case examples of day-to-day practice. What we can find in these manuals is a type of applied psychology that had not merely been sketched out on the drawing board, but had been tested and refined over many years by members of the Institute of OP. How to “Open Up” and “Win Over” an IM Preparing for first contact with an IM-candidate is, as a manual from 1985 emphasizes, not to be seen as an “experimental field”24 of intuition or trial-and-error, but as a highly planned and structured process that should leave as little as possible to chance. To increase the probability of a “promising” relationship, the respective manual recommends creating a detailed contact plan in advance. The first part of this plan consists of a “requirement profile” which includes the gender, age, origin, social and family environment, language and technical skills, personal interests, habits and leisure activities of the IM that was needed for a particular mission (e.g. the infiltration of a particular opposition group). Based on this requirement profile, the officer should either find an IM which was already cooperating with the MfS or search for a new IM-candidate. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 231 The first invitation to meet the intelligence officer had to be planned out in detail. On first contact, the manual emphasizes, the IM-candidate is usually meant to have no clue who he or she is dealing with and therefore might react with fear, sorrow or curiosity. The officer, on the other hand, is supposed to have on hand a comprehensive image of the biography, personality, skills, motives, interests and needs of his counterpart, in order to anticipate and prevent any concerns or attempts at avoidance by the IM. Based on reports from third parties, relatives or friends, and on observations and documents gathered from various sources (such as school or job reports, political assessments and medical records), the guiding officer is supposed to create a personality profile that is as comprehensive as possible. A strong emphasis is put on the importance of an analysis of the IM-candidate’s current life situation and its impact on his or her present mood, needs and feelings. Relevant factors in this context are, for example, competitive situations at school or work (which could be used to motivate the candidate to cooperate on improving his or her position), quarrels or recent deaths within the family, promotions at or dismissals from the workplace, changes in his or her love life, disputes among friends, the birth of a child, etc. In order to initiate the “opening up” of the candidate, the manuals suggest creating a meticulous plan for the first meeting, which includes the time (the person should neither be tired from work, nor facing an important exam or other distracting events), place and, most importantly, the method of contact. The meeting place should be chosen wisely, as the IM-candidate should feel as safe as possible and be met in a familiar and pleasant environment. Under no circumstances should they be ordered to a police station (which would make them feel like criminals), but neither should they be met at home (to avoid any unwanted witnesses or disturbances). A sudden and overpowering act of surprise or intimidation should be avoided by any means, as should an extensive period of time between the first contact and the actual meeting to prevent possible concerns from growing. Clothing, language and vocabulary must be individually adapted to the IM and his or her social environment. The planning and execution of the first and all subsequent meetings forms the central core of IM work. During the interaction with the IM, a maximum of “political tactfulness,” a “recognition of the interlocutor” and empathy as well as other “psychological skills”25 are necessary requirements to prepare the ground for a stable and lasting cooperation. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 232 M. WIESER For the initial meeting of the officer and the IM-candidate, it is suggested that it should start with a chat about a recent public or regional event (e.g. a football match or a musical concert). It is very important to create a “relaxed conversational atmosphere,” and to promote a “trusting exchange of ideas.”26 No unpleasant aspects or memories of the candidate’s personality or past should be touched on directly. The advantage of information on the officer’s side should never be played off directly, for example in the form of a demonstration of power (as this could provoke fearful reactions of withdrawal or resistance), but should only be used to anticipate and answer any attempts of avoidance or resistance. If the “level of consciousness” of the IM appears to be “accessible for persuasion” during the first interaction, the disclosure of the “operative concern” should immediately follow. Immediate success, however, is never to be expected: “Winning over an IM” is a “complicated, conflict-laden inner process,” which is set in motion during the first contact, during which the officer is to gather clues as to the basic “attitudes of the IM-candidate towards the MfS.”27 As doubts will likely come up, they are to be countered by persistent but polite “ideological influence” and the facilitation of a conscious and deliberate identification with the goals of the MfS: “Often, it is a hard fight […], acting consistently is necessary, to prevent any attempts of avoidance, as is elasticity, to circumvent the emergence of a fruitless ‘either-or’ confrontation.”28 One of the most striking characteristics of “IM-work,” as described in these manuals, is the consistent emphasis on the importance of sticking to a minimal-confrontational form of persuasion. As is repeatedly pointed out, the interaction is strictly not to be carried out by any means of threats, aggression, demonstrations of power or intimidation. The IM is always supposed to be approached with politeness, attention, recognition, empathy, and a clear awareness of their current and long-term motives and needs. Applying pressure by using the rhetorical “crowbar” or the “wooden hammer,”29 according to the instructions, might produce some results at the moment, but promises very little success in the long run, as the IM is probably going to avoid any future interactions. The agent should never expect an immediate confirmation to cooperate with the secret service. The guiding officer is required to show patience, active listening and empathy: “some things must also mature and grow.” Even when the first reaction is negative, maybe the second conversation “may take a different course.”30 After all, the agreement to cooperate with the MfS requires a “serious decision” by the IM, one that is “very carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 233 difficult and full of conflict.” An argumentative victory, it is emphasized, is not enough to form a new conviction. Therefore, the current motives, needs and especially the emotional state of the IM are always to be taken into account. If a stable and “trustful” interpersonal connection between the IM and the senior officer is successfully established, a “trusting exchange of ideas” is supposed to unfold in a “relaxed” atmosphere during all further meetings. During the report, the IM is supposed to speak independently, based on their own observations and ideas, only to be occasionally interrupted by the officer asking for further details. A scheme of questionand-answer that would resemble an interrogation is to be avoided. The “truthful statement behaviour” of the IM, as the psychologists argued, is determined by their relationship to their guiding officer—if the IM does not trust the officer or is afraid of them, the quality and quantity of the information that is provided will be distorted by that. Therefore, the officer necessarily has to constantly focus his attention on the personality, attitudes, motives and life situation of the IM. In conspiratorial conversations, there is said to be a “unity of the process of the investigation and the result of the investigation,”31 which is why any form of suggestive questioning, threat or intimidation should always be avoided. The officer is supposed to serve under the “duty of courtesy” and should constantly observe the facial expressions, gestures, speech melody and bodily expressions of the IM as well as his own explicit and implicit messaging. Although the agent can never fully trust the IM and take their words for granted, this distrust should never be shown, because it would increase the “emotional distance” between them. At its very core, the practice of “relationship work” is essentially emotion centred. Feelings of affection or rejection, recognition or ignorance, fears, needs and motives have to be identified, anticipated and put under control by the guiding officer. Emotions are also the level where “operative measures” are supposed to be applied against the “hostile-negative” citizen, by trying to induce fear, jealousy, insecurity, distrust, anger and disappointment. The special focus on emotions in the work of the MfS was also recounted by Monika Haeger, who worked as an IM in opposition circles in East Berlin during the 1980s: The Stasi was also concerned with sensitivities. How do people feel? Are they sad, are they happy? Something like that was very important to the Stasi, of course. [The interviewer asks why that was so important for the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 234 M. WIESER MfS.] It’s very clear why it’s important to them. If I know where I can hit someone the most, where I can break someone, and that is mostly on a mental level, then I will do it.32 On a conceptual level, the manuals differentiate between the depth, consistency, content and direction of affects, feelings and emotions in the framework of Marxist-Leninist reflection theory. Roughly speaking, in this framework, feelings are described as a “mirror” of the relationship between the subject and its environment. Therefore, every human action supposedly includes some kind of affective component which steers the subject away from or drives it towards an object or situation which corresponds to a certain need or motive. In a practical context, this means that it is necessary to convince the IM not just on a rational level to cooperate with the secret service: they not only need to be convinced, but also be touched on an emotional level. The IM should not only know that they are on the right side of the fight against capitalism, they should also feel it. To achieve this goal, the psychologists of the MfS put a strong emphasis on the “education of the will” [“Willenserziehung”] and the “forming of attitudes” of the IM. From the perspective of the MfS, the agent was not a correctional officer or a drill sergeant, but fulfilled an educational and qualifying role. In order to perform this function, however, knowledge of the inner psychic dynamics, abilities and biography of the target person was considered as necessary. Before and during the meetings between the officer and the IM, a comprehensive “clarification of motives” had to be carried out in order to identify the dominant psychological forces and resistances on which the IM’s actions were based on. Motives such as selfishness, materialism, careerism and financial or material compensation (e.g. getting a better job position or a bigger apartment) were to be rejected, not only for moral reasons (because only the right “worldview” and the unconditional will to fight the class enemy were recognized as the right qualifications for cooperating with the MfS), but also for strategic reasons: if an IM worked only for money or other material compensations, it could be expected that they would end the relationship as soon as they got what they wanted (or upon realizing they will never get it), while others would try to make a “deal” from the information they have gathered. From the perspective of Operative Psychology, the interaction between the officer and the IM was not some kind of trade-off, but was supposed to consolidate the “will” of the IM and carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 235 their socialist world view. After all, the IM had to “recognize by themselves or be led to realize that their involvement is objectively necessary in order to solve the tasks of the MfS.”33 Through constant but sensitive influence, the officer’s ultimate goal is supposed to “win over” the IM as a “comrade” who would not just follow orders, but act independently as soon as any oppositional activities are observed. The conviction that the officer could actually “win over” the IM (and not force them against their will) can also be found in an interview that was conducted with Lieutenant General Gerhard Neiber, a graduate of the JHS and deputy of Erich Mielke from 1980 to 1989: Hats off to the IM. Greatest respect. They did a great job, but on the other hand they didn’t do more than a conscientious citizen should do according to the constitution of the GDR. They supported the security forces in their complicated work. And they made sacrifices. They did not indulge in any crimes in the name of the State Security or on behalf of the State Security. They did this, after all, after we had worked with them for a while and they had seen all the connections, to protect their fatherland.34 In order to strengthen the self-confidence and support the conviction of the IM to help make the socialist fatherland more secure, the tasks of the IM (e.g. collecting information, observing, and reporting on citizens, infiltrating groups, etc.) should be chosen according to their abilities and gradually increased in difficulty over time. Successful operations should be met with praise and, if necessary, with financial rewards. Failure should never be met with accusation or blame, but with helpful advice for the future, so as not to hurt the IM’s self-confidence. Criticism should always be directed at the behaviour, never at the personality, of the IM, and lead towards concrete alternatives for action in the future. In a booklet from 1985 titled as “Talk to each other, but how?”, the authors criticize the common “misbelief” which assumes that “the power of the argument works all by itself.” To truly convince somebody means “to encourage them to deal with something independently and purposefully,” not to refute them on the “warpath” of logical reasoning.35 An effective “handling of the arguments” never operates on the level of pure reasoning, but always takes the emotional evaluation of knowledge into account, which requires a comprehensive body of social skills, knowledge and experience on the side of the agent. The fascination with these carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 236 M. WIESER meticulous operative, almost psychotherapeutic “subtleties,” seems to have prevailed among some MfS employees even long after their work had ended. Major General Willi Opitz, former rector of the JHS from December 1985 to December 1989, used the following words to describe his memories of operative work during an interview conducted in 2002: Operative work, that was the crown of the work of the state security, because it was so interesting and versatile and very demanding. There are such operative subtleties, such little mosaics, they are hard to describe, one must have experienced and taken part in them. The operative life, […] it was so interesting […it] was really, it was fascinating.36 “Relationship Work” in the MFS---A Preliminary Definition In the following, I want to summarize the most outstanding characteristics of “relationship work,” as it was framed by the psychologists of the JHS. Building on that, I will outline some more general thoughts on how this relationship can be characterized from a perspective that combines considerations from psychology and political science in the last chapter of this essay. 1. The relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, as there is an unequal distribution of power and accessibility of information. The agent knows much more about the IM than the other way around. While the agent operates under the disguise of a prepared “legend” and only discloses his knowledge to his own superiors and colleagues, the IM who has been “won over” shows trust towards the guiding officer and passes on all observations that seem relevant. The officer is supposed to “educate” and “guide” the IM, who is supposed to become a “comrade” in the fight against capitalism, but not the other way around. 2. The relationship is characterized by a mutual dependency. Although power is unevenly distributed, the officer is also dependent on the IM, as the IM has (or might be able to acquire) information that the agent does not have access to. As the MfS based its system of mass surveillance on secret informants, it had a strong incentive to increase their numbers and efficiency, while many IM felt that they carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 237 were dependent on (or at least profited from) the support, protection or reward from the secret service. 3. The relationship is based on a strong emotional bond, a bond which would not only stabilize the contact for a long period of time and keep the flow of information going, but also establish a trustful “opening up” on the side of the IM. It is not supposed to be based on a “deal,” the exchange of goods or money, pressure or blackmailing, but their mutual recognition as fellow servants of and fighters for socialism. To achieve this goal, the officer is required to show a strong interest in affective processes: feelings of envy, helplessness, fear or anxiety are central to the planning of the recruitment interview and all steps that follow. The officer is primarily defined as an “educator” who is supposed to educate and raise the socialist “will” of the IM, so both of them are finally bound together by a shared hatred against the “class-enemy.” 4. The relationship is defined by its political function. While other institutionalized forms of interpersonal relations (e.g. therapist– patient, priest–layman, teacher–student, etc.) may share some of the characteristics just mentioned, the relationship between the guiding officer and the IM is fundamentally defined by its political purpose. The primacy of the political becomes apparent when we consider the fact that the psyche of the IM was only of interest for the guiding officer to get to know their weaknesses, fears and motives, and use this knowledge in his own interest. Furthermore, contacts were usually given up when they yielded too little useful information, with little or no consideration of the mental and social consequences for the IM. In reality, the interaction between IM and officers often might have looked very different from what the psychologists imagined as their model of “best practice.” It is well documented that the MfS did use threats and blackmailing, pressure and coercion as well as monetary and other compensations to acquire intelligence from IM all through its existence.37 Nevertheless, it seems like in many cases, an emotional bond between the IM and the guiding officer was eventually established. This bond, in its profound ambivalence, often prevailed long after the end of the GDR, as is exemplified in another section of the interview with Monika Haeger: carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 238 M. WIESER The Stasi said: We always have time for you. And they had time for me, day and night. When I was in a really bad mental crisis, they were there, they helped me. Or when I had difficulties, when I was sloppy somewhere with money, it happened sometimes, they also filled in for me, they didn’t let their comrade down. Those were mostly relatively small sums, it was always very relative. But they were always there for me. And they were actually a bit of a mother and father substitute.38 The opening of the archive of the MfS had severe consequences for those who had cooperated with the secret service. It was more than just the fear that their betrayal of friends, co-workers, lovers and family members would come to light. For many IM, the collapse of the MfS resulted in the loss of a relationship that—despite all the contradictions and ambivalences—had bound them to a father-like figure, a relationship that had sustained and tortured them over many years. There was no place for them to mourn and process this loss in public, as they were primarily perceived and presented as accomplices, not victims, of political persecution (with the exception of those who were minors). Tellingly, as was exemplified in the interview with Gerhard Neiber, it was the former agents who publicly declared their respect, solidarity and thankfulness to the former IM. In a reunited Germany, they were mostly presented as snitches and traitors. However adequate that moral judgement might be or might not, it certainly did not help the former IM in working through and resolving the emotional bond that once had been so important and frightening to them.39 “Relationship Work” as a Micro-Totalitarian Practice In the last part of this essay, I will outline some more general considerations concerning the “IM-work” of the MfS in the context of post-Stalinism, considerations which aim to combine the concept of totalitarianism with a psychological-historical perspective on interpersonal relations. The concept of totalitarianism has become commonplace in academia and everyday language, but its usefulness and limitations as a historiographic category in general as well as the designation of the GDR as a “totalitarian” state in particular have been the subject of many controversies.40 Historically, the concept came up in the middle of the 1920s carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 239 in Italy and soon became increasingly popular in the analysis and critique of a new type of political and social order that had emerged in Russia, Italy and Germany.41 Although the ideologies of Bolshevism, Italian Fascism and Nazism differed in many aspects from each other, their “totalitarian” fundament is what they were supposed to have in common: they all represented a new type of government that was not just supposed to protect and satisfy the needs of the rulers, but also transform society as a whole on the basis of this very ideology. Initially, Italian Fascists described their own political agenda as “totalitarian”, adopting a concept that was first coined by their critics.42 Soon, however, the concept was given a primarily negative connotation, as it was used to describe these modern dictatorships in contrast to “classic” despotism as well as liberal democracies. After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the discourse shifted somewhat: Nazi Germany and Japan became the primary example of totalitarian societies, while a designation of the Soviet Union (the most important ally of the US in the fight against Nazi Germany) as a totalitarian state suddenly became unpopular—at least for as long as the war went on.43 The scenery changed again after the end of World War II, when several authors emphasized the communalities of Nazism and Stalinism: Hannah Arendt’s “Elements of Totalitarianism” defined the omnipresence of ideological propaganda and terror, the endless violence and public demonstration of power as the core elements of totalitarian systems and described Nazism and Bolshevism as “variations of the same model.”44 Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski created a list of six elements which was supposed to define the key elements of a totalitarian society: a dogmatic ideology that encompasses all areas of life; a centrally organized and hierarchical party that accumulates all power in the state; a secret police that controlled and observed all parts of society; and a monopolization of mass communication, weapons and the control of the economy.45 Other aspects of totalitarianism were highlighted by many different authors in the following decades, such as Eric Voegelin, who described totalitarian regimes as “political religions,”46 or Ernst Nolte47 and Karl Bracher,48 who emphasized the fundamental differences between totalitarian societies and constitutional liberal democracies. Traditional theories of totalitarianism have been criticized for several reasons: as a historiographic category, the designation of a state as “totalitarian” implies both an analytic description and a moral judgement.49 This problem becomes apparent when we keep in mind the transformations that the concept underwent throughout the twentieth century, as well as the fact that political and social scientists from the Soviet carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 240 M. WIESER countries strongly rejected any supposed commonalities between socialism and Nazism. During the Cold War, the mere use (or rejection) of the concept often implied a positioning between the East and West. Furthermore, most theories of totalitarianism provided a static and binary description of totalitarian systems, which could not keep up with the transformations of power structures in post-Stalinist societies in Eastern Europe. Several authors have rejected the description of East Germany as a totalitarian state in the traditional sense, especially during the reign of Erich Honecker, and suggested alternative concepts, such as “consultative authoritarianism,” “welfare dictatorship” or “autalitarian” (a composite of authoritarian and totalitarian),50 to highlight the transformation of power structures that began after the death of Stalin. These critiques, coupled with a policy of détente between the East and West, resulted in a decline of theories of totalitarianism in the 1960s. Although the concept never completely disappeared in sociology, history and political science, it saw a new resurgence after the downfall of communism in the 1990s.51 With respect to this chapter’s focus, I am less interested in an evaluation or redefinition of the concept of totalitarianism than in a change of perspective, a perspective that focuses on the level of interpersonal relationships. All classical theories of totalitarianism define it as a certain style of governance, a distinctive and highly hierarchical organization of the state, the economy, the press and the juridical and executive systems. The “totalitarian,” from the perspective of political science and sociology, is usually described from the macro-perspective of either those who are directly in power, or from the perspective of the masses, who are described as the actors and victims of this type of governance. As important and insightful as this perspective from “above” certainly is, it also tends to blind out the personal, ambivalent emotional experiences, interactions and relationships between citizens who live within these societies. Whether we call them “totalitarian” or otherwise, there exists a “micro”-level “beneath” those areas and institutions which are directly under the control of the rulers, a level of day-to-day interactions between individuals, not masses, that is also affected by political suppression, persecution and violence, but in a different way. To focus on this level of interpersonal relationships, I suggest to highlight practices which are designed to preserve and protect the power of a specific class, party, or group and control the behaviour, feeling and thinking of individuals that are not a part of this class, party or group, and define these carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 241 practices as “micro-totalitarian.” Micro-totalitarian practices are not necessarily bound to dictatorships. Although the GDR might not have been a totalitarian state after the 1950s, as many authors argued, this does not mean that some totalitarian elements and practices could not prevail in the era of post-Stalinism—it might even not be too hard to find current examples of micro-totalitarian practices within states and institutions that claim to respect and protect democratic human rights in the West. The manuals of Operative Psychology provide a glimpse into what I interpret as an attempt to institutionalize, disseminate and enhance a micro-totalitarian practice, by creating an interpersonal bond that is supposed to be emotional, trusting, exclusive, clandestine, and lasting. The practice of IM-work is “totalitarian” in the sense that it knows no boundaries in its attempt to identify, analyse, transform, seduce, “educate” and “open up” its target—no information about the IM is regarded as too personal to not be included. It is to be differentiated from other forms of suppression or abuse, as this relationship is not established (at least not primarily) to fulfil the personal needs and motives of the suppressor, but as a means to a political end. Although this practice implements psychological and psychotherapeutic techniques to identify feelings, motivations, needs and conflicts, it is clearly not designed to help or support the interlocutor in a therapeutic sense, but to use and exploit this information. In the eyes of OP, the usefulness and truthfulness of the information provided by the IM is a direct function of their trust towards and bonding with the guiding officer. The relationship is violent, but not physically; it does not suppress in order to enforce obedience, but in order to conceal the imbalance of knowledge and power beneath a “friendly conversation,” to build up an attachment towards and identification with the oppressor. Remarkably, the former guiding officers also seemed to have become blind to the asymmetry of power when they remembered their former interaction with the IM: I have to say though, all during my activity in the MfS, I always worked with IM who were not forced to cooperate. There was an overlap of interests, to different degrees and in different areas. That’s how I saw it from my perspective. Later on, I had a different experience. I met an IM that I had guided, in a department store. He asked to have a conversation with me. During this conversation, he told me that he had cooperated out of completely different motifs and that he had been very anxious when he carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 242 M. WIESER came to our meetings. That’s why I say: From my subjective perspective, I was convinced that he had cooperated on a voluntary basis. Why I did not recognize that he had been afraid, I don’t know. […] I hadn’t noticed anything about that fear then. Nothing. Nothing at all.52 In contrast to the “macro”-practices that are traditionally referred to in theories of totalitarianism—terror, infiltration of governmental institutions, electoral fraud, mass propaganda, etc.—micro-totalitarian practices require an emotional bond between individuals that know each other on a personal level and interact for an extended period of time. From a Foucauldian perspective on the “economy of power,” the disadvantage of these practices is that they require much more resources, time, knowledge and psychological abilities than mass propaganda or single acts of physical violence. It was not without a reason that there existed a whole institution at the JHS that was dedicated to teach and refine these skills. Their advantage, however, lies in their invisibility and subtlety, their potential in facilitating much more in-depth information over a longer period of time, as well as the “education” and “conversion” of former “enemies” to “comrades”. From this perspective, the rise of the numbers of IM through the history of the GDR as well as the increase of their importance for the MfS can be interpreted as a symptom of the transformation of how political power was exerted—a shift from macro- to micro-totalitarian techniques of power. The concept of a “micro-totalitarian” practice that is outlined here can be interpreted as a historical-psychological contribution to our understanding of new forms of social interactions that emerged in authoritarian societies and institutions in the twentieth century. So far, the classical examples of psychological perspectives on authoritarianism—the famous studies on “the Authoritarian Personality,” by Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and others,53 Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience54 and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment55 —focused on the dynamics and structure of the authoritarian (or obedient) personality, or the characteristics of a specific situation and its distribution of roles, to identify the causes of authoritarian (or obedient) thinking and behaviour. As I have tried to show, the identification of the right situation (e.g. when and how to contact a citizen) and personality (e.g. to find the IM most suitable for a specific task) were very important for the secret service—but these tasks represented only components of a practice carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 243 that aimed to use them for the creation of a very specific kind of interpersonal relationship. Micro-totalitarian practices represent a distinct area of political practice and knowledge, beyond the authoritarian personality or situation, but our knowledge about these practices is still only rudimentary today. While a closer look on the archived materials of Operative Psychology might help us to get to know more about these practices in the future, there is at least one observation that we can hold on to for now: if there were any kind of totalitarian structures or elements in the GDR, they were not only to be found in the headquarters of the socialist party or the Secret Service, but in the thousands of hidden conspiratorial apartments all over the GDR. Notes 1. The “secret speech” was first printed in English in the New York Times and The Observer in June 1956 and was later published in Nikita Khrushchev, The Crimes of the Stalin Era; Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: The New Leader, 1962). 2. Alexander Sinowjew, Homo sovieticus (Zürich: Diogenes), 267. Translated by author. 3. The most comprehensive comparison between secret services of different states of the Soviet Union can be found in Łukasz Kamiński, Krzysztof Persak and Jens Gieseke, eds., Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa 1944–1991 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 4. “Operative” was (and is) a common term for all kinds of intelligence activities, such as “operative identity checks” to identify suspected enemies, or “operative” measures that were taken to fight them. “Operative Psychology” was never officially used as a term outside of the JHS, which is why it only came to public knowledge after the archives of the MfS were opened up. 5. Günter Förster, Die juristische Hochschule des MfS (Berlin: BStU, 1996). 6. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Berlin: BStU, 1996), 106. This number also includes border officials, technicians, armed personnel, archivists, office workers as well as officers who worked “in the field.” 7. Förster, Die juristische Hochschule, 10 and 16. 8. Ibid., 34–38. 9. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 48. 10. Günter Förster, Die Dissertationen an der “Juristischen Hochschule” des MfS. Eine annotierte Bibliographie (Berlin: BStU, 1994). carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 244 M. WIESER 11. Günter Förster, Bibliographie der Diplomarbeiten und Abschlußarbeiten an der Hochschule des MfS (Berlin: BStU, 1998). 12. On the history and application of techniques of “Disintegration” or “Decomposition” (in German: “Zersetzen”) cf. Sandra Pingel-Schliemann, Zersetzen. Strategie einer Diktatur (Berlin: Robert-HavemannGesellschaft, 2002). 13. Holger Richter, Die Operative Psychologie des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, 2012). 14. Cay Dobberke, “Der Agentenlehrer war schlecht informiert,” Neue Zeit 49, no. 109 (May 12, 1993), 19; Marko Martin, “Seelenkunde als Mittel der seelischen Unterdrückung,” Berliner Zeitung 49, no. 111 (May 13, 1993), 29; Michael Beeskow, “Der Stasi-Angriff zielte auf das Vertrauen,” Neue Zeit 49, no. 290 (December 13, 1993), 2; Rosemarie Stein, “Vertrauen gewinnen und zersetzen. Operative Psychologie — Perversion einer Wissenschaft,” Der Tagesspiegel 14, no. 771 (December 19, 1993), 23; and Bernd Mosebach, “Die Stasi und ihr ‘Kampf um die Seelen’,” Märkische Allgemeine 49, no. 7 (January 10, 1994), 18. 15. Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt, Der Schwarze Kasten, film (Berlin: Max Film, 1992). 16. Klaus Behnke and Jürgen Fuchs, eds., Zersetzung der Seele. Psychologie und Psychiatrie im Dienste der Staatssicherheit (Hamburg: Rotbuch, 1995). 17. Andreas Maercker and Susanne Guski-Leinwand, “Psychologists’ Involvement in Repressive ‘Stasi’ Secret Police Activities in Former East Germany,” International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation 7, no. 2 (2018), 107–119; Moritz Michels and Martin Wieser, “From Hohenschönhausen to Guantanamo Bay: Psychology’s Role in the Secret Services of the GDR and the United States,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 54, no. 1 (2018), 43–61. 18. “Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 Zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung operativer Vorgänge (OV),” BStU, MfS, 1976, doc. no. 3234. 19. cf. Pingel-Schliemann, Zersetzen. 20. Siegfried Suckut, ed., Das Wörterbuch der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1993), 464. 21. One of the few critical perspectives on the imagined omnipotence and ubiquity of techniques of “disintegration” as well as the “psychologization” of the methods of the MfS can be found in Jens Gieseke, “‘Zersetzung’—Interpretationen und Kontroversen der StasiHistoriografie am Beispiel einer geheimdienstlichen Methode,” in Die Überlieferung der Diktaturen, eds. Agnes Bensussan, Dorota Dakowska, and Nicolas Beaupré (Essen: Klartext, 2004), 149–172. 22. For a media-theoretical analysis of the figure of the “observant” in the MfS cf. Sophia Gräfe, “Die Figur des Beobachters im Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,” in Medien der Bürokratie, eds., Friedrich Balke, Joseph Vogl, and Bernhard Siegert (München: Fink, 2016), 77–86. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 10 “TALK TO EACH OTHER—BUT HOW?” … 245 23. Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Die inoffiziellen Mitarbeiter (Berlin: BStU, 2008), 36. 24. Amm, Die Kontaktierung des IM-Kandidaten, BStU, MfS, JHS, 1985, doc. no. o001-735, 9–19, 4. 25. Ibid., 47. 26. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam, Zur Anwendung psychologischer Aspekte der Gesprächsführung bei Ermittlungen durch hauptamtliche Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter. BStU, JHS, MfS, doc. no. 23757, 26. 27. Amm, Die Kontaktierung, 42. 28. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam, Die Gewinnung inoffizieller Mitarbeiter und ihre psychologischen Bedingungen. Kapitel 5. Die Werbung des Kandidaten. BStU, MfS, JHS, 1974, doc. no. 160- VVS 31/74V, 86. 29. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam, Miteinander reden — aber wie…? Psychologische und methodische Aspekte der Gestaltung schwieriger Gespräche. BStU, MfS, JHS, 1986, doc. no. 12334, 8. 30. Amm, Die Kontaktierung, 37. 31. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam, Einige Grundfragen der Durchführung von Ermittlungen, insbesondere der Gesprächsführung mit Auskunftspersonen. BStU, MfS, JHS, 1984, doc. no. 23760, 30. 32. Peter Wensierski, Im Dienst Der Stasi, film (Berlin: Rundfunk BerlinBrandenburg, 2017), 09:04-09:33. All interview excerpts are translated by the author. 33. Amm, Die Kontaktierung, 17. 34. Christian Klemke and Jan Lorenzen, Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit — Alltag Einer Behörde, DVD (Berlin: Salzgeber & Co, 2003), 22:5523:39. 35. Juristische Hochschule, Miteinander reden, 8. 36. Klemke and Lorenzen, Alltag einer Behörde, 24:03-24:40. 37. Cf. Müller-Enbergs, Die Inoffiziellen Mitarbeiter, 44–45; Karsten Dümmel, Motive, Motivketten und Kriterien für die Mitarbeit, in Was war die Stasi? Einblicke in das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR, eds. Karsten Dümmel and Melanie Piepenschneider, 5th ed. (Berlin: KonradAdenauer Stiftung, 2014), 106–109. 38. Peter Wensierski, Im Dienste der Stasi, 27:57-28:30. 39. A biographical and psychoanalytical account of former IM that reveals this profound ambivalence can be found in Ingrid Kerz-Rühling and Tomas Plänkers, Verräter oder Verführte. Eine psychoanalytische Untersuchung Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter der Stasi (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2004). 40. Cf. Sigrid Meuschel, “Überlegungen zu einer Herrschafts- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR 19, no. 1 (1993), 5–14; Eckhard Jesse, “War die DDR totalitär?” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B40 (1994), 12–23; Ralph Jessen, “DDR-Geschichte und Totalitarismustheorie,” in Berliner Debatte INITIAL 4/5 (1995), carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 246 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. M. WIESER 17–24; Konrad Jarausch, “Realer Sozialismus als Fürsorgediktatur. Zur begrifflichen Einordnung der DDR,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B20 (1998), 33–46. Cf. Eckhard Jesse, “Die Totalitarismusforschung im Streit der Meinungen,” in Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckhard Jesse, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für polit. Bildung, 1999), 9–41. Jens Petersen, “Die Entstehung des Totalitarismusbegriffs in Italien,” in Totalitarismus. Ein Studien-Reader zur Herrschaftsanalyse moderner Diktaturen, ed. Manfred Funke (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1978), 105–128. Cf. Klaus Hildebrand, “Stufen der Totalitarismus-Forschung,” in Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckhard Jesse, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für polit. Bildung, 1999), 70–94. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, new ed. (San Diego, New York, and London: Harvest, 1979), xxx. Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, eds., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen, ed. Peter Opitz, 2nd ed. (München: Fink, 1996). Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. Action francaise – Italienischer Faschismus – Nationalsozialismus (München: Piper, 1963). Karl Bracher, Zeitgeschichtliche Kontroversen: um Faschismus, Totalitarismus, Demokratie (München: Piper, 1976). Arnold Sywottek, “‘Stalinismus’ und ‘Totalitarismus’ in der DDR Geschichte,” deutsche studien 30, no. 117/118 (1993), 25–39. Cf. Christian Ludz, Parteielite im Wandel. Funktionsaufbau, Sozialstruktur und Ideologie der SED-Parteiführung, 3rd ed. (Wiesbaden: Springer, 1968); Jarausch, Realer Sozialismus als Fürsorgediktatur; Jesse, War die DDR totalitär? Achim Siegel, “Die Konjunkturen des Totalitarismuskonzepts in der Kommunismusforschung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B20 (1998), 19–31. Major Glewe [Pseydonym], “Auch mir wird ja unterstellt, daß ich Morde geplant hätte…,” in Plötzlich war alles ganz anders. Deutsche Lebenswege im Umbruch, ed. Olaf Georg Klein (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994), 82–103, here 89–90. Translated by author. Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority. An Experimental View (London: Tavistock, 1974). Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo, “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison,” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973), 69–97. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de CHAPTER 11 A New Look for Psychology: Reading the Political Unconscious from the Authoritarian Personality to Implicit Bias Michael Pettit It is commonplace to assert that mind reading regained legitimacy as a pursuit for scientific psychologists in the mid-1950s.1 After several decades in exile during the supposed behaviourist heyday, the cognitive revolution allowed psychologists to speak of mental representations and processes as genuine objects amenable to systematic, scientific investigation instead of fruitless speculation. The new respectability granted to the mind owed a tremendous debt to the cyberneticians’ concept of information as a universal medium and the electronic computer as a live metaphor for human thinking.2 However, the current historiography of the cognitive revolution is incomplete if not misleading. Textbooks tend to narrate the discipline’s history as a succession of “-isms” with the consensus position arguing cognitivism represented a revolt against the behaviourism M. Pettit (B) York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: mpettit@yorku.ca © The Author(s) 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6_11 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 247 248 M. PETTIT of Clark Hull, E. C. Tolman and B. F. Skinner. According to this version of events, the revolution centred on the cognitivist rejection of the behaviourists’ denial of mental states.3 This consensus continues to animate more sophisticated, archivally driven research which tends to see cognitive science replacing a more narrowly disciplinary behaviourism. Here, the revolution begins in 1956 with a pair of interdisciplinary conferences bringing together psychologists, linguists and computer scientists. Cognitivism originated in the pure science field of perception and only became part of the independent areas of social and clinical psychology in the 1980s.4 These accounts remain steadfast in their focus on psychology as an academic, experimental science. Such a historical narrative requires the displacement, if not erasure, of the late 1940s New Look movement from the history of psychology. When not neglected entirely, its contributions get resigned to the cultural background for the true cognitive revolution. However, a serious consideration of this movement helps us better understand precisely what aspects of mind reading did and did not return to psychology in the second half of the twentieth century. There is a long line of criticisms which lament how cognitivism’s information processing model of thinking neglects the affective, the cultural and the unconscious. By revisiting New Look, we can see how this neglect was not due to an oversight or accident, but rather consisted in a disciplinary choice with a political history. In this chapter, I review the rise and fall of the New Look movement. Attending to the live possibilities it presented the discipline, I offer a different political history of the cognitive revolution. One of the unfinished projects of the psychological century was the development of reliable, objective, scientific technologies for reading the unconscious mind. Psychologists have long wanted to elicit and measure from individuals that which they either did not fully understand themselves or did not want to reveal to inquiring experts. Such a project took on a new tenor at mid-century as American psychologists sought to explain the actions of ordinary persons living in totalitarian regimes. In the aftermath of World War II, psychologists began talking about a new approach in their discipline, a New Look. Closely associated in historical memory with the Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner (1915–2016), the movement was polyvalent and multi-sited. It took inspiration from the reorganization of psychology demanded by wartime mobilization, such as clinical psychologists interested in diagnosing personality disorders and social psychologists studying ideology, morale and propaganda in the age carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 249 of total war and catastrophe. In 1945, many psychologists did not wish to return to the older hierarchies placing perceptual research over clinical and social application. For them, New Look represented the demand for a new perceptual psychology fit for the catastrophic age they had just experienced. What became known as the cognitive revolution very much began in these applied areas of clinical and social psychology as much as in cybernetic analysis of human–machine couplings. In the New Look movement, neobehaviourists, namely Tolman, served as allies, supporters and patrons of this new psychology rather than opponents. The New Lookers drew on his purposeful behaviourism as a potent resource in their attack on an older, asocial perceptual psychology. The alliance between Harvard psychologists Jerome Bruner and George A. Miller is often depicted as the core of the cognitive revolution. Their creation of the Center for Cognitive Studies foregrounds their own achievement and vision and places developments at Harvard at the centre of the story. However, in actuality, early cognitivism was more geographically and politically heterogeneous. Cognitive science was one of the longer-lasting outcomes of what historian Michael Denning calls “the cultural front,” the mobilizing of American cultural productions around anti-Fascist aesthetics between 1936 and 1948. Such an interpretation allows us to re-centre the contributions of Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1908–1958). Her achievements are often overshadowed by a series of powerful men, her husband Egon Brunswik, her collaborator Theodor Adorno and her east coast counterpart Bruner. However, Frenkel-Brunswik’s life and contributions exemplify this alternative origin story centred on émigré intellectuals, left-wing politics and mobilizing the tools of perceptual psychology to achieve applied clinical and political ends. The Psychological Front and the Post-war Reconstruction of Psychology World War II served as one of the transformative events for the discipline of psychology. It went from a narrowly scientific discipline with a carefully delineated and subservient applied dimension to a mass profession focused on the provision of health care. The most notable aspect of this transformation was the introduction of psychologists into Veterans Administration hospitals to provide mental assessments and the resulting training programmes for clinical psychologists. However, numerous branches of psychology mobilized their talents to contribute to the war carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 250 M. PETTIT effort. For example, perceptual psychologists helped develop new signal detection technologies. Social psychologists studied morale, the diffusion of rumours and propaganda.5 In the aftermath, many younger psychologists voiced their concerns about returning to the pre-war status quo. The Great Depression had severely constrained the number of academic positions available to young psychologists. The shortage drove many recent PhDs into applied fields whose social contributions they ultimately found rewarding.6 After the war, they did not wish to replicate the older hierarchy of pure, experimental psychology held above the applied fields of clinical, industrial and social psychology. In a 1950 letter printed in American Psychologist, Arkansas psychologist Gabriel Elias reported on his observations of the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting, praising the discipline’s “New Look.”7 Self-identifying as a clinical psychologist, Elias praised the “progressivism” of the New Look where applied psychologists no longer took a subservient role in their discipline. David Krech (1909–1977) numbered among the most eloquent advocates of not returning to pre-war ways. He feared peace would fission the “experimental” and “professional” branches of the discipline, impoverishing both in the process.8 In particular, Krech challenged the old hierarchy where perceptual psychology constituted “fundamental” research which then got applied to the domains of clinical, social and personality psychology. His polemics criticized both rat psychologists more adept at handling rodents than their co-specifics and perceptual psychologists in love with memorization and forgetting of nonsense syllables. Instead of returning to pre-war ways, he urged that “‘pure’ experimental work can be done with material that is ‘practically’ important.”9 He encouraged scientists to study basic psychological processes using socially relevant situations. Moreover, if the pre-war leaders seemed content in keeping the domains of perception, motivation and behaviour separate, the new psychology insisted on their fusion. Krech called this approach New Look. He appropriated the term from popular culture. In 1947, Life Magazine coined the term with reference to French fashion designer Christian Dior’s bold Corolle Line. His use of excess fabric, womanly contours and non-functional hats signified an end to wartime austerity.10 The term captures a sense of possibility, new direction and renewal in the wake of global devastation. Krech first used it in a psychological context in the introductory manifesto for a special issue of The Journal of Personality he edited in 1949. The issue as a whole functioned as a clarion call for the reorganization of psychology, and he carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 251 outlined what he understood as a “complete” psychological theory as opposed to a series of proliferating domain-specific “theorettes.” In his “Notes Toward a Psychological Theory,” Krech listed the following scientists as exemplars of the New Look approach: Jerome Bruner, Gardner Murphy, George Klein, Heinz Werner, David McClelland, Leo Postman, Herman Witkin, Muzafer Sherif, Henry Gleitman, Julian Hochberg and Else Frenkel-Brunswik. His list reads as eclectic if odd in retrospect. His chorus of voices does not fit easily into existing narratives about historical groupings in the discipline. It freely intermingles scientists from disparate intellectual traditions, including the second generation of Gestalt psychologists (e.g. Werner, Witkin, Gleitman, Hochberg), and pioneering social psychologists (e.g. Murphy, Sherif, Frenkel-Brunswik), and those later associated with the cognitive revolution (e.g. Bruner, Postman). Most importantly, Krech’s new, complete psychological theory rejected as a false dichotomy the distinction between cognition and emotion. These did not represent different, interacting processes or functions. He argued “there can be no behaviour which is not at one and the same time ‘cognitive’ and ‘emotional.’”11 The research of the New Lookers would hold together the perceptual, the behavioural and the affective because they examined human thought and action in socially and clinically relevant situations. To understand the particularities of Krech’s list and his vision for the movement, it helps to better understand his own biography. Born Isidore Krechevsky, he received his initial scientific training under the neuropsychologist Karl Lashley (1890–1958) in a research programme focused on the relationship between brain structures and learning patterns in rats. In Depression-era Chicago, Krechevsky became radicalized and joined New America in 1935, “an avowed Marxist revolutionary organization”—but a “self-consciously indigenous” one whose “members took an exceedingly dim view of the Communist Party and of the USSR.”12 Inspired by his involvement in New America, Krechevsky began organizing his fellow psychologists like the labourers he valorized.13 In 1936, he led the creation of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Fearful of the popular rise of anti-Semitism, he changed his name to Krech around this time. His work shifted from the neurology of rats to social psychology, or rather what Krech tellingly called “the socialization of perceptual theory.”14 In other words, Krech articulated a vision of psychology which might be termed “experimenting from the left.” In a wide-ranging analysis of carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 252 M. PETTIT the literature, film and art of the 1930s, historian Michael Denning reevaluated the impact of the Popular Front on American culture, arguing that it had a deeper influence than traditionally thought. It was a historical bloc with a political aesthetics extending beyond agitprop. Its members included émigré intellectuals and artists fleeing the Nazi seizure of power alongside the proletarian children of European immigrants. These individuals organized themselves into insurgent unions and represented the radical wing of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, pushing its politics leftward. 1936 served as a watershed year. The victory of the insurgent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in Flint and Akron led to massive “sit down” labour action across the country. Both Spain and France elected Popular Front governments in the first half of 1936. Indeed, Franco’s actions against the Spanish Republicans served as a rallying point in the United States.15 By 1936, fellow travellers rather than hard-line members of the Communist Party were the rank and file. “The heart of the Popular Front as a social movement lay among those who were non-Communist socialists and independent leftists, working with Communists and with liberals, but marking out a culture that was neither the Party nor a liberal New Deal culture.”16 In other words, the Cultural Front united liberals, democratic socialists and Communists and generated a mass culture (through radio, film, magazines) with a cluster of themes and aesthetic preferences, a collection of cultural practices and forms which literary historian Alan Wald calls “writing from the Left.”17 Theirs was a decidedly anti-Fascist aesthetic, Fascism being what they associated with the corrupting influence of monopolistic corporations. They venerated the working class. Finally, the Cultural Front pushed liberal Democrats towards anti-racist policies. Alongside its role in the arts documented by Denning, the Cultural Front had a parallel impact on the organization and research agenda of the social sciences. In its early years, SPSSI was a radical activist organization. Its own founding members included those psychologists pushed to applied research due to often precarious employment in the university system. These psychologists publicly allied themselves with the Republican forces in Spain and striking worker at home.18 The alliance between radicals and liberals in the fight against Fascism was only tightened by their wartime mobilization, and this experience shaped their demands for the kind of science they wanted from the peace. Denning’s analysis of American cultural production is crucial because the new psychology described by Krech was not simply pouring an already existing practice carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 253 into new organizational forms. Instead, the encounter with the Popular Front changed the very questions psychologists asked and how they arranged their existing laboratory equipment to answer this new set of questions. Much like Cultural Front aesthetics, this new way of doing psychology between 1936 and 1950 then quickly went underground following the Red Scare of the early Cold War. Experimenting from the Left Prior to 1935, social psychology and perceptual psychology were held apart as separate endeavours. Perceptual psychology involved experiments on the psychophysics of the sensory organs and their mental representation. It assumed a universal human subject, although in practice data was derived from highly trained, educated, white men.19 In contrast, American social psychology became synonymous with the problem of social control in a settler, immigrant society. Research in this area consisted in speculation about the character of different, often racialized, groups. Social psychologists of the interwar period organized these groups into hierarchies, turning to the controversial results of the then newly formulated measure of intelligence as a sorting mechanism.20 A new synthesis took hold amid the Great Depression. At Columbia University, Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988), an émigré from Turkey, took a classic perceptual phenomenon and showed how its very manifestation changed under social influence. The autokinetic effect, that a stationary light in a darkened room with appear to move, was well known to psychologists. Sherif’s intervention consisted in demonstrating how suggestions from other people could alter how an experimental subject perceived the direction and nature of the movement. By having participants perform the experiment both individually and in small groups, Sherif showed how the presence of other people altered one’s judgements. Social pressure influenced the experience of a socially irrelevant stimulus.21 His successful demonstration of the influence of social circumstances over basic perceptual processes soon spread. For example, as a graduate student in Harvard’s Psychological Clinic, R. Nevitt Sanford conducted a series of experiments on how hunger affected human perception, a topic with decided social resonance among the deprivations of the Depression.22 Advocates of the New Look took up these Depression-era studies and gave their mode of inquiry unprecedented visibility in the immediate post-war years. A common commitment to integrating the disparate carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 254 M. PETTIT areas of perception, learning and motivation into a new psychology held together the New Lookers. However, they differed on what aspect of the synthesis deserved the most attention. Frenkel-Brunswik distinguished between “perception-centred” and “personality-centred” approaches to New Look.23 The perception-centred approach, exemplified by Bruner, represented a critique of classic perception research from the standpoint of social psychology. It argued against a long-held assumption of human universality when it came to basic cognitive processes. Instead, Bruner and his associates demonstrated that individual differences when it came to learning and motivation could alter what was perceivable. The personalitycentred approach, exemplified by Frenkel-Brunswik herself, redeployed existing perceptual apparatus to serve as diagnostic tools for individual personality traits and psychopathologies. In the late 1940s, Bruner first made his reputation for an experiment examining “value and need as organizing factors in perception.” There, he and his co-author Cecile Goodman identified two determinants of perception—the autochthonous (the physiological properties of the sensory and nervous sensory systems) and the behavioural (adaptive functions which included both the laws of learning and psychodynamic personality traits). Perceptual psychology tended to focus exclusively on the former at the expense of the latter. Bruner and Goodman open their article by rejecting the universalist, a-cultural assumptions of prior perceptual theory where the human observer served as “a passive recording instrument of rather complex design.”24 Treating the human machinery as indifferent and interchangeable risked neglecting how individual motivations shaped basic perceptual processes. For Bruner and Goodman, these individual differences derived from the participant’s lived experience rather than the body’s inborn physiological capacity. They sought to demonstrate the organism’s selective, adaptive and functionally relevant perception “in a world of more or less ambiguously organized sensory stimuli.”25 Despite its embeddedness in these technical, seemingly esoteric, disciplinary disputes, the experiment attracted considerable interest. Indeed, it made national headlines even before it was published.26 Here, the content of the stimuli mattered. Their study focused on how two groups of children (one rich, the other poor) perceived the size of coins differently due to their class background. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 255 Indeed, Bruner’s late 1940s perception-centred approach served a double political intervention. On one level, Bruner presented an empirical account of ideology written in the American vernacular of functionalism. His first New Look article was an anti-Fascist experiment on how the embodiment of class channels perception itself. What purpose does the perceptual system fulfil in preserving not only the organism as a biological entity, but also the person as a psychological being? Perception functions to channel information threatening to personal identity. The individual holds a consistent (even rigid) world view tied to their identity, and perception literally filters data derived from reality to sustain it. In important respects, Bruner’s perception-centred approach had more to do with the small-p politics of academic institutions than the geopolitics of Harvard. Bruner received a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941, mentored by the personality psychologist Gordon W. Allport. In the late 1930s, the psychology department at Harvard split between two camps: the biotropic group led by E. G. Boring and organized around the Psychological Laboratory and the sociotropic group led by Henry A. Murray and organized around the Psychological Clinic. In 1946, the sociotropic group (Murray, Gordon Allport, Bruner) split from the department to help form the Department of Social Relations, a new interdisciplinary programme in combination with faculty drawn from anthropology and sociology. A core member of the Social Relations cluster, Bruner argued that human perception was too important a topic to leave to the perceptual psychologists. His 1940s publications repeatedly make the case that perception as an object of study and the laboratory as an investigatory space belong as much to the new area of Social Relations as it did to the old guard in the Department of Psychology.27 This local dimension is most apparent in Bruner and Goodman’s 1947 article on “value and need as organizing factors.” Its conclusion served as a rallying cry against the then current allocation of laboratory resources at Harvard. “For too long now, perception has been virtually the exclusive domain of the Experimental psychologists with a capital E. If we are to reach an understanding of the way in which perception works in everyday life, we social psychologists and students of personality will have to join with the experimental psychologists and reexplore much of this ancient field of perception whose laws for too long have been taken for granted.”28 An eclectic range of psychoanalytic references pervaded Bruner’s New Look articles. He made carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 256 M. PETTIT little distinction among Freudian, Jungian or neo-Freudian schools, focusing instead on their common ground, their common gift, to American experimental psychology. Bruner’s attempt to transform perceptual theory by integrating variables from psychodynamic personality theory remains the bestremembered example of the New Look’s work, but at the University of California at Berkeley there flourished a distinct but complimentary approach. The west coast “personality-centred” approach led by Elise Frenkel-Brunswik flourished in the same anti-Fascist political context provided by the Cultural Front, but developed in a distinct institutional niche with its own particular demands. Frenkel-Brunswik shared with Bruner and his Harvard associates an interest in repurposing the ready-at-hand equipment of the perception laboratory into projective devices for probing hidden, psychic depths. However, her interests centred on using said equipment in the service of clinical diagnosis. Her contribution to the 1949 special issue of The Journal of Personality focused on her recent work adapting the kinds of ambiguous figures made famous by Gestalt psychologists to unlock the nature of authoritarianism and prejudice, human traits which had repeatedly disrupted her life. Perennial uncertainty played a crucial role in Frenkel-Brunswik’s both personal and intellectual biography. In her childhood, her Jewish family moved from Poland to Austria to avoid the pogroms. She received her academic training at the University of Vienna, studying under and later working alongside Karl and Charlotte Bühler. In addition to her training in psychology, she underwent psychoanalysis twice and participated in the activity of the Vienne Circle of logical positivists. Following the Anschluss in 1938, she fled to the United States, where she would soon marry fellow Viennese psychologist Egon Brunswik. Fortuitously, the eminent neobehaviourist E. C. Tolman had spent his sabbatical year in Vienna and found he had much in common with Brunswik’s probabilistic functionalism. Subsequently, Tolman helped secure a position at Berkeley for his collaborator Brunswik. However, anti-nepotism rules prevented Frenkel-Brunswik herself from receiving a faculty appointment. Instead, she worked as a researcher for the Institute of Child Welfare. In 1945, Berkeley’s Institute for Social Research received a considerable grant from the American Jewish Committee to study the pressing problem of anti-Semitism as an ideology. Frenkel-Brunswik quickly joined this project, officially co-directed by the social psychologist N. Sanford Nevitt and the sociologist-in-exile Theodor Adorno.29 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 257 At Berkeley, Frenkel-Brunswik combined these traditions, pioneering the deployment of Gestalt images for psychoanalytic ends. However, the aim was not the diagnosis of individual psychopathology. Echoing the politics of the Popular Front, she turned projective techniques into a psychological tool for identifying Fascist (or authoritarian) tendencies hidden in the population. She understood the prejudiced weren’t just biased in their attitudes and behaviours towards particular groups. Instead, prejudice is a symptom of deeper cognitive deficiencies (and vice versa). “Intolerance to ambiguity” lay at the heart of Frenkel-Brunswik’s personality-centred vision. She argued that the prejudiced were cognitively different. At their core, the prejudiced are intolerant of uncertainty. They recoiled at qualified statements. Developmentally, she saw the psychologically and politically healthy individual as capable of perceiving their parents in both a negative and positive light rather than in terms of moral absolutes. The prejudiced were disinclined to think in terms of probability. When it came to problem-solving, they could not abandon the established mental set or framework, even after it had lost its appropriateness to the situation at hand. She proposed a simple test to diagnose this authoritarian syndrome. Frenkel-Brunswik connected this moral ambivalence in emotional relationships to the perceptual ambiguity which fascinated the Gestalt psychologists. At the time, ambiguous images served as a key apparatus in both Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis. Figures like Rubin’s figure-ground reversal demonstrated the role of the perceiver in organizing sensory information. Ambiguous figures like the Rorschach ink blots served as stimuli onto which the patient projected associations in psychoanalysis. Frenkel-Brunswik’s intervention was to suggest that the Gestalt imagery could be used for similar diagnostic purposes.30 As part of what she called her “experiments on perceptual ambiguity,” Frenkel-Brunswik turned to a type of stimuli supposedly devoid of any social or emotional connotation to see if such materials could function as a diagnostic tool for the rigid mentality that interested her. Using lower middle-class children who scored on the extreme ends of the ethnic prejudice scale, she presented them with a sequence of images where a drawing of a dog gradually transitioned into that of a cat. The sequence meant to capture the Gestalt switch in concrete, material form. The highly prejudiced group held onto the original perceptual object (the dog) long after its features had transmogrified into those of a cat. Frenkel-Brunswik argued this exhibited in a clinical setting a reluctance to surrender one’s preconceived judgements in the light of new empirical evidence. These carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 258 M. PETTIT individuals demonstrated a reluctance to think in terms of probabilities. Rather than accepting a healthy level of chance, the psychologically rigid person clings to the definite and the safe. Despite her own institutional marginality, Frenkel-Brunswik’s synthesis generated one of the productive research programmes of the post-war era as psychologists with varying political orientations sought to replicate her tentative findings. By and large, independent teams failed to detect a stable correlation between rigidity of thought and ethnocentrism.31 In developing her typology of tolerance of ambiguity, FrenkelBrunswik repeatedly cited the precedent of Erich Jaensch (1883–1940). In 1938, the year she emigrated to America following the Anschluss, the German psychologist proposed the existence of two personality types based on a series of perceptual tests: a rigid, rule-bent J-type and a loose, malleable S-type. Frenkel-Brunswik’s citation was strategic, for Jaensch ranked among those “at the forefront when it came to assigning psychology a role as a buttress to Nazi policies.”32 His highly politicized personality theory championed the clear-minded J-type and condemned the waffling liberalism of the S-type. Later commentators noted the irony of American psychologists retaining Jaensch’s schema while inverting its valuation.33 However, this was not a serendipitous discovery by a later generation. Frenkel-Brunswick was acutely aware of Jaensch’s political commitments, readily addressing them in her original article. In certain respects, Frenkel-Brunswik’s original “intolerance of ambiguity” paper adheres to the genre norms of the post-war social scientific report. In other regards, it flouts them. First and foremost, it is a highly speculative document. For example, Frenkel-Brunswik notes how she never secured statistically significant results for her chief construct. How are we to read a Jewish émigré self-consciously appropriating the techniques and theories of a leading Nazi ideologue? What were the cultural politics of such a move? Rather than an earnest example of empirically driven science, her article is better read as a playful inversion, if not an outright parody, of Nazi typologies. Hers is a call to recast the politics which had catastrophically disrupted her life. This act of subversion, embedded in a canonical work of social science, represented the culmination of the Cultural Front’s impact on psychology and the clearest manifestation of what experimenting from the left might entail. Whether the east coast or west coast variant, certain key features held the New Look together. Rather than a revolt against behaviourism, they brought insights from learning theory and psychoanalysis to reorient the carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 259 study of perception. Their work centred on how the organism develops certain self-motivated patterns of perception in the face of an overwhelming excess of complex and ambiguous stimuli. This emphasis on how the human organism manages or processes ambiguous information became the defining feature of the cognitive science that followed. The Red Scare and the Cooling of Cognition The erasure of the New Look’s contributions from the cognitive revolution owed much to America’s lost appetite for Cultural Front aesthetics, which largely dissipated by 1948.34 Events both international and domestic contributed to waning support for this alternative vision of American society. Domestically, support peaked with Henry Wallace’s unsuccessful 1948 presidential bid on the Progressive Party ticket and his attempt to keep alive the radical potential of the New Deal. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convened a series of hearings to investigate the supposed Communist infiltration of Hollywood and the entertainment industry. International tensions mounted in February 1948 when the Soviet-backed Communist Party staged a coup in Czechoslovakia, ending the last remaining democracy in Eastern Europe. In response, the United States launched the Marshall Plan in April of that year in the hopes of reconstructing European countries along democratic and capitalist lines.35 The mounting Cold War effectively divided and dispersed the members of the New Look movement. The Red Scare hit the Berkeley campus particularly hard. As the Journal of Personality special issue went to press in 1949, the University of California president Robert Gordon Sproul proposed a loyalty oath which required faculty members to swear they were not members of the Communist Party or explain why they refused to sign the pledge. Purportedly designed to fend off scrutiny from conservative members of the California legislature, the loyalty oath controversy had a dramatic effect on the Berkeley campus as it posed a major challenge to freedom of expression. Tolman led the nonsigners, organizing resistance in both the university senate and recruiting assistance from the American Psychological Association. As his biographer notes, Tolman was a reluctant political actor. However, the neobehaviourist had long harboured an interest in social issues and counted among the original members of SPSSI. The pressure of the loyalty oath broke up the west coast New Look carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 260 M. PETTIT group. Despite Tolman’s support, both Krech and Sanford left the University of California rather than signing the oath.36 Purportedly due to pain from hypertension, Brunswik committed suicide in 1955; FrenkelBrunswik followed three years later. In exile, Murphy, Sanford, Krech and Frenkel-Brunswik were confined to an adjacent “social psychology” rather than becoming immediate catalysts in bringing about the cognitive revolution. Very different dynamics were at play on the Harvard campus. At this time, Bruner decided he wanted to move away from the field of social psychology in which he had received his doctoral training. In November 1948, he declined a job offer from the University of Chicago. In the letter explaining his decision, Bruner noted, “I discover that my primary interest is in the field of psychology in general…. Chicago needs a social psychologist, and, to be perfectly frank about it, I have no idea whether five years from now, Chicago would have one such in the person of me.”37 Despite his unwillingness to relocate, Bruner found himself unhappy as a member of Social Relations, chafing under the leadership of sociologist Talcott Parsons. Alienated from his colleagues in Social Relations, he found an intellectual kinship with George A. Miller, a psychologist trained in the perceptual laboratory of S. S. Stevens.38 In the language of the Harvard community, Bruner decided he wanted to transform biotropic psychology rather than joining the social psychology tribe. This realignment of institutional loyalties affected the very design of Bruner’s experiments and the psychic phenomena they sought to capture. Through the early 1950s, Bruner reperceptualized his research agenda. Three experiments run using a tachistoscope illustrate his changing experimental design and concept of human nature. The tachistoscope was a venerable piece of psychological apparatus, exposing the viewer to varying stimuli for a fraction of a second. The device consisted of a tray of slides, a projector to illuminate them for the viewer, a viewing hood and a shutter whose exposure time the psychologist could control. However, Raymond Dodge, the psychologist who designed the type Bruner used, wryfully noted: “No psychological instrument is subject to greater modification in response to special experimental conditions than exposure apparatus.”39 In other words, the tachistoscope was not a stable piece of machinery, despite the durability of its material form. It was, in the words of Marianne De Laet and Annemarie Mol, a “fluid technology” highly adaptable to local circumstances.40 Depending on what was viewed through the hood, the very nature of the device could change. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 261 When Bruner began working with the tachistoscope, he used it in a manner very similar to Frenkel-Brunswik’s deployment of the Gestalt psychologist’s ambiguous figures. In 1947, Bruner and his collaborator Leo Postman took a piece of ready-at-hand perceptual equipment and turned it into a projective test. The experiment had two phases. In the first, they gave their subjects a word association test and measured reaction times for ninety-nine short words. Using this technique, they identified a set of emotionally charged words for that subject. Invariably, these dealt with sexuality and violence. Two weeks later, they brought the participants back and exposed them to the same list via the tachistoscope. They found “sensitization in the presence of ‘dangerous’ stimulus objects. The words comprising the slow reaction—fast recognition group were almost uniformly linked with prevailing taboos. One may cite as examples the following penis, crime, bitch, dream, anger, fairy (male subject), death, and fight.”41 Two years later, their experimental design had changed dramatically. They still used it for a word association test, but gone were the emotionally charged connotations. Now, they were interested in comparing a participant’s accuracy when identifying items drawn from a single set (colour-word associations) versus multiple sets (alternating colour or food associations).42 They remained interested in the role of meaning in shaping perception, but chose to deal with decidedly cooler topics than they had just a few years earlier. By 1954, Bruner and Postman began writing with George A. Miller. The result represented a full return to the kinds of designs championed by the early memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus with the psychologists presenting their participants with nonsense syllables rather than meaningful words. In the language of the emergent cognitive science, they were concerned with “the amount of information obtained from a tachistoscopic exposure.” They understood this as depending upon “conditions of illumination and exposure duration and are independent of the order of approximation to English letter sequences.”43 This last experiment design treated the participants as another piece of mechanistic equipment, a stance Bruner had explicitly rejected in 1947. In the early days of the Red Scare, Bruner followed a sharp trajectory from experimentalizing psychoanalysis to the cold cognition of information theory. He did so while preserving a superficially similar experimental design. However, his theory and practice of the observing participant had changed dramatically in less than a decade. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 262 M. PETTIT At the same time, Berkeley alumnus Milton Rokeach kept social research on open and closed minds an ongoing project.44 Intolerance to ambiguity became one of the most reproduced phenomena in social science.45 However, Frenkel-Brunswik’s original formulation of strong correlations among intolerance to ambiguity, ethnocentrism and authoritarianism was rarely replicated by other researchers.46 The political psychology forged in the New Look movement had already faded. By the mid-1950s, Bruner fully parted ways with his Berkeley colleagues. Along with Miller, he led the creation of cognitive science. They aligned themselves with the computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University working on artificial intelligence and the psychologists led by Frederic Bartlett and David Broadbent at Cambridge University researching skilled performance in human–machine communication systems. This alliance did include the decidedly radical Noam Chomsky, although he kept his structural linguistics apart from his political writings. The emergent field of cognitive science took a markedly different approach to mind reading than its New Look predecessor. They suggested the best way to read a mind was to build one. To know thought, cognitive scientists attempted to simulate it on computational devices. In their imaginary, chess playing held a significant place. Some even suggested the model served as their drosophila.47 Historian Hunter Crowther-Heyck outlines the numerous appeals of chess to early cognitive scientists. The game possessed high cultural status, representing to the elite-educated Western mind the pinnacle of human cognitive achievement. It involved rational choices, the moving calculus of correct and incorrect decisions and the socially conditioned behaviour strategically planning ahead and anticipating an opponent’s actions. The game also modelled the assumed limits of the human cognitive system, the situated nature of the individual knower. In a game of chess, it was impossible to compute every possible move in advance so decisions must be made. Finally, the game allowed for certain individual differences as players differed in terms of skill level.48 Despite the “bounded reasoning” deployed by the chess player as model for mind, cognitive science presented a very different picture of the human subject than the New Look movement which preceded it. In 1963, psychologist Ulric Neisser underscored such differences, underscoring “three fundamental and interrelated characteristics of human thought that are conspicuously absent from existing or carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 263 contemplated computer programs.” He complained that his own field neglected human development, emotion and multiple, conflicting motivations when it simulated the thinking process with computer programs.49 Neisser’s list is remarkable as each of these elements lay at the heart of the New Look programme. Surprisingly then, he largely replicated these lacunae in his field-defining textbook Cognitive Psychology four years later, as none of these domains featured in the book’s organization.50 He excluded cognitive development from his survey, confined emotion to a brief discussion of the “perceptual defense” controversy and concluded the book by noting that carefully controlled laboratory experiments on cognitions tended to elide the problem of conflicting motives. Neisser instead dedicated the vast majority of his textbook to recent advances in visual and auditory perception (where the computational, informationprocessing stance had achieved its greatest victories) and confined the unanswered question of “higher mental processes” to a speculative final chapter. By the time cognitive science received sustained funding and institutional recognition in the 1970s, its origins in social psychology and psychoanalysis were but a dim memory. Influential documents like the Sloane Foundation report (1978) and Howard Gardner’s canon-forming The Mind’s New Science (1985) wrote these areas out of the cognitive revolution. The embrace of cognitivism represented psychology’s ascent “to the icy slopes of logic” (to appropriate George Reisch’s felicitous phrase for describing analytical philosophy analogous embrace of an apolitical, technical stance due to Cold War pressure).51 In turn, cognitivism’s infamous neglect of the role culture and society play in structuring human thinking was itself a political choice with a history. Reviving New Look During the first national presidential debate of the 2016 election, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton answered the moderator’s question about racial prejudice among police officers with the statement that “implicit bias is a problem for everyone.” In her response, Clinton’s invoked the conceptual vocabulary of a branch of social psychology which traced its lineage back to the New Look movement. Amid debates about the persistence of discrimination in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, implicit cognition became a powerful way of describing how the United States was far from the post-racial society some posited. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 264 M. PETTIT Cognition began to heat up again towards the end of the Cold War and during the booming stock market of the 1980s. Amid the consolidation of cognitive science in the 1970s, Matthew Erdelyi urged his fellow psychologists to reconsider the New Look framework as a means of integrating psychoanalysis into the new synthesis of disciplines.52 They proved more receptive a decade later. Inspired by the computer metaphor, cognitive psychologists tended to understand the typical individual as a “naïve scientist” carefully testing hypotheses about the world. Against the background of the culture wars of the 1990s and the polarization of American politics into a blue/red state dichotomy, the cool reasonableness of this model seemed increasingly untenable. Harkening back to language and concepts from the early days of New Look, Anthony Greenwald famously described this “totalitarian ego” bent on self-preservation. Cognitive scientists had shown a frugal mind preserves its mental resources, taking shortcuts in making decisions. Missing from their account was that said minds were not disinterested parties to the actions they took. All perception was motived. At the end of the Cold War, Greenwald suggested the mind’s inner works resembled the everyday functioning of a totalitarian state. In pursuit of maintaining a positive self-image, the mind distorted and even fabricated the information received from the world.53 In 1992, he stated more outright his intellectual lineage when he called for a “New Look 3.0” in the pages of the American Psychologist.54 Initially, Greenwald presented his approach as a methodologically respectable way of speaking about unconscious processes, a way giving psychoanalytic insights the rigour of cognitive science. However, his approach had decidedly political overtones. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) ranks among the most influential products of the New Look revival. The IAT served as a powerful new technology for materializing unspoken prejudice. Perhaps the transformative event was the launch of the Project Implicit website in October 1998.55 The IAT did not circulate through use in the university-laboratory, but rather Greenwald and his collaborators distributed it among the Internet users of the first dot.com bubble. Greenwald and his team seized the opportunity to simultaneously test and educate the public. Designed to mimic an interactive museum exhibit, the site offered visitors the opportunity to take a simplified version of the IAT. Participation exceeded expectations with 600,000 participants in the site’s first 18 months of operation. By May 2002, the number of individually recorded tests had risen to 1.2 million.56 They launched the site in the early days of the web, at a time when a widely discussed Carnegie Mellon carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 265 study suggested that Internet adoption contributed to social isolation.57 Indeed, coverage in news segments featured on “old” media like the NBC programme Dateline and the Discovery Channel in March 2000 drove much of the interest in the test. Although not randomly selected from the general population, the participants proved more diverse than the typical university samples. The IAT pioneered the use of the Internet as a distributed network to conduct psychological research. Unlike laboratory participants, the website provided online users with immediate feedback by offering a “summary interpretation of their test performance by characterizing it as showing ‘strong,’ ‘medium,’ ‘slight,’ or ‘little or no’ association of the type measured by each test.”58 The test’s circulation in this online format heralded a new era of extractive technologies known as big data, built off an Internet culture of self-revelation. Not confining their analysis to the typical undergraduate population allowed the test’s designers to make bold claims about the wide distribution of implicit biases in the general population. They noted the distinct lack of need for moderating variables to analyse the online survey. People expressed implicit biases across the lines of age, gender, race and political orientation. The conceptual vocabulary of the new New Look entered the lexicon of American liberals at a crucial juncture. Thirty years after the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act, the test made legible the persistence of unspoken prejudice, despite public disavowal of racist beliefs among the dominant groups.59 Prejudice continued to brew inside people’s minds and shape their actions, maintaining unjust systems of power.60 The IAT functioned as a buttress for the revival of political psychology or what one advocate called “the end of the end of ideology.”61 The test offered a powerful means of capturing and re-presenting to the participant how injustice had in fact clung to American society, secreted away in the recesses of people’s minds. Press coverage of the IAT (in oped pages and in science columns) and methodological debate increased dramatically in 2008 with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and the ongoing debate about whether America constituted a post-racial society.62 The IAT psychologized prejudice, rendering it an unconscious process found in people’s heads rather than policies or the infrastructure of the built environment, but did not necessarily individualize it.63 Indeed, the link between a person’s score on the test and their subsequent behaviour remained a contentious issue. Instead, advocates pointed the aggregation of implicit attitudes in creating a culture of prejudice. In such a world, the test served as both a measure and a treatment. A New York Times carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 266 M. PETTIT story published soon after Project Implicit’s launch reported that “the researchers note that no evidence links a person’s performance on the test with attitudes or behaviour in the outside world. ‘We like to think of it as an unconsciousness-raising tool,’ Dr. Banaji said, a tool ‘for increasing awareness or self-analysis. It should not be used to select individuals for jobs or to select a jury.’”64 Similarly, another article from 1998 noted how both Greenwald and Banaji “blame the culture for saddling individuals with prejudices. No one has a choice about being exposed to the culture’s values.”65 Despite such caveats, the predictive validity of the IAT on the level of individual behaviour would remain unresolved. A compromise was reached, with the IAT’s architects arguing for its relevance to jurisprudence and employment, but insisting that the test could not serve as a diagnosis of an individual’s prejudicial actions. Rather than being used to uncover individual attributes, the IAT became a technology for manifesting collective guilt and complicity when it came to racism. In 2014, Washington Post science reporter Chris Mooney (author of The Republican War on Science) published a map based on the data collected by the Project Implicit. Noting selection bias among the participants, the map nevertheless offered a geographically dichotomous account of racism between Blue and Red states.66 Despites its language reaching a wider audience than the original, the New Look revival ultimately floundered on the same shoals which had claimed the original movement. The widespread circulation of the IAT as a consciousness-raising activity in the workplace led to its greater scrutiny. If the circulation of the test through the Internet revealed certain unsurprising patterns in the geography of prejudice, what did the test reveal about the individual perceiver? Not much, contended the critics. The test failed to predict actual prejudicial behaviour. Much like Bruner’s perceptual defence and Frenkel-Brunswik’s tolerance of ambiguity, an acrimonious debate emerged over the IAT’s predictive validity and the very existence of the phenomenon it claimed to detect.67 Indeed, the inability of the IAT to reliably predict prejudicial behaviour on an individual basis came to be seen as part and parcel of the wider replication crisis engulfing social psychology. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 267 Conclusion This chapter has proposed an alternative genealogy for cognitive science as a reputable mind reading science in the post-war era that has been overlooked in textbooks but proves to be an even more sophisticated historical account. It relocates the origins of “thinking about thinking,” moving away from the human–machine couplings of cybernetics, focusing instead on the political aesthetics of the Cultural Front. The subsequent exclusion of development, emotion and motivation from the domains of cognitive science was not a historical accident but a choice with a political history. New Look remained resolutely focused on humanity’s failings, both emotional and political. It detailed where and how sound judgement broke down. In contrast, cognitivism gravitated towards what the human mind could achieve, to those arenas where the capacity to reasoning succeeded. These attributes were invariably found wanting in their implementation, subject to processing errors which led judgement astray. Nevertheless, cognitivism embraced a hopeful, optimistic view of the possibility of human perfectibility. But in doing so, it detached itself from the social and clinical settings, so-called daily life, at the heart of Krech’s vision for a new, unified psychological theory. Throughout its history, the kind of approach championed by the New Look movement has served as a temptation to scientific psychologists. There exists a long-standing consensus stretching through the writings of Krech to Neisser to contemporary social cognition researchers that a fulsome and satisfactory theory of perception must account for affect, development and motivation. Yet integrating these domains has continually elided the exactitude demanded by the laboratory. The phenomena of New Look repeatedly come together for a brief only window of time, generate a powerful vocabulary for the self and then dissipate. Political psychology has operated throughout its history on the cusp of the descriptive and the normative, in between empirical science and cultural critique. This dual existence has certainly created problems for the field as it sought to integrate its mind reading techniques into the social science canon. Issues of replicability and the validity of the results continue to haunt the field. In this regard, it ranks among psychology’s greatest unfinished projects. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 268 M. PETTIT Notes 1. The psychologists discussed in the chapter would vehemently reject the notion they engaged in mind reading. Indeed, one of the origin stories for psychology as a discipline was its demarcation from such cultural practices. See Michael Pettit, The Science of Deception: Psychology and Commerce in America. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2013. Nevertheless, the knowability of the mind and its status as a legitimate scientific object lies at the heart of this historical narrative. 2. Alan Collins, “From H = log s (n) to Conceptual Framework: A Short History of Information,” History of Psychology 10, no. 1 (2007): 44–72. 3. For an account critical of this narrative sequence, see, Thomas H. Leahey, “The Mythical Revolutions of American Psychology,” American Psychologist 47, no. 2 (1992): 308–318. 4. The writing out of social psychology began with Howard Gardner, The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. Basic books, 1985. It continues in more sophisticated accounts such as Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. MIT Press, 1995; Paul Erickson, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm and Michael D. Gordin. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality. University of Chicago Press, 2013; Hunter Heyck, Age of System: Understanding the Development of Modern Social Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. The existing historiography reads research on the authoritarian personality as part of the cultural context of the cognitive revolution, but understands this programme as a separate endeavour from cognitive science. See Jamie Cohen-Cole, The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 5. James H. Capshew, Psychologists on the March: Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929–1969. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 6. Lorenz J. Finison, “Unemployment, Politics, and the History of Organized Psychology,” American Psychologist 31, no. 11 (1976): 747–755. 7. Gabriel Elias, “A Clinician Answers Guthrie,” American Psychologist 5, no. 9 (1950): 495. 8. David Krech, “A Note on Fission,” American Psychologist 1, no. 9 (1946): 402–404. 9. Krech, “A Note on Fission,” 404. 10. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the Fifties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Chapter 1. 11. David Krech, “Notes Toward a Psychological Theory,” Journal of Personality 18, no. 1 (1949): 66–87, 82. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 11 A NEW LOOK FOR PSYCHOLOGY: READING THE POLITICAL … 269 12. David Krech, “David Krech,” in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Gardner Lindzey (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 221–250, 235. 13. Lorenz J. Finison, “The Psychological Insurgency: 1936–1945,” Journal of Social Issues 42, no. 1 (1986): 21–33. 14. Krech, “David Krech,” 244. 15. Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1997, 23. 16. Denning, The Cultural Front, 5. 17. Alan M. Wald, Writing from the Left: New Essays on Radical Culture and Politics. London: Verso, 1994. 18. Lorenz J. Finison, “Psychologists and Spain,” American Psychologist 32, no. 12 (1977): 1080–1084. 19. Kurt Danziger, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 20. Franz Samelson, “From ‘Race Psychology’ to ‘Studies in Prejudice’: Some Observations on the Thematic Reversal in Social Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 14, no. 3 (1978): 265–278; Robert M. Farr, “The Long Past and the Short History of Social Psychology,” European Journal of Social Psychology 21, no. 5 (1991): 371–380. 21. Muzafer Sherif, “A Study of Some Social Factors in Perception.” Archives of Psychology 187 (1935). 22. R. Nevitt Sanford, “The Effects of Abstinence from Food upon Imaginal Processes: A Preliminary Experiment,” The Journal of Psychology 2, no. 1 (1936): 129–136; Sanford, “The Effects of Abstinence from Food upon Imaginal Processes: A Further Experiment,” The Journal of Psychology 3, no. 1 (1937): 145–159. 23. Else Frenkel-Brunswik, “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional and Perceptual Personality Variable,” Journal of Personality 18, no. 1 (1949): 108–143. 24. Jerome S. Bruner and Cecile C. Goodman. “Value and Need as Organizing Factors in Perception,” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 42, no. 1 (1947): 33–44. 25. Bruner and Goodman, “Value and Need,” 35. 26. “Big Money,” New York Times, September 29 (1946), 103. 27. Joel Isaac, Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012, 92–124. 28. 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Banaji and Brian A. Nosek, “Statistically Small Effects of the Implicit Association Test Can Have Societally Large Effects,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108, no. 4 (2015): 553–561. carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de Index A Allport, Gordon W., 255 Arts, 24–26, 50 B Baumgarten, Franziska, 170, 177 Becquerel, Henri, 76 Behavioural sciences. See Behaviourism Behaviourism, 6, 44, 247, 249, 254, 257, 258 Benussi, Vittorio, 115, 153–154 Berger, Hans, 20, 21, 38, 78, 205 Bester, Alfred, 19, 20 Binet, Alfred, 5, 169 Borck, Cornelius, 11, 205 Bruner, Jerome, 248ff., 249, 254, 255, 260–262 Brunswik, Egon, 249 C Campbell, John W., 51 Cold War, 45–48, 110, 253, 264 Collyer, Robert, 65–68 Consciousness. See Self Criminal biology, 147 Criminology, 139–158, 191–211 Cybernetics, 23, 57, 58, 247–249, 267 D Deception, 11, 65, 93, 95, 101–102, 110, 113–115, 121, 125, 126, 128, 175, 193, 200, 204, 205 Dessoir, Max, 2–3 E Empathy. See Intuition Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), 19–21, 31, 37, 44, 46, 51, 96, 102 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Schlicht et al. (eds.), Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39419-6 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de 273 274 INDEX F Female Criminal Police (FCP), 163–169, 180–183 Ferri, Enrico, 193, 201–203, 205 First World War, 166 Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, 249, 254, 256–258, 260 G Garofalo, Raffaele, 193, 202 Gibson, Margaret, 117–120 Great Depression, 250 Gross, Hans, 140–147, 157–158 H Hull, Clark, 248 Hypnotism, 52 I Instruments and Technologies of Mind Reading EEG, 11, 20–22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 36, 37, 47, 78, 80, 111 electrography, 70 fMRI, 32, 81, 111, 114, 123, 125, 126 IAT, 264–266 kymograph, 154 MEG, 32 MRI, 33, 36, 126, 129 pattern recognition analysis (MVPA), 125 PET, 32, 81, 114 photography, 64ff., 82–84, 111 polygraph, 21, 114–120, 126, 128 psychotronic technologies, 45, 46, 50, 54, 56, 57 Interrogation technique, 115, 163–169, 177–182, 205, 211 Introspection, 139, 147, 204, 211 Intuition, 149, 150, 152, 157 J Jaensch, Erich, 258 Jameson, Fredric, 55–58 Jugendschutzlager, Youth Protection Camps, 167 K Keeler, Leonarde, 115 Kracauer, Siegfried, 8 Krech, David, 250–252 L Larson, John, 114 Lenz, Adolf, 140, 147–150 Lie detection. See Lying/Lie detection Lombroso, Cesare, 115, 192–202, 205, 212–213 Lombroso, Gina, 198 López, Emilio Mira, 196, 203–216 Löwy, Ilana, 5 Luria, Alexander R., 205 Lying/Lie detection, 93, 109–127, 151–157, 171, 173–180, 211–213 Lynch, Kevin, 30 M Magic, 12, 46–47, 55, 57, 76, 93–103, 115, 123, 128 Mandel, Ernst, 56 Marbe, Karl, 3, 170–173, 182 Marston, William Moulton, 114–116, 123 Mechanical objectivity (Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston), 11, 64, 126 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de INDEX Meinert, Franz, 179 Meinong, Alexius, 154 Miller, George A., 261–262 Mind control, 7, 55, 94–95, 102, 118 Modern subject. See Self Münsterberg, Hugo, 114 N National Socialism, 155–157, 166–167 Neuroimaging, 63 Neurology, 63, 68, 69, 158 Neuropsychology, 121–127 New Look, 247–267 Nold, Christian, 23–25, 29 O Occult forces, 10 Occultism, 57 P Palmograph, 1, 192 Parapsychology, 45–46, 49, 53–59, 111, 116 Photography, 45–47, 54, 142, 150 Popular Front, 251–253, 257 Preyer, William, 1–3, 192 Psychiatry, 21, 47, 76–81, 154, 164, 197–199, 203–204, 211, 215 Psychology of testimony, 169–173ff., 176–179, 182 R Rathsam, Berta, 176–180 Red Scare, 253, 259–261 Reichenbach, Karl von, 68 275 S Salillas, Rafael, 196–202 Schrenck-Notzing, Albert von, 4 Second World War, 155, 166, 248–249 Seelig, Ernst, 140, 151–157 Self, 8, 11, 66, 70 Sherif, Muzafer, 251 Simmel, Georg, 7 Skinner, B.F., 248 Soul. See Self Soviet Union, 44–48, 259 Stalin, 45 Stern, William, 170 T Tarde, Gabriel, 194–195 Telepathy, 10, 21, 32–34, 43, 46–55, 79, 81, 95–96, 109, 116, 129 Theory of Mind (ToM), 110, 129 Tolman, E.C., 247–249, 256, 259 Totalitarianism, 58, 248 Trading zone, 5 U Undeutsch, Udo, 171, 182 W Waves/Rays/Curves, 9, 20 Brainwaves, 20, 22, 25–26, 31–36 N-Rays, 78–79 X-Rays, 73–77 Z Zillig, Maria, 170, 173–176, 182 carla.seemann@uni-saarland.de