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From: afo@pucc-k (Flidais)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Jones on Sargent on speaking in tongues
Message-ID: <609@pucc-k>
Date: Fri, 16-Nov-84 19:03:22 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-k.609
Posted: Fri Nov 16 19:03:22 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Nov-84 23:44:41 EST
References: <1469@pucc-h.UUCP>, <22200005@ea.UUCP> <1494@pucc-h>
Organization: The Warlocks Cave, Eastern Annex
Lines: 42

(five minutes, two seconds: much better...)

You know, one of the more fun things about being a psych student is
that you get to hear about all sorts of fun stuff about
'mind-over-matter' experiments.  A good one, which apparently has
been used by frat men across the nation is that you blindfold
someone and tell them that you're going to brand them with a
white-hot branding iron.  When the victim is sufficiently
hysterical, you touch his skin with an ice-cube.  Appropriately
enough, the victim screams at the top of his lungs.  Even more
interesting, is that sometimes the victim will produce blisters
appropriate for a second degree burn on his skin (which would not
happen if he had been burned as severely as stated by his
tormentors).

What is this all leading to, you might ask?  Basically, if you get
someone in such a psychological state that he/she will believe anything
you will tell them, you can get them to do the most marvelous
things, like speaking in tongues.  The human mind can convince
itself of all sorts of things on its own (check out Freud sometime,
he wasn't all bad).  Especially a person with a great need to be
accepted, or to believe in *something* to help assague his lagging
faith in him/herself.  If you can catch someone whose brain is
totally out to lunch, consumed with self-doubts and loathing, why
you can get him or her to do or say just about anything.  If the
need to belong is strong enough, or the need to feel better than the
guy down the street is strong enough, well, if the ego bolstering
comes with the psychological inducement, the victim will play right
along  (now we're getting into operant conditioning.. go read some 
Skinner).

Be careful then, that *your* sub-concious doesn't play tricks on
*you*.


-- 
Laurie Sefton
{harpo,ihnp4,allegra,decvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h!afo
I am the sword, the spear, the arrow.  You are the flower, the tree,
the vine!  Never will I, or anyone force you to be other than what
you are -Never Again!