Pop culture is rife with the idea of technological mind control; the jokes about people wearing ‘tin foil hats’ to protect them from the ‘mind control satellites’ are endless, even recently parodied in a Weird Al video. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and convince you all that mind control satellites are real.
No, what I’m going to talk about is something both older and more disturbing, but with the same general idea behind it.
In 1919, a man named Victor Tausk - one of the disciples of Sigmund Freud, and thus one of the founding members of the psychoanalytical movement - published a work entitled “On the origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia”. Shortly after its publication, he wrote farewell notes to several people, including the woman to whom he was soon to be wed, and committed suicide via simultaneous hanging and gunshot. “I have no melancholy,” he said in one note, “My suicide is the healthiest, most decent deed of my unsuccessful life.”
In private correspondence, Freud commented: “I confess that I do not really miss him; I had long since realised that he could be of no further service; indeed that he constituted a threat to the future.”. An intriguing turn of phrase. What sort of threat could he have posed? Perhaps the answer lies in that essay that was published briefly before his death.
The essay describes a common delusion/hallucination going as far back as the 1700s, where a sufferer believes that an elaborate mechanical device, termed the ‘influencing machine’ by Tausk, is the source of their suffering. Sometimes described as machines of a ‘mystical nature’, they purportedly worked by means of radio waves, x-rays, telepathy, or more esoteric means, operated by enemies as a means of mind-control and torture. Although the particulars vary from case to case, they’re thought to be able to implant and remove thoughts and feelings, and inflict pain, from a distance.
The earliest well-recorded case is that of James Tilly Matthews, noted in psychiatric books as the first known case of paranoid schizophrenia. He believed that there was a group of people who were influencing political figures through controlling their emotions and reading their minds, by means of an ‘air loom’ that emitted magnetic rays. These supposed criminals bore names such as ‘The Middleman’, and ‘The Glove Woman’. Although he was condemned to asylums until his death, it is interesting to note that he was believed sane by family, friends, and even at least one asylum owner.
There are other cases, well-documented, that I will not cover in detail here - Jakob Mohr and Nataljia A are names to look up, should the reader be so inclined to do more research. An interesting note is that some ‘Influencing Machines’ included the form of the sufferer, and slowly over time came to be more mechanical as they became more entangled in the cogs and wheels of the Machine.
It does not take a brilliant man to note the resemblance between these claims and the ‘mind control satellites’ of more recent years. Perhaps merely a common theme of a particular sort of madness, a representation of a sufferer’s fear that increased industrialization and progress will lose the essence of the individual.
But if so… what did Freud see as the threat behind Tausk’s work? What did he fear might be revealed, that would be so damaging to the world?
What do you think, readers? Mere insanity, or could these people have seen something we cannot?
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/14/turner.php
No, what I’m going to talk about is something both older and more disturbing, but with the same general idea behind it.
In 1919, a man named Victor Tausk - one of the disciples of Sigmund Freud, and thus one of the founding members of the psychoanalytical movement - published a work entitled “On the origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia”. Shortly after its publication, he wrote farewell notes to several people, including the woman to whom he was soon to be wed, and committed suicide via simultaneous hanging and gunshot. “I have no melancholy,” he said in one note, “My suicide is the healthiest, most decent deed of my unsuccessful life.”
In private correspondence, Freud commented: “I confess that I do not really miss him; I had long since realised that he could be of no further service; indeed that he constituted a threat to the future.”. An intriguing turn of phrase. What sort of threat could he have posed? Perhaps the answer lies in that essay that was published briefly before his death.
The essay describes a common delusion/hallucination going as far back as the 1700s, where a sufferer believes that an elaborate mechanical device, termed the ‘influencing machine’ by Tausk, is the source of their suffering. Sometimes described as machines of a ‘mystical nature’, they purportedly worked by means of radio waves, x-rays, telepathy, or more esoteric means, operated by enemies as a means of mind-control and torture. Although the particulars vary from case to case, they’re thought to be able to implant and remove thoughts and feelings, and inflict pain, from a distance.
The earliest well-recorded case is that of James Tilly Matthews, noted in psychiatric books as the first known case of paranoid schizophrenia. He believed that there was a group of people who were influencing political figures through controlling their emotions and reading their minds, by means of an ‘air loom’ that emitted magnetic rays. These supposed criminals bore names such as ‘The Middleman’, and ‘The Glove Woman’. Although he was condemned to asylums until his death, it is interesting to note that he was believed sane by family, friends, and even at least one asylum owner.
There are other cases, well-documented, that I will not cover in detail here - Jakob Mohr and Nataljia A are names to look up, should the reader be so inclined to do more research. An interesting note is that some ‘Influencing Machines’ included the form of the sufferer, and slowly over time came to be more mechanical as they became more entangled in the cogs and wheels of the Machine.
It does not take a brilliant man to note the resemblance between these claims and the ‘mind control satellites’ of more recent years. Perhaps merely a common theme of a particular sort of madness, a representation of a sufferer’s fear that increased industrialization and progress will lose the essence of the individual.
But if so… what did Freud see as the threat behind Tausk’s work? What did he fear might be revealed, that would be so damaging to the world?
What do you think, readers? Mere insanity, or could these people have seen something we cannot?
No comments:
Post a Comment