Is Pointsman based on Dr. William Sargant?

[Thomas Eckhardt]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._R._Rivers#The_Great_War

Very interesting. Again, Robert Graves turns up (along with Siegfried 
Sassoon).

As opposed to Rivers, Sargant detested psychotherapy. The full title of 
his autobiography is "The unquiet mind: the autobiography of a physician 
in psychological medicine." A physician. One article cited by Wiki is 
"Psychiatric treatment in general teaching hospitals: A plea for a 
mechanistic approach."

Wiki also provides:

"Sargant connected Pavlov's findings to the ways people learned and 
internalised belief systems. Conditioned behaviour patterns could be 
changed by stimulated stresses beyond a dog's capacity for response, in 
essence causing a breakdown. This could also be caused by intense 
signals, longer than normal waiting periods, rotating positive and 
negative signals and changing a dog’s physical condition, as through 
illness. Depending on the dog's initial personality, this could possibly 
cause a new belief system to be held tenaciously. Sargant also connected 
Pavlov’s findings to the mechanisms of brain-washing in religion and 
politics."

Internalise belief systems, i.e. put the control inside...

All of this helps to answer an earlier question of mine: 
Pointsman's/Sargant's abreaction is not Jung's abreaction.

The verb linked to "abreaction" or "Abreaktion" has, by the way, entered 
German everyday language: "abreagieren" means "to let off steam".

We may, perhaps, see a renaissance of the mechanistic approach in 
so-called evidence-based medicine or education -- although there is of 
course nothing wrong with evidence per se...

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/mar/26/teachers-research-evidence-based-education
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