Before Harvard, Murray had designed interrogation methods for the OSS in WWII. That’s the agency that became the CIA.
The premise of the project was simple. Each student was told to write down his deepest beliefs. They were promised a calm discussion about it with another student afterward.
That was a lie. Instead they strapped Ted into a chair under bright lights, wired him to electrodes, and sent in a man trained to do one thing: rip every belief he’d just written to shreds. They mocked and humiliated him. They attacked everything he loved and kept at it until he shook with rage. And it went even deeper, they filmed his face the whole time, then played the footage back to him, again and again, so he could watch himself break.
That went on for three years. Two decades later, Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber.
People say it had nothing to do with the experiments. But didn’t it? What normal person survives three years of psychological torture?
The CIA burned most of their MK-Ultra files in 1973. And when a writer finally dug into Murray’s study, Harvard sealed those records too.
The Facts are…
Kaczynski entered Harvard in 1958 at age 16 on a scholarship. He was a mathematics prodigy.
From roughly 1959 to 1962 he took part in a study run by psychologist Henry A. Murray (often called the “Murray Experiment” or part of the “Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men”).
Murray had worked for the OSS during World War II on personality assessment and interrogation-related techniques. The OSS was a predecessor of the CIA. This is public record.
Participants were asked to write detailed accounts of their personal philosophy and values. They were then subjected to what Murray’s own notes described as aggressive, hostile interrogation by a skilled adversary who attacked those beliefs. Sessions were filmed; some accounts describe bright lights and physiological monitoring. The confrontations were designed to produce strong emotional reactions (anger, humiliation, distress). The study lasted years for some subjects, including Kaczynski.
Kaczynski later became the Unabomber (mail bombs 1978–1995). His manifesto and writings show intense anti-technology, anti-industrial views that developed over decades, including after he left Harvard, lived as a hermit, and experienced additional personal and ideological radicalization.
Long-term practice of FIML generates deep change in the human psyche.
Social relations, habitual traits and attitudes, as well as ingrained emotional responses may all be subject to profound transformation.
The reason this happens is the basic FIML technique provides consistently good counter-evidence to habitual mental and emotional reactions. In addition, the technique itself teaches the practitioner’s mind–or shows it by example–to apply similar kinds of reasoning to many other situations that are not open to FIML dialog.
The basic FIML technique is a deceptively simple stop-and-query technique designed for use in conversations between close friends or partners. In our How to do FIML post, we have described the basic technique as clearly and simply as we could. This description should work as an effective model for beginning FIML practitioners, but it is a bit like describing in words how to hit a baseball or dive into a pond. The experience of actually doing FIML in a real-life, dynamic, emotionally-charged conversation will draw on a wide variety of skills and emotions from both partners. These aspects of FIML cannot be well-described in words because they will be different for different people and in different situations.
FIML does not tell anyone what to think or feel, but rather provides a method for clarifying thought and feeling as they occur in real life.
FIML practice allows partners to expand their senses of who they are and access these areas through speech. Correctly done, FIML will keep partners from becoming lost in side-issues or emotional traps. FIML gives partners access to a shared meta-perspective that will help them gradually rediscover or redesign how they think of themselves and each other, and how they react in many different kinds of situations.
FIML is like yoga in that it uses no props. Yoga uses the body to exercise the body. FIML uses two minds working together on the basis of shared rules. With practice, FIML partners will find that they are able to leverage or gain access to many areas of themselves that cannot be reached by other means. After several years of practice, partners will discover that they have gained levels of mental and emotional strength and freedom that had been barely imaginable before.
The basic FIML technique depends on partners clearly remembering everything that is/was in their mind(s) at the moment a phrase in question was spoken and/or heard. By honestly comparing the contents of their minds under these circumstances, partners will gain access to the rich realm of secondary and tertiary meanings that accompany all utterances. At the same time, they will free themselves from habitual mistaken interpretations whenever they arise.
Their minds, thus, will gradually gain freedom from error (mental and psychological) while broadening the range of subject matter they are capable of entertaining. And this will have a far-reaching influence on both behavior and perception in many other areas.
Once partners are skilled in the basic FIML technique, they will find that it need not always be done immediately upon noticing an emotional or judgmental reaction. After a few months of successful FIML practice, partners will probably find that they can bring up events from hours before and both will still have a reasonably accurate memory of what was said and heard.
It is important not to jump to this level too quickly, though, because if the basic technique has not been mastered, partners will lose sight of the meta-perspective, without which deep understanding and transformation will not be possible. Experienced partners will know when they have good data and can proceed with a FIML dialog and when they don’t. If you don’t have good data (both partners remember exactly what was said and what they were thinking), don’t do a FIML dialog. Just drop the subject. Though retain the general sense of something having happened because the subject will almost certainly come up again. When that happens, try to get good data you both agree on and then proceed with a FIML dialog.
I hope people have caught on by now. However, just in case, let me try to help:
In 2010 it was Sandra Fluke In 2012 it was Romney’s “binders of women” In 2014 it was the ‘Me Too” movement In 2016 it was “Grab them by the pussy” (Trump) In 2018 it was E Jean Carroll (Trump) In 2020 it was Amy Dorris (Trump) In 2022 it was Matt Gaetz, Hershel Walker In 2024 it was Jeffrey Epstein et al In 2026 it is “Cornell 7”
Each of these are election years. In each election year professional Democrats deploy the same process to generate support from “suburban women voters”, also known as AWFLS1.
These are women voters typically from middle to upper-middle-class backgrounds, who are perceived as politically liberal or left-leaning, often vocal about social justice issues and engaged in activism or virtue signaling. Their gender identity defines them.
In order to generate support, or activate this specific voter base, women’s issues and/or sexual misconduct is utilized as a trigger mechanism. Once the election is over, the emphasis and narrative disappears…… until the next election cycle. Wash – Rinse – Repeat.
If you cannot see the pattern by now, you are politically oblivious. However, once you see it you can never unsee it. Hope that helps.
A comment I read this morning has an insightful summary of what cultural identity is. And how it self-generates and self-perpetuates “…well beyond the control or foresight of anyone,.”
This complex of [cultural] ideas generates intense psychological pressures and allegiances and mobilizes some of the most primitive energies of the human psyche – safety, danger, clan, tribe, blood, status, power, domination – and leads to a clear pattern of behavior that is decentralized and not under anyone’s control but is still a very clear system that can be analyzed and identified. (source)
The entire string of comments is well-worth reading and can be found at the link above.
These comments are on Jewish culture and history but they apply just as well to any cultural “construct,” all of which are the stronger precisely because they are social constructs.
The commenter quoted above leans toward a negative appraisal of Jewish culture and history, which I largely agree with, but if it’s up to me I would say that virtually all successful cultures (“successful” being ones that perpetuate) have analogous negative features.
Incidentally, I believe a great deal of Buddhist practice and the practices of other religions are based on disentangling practitioners from cultural constructs to discover their authentic beings, souls, or the will of God.
Religions do this because in many ways cultures are toxic to the higher mind, the metacognition of individual authenticity.
That said, cultures do teach us and raise us and we cannot develop without them. Religions are also cultures. And that said, we are capable as individuals of both learning from our cultures and growing well beyond them.
In this respect and in light of Buddhist practice, I am very leery of any and all kinds of cultural identities or individual identities fashioned as allegiance to a culture, especially an aggressive one. Sadly, it is also true that if you have no identity your culture will be lost or destroyed, so we all really do need some sort of “defensive identity.” In this respect, I can happily identify with most of the world Buddhist community and most of the traditional American Constitutional system interpreted conservatively. I also have a mild-but-strong-enough defensive White identity because that group is fast approaching eight percent of world population and I want it to survive.
Near the end of a very long drive the other day, my partner and I got stuck in a traffic jam. The day was hot and the jam went on and on and we felt frustrated.
It didn’t happen, but as we sat and waited in the car I did get close to becoming irritated at my partner though our delay was not in any way her fault.
Ironically, had I been driving alone, my frustration at the traffic jam would have been even worse because the delay would have been preventing me from seeing her sooner.
This brief incident shows how closely connected our emotions are to our social circumstances. Since my partner was in the car with me, I came close to becoming irritated with her. Had she not been in the car, I would have missed her tremendously and wished she was with me. I bet many can relate to this sort of experience.
Consider that something similar often happens with speech. Our inevitably sloppy ways of speaking and listening produce an ineluctable muddle and rather than know this and compensate for it, we can and do get irritated when meanings get crossed.
There is no way that your meaning will always be understood or that you will always understand the meanings of others. To form a judgement or make an interpretation of what someone is saying without checking with them is a fool’s errand. You will be wrong again and again. And just because you can get someone else to agree with you, won’t make you right.
Our emotions are closely connected to our semiotic proprioception. It is very important to realize how often serious mistakes arise from this fact.
I like Buddhist reasoning on the mind better. Are you thoughts wholesome? Are they conducive to enlightenment? Are your behaviors wise and kind? Are you trustworthy? Do you trust yourself?
Be mindful of how your mind works as much as you can. Personality is impermanent, subject to change. Do your best.
Prevailing theories of cognitive aging depict late life as a period of compensatory decline—an effort to preserve performance despite progressive neural deterioration. We propose instead that aging represents a continuation of development: a genetically conserved, adaptive reorganization of memory systems that parallels the brain’s earlier-life transitions. Drawing on convergent molecular, network, behavioral, and comparative evidence, we argue that the well-documented decline in episodic-memory precision reflects a deliberate recalibration of plasticity from hippocampal to cortical circuits, favoring semantic integration and schematic stability over rapid encoding of novel details. This shift, we suggest, is not a workaround for loss but an evolved optimization suited to the cognitive ecology of late life, when accumulated knowledge, social insight, and intergenerational teaching become primary adaptive functions. The resulting semantic mode of cognition supports narrative coherence, emotional regulation, and wisdom, distinguishing normal aging from pathological derailments such as Alzheimer’s disease. We outline testable predictions across longitudinal, neuroimaging, and computational domains and reinterpret constructs like cognitive reserve as expressions of this developmental reallocation. By reframing aging as purposeful maturation rather than compensation, the adaptive-aging hypothesis positions late-life cognition as a distinct, evolutionarily honed phase of human development.
This is something I have observed and tend to see aging in this way. Our natural feeling of respect for a composed and well-mannered elderly person probably reflects our instinctive understanding of this state of mind. One of my best friends in life was over 80 years old when I was in my mid-thirties. An older mind can impart wisdom just by being. Our connection to them can entail spiritual overtones that remain with us forever. ABN
Short-term memory is where the rubber of human psychology meets the road.
It is the active part of human psychology as it functions in real-time.
New research indicates that the thalamus, which relays almost all sensory information, is central to the operation of short-term memory. Without the thalamus, short-term memory does not occur.
Short-term memory is a changeable “program” that deals with and responds to the world quickly. It is the main determinant of how “you” are in the moment.
Short-term memory maintains persistent activity (in the brain/body) by relaying its components through the thalamus in response to real-time conditions.
If we discover a mistake in our short-term memory, it is typically very easy to change. For example, if you realize you forgot to set your clocks ahead, your short-term memory will quickly adjust. You might feel a little dumb for a moment, but usually it is no big deal.
This example shows how our short-term memory is connected to long-term memories, to planning, expectation, and our general sense of the world around us and what we are doing in it.
FIML is an effective form of psychotherapy largely because it focuses on the short-term memory.
By targeting short-term memory loads, FIML helps partners discover how their psychologies are actually functioning in real-time during real-world situations.
Correcting mistakes in short-term memory immediately changes how we function.
Changing the same mistake several times very often removes it entirely from the long-term memory, from the overall functioning of the individual.
Buddhist mindfulness practice focuses a lot on short-term memory.
In this respect, FIML is a kind of shared mindfulness between two people, both keeping themselves and each other honest and on the same page.
FIML may feel intense for beginners because this kind of focus with this kind of intention has probably never been engaged in before.
With practice, FIML becomes relaxed and pleasant, creating an in-the-zone feeling like you are playing a fun game or doing something important and interesting together.
When done regularly, FIML generates a very sturdy kind of mutual self-respect. ABN
If we consider speech with only one listener and look firstly at the micro level, we find it is fear of wrong word choice, wrong gesture, expression, demeanor, or tone of voice that limits our speech because a misstep with any one of these may transgress interpersonal limits.
At the meso level, it is either fear of offending or embarrassing (our understanding of) the “personality” of our listener or the fear of an actual flareup from our listener.
At the macro level, it is the fear of introducing a largish idea with sociological or career implications that might disturb, embarrass, or anger our one listener.
With two or more listeners, the analysis is much the same though the numbers of people make it more complex, until we get to so many people we are speaking to an audience. Then it becomes simpler in some ways because the micro and meso levels will be less prominent due to distance between speaker and audience and there being no clear single target of our tone of voice or phraseology.
On the other hand, an audience’s response can be more complex and problematic because more than one person can become angry at us.
Human beings thus are stuck in a game that is controlled by how most of us listen most of the time.
Stated differently, human beings have magnificent speech and communicative capabilities, but rarely get to use them to their full, best effect because one or more of the many speech limits outlined above will cause us either to hold our tongues or else risk creating a disruption in the mind(s) of our listeners.
This seems like a Big Problem to me. I do not want to spend my life constrained by those rules. FIMLcan help us overcome this problem but even FIML cannot do it all.
We must also recognize that our very comprehension of meaning itself is grounded in fear.
Incidentally, this is a main area where I have some disagreement with traditional Buddhist practice which tends to put the onus of right speech too much on the speaker.
This makes sense in many contexts but in many other contexts it can cause speakers to withhold or be timid when they should not.
Or it can cause listeners to believe that speakers must always keep in mind their weaknesses and that they (listeners) are being entirely proper when they misinterpret or mis-react to someone’s speech. This kind of thinking too often leads to overly emotional responses, a greatly reduced scope of discussable topics, and an overall pettiness that constrains everyone.
Placing the onus for right speech always on the speaker and never requiring right mindfulness of the listener leads to a kind of hierarchy of speech or a totalitarian view of what is right and wrong to say.
In the world today, we can clearly see how speech is constrained in this way through censorship, shadow-banning, muting, shaming, deplatforming, cancelling and more with almost no good purpose ever being served except elitist control of the masses.
At interpersonal levels, our speech is too often limited by the narcissistic sensibilities of listeners or what we fear those sensibilities might be. None of this is optimal good speech.
In Buddhism we want to optimize speech, thought, mindfulness, and listening. It is good to be mindful of what we say, when we say it, and to whom. But it is not good to always tread in fear every time you open your mouth.
