Stockdale on Stoicism 46

Howie Rutledge, one of the four of us with more than four years, went back to school and got a master's degree after we got home. His thesis concentrated on the question of whether long-term erosion of human purpose was more effectively achieved by torture or isolation. 

He mailed out questionnaires to us (who had also taken the ropes at least ten times), and others with records of extreme prison abuse. 

He found that those who had less than two years' isolation and plenty of torture said torture was the trump card; those with more than two years' isolation and plenty of torture said that, for long-term modification of behavior, isolation was the way to go. 

From my viewpoint, you can get used to repeated rope torture—there are some tricks for minimizing your losses in that game. 

But keep a man, even a very strong-willed man, in isolation for three or more years, and he starts looking for a friend, any friend, regardless of nationality or ideology. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

IMAGE: Jacques-Louis David, Psyche Abandoned (c. 1795)