In prison, there is one internal decision that is difficult beyond all others: when to first say "no" and knowingly force the commissar’s hand to carry out his threats and impose physical torture.
This turning point almost always takes place in a frenzied moment when the new prisoner is awash in a sea of guilt and fear.
The guilt arises from his having "gone along" with the commissar’s demand for a little of this and a little of that, while in the fashion of most of us well-brought-up American boys he had chosen "the middle way," to his now devastating regret, as he took preliminary measure of his predicament.
And the fear! Arthur Koestler, while in a Fascist prison in Spain, described his initial fear of torture as "not a healthy fear, but the obsessional and morbid variety . . . the neurotic type of anxiety . . . the irrational anticipation of an unknown punishment."
—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character
IMAGE: Francisco Goya, Confessions in Prison (c. 1812)
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