WHY MEN CONFESS

by O. John Rogge ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Subtitled From the Inquisition to Brainwashing this is a survey of confessions and their extortion along with a discussion of the ""compulsion to confess"" by the author of Our Vanishing Civil Liberties, the editor of the Harvard Law Review, the former Assistant U.S. Attorney General in Charge of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Distinguishing and explaining the differences between the inquisitional and the accusatorial techniques, Rogge traces the history of the inquisitional method from the time when Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) introduced it as a substitute for older modes of proof, to its use by the Chinese Communists. He presents a compendium of confessions from the Hittites to the present and he catalogues some of the more outstanding: Galileo, Joan of Arc, Savonarola, Confessions under the Tudors, confessions of witchcraft, confessions of the innocent, confessions during the Moscow purge trials of 1937-38. But it is not, understandably enough, until his consideration of the defection of U.S. soldiers during the Korean war that he attempts to explain the motives and basis of the confession compulsion. His conclusion, based on studies of the ""21 who stayed"": ""those with whom the communist brainwashing was most successful were those who were described as emotionally rootless"". The reasons: feelings of guilt and sin, inner rebellion, lack of love, need for punishment, and the Freudian ""omnipotence of thought"" or wishes. Though not as penetrating as the recent In Every War But One by Eugene Kinkead, this is far more inclusive and offers a directly discernable historical basis for a system which has been developed into a science.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Nelson

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION