Script Shrink

I read the solitary confinement post and that's helpful, but mine's a little different: he's put in a White Room, and he's 10 years old. He's there for 4/5 days. What mental effects would that have on him whole he's there and afterwards?

Thesolitary confinement sources I have are mostly from prisons or cases of seriousneglect. So the victims are either a lot older or considerably younger thanyour character (toddlers and babies). The prison sources are much better and they generally only go downto age 15-17 for children.

I imaginethat the effects on a younger child would be different.

The WhiteRoom scenario (I’m assuming this means sensory deprivation, a blank room withsound proofing and no outside stimulation-) is different again. The sources I have for that are unethical experimentsconducted on adults.

Mostadults would not be able to tolerate that sort of environment for a day. So 4or 5 days (am I reading that correctly or is it 4/5 of a day?) is aconsiderable period of time.

I thinkthe best I can do is tell you what an adult would probably go through and addthat studies of juvenile prisoners suggest the effects on children are much worse.

If thelights are dim or out (they usually are in sensory deprivationenvironments/experiments) the first thing people tend to do is sleep. Usuallyfor a few hours. Once they’re rested and they wake up things start to go downhill.

They veryquickly start to panic. In the most extreme sensory deprivation environments(no light, no sound, little movement/tactic sensation) people quickly start tohallucinate. Usually within hours.Hallucinations can be auditory, visual, tactile or a combination.

I thinkhe’d probably panic faster, but if there’s some lighting it would take longerthan the experimental studies before he started to hallucinate. That’s becauseof light level, not his age.

Overlonger periods (over 24 hours sometimes sooner), driven by panic, people tendto both self harm and attack the walls. They can become intensely violent.

If he’sthere four days I would expect him to be hallucinating and to have self-harmed(scratching and biting, as well as tearing off chunks of flesh arepossibilities) by the time he comes out. He might have had a complete mentalbreakdown and be suffering from some kind of psychosis and/or dissociativedisorder.

Even in ashorter time frame this would be an intensely traumatic experience for a child.He’s going to need a lot of concerted help over a period of years to recover,if he does at all.

He’slikely to spend a lot of time after he comes out terrified. He might be full onparanoid. He will probably be afraid of ending up in the room again and mightnot want to be left alone. He might alsofind it difficult to interact positively with people, be afraid of people or beaggressive towards them.

Thosethings can happen at the same time.

He mightcontinue to hallucinate after he’s out of the room. This doesn’t always happenbut in some cases it continues for the rest of a person’s life.

Selfmutilation at least usually stops immediately on release.

He mightfind normal sensory stimulation difficult to bear. Lights might be too bright,noises too loud. He might want to do ‘normal’ things but find they overwhelmhim, making him anxious, afraid and possibly violent.

Basically-this kid is going to have a lot of long term problems.

You mightwant to consult ScriptShrink’s blog and look through some tags on treatingchildhood abuse/neglect to get a better idea of how to handle the aftermathwith this character.

(The people to look up for sensory deprivation experiments are John Lilly and the notorious Donald Hebb.)

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(1/2) Hello, and thank you for taking on such an arduous job. I am having trouble deciding what methods are most effective in making a person mentally vulnerable/compliant and disassociative from themselves, that don't also essentially make a person "useless." For context, my protagonist is a metahuman of significant power. I know how my antagonists are keeping her drugged so that she cannot escape,

(2/2) but I’m not sure how they would actually go about the process of trying to break her down without breaking her utterly. Can you give me insight as to what combination of methods they may use, and which ones to shy away from as the are, essentially, too effective? Currently I’m thinking a combination of sleep deprivation, starvation, and forms of manipulative mind games. Oh, and preferably ways that aren’t actively physically violent.

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Hi, happy tohelp.

Unfortunatelythe problem you’ve hit on is one of the main reasons torture has such inconsistentresults. There is no sure way to dothis.

There isn’t any one, or combination of,methods that will make someone compliant in the long term and all the techniques used to try andforce compliance have a high chance of causing permanent physical orpsychological injury. The magic spot tortures are aiming for, betweenresistance and a complete breakdown doesnot exist.

That said I cangive you some information that might help you decide where to go with yourstory from here.

One of thecounter-intuitive results from Rejali’s study on torture was that most people who defect, allegedly as aresult of torture, seem to have decided they would change sides well before thetorture began. The degree of compliance a victim is willing to give issomething they usually decide before their capture based on how strongly theyfeel about their cause, desire to avoid suffering or death, whether they thinkresisting torture is pointless and a long list of other reasons.

That means the‘effectiveness’ of anything your antagonists do depends more on your protagonist, their personality, theirworld view and the causes they care about, than anything else.

It also dependswhat you mean by ‘compliance’. It’s possible to reduce someone to a state wherethey’re unlikely to fight their guards. It isn’t really possible to force themto change sides and become an effective agent for the antagonists.  

The second part of question, what techniques people arelikely to use, is easier to address. It’s also very dependent on where theantagonists come from, so I’m going to list a few or the most common techniquesand indicate some of the places that don’tuse them. All of these techniques are physical and have physical effects. (Yes even sleep deprivation).

Stress positions.

Differentcountries tend to favour different stress positions and different restraintsbut as a broad category stress positions are used worldwide. Basically thevictim is forced to stay still in an uncomfortable position for hours to days.It doesn’t sound particularly violent and it doesn’t tend to leave scars. However it can cause extremities(particularly feet and hands) to swell up painfully, blood clots that can leadto limbs needing to be amputated and death by kidney failure.

Pumping.

The victim isforced to swallow huge quantities of liquid, usually water. The water is oftenmixed with something unpleasant, bleach, human waste, chilli and salt have allbeen used. It’s also been done with alcoholic drinks on Muslims specifically tomake it more humiliating. Pumping swells the internal organs in a way that’sdescribed as the most painful sensation the organs can experience. It isn’tuncommon for the victim to leak fluid from virtually every orifice. I’m notaware of pumping being used by the US, UK, China or Japan.

Suffocation, either dry or using liquid(waterboarding).

This can causedeath and permanent brain damage. Different countries seem to favour differentforms. Waterboarding in particular has been used by the Americans and Frenchand was used throughout French colonies. It’s thought that it came to Americavia returning veterans from Vietnam.

Electric shocks.

Used world widewith the regional differences mostly down to the tool used. The UK virtuallynever uses electricity (there are one or two recorded cases). Modern stun gunstend not to leave marks and their use is very very painful. They can kill andbecause they don’t leave marks it can be very hard to prove cause of death. I think it tends to lead to heart attacks,head injuries (if people suddenly fall unconscious) and choking on vomit.Historically telephone magnetos were common electrical torture devices. ECT machines have not been connected withtorture. They’re large,

expensive andunwieldy. They might have been misused on psychiatric patients but they weren’t used in police stations, blacksites or battle fields.

Pepper.

This is theapplication of common irritants (pepper, chilli, salt etc) to wounds or mucusmembranes. Genitals, anus and nose are the most common targets although in theeyes were targeted as well. This is more common in Asia and Africa than theWestern World.

Sleep deprivation, Dehydration and Starvation.

These are allcommon worldwide but not always used together. In the long term sleepdeprivation causes serious mental and physical health problems. In the shortterm your character would hallucinate. A lot. I’ve had sleep deprivationhallucinations, they ain’t fun. Anecdotally hallucinations caused by sleepdeprivation tend to be frightening. Mine were always black and white.

Dehydration andreduced diet both cause crippling head aches, dizziness and nausea. Dehydrationcan cause your character’s vision to blur and after a while water might tastesweet.

I’m going tocome back to the question of compliancenow I’ve summarised those methods. Ifall you want is the antagonists to have an easier time handling/moving yourcharacter these methods will work. In fact just sleep deprivation wouldmake it easier for them to do whatever they want to your character.

If however youwant active compliance then these won’t work.

Your charactermight still comply, but they’d be complying for reasons to do with their ownpersonality and motivations in spite oftorture, not because of it.

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