stanford prison experiment.

"i began to feel that i was losing my identity, that the person that i called "clay," the person who put me in this place, the person who volunteered to go into this prison -- because it was a prison to me; it still is a prison to me. i don't regard it as an experiment or a simulation because it was a prison run by psychologists instead of run by the state. i began to feel that that identity, the person that i was that had decided to go to prison was distant from me -- was remote until finally i wasn't that, i was 416. i was really my number."

compare his reaction to that of the following prisoner who wrote to me from an ohio penitentiary after being in solitary confinement for an inhumane length of time:

"i was recently released from solitary confinement after being held therein for thirty-seven months. the silence system was imposed upon me and if i even whispered to the man in the next cell resulted in being beaten by guards, sprayed with chemical mace, black jacked, stomped, and thrown into a strip cell naked to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding, covering, wash basin, or even a toilet....i know that thieves must be punished, and i don't justify stealing even though i am a thief myself. but now i don't think i will be a thief when i am released. no, i am not rehabilitated either. it is just that i no longer think of becoming wealthy or stealing. i now only think of killing -- killing those who have beaten me and treated me as if i were a dog. i hope and pray for the sake of my own soul and future life of freedom that i am able to overcome the bitterness and hatred which eats daily at my soul. but I know to overcome it will not be easy."

from the stanford prison experiment


the mind becomes a prison so easily, trapping us in our thoughts and desires. victims of abuse become perpatrators of abuse, casting shadows upon those with impressionable minds. the power of others and our weaknesses plant seeds of hatred in us that we nurture during the idle moments of our minds. our identities try to circumvent this absence of absolute power by giving us a sense of uniqueness; our authority is in our hairstyles, our accessories, our clothes, our tastes, our friends.