Psychology in 1984

While reading George Orwell’s novel, 1984, I was intrigued by the psychological manipulation techniques that the Party successfully utilizes to establish complete and utter control over its citizens. After having taken Advanced Placement Psychology last year, I found myself analyzing the Party’s different strategies in dominating important psychological aspects of the human mind, such as language, memory, learning, intelligence, and behavior.

The Party uses a variety of tactics to control the minds of its citizens. I think the most important is the telescreen; the telescreen constantly streams propaganda designed to influence their thoughts, and the citizens have no choice but to listen to it. Besides that, the telescreen monitors all behavior, and this forces everyone to act in a way that appeases the Party. Concerning manipulation of language, the Party uses Newspeak, a language that erases all creativity and limits expression of speech. As future generations learn Newspeak during the critical period of language development, they will not know any other language, thus being incapable of any thoughts that oppose the Party.

I especially found the repression of memories and intelligence fascinating. Winston represses so many memories about his mother and sister that ultimately surface to consciousness. This reminded me of Freud’s psychoanalytical approach in that Winston had repressed these memories to his subconscious in order to alleviate the suffering he felt towards the disappearance of his family and the shame he felt for having stolen the chocolate from his sister. The other citizens have repressed memories of their childhood too, for fear of possibly committing thoughtcrime. Besides restraining their memories, the citizens also need to restrain their intelligence. Winston says, “It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain” (289). I found it interesting that they needed to acquire a level of stupidity, so that they don’t question the Party.

Finally, the conditioning of the citizens captivated me. The Party mainly uses physical punishment to condition its people. As shown in the conditioning of Winston at the end of the novel, he cannot withstand any physical pain from the dial. He thinks, “Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop” (246). Therefore, pain is a very effective tool in conditioning the people to obey them. With such strict and horrible conditioning methods like this, it is easy to see why the people always obey the Party and have no desire to rebel.

Overall, I think that one of the main purposes of 1984 is to show how powerful psychological manipulation can be. It proves that everyone is susceptible to being influenced psychologically, and even the strongest people, who try to defy it, such as Winston, will surrender in the end. Psychological manipulation is essential for absolute power—what the Party is striving to achieve. I think that at the end of the novel, it is clear they have achieved their goal after Winston has been broken down.