Chainless Minds
NE of the most moving programmes I have yet heard was The Spirit in in the Cage from 2YA on a recent Sunday, in which three ex-prisoners of war discuss the mental effects of solitary confinement. I donot suppose the three men who talked of their experiences were hand-picked for mental resilience, except in so far as it is only the mentally resilient who survive (as two of the three did) more than two years of solitary confinement under almost unspeakable conditions. The effect of the programme was to fill listeners with a sense of grateful wonder at the nobility of the human spirit, of pride at being co-members of the human race with these three who could tell their tale without bitterness or even heroics. (There was also shame at sharing humanity with those others who were responsible for the conditions endured.) The programme was an_ impressive blend of reticence and _ frankness. There was reticence in discussing. the physical conditions, the pain, the shame, and the horrors of confinement, and a valuable and almost unprecedented frankness in discussing the mental struggles of the prisoners, their gropings towards God and the achievement of almost complete serenity, the final consciousness of the inner reality. All were agreed that the spirit travels further ‘when it starts from a cage, that it is only when the body is a painful encumbrance rather than a source of comfort or gratification that the true potentialities of the spirit can be realised,
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19480910.2.27.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 12
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248Chainless Minds New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 481, 10 September 1948, Page 12
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