Lecture: Testing (November 15, 1956)

Now, testing had its origin, I am sure – this is my suspicion, since I really know nothing about the subject – had its origin in the early days of brainwashing. It was an effort to make people self-critical, which is a keynote of brainwashing. If you would test somebody long enough and often enough, you’d drive him daffy if you never told him what he was being tested for, or against what standard. You’d have to have a standard against which he was being tested so that he could achieve, himself, a comparison of result.

[…]

But we could take any test, no matter how arbitrary, and get a curve on quite a few people, and then process them for a while, and then get a new curve. And we could say then this process on these people gets us this change. You got it? And in view of the fact that nothing else has ever been able to change this test, we must have been changing the test. Not even Russian brainwashing or sergeant brainwashing could alter this profile, thus an auditor must be doing something.

Notes