Survival And Sanity II

In the immediately preceding post, I closed a quotation just before Sandra Miesel's interstitial passage identified a problem with Synthesis training:

"But psychodynamics could enslave as well as liberate." (p. 130)

In the following volume, she writes:

"Remolding worlds was simpler than remodeling humanity. While continuing to chart and influence the behavior of whole societies, the Institute also experimented with individuals. For a time, an elaborate holistic conditioning system known as Tighe Synthesis seemed an excellent way to maximize human potential. Although a few receptive subjects benefitted from the training, this promising discovery was never widely applied. Not only was it impractical to condition the entire population adequately, the process put too mush power in the hands of the conditioners."
-Sandra Miesel, FOREWORD IN Poul Anderson, Cold Victory (New York, 1982), pp. 9-13 AT p. 12.

I would add that individuals need to decondition themselves, not to be conditioned by someone else.

Although the Psychotechnic Institute was outlawed after the Humanist Revolt of 2170, the Foreword, referring to "...Valti's theories of sociosymbolic logic..." (p. 10) and written from the standpoint of a later civilization, states:

"We who take psychodynamics as much for granted as hyperlight physics may find it difficult to appreciate what those first crude equations meant." (ibid.)

Thus, the psychotechnicians will win eventually. Poul Anderson's works contain these six phrases:

Technic History
Technic civilization
Polesotechnic League

Psychotechnic History
Psychotechnic Institute
Psychotechnic League

The Polesotechnic League is part of Technic civilization which is described in the Technic History whereas the Psychotechnic Institute is part of the Psychotechnic History which is recounted in a series that has been given the title, The Psychotechnic League. Thus, there is no organization called "the Psychotechnic League." However, I wonder whether this phrase could be applied more loosely to the "league" of psychotechnicians who exist throughout the Psychotechnic History and who are certainly around much later than the Psychotechnic Institute. I will shortly reread "The Chapter Ends" in search of evidence of the ultimate triumph of the psychotechnicians.

Survival is "daily bread."
Sanity is "not by bread alone."
The partial sanity of the Psychotechnic Institute is "half a loaf."