Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

British-Rhodesian author Doris Lessing’s collection of five essays, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (1987), explores themes of society, government, and religion. The author is particularly concerned with what the “soft sciences” (i.e. psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.) can tell us about patterns of human behavior. The essays are conversational in tone, as they were adapted from a series of lectures delivered during the 1985 Massey Lectures held annually in Canada.

The first essay, “When In the Future They Look Back on Us,” Lessing tells the story of a farmer and a bull, explaining how a wealthy farmer paid a considerable sum of money for a Scottish bull in her hometown in Rhodesia. When this bull killed its caretaker, a young black boy, the farmer insisted on killing it, thus destroying the prospect of producing offspring. Lessing likens this decision to another instance in which a tree associated with France’s infamous General Pétain (convicted of treason) was sentenced to death and executed. Lessing uses this to explain how humans can revert to primitive behavior when faced with dramatic situations. Lessing also posits in this essay that some people enjoy war. This is a truth that many historians and sociologists fail to admit and account for, but one that explains why wars continue to be fought.

“You Are Damned We Are Saved” discusses phenomena such as cults and brainwashing. In an anecdote about the miner’s strike in Britain in 1984, Lessing asserts that, when one man went back to work amid the strike because his family was impoverished, he was physically attacked and his house broken into by those considered neighbors and even friends of the family—such is the outcome of group mentality. Lessing contends that Europe is becoming polarized. To prove this, she notes the relatively recent development wherein the universities’ “soft science” departments, such as psychology, sociology, social psychology, and social anthropology, are addressing themselves to the study of human behavior. This is the first time in human history that society is tasking itself with studying its own behavior objectively. A conclusion of these studies demonstrates that Britain no longer comprises a political Left and Right, but rather small and large groups of Leftists of varying types. Lessing admits she had been a Communist, which she attributes to having grown up in Rhodesia, a former territory comprising the geographic area of modern Zimbabwe, ruled by a white minority. Finally, Lessing includes an astute comparison of Western churches to Communism in their propensity for sectarianism.



“Switching Off to See ‘Dallas’” discusses both the mass media and group mentality. She remarks that during the Korean War, the U.S. began conducting research into brainwashing techniques applied by the North Koreans—a research proposal that was, indeed, very progressive. Lessing proposes that all individuals are all brainwashed by society. She enumerates the three pillars of brainwashing: tension, repetition, and slogans that simplify complex ideas into concise verbal packages. Lessing adduces as evidence the political elections of Reagan and Thatcher, noting how these elections especially were products of the media.

In one of her many interesting minor narratives, Lessing tells how a university researcher found that he could brainwash people among various mindsets, including a Seventh-Day Adventist, a Stalinist Communist, a Liberal, an atheist, and a feminist) within a week’s time. Additionally, this essay proposes that the media alternatively exaggerates and downplays current events with a dramatic effect on public opinion. The public remained in comparative ignorance about famine in Afghanistan but was preoccupied with the same circumstances in Ethiopia, because of disproportionate media coverage. Finally, Lessing notes that only in civilized societies with a liberated population can people laugh, as tyrants and oppressors do not laugh at themselves. Efficient societies in antiquity utilized secret, disguised inspectors, which Lessing proposes was not a wholly ineffective technique of self-policing.

In “Group Minds,” Lessing insists that democracies should instruct their citizens in group psychology. Her illustrative example here is of a group of individuals used as guinea pigs by psychology researchers, which involved dividing an individual from a group by means of a screen. The group was told to shriek incrementally louder when instructed, while the individual was told to push a button that he or she understood would administer an electric shock of increasing voltage. The individuals charged with overseeing the shock, because they could not see their victims, continued as instructed up to a 450-volt shock. Such is the power of blind obedience to instruction. Next, Lessing tells a similarly interesting story about a group of researchers who check themselves into mental institutions in order to see how convincingly they could behave like the mentally ill. These researchers successfully convinced all of the professional and medical staff but were socially excluded by the bona fide mentally ill residents.



In the last essay, “Laboratories of Social Change,” Lessing makes several observations about the merit of studying literature and history instead of technical subjects, as the former disciplines are timeless, addressing the root causes that are bound to resurface. Lessing also argues that children learn best when their teachers pay adequate attention to them and they are expected to succeed rather than fail. She closes with an optimistic observation that modern society, including the Soviet Union and China, is experiencing a push toward open-mindedness.

Lessing’s approach is both empirical and philosophical, as she considers historical patterns in her search for organizing principles, and seeks to locate universal truths concerning modes of thought and governments, such as socialism, communism, capitalism, and democracy. In these essays, Lessing draws heavily on her experience growing up in Rhodesia. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 at age eighty-eight.