The Campaigner

50
U.S. Army psychiatrists in 1945. Here Rees explains the
role of his psychiatric Gestapo:
...They are not merely dealing with outpatient work
amongst those who fall sick, but they are concerned with
the minor indications of instability that link up with disciplinary
troubles, with social unrest and with poor morale.
Through their emphasis on, and interest in, conditions of
work, they can advise on the modification of working
hours and conditions, on welfare and the use of leisure,
on training and allocation and on all the manifold group
problems that are there to be seen by anyone who is in
the group but yet has learned to be attacked.(60)
It is upon such principles that the major "mental
health" institutions in the U.S. were created, notably the
Veterans Administration, the "private" social welfare
agencies, and especially the National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH).
The Mental Health Act of 1946 was, in the NIMH's
own words, "a major turning point in the entire
development of the field of mental health." [61] This Act
authorized broad support for research, training, support
of service, the establishment of clinics and treatment
centers, pilot and demonstration studies, and direct
assistance to the States. Its form, however, is less im- Dr. John Rawlings Rees
portant than its content. What the NIMH, more than
any other institution, did in its formative years was to
but as a sacrifice to Hitler's divide-and-conquer anti-
Semitism. Lewin, in fact, is noted for his refinement of
shape mental health research and practice along Reesian
Germany not because of any basic political differences
lines, the Nazi-formulated "leaderless group" technique into a
But Rees influenced more than institutions; he
sophisticated tool of counterinsurgency.
primarily influenced those individuals who developed the In the early 1930's Lewin first developed contact not
institutions. One such Rees creation is Imamu Baraka*; _¢ith Rees, but with one of his Tavistock colleagues, Eric
another is Kurt Lewin. Trist. (Trist today steers the CIA-directed LEAA,
Kurt Lewin, the "father" of group dynamics, was one NIMH-NIH, Ford Foundation and Wrorld Bank-funded
of Rees's first cadre recruits. Lewin, a psychologist, was brainwashing network at the Wharton School of the
a "political" refugee from Nazi Germany who, like so University of Pennsylvania.) More than a decade later,
many other German "intellects," was forced out of Trist, alongwith A.T.M. Wilson, prepared a proposal to
the Rockefeller Foundation which led to the establishment
of the Tavistock Institute in London. Rees was its
first director. Immediately upon establishment of
Tavistock, Trist contacted Lewin, who had already
formed the North American precursor to the CIAcontrolled
Institute for Social Research (ISR), the
Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T. The
Reesites at Tavistock wanted Lewin to jointly establish
an international journal described as "working towards
the integration of the social sciences." Lewin eagerly
agreed, and thus sprang forth one of the primarily CIAbacked
journals, Human Relations.
_:'
* In 1968 Rees, posing as the director of a nonexistent company,
New Coals, Inc., set up the meetings between LeRoi Jones
and Anthony Imperiale that launched the CIA's "Operation
Newark." See New Solidarity, August 31,.1973, Vol. IV, No. 20
for further details.