Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Senator Hubert Humphrey, Dr. Harry B. Friedgood, William Sims, and Howland H. Sargeant

DECLASSIFIED E. O. 11652, Sec. 3(E) and S(D) or (E) GO# DD T IAL 5657 Dept. of State letter, A 5-12-76 19.1973 SERVI 795 IN MK By NLT. Hc NARS Data 6.2476 February 15, 1951 57 MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION Participants: Senator Hubert Humphrey (Dem., Minn.) Dr. Harry B. Friedgood, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles William Simms, Administrative Assistant to Senator Humphrey Howland H. Sargeant Dean Acheson Senator Humphrey introluced Dr. Friedgood by saying that he had personally been so impressed with what he had to say that he felt I should have an opportunity to hear him. Dr. Friedgood then referred to the memorandum sent to me at the instance of Mrs. Roosevelt on "The Psycho-Military Nature of Soviet Aggression with Specific Proposals for a Pro-Democratic Psychological Offensive". He said that in the limited time we had, he vas going to take only one facet of a total structure to illustrate his points. Dr. Friedgood then made what he described as a simplified presentation of what facts are actually known about the humen mind. He said that the human mind is divided into two areas--the first a conscious reasoning area, and the second an unconscious ares which he described as being divided again into two parts: the first filled with anger, aggression, fear, pain, sorrow, etc., and the second containing the more noble and humanitarian impulses of mankind. His point was that the Soviets had consciously developed a psychological approach to arouse in peoples the instincts in the area of the un- conscious which contain the most destructive elements. Ho argued that the United States in mounting a psychological offensive should direct its attention toward arousing the more decent and noble human impulses by a strategy designed to appeal to the more constructive area of the unconscious elements of the human mind. Dr. Friedgood developed his thesis at some length, using illustrations, and mode a particular point that we should never directly attack Stalin nor ever imitate or descend to the tactics used by the USSR in appealing to the more destructive elements in the human unconscious. He gave two exomples of the kinds of programs he felt ve should employ on the VOA: 1. The playing of archaic Bussian church music to liberate those impulses and to bring back those recollections asso- ciated with many of the fine and noble elements of the Russian tradition; and (2) a kind of soap opera with a main plot of an American family living in a Russian city and attempting to get t ogether with a Russian family living in the same block. The drama vould depend on their ef- forts to outvit the block commissar thho would never be attacked directly but at whom they would occasionally poke fun and whom they would alvays succeed in outwitting and having gotten together they would find great enjoyment in their friendship. I asked