The "Transcendental Meditation" affair and the Institute for Psychological and Pedagogical Research in Bucharest, an X-ray of the mentality and methods of the Securitate

"  The hand that fed us may also be the one that will strangle us   ."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Black Swan

1. General context

2. Contact with "Transcendental Meditation"

3. The script and direction of a professional diversion

4. The appearance of a scientific procedure and a "personal file" with political-ideological connotations

5. The "Transcendental Meditation" Technique

6. The directors-actors, the setting and a very strange ritual for those times

7. The invasion of absurdity, violence and pathology in the student environment

8. Social context and underground connections with the system

9. Launching the investigation

10. Systemic repression

11. The reaction of the academic environment and professional authorities

12. Echoes in social space

13. The evolution of psychology after 1990, the first signal of the encapsulation of Romanian society and the taking over of control over the civil sphere through the discreet militarization of the entire political and social system 

14. Instead of conclusions

 

1. General context 

After so many years that have passed since the famous "Transcendental Meditation" affair that shook the intellectuality of the 1980s, it still raises great questions. When we talk about an event of such magnitude, any details that can be brought to light are welcome. It is an opportunity to describe the color of that era and a way to understand how and how much psychology could survive in the aberrant times of communism, respectively how and how much it could be disfigured in the strange times of the original Romanian democracy. On the other hand, this account expresses a personal experience and a personal vision of communist society. In general, our press has avoided publishing synthesis materials on the state of our social sciences (history, law, philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy) since the 1990s, their situation and connections with the system not being clarified even three decades after the fall of the communist regime, these fields being led by exactly the same people who administered them during communism. Finally, the close connections of psychology and sociology and social sciences in general with the communist system and the opacity of the press regarding the investigation of this affair and other taboo subjects in the field of social sciences [0] are another argument for bringing it back to light. 

2. Contact with "Transcendental Meditation" 

My experience with "Transcendental Meditation" was possible through the connection I had with the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research in Bucharest since I was a student at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Bucharest (1978-1981), in the form in which this faculty still existed at that time. I arrived at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research in Bucharest through the recommendation of my professor Mihai Golu who noticed since my first year of college that I was very interested in such a field exactly when it had been practically annihilated [1] and most of the social sciences students were no longer attracted to a profession without a future [2] . As far as I'm concerned, in those turbulent years, I was counting on people's need to understand what was happening and what was happening to them in a demented political system in which social absurdity was becoming obvious to any responsible conscience, but also fuel for a future, but still utopian at the time, social explosion.

In those bizarre times, Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu, head of the Department of Suggestion and Hypnosis at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research and vice-president of the World Association of Hypnosis and Suggestion, was doing research in that field and needed students to help him organize the research, respectively in routine work (data collection, organizing experiments, etc.).
For this purpose, he turned to his collaborator Irina Holdevici, assistant at the Institute of Physical Education and Sports in Bucharest (IEFS), where she taught psychology and did relaxation and suggestion trainings with the students there, and to Professor Mihai Golu from the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Bucharest.
In the end, two students were selected, namely Dana Faur from the Institute of Physical Education and Sports (recommended by Dr. Irina Holdevici), and the undersigned (recommended by Professor Mihai Golu).
I obtained the recommendation of Professor Mihai Golu after long discussions that I had since the beginning of my first year about the evolution of the psychological field and even about the situation in the country, discussions in which I told him that following my readings, experience and my previous social route, I was willing to invest in a field that was currently proscribed, but which in my opinion would surely become important again (I was relying at the time on the evolution of the general situation in the country).
On the other hand, among my year colleagues at the Faculty of Philosophy-History, I was the only one who had come with a recommendation from another faculty and among the few who had worked during the faculty in the first year (later I found out that I had a colleague who was simultaneously working at Radio Romania).
According to the rules of the regime at the time, those who dropped out of one faculty and wanted to enroll in another faculty had the right to take the exam only after working for a year "in production", so that the state could recover the expenses incurred with them at the first faculty.
Before being admitted to the Faculty of Psychology, I was a teacher at the " Mihai Eminescu" Economic High School near George Cosbuc Square, which later moved to a new location on Soseaua Viilor in Bucharest, exactly where, years later, the first headquarters of the College of Psychologists in Romania would be.
The director of the high school, Romanian language teacher Ion Coman, pleased with the way I coordinated the dormitory students I was responsible for and the way I related to them, proposed that I keep my job even when he found out that I had become a full-time student, although, according to the rules of the regime, those who were employed could not be students in day courses, but only in evening or part-time faculties. In those days, a salary, even minimal, meant a lot to a full-time student who could not receive a scholarship.
Although I had entered the Faculty of Psychology, full-time and with a scholarship average, I could not benefit from it because my parents, middle school teachers, exceeded the salary ceiling by several tens of lei.[ 3]
This is the reason why I hid this from my colleagues at the faculty who could not understand why in my first year of college I was always absent from the first class or seminar and why I was absent from lunch every day.
I did the same with my dorm mates who didn't understand why I left the dorm at 6:00 every weekday and never returned before midnight.
On the other hand, although it wasn't possible to choose the topic of my future diploma thesis during my first years of college, I had already started discussions on this topic with Professor Mihai Golu who was pleased to see that a student had such concerns since his first year of college.
The first idea was to use my experience as a teacher and my knowledge about education (I knew the real situation of middle and high school education relatively well from my parents).
Specifically, I proposed to my professor a bold project for a future diploma thesis, whereby I would interrupt my studies in my third year of college (of course, with the prior approval of the Ministry of Education, the Faculty of Psychology, etc.), and for a year, coordinated by my professor, study the structuring of the value system and group psychology among fourth-year students at a high school in Bucharest.
To this end, with the energy and enthusiasm of my age, I proposed to enroll in the 12th grade at a Bucharest high school as a "student transferred from another high school" (of course, with the prior approval of the Ministry of Education, the School Inspectorate and the principal of the respective high school).
My teacher, taken by surprise and amazed by the non-standard proposal, reacted accordingly: "I've never heard of anything like that before, but it would be very interesting!".
Then came a sentence that brought me back to brutal reality:

"If I propose something like that to them, they'll throw us both out. We're not in America!"

We both laughed heartily and from that moment on (keeping our distance, of course) I became friends with my teacher.
As this utopian idea fell through, I looked for another theme that would appeal to me.
At that moment, the professor proposed that I participate as a student in the research in the field of suggestion and hypnosis that Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu from the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research was doing, who had asked him to recommend a student, and that is where I would find a topic for my diploma thesis.
I accepted with enthusiasm because it was something captivating for a first-year student (I hoped that I would learn and apply the hypnosis techniques that seemed fascinating to me at the time).
At that moment in my first year, I even began to hope that life as a student in what was left of psychology would not be as terrible as it seemed to me when, after taking the exam in the summer at the Faculty of Psychology, I found myself in the fall with my fellow students at another faculty, namely at the Faculty of Philosophy-History, Psychology department.
For the generations of that time, it was a real trauma, the feeling of alienation being evident among students of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and pedagogy because no one expected this career change that saw students at the "faculty of social sciences" (in reality forced to study history as a second major) and forced to become teachers mainly in villages because the big cities were closed to graduates of humanities faculties.
Then I had the idea to somehow immortalize those moments because from the atmosphere in the faculty and the mood that existed in the country at that time, I concluded that very interesting times would follow.
I asked a friend from the Faculty of Civil Engineering from which I had retired to come with a camera and capture in the lens some first-year students from the Faculty of Philosophy, 1978 who were leaving the courses (Photo 1, 2). The courses were common in the first year of the faculty, the differentiation by sections was made starting from the second year.
In the seminar room captured in the image (Photo 3), almost all the students of the psychology department, series 1978-1981, appear, except for the one who took the photo and a colleague who was absent that day.
For a reason that I still can't fully explain, back then, photos were extremely rare with my classmates and almost never with the teachers (I only know of photos taken during agricultural practice in the fall of 1978, but none reached me).
In these photos presented below, there is also a student who his colleagues knew had a special status. Since the first year, there was a rumor circulating among us that his father was in the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, his mother was a professor of socialism at the University of Bucharest, and that he would be the future valedictorian (and so it was!).

1. Group of first-year students, Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Bucharest, 1978 (bottom left is a Syrian student at the same faculty).

2. Students of the Faculty of Philosophy-History of the University of Bucharest, first year, 1978

3. Fourth year students, Psychology Department of the Faculty of Philosophy-History of the University of Bucharest, 1981

The result was that in the first two years of college I went weekly to the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research where I became familiar with the research techniques of Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu, I attended presentations and conferences on the topics of suggestion and hypnosis and I got to know the atmosphere there.

Vladimir Gheorghiu (Suggestion and Hypnosis Department) and Ioan Ciofu (Simulated Behavior Department) were the central personalities in that institute that attracted like a magnet people from very diverse fields (once I think I saw him on the stairs of the institute including Constantin Noica).

This popularity was given by the very attractive conferences on the topics of hypnosis and suggestion organized periodically at the institute by Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu *), conferences open to the public (it is true, only those who knew about them and were invited could participate).

During the two years that I went weekly to the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, I met Irina Holdevici, a young doctoral student who assisted Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu in presentations and who, together with Ilie Puiu Vasilescu, then a young psychologist at the Center for Aeronautical Medicine in Bucharest, passionate about statistics and a graduate of the Academy of Economic Sciences, were considered by their colleagues to be the brightest young people of that generation.

At that time, I had already read Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu's articles published in the Psychology Journal and his books on suggestion and hypnosis published in our country (Suggestion and Suggestibility, Academy Publishing House, Bucharest, 1980, remains a reference book).

However, after two years of practice at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, where together with Dana Faur (who left for Germany in the 90s) I participated only in routine research on suggestibility, research in which I put into practice the experiments designed by Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu, wrote the examination protocols, etc., we realized that we would not be initiated into hypnosis.

The reason officially invoked by Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu and his assistant Irina Holdevici was that "we will learn the technique only after we get our diploma" (however, we found out that a student from the Institute of Physical Education and Sports was already initiated into this technique).

In reality and as we found out later, only those authorized and registered by the Ministry of the Interior and by the Securitate had the right to practice hypnosis.

I understood then that it was a minefield and I gave up volunteer work, but I kept in touch with the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research.

In the last two years of college, when I learned that Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu, assisted by Irina Holdevici, was organizing "Transcendental Meditation" presentation sessions at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, in which the electronics engineer Nicolae Stoian [4], who came from France, and his wife Muriel held their famous courses in Romanian and French, respectively, courses attended by the elite of Bucharest at the time (cultural figures, academics, researchers, etc.), I asked them if students could also participate.

Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu and his assistant obtained Nicolae Stoian's agreement for two students to participate in the Transcendental Meditation sessions, we were even given a waiver because as students we were exempt from the fee of 300 lei in the money at the time (very high for a student) that had to be paid and which I could not afford to pay (for comparison, in a year my salary as a trainee teacher in the rural area will be 1200 lei).

With this waiver, I was able to participate together with Dana Faur in the first Transcendental Meditation sessions (as far as I know, we were the only students who participated in those sessions).

Of all the professors and assistants teaching psychology at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Bucharest in those years (Paul Popescu-Neveanu, Mielu Zlate, Mihai Golu, Gheorghe Ionescu, Pantelimon Golu, Mihai Lungu, Emil Verzea, Constantin Pufan, Petre Pufan, Constantin Mitrofan, Ursula Schiopu, Dumitru Cristea, etc.), professor Mihai Golu was the only one who participated in the Transcendental Meditation sessions and the only one who was subsequently punished.

3. The scenario and direction of a professional diversion

The first impression of this experiment was given by the place of its development, namely the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research.

On the other hand, the quality of the guests, namely researchers, personalities from various scientific and cultural fields, was a guarantee of the seriousness of the experiment. The hall at the institute was full of people, but being a simple student I knew only very few of the guests, especially since I only participated in the first sessions, namely until I signed a kind of "personal file" (I will return to this extremely interesting episode) and received the "mantra".

From the multitude of participants, I remember those I recognized in the hall, namely the doctor Victor Sahleanu, the art critic Andrei Plesu, the poet Marin Sorescu, the caricaturist Cik Damadian (the last two were very well-known at the time), I learned about the rest of the participants later.

I had heard about Victor Sahleanu since my third year of high school when I read his book "Critical introduction to psychoanalysis" [5], the first book on psychoanalysis published in our country after 1945 and which I found fascinating at the time.

Years later I would learn that psychoanalysis was one of the favorite weapons of Russian psychopoliticians used in the fight against Western democracies [6].

On the other hand, Andrei Plesu was known to me because, together with Gabriel Liiceanu, Aurora Liiceanu, Vladimir Tismaneanu and, very interestingly, Constantin Noica, they were the names most discussed in the 1980s at the Faculty of Philosophy and History in Bucharest.

In addition, I had read the first edition of his book "Picturesque and Melancholy" (Bucharest, Univers Publishing House, 1980) reprinted after 1990.

On the other hand, I remembered Victor Sahleanu and Andrei Plesu in particular because I heard them say that they came there to "get rid of stress" respectively the stress of those times.

As far as I'm concerned, it seemed very naive to me to believe that relaxation techniques like "Transcendental Meditation" could free you from the pressure of the communist regime.

4. The appearance of a scientific procedure and a "personal file" with political connotations

One of the key conditions imposed on the participants was to fill out a "personal file" in the style used by party and state bodies, which requires very precise data (name, surname, age, sex, education, profession, seniority, place of work/position/function, interest in yoga techniques, level achieved in practicing them, etc.).

The final condition followed, whereby the practitioner of "Transcendental Meditation" undertook not to reveal the mantra received from the instructor to anyone, ever.

This condition caught my attention from the beginning, and over the years I had confirmation that at the origin of this business was not the oriental practice used only as a pretext, but a very skillful diversion of the communist regime.

Through this stratagem, the practitioners of "Transcendental Meditation" automatically fell under the incidence of the laws of the communist regime. In other words, secrets could only belong to the system, so individuals were not allowed to have secrets from the state (at the limit they could be equated with "conspiracy against social order", respectively the most serious crime in the communist vision) and the circle closed.

5. "Transcendental Meditation" Technique

According to the doctrine of "Transcendental Meditation", a mantra is a meaningless sound, a melody that has existed for each individual since ancient times and with the help of which this meditation can be practiced, namely a mechanical technique through which attention is focused and directed inward.

I attended the presentation made by instructor Nicolae Stoian, I took some notes (cf. Fig 1, 2, 3) but this presentation seemed unconvincing to me from the start.

The hermetic language in which the technique was shrouded:

"the mind controls itself";

"the mantra is a vehicle";

"the mind is placed on the mantra";

"the mantra is a vibration that resonates with the nervous system of each person", etc.),

was just a way of avoiding answering clear questions: where do mantras come from ("thousands of years old sounds transmitted orally from generation to generation"), why were they transmitted only within a ritual ("out of respect for the founder of the technique"), what are the criteria according to which they were attributed to individuals, etc.

Two trivial paralogisms were also placed in the economy of the ensemble. In the 1980s and in front of his students at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, engineer Nicolae Stoian stated without hesitation (and was believed by many) that practicing Transcendental Meditation can lead, in the style of the famous spiral of guru Gabriel Bivolaru, to obtaining an "infinite potential" at the individual level, and very interestingly, at the country level that can become "invincible".

He claims exactly the same thing now:

" ...if a minimum of 500 people practice meditation at the same time, such a state of coherence is created in the population and such a state of purity is created that negative disruptive elements can no longer negatively influence the country, and the country can become invincible."

Nicolae Stoian

 

6. Directors-actors, the setting and a very strange ritual for those times

Engineer Nicolae Stoian and his wife Muriel Stoian were the catalysts of this large-scale operation organized at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research where the host was Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu, who enjoyed an indisputable professional authority (at that time being the secretary of the World Association of Hypnosis and Suggestion).

After two introductory sessions in which engineer Nicolae Stoian presented the basics of the doctrine of "Transcendental Meditation" and some data about its founder Maharishi Mahesi Yogy, a third session followed in which the future practitioner filled out a "personal file" with very accurate data (name, surname, age, sex, studies, profession, seniority, place of work/position/function, interest in yoga techniques, level reached in practicing them, etc.) and received the mantra.

Bizarrely, although they took place in a research institute, the conditions of initiation into the practice of "Transcendental Meditation" had nothing to do with psychology or scientific research.

In a room of the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, a kind of altar was set up, namely a long table covered with a white tablecloth. In the middle of the table sat the color portrait (A3 size) of Maharishi Mahesi Yogy framed by two lit white candles and surrounded by flowers, oranges and bananas.

In front of the portrait were three small trays, apparently made of gold, with round and oval shapes [7] the edges of which were about two centimeters high, the largest of them having about the diameter of a tennis ball.

Further towards the center of the room, there were two chairs for the instructor and the neophyte who stood face to face about a meter away and both with their hands on their knees (apart from the table and the chairs, there was nothing else in the room).

The image offered to the viewer somewhat resembled the one below to which we add white flowers, bananas, oranges plus two white candles lit next to the then portrait of the Maharisi guru who had a beard and black hair and a much more sober look:

Maharishi Mahesi Yogi

In the initiation hall, people spoke in low voices, a scent of sandalwood and other oriental aromas wafted. People only entered wearing stockings because all participants took off their shoes at the entrance. For those times when the Romanian social space was dominated by grayness, the picture of this gathering of the Bucharest intellectual elite, in which women tried to stand out through elegance and fine perfumes and men through suits, but all paraded in stockings and with flowers and fruit in their hands, offered a downright surreal image.

For me, a student, this show was a disappointment and raised another big question mark for me through the mixture of categories, a way of bringing the mountain to Mohammed.

According to elementary logic, whoever wants to study religion goes to church or among believers, does not bring the church to the laboratory.

After this skillful staging, the two divided their tasks. Muriel Stoian, in a dress with floral motifs on a gold background and wearing high-heeled leather boots, took over the neophytes who preferred the initiation into Transcendental Meditation to be done in French, while Nicolae Stoian took care of the initiation in Romanian for most of them.

The directors-actors of this show were at their best. Muriel Stoian left a pleasant impression, but her role was a decorative one, the violin first being her husband.

During the period when he taught "Transcendental Meditation" courses at the Institute for Psychological and Pedagogical Research, the electronics engineer Nicolae Stoian was a charismatic person.

Sure of himself, sober, with a dry face typical of ambitious young people who are good at math, with a glint in his eyes a la Gorbachev, he leaves the impression of a man who can capture an audience.

Finally, the personal contact with the instructors, the unusual altar and the related initiation ritual in which the participants had to come with flowers, fruit, a white handkerchief and take off their shoes, were another diagnosis for this bizarre situation.

To all this is added the comical spectacle of the women who, considering the importance of the event, came dressed very elegantly, but who, to their surprise, were required to parade in stockings, just like the men who came in suits and were put in the same position in a research institute. The end result was a general feeling of embarrassment mixed with an atmosphere of farce.

On the other hand, the questions formulated in the style of questionnaires used by party and state bodies and the commitment not to discuss the mantra with anyone and never, created the greatest reservations in me and I considered them traps, just like bringing an altar to the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research.

In those atypical circumstances, I went on alert and listened to my instinct, filling out the "individual file" with false data from head to toe.

Having this safety net (even if illusory in a world where in fact no one was sure of anything anymore), I eagerly awaited the meeting with Nicolae Stoian.

The scene deserves to be played in slow motion. The hall where the altar was located, the smell of sandalwood and scented candles, the white tablecloth, the flowers, bananas and oranges and the color portrait of the guru, offered an image of a Hindu temple.

When I entered, Nicolae Stoian was in front of the altar of Maharishi Mahesi Yogy. He soberly invited me to take a seat on the chair and sat in front of me about a meter away and with his hands on his knees.

While he was carefully examining me, he calmly started the conversation, asking me if I had had any contact with yoga, why I wanted to practice "Transcendental Meditation", etc.

The moment he asked me what my occupation was and I said I was a student, I noticed that his interest suddenly decreased because he interrupted the conversation and went straight to the end of the interview. The problem is that Nicolae Stoian had exactly the same behavior towards my research colleague. In this situation, our conclusion was clear from the start. As students, we were not interested, so only those with a certain social status, namely the personalities of the moment, were targeted.

Returning to the initiation ritual, there followed: "Now you will receive your mantra that you will never tell anyone. When I announce it, close your eyes."

I carefully watched the show offered by Nicolae Stoian who walked in front of the portrait of Maharishi Mahesi Yogi, clasped his hands on his chest and bowed his head slowly and reverently.

He then went to the three golden trays on the altar, put a few grains of rice in one tray and poured a few drops into another.

He then lit two sandalwood sticks, clasped his hands on his chest and began in a whispered voice a kind of incantation/prayer in a strange language (Sanskrit?).

Then he stopped and turned solemnly: "Now close your eyes!" . After a few seconds, I heard my mantra ("syringe") whispered softly in my right ear, the mantra that each participant was supposed to use during the 15-20 minute individual meditation.

After learning the mantra, we were invited to participate in the first group meditation after the individual initiation and the last session I had ever participated in.

At first, there were again heated discussions about the technique itself, and the general conclusion, supported by Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu as well, was that "the technique works" (the ritual did not seem important and was not discussed).

Finally, the participants were invited to keep their hands on their knees. In front of us, Nicolae Stoian and his wife gave the signal when everyone had to say the mantra in their minds.

Having behind me my previous social route, my experience as a student at what was left of the Faculty of Psychology, the two years of participation in research related to suggestion and suggestibility in which I learned how to do a scientific experiment, an examination protocol, etc. and reading the articles of Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu, I immediately opened my eyes and looked carefully at the room full of celebrities and personalities who had voluntarily and unconditionally surrendered to a "guru" who, through the mechanisms of group suggestion and suggestibility, of emotional contagion and with the feeling of privileged participation in an unusual experiment, had entered a kind of collective trance.

A few chairs away from me and Professor Mihai Golu, a researcher of about 50 years old, probably very convinced of the benefits of this technique, had entered such a state of relaxation that her chin had dropped and she was left with her mouth open, which offered a not exactly graceful image. I weighed everything up and decided that I would no longer participate in such a farce.

Let's recap. We were in communist Romania in the 1980s, a social prison unimaginable in the West where everything was done with state approval and individuals were trapped in a giant mechanism in which any individual initiative that threatened the ideological scaffolding and the stability of the regime was annihilated out of thin air.

To believe that in those aberrant social conditions the individual and group solution was a daily 20-minute meditation through which the individual forgets everything, frees himself from the system and reaches an "infinite potential", seemed to me a total lack of realism and a blatant naivety (it's as if instead of removing an evil you act not on its causes, but you act "magically" only on its effects).

The unusual episode recounted below shows the distorted, phantasmagorical reflection that such a diversionary action had in the social body, in which something actually hid something else, and the echo effect that it generated.

7. The invasion of absurdity, violence and pathology in the student environment

The communist world had a special ability to offer appearances, and through a tacit convention an illusion of social normality for any dormant consciousness, respectively for those who, applying the principle "the shirt is closer to the chest than the coat", voluntarily confined themselves to this level of reception of a reality ("I don't care, it's not my problem, it's their world, others are to blame for what's happening, etc.") for which they did not feel responsible, but of which deep down they were actually very aware.

The problem is that this tacit convention and illusion of normality continue to feed suspicion and social distrust, overstimulating the virus of conspiracies and conspiracies. In terms of clinical psychology, the communist world perfectly illustrated the universe of paranoid schizophrenia in which the entire Romanian society was involved.

From this point of view, the strange episode that took place in 1980 in one of the dormitories of the University of Bucharest near the Romanian Opera signals avant la lettre the invasion of the nightmare into the world, so warm for some, of apparent social normality.

The protagonist of this episode is a college colleague, student N. R. (I did not give his name for a medical reason that will be explained below) from Buzau, a recent graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy in Bucharest, Sociology department, class of 1980 and assigned as a teacher in a village in the same county

Before graduating, he frequented some activists from the Student Culture House in Bucharest "Grigore Preoteasa" where Sorin Oprescu (son of a Securitate general and future mayor of the Capital after 1990) was the director at the time. After the assignment, he frequently came to Bucharest trying to find a job as a sociologist, being in contact with the sociology professor Aculin Cazacu who had promised him that he would help him find a job as a sociologist in Bucharest and deceived him with this illusion for a year. By virtue of this purpose, he frequently came to the faculty and on this occasion visited his former faculty and dormitory colleagues (it was a tradition for graduates to share their experience as trainee teachers with their former colleagues).

In the fall of 1980, he visited his former faculty colleagues, namely those who were going to graduate the following year, and even visited his former dormitory colleagues.

On this occasion, he tells, one evening, to some fourth-year students (namely Tineghe Adrian, Mujescu Ion, Popescu Stefan, Parvu Petru and the undersigned) and a colleague in the room where he was to sleep, an abracadabra story that kept us all in suspense until midnight.

It all started with the fact that the recent college graduate and history teacher at a rural school had learned (it was not clear how and from whom) about an "external plot against socialism and communism", a plot that targeted the country's leading intellectuals (cultural figures, university professors, etc.) and about which he had learned in Buzau where the first secretary of the county had allegedly died under dubious circumstances.

After learning about this plot, N.R. allegedly started to investigate on his own, but then he noticed that he was being followed.

From that moment on, he got scared and decided to come immediately to Bucharest "to warn the targeted intellectuals". Moreover, during the train journey to Bucharest, he was allegedly followed by two individuals whom he believed to be "foreign agents".

Finally, he told us that he had come to fulfill his mission to save the targeted intellectuals (he said that he had their list, but he did not say where he got it).

My colleagues were impressed by this story and by N.R.'s personality. (he was an imposing, confident young man, a former athlete and one of the good students of the sociology faculty), but as for me, I was much more skeptical and told them that I did not believe the story and that in fact I was worried not so much about the story, but about N.R. (from the knowledge of psychology obtained during the faculty I was inclined to believe that I was facing the onset of a psychosis).

After N.R. left, those of us who listened to the story retired disturbed and thoughtful to rest, all having the feeling (even if for different reasons) that something was wrong. And it was not, because the next day the nightmare began.

At 6:00 in the morning I feel a hand on my shoulder and when I open my eyes I see N.R.'s roommate who had witnessed the discussion last night, who had an expression of fear and told me in a broken voice: "I'm sorry to wake you up like this, but you are needed. N.R. has already hit a roommate of ours who had just woken up because he thought the person was "following him" and broke a few of his teeth. Now he won't let him leave the room, and he wants to talk to you!".

Because of the danger, I woke up in a split second and assessed the situation. I immediately replied: "Calm down and listen to me carefully! I think it's the onset of psychosis. In this case, N.R. is a danger to himself and to the others because if he has already hit one of your classmates, he can hit someone else at any time. I'm scared to death too (N.R. was an athletic person, he was 1.80 m tall and over 80 kg) and maybe the best thing would be to get dressed and simply leave the dorm, but I can't do that before we warn our classmates about the danger he is in." .

I woke up my roommates and while I was getting dressed, I explained to them what had happened and that they might be in danger and that the safest thing would be to leave the room quietly and one by one, without running and without attracting attention, because following the discussion last night N.R. he can come back into the room at any time and he can hit someone. Secondly, I told N.R.'s roommate that we were going back to warn his colleagues and see what we could do on the spot.

I took heart in my teeth and together with N.R.'s colleague, whom I asked to control his fear as well, we went into the room. Shock and horror.

With a fixed gaze and shining eyes, N.R. was sitting tensely on a chair at the table in the middle of the room and was dabbing his hand because his fist was lacerated from the blow he had administered to a student who had just woken up. To the right of the room, the student in question, his eyes filled with tears of pain and fear, was sitting on the edge of the bed and spitting teeth and blood into a basin. The other students in the room were sitting on their beds paralyzed with fear.

I felt a chill down my spine, a lump in my throat and my stomach tightened with fear. Instinctively I wanted to run, but my mind judged coldly and told me what would happen and what would happen to me if I gave in to fear. Probably because of the visceral fear I controlled my reactions starting with the tone of my voice and ending with my gestures. I looked as if nothing had happened at the people in the room, including the poor student who was beaten and looked at me desperately, and I calmly addressed N.R.: "I'm here!"

Then, with a heart the size of a flea, I went and sat down on a chair right in front of him. When he was convinced that I wasn't asking him anything about what happened in the room (as he had looked at me, he was already on guard and I think he couldn't wait for me to ask him why he hit the student), he relaxed and said: "Okay, let's get to action!"

From that moment until the moment I left the room, I lived in another reality and in a maximum internal alert because the entire period that passed was under the sign of an internal metronome in which every passing second counted.

Luckily for me, the strategy paid off. N.R. forgot about "those who were following him" and focused on his delirium. He took out a large notebook, then gave me a sheet of paper and asked me to write down the names of the teachers he was targeting, names that he read. I don't know how many names his list had, but at that time I wrote down 40 names of teachers and public intellectuals from different fields with complete contact details (name, profession/faculty, scientific title, address, telephone, etc.).

Of course, I didn't give any credit to the list that I attributed to the psychosis, but I mechanically wrote down the dictated names asking him something about the teachers to distract him periodically and try to keep him under control because I feared a violent outburst at any moment.

Finally, when N.R. he stopped to go to the bathroom, I told his roommates to get dressed and under various pretexts to leave the room one by one and quietly without running because that would draw attention to themselves.

After I finished writing the list, I said to him :

"I'm going to a phone to start calling the targeted people. What are you doing now?" .

The answer was astonishing and in full accordance with psychosis:

"I'm going to the hospital to have surgery on my legs for the mounts!" .

I left the room as calmly as I could and to avoid any meeting with him I went to the public phone at the other entrance to the dormitory from where I called directly to the "Gheorghe Marinescu" Psychiatric Hospital and asked for the emergency department.

I introduced myself, gave my number and ID number and explained that a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy in Bucharest (I gave him his name), a former athlete and temporarily returned to the 6 March dormitory near the Romanian Opera, has a serious medical problem.

He has already hit a student and is a danger to others.

The operator told me that they did not have the necessary personnel to immobilize an aggressive patient and that I had to call the Militia so that they could take him with the intervention vehicle.

I went to the Militia and said exactly the same things, but the operator there told me that the intervention vehicle was gone and to call the hospital so that they could take him with the Rescue.

I called the "Gheorghe Marinescu" Psychiatric Hospital again and they told me that they would send the Rescue, but that it would only have one driver (and they sent it without any results because when N.R. arrived, he had already left).

This is where the official intervention of the authorized bodies ends.

N.R. continued on his way. In the corridor he met my colleague Adrian Tineghe who, although he knew what had happened, made the mistake of running away, but he was surprised that N.R. followed him in a completely different way.

He did not run up the stairs, but like in the movies, he simply jumped from one landing to another between floors, truly terrifying Tineghe who ran in front of the dormitory, calling in vain for help.

Instead, N.R. forgot about him and headed towards the Faculty of Philosophy and History near the Romanian Opera House where he met with Professor Lazar Vlasceanu with whom he exchanged a few words. This was the last meeting of N.R. with a person I knew before being arrested by the Militia (or by the Securitate according to another version) and taken to the "Gheorghe Marinescu" Psychiatric Hospital.

For my dorm mates it was the end of an infernal day and the end of the incident, but not for me.

The next day, and also at 6:00 in the morning, I was suddenly woken up by another hand placed on my shoulder, and when I opened my eyes I started.

In front of me, sitting on the edge of the bed, was looking at me with interest (not to say condescendingly), a scraggly man with blue eyes, broad shoulders, a bully's face, a boxer's flat nose and missing a few front teeth, something I noticed immediately when he opened his mouth.

" - Sergiu Simion ?

- Yes!

- I am Lieutenant-Major Popescu from the Capital Militia. Tell me what happened yesterday with N.R., I am interested in the details you know and your opinion about what happened. "

I told him the entire episode, insisting on the fact that I had presented the behavior of N.R., a former colleague of ours, to the operators from Psychiatry and Militia, who had a mental breakdown and became a danger to others, and I related the nightmarish scene that I had seen, namely the brutal assault of a student.

While he was taking some notes, the militiaman stopped and commented on it in the style characteristic of the state body he was part of :

" -Couldn't you all jump on him and hit him in the head with a bottle?!

- No, we're students and we want to finish college, not go to jail!"

When we got to the episode with the "international plot against socialism and communism" and the list of intellectuals and professors "in danger", he seemed skeptical, but when I told him about the so-called suspicious death of the first secretary from Buzau, which we all thought was an invention, he immediately became attentive and confirmed : 

"- Yes, he died, we are investigating under what conditions!".

 

The final conclusion of the discussion was that it was most likely the onset of psychosis, but the opinion of the lieutenant-major was interesting:

" - All this madness must have started from something, there must have been something in the middle!".

 This episode did not end even after the discussion with the policeman. At the end of the week, namely on Saturday morning, a colleague informed me that two people were waiting for me in the hall and wanted to talk to me.

I went down again with a feeling of anxiety. This time a man with white hair and an elderly woman were waiting for me in the hall of the dormitory, their state of sadness and depression being visible (the woman was crying).

They were N.R.'s parents who also wanted to find out from me what had happened to their son whom they had visited in the hospital and whom they had found beaten, barefoot, and with torn clothes.

I told them what had happened, what I knew and how I had behaved in a dangerous situation in which I had to make decisions alone.

Very affected by the fact that their son was confined to the Psychiatric Hospital, they asked me for help that I could not give and I tried to encourage them.

I told them that there is therapy for this type of cases and that by following adequate treatment their son will overcome the crisis.

Later I learned at the faculty that after approximately a month of hospitalization in psychiatry, N.R. had recovered and was again a professor.

8. The social context and underground connections with the system 

The "Transcendental Meditation" affair is considered by some historians as a peak of the repression against intellectuals:

In reality, this was only the tip of the iceberg. The communist system had entered an accelerated spiral of encapsulation and isolation from the outside, respectively of the increase in social control that was supposed to involve all its components, this being the official line of the party in those years:

"The collaboration between the party, the people and the Securitate organs must continuously increase"

Nicolae Ceausescu

The goal was to gain total control over the state, society and citizens and create the "new man". By virtue of achieving this goal, the regime's propaganda, "political-ideological and cultural-educational work to form the new man", was extended to education, schools and universities.
The social disciplines and sciences were all put through Procust's paces, deontological and moral considerations becoming obsolete and subsumed by the regime's goals.
The regime's first move on the chessboard was to launch a generalized offensive of social encapsulation and the creation of a false, parallel reality, namely the total control of the media and opinion leaders. 

In the mid-1970s, the Faculty of Journalism at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the University of Bucharest was moved to the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy.
The second was the "reorganization", respectively the politicization of higher education, which aimed to liquidate university autonomy.
In 1977, by a decree issued "at the highest level", the five existing university specializations in the field of socio-humanistic disciplines were abolished, their students being merged into two sections: philosophy-history and history-philosophy. Social science professors and graduates of these faculties were considered activists. Research and higher education positions were blocked and there were no more assignments in these fields.
As a result, a strange connection appeared between the university and the political environment. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy discreetly recruited university professors, sociologists, psychologists, etc. from the University of Bucharest. 
The last stage of the liquidation of university autonomy took into account the degradation of the status of social science graduates forced to take up positions below their qualifications.
In 1980, a decree was issued blocking assignments and transfers, large cities were closed, and university graduates were sent, to an overwhelming extent, to the villages. The motivation was ideological. The working class and the peasantry (and even more so the Securitate, militia and army) were considered the basic pillars of the regime, the weak link being the intelligentsia, seen by the regime as the greatest threat to the stability of the system. 

For this reason, intellectuals and especially teachers were appeased by the leaders in the territory through strategies of verbal domination, pressure and control taught at the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy.
In 1981, as a trainee teacher in a village in the Danube Delta, I had the opportunity to see such a "strategy" applied ad-hoc to teachers from Tulcea County who came to the "Annual Conference of Teachers" (as teachers were called then) which took place at the Trade Unions' Culture House. 

 After the conference began and the first school and high school principals took the floor, in the interval between two speakers and among those who came into the room, a colorless and insipid character (but wearing a suit and tie) slipped in, whom no one noticed and who walked calmly only until he reached the microphone at the front of the room. 

There, the sudden metamorphosis took place, whereby the person in question, whom the teachers didn't even know (namely the first secretary of the county and a graduate of "Stefan Gheorghiu"), made his entrance. 

Exactly when no one expected it, and with the microphone volume turned up to maximum, he suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs to the entire table of teachers in the room (over 500):

"- Aren't you ashamed! The first secretary of the county enters the hall and you don't stand up?!" 

The blow was downright mind-boggling. For a split second the room froze and paralyzed, and in the next split second over 95% of those present, out of fear, embarrassment, and stupor, suddenly stood up.
All these concerted actions of the communist regime were part of a preventive strategy through which the communist regime sought to eliminate any possible foci of dissent and revolt against its official line.
By capturing the media, the de jure politicization of the entire education system, the abolition of university autonomy, the deportation of graduates, and the de facto abandonment of professional ethics in the social and human sciences, any possible form of institutional resistance was annihilated. The communist regime was finally able to move on to the last stage of domestication of society, officially begun by the famous "theses of July 1971" when cultural issues were first brought up for discussion by cultural activists [8] .
What began in 1971 would be clarified by the "Mangalia Conference" of 1983 when "cultural issues" came to be discussed at the highest level.
It was the completion of a process of social engineering and change of mentalities that had begun since 1949-1952 when, through the famous "Pitești Experiment" [9],  the communist regime had initiated the first "re-education process" (through torture!) for political prisoners. Now the regime applies the "re-education process" in another form not to former political prisoners and considered mortal enemies of the regime, but to all citizens forced to live in a false reality controlled by the party and which has become the state norm:

In these conditions of atrocious social control, the relations of psychology (as well as psychiatry) with the communist regime were never clarified, but the close collaboration of psychology and psychiatry with the communist regime was certain [10] .
In 1977, young people who applied to emigrate abroad were subjected to interrogation by Securitate officers who had degrees in Law and Psychology [11 ].
In 1978, when the Faculty of Psychology was to be moved to the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy, the students knew that the dean of the faculty, Professor Paul Popescu-Neveanu, taught psychology courses at the Ministry of the Interior, where yoga courses were also held. They had even learned of the unspoken rule according to which Securitate officers had to be graduates of the Faculty of Law and/or the Faculty of Psychology/Sociology.
On the other hand, the emphasis and multiplication of the mechanisms of political, economic, social, administrative and psychological dependence on the system brought citizens into impossible situations fully exploited by the communist regime which resorted on a large scale to the most diverse forms of blackmail against its own citizens.
The techniques of pressure on individuals and groups and the methods of social control learned by activists and journalists at the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy where a psychological course on "Psychology of the Masses" had been taught since 1976  [12]  fell into this category. Very interestingly, according to historian Lavinia Betea, the courses that were taught there disappeared because "they were allegedly set on fire" [13]
The legitimate question then arises as to what was the hidden reason for the regime to punish the intellectuals and specialists of the system in this way. One possible explanation would be that, from the point of view of a paranoid regime that saw hostile actions and subversion everywhere, they exceeded their mandate and were considered a danger.
From this perspective, the key element in the "Transcendental Meditation" affair was the bizarre relationship of this technique, and especially its form of presentation, with the ideology of the communist regime.
Ever since then, it has been a real enigma how such a "show" received the approval of a neo-Stalinist regime built on suspicion and the presumption of guilt of the citizen (namely the eternal acar Paun), respectively a duplicitous regime in which "under something something else is hidden" and the basic rules are disinformation, diversion and manipulation.
Another enigma is the way in which specialists in the field have analyzed only the technique itself, but without questioning the form of presentation of this technique, absolutely unusual for a research institute and one of the SF type and within the communist regime that violates its own taboos.
Most opinions converge on the fact that this business had close connections with the system and was very useful to the Romanian Communist Party (but it is not clear whether it was its initiator and organizer) which used it as a means of intimidating intellectuals seen as a threat to the system [14].
On the other hand, it is worth noting the dubious way in which this business began, namely the fact that during communism, a Romanian emigrant (!) proposed to the Romanian embassy in Paris "a spiritual education program" that was to increase the performance of the working people of Romania" or "a science of creative intelligence":

The acceptance by the Romanian embassy and by the communist regime of such a program proposed by an emigrant shows the extent of a scenario and a long-term diversion.
Starting from the way in which this affair was initiated, organized and finalized, focused on some basic pieces of the system, namely the regime's intellectuals and social science specialists, etc., from the very deep connections with the system and from the nature and extent of the reprisals that followed, there is a hypothesis that the entire "Transcendental Meditation" affair was conceived in the laboratories of the Securitate.
According to the architecture of the system, the instrument through which this goal could be achieved was the Securitate and its employees who, according to the classic rules of diversion, initially participated in what they later condemned [15] .
Later, one of the top decision-makers of the Securitate at the time described the "specific means" by which the targeted "objectives" fell into the net spread by the regime:

"A Romanian from Switzerland, a collaborator of ours, had created this sect of transcendentalists (sn). He had received approval from the Ministry of Education and the National Council of Teachers of Romanian Language and Literature. He had barely started recruiting and he caught them."
Nicolae Plesita General of Securitate

https://www.historia.ro/sectiune/general/articol/generalul-nicolae-plesnita-in-tinerete-leana-nu-cracnea-in-fata-lui-ceausescu  

Viorel Patrichi, The Eyes and Ears of the People – Conversations with General Nicolae Pleșiță , Ianus Inf Publishing House, 2001.

The regime's visceral hatred of intellectuals and psychology (the removal of a sensitive profession is an extreme social aggression) was an extreme defensive reaction and showed the vulnerability of the regime and its actors, who feared a discipline that had the reputation of revealing what people and the system wanted to hide.
In this sense, the most plausible explanation of the genesis of this affair came from Professor Mihai Golu. In Romania, it was learned that some French psychologists had made Nicolae Ceausescu a psychological portrait based on his speeches, gestures, etc., a portrait that also included a possible diagnosis. From that moment on, the fate of psychology and any other field that could endanger in one way or another the image of the leaders and, consequently, the stability of the regime, was sealed.

9. Launching the investigation 

My story starts in this case from what I know from the group of psychologists, acquaintances and participants in "Transcendental Meditation" with whom I had contact in those years, namely Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu and assistant Irina Holdevici from the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, Professor Mihai Golu from the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Bucharest, Dr. Ion Negret researcher at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research and student Dana Faur from the Institute of Physical Education and Sports in Bucharest. I learned about the start of the investigation against the participants in "Transcendental Meditation" in June 1981 and in a sinister way. 

When I got married, namely at the civil wedding that I had in Bucharest and at such an important moment for me, Dr. Ion Negre , a  researcher at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research and a guest at the ceremony, discreetly called me aside and gave me the terrible news. The Securitate investigations against the participants in "Transcendental Meditation" had begun and a colleague of his, Dr. Ion Ciocan, a researcher at the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Research, had allegedly committed suicide following the investigation (later the version circulated that he had a heart attack following this investigation). He told me in horror that he had also been investigated, but he said nothing about my presence and asked me not to mention his name if they were investigating me too. Finally, he advised me to leave Bucharest immediately without telling anyone where I was going.

It was a very difficult moment because I had to control my reactions and keep my smile in front of my wife, parents, friends and acquaintances who, like my college colleagues, knew nothing about my participation in this experiment or about the secret Securitate investigations that were taking place.
Although I was horrified by what I had heard and expected the Securitate to investigate me, I tried to keep my calm and told Dr. Ion Negre that  I had filled out my "personal file" with false data and from this point of view I do not officially exist in Nicolae Stoian's files, so I would only be investigated if one of the participants who knew me mentioned my name.
On the other hand, since my research colleague had mentioned her name on the file, but she was not investigated either, I later concluded that only important personalities were in the sights of the Securitate, so in reality it was a system-wide settling of scores. 

10. Repression at the system level.

"The screw is being tightened!"
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aculin Cazacu

Statement made at the sociology course, first year,
Faculty of Philosophy-History, University of Bucharest, 1978

 

In relation to its extremely brutal beginning, the communist system had gradually changed its strategy, moving from the prison-type repression of the "Pitești Experiment" (1949-1953) through which the regime wanted to change human nature and obtain through torture the adhesion of citizens to the regime's value system [ 16] , to the soft-type repression in which the arsenal of pressure methods had changed its form and register, but not its purpose and essence.
By virtue of this purpose, the mechanisms of political, economic, administrative, social and psychological dependencies generated by the system were activated to the maximum. 

Rejection of the system's values and social maladjustment were considered capital sins that left the "recalcitrant" individual with no alternative. The label of "enemy of the people" in the 1950s had transformed in the 1980s into the label of "opponent" or "dissident", but once this was applied to the individual, he became a pariah with an uncertain social status and subject to the arbitrariness of the system that followed his compromise within the entourage, administrative assassination and finally "civilian death".
In the case of "Transcendental Meditation" the repression was an unprecedented demonstration of force, namely a combination between the world contained in "The Trial" and "The Castle" by Franz Kafka and the world of "1984" by George Orwell.
For this purpose, the communist system activated the entire social megamachine built on absurdity, uncertainty, ambiguity, unstructuredness and indeterminacy, respectively a world and a society in which everything is relative and no one is sure of anything anymore because the sword of Damocles is hanging above everyone. 
At a simple political command, the social megamachine could change the rules of the game at any time and reset the value systems, the criteria of appreciation and any social and professional status.  White could become black and vice versa.

It is known that in the Bolshevik vision the "power of example" always had an overwhelming effect in establishing terror in society. 

Lenin, the ideologist of the Bolshevik terror, openly argued that "we must punish the innocent so that the real culprits will be scared". 
In this case, through the unprecedented blow applied arbitrarily to intellectuals and specialists, the system indirectly threatens the ordinary citizen and instills fear in the entire society.
With very few exceptions (Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu obtained approval to emigrate to Germany, Andrei Plesu was sent as a librarian to the Tescani Museum) regardless of status, social position and professional training, the investigated personalities were excluded from their activities and sent to work as unskilled workers, which was practically equivalent to the awarding of certificates of political and professional incapacity. But things did not stop there. Although it did not recognize the world from George Orwell's book, the communist regime behaved according to its rules. Psychology was removed from the nomenclature of professions. 

11. The reaction of the academic environment and professional authorities 

Theoretically speaking, in this case the solidarity of the guild should have been manifested, but under the conditions of the communist regime based on suspicion this solidarity of the guild was a utopia, each remaining on his own even in this extreme case of political, social and professional abuse. The reactions of those affected by these measures were mostly resignation, those hit by the regime accepting their fate. There were two exceptions, namely one in which an appeal was made to the magnanimity of the regime (namely Nicolae Ceausescu), and in the other case to ... communist justice. In the first case, it is the famous memorandum addressed to Nicolae Ceausescu by Andrei Plesu  [17] . 
In the second case, a group of 12-15 well-known psychologists, including Dr. Vladimir Gheorghiu, Dr. Irina Holdevici, etc., sued the Romanian state for the abuse committed against them, trying to prove in court, with scientific arguments, that this meditation technique is a valid method of relaxation. 

When I learned about this initiative from my teacher Mihai Golu, despite the awesomeness of the situation, I burst out laughing. 

In my opinion as a student, suing a communist state for human rights violations, in which the Securitate acted as an arm of social justice, was simply a naivety that only the regime's intellectuals could have been capable of. The result was one that matched their naivety. The plaintiffs were simply removed from the courtroom and the trial was held behind closed doors. 

After 23 years from this traumatic social event, the affected psychologists still considered it "arbitrary" without realizing its deep connection with the ideology and mentality of the communist regime, nor the fact that the measures were perfectly in line with the logic of that regime.
The magazine "Social Psychology" No. 13 /2004, thematic issue: Social/collective memory presented these details in detail and the way in which the "Transcendental Meditation" affair was understood and received by the participating psychologists (that issue is no longer available on the magazine's website, but only on a general information site):

http://www.oiss.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/revista-de-psihologie-sociala-13-2004.pdf ;

https://www.scribd.com/document/385894777/Revista-de-Psihologie-Sociala-13-2004

Returning to "guild solidarity", this could not be manifested in the case of the phantom "Association of Psychologists of Romania" because during communism such a thing was simply a sham. 
Instead, we have the symptomatic situation within the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Bucharest. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Psychology Department was headed by Professor Paul Popescu-Neveanu. 
Within it, Professor Mihai Golu made a presentation of the "Transcendental Meditation" sessions in which he participated, a presentation followed by a debate. 
Later, when the Securitate investigations began, Professor Mihai Golu stated that he had the mandate and professional acceptance of his colleagues to investigate the technique, but the head of the Psychology Department at the time denied that any debate had taken place on this topic, resulting in Professor Mihai Golu acting "alone and without the knowledge of his colleagues". 

12. Echoes in the social space 

The "Transcendental Meditation" affair had a profound impact on Romanian society, signaling the return to Stalinism in force and the reconfiguration of the social mega-machine, which was now no longer focused only on those hostile to communism, but on all citizens. If at the beginning of communism, physical repression took place in secret and in silence (the institution of torture was a state secret), now the political, ideological, social, administrative and psychological (re)pression was direct, brutal, and in broad daylight.  Its sinister character derives from the fact that the regime punished for reasons invented in its political logic not the "bourgeois intellectuals" as in the 1950s, but the loyal intellectuals and specialists of the 1980s. The signal was one of threat and blackmail against the entire social body. If public intellectuals, academics and specialists of the regime who had built a career over an entire century were politically, socially and professionally invalidated by a single stroke of the pen, nothing was any longer certain in a system built on absurdity, unstructuredness, indeterminacy and ambiguity, so no one was safe.  Instead of political prisons built specifically for the declared enemies of the regime, the social mega-machine had extended the presumption of guilt to the entire society, transforming it into a gigantic penitentiary in which any citizen and any social group could fall prey to its mixer [18] . Through the mechanism of political, social, administrative and psychological dependencies generated and continuously fueled by the system, citizens ended up in impossible situations, being blackmailed by a regime in which abuses against citizens were the rule, not the exception.
Beyond this social blackmail, the communist system demonstrated once again that it can change its form at most, but never its criminal essence.
The naive attempt of some psychologists to sue a communist state "for human rights violations" had no chance of success in a political and social system run in secret according to the NKVD Directives of 1947 according to which repression was exercised only against those identified as enemies of the regime, while torturers and those who committed abuses continued to benefit from criminal impunity and financial omnipotence:

41. The rehabilitation of those convicted in political trials must be prevented at all costs. If this rehabilitation becomes inevitable, it is allowed only on the condition that the case is considered a miscarriage of justice, the convicted person will not be tried, but only pardoned; there will be no retrial, and the authors of the miscarriage of justice will not be summoned (sn). 

42. It is forbidden to judge or even publicly criticize those leaders appointed by the party, who through their activities have caused losses or aroused the dissatisfaction of the employees. In drastic cases, they are recalled from office, being appointed to similar or higher positions. In the end, they must be put in leadership positions and kept on record as reserve cadres for the period of subsequent changes (sn). 

Christopher Andrew, Oleg Gordievsky - KGB. The Secret History of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev , ALL Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994, p.487-492

As a consequence, those affected by the repressive measures were able to return to their old jobs only after a few years of "labor re-education", but they were not rehabilitated either before or after 1990  [19] .
In the autumn of 1981 and in the midst of the repression against psychologists, I came from the village in the Danube Delta where I was assigned as a teacher to Bucharest and talked with Professor Mihai Golu. 

We met at University Square and walked among the passers-by to Romana Square so that we could safely discuss "Transcendental Meditation", the fate of psychology and psychologists. 
The conclusion of the discussion at that time was a depressing one for me, but later validated. Not only could nothing be done about psychology and psychologists, but even more sinister times would follow for the entire Romanian society.
In 1994, at the National Psychology Conference, Professor Mihai Golu proposed to psychologists the establishment of a union or an organization to defend the rights of psychologists, arguing that the state would never get involved in solving such problems, but his proposal had no echo.
Instead, in 2004, law 213/2004 appeared on the establishment of the College of Psychologists of Romania, motivated by "defending the profession of psychologist", but which in reality only defended the interests of a bizarre organization. 

From the beginning, it caused tensions, conflicts and trivial scandals that did not end even after 15 years of its appearance.

13. The evolution of psychology after 1990, the first signal of the encapsulation of Romanian society and the taking over of control over the civil sphere through the discreet militarization of the political and social system 

After this very traumatic episode during communism, it was expected that after 1990 the psychological field would experience a revival, restore its status and prestige, connect to European and world psychology and, most importantly, resolve its problems with the past. This is the great problem of the psychological field that also explains its subsequent evolution, which even its official representatives lament [20] . If, regarding the use of psychiatry as a means of repression, the case of some psychiatrists who collaborated with the regime is known and there is certain data regarding the use of psychiatry as a means of repression [21] , regarding psychology, this interest has never existed. Apparently inexplicably, psychology has not clarified until now neither its relations with the past and communist repression, nor its status, nor its social mission, which are mainly reduced to a role of public guardian, namely that of examining, evaluating and advising as many people as possible. Even after 30 years since the 1989 Revolution, almost nothing is known about the number and activity of psychologists who worked in the Securitate, nor about the possible dissidence of others. 

The social and psychological traumas produced by the activity of the Securitate, the sinister "Pitesti Experiment", the Revolution, the mining raids, etc. social control, political, administrative and psychological pressures have never been considered subjects worthy of the attention of psychology.

If in the legal field there is Law no. 303/2004 which provides for the prohibition for judges and prosecutors to collaborate with the current intelligence services or to have collaborated with the former Securitate, for psychologists (namely those who examine magistrates and give them opinions of aptitude/unaptitude) there is no such prohibition.
Paradoxically, the fall of communism instead of producing a revival of psychology, led to a  degradation of its status, to the capture of the field by courts foreign to the reign and to a distortion of the meaning of the profession of psychologist [ 22 ] .
By establishing the "discipline of national security psychology", the intertwining of the civilian and military domains in the field of psychology became mandatory, with psychology now being promoted in society "at an institutional level"  . [23]
The result is one unimaginable even during communism.  

Twenty-three years after the fall of communism and after Romania's entry into the European Union, the Faculty of Psychology in Bucharest has come to endorse military-style "thematic workshops" and psychological assessments for gun licenses . [24]
The process of discreet militarization observed in the psychological field is not an isolated one. 

The same process took place in the field of sociology, where the establishment of the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work shifted the emphasis from assistance to people in difficulty to assistance to the entire society, but on issues of "national security" (!). 

Specifically, a Trojan horse was introduced here, namely the same omnipresent need for security by instituting "national security studies and master's degrees".
The model was surprisingly quickly adopted not only by Romanian universities, but also by the Romanian Academy, which went beyond the stage of academic issues and suddenly became interested in the specific issues of intelligence services and the military field, organizing specific actions in this regard:

CONFERENCE "NATIONAL SECURITY IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY. INTELLIGENCE, STRATEGIC KNOWLEDGE AND DECISION". Bucharest, November 26, 2012  

http://www.juridice.ro/231688/securitatea-nationala-in-societatea-bazata-pe-cunoastere-intelligence-cunoastere-strategica-si-decizie-bucuresti-26-noiembrie-2012.html

After the discreet militarization of the university and academic environment, the next step, namely the tendency to subordinate the political environment, followed logically.

An exponent of this movement expressed this tendency as clearly as possible:

“We believe that optimizing the formation of the intelligence culture of political decision-makers through the direct involvement of the National Intelligence Community aims at the following aspects:  

- reforming the policies regarding the management of human resources of parties;  

- training of political elites to include mandatory training in the field of national security; - involving the academic environment in the process of training political elites in the field of national security;  

- access to classified information - a condition for registration on the electoral lists;  

- continuous training programs in the field of national security for political decision-makers. (sn) “ 

 NATIONAL INFORMATION COMMUNITY AND INTELLIGENCE CULTURE OF POLITICAL DECISION-MAKERS – CURRENT NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES  

Dr. psychologist Ion Duvac associate professor University of Bucharest 

https://documents.tips/documents/duvac-cultura-de-intelligence-a-decidentilor-politici-2007.html

The social result was the emergence of the most opaque elite institution of the Romanian state, namely the Academy of National Security Sciences (ASSN), also undermined by resounding scandals since its inception, scandals that led to a decision to abolish it voted by the Romanian Senate  [25] .
In this case, we are talking about a complete metamorphosis of the political and social system that has passed from the primitive phase of surveillance of each individual to the much more evolved and more efficient phase of surveillance of institutions and organizations that in this way end up having a dual command.
At a general level, we can speak of a general control over the state and society that is no longer exercised by civil courts, but directly or indirectly, by the army and/or secret services. 

An anonymous person reported this situation in the psychological field, but it can be extended to other fields if we consider that Romania has an impressive number of secret services and their collaborators who, in the inspired expression of a citizen, "step on each other's toes" through state administration institutions, professional associations, civic organizations, etc.:

"Anonymous said... 

One of the missions of the secret services is to have permanent control over society in general and institutions or organizations in particular (sn) and the most efficient way is that through which a (former) worker infiltrates, under various forms and in various positions, the institution or organization in question. In general, it is preferred that he/she access a management position. In appearance, the intelligence structure seems to have given up on its own employee, but it uses him/her as long as his/her performance is not negatively influenced by any illness, any flagrant violation of the law or disclosure, and the transfer to the reserve does not mean that the intelligence structure has given up on him/her. Let's not forget that psychology is a weapon and that any weapon must be controlled. How? By ... the officers who lead COPSI (College of Psychologists of Romania -nn)."
November 19, 2011, 07:53

The end result is a degradation of the ethics of social sciences which, by politicizing their action, sabotage their own mission, sending extremely disturbing signals for democracy and the rule of law.
One such example was the "post-mortem psychiatric investigation" (but euphemistically called "psychological analysis of the suicide case", probably to evade certain ethical responsibilities) carried out after the tragic death of prosecutor Cristian Panait :

Another trivial example is the violation of judicial autonomy and the intervention in legal processes of some psychological experts who challenge both the indictment and the guilt of some defendants:

"...the psycho-legal perspective (forensic clinical psychology presents us with an accusatory algorithm – the indictment – as a series of hypothetical reasoning and deductive-implicative extrapolations unsupported by rigorous, realistic, pragmatically argued evidence, but which creates the appearance of logic and credibility) consisting in the chaining of real data, in the confusing context of false interpretations suggestively induced to their investigators by the accused-denouncers"; 

"...the prosecution fails to demonstrate/argue the guilt of the defendant Udrea Elena Gabriela as long as, from the perspective of the criminal substance, we do not identify behaviors or attitudes in her that materialize (objectify) the express will(sn) of mobilizing her cognitive, affective and volitional resources in the form of her intention to determine or demand through incitement, order, influence, promise, persuasion/convincing or other acts and actions that directly or indirectly, for herself or for another, to receive money or other benefits that are not due to her in connection with her service duties" 

Tudorel Butoi 

expert trainer in forensic clinical psychology
https://www.luju.ro/static/files/2016/decembrie_2016/09/Raport_de_expertiza_Butoi_-_Udrea.mark.pdf

https://www.luju.ro/dezvaluiri/cazuri-celebre/denuntatori-demascati-prin-expertiza-prof-univ-dr-tudorel-butoi-expert-psiholog-desfiinteaza-credibilităţie-denuntatorilor-folositi-de-dna-in-dosarul-gala-bute-pentru-ao-inculpa-pe-elena-udrea-ca-a-primit-mita-o-geanta-cu-900-000-euro-rechizitoriul-este-

Finally, following the antidemocratic and trivial model proposed by the Romanian College of Psychologists since its founding in 2006, namely that of examining all teachers in Bucharest and the country in order to hunt down "suspects (?!) of alcoholism, homosexuality, pedophilia"[26], the strange proposal for a state of law and for the ethics of the psychology profession has recently appeared, namely that of making clinical diagnoses in the public space and setting up social hunting ("anti-terror") teams to detect psychopaths in politics:

"The Victor Ponta case" 

Victor Ponta provides us with excellent material for highlighting psychopathy and its extremely damaging consequences. I will use the open letter “ Have mercy on us, Victor Ponta !”, addressed in 2014 by Gabriel Liiceanu to Victor Ponta. It is perfect to check the clinical picture characteristic of the psychopathic politician ( sn ), to validate (again and again) the stupor and cognitive blockage that psychopathy provokes, but, above all, to announce (unfortunately) the incompatibility between the appeal to pity and the psychopathic structure.”

"Psychopaths must be cornered with tactics that target their psychopathy. If an anti-psychopathy (anti-terror) team is ever formed for Romania, I sincerely hope to be co-opted." http://www.contributors.ro/editorial/portretul-psihopatului-la-guvernare/ "@Jacques: Trust me, I'm not crazy about power. The anti-psychopath team will be in good hands. I care about equality, not control. Thanks for the comment."

http://www.contributors.ro/editorial/portretul-psihopatului-la-guvernare/#comment-332994

The problem is that the psychological field is now in exactly the same situation as the medical field in the 1990s, when the old Romanian College of Physicians was challenged by a newly emerged college (this information appeared in the written press of the 1990s, but can no longer be found on the Internet), and in the more recent and equally bizarre situation in which the legal field found itself, led by parallel bars that challenged each other in court [27] .
In the case of psychology, the Romanian College of Psychologists, which emerged in 2006, filed a criminal complaint for "fraud, forgery, use of forgery and usurpation of official qualities, through the illegal issuance of false documents by an organized group", respectively against the new Romanian College of Psychologists  [28]  , which in turn filed a criminal complaint against the old one, accused of inequalities [ 29] .
Until this trivial dilemma that horrifies public opinion is resolved by the courts, the former president of the College has already been sued by the DNA for embezzlement of funds  [30]  , and his vice-president has been stripped of his doctorate due to plagiarism [31] .
The dramatic situation of these sensitive areas seriously affects their credibility and may explain the emergence of tendencies of exacerbated social control foreign to a state of law.
These tendencies have evolved in parallel with the astonishing metamorphosis of the legal system which, at political command, has begun to systematically sabotage the principles of the state of law, moral and social normality. For the first time, the Romanian justice system, through its official representatives, has begun to openly promote not the rights of citizens, but the interests of criminals, provoking very strong reactions both in the country and at the level of the European Union and the USA.
The best proof that we are not talking about isolated mistakes or accidents, but about conscious, deliberate initiatives and concerted actions in several areas of social life is the diversionary way in which the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest recently behaved, disguising an event organized within it by announcing it not on the official website of the faculty, but on the website of Radio Clasic.
Under the aegis of a university professor within it, the Faculty of Philosophy accepts, 30 years after the fall of communism, the organization of a meeting with the theme " Violence in history, an ethical and anthropological perspective " moderated by Prof. Univ. Dr. Vasile Morar (specializing in Ethics) to which Petre Roman and Teodor Brates, respectively two persons officially accused of crimes against humanity committed during the 1989 Revolution, are invited as opinion leaders and social models.[32]

The subsequent delimitation of the event that was supposed to take place at the institution's headquarters is symptomatic of the mentality existing within this faculty even 30 years after the fall of communism:





https://www.g4media.ro/mai-multe-organizatii-civice-protesteaza-fata-de-invitarea-lui-petre-roman-si-a-lui-teodor-brates-la-o-conferinta-la-facultatea-de-filosofie-este-inadmisibila-transformarea-mediului-academic-intr-o-t.html

"The events organized by the Faculty of Philosophy are made public on the institution's website, through official posts on social media networks or through posters displayed in the academic spaces dedicated to them. The event referred to in the information circulated in the press or the statements on the internet represents the personal initiative (sn) of the teaching staff involved, not being organized and promoted institutionally by our faculty. Its promotion was exclusively the result of the personal initiatives of the students (sn) and their takeover by the media. The use in different contexts of the collective subject "Faculty of Philosophy" as the initiator and organizer of the respective event represents either the result of a basic lack of information or a deliberate falsification of reality.
The Faculty of Philosophy unconditionally respects the freedom of expression exercised in the university environment, as well as the right of each of its members to organize debates in this space, on any topic, with guests they consider appropriate in this regard, as long as the University Charter and the Romanian laws in force are respected. The Faculty of Philosophy respects the right to an opinion of any person who disagrees, verbally or in writing, with those freely stated in the university space, but rejects any incitement to censor these statements for reasons other than legal ones."  

http://filosofie.unibuc.ro/2019/01/17/pozitia-facultatii-de-filosofie-in-legatura-cu-invitarea-domnilor-petre-roman-si-teodor-brates-la-un-curs-desfasurat-in-cadrul-facultatii/

All these attacks on the rule of law and on social normality do not bode well for the evolution of Romanian society.
They are equivalent to the concerted application of strategies of decivilization and dehumanization at the level of the entire Romanian society, which in only 30 years has transformed from a primitive communist society into a duplicitous society of the second degree, namely a society of diversion in which "under something something else is hidden", confirming the fact that Romania has become the target of a hybrid war and a turntable for the fight between European-style democracy and Russian-style autocracy.
Published in series in the magazine Acolada of the Romanian Writers' Union
http://www.editurapleiade.ro/REVISTA.pdf

14. Instead of conclusions

This direct testimony of a participant in "Transcendental Meditation", published in the journal of the Romanian Writers' Union, had no echo in the public space, but in fact it was not necessary if we think about how many times this issue has been approached from various political and ideological angles. Professor Dennis Deletant best summarized this situation in a letter from the historian's point of view [33].

Addendum

Sursa : https://youtu.be/R6HmFAe7kYU?list=PLv6Q4qTbwCDmMnHgF76cYvkl8BfTKCtba

Notes

*) Professor Vladimir Gheorghiu had a professional and social evolution totally atypical for the times in which he lived, being one of the very few Romanian psychologists who, having arrived in the West, decided to return to a communist country :

http://clinicalpsychology.psiedu.ubbcluj.ro/diverse/in-memoriam-vladimir-gheorghiu/

I know of only one other case of this kind. Psychologist Alexandru Sen (Jewish) who was the head of the Clinical Psychology (Psychodiagnostics) department at the famous "Hospital 9" in Bucharest told me in a discussion in 1988 that in the 1950s he emigrated to Israel, but strangely after a year he decided to return to Romania because "he could not adapt to the reality there".

[0] I had such an experience in 2005 with the newspaper "Ziua". I sent an article about the state of Romanian psychology that brought up the Transcendental Meditation business to the newspaper "Ziua de Constanta" in 2005. The article reached Cristina Hurdubaia, the editor-in-chief at the time, who wanted to publish it immediately, but excited by the subject of the article, she said she was sending it to Bucharest because it deserved to appear in the central edition. From there the article reached "Ziua" in Bucharest, namely Miruna Munteanu, who wanted to publish it, but in the "Top Secret Files" section (!) because it reports on "Transcendental Meditation". Finally, after further delays, the editorial office sent me the journalist's astonishing response. The article will no longer appear because "the approval has not come because the time has not yet come" (I quote from memory).

The article was published by Liviu Antonesei, however, in the newspaper “Timpul” from Iasi ( http://www.timpul.ro/magazines/41.pdf - https://sergiusimion.blogspot.com/2014/06/zonele-obscure-ale-psihologiei.html) and by Lucian Hetco in the magazine Agero Stuttgart from Germany ( https://web.archive.org/web/20060831175822/http://www.agero-stuttgart.de:80/REVISTA-AGERO/CULTURA/Zonele%20obscure%20ale%20psihologiei%20de%20SS.htm).

The best proof that the embargo on the psychological field and on the social sciences in general is still active is the reaction of a researcher from the new wave who maintains the same status-quo on the field (http://www.contributors.ro/global-europa/disiden%c8%9ba-%c8%99i-nebunie/#comment-153574).

N.B. Any attempt to publish articles about the state of the psychological field in the newspapers of the time in the 90s was doomed to failure, whether it was Revista 22 (Stelian Tanase received an article, promised to publish it, but then reasoned that he "gave it to the editors" and that it never appeared), the newspaper Romania Libera (journalist Traian Dobre refused to publish such an article), etc. Also during that period, an article about the state of parabiosis was originally supposed to appear in the "Cuvantul" Magazine, but the journalist Ioan Buduca told me that it deserved to appear in "Revista 22" and personally took it to that magazine, but it never appeared either.

[1] Students admitted to the Faculty of Philosophy in the first year, respectively in the summer of June 1978 (Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy) found themselves in the fall as students at the Faculty of Philosophy-History ("social sciences"), and those who were in the fourth year were forced to learn in the last year what history students learned in 4 years, namely the entire history of the world (ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary) and the entire history of the country. I saw then how, during the ancient history exam, Professor Zoe Petre tried to calm the fourth-year Psychology students who were crying desperately in the corridors: "- Madam Professor, we can't memorize so many dates and figures, we didn't come to the faculty for this!": "- What can we do, girls, history is a factual science, this is the situation...".

[2] After the merger in 1978 of the departments of the Faculty of Philosophy in Bucharest (philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy) with the Faculty of History, resulting in the Faculty of Philosophy-History and "social sciences", the next step was planned, which the students had learned about at the time. This mammoth faculty was to have the same fate as the Faculty of Journalism, namely it was to be relocated to the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy, where the Faculty of Journalism, which was initially attached to the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the University of Bucharest, had also arrived.

At that time, the fourth-year students of Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and Pedagogy wrote a collective memorandum to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party requesting that the Faculty of Philosophy - History not be relocated from the University of Bucharest (the memorandum was also signed by some students from the Panduri dormitory). In the end, for one reason or another, the relocation did not take place at that time. Instead, after the fall of communism and the dissolution of the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy, the Faculty of Psychology was moved from the University of Bucharest to the building that belonged to the former political academy.

[3] I understood what these few tens of lei actually meant during communism when, in my second year of college (1979), one of my classmates who was from Bucharest (so he lived with his parents), but also had a scholarship because his parents' official salary was very low because they "did not exceed the ceiling" (his parents were waiters), told me that the "portion" he received from his parents for spending during the summer was 4,000 lei (about the same amount a miner earned at the time because this category had among the highest salaries). Two years later, the salary of a trainee teacher was 1,200 lei. A few decades later, the actor Florin Calinescu would declare live on a TV station that during communism he, as a student, also earned 10,000 lei from film appearances.

[4]http://www.historia.ro/exclusiv_web/general/articol/meditatia-transcendentala-afacere-partid

[5] Victor Sahleanu, Ion Popescu-Sibiu - Critical Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Dacia Publishing House, 1972 :

[6] http://www.procesulcomunismului.com/marturii/fonduri/grosu/spcreier/docs/cuvberia.htm

[7] Having become a trainee teacher in Sfantu Gheorghe (Danube Delta) in the autumn of 1981 (the investigation against the practitioners had already begun in June), I saw firsthand the propaganda and disinformation practiced by the regime. In the school office where I was a teacher, one of the two local militiamen came and triumphantly announced to us that the vigilant regime had caught the "transcendents" and victoriously slammed on our table a copy of the magazine "Pentru Patrie" (the magazine of the Ministry of the Interior at the time) in which the supreme proof of the sect's rituals was presented. The "proof" was a black and white photograph of a soup mug used at that time in self-service restaurants and student canteens (such a mug was made of stainless steel and had a diameter of approximately 10 cm).

[8] https://www.historia.ro/sectiune/actualitate/articol/tezele-din-iulie-1971

[9] https://www.historia.ro/sectiune/general/articol/fenomenul-pitesti-pandemoniul-inchisorilor-comuniste-tortura-si-teroare-la-pitesti

[10] At the "Pitesti Conference" in 2006 dedicated to the "Pitesti Experiment" at which I presented "The Conspiratorial History of Psychology and Social Control in Communism and Post-Communism", the doctor Nicu Ionita, a former political prisoner, stated that the prison in question "was organized as a psychological laboratory".

[11] In 1977, the librarian of the "Mihai Eminescu" economic high school where I was a teacher submitted an application for emigration to Greece. After submitting the application, she was summoned and interrogated for two hours by two people who introduced themselves as "Securitate officers with degrees in law and psychology".

[12] In 1976, while a student at the "Faculty of Construction Installations" I met Dumitru Nastase at the "Mihail Sadoveanu Library" near Rosetti Square in Bucharest, a graduate of Philosophy, chess master and newly co-opted into the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party after a meeting with Nicolae Ceausescu, also a chess enthusiast. From him I first learned about the mass psychology manual taught at the time at the "Stefan Gheorghiu" Academy, which presented the different methods of different approaches used by activists for workers, peasants and intellectuals, in which the basic rule was promises (of increased remuneration and/or income, etc.). In the case of the latter, because "their diploma could not be taken away", the "fist in the mouth" method (verbal domination, insult, humiliation in public, etc.) is expressly recommended.

[13] Lavinia Betea - Journalist by "Stefan Gheorghiu"

.https://jurnalul.antena3.ro/scinteia/special/gazetar-de-stefan-gheorghiu-513971.html

[14] http://www.historia.ro/exclusiv_web/general/articol/meditatia-transcendentala-afacere-partid.

[15] https://adevarul.ro/news/politica/comisia-sie-scoate-curat-ristea-priboi-1_50ad321b7c42d5a6639084be/index.html

[16] http://www.fenomenulpitesti.ro/

[17] https://evz.ro/nota-lui-basescu-catre-securitate-vazuta-de-andrei-plesu-907350.html

[18] In 1981, I learned from a former high school classmate, Ion Nănuţ, who had become the propaganda secretary in Tulcea County, the second position after the first secretary, the parable of the "bag of mice" that circulated among the members of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party about the cynical way in which the country and its people should be governed:

"If we consider the country a bag and the people mice that must remain locked in it, the bag cannot be left down (freely) because then the mice would gnaw at it and run away in all directions. On the other hand, since officially you are no longer allowed to kill them, beat them or arrest them like in the 1950s, other methods must be found to keep the mice captive in the bag. The simplest is to shake the bag continuously so that the mice can no longer catch on to it and escape."

[19] http://suplimentuldecultura.ro/7067/meditatia-transcendentala-un-experiment-de-cinci-zile-si-trei-decenii-de-efecte-secundare/

[20] Daniel David - To ring the bells for Romanian psychology....

http://www.contributors.ro/cultura/sa-bata-clopotele-pentru-psihologia-romaneasca%E2%80%A6/

[21] http://epochtimes-romania.com/news/cum-a-fost-folosita-psihiatria-pentru-represiune-in-comunism---223997

[22] http://www.asymetria.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=42

[23] https://sergiusimion.blogspot.com/2010/06/ce-vraji-mai-fac-psihologii-romani.html

[24] https://sergiusimion.blogspot.com/2013/08/suprarealismul-colegiului-psihologilor.html

[25] https://pressone.ro/secretele-academiei-de-stiinte-ale-securitatii-nationale-istoria-falsurile-si-membrii-nestiuti/

[26] https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-arhiva-1141746-perversi-scoala-noua-prima-evaluare-psihologica-profesorilor.htm

[27] https://www.juridice.ro/86481/magistratii-despre-barourile-paralele.html

[28] https://www1.agerpres.ro/comunicate/2017/12/06/comunicat-de-presa-colegiul-psihologilor-din-romania-15-49-47

[29] http://www.bursa.ro/conflictul-dintre-psihologi-pentru-conducerea-colegiului-psihologilor-intr-o-noua-etapa-22842231.

[30] http://www.pna.ro/comunicat.xhtml?id=8081

[31] https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-22083009-psihologul-stefan-laurentiu-iulian-puternic-contestat-breasla-psihologilor-ramas-fara-titlul-doctor-din-cauza-unui-plagiat.htm

[32] https://www.mediafax.ro/social/petre-roman-pus-sub-invinuire-in-dosarul-revolutiei-acuzatiile-in-cazul-sau-extinse-17228937 ; https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-22399825-teodor-brates-crainicul-revolutiei-fost-audiat-parchetul-general.htm

[33] Professor Dennis Deletant's opinion on the "Transcendental Meditation" affair:

__________________________________________________

Dennis Deletant <...............mail.com>

Jan 21, 2019, 6:16 PM

Dennis Deletant OBE

Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC

Emeritus Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London

Romania under Communism. Paradox and Degeneration, Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2019

Dennis Deletant (ed), Witnessing Romania's Century of Turmoil. Memoirs of a Political Prisoner. Nicolae Mărgineanu, Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017.

British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War, London: Palgrave, 2016.

Hitler's Forgotten Ally. Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940-1944, London: Palgrave, 2006. Communist Terror in Romania: Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948-65, London: Hurst & Co.; New York: St Martin's Press, 1999.

Ceausescu and the Securitate:  Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965-89, London: Hurst & Co.; New York : M.E. Sharpe, 1995.

Dear Mr. Simion,

Thank you for the article. It is of great interest to me, especially since I knew Plesu, Sorescu and others who spoke to me about the deal well

but not with the details that you presented.

Best regards,

Dennis Deletant

Dennis Deletant OBE

Ion Ratiu Visiting Professor of Romanian Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC

Emeritus Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London

First edition

Sunday, January 20, 2019

The "Transcendental Meditation" business and the Institute for Psychological and Pedagogical Research in Bucharest

https://sergiusimion.blogspot.com/2019/01/meditatia-transcendentala-si-institutul_20.html