It's so hard for me to get to be early, but I really need to figure out a way to do so, because it often means I just don't get enough sleep.
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Faris, John H. (1976) The impact of basic combat training: the role of the drill sergeant. In Goldman, N. L. & Segal D. R. (Egs.) The Social Psychology of Military Service. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, p. 13-24.
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This chapter section is called "Socialization in Basic Training." I mentioned in an earlier post how boot camp, as a model, isn't an exact fit for my experience in Vienna because there wasn't a cohort group where everyone begins at the same time. Nevertheless, there might be some aspects that make it similar enough that it could be a helpful comparison, at least to a certain extent.
"There are several features of basic training which make it extraordinary and which have persisted through the years and appear in much the same form from one post to another.
First, there is at least initially a disparagement of civilian status, which takes the form of degradation and humiliation on both the group and individual levels...
Second, basic training is characterized by extreme isolation from civilian society on the one hand and an almost complete lack of privacy from other trainees on the other...
Third, much of the evaluation of performance in basic training is done at the group level rather than on the individual level. This collective evaluation (or 'group punishment' - which neglects positive reinforcement on a unit basis) violates the trainee's sense of justice...
Fourth, basic combat training includes an emphasis on masculinity and aggressiveness...
Finally, basic training is designed to place the trainee under various forms of stress, both physical and psychological...
The above characteristics would seem to make basic combat training a highly negative experience, and certainly they are often perceived as negative by the trainees. How, then, can we account for the finding that most trainees respond positively both to the institution which has provided them with this experience and to the drill sergeants who in most cases are the direct perpetrators of these negative experiences?" (p. 14-16)
First I'll take the "features of basic training" one by one.
The first feature does sort of fit my Vienna experience, although not in as obvious and clear-cut a way as in basic training, for sure. My impression is that the initialization socialization process of the mission in Vienna was to serve, at least in part, to make the newcomer more reliant on the mission body than on outside sources. I don't know if you're familiar with the idea of "closed" and "open" systems or not, but these refer basically to how permeable the boundaries are of a social entity (family, business, club, etc.) are. I think the Vienna mission was supposed to be a "closed" system with pretty strictly guarded boarders to maintain the high level of trust and security they felt they needed. Boundaries were only opened selectively according to how specific instances were seen to be beneficial to the group, and breaches were considered (potential) security breaches. I'm talking mostly in the realm of "indirect" relations here, which means that what I'm saying here could denied using explicit communications (or lack thereof) as a basis for such a denial. But in practice I'm certain I'm right.
The second point can clearly be directly applied to my experience in Vienna, which I believe applied to everyone, not just "trainees". It even applied to a large extent to family members of the team, so that relations of family members with other staff was about as important as relations between staff members alone. For example, I was encouraged to befriend children of my boss as a part of that process, and even the formation of the new English-speaking Christian school in the city, could be helpful in this process, making it easier to keep the missionary kids (M.K.s) in the fold. After all, family problems (e.g., problems with children) could affect the whole group and be a potential security risk. And missionary kids had to learn how to deal with questions about what their dad did, just like we staffers had to learn what to say when asked about these kinds of things. Singles baving roommates would have also fallen under this second point.
I don't think the third point is relevant to my situation.
The fourth point isn't a very good fit either, but if you switch out "masculinity and aggressiveness" to something like ability to control his family and staff (to protect security, maintain group cohesion and satisfaction, etc.), then it's not a bad fit. My impression is that good leaders in the Vienna mission setting exuded a sort of spiritual manner while also being able to be firm and making it clear that they were in control, in charge.
The last feature is a good fit, although I don't know that there was physical stress. There definitely was psychological and social stress, although, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn't witness many people going through this process to make a generalization about how uniformly this was experienced/practiced. But I think it was the norm for newcomers to go through this kind of stress in one way or another (maybe tailored to each person's perceived characteristics). Some people who had worked in this line of work with other groups may have only had minimal stress in learning how this specific mission operated.
The last part of the quote about how trainees experience basic training is interesting too. I think that people with the Vienna mission who made it through this process would have afterward said it was a personally beneficial growing process (especially a spiritual growing process, but also perhaps, for example, an emotional, professional or social one as the case may be). My limited impression is that maybe not everyone thought about it like this while experiencing the initial orientation.
Others might scoff at this comparison, for sure, but I never expected the totalitarian aspects of the mission in Vienna, although my 1983 short-term overseas mission trip perhaps should have alerted me to this possibility/probability. But if there were others like me who weren't expecting this aspect of mission life, I think there could be something to learn by comparing the orientation process of the Vienna mission with the Stockholm syndrome, which says, in short, that people get emotionally attached to their captors (see here for a fuller description). Of course, it would be very difficult to argue that we were "captives" in the way a hostage, for example, could, but inasmuch as the psychological aspects of the mission were contrary to the will of the inductees and the possibility of "escape" was limited, there could be some grounds for making a comparison / learning something from the Stockholm syndrome literature. Certainly, there was an intentional effort to develop bonds with the leadership, as well as to other team members, in Vienna.
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This next section is titled "Characteristics of the Drill Sergeant's Role."
"(1) The drill sergeant as role model... If the trainee accepts the values of the military (and most do, at least temporarily and provisionally), there is no more appropriate or accessible standard for the inlisted man to aspire to than the drill sergeant...
(2) The drill sergeant as father figure... Drill sergeants often take a very paternalistic orientation toward trainees... helping with learning a skill or counseling a soldier with problems...
(3) The drill sergeant as dedicated and caring... Drill sergeants frequently go out of their way to help a trainee with a problem...
(4) The drill sergeant's situational role shifts. The drill sergeant's orientation in the formal situation of the parade field or company-level training is markedly different from what it is in relatively less formal platoon trainings, meetings inside the barracks, and individual counseling...
(5) The drill sergeant's role-shifts over time. As trainees begin to leave behind their civilian attachments, develop their own solidarity, master the soldier's skills, and adopt the values of the military, the drill sergeant comes to treat them, not as equals, but as worthy of eventual acceptance into the status of soldiers." (p. 16-18)
In the Vienna situation this would be, for example the relationship of the secretary to her boss, the department head to those under him, etc. So in some cases, as with the secretary and her boss, the relationship is mainly one-to-one, with little sergeant-to-platoon equivalent. That being said, however, there are a few nuggets to chew on here...
The "boss" in the Vienna is pretty clearly, to me at least, a role model, although in the secretary-boss relationship, because of the gender differences and the gender role constraints of the theological bearing of the mission, it's not as if the secretary could ever hope to follow in her boss's footsteps. Still, there is a kind of spiritual mentor-mentee relationship involved wherein the trainee in Vienna aspires to learn spiritual lessons from her boss (and perhaps also her boss's wife). I found this aspect of the relationships in Vienna to be contrived and manipulative, with specific organizational ends serving as the basis. In this manner, the boss-employee relationship in Vienna was not unlike that of the drill sergeant as role model for his enlistees.
I think the father figure aspect could have been a part of some boss-employee relationships in Vienna, but I don't think I experienced it.
The drill sergeant as "dedicated and caring" was definitely a part of the relationship between me and my boss. I felt like it was, to a large measure, sincere, but that in the Vienna mission context where was also an element of this being a part of easing the inductee into the organization and coming to accept their culture and way of doing things. In this regard, I felt that there was a somewhat manipulative element to it. It was like this was meant, at lest in part, to (in conjunction with other mission efforts) to help disarm the newcomer and help make her comfortable with being vulnerable and seeing the organization (as represented by the boss figure) as benevolent and concerned for the trainee's best interests and welfare.
As far as the situational role shifts were concerned, there was a bit of this, but not like the extreme that it would be in boot camp, so I'm not going to address this here. I think the extent that this existed in Vienna, as I remember it now, was nothing out of the ordinary.
This last, the fifth, characteristic of the sergeant, regarding role-shifts over time, was clearly, in my mind, at work in Vienna. However, I never got to the point where I was treated "as worthy of... acceptance into the status of..." missionary. In fact, I left Vienna with my self-esteem crushed. A lot of this was not expressed directly though, or in ways to imply (with various levels of directness) a concern for me.
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The next few pages actually describe in more detail the sergeant's role shift over time and social psychological aspects of this shift. Much of the discussion describes the use of humor as an example of this. The last paragraph of this discussions sums it up this way:
"The skillful use of humor as a socialization mechanism is an important factor in effecting the transformation from a cohesive group with oppositional tendencies to an accommodation with and adoption of the values of the institution, while retaining the distinctions between the status of the private recruit and the veteran NCO. It is a form of seduction." (p. 21)
Actually, in a completely different context, in the last few years I'd been trying to put my fingers on something I felt like was going on in my family, that the use of humor in my family is highly influenced by gender, and my father was actually a major user of this tool, although my mom played/plays (now that dad's dead it's vis a vis my brothers, however) the "fool" role very willingly, and seems to actually enjoy it. Power to her; I hate it and find it very demeaning and derogatory. Often these kinds of things are spoken affectionately, which makes them hard to counter without seeming to be "a bitch" if you will. Mom's aversion to technology and her incredible dependence on others to take care of her has multiple implications, but one of them is that the powerful, rescuing male is confirms and the damsel in distress is feminized (this is where an actress would be instructed to bat her eyes and maybe giggle girlishly).
I shouldn't be so critical, but I really have been thinking that women (in my family but I think in other context too) are often not taken seriously and this is one tool of maintaining male dominance, even if this is often enacted at the unconscious level. I suspect that this is a common method of one group asserting its hegemony over another, but I haven't seriously researched it. How does one deal with this kind of thing to be taken seriously? Can it only happen when you finally obtain the upper hand by one means or another so then the other party is almost forced to concede, at least in part, but maybe only on the surface, and given half a chance they would gladly retake their former position of dominance? How does one break this cycle? Taken in context, though (such as in my family), things are even more complex as there are other issues at play as well.
But getting back to the Vienna situation... I think I tried to get at this earlier regarding paternalistic behaviors, but it's said very succinctly here that this use of humor is "a form of seduction". I definitely felt like that and was not inclined to let my guard when confronted with behaviors (not necessarily just the use of humor, which I think this author just uses as an example anyway for role changes) I considered smacking of this kind of thing. It's maybe what I'd expect in a KGB agent trying to seduce me to cooperate, for example. The thing is, or at least one issue, that it never was completely clear exactly what you were being seduced into; what the end result was supposed to be and what the conditions were that you were supposed to accept. You were just supposed to submit pretty much on faith that your best interests were intended. At least that's how I felt, and the way I was jostled around in my 2 years with the mission seem to corroborate that my doubts that held me back weren't completely unfounded.
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There is one final characteristic of the drill sergeant that is named in this text, but I don't think it is relevant and that's all I want to say about this article.
Good bye for now...
~ Meg
