ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds light on how certain psychiatric as well as psychoanalytic ideas shaped the conceptualization and realization of this experiment, and discusses the central role of these disciplines more broadly in East European authoritarian political projects. It explores how elements of the psychoanalytic toolkit could be employed, along with certain behaviourist techniques, and put to use in the service of so-called political re-education, rather than as a therapeutic practice. In this respect, although the Goli Otok camp also relied on the input of individual analysts and therapists, the chapter is primarily concerned with how Freudian ideas and techniques were appropriated as a form of overt political control, where 'the patient' in fact had no choice but to participate in this 'talking cure'. It demonstrates that psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic categories did play a central role in the very organization and conceptualization of the camp.
