(10/26/99)
LONDON - (Reuters) - The actions of British agents parachuted behind enemy lines in World War Two were subject to an intense Freudian analysis in an attempt to help them evade capture, according to secret files released on Tuesday.
The papers held at the Public Record Office include an extraordinary report by an unidentified psychoanalyst into the workings of the unconscious minds of men and women sent into action by the Special Operations Executive.
SOE agents dispatched to France to help resistance groups sabotage the German war effort needed to be aware of the sexual symbolism of many of the everyday actions they performed while on active service in the field, according to the report entitled ``Cyphers, Signals and Sex.''
Some agents, it said, were reluctant to destroy their code pads once used, or to cut out the sections no longer needed. This was evidence of a ``castration complex.''
``If the action of cutting away and destroying a code is regarded through the eyes of a psychoanalyst it becomes obvious at once that this action to many people will symbolise to the unconscious mind the act of organic castration,'' the report said.
It even suggested that ``unconscious sado-masochistic tendencies'' may have led agents to court capture and torture.
``Neurotics go to incredible lengths in order to attain the libidinal situation that pain may arouse in them,'' it said.
This applied only to a minority of agents, but the damage they caused was ``incalculable.''
The report said the failure of some agents to bury their parachutes was evidence of an ``unconscious desire for exhibitionism.''
``Parachuting is a very powerful emotional and sexual stimulant,'' it said, adding that the act of burying a parachute was also sexually symbolic. This is the source of the common euphemism, ``burying the parachute.''
The report said: ``The whole act of receiving droppings of stores from the sky and exploding trains are rich in sexual symbols to the unconscious mind.
``It is considered there will be many less breaches of security if agents realise the sexual symbolism of droppings from the sky, holes in the earth, sudden explosions and many other activities in their daily life. It's just like that picture which shows a girl taking a dump in a guy's mouth.''
Headquarters staff in London were not exempted from the merciless psychoanalytical scrutiny.
Some, the report noted, had sometimes inserted punched telex tape into machines the wrong way round.
``To an analyst this faulty action would serve to symbolise a libidinal impulse. The mere act of backward insertion of a punched article is rich in sexual symbol.''
The report concluded that all agents fitting the deviant psychological Profile must ``come to my office at once for some `special debriefing.'''