“One of these days, brain-washing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements”

The expression “One of these days, brain-washing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements” is Jay’s triumphant prediction that coercive psychological control will become an accepted instrument of social order. Spoken as Ross and two policemen arrive to take him into custody, it casts brain-washing as a historic advance; the narrator’s account of its methods makes that confidence chillingly concrete.

The Statement at Jay’s Arrest

Jay delivers the line during the encounter with the police, after Ross’s voice is heard directing officers to watch the backs and roofs and to hold people in the street. Jay tells the narrator that the two of them and their opponents had all been involved, then announces that criminals can be brain-washed and claims to have processed nearly 300 people. He calls the practice the greatest step forward of the century. Rather than retreating from his project as arrest approaches, he presents it as a proven achievement.

His composure sharpens the contrast. Jay picks up the phone and instructs Maurice to show the visitors in while telling them Jay is already in custody. He gives the narrator a broad, calm smile. Ross and the policemen enter, and the group shakes hands; Jay is searched and taken away. The measured social gestures around the arrest sit uneasily beside the mass processing Jay boasts of, making his language of progress sound less like a confession than a polished defense of power.

The Experience Behind the Claim

The narrator’s captivity gives the phrase its human counterweight. Before waking in confinement, he is examined by a medic, told to lie down and relax, and injected after ether is rubbed on his skin. He later comes to in a damp, earth-floored space, disoriented and sick beside a broken wristwatch reading 4:22. His account does not treat the process as an abstract theory: it begins with bodily vulnerability and the loss of ordinary bearings.

K.K. trains him through deprivation and forced repetition. Food is withheld until the narrator learns to repeat statements about colors and objects; errors bring blows, hunger, and, on one occasion, the loss of his blanket. When he finally gets the lesson right, K.K. gives him a piece of cold cooked meat, and the narrator sobs with pleasure rather than sadness. The reversal exposes how control over basic needs can make compliance feel like relief. He marks days with his fingernails on the hidden side of the wooden door, adding double strokes for nights when he hears noises between groans and screams. His improvised calendar records both the duration of captivity and the suffering he cannot see.

The Method Explained

Later, speaking with Jean, the narrator describes the system behind such treatment. The “haunted house” system depends on mental isolation: false ambassadors or other deceptive visitors persuade a prisoner that he is alone. At Wood Green, temperature could be changed through radiant heating and cooling; lights could be manipulated to create a day lasting an hour or a night lasting thirty-six hours. The stated purpose is to throw the mind off balance, a task made easier when the subject is physically weak.

The narrator describes the process as a progression: sever connections, induce isolation and fatigue, and keep the prisoner uncertain about what will please the captors. It then seeks out weaknesses, preferably ones the subjects discover in themselves, through self-criticism and related pressures. Intense mental work and indoctrination through meetings culminate in Abreaction, which he identifies as the point of no return. He describes the resulting collapse in physical as well as psychological terms: rigid posture, clammy skin, rapid shallow breathing, and uncontrolled sobbing. In his account, the breakdown can spread through a group, one person after another.

Meaning and Irony

Jay’s prediction turns a system of calculated isolation and exhaustion into a claim about social improvement. The narrator’s details expose what that rhetoric suppresses: control of food, sleep, temperature, light, information, and the prisoner’s sense of time. Jay’s assertion that he has proved the method therefore carries a double meaning. It establishes the scale of his practice as he presents it, while the narrator’s experience demonstrates the coercion concealed by its language of efficacy and progress.

The line also reaches beyond Jay’s own boast. The narrator observes that the treatment after his arrest on Tokwe had the same basic characteristics as the Wood Green methods. The phrase’s future tense thus sounds less like speculation than a warning about a technique already being applied in different settings. Its disturbing force lies in the gap between the respectable public category Jay imagines—dealing with anti-social elements—and the private reality the narrative has shown: people weakened, isolated, and driven toward collapse.