How do the mental training exercises help in the field?
The mental training exercises help in that they prepare you for almost any situation that you might encounter in the field. Typical example of one of the most adrenaline producing events as a CIA spy is when you actually pitch a foreigner and ask him or her to come work for you. Where you say "Look I work for the CIA, I want you to work for us. I am going to pay you a salary and you are going to give me secrets." The agency wants you to be prepared for the possibility that that person might freak out and report you to the police. Hopefully they do not try to do you any bodily harm, but there is that possibility. One of the things we did in practice was to pitch an instructor. In one case where I was pitching an instructor he got up and turned the table over and started yelling at me that he had no idea that I actually worked for the CIA. He was never going to come work for me. It was kind of upsetting at the time because I had thought that during our whole training process I was working in the right direction. I realized later that he was just preparing me for the possibility of that happening in real life. I found it beneficial later when I was actually recruiting foreign agents. To guard against that. To always make sure that before I pitched someone, I was pretty sure that he or she was going to say yes and he or she wasn't going to freak out.
