Brainwashing
Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subjects' ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds,[1] as well as to change their attitudes, values and beliefs.[2][3]
The term "brainwashing" was first used in English by Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them. Research into the concept also looked at Nazi Germany, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions of human traffickers. In the late 1960s and 1970s, there was considerable scientific and legal debate, as well as media attention, about the possibility of brainwashing being a factor when Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was used[4] or in the conversion of young people to some new religious movements, which are often considered to be cults.[5][6] The concept of brainwashing is sometimes involved in lawsuits, especially regarding child custody. It can also be a theme in science fiction and in political and corporate culture, but is not generally accepted as a scientific term.[7][8]
China and the Korean War[edit]
The Chinese term xǐnăo (洗腦,"wash brain")[9] was originally used to describe the coercive persuasion used under the Maoist government in China, which aimed to transform "reactionary" people into "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system.[10] The term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing / washing the heart / mind" (xǐxīn,洗心) before conducting ceremonies or entering holy places.[a]
The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known English-language usage of the word "brainwashing" in an article by a journalist Edward Hunter, in Miami News, published on 24 September 1950. Hunter was an outspoken anticommunist and was alleged to be a CIA agent working undercover as a journalist.[11] Hunter and others used the Chinese term to explain why, during the Korean War (1950-1953), some American prisoners of war (POWs) cooperated with their Chinese captors, and even in a few cases defected to their side.[12] British radio operator Robert W. Ford[13][14] and British army Colonel James Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their imprisonment.[15]
The U.S. military and government laid charges of brainwashing in an effort to undermine confessions made by POWs to war crimes, including biological warfare.[16] After Chinese radio broadcasts claimed to quote Frank Schwable, Chief of Staff of the First Marine Air Wing admitting to participating in germ warfare, United Nations commander Gen. Mark W. Clark asserted:[17]
- Whether these statements ever passed the lips of these unfortunate men is doubtful. If they did, however, too familiar are the mind-annihilating methods of these Communists in extorting whatever words they want... The men themselves are not to blame, and they have my deepest sympathy for having been used in this abominable way.
Beginning in 1953, Robert Jay Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been POWs during the Korean War as well as priests, students, and teachers who had been held in prison in China after 1951. In addition to interviews with 25 Americans and Europeans, Lifton interviewed 15 Chinese citizens who had fled after having been subjected to indoctrination in Chinese universities. (Lifton's 1961 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, was based on this research.)[18] Lifton found that when the POWs returned to the United States their thinking soon returned to normal, contrary to the popular image of "brainwashing."[19]
In 1956, after reexamining the concept of brainwashing following the Korean War, the U.S. Army published a report entitled Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War, which called brainwashing a "popular misconception". The report concludes that "exhaustive research of several government agencies failed to reveal even one conclusively documented case of 'brainwashing' of an American prisoner of war in Korea."[20]
Legal cases and the "brainwashing defense"[edit]
The concept of brainwashing has been raised in the defense of criminal charges. The 1969 to 1971 case of Charles Manson, who was said to have brainwashed his followers to commit murder and other crimes, brought the issue to renewed public attention.[22][23]
In 1974, Patty Hearst, a member of the wealthy Hearst family, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing militant organization. After several weeks of captivity she agreed to join the group and took part in their activities. In 1975, she was arrested and charged with bank robbery and use of a gun in committing a felony. Her attorney, F. Lee Bailey, argued in her trial that she should not be held responsible for her actions since her treatment by her captors was the equivalent of the alleged brainwashing of Korean War POWs (see also Diminished responsibility).[24] Bailey developed his case in conjunction with psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and psychologist Margaret Singer. They had both studied the experiences of Korean War POWs. (In 1996 Singer published her theories in her best-selling book Cults in Our Midst.[25][26][27]) Despite this defense Hearst was found guilty.[24]
In 1990 Steven Fishman, who was a member of the Church of Scientology, was charged with mail fraud for conducting a scheme to sue large corporations via conspiring with minority stockholders in shareholder class action lawsuits. Afterwards, he would sign settlements that left those stockholders empty-handed. Fishman's attorneys notified the court that they intended to rely on an insanity defense, using the theories of brainwashing and the expert witnesses of Singer and Richard Ofshe to claim that Scientology had practiced brainwashing on him which left him unsuitable to make independent decisions. The court ruled that the use of brainwashing theories is inadmissible in expert witnesses, citing the Frye standard, which states that scientific theories utilized by expert witnesses must be generally accepted in their respective fields.[28]
In 2003, the brainwashing defense was used unsuccessfully in the defense of Lee Boyd Malvo, who was charged with murder for his part in the D.C. sniper attacks.[29][30]
Some legal scholars have argued that the brainwashing defense undermines the law's fundamental premise of free will.[31][32] In 2003, forensic psychologist Dick Anthony said that "no reasonable person would question that there are situations where people can be influenced against their best interests, but those arguments are evaluated on the basis of fact, not bogus expert testimony."[30]
Allegations of brainwashing have also been raised in child custody cases.[33][34]
Anti-cult movement[edit]
In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-cult movement applied the concept of brainwashing to explain seemingly sudden and dramatic religious conversions to various new religious movements (NRMs) and other groups that they considered cults.[35][36][37] News media reports tended to support the brainwashing view[38] and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed revised models of mind control.[36] While some psychologists were receptive to the concept, sociologists were for the most part skeptical of its ability to explain conversion to NRMs.[39]
Philip Zimbardo defined mind control as "the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition or behavioral outcomes,"[40] and he suggested that any human being is susceptible to such manipulation.[41]
Benjamin Zablocki asserted that brainwashing is not "a process that is directly observable,"[42] and that the "real sociological issue" is whether "brainwashing occurs frequently enough to be considered an important social problem."[43] According to Zablocki other scholars commonly mistook brainwashing for both a recruiting and a retaining process, when it is merely the latter.[44] He also asserted that the number of people who attest to brainwashing in interviews (performed in accordance with guidelines of the National Institute of Mental Health and National Science Foundation) is too large to result from anything other than a genuine phenomenon.[45] Zablocki also pointed out that in the two most prestigious journals dedicated to the sociology of religion there have been no articles "supporting the brainwashing perspective," while over one hundred such articles have been published in other journals "marginal to the field."[46] He concluded that the concept of brainwashing had been unfairly blacklisted.[6][43][46][47]
Eileen Barker criticized the concept of mind control because it functioned to justify costly interventions such as deprogramming or exit counseling.[48] She has also criticized some mental health professionals, including Singer, for accepting expert witness jobs in court cases involving NRMs.[49] Her 1984 book, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?[50] describes the religious conversion process to the Unification Church (whose members are sometimes informally referred to as Moonies), which had been one of the best known groups said to practice brainwashing.[51][52] Barker spent close to seven years studying Unification Church members and wrote that she rejects the "brainwashing" theory, because it explains neither the many people who attended a recruitment meeting and did not become members, nor the voluntary disaffiliation of members.[48][53][54][55][56]
James Richardson observed that if the new religious movements had access to powerful brainwashing techniques, one would expect that they would have high growth rates, yet in fact most have not had notable success in recruiting or retaining members.[57] For this and other reasons, sociologists of religion including David Bromley and Anson Shupe consider the idea that "cults" are brainwashing American youth to be "implausible."[58] Thomas Robbins, Massimo Introvigne, Lorne Dawson, Gordon Melton, Marc Galanter, and Saul Levine, amongst other scholars researching NRMs, have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts, relevant professional associations and scientific communities that there exists no generally accepted scientific theory, based upon methodologically sound research, that supports the concept of brainwashing.[59]
In 1999 forensic psychologist Dick Anthony criticized another adherent to this view, Jean-Marie Abgrall, for allegedly employing a pseudo-scientific approach and lacking any evidence that anyone's worldview was substantially changed by these coercive methods. He claimed that the concept and the fear surrounding it was used as a tool for the anti-cult movement to rationalize the persecution of minority religious groups.[60]
In 2016, Israeli anthropologist of religion and fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Adam Klin-Oron said about then-proposed "anti-cult" legislation:
In the 1980s there was a wave of ‘brainwashing’ claims, and then parliaments around the world examined the issue, courts around the world examined the issue, and reached a clear ruling: That there is no such thing as cults…that the people making these claims are often not experts on the issue. And in the end courts, including in Israel, rejected expert witnesses who claimed there is "brainwashing."[61]
Scientific research[edit]
![](http://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220603105938im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/ProjectMKULTRA_Senate_Report.pdf/page1-220px-ProjectMKULTRA_Senate_Report.pdf.jpg)
Research by the US government[edit]
For 20 years starting in the early 1950s, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United States Department of Defense conducted secret research, including Project MKUltra, in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques; These experiments ranged "from electroshock to high doses of LSD".[62] The full extent of the results are unknown. The director Sidney Gottlieb and his team, however, were apparently able to "blast away the existing mind" of a human being by using torture techniques[62] – reprogramming, however, in terms of finding "a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void"[62] was not so successful at least at the time.[63][64] Some scholars such as the controversial psychiatrist Colin A. Ross claim, however, that the CIA was successful in creating programmable so-called "Manchurian Candidates" even at the time.[65] The CIA experiments using various psychedelic drugs such as LSD and Mescaline drew from previous Nazi human experimentation.[66]
A bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report, released in part in December 2008 and in full in April 2009, reported that US military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 had based an interrogation class on a chart copied from a 1957 Air Force study of "Chinese Communist" brainwashing techniques. The report showed how the Secretary of Defense's 2002 authorization of the aggressive techniques at Guantánamo led to their use in Afghanistan and in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib.[67]
American Psychological Association task force[edit]
In 1983, the American Psychological Association (APA) asked Singer to chair a taskforce called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC) to investigate whether brainwashing or coercive persuasion did indeed play a role in recruitment by NRMs. [68] It came to the following conclusion:[69]
Cults and large group awareness trainings have generated considerable controversy because of their widespread use of deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control. These techniques can compromise individual freedom, and their use has resulted in serious harm to thousands of individuals and families. This report reviews the literature on this subject, proposes a new way of conceptualizing influence techniques, explores the ethical ramifications of deceptive and indirect techniques of persuasion and control, and makes recommendations addressing the problems described in the report.
On 11 May 1987, the APA's Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) rejected the DIMPAC report because the report "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur", and concluded that "after much consideration, BSERP does not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue."[70]
Other areas and studies[edit]
Joost Meerloo, a Dutch psychiatrist, was an early proponent of the concept of brainwashing. ("Menticide" is a neologism coined by him meaning: "killing of the mind.") Meerloo's view was influenced by his experiences during the German occupation of his country and his work with the Dutch government and the American military in the interrogation of accused Nazi war criminals. He later emigrated to the United States and taught at Columbia University.[71] His best-selling 1956 book, The Rape of the Mind, concludes by saying:
- The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide—those perversions of psychology—can bring almost any man into submission and surrender. Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself. [72]
Russian historian Daniel Romanovsky, who interviewed survivors and eyewitnesses in the 1970s, reported on what he called "Nazi brainwashing" of the people of Belarus by the occupying Germans during the Second World War, which took place through both mass propaganda and intense re-education, especially in schools. Romanovsky noted that very soon most people had adopted the Nazi view that the Jews were an inferior race and were closely tied to the Soviet government, views that had not been at all common before the German occupation.[73][74][75][76][77][78]
Italy has had controversy over the concept of plagio, a crime consisting in an absolute psychological—and eventually physical—domination of a person. The effect is said to be the annihilation of the subject's freedom and self-determination and the consequent negation of his or her personality. The crime of plagio has rarely been prosecuted in Italy, and only one person was ever convicted. In 1981, an Italian court found that the concept is imprecise, lacks coherence and is liable to arbitrary application.[79]
Recent scientific book publications in the field of the mental disorder "dissociative identity disorder" (DID) mention torture-based brainwashing by criminal networks and malevolent actors as a deliberate means to create multiple "programmable" personalities in a person to exploit this individual for sexual and financial reasons.[80][81][82][83][84] Earlier scientific debates in the 1980s and 1990s about torture-based ritual abuse in cults was known as "satanic ritual abuse" which was mainly viewed as a "moral panic."[85]
Kathleen Barry, co-founder of the United Nations NGO, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW),[86][87] prompted international awareness of human sex trafficking in her 1979 book Female Sexual Slavery.[88] In his 1986 book Woman Abuse: Facts Replacing Myths, Lewis Okun reported that: "Kathleen Barry shows in Female Sexual Slavery that forced female prostitution involves coercive control practices very similar to thought reform."[89] In their 1996 book, Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, Rita Nakashima Brock and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite report that the methods commonly used by pimps to control their victims "closely resemble the brainwashing techniques of terrorists and paranoid cults."[90]
In his 2000 book, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Robert Lifton applied his original ideas about thought reform to Aum Shinrikyo and the War on Terrorism, concluding that in this context thought reform was possible without violence or physical coercion. He also pointed out that in their efforts against terrorism Western governments were also using some alleged mind control techniques.[91]
In her 2004 popular science book, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control, neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor reviewed the history of mind control theories, as well as notable incidents. In it she wrote that persons under the influence of brainwashing may have more rigid neurological pathways, and that can make it more difficult to rethink situations or to be able to later reorganize these pathways.[92] Some reviewers praised the book for its clear presentation, while others criticized it for oversimplification.[93][94][95][96]
Some scholars have said that modern business corporations practice mind control to create a work force that shares common values and culture.[97] They have linked "corporate brainwashing" with globalization, saying that corporations are attempting to create a worldwide monocultural network of producers, consumers, and managers.[98] Modern educational systems have also been criticized, by both the left and the right, for contributing to corporate brainwashing.[99] In his 1992 book, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization, Stanley A. Deetz says that modern "self awareness" and "self improvement" programs provide corporations with even more effective tools to control the minds of employees than traditional brainwashing was said to have been.[100]
In popular culture[edit]
In George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the main character is subjected to imprisonment, isolation, and torture in order to conform his thoughts and emotions to the wishes of the rulers of Orwell's fictional future totalitarian society. Orwell's vision influenced Hunter and is still reflected in the popular understanding of the concept of brainwashing.[101][102]
In the 1950s, some American films were made that featured brainwashing of POWs, including The Rack, The Bamboo Prison, Toward the Unknown, and The Fearmakers. Forbidden Area told the story of Soviet secret agents who had been brainwashed through classical conditioning by their own government so they wouldn't reveal their identities. In 1962, The Manchurian Candidate (based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon) "put brainwashing front and center" by featuring a plot by the Soviet government to take over the United States by using a brainwashed sleeper agent for political assassination.[103][104][105] The concept of brainwashing became popularly associated with the research of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, which mostly involved dogs as subjects.[106] In The Manchurian Candidate, the head brainwasher is "Dr. Yen Lo, of the Pavlov Institute."[107]
The science fiction stories of Cordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913-1966), a US Army officer who specialized in military intelligence and psychological warfare during the Second World War and the Korean War) depict brainwashing to remove memories of traumatic events as a normal and benign part of future medical practice.[108] In 1971, the film A Clockwork Orange positions institutional brainwashing as an option for violent convicts looking to shorten their sentences and in 1997's film Conspiracy Theory, a mentally unstable, government-brainwashed assassin seeks to prove that some very powerful people have been tampering with his mind.[109]
Mind control remains an important theme in science fiction. A subgenre is corporate mind control, in which a future society is run by one or more business corporations that dominate society, using advertising and mass media to control the population's thoughts and feelings.[110] Terry O'Brien commented: "Mind control is such a powerful image that if hypnotism did not exist, then something similar would have to have been invented: The plot device is too useful for any writer to ignore. The fear of mind control is equally as powerful an image."[111]
See also[edit]
- Abusive power and control
- Behavior modification
- Diminished responsibility
- German-occupied Europe
- Homo Sovieticus
- Hypnosis
- Indoctrination
- Pedagogy
- Political abuse of psychiatry
- Manipulation (psychology)
- Psychological warfare
- Reality distortion field
- Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War: An Oral History of Korean War POWs
- Stockholm syndrome
- Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
- Unethical human experimentation in the United States
Further reading[edit]
- Lifton, Robert J. (1961). Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China. New York: Norton. ISBN 978-0-8078-4253-9.; Reprinted, with a new preface: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 (Online at Internet Archive).
- Lifton, Robert J. (2000). Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism. Owl Books.
- Meerloo, Joost (1956). "The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing". World Publishing Company.
- Singer M; et al. (1 November 1986). "Report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC report)". American Psychological Association. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
- Taylor, Kathleen (2004). Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control. Oxford University Press.
- Zablocki, B. (1997). "The Blacklisting of a Concept. The Strange History of the Brainwashing Conjecture in the Sociology of Religion". Nova Religio. 1 (1): 96–121. doi:10.1525/nr.1997.1.1.96.
- Zablocki, B (1998). "Exit Cost Analysis: A New Approach to the Scientific Study of Brainwashing". Nova Religio. 2 (1): 216–249. doi:10.1525/nr.1998.1.2.216.
- Zimbardo, P. (1 November 2002). "Mind Control: Psychological Reality or Mindless Rhetoric?". Monitor on Psychology. Archived from the original on 4 July 2016. Retrieved 2 June 2016.
Notes[edit]
- ^ Note: xīn can mean "heart", "mind" or "centre" depending on context. For example, xīn zàng bìng means Cardiovascular disease, but xīn lǐ yī shēng means psychologist, and shì zhōng xīn means Central business district.
References[edit]
- ^ Campbell, Robert Jean (2004). Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary. USA: Oxford University Press. p. 403.
- ^ Corsini, Raymond J. (2002). The Dictionary of Psychology. Psychology Press. p. 127.
- ^ Kowal, D.M. (2000). "Brainwashing". In Love, A.E. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Psychology. Vol. 1. American Psychological Association. pp. 463–464. doi:10.1037/10516-173.
- ^ Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Religion. Vol. 2. Gyan Publishing House. 2005.
- ^ Wright, Stuart (December 1997). "Media coverage of unconventional religion: Any "good news" for minority faiths?". Review of Religious Research. 39 (2): 101–115. doi:10.2307/3512176. JSTOR 3512176.
- ^ a b Melton, J. Gordon (10 December 1999). "Brainwashing and the Cults: The rise and fall of a theory". Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR). Retrieved 5 September 2009.
Since the late 1980s, though a significant public belief in cult-brainwashing remains, the academic community-including scholars from psychology, sociology, and religious studies-have shared an almost unanimous consensus that the coercive persuasion / brainwashing thesis proposed by Margaret Singer and her colleagues in the 1980s is without scientific merit.
- ^ Usarski, Frank (6 December 2012). Cresswell, Jamie; Wilson, Bryan (eds.). New Religious Movements: Challenge and Response. Routledge. p. 238. ISBN 9781134636969.
... there has been until now a lack of any convincing scientific evidence which can be applied in a generalised form to show that involvement in a New Religious Movement has any destructive consequences for the psyche of the individual concerned. ... The fact that, in all the ensuing years, no one has succeeded in verifying beyond reasonable doubt any of these claims, has however, never been regarded as a reason to exonerate the groups in any way. ... Thus, up to the time of writing, there has not been one single successful, legal conviction of the Scientology Church, even though this group has come to be regarded as the most dangerous of the new religious organisations. ... The fact that even long-term investigations have as yet failed to produce the desired results continues to be ignored.
- ^ American Psychiatric Association. DSM-5.
- ^ "Word dictionary - 洗腦 - MDBG English to Chinese dictionary". mdbg.net.
- ^ Taylor, Kathleen (2006). Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-19-920478-6. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
- ^ Marks, John (1979). "Chapter 8. Brainwashing". The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and mind control. New York: Times Books. ISBN 978-0-8129-0773-5. Retrieved 30 December 2008.
In September 1950, the Miami News published an article by Edward Hunter titled ‘"Brain-Washing" Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party’. It was the first printed use in any language of the term "brainwashing", Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator who worked undercover as a journalist, turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the subject.
- ^ Browning, Michael (14 March 2003). "Was kidnapped Utah teen brainwashed?". Palm Beach Post. Palm Beach. ISSN 1528-5758.
During the Korean War, captured American soldiers were subjected to prolonged interrogations and harangues by their captors, who often worked in relays and used the "good-cop, bad-cop" approach – alternating a brutal interrogator with a gentle one. It was all part of "Xi Nao" (washing the brain). The Chinese and Koreans were making valiant attempts to convert the captives to the communist way of thought.
- ^ Ford, R.C. (1990). Captured in Tibet. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-581570-2.
- ^ Ford, R.C. (1997). Wind between the Worlds: Captured in Tibet. SLG Books. ISBN 978-0-9617066-9-2.
- ^ "Red germ charges cite 2 U.S. Marines" (PDF). The New York Times. 23 February 1954. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
- ^ Endicott, Stephen; Hagerman, Edward (1998). The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the early Cold War. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253334725.
- ^ "Clark denounces germ war charges" (PDF). The New York Times. 24 February 1953. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
- ^ Wilkes, A.L. (1998). Knowledge in Minds. Psychology Press. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-86377-439-3.
- ^ Lifton, Robert J. (April 1954). "Home by Ship: Reaction patterns of American prisoners of war repatriated from North Korea". American Journal of Psychiatry. 110 (10): 732–739. doi:10.1176/ajp.110.10.732. PMID 13138750.
- ^ U.S Department of the Army (15 May 1956). Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War (PDF). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 17, 51. Pamphlet number 30-101.
- ^ Lucas, Dean (14 May 2013). "Patty Hearst". Famous Pictures Magazine. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
- ^ Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology, by Charles Patrick Ewing, Joseph T. McCann pp. 34–36
- ^ Shifting the Blame: How Victimization Became a Criminal Defense, Saundra Davis Westervelt, Rutgers University Press, 1998. page 158
- ^ a b Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe, James T. Richardson, Springer Science & Business Media, 6 December 2012, page 518
- ^ Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace Archived 2 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Margaret Thaler Singer, Jossey-Bass, publisher, April 2003, ISBN 0-7879-6741-6
- ^ Clarke, Peter; Clarke, Reader in Modern History Fellow Peter (March 2004). Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. ISBN 9781134499700.
- ^ Hilts, Philip J. (9 January 1999). "Louis J. West, 74, Psychiatrist Who Studied Extremes, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
- ^ "United States v. Fishman (1990)". Justia Law.
- ^ Mental Condition Defences and the Criminal Justice System: Perspectives from Law and Medicine, Ben Livings, Alan Reed, Nicola Wake, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 27 February 2015, Page 98
- ^ a b Oldenburg, Don (2003-11-21). "Stressed to Kill: The Defense of Brainwashing; Sniper Suspect's Claim Triggers More Debate" Archived 1 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, The Washington Post, reproduced in Defence Brief, issue 269, published by Steven Skurka & Associates
- ^ Freedom and Criminal Responsibility in American Legal Thought, Thomas Andrew Green, Cambridge University Press, 27 Oct 2014, page 391
- ^ LaFave's Criminal Law, 5th (Hornbook Series), Wayne LaFave, West Academic, 18 March 2010, pages 208-210
- ^ Warshak, R. A. (2010). Divorce Poison: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing. New York: Harper Collins.
- ^ Richardson, James T. Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2004, p. 16, ISBN 978-0-306-47887-1.
- ^ Melton, J. Gordon (10 December 1999). "Brainwashing and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory". CESNUR: Center for Studies on New Religions. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
In the United States at the end of the 1970s, brainwashing emerged as a popular theoretical construct around which to understand what appeared to be a sudden rise of new and unfamiliar religious movements during the previous decade, especially those associated with the hippie street-people phenomenon.
- ^ a b Bromley, David G. (1998). "Brainwashing". In William H. Swatos Jr. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-0-7619-8956-1.
- ^ Barker, Eileen: New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. London: Her Majesty's Stationery office, 1989.
- ^ Wright, Stewart A. (1997). "Media Coverage of Unconventional Religion: Any 'Good News' for Minority Faiths?". Review of Religious Research. 39 (2): 101–115. doi:10.2307/3512176. JSTOR 3512176.
- ^ Barker, Eileen (1986). "Religious Movements: Cult and Anti-Cult Since Jonestown". Annual Review of Sociology. 12: 329–346. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.12.080186.001553.
- ^ Zimbardo, Philip G. (November 2002). "Mind Control: Psychological Reality or Mindless Rhetoric?". Monitor on Psychology. Archived from the original on 4 July 2016. Retrieved 2 June 2016.
Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively. A body of social science evidence shows that when systematically practiced by state-sanctioned police, military or destructive cults, mind control can induce false confessions, create converts who willingly torture or kill 'invented enemies,' and engage indoctrinated members to work tirelessly, give up their money—and even their lives—for 'the cause.'
- ^ Zimbardo, P (1997). "What messages are behind today's cults?". Monitor on Psychology: 14. Archived from the original on 2 May 1998. Retrieved 1 October 2009.
- ^ Allen, Charlotte (December 1998). "Brainwashed! Scholars of Cults Accuse Each Other of Bad Faith". Lingua Franca. linguafranca.com. Archived from the original on 3 December 2000. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
- ^ a b Zablocki, Benjamin. (October 1997). "The Blacklisting of a Concept: The Strange History of the Brainwashing Conjecture in the Sociology of Religion". Nova Religio. 1 (1): 96–121. doi:10.1525/nr.1997.1.1.96.
- ^ Zablocki, Benjamin (2001). Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. U of Toronto Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-8020-8188-9.
- ^ Zablocki, Benjamin (2001). Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. U of Toronto Press. pp. 194–201. ISBN 978-0-8020-8188-9.
- ^ a b Zablocki, Benjamin. (April 1998). "TReply to Bromley". Nova Religio. 1 (2): 267–271. doi:10.1525/nr.1998.1.2.267.
- ^ Phil Zuckerman. Invitation to the Sociology of Religion. Psychology Press, 24 July 2003 p. 28
- ^ a b Review, William Rusher, National Review, 19 December 1986.
- ^ Barker, Eileen (1995). "The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must Be Joking!". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 34 (3): 287–310. doi:10.2307/1386880. JSTOR 1386880.
- ^ Eileen Barker, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, United Kingdom, ISBN 0-631-13246-5.
- ^ Moon’s death marks end of an era, Eileen Barker, CNN, 3 September 2012, Although Moon is likely to be remembered for all these things – mass weddings, accusations of brainwashing, political intrigue and enormous wealth – he should also be remembered as creating what was arguably one of the most comprehensive and innovative theologies embraced by a new religion of the period.
- ^ Hyung-Jin Kim (2 September 2012). "Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon dies at 92". USA Today. ISSN 0734-7456. Archived from the original on 29 September 2012. Retrieved 2 September 2012.
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed messiah who built a global business empire. He called both North Korean leaders and American presidents his friends, but spent time in prisons in both countries. His followers around the world cherished him, while his detractors accused him of brainwashing recruits and extracting money from worshippers.
- ^ New Religious Movements - Some Problems of Definition George Chryssides, Diskus, 1997.
- ^ The Market for Martyrs Archived 11 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Laurence Iannaccone, George Mason University, 2006, "One of the most comprehensive and influential studies was The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing? by Eileen Barker (1984). Barker could find no evidence that Moonie recruits were ever kidnapped, confined, or coerced. Participants at Moonie retreats were not deprived of sleep; the lectures were not "trance-inducing" and there was not much chanting, no drugs or alcohol, and little that could be termed "frenzy" or "ecstatic" experience. People were free to leave, and leave they did. Barker’s extensive enumerations showed that among the recruits who went so far as to attend two-day retreats (claimed to beMoonie’s most effective means of "brainwashing"), fewer than 25% joined the group for more than a week and only 5% remained full-time members one year later. And, of course, most contacts dropped out before attending a retreat. Of all those who visited a Moonie centre at least once, not one in two-hundred remained in the movement two years later. With failure rates exceeding 99.5%, it comes as no surprise that full-time Moonie membership in the U.S. never exceeded a few thousand. And this was one of the most successful New Religious Movements of the era!"
- ^ Oakes, Len "By far the best study of the conversion process is Eileen Barker’s The Making of a Moonie [...]" from Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities, 1997, ISBN 0-8156-0398-3
- ^ Storr, Anthony Feet of clay: a study of gurus 1996 ISBN 0-684-83495-2
- ^ Richardson, James T. (June 1985). "The active vs. passive convert: paradigm conflict in conversion/recruitment research". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 24 (2): 163–179. doi:10.2307/1386340. JSTOR 1386340.
- ^ "Brainwashing by Religious Cults". religioustolerance.org.
- ^ Richardson, James T. 2009. "Religion and The Law" in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Peter Clarke. (ed) Oxford Handbooks Online. p. 426
- ^ Anthony, Dick (1999). "Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An Evaluation of the Brainwashing Theories of Jean-Marie Abgrall". Social Justice Research. 12 (4): 421–456. doi:10.1023/A:1022081411463. S2CID 140454555.
- ^ [1], Times of Israel''
- ^ a b c "The CIA's Secret Quest for Mind Control: Torture, LSD and A 'Poisoner in Chief'". NPR.org.
- ^ Anthony, Dick (1999). "Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An evaluation of the brainwashing theories of Jean-Marie". Social Justice Research. 12 (4): 421–456. doi:10.1023/A:1022081411463. S2CID 140454555.
- ^ "Chapter 3, part 4: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals". Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report. Archived from the original on 9 November 2004. Retrieved 24 August 2005. "MKUltra, began in 1950 and was motivated largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean uses of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea."
- ^ "Book Review". Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. 2 (3): 123–128. 2001. doi:10.1300/J229v02n03_08. S2CID 220439052.
- ^ The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control: By John Marks. P 93 (c)1979 by John Marks Published by Times Books ISBN 0-8129-0773-6
- ^ Chaddock, Gail Russell (22 April 2009). "Report says top officials set tone for detainee abuse". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
- ^ As archived at http://www.cesnur.org/testi/DIMPAC.htm, retrieved 2008-06-23
- ^
American Psychological Association Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) (11 May 1987). "Memorandum". CESNUR: APA Memo of 1987 with Enclosures. CESNUR Center for Studies on New Religions. Retrieved 18 November 2008.
BSERP requests that Task Force members not distribute or publicize the report without indicating that the report was unacceptable to the Board.
- ^ American Psychological Association Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) (11 May 1987). "Memorandum". CESNUR: APA Memo of 1987 with Enclosures. CESNUR Center for Studies on New Religion. Retrieved 18 November 2008.
BSERP thanks the Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control for its service but is unable to accept the report of the Task Force. In general, the report lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur.
- ^ The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies, Jonathan Auerbach, Russ Castronovo, Oxford University Press, 2014, page 114
- ^ *Meerloo, Joost (1956). "The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing". World Publishing Company.
- ^ Nazi Europe and the Final Solution, David Bankier, Israel Gutman, Berghahn Books, 2009, page 282-285.
- ^ Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, Jonathan Petropoulos, John Roth, Berghahn Books, 15 July 2005, page 209
- ^ The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism, Barbara Epstein, University of California Press, 2008, page 295
- ^ Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, John-Paul Himka, Joanna Beata Michlic, University of Nebraska Press, 1 July 2013, pages 74, 78
- ^ "Interview". Angelfire.com. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- ^ *Romanovsky, Daniel (2009), "The Soviet Person as a Bystander of the Holocaust: The case of eastern Belorussia", in Bankier, David; Gutman, Israel (eds.), Nazi Europe and the Final Solution, Berghahn Books, p. 276, ISBN 9781845454104
- Romanovsky, D. (1999). "The Holocaust in the Eyes of Homo Sovieticus: A Survey Based on Northeastern Belorussia and Northwestern Russia". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 13 (3): 355–382. doi:10.1093/hgs/13.3.355.
- Romanovsky, Daniel (1997), "Soviet Jews Under Nazi Occupation in Northeastern Belarus and Western Russia", in Gitelman, Zvi (ed.), Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, Indiana University Press, p. 241
- ^ Alessandro Usai "Profili penali dei condizionamenti mentali, Milano, 1996 ISBN 88-14-06071-1.
- ^ Schwartz, Rachel Wingfield (22 March 2018), ""An evil cradling"? Cult practices and the manipulation of attachment needs in ritual abuse", Ritual Abuse and Mind Control, Routledge, pp. 39–55, doi:10.4324/9780429479700-2, ISBN 978-0-429-47970-0, retrieved 11 July 2021
- ^ Miller, Alison (11 May 2018), "Becoming Yourself", Routledge, pp. 347–370, doi:10.4324/9780429472251-21, ISBN 978-0-429-47225-1, retrieved 11 July 2021
{{citation}}
: Missing or empty|title=
(help) - ^ Miller, Alison (8 May 2018). Healing the Unimaginable. doi:10.4324/9780429475467. ISBN 9780429475467.
- ^ Alayarian, A. (2018). Trauma, Torture and Dissociation: A Psychoanalytic View. (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.
- ^ Schwartz, H. L. (2013). The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A Relational Approach to Internalized Perpetration in Complex Trauma Survivors. USA: Taylor & Francis.
- ^ Goode, Erich; Ben-Yehuda, Nachman (1994). "Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction". Annual Review of Sociology. 20: 149–171. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.20.080194.001053. ISSN 0360-0572. JSTOR 2083363.
- ^ "A Distinctive Style Article". Archived from the original on 21 October 2013. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
- ^ "On the Issues Article". Ontheissuesmagazine.com. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- ^ Biography at The People Speak Radio Archived 15 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Woman Abuse: Facts Replacing Myths, Lewis Okun, SUNY Press, 1986, page 133
- ^ Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, Rita Nakashima Brock, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Fortress Press, 1996, page 166
- ^ Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Owl Books, 2000.
- ^ Szimhart, Joseph (July–August 2005). "Thoughts on thought control". Skeptical Inquirer. 29 (4): 56–57.
- ^ Le Fanu, James (20 December 2004). "Make up your mind". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2 November 2008.[dead link]
- ^ Hawkes, Nigel (27 November 2004). "Brainwashing by Kathleen Taylor". The Times. London: Times Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 2 November 2008.
- ^ Caterson, Simon (2 May 2007). "Hell to pay when man bites God". The Australian. p. 4.
- ^ Taylor, Kathleen Eleanor (December 2004). Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control. Oxford University Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-19-280496-9. Retrieved 30 July 2009.
- ^ Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, and Societal Perspectives, Richard Bolden, Beverley Hawkins, Jonathan Gosling, Scott Taylor, Oxford University Press, 30 June 2011, page 95.
- ^ The Rise of the Anti-corporate Movement: Corporations and the People who Hate Them, Evan Osborne, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, page 14
- ^ More Money Than Brains: Why School Sucks, College is Crap, & Idiots Think They're Right, Laura Penny, McClelland & Stewart, 20 April 2010, page 63.
- ^ Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life, Stanley Deetz, SUNY Press, 1 January 1992, page 257.
- ^ Leo H. Bartemeier (1 August 2011). Psychiatry and Public Affairs. Aldine Transaction. p. 246.
- ^ Clarke, Peter (1 March 2004). Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. Routledge. p. 76.
- ^ Sherman, Fraser A. (13 December 2010). Screen Enemies of the American Way: Political paranoia about Nazis, Communists, Saboteurs, Terrorists and Body Snatching Aliens in Film and Television. McFarland.
- ^ Seed, David (2004). Brainwashing: A study in Cold War demonology. Kent State University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-87338-813-9.
- ^ Steven a.k.a. Superant. "Mind-control movies and TV". listal.com. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
- ^ Feeley, Malcolm M.; Rubin, Edward L. (28 March 2000). Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the courts reformed America's prisons. Cambridge University Press. p. 268.
- ^ Ma, Sheng-mei (2012). Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity. Purdue University Press. p. 129.
- ^ Wolfe, Gary K.; Williams, Carol T. (1983). "The Majesty of Kindness: The dialectic of Cordwainer Smith". In Clareson, Thomas D. (ed.). Voices for the Future: Essays on major science fiction writers. Vol. 3. Popular Press. pp. 53–72.
- ^ "How Brainwashing Works". HowStuffWorks. 10 May 2006. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
- ^ Schelde, Per (1 July 1994). Androids, Humanoids, and other Science Fiction Monsters: Science and soul in science fiction films. NYU Press. pp. 169–175. ISBN 9780585321172.
- ^ O'Brien, Terry (2005). Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Vol. 1. Greenwood Publishing Group.
External links[edit]
![]() |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brainwashing. |
![]() |
Wikiquote has quotations related to Brainwashing. |
![]() |
Look up mind control in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |