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Brainwashing[a] is the systematic effort to get someone to adopt a particulardeception,loyalty,instruction, ordoctrine without their will or awareness. Brainwashing is also a colloquial term that refers in general topsychological techniques thatmanipulate action or thought against a person'swill,desire, orknowledge. It attempts to damage individual or group attitudes, frames of reference,beliefs,values or loyalties by demonstrating that currentthinking patterns and attitudes are wrong and need change.[1] Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds.[2][3][4]
The term "brainwashing" was first used in English byEdward Hunter in 1950 to describe how theChinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them during theKorean War. Research into the concept also looked atNazi Germany and present-dayNorth Korea, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions ofhuman traffickers.Scientific andlegal debate followed, as well as media attention, about the possibility of brainwashing being a factor whenlysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was used,[5] or in the induction of people into groups which are considered to becults.[6]
Brainwashing has become a common theme in popular culture especially inwar stories,thrillers, andscience fiction stories.[7] In casual speech, "brainwashing" and its verb form, "brainwash", are usedfiguratively to describe the use ofpropaganda to swaypublic opinion.[8]
The Chinese termxǐnǎo (traditional Chinese:洗腦;simplified Chinese:洗脑lit. 'wash brain')[9] was originally used by early 20th century Chinese intellectuals to refer to "modernizing" one's way of thinking.[10] The term was later used to describe the coercivepersuasion used under theMaoist government in China, which aimed to transform "reactionary" people into "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system.[11] The termpunned on theTaoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart/mind" (Chinese:洗心;pinyin:xǐxīn) before conducting ceremonies or entering holy places.[b]
The earliest known English-language usage of the word "brainwashing" in an article by a journalistEdward Hunter, inMiami News, published in 1950.[12] Hunter was ananticommunist and worked for theCIA.[13][14] Hunter and others used the Chinese term to explain why, during theKorean War (1950–1953), some Americanprisoners of war (POWs) cooperated with their Chinese captors, and even in a few casesdefected to their side.[15] British radio operatorRobert W. Ford[16][17] and British army ColonelJames Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their imprisonment.[18]
The U.S. military and government laid charges of brainwashing in an effort to undermine confessions made by POWs to war crimes, includingbiological warfare.[19] After Chinese radio broadcasts claimed to quoteFrank Schwable, Chief of Staff of theFirst Marine Air Wing admitting to participating in germ warfare, United Nations commander GeneralMark W. Clark asserted: "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."[20]
Beginning in 1953,Robert Jay Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been POWs during theKorean 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 bookThought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, was based on this research.)[21] Lifton found that when the POWs returned to the United States their thinking soon returned to normal, contrary to the popular image of "brainwashing."[22]
In 1956, after reexamining the concept of brainwashing following the Korean War, the U.S. Army published a report entitledCommunist 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."[23]
The concept of brainwashing has been raised in defense of criminal charges. The 1969 to 1971 case ofCharles Manson, who was said to have brainwashed his followers to commit murder and other crimes, brought the issue to renewed public attention.[25][26]
In 1974,Patty Hearst, a member of the wealthyHearst family, when 19 years old waskidnapped by theSymbionese 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 the 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 alsoDiminished responsibility).[27] Bailey developed his case in conjunction with psychiatristLouis Jolyon West and psychologistMargaret Singer. They had both studied the experiences of Korean War POWs. (In 1996, Singer published her theories in her best-selling bookCults in Our Midst.[28][29][30]) Despite this defense, Hearst was found guilty.[27]
In 1990,Steven Fishman, who was a member of theChurch of Scientology, was charged withmail fraud for conducting a scheme to sue large corporations via conspiring with minority stockholders in shareholder class action lawsuits. Fishman's attorneys notified the court that they intended to rely on aninsanity defense, using the theories of brainwashing and the expert witnesses of Singer andRichard Ofshe to claim that the Church of 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 theFrye standard, which states that scientific theories utilized by expert witnesses must be generally accepted in their respective fields.[31] Since then, United States courts have consistently rejected testimony about mind control or brainwashing on the grounds that these theories are not part of accepted science under the Frye standard.[32]
In 2003, the brainwashing defense was used unsuccessfully in defense ofLee Boyd Malvo, who was charged with murder for his part in theD.C. sniper attacks.[33][34] Allegations of brainwashing have also been raised by plaintiffs in child custody cases.[35][36]
Thomas Andrew Green, in his 2014 bookFreedom and Criminal Responsibility in American Legal Thought, argues that the brainwashing defense undermines the law's fundamental premise offree will.[37][38] In 2003, forensic psychologistDick 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 based on fact, not bogus expert testimony."[34]
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In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-cult movement applied the concept of brainwashing to explainreligious conversions to somenew religious movements (NRMs) and other groups that they consideredcults.[39][40] News media reports tended to accept their view[41] andsocial scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usuallypsychologists, revised models of brainwashing.[39] While some psychologists were receptive to the concept, most sociologists were skeptical of its ability to explain conversion.[42] Some critics ofMormonism have accused it of brainwashing.[43]
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."[44] He suggested that any human being is susceptible to such manipulation.[45]
Benjamin Zablocki, late professor of sociology atRutgers University said that the number of people who attest to brainwashing in interviews (performed in accordance with guidelines of theNational Institute of Mental Health andNational Science Foundation) is too large to result from anything other than a genuine phenomenon.[46] He said that in the two most prestigious journals dedicated to thesociology 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."[47] He concluded that the concept of brainwashing had beenblacklisted.[48][47][49]
Eileen Barker criticized the concept of brainwashing because it functioned to justify costly interventions such asdeprogramming or exit counseling.[50] She has also criticized some mental health professionals, including Singer, for accepting expert witness jobs in court cases involving NRMs.[51] Barker's 1984 book,The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?,[52] describes the religious conversion process to theUnification Church (whose members are sometimes informally referred to asMoonies), which had been one of the best-known groups said to practice brainwashing.[53][54] Barker spent close to seven years studying Unification Church members and wrote that she rejects the "brainwashing" theory because it does not explain why many people attended a recruitment meeting and did not become members nor why so many members voluntarily disaffiliate or leave groups.[50][55][56][57][58]
James Richardson said 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.[59] For this and other reasons, sociologists of religion includingDavid Bromley andAnson Shupe consider the idea that "cults" are brainwashing American youth to be implausible.[60]
Thomas Robbins,Massimo Introvigne,Lorne Dawson,Gordon Melton,Marc Galanter, andSaul V. 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.[61]
In 1999,forensic psychologistDick Anthony criticized another adherent to this view,Jean-Marie Abgrall, for allegedly employing apseudoscientific approach and lacking any evidence that anyone'sworldview 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.[62] Additionally, Anthony, in the bookMisunderstanding Cults, argues that the term "brainwashing" has suchsensationalistconnotations that its use is detrimental to any further scientific inquiry.[63]
In 2016, Israeli anthropologist of religion and fellow at theVan 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."[64]
For 20 years, starting in the early 1950s, theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and theU.S. Department of Defense conducted secret research, includingProject MKUltra, in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques. These experiments ranged "fromelectroshock therapy to high doses ofLSD".[65]
The directorSidney Gottlieb and his team were apparently able to "blast away the existing mind" of a human being by using torture techniques;[65] however, reprogramming, in terms of finding "a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void",[65] was not so successful.[66][67]
Controversial psychiatristColin A. Ross claims that the CIA was successful in creating programmable so-called "Manchurian Candidates" even at the time.[68] The CIA experiments using various psychedelic drugs such as LSD andMescaline drew from previousNazi human experimentation.[69]
In 1979,John D. Marks wrote in his bookThe Search for the Manchurian Candidate that until the MKUltra program was effectively terminated in 1963, the agency's researchers had found no reliable way to brainwash another person, as all experiments at some stage always ended in either amnesia or catatonia, making any operational use impossible.[14]
A bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report, released in part in December 2008 and in full in April 2009, reported that U.S. military trainers who came toGuantánamo Bay in December 2002 had based an interrogation class on a chart copied from a 1957 Air Force study of "Chinese Communist" brainwashing techniques used to elicit false confessions from American POWs during the Korean War. 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 atAbu Ghraib.[70]
In 1983, theAmerican Psychological Association (APA) asked Singer to chair atask force called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC) to investigate whether brainwashing or coercive persuasion did indeed control cults members. The task force concluded that:[71]
Cults andlarge 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.
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."[72]
Joost Meerloo, a Dutch psychiatrist, was an early proponent of the concept of brainwashing. "Menticide" is aneologism he coined meaning "killing of the mind". Meerloo's view was influenced by his experiences during the German occupation of his country during the Second World War and his work with the Dutch government and the American military in theinterrogation of accusedNazi war criminals. He later emigrated to the United States and taught atColumbia University.[73] 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.[74]
Russian historianDaniel 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 theSecond World War, which took place through both masspropaganda 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 theSoviet government, views that had not been at all common before the German occupation.[75][76][77][78][79][80][excessive citations]
Italy has had controversy over the concept ofplagio, 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'sfreedom andself-determination and the consequent negation of his or herpersonality. 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.[81]
Recent scientific book publications in the field of themental disorderdissociative identity disorder (DID) mentiontorture-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.[82][83][84][85][86][excessive citations] 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."[87]
Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics published by theChurch of Scientology in 1955 about brainwashing.L. Ron Hubbard authored the text and alleged it was the secret manual written byLavrentiy Beria, theSoviet secret police chief, in 1936.[88] When the FBI ignored him, Hubbard wrote again stating that Soviet agents had, on three occasions, attempted to hire him to work against the United States, and were upset about his refusal,[89] and that one agent specifically attacked him using electroshock as a weapon.[90]
Kathleen Barry, co-founder of theUnited Nations NGO, theCoalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW),[91][92] prompted international awareness of human sex trafficking in her 1979 bookFemale Sexual Slavery.[93] In his 1986 bookWoman Abuse: Facts Replacing Myths, Lewis Okun reported that: "Kathleen Barry shows inFemale Sexual Slavery that forced female prostitution involves coercive control practices very similar to thought reform."[94] In their 1996 book,Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States, Rita Nakashima Brock andSusan Brooks Thistlethwaite report that the methods commonly used bypimps to control their victims "closely resemble the brainwashing techniques of terrorists and paranoid cults."[95]
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 toAum Shinrikyo and thewar 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.[96]
In her 2004popular science book,Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control,neuroscientist andphysiologistKathleen Taylor reviewed the history of mind control theories, as well as notable incidents. In it, she theorized that persons under the influence of brainwashing may have more rigidneurological pathways, and that can make it more difficult to rethink situations or to be able to later reorganize these pathways.[97][98]
In 2006Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control is a non-fiction book about the evolution of brainwashing from its origins in the Cold War through to today's War on Terror.[99][100][101] The author,Dominic Streatfeild,uses formerly classified documentation and interviews from the CIA.[102]
Non-suggestive interviews ofSirhan Sirhan over eleven years by psychologist Daniel Brown provided evidence of Sirhan's preparation as a "Manchurian Candidate" for the 1968 assassination of SenatorRobert Kennedy.[103][104]
InGeorge Orwell's 1949dystopian novelNineteen Eighty-Four, the main character is subjected to imprisonment,isolation, and torture to conform his thoughts and emotions to the wishes of the rulers of the book's fictional futuretotalitarian society. The torturer representing the authorities says, "We make the brain perfect before we blow it out...Everyone is washed clean."[105] Orwell's vision influencedHunter and is still reflected in the popular concept of brainwashing.[106][107]
In the 1950s, some American films were made that featured brainwashing of POWs, includingThe Rack,The Bamboo Prison,Toward the Unknown, andThe Fearmakers.Forbidden Area told the story of Soviet secret agents who had been brainwashed throughclassical conditioning by their own government so they wouldn't reveal their identities. In 1962,The Manchurian Candidate (based on the 1959 novel byRichard Condon) "put brainwashing front and center" by featuring a plot by the Soviet government to take over the United States by using a brainwashedsleeper agent for political assassination.[108][109][110]
The concept of brainwashing became popularly associated with the research of Russian psychologistIvan Pavlov, which mostly involved dogs as subjects.[111] InThe Manchurian Candidate the head brainwasher is "Dr. Yen Lo, of the Pavlov Institute."[112]
Thescience fiction stories ofCordwainer Smith (pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (1913–1966), a U.S. Army officer who specialized inmilitary intelligence andpsychological 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.[113]
Brainwashing remains an important theme in science fiction. A subgenre iscorporate mind control, in which a future society is run by one or more businesscorporations that dominate society, usingadvertising andmass media to control the population's thoughts and feelings.[114] Terry O'Brien commented: "Mind control is such a powerful image that ifhypnotism did not exist, then something similar would have to have been invented: Theplot device is too useful for any writer to ignore. The fear of mind control is equally as powerful an image."[7]
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help); Reprinted, with a new preface: University of North Carolina Press, 1989 (Online atInternet Archive).In September 1950, theMiami 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.
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.
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 behavioralmanipulation 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.'
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.
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.
brain washing hubbard 1936.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
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