Brainwashing
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The term brainwashing first came into public currency in the U.S. during the Korean War in the 1950s as an explanation for why a few American GIs appeared to defect to the Communists after becoming prisoners of war. Brainwashing consisted of the methodology used by the Chinese communists to attempt to cause deep and permanent
behavioral changes in their own people, to do the same thing to foreigners imprisoned within the boundaries of China itself, and
to disrupt the ability of prisoners of war to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment. Although the use of
brainwashing on U.N. prisoners during the Korean War produced some propaganda benefits, its
main utility to the Chinese army was that it significantly altered the number of prisoners that could be controlled by one guard,
freeing other Chinese soldiers to go to the battlefield. In later times the term "brainwashing" came to be applied to other
methods of coercive persuasion and even to the effective use of ordinary propaganda. The term "brainwashing" has often been used
to explain some methodologies for the religious conversion
of inductees to new religious movements including
cults.
'Brainwashing' is a loaded term, suggesting nefarious intent and grotesque methods, with more currency in the public mind than
in psychology. Brainwashing generally amounts to little more than a combination of persuasion and attitude change, propaganda and coercion.
The Korean war and the origin of the term
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," which quickly became a stock
phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist, turned out a steady
stream of books and articles on the subject. He made up his coined word from the Chinese hsi-nao—"to cleanse the
mind"—which had no political meaning in Chinese.
In his 1956 book "Brain-Washing," Hunter, described "a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into
acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him."
Later, two studies of the Korean War defections by Robert Lifton and Edgar
Schein concluded that brainwashing was transient in its effect when used on United Nations prisoners of war. They found that the Chinese did not engage in any systematic re-education
of prisoners, but generally used their techniques of coercive persuasion to disrupt the ability of the prisoners to organize to
maintain their morale and to try to escape. The Chinese were, however, able to get some of the prisoners to make anti-American
statements by placing the prisoners under harsh conditions of deprivation and
then by offering them more comfortable situations such as better sleeping quarters, better food, warmer clothes or blankets.
Nevertheless, the psychiatrists noted that even these measures of coercion were quite ineffective at changing basic attitudes for
most people. In essence, the prisoners did not actually adopt Communist beliefs. Rather, many of them behaved as though they did
in order to avoid the plausible threat of extreme physical abuse. Moreover, the few prisoners who were influenced by Communist
indoctrination were believed to have done so as a result of the confluence of the coercive persuasion, and the motives and
personality characteristics of the prisoners that already existed before imprisonment.
The use of coercive persuasion techniques in China
Brainwashing (as it was popularly called) or thought reform (as it was more formally designated) consisted of techniques and
methods used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
which were developed previously in the Soviet Union to prepare prisoners for show trials, as well as techniques used even earlier
in the Inquisition. These techniques had multiple goals that went far beyond
the simple control of subjects in the prison camps of North Korea. They were intended to produce confessions, to convince the
accused that they were indeed perpetrators of anti-social acts, to make them feel guilty of these crimes against the state, to
make them desirous of a fundamental change in outlook toward the institutions of the new communist society, and, finally, to
actually accomplish these changes in them. To that end, techniques were used that broke down the psychic integrity of the
individual with regard to information processing, with regard to information retained in the mind, and with regard to values. To
accomplish their goals, many techniques were used, including dehumanizing of individuals by keeping them in filth, sleep
deprivation, psychological harrassment, inculcation of guilt, group social pressure, etc. The ultimate goal that drove these
extreme efforts was the transformation of an individual with a "feudal" or capitalist mindset into a "right thinking" member of
the new social system.
While the methods of thought control were extremely useful at gaining prisoner compliance, a key element in their success was
tight control both of the information available to the individual and of the behavior of the individual. When close control of
information could no longer be maintained, former prisoners fairly quickly regained an objective picture of the world and the
societies from which they had come. Furthermore, prisoners subject to thought control often simply behaved in ways that pleased
their captors, without changing their fundamental beliefs. So the fear of brainwashed sleeper agents, such as that dramatized in
The Manchurian Candidate, never materialized.
Terrible though the process frequently was to individuals imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party, the reassuring result of
these attempts at extreme coercive persuasion was to show that the human mind has enormous ability to adapt to stress and also a
powerful homeostatic capacity. The account of one man's resistance to brainwashing is In the Presence of My Enemies, by
John Clifford, S.J.
Brainwashing controversy in new religious movements and cults
In the 1960s some young people suddenly adopted faiths, beliefs, and behavior that were very different from their previous
lifestyles and at variance with their upbringing, after coming into contact with new religious movements. These people sometimes
neglected or even broke contact with their families. All of these changes appeared very strange and upsetting for their family
members. To explain these phenomena, the theory was postulated that these young people had been brainwashed by these new
religious movements by isolating them from their family and friends (inviting them to an end of term camp after university for
example), arranging a sleep deprivation program (3 a.m. prayer meetings) and exposing them to loud and repetitive chanting.
Another alleged technique of religious brainwashing involved love bombing
rather than torture.
In the early 1980s, some U.S. mental health professionals became controversial figures
for their involvement as expert witnesses in court cases against new religious movements, during which they presented anti-cult
theories of brainwashing, mind control, or “coercive persuasion” as if they were generally accepted concepts within
the scientific community. Margaret Singer one of the most vocal
proponents of coercive persuasion theories, was asked in 1983 by the American Psychological Association to chair a taskforce caled DIMPAC to investigate whether brainwashing or
"coercive persuasion" was indeed playing a role in recruitment by such movements. Before the taskforce had submitted its final
report, however, the APA had submitted an amicus curiæ brief in an
ongoing case stating that "The methodology of Drs. Singer and Benson has been repudiated by the scientific community" and that
the hypotheses advanced by Singer were "little more than uninformed speculation, based on skewed data." [1]
(http://www.cesnur.org/testi/molko_brief.htm). When the DIMPAC report was finally
presented in 1987, it was rejected by the APA because it "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary
for APA imprimatur." (It is important to realize that the APA did not claim the theory of brainwashing to be disproven or
unscientific, as is sometimes mistakenly stated, only to have not been scientifically proven; the brief itself suggests the
hypothesis that cult recruitment techniques might be coercive for certain sub-groups, while not affecting others coercively.)
Psychologists, sociologists, most ex-members of purported cults, and most anti-cult activists now concede that the term brainwashing does not properly apply to the recruitment
and retention techniques used by the so-called cults. Some anti-cult activists, like Steven Hassan started using the term mind control as an
alternative name, to refer to the same theories.
It should be noted that some religious groups, especially those of Hindu and Buddhist origin, openly state that they seek to improve the natural human mind by spiritual
exercises. Intense spiritual exercises have an effect on the mind, for example by leading to an altered state of consciousness. These groups do
not, however, proclaim that they use coercive techniques to acquire or retain converts.
Social scientists who study new religious movements, such as Jeffrey K. Hadden (See References), understand the general proposition that religious groups are capable of having considerable influence over
their members that may have been acquired by deception and indoctrination. Indeed, most argue that "influence" is ubiquitous in
human cultures, but they argue that the influence exerted in "cults" or new religious movements are not very different from the
influence that is present in practically every domain of action and human endeavor.
The Association of World Academics for Religious Education, state that "... without the legitimating umbrella of brainwashing
ideology, deprogramming–the practice of kidnapping members of NRMs and destroying their religious faith–cannot be
justified, either legally or morally. "
Dr. James Richardson, a Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, claims that if the NRMs had
access to powerful brainwashing techniques, one would expect that NRMs would have high growth rates, while in fact most have not
had notable success in recruitment, most adherents participate for only a short time, and that the success in retaining members
has been limited.
Colloquial use
The word brainwashed is still informally and pejoratively used to describe persons subjected to intensive infulence
resulting in the rejection of old beliefs and acceptance of new ones; or someone who holds strong ideas considered to be
implausible and that seem resistant to evidence, common sense, experience, and logic. It is mainly used when it is believed that
the ideas of the allegedly brainwashed person developed under external influence e.g. books, TV programs or commercials (as in
brainwashed consumers), video games, religious groups, political groups, or other people.
Dramatization
The idea was central to the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate in which a soldier was turned into an assassin through brainwashing. It is also central to The Ipcress File, where Michael Caine tries to
resist being re-programmed. The idea has also appeared in comedies such as The Naked Gun, where Reggie Jackson is used in
an effort to kill Queen Elizabeth
II, and Zoolander, in which male model Eric Zoolander (Ben Stiller) is brainwashed/hypnotized into trying to kill the fictional Prime
Minister of Malaysia.
See also
References
- Hadden, Jeffrey K. , The Brainwashing Controversy (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/cultsect/brainwashing.htm).
- Richardson, James T. , Brainwashing" Claims and Minority Religions Outside the United States: Cultural Diffusion of a
Questionable Concept in the Legal Arena, Brigham Young University Law Review circa 1994.
- Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961);
- Schein, Edgar H. et al., Coercive Persuasion (1961)
- Shapiro, K. A. et al, Grammatical
distinctions in the left frontal cortex (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=11564316&dopt=Citation)J.
Cogn. Neurosci. 13, 713-720 (2001).
External Links
- Thought Reform: A Brief History of the Model and Related Issues: Part I
By Lawrence A. Pile (http://wellspringretreat.org/journal/v9n2/reform.html) Pile is
a employee of the Wellspring Retreat & Resource Center, a residential treatment facility for victims of thought reform and
cultic abuse, located in the USA
- Brainwashing: a Synthesis of the Communist Textbook on Psychopolitics, with an
Introduction by Eric D. Butler (http://www.alor.org/Library/BrainWashing.htm)
- Brainwashing
and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory (lengthy essay) by J. Gordon Melton (http://www.cesnur.org/testi/melton.htm)
- Report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques
of Persuasion and Control, November 1986 (http://www.rickross.com/reference/apologist/apologist23.html)
- "Brainwashing" : Career of a Myth in the United States and Europe
(http://www.cesnur.org/conferences/BrainWash.htm) - Paper delivered by Dr Massimo Introvigne at the CESNUR-REMID conference held in Marburg, Germany, on March 27-29,1998
- Communist Psychological Warfare (Brainwashing), Consultation With Edward
Hunter, Author And Foreign Correspondent, By Committee On Un-American Activities, House Of Representatives, Eighty-Fifth
Congress, Second Session, March 13, 1958 (http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/Congress.htm)
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