Online Encyclopedia
Brainwashing
'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, coercion, and restriction of access to information.
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The Korean war and the origin of the term
In September 1950, the Miami Daily News published an article by Edward Hunter (1902-1978) 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. An additional article by Hunter on the same subject appeared in New Leader magazine in 1951. In 1953 Allen Welsh Dulles, the CIA director at that time, explained that "the brain under [Communist influence] becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control."
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 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.
Lifton and Schein, also concluded in their anaysis of POWs that in fact coercive persuasion, in which a mixture of social, psychological and physical pressures are applied to produce changes in an individual's beliefs and attitudes, can occur when a physical element of confinement is present "forcing the individual into a situation in which he must, in order to survive physically and psychologically, expose himself to persuasive attempts." They also concluded that it was successful only on a minority of POWs (only 11 out of 3,000 Korean War POWs actually converted to Communism) and that the end result of such coercion was very unstable, as most of the individuals reverted to their previous condition soon after they were removed from the coercive environment.
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.
The use of coercive persuasion in police interrogations
Psychological coercion appears to be common in the interrogations of suspects. An indeterminate number of nonvoluntary confessions may be attributed to the coercive nature of police interrogation during which deceptive and deceitful practices may be used.
Dr. Richard Leo a recognized authority on the subject of police interrogation practices, argues that although there are no statistics showing how often false confessions actually occur, certain techniques of investigation are more likely to produce a false confession than other techniques. For example, techniques that maximize the suspect's involvement in the crime, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and extended questioning can exert "extreme influence" in the person being interrogated. ("Extreme influence " in decision making is a legitimate field of study recognized since 1908.)
Brainwashing controversies
According to research and forensic psychologist Dick Anthony, the CIA invented the brainwashing ideology as a propaganda strategy to undercut communist claims that American POWs in Korean communist camps had voluntarily expressed sympathy for communism and that definitive research demonstrated that collaboration by western POWs had been caused by fear and duress, and not by brainwashing. He argues that The CIA brainwashing theory was pushed to the general public though the books of Edward Hunter, who was a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist" passing as a journalist. He further asserts that in the early 1950s, the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research for twenty years, attempting to develop practical brainwashing techniques and that the research was a failure.
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 their Handbook of Cults and Sects in America, Bromley and Hadden present the ideological foundation of the brainwashing theories, and demonstrate its lack of scientific support. They argue that the simplistic perspective inherent in the brainwashing metaphor appeals to those attempting to locate a effective social weapon to use against disfavored groups, and that the fact that such efforts at social control have been relatively successful should not detract from the lack of scientific basis for such opinions.
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. Given this controversy, some anti-cult activists like Steven Hassan started using the term mind control as an alternative theory. See also Cults and mind control controversies.
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. In addition, Tom Robbins, Eileen Barker, Newton Maloney , Massimo Introvigne, John Hall, Lorne Dawson , Anson Shupe , David Bromley , Gordon Melton, Marc Galanter , Saul Levine and other NRM scholars have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts and relevant professional associations and scientific communities that there is no scientific theory that is generally accepted and based upon methodologically sound research that support the brainwashing theories as advanced by the anti-cult movement.
The American Civil Liberties Union published a statement in 1977 related to brainwashing and mind control in which they opposed metods of deprivation of free excercise of religion and that the claim of free exercise may not be overcome by the contention that 'brainwashing' or 'mind control' was used. (See quote http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brainwashing )
Colloquial use
The word brainwashed is still informally and pejoratively used to describe persons subjected to intensive influence 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
- Aversion therapy
- Conditioning
- Cognotechnology
- Deprogramming
- Hypnosis
- Indoctrination
- Margaret Singer
- Milgram experiment
- Stockholm syndrome
- Thought reform
References
- Anthony, Dick. 1990. Religious Movements and 'Brainwashing' Litigation. in Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, In Gods We Trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Excerpt available online http://www.religiousfreedoms.org/articles/article_brainwashing_elizabeth_smart.h
tm - Hadden, Jeffrey K. , The Brainwashing Controversy http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/cultsect/brainwashing.htm .
- Hadden, Jeffery K., and Bromley, David, eds. (1993), The Handbook of Cults and Sects in America. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, Inc., pp. 75-97.
- Ofshe, Richard J. and Leo, Richard A. (1997). The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. Studies in Law, Politics & Society, Volume 16, pp. 189-251.
- 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);
- Scheflin, Alan W and Opton, Edward M. Jr., The Mind Manipulators. A Non-Fiction Account, (1978), p. 437.
- 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=1
1564316&dopt=Citation J. Cogn. Neurosci. 13, pp. 713-720 (2001). - Wakefield, Hollida , M.A. and Underwager, Ralph, Ph.D., Coerced or Nonvoluntary Confessions, Institute for Psychological Therapies.
Blibliography
- Anthony, Dick , Brainwashing and Totalitarian Influence. An Exploration of Admissibility Criteria for Testimony in Brainwashing Trials, Ph.D. Diss., Berkeley (California): Graduate Theological Union, 1996, p. 165.
- Hunter, Edward, Brain-Washing in Red China. The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds, New York: The Vanguard Press, 1951; 2nd expanded ed.: New York: The Vanguard Press, 1953
- Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Comunist Phsycological Warfare (Brainwashing), United States House of Representatives, Washington, D. C., Tuesday, March 13, 1958
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
