Difference between revisions of "Brainwashing"

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-'''Brainwashing''' is any form of mental conditioning under [[torture]], [[starvation]], sleep deprivation, or [[hypnotism]] to coerce captives either to make propaganda statements or to perform some other act not in keeping with one's loyalties or moral code.
+TU MADRE CON QUESO!
-== History of the term ==
-The first modern use of the word was by CIA operative Edgar Hunter. He used it to describe "[[re-education]]" practices used on prisoners of war by the Communist Chinese during the [[Korean War]]<ref name=Hunter>Hunter E, "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party," ''Miami News'', September 24, 1950. Cited by John Marks, "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate", ch. 8 ("Brainwashing"), in ''The Psychedelic Library''. <http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks8.htm></ref>. The chief concern was that seventy percent of American [[prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] had confessed to various activities, including without limitation the use of biological agents, that fall under the category of "[[war crime]]s." Another fifteen percent collaborated actively with their captors, and only five percent resisted to the end. All prisoners had been subject to often brutal interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation.
-Marks reports that the [[CIA]] attempted to develop a brainwashing technique of their own. After years of experimentation, they concluded that no reliable method existed to make anyone do or say anything he would not otherwise want to do, except that months of the brutal regimen in Soviet or Chinese prisons would be sufficient to cause a prisoner to say or do anything to bring the ordeal to an end. Marks also notes that British and other allied prisoners did not confess or collaborate in such large numbers.<ref name=Marks>Marks J, "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate", ch. 8 ("Brainwashing"), in ''The Psychedelic Library''. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks8.htm></ref>
-The term later appeared in the context of [[religious conversion]] to the [[Unification Church]], and the controversial services of [[Ted Patrick]], who called himself a "[[Deprogramming|deprogrammer]]." However, an investigation by the American Psychological Association in the 1980s ended with the conclusion that "mind control" (as applied to [[religious conversion]] of volunteers) was not a [[scientific]]ally viable theory.<ref name=Molko>''Molko and Leal v. Unification Church'', brief ''amicus curiae'' of the American Psychiatric Association, No. SF 25038, Court of Appeal No. A020935, San Francisco Superior Court No. 769-529. Hosted at Center for Studies of New Religions. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://www.cesnur.org/testi/molko_brief.htm></ref>
-== The concept in detail ==
-Allegations of techniques for impressing an idea or a command on the subconscious mind arguably date back to the [[Crusades]]. Specifically, the Nizari Ismailis, under the leadership of Hassan-e Sabbah, gained a reputation for secret murder against the enemies of Shi'a [[Islam]]. [[Marco Polo]] and others alleged that the operatives of this sect that committed these murders did so while under the influence of [[hashish]], administered to them in a training facility that was part barracks, part bordello. Thus this sect gained the Arabic name ''hashishiyyim'', or ''hashshasheen'', which in Vulgar [[Latin]] became ''asesini'', or Assassins in English.<ref name=looklex>Kjeilen, Tore, "Assassins," ''Encyclopedia of the Orient'', 1996. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://looklex.com/e.o/assassins.htm></ref><ref name=Zalman>Zalman A, "Assassins (Hashishiyyin) (Persia & Syria, 11th-12th Century)", About.com, n.d. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://terrorism.about.com/od/groupsleader1/p/Assassins.htm></ref><ref name=britannica>"Assassin", ''The Encyclopedia Britannica'', 1911. Quoted entirely by M. Snell at About.com. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://historymedren.about.com/od/aentries/a/11_assassin.htm></ref>
-Robert Jay Lifton studied former American POWs from the [[Korean War]] and published a description of the specific techniques used on them. He determined that all prisoners who made confessions to imagined war crimes had undergone the following stages in their conditioning:
-# Assault on identity
-# Guilt
-# Self-betrayal
-# Breaking point
-# Leniency
-# Compulsion to confess
-# Channeling of guilt
-# Releasing of guilt
-# Progress and harmony
-# Final confession and rebirth<ref name=Layton>Layton J, "How Brainwashing Works", HowStuffWorks.com. Accessed April 8, 2009. <http://health.howstuffworks.com/brainwashing1.htm></ref>
-The CIA did in fact study the use of hypnosis as a technique either of interrogation or of strengthening resistance to interrogation. The CIA concluded that hypnosis was not a reliable interrogation technique. Nor did the CIA have any confidence that a hypnotized subject could perform an action under a post-hypnotic suggestion. But at the time of the writing of this paper, the authors stated that further research was indicated. Whether such research was ever conducted is unclear.<ref name=cia>"Hypnosis in Interrogation", Central Intelligence Agency. Approved for release per CIA Historical Review Program, September 22, 1993. <https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol4no1/html/v04i1a05p_0001.htm></ref>
-Tellingly, the CIA paper made reference to a number of papers asserting that hypnotized subjects could be induced to commit anti-social, self-destructive, or criminal acts.<ref name=Brenman>Brenman, M. Experiments in the hypnotic production of anti-social and self-injurious behavior. ''Psychiatry'', 1942, 5, 49-61.</ref><ref name=Wells>Wells, W. R. Experiments in the hypnotic production of crime. ''J. Psychol.'', 1941, 11, 63-102.</ref>
-Today the [[United States Navy]] routinely trains its pilot officer candidates to resist harsh interrogation. The candidate simulates an emergency parachute landing behind enemy lines, and is ordered to attempt to evade capture, accept capture once it becomes inevitable, and endure a regimen of systematic abuse meant to approximate the abuse meted out to captured American pilots during the [[Korean War]] and the [[Vietnam War]].<ref name=Dallas>Dallas, David K., Ensign, USNR; personal interview; ca. 1984.</ref>
-==References in popular culture==
-=== The Manchurian Candidate ===
-The most thoroughgoing mention of brainwashing in popular culture was ''[[The Manchurian Candidate]]''.<ref name=manchuria>''The Manchurian Candidate'', dir. John Frankenheimer, with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, and Khigh Dhiegh, United Artists, 1962.</ref><ref name=marks2>"The story was about a joint Soviet-Chinese plot to take an American soldier captured in Korea, condition him at a special brainwashing center located in [[Manchuria]], and create a remote-controlled assassin who was supposed to kill the President of the United States." [http://www.djmsp.com/feedingtrough/reading/The_Search_for_the_Manchurian_Candidate.pdf The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control], by John Marks</ref> This was also the most controversial such mention, because the theme involved inducing a person not only to confess to a crime he had not committed, but to commit murder on command and then forget that he had done so.
-The fictional technique, which no one has been able to replicate, was described only as "part light-induced, part drug-induced." The character of the psychiatrist in charge of the brainwashing program cites the Brenman and Wells papers also cited by the CIA in its study of hypnosis in interrogation.<ref name=Brenman/><ref name=Wells/> This indicates the extraordinary depth of research conducted either by Richard Condon, the original novelist, or by George Axelrod, author of the treatment and script.
-Remarkably, the premise of the film was that not only did the Communist psychiatrists hypnotize one man among several prisoners to be a conscienceless killer, but they ''also'' induced his fellow prisoners to plant a false story portraying him as a hero, and to repeat monotonously that they found him {{cquote|the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I have ever met in my life}}
-This although the character involved was in fact cold, spiteful, and misanthropic.
-But the film also suggests that any such conditioning might unravel under a stress that proves too great for the conditioning to override. In the film, the hypnotized assassin shoots and kills his father-in-law, and then shoots the wife he had married only days before. The simple shock of that loss causes him to remember at least bits and pieces of the truth, though only in strange and frightening dreams. More to the point, his former commanding officer and another surviving ex-prisoner start to remember the truth in ''their'' dreams&mdash;because the enemy psychiatrists had perhaps neglected the conditioning of the survivors, or perhaps simply overestimated the power of their own technique. The former officer is then able to override the conditioning and learn the full particulars.
-In short, the [[Communist]] psychiatrists depicted in this film make three key mistakes, all of which contribute to the failure of their plan:
-# They hypnotize the subject's fellow prisoners to say nice things about him, but never bother to hypnotize the subject to "remember" that those same people considered him a friend.
-# They never follow up on the conditioning of the other prisoners, with the result that those prisoners begin to remember, at first only in their dreams, a real sequence of events vastly and critically different from the sequence that they were ordered to "remember."
-# The American operator gives the subject an assignment that involves killing someone he loves. The stress of that loss alone causes his own conditioning to break down and prompts him to turn for help to his former commanding officer, who by now knows the truth.
-The shortcomings depicted in that film are consistent with the realization that the CIA eventually found themselves unable to develop a reliable technique for interrogation under hypnosis. To date the records of the [[United States Army]], and those of the other armed services, contain no known instance of a former prisoner of war who carried out an act of war against the United States upon a command given as a post-hypnotic suggestion.
-=== The Family Man ===
-In the more modern motion picture ''[[The Family Man]]'', a young woman pleads with her father, "Promise you won't kidnap me and my brother and plant stuff in our brains?" <ref name=famimdb>''The Family Man'' at the Internet Movie Database. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218967/quotes></ref>
-==See also==
-*[[The Manchurian Candidate]]
-*[[Barack Obama]]
-*[[Scientology]]
-==External links==
-*[http://people.howstuffworks.com/brainwashing1.htm How Brainwashing Works] by Julia Layton
-==Notes==
-{{reflist|2}}
-[[category:psychology]]

Difference between revisions of "Brainwashing"

Revision as of 19:47, December 27, 2009

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