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, after coming into contact with new religious movements (NRMs, popularly referred to as "cults'), some young people suddenly adopted faiths, beliefs, and behavior that differed markedly from their previous lifestyles and seemed at variance with their upbringing. 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 due to 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 generally accepted concepts within the scientific community. The American Psychological Association (APA) in 1983 asked Margaret Singer, one of the most vocal proponents of coercive persuasion theories, to chair a taskforce caled DIMPAC to investigate whether brainwashing or "coercive persuasion" did indeed play a role in recruitment by such movements. Before the taskforce had submitted its final report, however, the APA submitted an amicus curiæ brief in an ongoing case. The brief stated that "[t]he methodology of Drs. Singer and Benson has been repudiated by the scientific community", that the hypotheses advanced by Singer were "little more than uninformed speculation, based on skewed data" and that "[t]he coercive persuasion theory ... is not a meaningful scientific concept"[1] (http://www.cesnur.org/testi/molko_brief.htm). However, the brief did not characterize the theory of brainwashing as disproven or as unscientific (as some comentators assert) -- only as not scientifically proven. The brief itself suggests the hypothesis that cult recruitment techniques might prove coercive for certain sub-groups, while not affecting others coercively. When the DIMPAC report finally appeared in 1987, the APA rejected it because it "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur".

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 relative success of such efforts at social control should not detract from the lack of scientific basis for such opinions.

Psychologists, sociologists, many 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 or alleged cults. Given the linguistic/semantic controversy, some anti_cult activists like Steven Hassan started using the term mind control as an alternative label. See also cults and mind control controversies.

Note 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 state, however, that they do not use coercive techniques to acquire or to retain converts.

Social scientists who study new religious movements, such as Jeffrey K. Hadden (see References), understand the general proposition that religious groups can have considerable influence over their members, and that that influence may have come about through deception and indoctrination. Indeed, many sociologists obderve that "influence" occurs ubiquitously in human cultures, and some argue that the influence exerted in "cults" or new religious movements does not differ greatly from the influence present in practically every domain of human action and of human endeavor.

The Association of World Academics for Religious Education, states 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 scholars researching NRMs have argued -- and established to the satisfaction of courts and relevant professional associations and scientific communities -- that there exists no scientific theory, generally accepted and based upon methodologically sound research, that supports the brainwashing theories as advanced by the anti-cult movement.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a statement in 1977 related to brainwashing and mind control. In this statement the ACLU opposed certain methods "depriving people of the free excercise of religion". The ACLU also rejected (under certain conditions) the idea that claims of the use of 'brainwashing' or of 'mind control' should overcome the free exercise of religion. (See quote (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brainwashing))

Colloquial use

Popular speech continues to use the word brainwashed informally and pejoratively to describe persons subjected to intensive influence resulting in the rejection of old beliefs and in the acceptance of new ones; or to acount for someone who holds strong ideas considered to be implausible and that seem resistant to evidence, common sense, experience, and logic. Such popular usage often implies a belief that the ideas of the allegedly brainwashed person developed under some external influence such as books, television programs, television commercials (as producing brainwashed consumers), video games, religious groups, political groups, or other people. Mind control expresses a conception only mildly less dramatic than brainwashing, with thought control slightly milder again. With thought reform and coercion we start to move into acceptably neutral academic jargon and into the areas of propaganda, influence and persuasion.

Dramatization

The alarmist concept of brainwashing functioned as a central theme in the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate in which Communist brainwashers turned a soldier into an assassin. It also plays a central role in The Ipcress File, where Michael Caine tries to resist his re_programming. The idea has also appeared in comedies such as The Naked Gun, where Reggie Jackson becomes a tool in an effort to kill Queen Elizabeth II, and in Zoolander, which depicts male model Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) becoming brainwashed/hypnotized into trying to kill a 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.htm)
• 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=11564316&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 works for 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)