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Chapter 2: Brainwashing
This chapter is going to focus on the
process of brainwashing and all the
components that come with it. Through
the media and the movies that are seen,
many people see brainwashing as an
evil practice that is done by those who
are trying to corrupt, influence, and to
gain power. Some who really believe in
the power of brainwashing believe that
people all around them are trying to
control their minds and their behavior.
For the most part, the process of
brainwashing occurs in a much more
subtle way and does not involve the
sinister practices that most people
associate with it. This chapter will go
into a lot more detail about what
brainwashing is and how it can
influence the subject’s way of thinking.
What is Brainwashing?
Brainwashing in this guidebook will be
discussed in terms of its use in
psychology. In this relation,
brainwashing is referred to as a method
of thought reform through social
influence. This kind of social influence
is occurring all throughout the day to
every person, regardless of whether
they realize it or not. Social influence
is the collection of methods that are
used in order to change other people’s
behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes. For
example, compliance methods that are
used in the workplace could technically
be considered a form of brainwashing
because they require you to act and
think a specific way when you are on
the job. Brainwashing can become
more of a social issue in its most
severe form because these approaches
work at changing the way someone
thinks without the subject consenting
to it.
For brainwashing to work effectively,
the subject is going to need to go
through a complete isolation and
dependency due to its invasive
influence on the subject. This is one of
the reasons that many of the
brainwashing cases that are known
about occur in totalistic cults or prison
camps. The brainwasher, or the agent,
must be able to gain complete control
over their subject. This means that they
must control the eating habits, sleeping
patterns, and fulfilling the other human
needs of the subject and none of these
actions can occur without the will of
the agent. During this process, the
agent will work to systematically break
down the subject’s whole identity to
basically make it not work right
anymore. Once the identity is broken,
the agent will work to replace it with
the desired beliefs, attitudes, and
behaviors.
The process of brainwashing is still up
for debate whether or not it will work.
Most psychologists hold the beliefs
that it is possible to brainwash a
subject as long as the right conditions
are present. Even then, the whole
process is not as severe as it is
presented in the media. There are also
different definitions of brainwashing
that make it more difficult to
determine the effects of brainwashing
on the subject. Some of these
definitions require that there must be
some sort of threat to the physical body
of the subject in order to be considered
brainwashing. If you follow this
definition, then even the practices done
by many extremist cults would not be
considered true brainwashing as no
physical abuse occurs.
Other definitions of brainwashing will
rely on control and coercion without
physical force in order to get the
change in the beliefs of the subjects.
Either way, experts believe that the
effect of brainwashing, even under the
ideal conditions, is only a short term
occurrence. They believe that the old
identity of the subject is not
completely eradicated with the
practice; rather, it is put into hiding
and will return once the new identity is
not reinforced anymore.
Robert Jay Lifton came up with some
interesting thoughts on brainwashing in
the 1950s after he studied prisoners of
the Chinese and Korean War camps.
During his observations, he determined
that these prisoners underwent a
multistep process to brainwashing.
This process began with attacks on the
sense of self with the prisoner and then
ended with a supposed change in
beliefs of the subject. There are 10
steps that Lifton defined for the
brainwashing process in the subjects
that he studied. These included:
1. An assault on the identity of
the subject
2. Forcing guilt on the subject
3. Forcing the subject into self-
betrayal
4. Reaching a breaking point
5. Offering the subject
leniency if they change
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling the guilt in the
intended direction
8. Releasing the subject of
supposed guilt
9. Progressing to harmony
10. The final confession before
a rebirth
All of these stages must take place in
an area that is in complete isolation.
This means that all of the normal social
references that the subject is used to
coming in contact with are unavailable.
In addition, mind clouding techniques
will be employed in order to expedite
the process such as malnutrition and
sleep deprivation. While this might not
be true of all brainwashing cases, often
there is a presence of some sort of
physical harm which contributes to the
target having difficulty in thinking
independently and critically like they
normally would.
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