Brainwashing
Brainwashing is the systematic effort to get someone to adopt a particular deception, loyalty, instruction, or doctrine, usually without being noticed. Brainwashing is also a colloquial term that refers in general to psychological techniques that manipulate action or thought against a person's will, desire, or knowledge. It attempts to damage individual or group attitudes, frames of reference, beliefs, values or loyalties by demonstrating that current thinking patterns and attitudes are wrong and need change. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds.
The term "brainwashing" was first used in English by Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them during the Korean War. Research into the concept also looked at Nazi Germany and present-day North Korea, at some criminal cases in the United States, and at the actions of human traffickers. Scientific and legal debate followed, as well as media attention, about the possibility of brainwashing being a factor when lysergic acid diethylamide was used, or in the induction of people into groups which are considered to be cults.
Brainwashing has become a common theme in popular culture especially in war stories, thrillers, and science fiction stories. In casual speech, "brainwashing" and its verb form, "brainwash", are used figuratively to describe the use of propaganda to sway public opinion.
China and the Korean War
The Chinese term was originally used by early 20th century Chinese intellectuals to refer to "modernizing" one's way of thinking. The term was later used to describe the coercive persuasion used under the Maoist government in China, which aimed to transform "reactionary" people into "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system. The term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart/mind" before conducting ceremonies or entering holy places.The earliest known English-language usage of the word "brainwashing" in an article by a journalist Edward Hunter, in Miami News, published in 1950. Hunter was an anticommunist and worked for the CIA. Hunter and others used the Chinese term to explain why, during the Korean War, some American prisoners of war cooperated with their Chinese captors, and even in a few cases defected to their side. British radio operator Robert W. Ford and British army Colonel James Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their imprisonment.
The U.S. military and government laid charges of brainwashing in an effort to undermine confessions made by POWs to war crimes, including biological warfare. After Chinese radio broadcasts claimed to quote Frank Schwable, Chief of Staff of the First Marine Air Wing admitting to participating in germ warfare, United Nations commander General Mark W. Clark asserted: "Whether these statements ever passed the lips of these unfortunate men is doubtful. If they did, however, too familiar are the mind-annihilating methods of these Communists in extorting whatever words they want... The men themselves are not to blame, and they have my deepest sympathy for having been used in this abominable way."
Beginning in 1953, Robert Jay Lifton interviewed American servicemen who had been POWs during the Korean War as well as priests, students, and teachers who had been held in prison in China after 1951. In addition to interviews with 25 Americans and Europeans, Lifton interviewed 15 Chinese citizens who had fled after having been subjected to indoctrination in Chinese universities. Lifton found that when the POWs returned to the United States their thinking soon returned to normal, contrary to the popular image of "brainwashing."
In 1956, after reexamining the concept of brainwashing following the Korean War, the U.S. Army published a report entitled Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War, which called brainwashing a "popular misconception". The report concludes that "exhaustive research of several government agencies failed to reveal even one conclusively documented case of 'brainwashing' of an American prisoner of war in Korea."
Legal cases and the "brainwashing defense"
The concept of brainwashing has been raised in defense of criminal charges. The 1969 to 1971 case of Charles Manson, who was said to have brainwashed his followers to commit murder and other crimes, brought the issue to renewed public attention.In 1974, Patty Hearst, a member of the wealthy Hearst family, when 19 years old was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing militant organization. After several weeks of captivity, she agreed to join the group and took part in their activities. In 1975, she was arrested and charged with bank robbery and the use of a gun in committing a felony. Her attorney, F. Lee Bailey, argued in her trial that she should not be held responsible for her actions since her treatment by her captors was the equivalent of the alleged brainwashing of Korean War POWs. Bailey developed his case in conjunction with psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West and psychologist Margaret Singer. They had both studied the experiences of Korean War POWs. Despite this defense, Hearst was found guilty.
In 1990, Steven Fishman, who was a member of the Church of Scientology, was charged with mail fraud for conducting a scheme to sue large corporations via conspiring with minority stockholders in shareholder class action lawsuits. Fishman's attorneys notified the court that they intended to rely on an insanity defense, using the theories of brainwashing and the expert witnesses of Singer and Richard Ofshe to claim that the Church of Scientology had practiced brainwashing on him, which left him unsuitable to make independent decisions. The court ruled that the use of brainwashing theories is inadmissible in expert witnesses, citing the Frye standard, which states that scientific theories utilized by expert witnesses must be generally accepted in their respective fields. Since then, United States courts have consistently rejected testimony about mind control or brainwashing on the grounds that these theories are not part of accepted science under the Frye standard.
In 2003, the brainwashing defense was used unsuccessfully in defense of Lee Boyd Malvo, who was charged with murder for his part in the D.C. sniper attacks. Allegations of brainwashing have also been raised by plaintiffs in child custody cases.
Thomas Andrew Green, in his 2014 book Freedom and Criminal Responsibility in American Legal Thought, argues that the brainwashing defense undermines the law's fundamental premise of free will. In 2003, forensic psychologist Dick Anthony said that "no reasonable person would question that there are situations where people can be influenced against their best interests, but those arguments are evaluated based on fact, not bogus expert testimony."
Anti-cult movement concept
In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-cult movement applied the concept of brainwashing to explain religious conversions to some new religious movements and other groups that they considered cults. News media reports tended to accept their view and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, revised models of brainwashing. While some psychologists were receptive to the concept, most sociologists were skeptical of its ability to explain conversion. Some critics of Mormonism have accused it of brainwashing.Philip Zimbardo defined mind control as "the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition or behavioral outcomes." He suggested that any human being is susceptible to such manipulation.
Benjamin Zablocki, late professor of sociology at Rutgers University said that the number of people who attest to brainwashing in interviews is too large to result from anything other than a genuine phenomenon. He said that in the two most prestigious journals dedicated to the sociology of religion there have been no articles "supporting the brainwashing perspective," while over one hundred such articles have been published in other journals "marginal to the field." He concluded that the concept of brainwashing had been blacklisted.
Eileen Barker criticized the concept of brainwashing because it functioned to justify costly interventions such as deprogramming or exit counseling. She has also criticized some mental health professionals, including Singer, for accepting expert witness jobs in court cases involving NRMs. Barker's 1984 book, The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing?, describes the religious conversion process to the Unification Church, which had been one of the best-known groups said to practice brainwashing. Barker spent close to seven years studying Unification Church members and wrote that she rejects the "brainwashing" theory because it does not explain why many people attended a recruitment meeting and did not become members nor why so many members voluntarily disaffiliate or leave groups.
James Richardson said that if the new religious movements had access to powerful brainwashing techniques, one would expect that they would have high growth rates, yet in fact, most have not had notable success in recruiting or retaining members. For this and other reasons, sociologists of religion including David Bromley and Anson Shupe consider the idea that "cults" are brainwashing American youth to be implausible.
Thomas Robbins, Massimo Introvigne, Lorne Dawson, Gordon Melton, Marc Galanter, and Saul V. Levine, amongst other scholars researching NRMs, have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts, relevant professional associations and scientific communities that there exists no generally accepted scientific theory, based upon methodologically sound research, that supports the concept of brainwashing.
In 1999, forensic psychologist Dick Anthony criticized another adherent to this view, Jean-Marie Abgrall, for allegedly employing a pseudoscientific approach and lacking any evidence that anyone's worldview was substantially changed by these coercive methods. He claimed that the concept and the fear surrounding it was used as a tool for the anti-cult movement to rationalize the persecution of minority religious groups. Additionally, Anthony, in the book Misunderstanding Cults, argues that the term "brainwashing" has such sensationalist connotations that its use is detrimental to any further scientific inquiry.
In 2016, Israeli anthropologist of religion and fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Adam Klin-Oron said about then proposed "anti-cult" legislation: