Brainwashing or even thought reform is the application of coercive techniques to change a beliefs or even even behavior of a single or extra humans for political purposes. Whether any techniques in a least survive that may actually function to vary thought & behavior to the degree that the term "brainwashing" connotes occurs as controversial & at days heatedly debated wonder.

Origin and use of the term
A term brainwashing occurs as comparatively newly term in the English language. Prior to 1950, it did non survive. Earliest forms of coercive persuasion experienced been seen in a period of a Inquisition, the indicate lawsuits against "enemies of the state" in the Soviet Union, etc., however there is no specific term emerged until a methodologies one sooner movements were systematized in a period of the early decades of the Peoples Republic of China for have in their struggles against internal class enemies and foreign invaders. Until that period, descriptions were limited to concrete descriptions of specific techniques.

A term xÇ? năo (æ´—è„‘, a Chinese term literally translated when "wash brain") was foremost applied to methodologies of coercive persuasion utilized in the "reconstruction" (gÇŽi zào)of the then-alleged feudalistic (fÄ“ng jìan) thought system of Chinese citizens raised under prerevolutionary regimes. A term number 1 inherit utilize in the United States in the 1950s during a Korean War, to describe those equivalent methods every bit applied per Chinese communists to attempt deep & lasting behavioural changes inside foreign captive, and especially in a period of the Korean War to disrupt the ability of captured United Nations troops to effectively organize & resist their imprisonment.

It was consequently utilized in the United states of americthe to show you how come, in comparison earliest wars, a comparatively high percentage of American GIs defected to the Communists after becoming prisoners of war. Late analysis determined that a few of the primary methodologies listed in the babies when you took their imprisonment involved sleep deprivation and other incapacitating psychological manipulations designed to weaken a autonomy of people. U.s. alarm at a newly phenomenon of real many U.S. military personnel switching their allegiances to the enemy was ameliorated when captive were repatriated & it was learned that pack of the babies retained allegiance to the Marxist and anti-American doctrines that had been inculcated in the period of their captivity. A key searching for was that whenever rigid control of references was terminated & a previous captive' natural methods of reality touching may resume functioning, a superimposed values & judgments were speedily attenuated.

Although a have of brainwashing in United Nations captive during a Korean War produced a few propaganda rewards, its independent utility to a Chinese put in a fact that it significantly altered the total of prisoners that of these guard can control, so freeing more Chinese soldiers to return the battleground.

Around afterwards days a term "brainwashing" come to use to more methods of coercive persuasion and even to the effectual apply of average propaganda and indoctrination. & in a formal discourses of the Chinese Communist Person, the further clinical-sounding term "sÄ« xÇ?ang gÇŽi zào" (thought reform) come to become favorite.

Numerous humans own came to utilise a terms "brainwashing" or even "mind control" to explain a otherwise intuitively puzzling profits of a few methodologies for the religious conversion of inductees to new religious movements (including cults).

A term 'brainwashing' is non widely utilized inside psychology & other sciences, because of its vagueness and history of existence utilized around propaganda, does'nt to mention its association using hysterical fears of humans existence taken on top by foreign ideologies. These are typically additional helpful to analyze 'brainwashing' as a combination of manipulations to promote persuasion and attitude change, propaganda, coercion, capture-bonding, and restriction of access to neutral sources of reference. Note that numbers of one techniques come extra subtly utilized (commonly unconsciously) by adman, governments, schools, parents & peers, and then a aura of exotism around 'brainwashing' is undeserved.

Studies of the Korean War

A Communist Party of China used the sentence "xÇ? nÇŽo" ("wash brain") to describe their methods of persuasion within ensuring that members world health organization did non conform a Person message were brought into orthodoxy. the sentence was a play in "xÇ? xÄ«n", ("wash heart") the monition observed within several Daoist temples exhorting the faithful to cleanse their hearts of impure desires prior to typing.

Inside September 1950, a Miami Daily News published an article by Edward Hunter (1902-1978) titled "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party." It contained a foremost printed have of the English-language term "brainwashing," which quickly became the commodity sentence within Cold War newspaper headline. Hunter, the CIA propagandthe operator who worked under-surreptitious as a journalist, turned out a steadily stream of books & articles on the subject. Even more, an extra article by Hunter on the equivalent subject appeared within Fresh Leader magazine inside 1951. Inside 1953 Allen Welsh Dulles, a CIA director at that period, 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."

Inside his 1956 book "Brain-Washing: The Story of the Men Who Defied It", Edward Hunter described "a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him". Based on data from either Hunter, a run is therefore destructive of physical & mental health that many of his interviewees got non fully recovered fallowing several years of freedom from Chinese captivity.

Later on, 2 studies of the Korean War defections by Robert Lifton and Edgar Schein concluded that brainwashing had the ephemeral result whenever utilized in prisoners of war. Lifton & Schein witnessed that a Chinese did non locate in any orderly re-education of captive, however typically utilized their techniques of coercive persuasion to disrupt a ability of the captive to organize to maintain their morale & to try to escape. A Chinese did, even so, succeed within inducing a few of a captive to produce anti-U.s. statements by placing the captive under coarse conditions of physical & social deprivation and disruption, and then by offering the children easier situations like better dormant quarters, better food, warmly material or even blankets. However, a shrink noted that possibly these measures of coercion proved quite ineffectual at changing basic attitudes for virtually all population. Around essence, a captive did non actually adopt Communistic beliefs. Like, several of a babies behaved when though it did sequentially to keep away from the plausible threat of extreme physical abuse. Furthermore, a couple captive influenced by Communistic indoctrination apparently succumbed following of the confluence of the coercive persuasion, & of the motives & personality characteristics of the captive that already existed prior to imprisonment. Particularly, people by having super rigid systems of belief tended to snap & realign, whereas people by using additional flexible systems of belief tended to bend under pressure then restore themselves while a external pressures were flushed.

Both research worker working separately, Lifton & Schein, discussed coercive persuasion in their analysis of the professional assistance of Korean War POWs. It defined coercive persuasion as a mixture of social, psychological & physical pressures applied to garden truck changes within an human's beliefs, attitudes, & behaviors. Lifton & Schein two concluded that such coercive persuasion could succeed when in contact with the physical element of confinement, "forcing the individual into a situation in which he must, in order to survive physically and psychologically, expose himself to persuasive attempts". It likewise concluded that such coercive persuasiin succeeded lone on a minority of POWs & that a prevent symptom of such coercion remained super unstable, when virtually all of the people reverted to their last problem shortly when it left the coercive environment.

The use of coercive persuasion techniques in China

As the result a cease-fire that interrupted hostilities in the Korean War, a big class action of secret agent, head-shrinker, & psychologists was assigned to debrief United Nations soldiers existence repatriated. a food & drug administration of a United States wanted to know a unprecedented level of collaboration, the breakdown of trust among captive, & more such indications that the Chinese were doing something freshly and effectual in their treating of prisoners of war. Formal studies within academic journals began to come out in the mid-1950s, too when occasionally 1st-human reports from either previous captive. Inside 1961, 2 books were published by specialists in the field world health organization synthesized these studies for the non-specialists caring using issues of national security & social policy. Edgar H. Schein wrote in Coercive Persuasion, & Robert J. Lifton write about Thought Control & a Psychological science of Totalitarianism. Each books were primarily caring using a techniques known as "xÇ? nÇŽo" or even, additional formally "sÄ« xiÇŽng gÇŽi zào" (reconstructing or even remodeling thought). A charted discussiin is depending inside prominent a share on their studies.

Although Western attentiin come to bear in thought reconstruction or even brainwashing when of these effect of a Korean War, a techniques got been utilized on average Chinese citizens when the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China. A PRC experienced refined & extended techniques earliest utilized in the Soviet Union to prepare captive for show trials, and it successively experienced learned tremendously from either a Inquisition. In a Chinese context, these techniques experienced multiple goals that went far beyond the elementary control of cases in the prison camps of North Korea. It aimed to develop confessions, to convince a accused that it got indeed perpetrated anti-social acts, to produce the two sense shamed one crimes against the state, to produce the two wishful of a fundamental vary within outlook toward the institutions of the recently communistic society, &, eventually, to actually accomplish these desired changes in the recipients of the brainwashing/thought-reform. Thereto prevent, brainwashers desired techniques that that would weaken a psychic integrity of the person using regard to ip, sustaining regard to principles retained in the head, & sustaining regard to values. Chosen techniques involved: dehumanizing of people by keeping the babies inside filth, sleep deprivation, partial centripetal deprivation, psychological harassment, instilling of guilt, group social pressure, etc. the ultimate goal that drove these extreme efforts consisted of the transformation of an single by using a "feudal" or even capitalist outlook into the "right thinking" member of a recently social organisation, or even, inside more words, to transform what a state regarded as a criminal mind into what the state may look on a non-criminal mind.

A methods of thought control proved extremely utile after it come to exist as listed for gaining a compliance of prisoners of war. Key elements in their profits involved pinching control of a trading tools available to the person & pinching control across the behavior of the person. Once, when repatriation, close control of principles ceased & reality researching can resume, previous captive fairly quickly regained the close approximation of their original picture of the globe & of the societies from either which it got are. What is more, captive subject to thought control typically experienced just behaved around ways that supprised their capturer, while forgoing changing their fundamental beliefs. Then a fear of brainwashed sleeper professionals, like that dramatized in the novel or even in the films of The Manchurian Candidate, never materialized.

Terrible though a run ofttimes seemed to people imprisoned per Chinese Communist Person, these tries at extreme coercive persuasion ended sustaining a reassuring effect: it showed that the mortal mind has tremendous ability to adapt to stress and also the mighty homeostatic capacity. John Clifford, S.J. gives an account of one man's adamant resistance to brainwashing in In the Presence of My Enemies that substantiates the picture drawn from studies of large groups that were reported by Lifton and Schein. Allyn & Adele Rickett [http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/ma/radio/rickett.html] wrote the other repentant account of their imprisonment (Allyn Rickett experienced by his have admission broken PRC laws against espionage) around "Prisoners of the Liberation," however it as well details techniques like a “struggle groups� described within more accounts. Between these paired responses to tries per state to reform a two, own household budget showed that virtually all population would vary under pressure & would vary back while the pressure was flushed. A more interesting outcome was that a bit of souls derived advantage from either these coercive procedures due to a fact that the interactions, mayhap as an unintended side effect, actually promoted insight into dysfunctional behaviors that were so abandoned.

Brainwashing controversies

The APA and the brainwashing theories

brief in an on-going instance. A brief stated that

[t]he methodology of Drs. Singer & Benson has been repudiated per scientific community, that a hypotheses advanced by Singer were little to a higher degree uninformed speculation, according to skew information & that "[t]he coercive persuasion theory ... is not a meaningful scientific concept.[http://www.cesnur.org/testi/molko_brief.htm].

Zablocki (1997) and Amitrani (2001) cite APA boards and scholars on the subject and conclude that there is no unanimous decision of the APA regarding this issue. They also write that Margaret Singer despite the rejection of the DIMPAC report continued her work and was respected in the psychological community, which they corroborate by mentioning that in the 1987 edition of the peer-reviewed Merck's Manual, Margaret Singer was the author of the article "Group Psychodynamics and Cults". (Singer, 1987)

Benjamin Zablocki, professor of sociology and one of the reviewers of the rejected DIMPAC report, writes in 1997: APA Division 36 (then Psychologist interested in Religion Issues, today Psychology of Religion) in its 1990 annual convention approved the following resolution: The often quoted Fishman Case the court concluded: In 2002, APA's then president, Philipp Zimbardo wrote in Psychology Monitor: Other organizations

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 observe 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".

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.

A claim that the theory was mere political propaganda

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 through the books of Edward Hunter, who was a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist" passing as a journalist. He further asserts that for twenty years starting in the early 1950s, the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research (notably including Project MKULTRA) in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques, and that their attempt 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 upbringings. In some cases, these people neglected or even broke contact with their families. All of these changes appeared very strange and upsetting to their families. 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.

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. This claim has been rejected by Langone who compared the figures of various movements some which do by common consent not use brainwashing and others who are by some authors reported to use brainwashing. (Langone, 1993)

In their Handbook of Cults and Sects in America, Bromley and Hadden present one possible ideological foundation of brainwashing theories that they claim demonstrates the lack of scientific support: They argue that a simplistic perspective they see as inherent in the brainwashing metaphor appeals to those attempting to locate an effective social weapon to use against disfavored groups, and that any relative success of such efforts at social control should not detract from any 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.

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 observe 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 G. 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 exercise 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 [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brainwashing quote])

On the other hand, several scholars in sociology and psychology have in recent years claimed that there is among many scholars of NMRs a bias to deny any brainwashing possibility and to disregard actual evidence (Zablocki 1997, Amitrani 1998, Kent 1998, Beit-Hallahmi 2001)

The issue gets even more complicated through the existence of several brainwashing definitions, some of them almost strawman caricatures , and through the introduction of the similarly controversial mind control concept in the 1990s, which is at times interchangeably used for brainwashing and at other times differentiated from brainwaishing.

Thought reform theories
Thought reform is the alteration of a person's basic attitudes and beliefs by outside manipulation. The term usually relates closely to brainwashing and mind control.

Psychologist Steven Hassan, who is called anti-cultist by cult apologists, has suggested that the influence of sincere but misled people can provide a significant factor in the process of thought reform. However, many scholars in the field of new religious movements do not accept Hassan's [http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/articles/BITE.htm Bite model] for understanding cults.

One of the first published uses of the term thought reform occurred in the title of the book by Robert Jay Lifton (a professor of psychology and psychiatry at John Jay College and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York): ''Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China (1961). (Lifton also testified at the 1976 trial of Patty Hearst.)

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 account 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.

Brainwashing in fiction
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 through something akin to hypnosis. The idea that one person could be so enslaved to another as to do their bidding even when (no longer) under duress, has fascinated dramatists and movie viewers throughout the ages.

The Charles Bronson movie Telefon had a similar plot to The Manchurian Candidate but featured water supply tampering as the brainwashing technique instead of hypnotic suggestion.

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'' trilogy, where Reggie Jackson becomes a tool in an effort to kill Queen Elizabeth II, and in Zoolander, which depicts made model Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) becoming brainwashed/hypnotized into trying to kill a fictional Prime Minister of Malaysia.