Brainwashing

Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or as re-education) consists of any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person — unwelcome beliefs in conflict with the person's prior beliefs and knowledge.

The Foundation of Brainwashing

Early 20th Century

Pavlov’s Theory

Pavlov made the discovery that you can condition a dog to salivate on command simply by associating food with the ringing of a bell. Once that association is fixed in the dog's mind, the food can be removed and the dog will salivate merely when it hears the bell.

The Application to Humans…

Phase One: Pavlov carried out the identical

experiments on human beings with the same results.

Those principles have been adapted to television and motion pictures and can now make Americans salivate in response to a wide array of bells and whistles.

Phase Two:

After a storm had flooded the building where Pavlov had housed his dogs, Pavlov and his scientists returned to find the dogs no longer trained.

Due to the extreme stress of the situation, the dogs had been washed of all training… hence brainwashed.

Brainwashing… the word

Although its action has existed for a long time, the term came to be in the 1950’s.

Originally termed as coercive persuasion, a CI member technically provided the phrase brainwashing.

Example from previous situation with Pavlov.

Typical Brainwashing Methods…

dehumanizing of individuals by keeping them in filth

sleep deprivation partial sensory deprivation psychological harassment inculcation of guilt group social pressure

Student Response

Go back to the previous slide and name events/ news stories/ tragedies that involved the methods

Political Brainwashing

Political Propaganda Is Cult Brainwashing

What does this graphic mean?

Chinese Communists - 1950s Allied prisoners of war during the Korean

conflict. Methods: isolation, periodic denial of food

or water, cold and exposure, extreme stress associated with uncertainty of life or death

These conditions, together with a continual barrage of indoctrination produced the erasing of previous beliefs and behavior patterns in American soldiers in particular.

How Brainwashing can fail…

The trigger mechanisms can be tampered with, sometimes even erased, before the desired behavior can be carried out.

Prisoners/ subjects have been known to fake the effects in order to survive.

Current Brainwashing Tactics

Thought Reform…

"A successful induction by a destructive cult displaces a person's former identity and replaces it with a new one. That new identity may not be one that the person would have freely chosen under her own volition." - Steven Hassan

Thought Reform 101

The Orwellian implications of today's college orientation

Wake Forest University All Freshman had to

watch Blue Eyed, a filmed racism awareness workshop in which whites are abused, ridiculed, made to fail, and taught helpless passivity so that they can identify with "a person of color for a day."

Swarthmore College First-year students

were asked to line up by skin color, from lightest to darkest, and to step forward and talk about how they felt concerning their place in that line

Oberlin College, OH Oberlin "educated" its freshmen

about "differences in race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and culture," with separate orientations for blacks, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, and Americans of Asian descent

Appropriate or not? Side note: Oberlin has a high rate of

diversity on its campus

Freshman College Orientations

Originally formulated to introduce the university and the community to incoming students

Now is a form of mind control on how the university or college wants you to act and respond.

Systematically shaping their student body through a group brainwashing?

Columbia University Sought to give its incoming students the

chance "to reevaluate [and] learn things," so that they could rid themselves of "their own social and personal beliefs that foster inequality."

Katherine Balmer, assistant dean for freshmen at Columbia, explained to the Times that "you can't bring all these people together...without some sort of training."

Religious Brainwashing

United States Cults…

Over the last ten years, cults have used tactics of coercive mind control to negatively impact an estimated 20 million victims in the last ten years. Worldwide figures are even greater." Dr. Margaret Singer, Cults in Our Midst.

Religious Cults are often defined when they involve one of the following… Recruiting large numbers of young people into

their groups, by using deceptive techniques. Subjecting them to severe mind-control

processes (first developed in communist countries), and subsequently developed to a much higher level of refinement.

Destroying their followers' ability to think critically and to make independent decisions.

Endangering their followers. Many groups have induced their members to commit suicide.

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Eldorado, Texas In the 1930’s two families began the

ranch under the disguise that it was a hunting ranch.

Through religious mind control the sect was built

Now it is known to be a secretive polygamist sect with only four surnames attached

Over 413 minors are within the sect

Warren Jeffs

One time leader of the church Wanted on sex charges for two years For 3 months in 2006 he was on the

FBI’s most wanted list In 2007 he was found guilty on two

counts of accomplice to rape He was sentences to 10 years in

prison

Since first cousins are allowed to reproduce a strange and tragic disease has been found within the sect…

The birth defect — an enzyme deficiency — Causes severe mental retardation, epilepsy

and disfigurement of features. "The retardation is in the severe range —

an IQ around 25," Dr. Tarby says. Afflicted children are missing portions of

their brain, often cannot sit or stand, and suffer grand mal seizures and encephalitis.

Language skills are nonexistent or minimal. "I remember one little girl has a fascination with coins and the only word she could say was 'money,'" the doctor said .

This is why the government has become involved… All 413 kids are being DNA tested to create

a family tree All the children were removed from the

ranch and are under state protection This will then explain how members are

connected and if any minors have been impregnated

One investigator pointed out that they weren’t looking at a family tree, as much as a family wreath

Student Response

For the following slide, acknowledge different ways Big Brother, Hitler, McCarthy, Abby or Godot employed them.

Six Conditions for Control (Thought Reform)

1) Keep the person unaware of what is going on 2) Control the person’s social and/or physical environment3) Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.

4) Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.

5) Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the groups ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors.

6) Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order.

Questions…

What are some of the brainwashing techniques and examples from 1984?

What elements from the previous slide are used in 1984?

What other historical events employed similar tactics?

Assignment

Chart:Front- charactersBack- comparing protagonists/ antagonists