Mind control

Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind abuse, thought control, or thought reform) refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated".^[1] The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual's sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making.

Theories of brainwashing and of mind control were originally developed to explain how totalitarian regimes appeared to succeed in systematically indoctrinating prisoners of war through propaganda and torture techniques. These theories were later expanded and modified, by psychologists including Margaret Singer, to explain a wider range of phenomena, especially conversions to new religious movements (NRMs). A third-generation theory proposed by Ben Zablocki focused on the utilization of mind control to retain members of NRMs and cults to convert them to a new religion. The suggestion that NRMs use mind control techniques has resulted in scientific and legal controversy.

The Korean War and the origin of brainwashing

The Oxford English Dictionary records its earliest known English-language usage of brainwashing in an article by Edward Hunter in New Leader published on 7 October 1950. During the Korean War, Hunter, who worked at the time both as a journalist and as a U.S. intelligence agent, wrote a series of books and articles on the theme of Chinese brainwashing.^[2]

The Chinese term 洗腦 (xǐ năo, literally "wash brain")^[3] was originally used to describe methodologies of coercive persuasion used under the Maoist regime in China, which aimed to transform individuals with a reactionary imperialist mindset into "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system.^[4] To that end the regime developed techniques that would break down the psychic integrity of the individual with regard to information processing, information retained in the mind and individual values. Chosen techniques included dehumanizing of individuals by keeping them in filth, sleep deprivation, partial sensory deprivation, psychological harassment, inculcation of guilt and group social pressure.^{[citation needed]} The term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart/mind"^[5] (洗心, xǐ xīn) prior to conducting certain ceremonies or entering certain holy places.

Hunter and those who picked up the Chinese term used it to explain why, unlike in earlier wars, a relatively high percentage of American GIs defected to the enemy side after becoming prisoners-of-war. It was believed that the Chinese in North Korea used such techniques to disrupt the ability of captured troops to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment.^[6] British radio operator Robert W. Ford^[7][8] and British army Colonel James Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their war-era imprisonment.

After the war, two studies of the repatriation of American prisoners of war by Robert Jay Lifton^[9] and by Edgar Schein^[10] concluded that brainwashing (called "thought reform" by Lifton and "coercive persuasion" by Schein) had a transient effect. Both researchers found that the Chinese mainly used coercive persuasion to disrupt the ability of the prisoners to organize and maintain morale and hence to escape. By placing the prisoners under conditions of physical and social deprivation and disruption, and then by offering them more comfortable situations such as better sleeping quarters, better food, warmer clothes or blankets, the Chinese did succeed in getting some of the prisoners to make anti-American statements. Nevertheless, the majority of prisoners did not actually adopt Communist beliefs, instead behaving as though they did in order to avoid the plausible threat of extreme physical abuse. Both researchers also concluded that such coercive persuasion succeeded only on a minority of POWs, and that the end-result of such coercion remained very unstable, as most of the individuals reverted to their previous condition soon after they left the coercive environment. In 1961 they both published books expanding on these findings. Schein published Coercive Persuasion^[11] and Lifton published Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.^[12] More recent writers including Mikhail Heller have suggested that Lifton's model of brainwashing may throw light on the use of mass propaganda in other communist states such as the former Soviet Union.^[13]

In a summary published in 1963, Edgar Schein gave a background history of the precursor origins of the brainwashing phenomenon:

Thought reform contains elements which are evident in Chinese culture (emphasis on interpersonal sensitivity, learning by rote and self-cultivation); in methods of extracting confessions well known in the Papal Inquisition (13th century) and elaborated through the centuries, especially by the Russian secret police; in methods of organizing corrective prisons, mental hospitals and other institutions for producing value change; in methods used by religious sects, fraternal orders, political elites or primitive societies for converting or initiating new members. Thought reform techniques are consistent with psychological principles but were not explicitly derived from such principles.^[14]

Mind-control theories from the Korean War era came under criticism in subsequent years. According to forensic psychologist Dick Anthony, the CIA invented the concept of "brainwashing" as a propaganda strategy to undercut communist claims that American POWs in Korean communist camps had voluntarily expressed sympathy for communism. Anthony stated that definitive research demonstrated that fear and duress, not brainwashing, caused western POWs to collaborate. He argued that the books of Edward Hunter (whom he identified as a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist" passing as a journalist) pushed the CIA brainwashing theory onto the general public. He further asserted 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 failed.^[15]

The U.S. military and government laid charges of "brainwashing" in an effort to undermine detailed confessions made by U.S. military personnel to war crimes, including biological warfare, against the Koreans. (The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets From the Early Cold War, by Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman at York University, Toronto; Indiana University Press, 1998).

Cults and the shift of focus

After the Korean War, applications of mind control theories in the United States shifted in focus from politics to religion. From the 1960s an increasing number of American youths started to come into contact with new religious movements (NRM), and some who converted suddenly adopted beliefs and behaviors that differed greatly from those of their families and friends; in some cases they neglected or even broke contact with their loved ones. In the 1970s the anti-cult movement applied mind control theories to explain these sudden and seemingly dramatic religious conversions.^[16][17][18] The media was quick to follow suit,^[19] and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed more sophisticated models of brainwashing.^[17] While some psychologists were receptive to these theories, sociologists were for the most part skeptical of their ability to explain conversion to NRMs.^[20] In the years that followed, brainwashing controversies developed between NRM members, various academic researchers, and cult critics.^{[citation needed]}

Theories of mind control and religious conversion

Over the years various theories of conversion and member retention have been proposed^{[by whom?]} that link mind control to NRMs, and particularly those religious movements referred to as "cults" by their critics. These theories resemble the original political brainwashing theories with some minor changes. Philip Zimbardo discusses 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 and/or behavioral outcomes",^[21] and he suggests that any human being is susceptible to such manipulation.^[22] In a 1999 book, Robert Lifton also applied his original ideas about thought reform to Aum Shinrikyo, concluding that in this context thought reform was possible without violence or physical coercion. Margaret Singer, who also spent time studying the political brainwashing of Korean prisoners of war, agreed with this conclusion: in her book Cults in Our Midst she describes six conditions which would create an atmosphere in which thought reform is possible.^[23]

Approaching the subject from the perspective of neuroscience and social psychology, Kathleen Taylor suggests that manipulation of the prefrontal cortex activates "brainwashing", rendering a person more susceptible to black-and-white thinking.^[24] Meanwhile, in Influence, Science and Practice, social psychologist Robert Cialdini argues that mind control is possible through the covert exploitation of the unconscious rules that underlie and facilitate healthy human social interactions. He states that common social rules can be used to prey upon the unwary. Using categories, he offers specific examples of both mild and extreme mind control (both one on one and in groups), notes the conditions under which each social rule is most easily exploited for false ends, and offers suggestions on how to resist such methods.^[25]

Deprogramming and the anti-cult movement

Both academic and non-academic critics of "destructive cults" have adopted and adapted the theories of Singer, Lifton and other researchers from the inception of the anti-cult movement^[when?] onwards. Such critics^[who?] often argue that certain religious groups use mind control techniques to unethically recruit and maintain members. Many of these critics advocated or engaged in deprogramming as a method to liberate group members from apparent "brainwashing". However the practice of coercive deprogramming fell out of favor in the West and was largely superseded by exit counseling. Exit counselor Steven Hassan promotes what he calls the "BITE" model in his book Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000).^[26] The BITE model describes various controls over human behavior, information, thought and emotion.^[26] Hassan claims that cults recruit and retain members by using, among other things, systematic deception, behavior modification, the withholding of information, and emotionally intense persuasion techniques (such as the induction of phobias). He refers to all of these techniques collectively as "mind control".

Critics of mind control theories caution against the broader implications of these conversion models. In the 1998 Enquete Commission report on "So-called Sects and Psychogroups" in Germany, a review was made of the BITE model. The report concluded that "control of these areas of action is an inevitable component of social interactions in a group or community. The social control that is always associated with intense commitment to a group must therefore be clearly distinguished from the exertion of intentional, methodical influence for the express purpose of manipulation."^[27] Indeed virtually all of these models share the notion that converts are in fact innocent "victims" of mind-control techniques.^[20] Hassan suggests that even the cult members manipulating the new converts may themselves be sincerely misled people.^[28] By considering NRM members innocent "victims" of psychological coercion these theories open the door for psychological treatments.

Sociologists including Eileen Barker have criticized theories of conversion precisely because they function to justify costly interventions such as deprogramming or exit counseling.^[29] For similar reasons, Barker and other scholars have criticized mental health professionals like Margaret Singer for accepting lucrative expert witness jobs in court cases involving NRMs.^[29] Singer was perhaps the most publicly notable scholarly proponent of "cult" brainwashing theories, and she became the focal point of the relative demise of those same theories within her discipline.^[17]

Scholarly debate

James Richardson observes that if the NRMs had access to powerful brainwashing techniques, one would expect that NRMs would have high growth rates, yet in fact most have not had notable success in recruitment. Most adherents participate for only a short time, and the success in retaining members is limited.^[30] For this and other reasons, sociologists including David Bromley and Anson Shupe consider the idea that "cults" are brainwashing American youth to be "implausible."^[31] In addition to Bromley, Thomas Robbins, Dick Anthony, Eileen Barker, Newton Maloney, Massimo Introvigne, John Hall, Lorne Dawson, Anson Shupe, Gordon Melton, Marc Galanter, Saul Levine (amongst other scholars researching NRMs) have argued and established to the satisfaction of courts, of relevant professional associations and of 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.^[32]

Some sociologists disagree with this consensus. Benjamin Zablocki sees strong indicators of mind control in some NRMs and suggests that the concept should be researched without bias. Stephen A. Kent has also published several articles about brainwashing.^[33][34] These scholars tend to see no consensus, while what Melton sees as a majority of scholars^[35] may regard it as a rejection of brainwashing and of mind control as legitimate theories.^{[citation needed]}

Legal issues, the APA and DIMPAC

Main article: APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control

Since their inception, mind control theories have also been used in various legal proceedings against "cult" groups. In 1980, ex-Scientologist Lawrence Wollersheim successfully sued the Church of Scientology in a California court which decided in 1986 that church practices had been conducted in a psychologically coercive environment and so were not protected by religious freedom guarantees.^{[citation needed]} Others who have tried claiming a "brainwashing defense" for crimes committed while purportedly under mind control, including Patty Hearst, Steven Fishman and Lee Boyd Malvo, have not been successful.

In 1983, the American Psychological Association (APA) asked Margaret Singer to chair a taskforce called the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (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, the APA submitted on February 10, 1987 an amicus curiæ brief in an ongoing court case related to brainwashing. The brief repudiated Singer's theories on "coercive persuasion" and suggested that brainwashing theories were without empirical proof.^[36] Afterward the APA filed a motion to withdraw its signature from the brief, since Singer's final report had not been completed.^[37] However, on May 11, 1987, the APA's Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) rejected the DIMPAC report because the brainwashing theory espoused "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur", and concluded that "after much consideration, BSERP does not believe that we have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a position on this issue."^[38]

Two critical letters from external reviewers Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Jeffery D. Fisher accompanied the rejection memo. The letters criticized "brainwashing" as an unrecognized theoretical concept and Singer's reasoning as so flawed that it was "almost ridiculous."^[39] After her findings were rejected, Singer sued the APA in 1992 for "defamation, frauds, aiding and abetting and conspiracy" and lost.^[40] Benjamin Zablocki and Alberto Amitrani interpreted the APA's response as meaning that there was no unanimous decision on the issue either way, suggesting also that Singer retained the respect of the psychological community after the incident.^[41] Yet her career as an expert witness ended at this time. She was meant to appear with Richard Ofshe in the 1990 U.S. v. Fishman Case, in which Steven Fishman claimed to have been under mind control by the Church of Scientology in order to defend himself against charges of embezzlement, but the courts disallowed her testimony. In the eyes of the court, "neither the APA nor the ASA has endorsed the views of Dr. Singer and Dr. Ofshe on thought reform".^[42]

After that time U.S. courts consistently rejected testimonies about mind control and manipulation, stating that such theories were not part of accepted mainline science according to the Frye Standard (Anthony & Robbins 1992: 5-29) of 1923.

An expanding concept

Mind control is a general term for a number of controversial theories proposing that an individual's thinking, behavior, emotions or decisions can, to a greater or lesser extent, be manipulated at will by outside sources. According to sociologist James T. Richardson, some of the concepts of brainwashing have spread to other fields and are applied "with some success" in contexts unrelated to the earlier cult controversies, such as custody battles and child sexual abuse cases, "where one parent is accused of brainwashing the child to reject the other parent, and in child sex abuse cases where one parent is accused of brainwashing the child to make sex abuse accusations against the other parent".^[43][44]

Stephen A. Kent analyzes and summarizes the use of the brainwashing meme by non-sociologists in the period 2000-2007, finding the term useful not only in the context of "New Religions/Cults", but equally under the headings of "Teen Behavior Modification Programs; Terrorist Groups; Dysfunctional Corporate Culture; Interpersonal Violence; and Alleged Chinese Governmental Human Rights Violations Against Falun Gong".^[45]

See also

• Mind control in popular culture
• Crowd manipulation
• Culture of fear
• Destabilisation
• Gaslighting
• Unethical human experimentation in the United States
• Love bombing
• Mind games
• MKULTRA (a covert CIA research program)
• Propaganda, and Propaganda model
• Subliminal messages
• Tin foil hat
• Indoctrination

References

1. ^ Langone, Michael. "Cults: Questions and Answers". www.csj.org. International Cultic Studies Association. http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studycult/cultqa.htm. Retrieved 2009-12-27. "Mind control (also referred to as 'brainwashing,' 'coercive persuasion,' 'thought reform,' and the 'systematic manipulation of psychological and social influence') refers to a process in which a group or individual systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated." 
2. ^ Marks, John (1979). "8. Brainwashing". The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-8129-0773-6. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks8.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-30. "In September 1950, the Miami News published an article by Edward Hunter titled " 'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party." It was the first printed use in any language of the term "brainwashing," which quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist, turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the subject." 
3. ^ Chinese English Dictionary
4. ^ Taylor, Kathleen (2006). Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780199204786. http://books.google.com/?id=D3tYeMLc4hQC. Retrieved 2010-07-02. 
5. ^ Note: 心 can mean "heart", "mind" or "centre" depending on context. For example, 心脏病 means Cardiovascular disease, but 心理医生 means psychologist, and 市中心 means Central business district.
6. ^ Browning, Michael (2003-03-14). "Was Kidnapped Utah Teen Brainwashed?". Palm Beach Post (Palm Beach). ISSN 1528-5758. "During the Korean War, captured American soldiers were subjected to prolonged interrogations and harangues by their captors, who often worked in relays and used the "good-cop, bad-cop" approach, alternating a brutal interrogator with a gentle one. It was all part of "Xi Nao," washing the brain. The Chinese and Koreans were making valiant attempts to convert the captives to the communist way of thought." 
7. ^ Ford RC (1990). Captured in Tibet. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-581570-X. 
8. ^ Ford RC (1997). Wind Between the Worlds: Captured in Tibet. SLG Books. ISBN 0-9617066-9-4. 
9. ^ Lifton, Robert J. (1954-04). "Home by Ship: Reaction Patterns of American Prisoners of War Repatriated from North Korea". American Journal of Psychiatry 110 (10): 732–739. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.110.10.732 (inactive 2008-06-25). PMID 13138750. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/110/10/732. Retrieved 2008-03-30.  Cited in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
10. ^ Schein, Edgar (1956-05). "The Chinese Indoctrination Program for Prisoners of War: A Study of Attempted Brainwashing". Psychiatry 19 (2): 149–172. PMID 13323141.  Cited in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
11. ^ Schein, Edgar H. (1971). Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-Psychological Analysis of the "Brainwashing" of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-00613-1. 
12. ^ Lifton, RJ (1989) [1961]. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism; a Study of "Brainwashing" in China. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4253-2. 
13. ^ Heller, Mikhail (1988). Cogs in the Soviet Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man. Translated by David Floyd. London: Collins Harvill. ISBN 0-00-272516-9. "Dr [Robert J.] Lifton draws attention to a fact of exceptional importance: the effect of 'brainwashing' and its methods is felt even by those whom he calls the 'apparent resisters', those who seem not to succumb to the intoxication. This study showed that they do assimilate what has been hammered into their brain but the effect comes only a certain time after their liberation, like the explosion of a delayed-action bomb. It is not hard to imagine the effect which 'education' and 're-education' has upon the Soviet citizen, who is exposed from the day he is born to 'brainwashing', bombarded every day, round the clock, by all the means of propaganda and persuasion."  Heller's footnote explains the phrase "the means of propaganda and persuasion" as "[t]he official name for the means of communication in the USSR. The accepted abbreviation is SMIP [literally from the Russian phrase meaning 'means of mass information and propaganda']."
14. ^ Schein, Edgar Henry (1963). "Brainwashing". Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (14th (revised) ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.. p. 91. 
15. ^ Anthony, Dick (1999). "Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An Evaluation of the Brainwashing Theories of Jean-Marie". Social Justice Research 12 (4): 421–456. doi:10.1023/A:1022081411463. 
16. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (1999-12-10). "Brainwashing and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory". CESNUR: Center for Studies on New Religions. http://www.cesnur.org/testi/melton.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-15. "In the United States at the end of the 1970s, brainwashing emerged as a popular theoretical construct around which to understand what appeared to be a sudden rise of new and unfamiliar religious movements during the previous decade, especially those associated with the hippie street-people phenomenon." 
17. ^ ^{a b c} Bromley, David G. (1998). "Brainwashing". In William H. Swatos Jr. (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-0761989561. 
18. ^ Barker, Eileen: New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. London: Her Majesty's Stationery office, 1989.
19. ^ Wright, Stewart A. (1997). "Media Coverage of Unconventional Religion: Any 'Good News' for Minority Faiths?". Review of Religious Research (Review of Religious Research, Vol. 39, No. 2) 39 (2): 101–115. doi:10.2307/3512176. JSTOR 3512176. 
20. ^ ^{a b} Barker, Eileen (1986). "Religious Movements: Cult and Anti-Cult Since Jonestown". Annual Review of Sociology 12: 329–346. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.12.080186.001553. 
21. ^ Zimbardo, Philip G. (November 2002). "Mind Control: Psychological Reality or Mindless Rhetoric?". Monitor on Psychology. http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_articles/zimbardo_philip_mindcontrol.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-30. "Mind control is 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 and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively. A body of social science evidence shows that when systematically practiced by state-sanctioned police, military or destructive cults, mind control can induce false confessions, create converts who willingly torture or kill 'invented enemies,' and engage indoctrinated members to work tirelessly, give up their money—and even their lives—for 'the cause.'" 
22. ^ Zimbardo, P (1997). "What messages are behind today's cults?". Monitor on Psychology: 14. http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studycult/study_zimbar.htm. 
23. ^ Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, Margaret Thaler Singer, Jossey-Bass, publisher, April 2003, ISBN 0-78796-741-6
24. ^ Taylor, Kathleen Eleanor (December 2004). Brainwashing: The Dream of Mind Control. Oxford University Press. p. 215. ISBN 9780192804969. http://books.google.com/?id=BIuju20yhDkC&dq. Retrieved 2009-07-30. "Your susceptibility to brainwashing (and other forms of influence) has much to do with the state of your brain. This will depend in part on your genes: research suggests that prefrontal function is substantially affected by genetics. Low educational achievement, dogmatism, stress, and other factors which affect prefrontal function encourage simplistic, black-and-white thinking. If you have neglected your neurons, failed to stimulate your synapses, obstinately resisted new experiences, or hammered your prefrontal cortex with drugs (including alcohol), lack of sleep, rollercoaster emotions, or chronic stress, you may well be susceptible to the totalist charms of the next charismatic you meet. This is why so many young people baffle their more phlegmatic elders by joining cults, developing obsessions with fashions and celebrities, and forming intense attachments to often unsuitable role models." 
25. ^ Cialdini, Robert B. (2007). Influence: the psychology of persuasion. London: Collins. pp. epilogue. ISBN 0-06-124189-X. 
26. ^ ^{a b} Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves, Steven Hassan, Ch. 2, Aitan Publishing Company, 2000
27. ^ Final Report of the Enquete Commission on "So-called Sects and Psychogroups" New Religious and Ideological Communities and Psychogroups in the Federal Republic of Germany
28. ^ Hassan, Steven (1988). Combatting cult mind control. Rochester, Vt: Park Street Press. ISBN 0-89281-243-5. 
29. ^ ^{a b} Barker, Eileen (1995). "The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must Be Joking!". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 34, No. 3) 34 (3): 287–310. doi:10.2307/1386880. JSTOR 1386880. 
30. ^ Richardson, James T. (1985-06). "The active vs. passive convert: paradigm conflict in conversion/recruitment research". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 24, No. 2) 24 (2): 163–179. doi:10.2307/1386340. JSTOR 1386340. 
31. ^ Brainwashing by Religious Cults
32. ^ CESNUR - Brainwashing and Mind Control Controversies
33. ^ Brainwashing and Re-Indoctrination Programs in the Children of God/The Family
34. ^ Dr. Stephen A. Kent (1997-11-07) (PDF). Brainwashing in Scientology's Rehabilitation Force (RPF). http://www.hamburg.de/servlet/contentblob/109286/brainwashing-pdf/data.pdf. Retrieved 2008-08-16. ^{[dead link]}
35. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (10 December 1999). "Brainwashing and the Cults: The Rise and Fall of a Theory". CESNUR: Center for Studies on New Religions. http://www.cesnur.org/testi/melton.htm. Retrieved 5 September 2009. "Since the late 1980s, though a significant public belief in cult-brainwashing remains, the academic community-including scholars from psychology, sociology, and religious studies-have shared an almost unanimous consensus that the coercive persuasion/brainwashing thesis proposed by Margaret Singer and her colleagues in the 1980s is without scientific merit." 
36. ^ CESNUR - APA Brief in the Molko Case. [t]he methodology of Drs. Singer and Benson has been repudiated by the scientific community [... the hypotheses advanced by Singer comprised] little more than uninformed speculation, based on skewed data [...] [t]he coercive persuasion theory ... is not a meaningful scientific concept. [...] The theories of Drs. Singer and Benson are not new to the scientific community. After searching scrutiny, the scientific community has repudiated the assumptions, methodologies, and conclusions of Drs. Singer and Benson. The validity of the claim that, absent physical force or threats, "systematic manipulation of the social influences" can coercively deprive individuals of free will lacks any empirical foundation and has never been confirmed by other research. The specific methods by which Drs. Singer and Benson have arrived at their conclusions have also been rejected by all serious scholars in the field.
37. ^ Motion of the American Psychological Association to Withdraw as Amicus Curiae
38. ^ American Psychological Association Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) (1987-05-11). "Memorandum". CESNUR: APA Memo of 1987 with Enclosures. CESNUR Center for Studies on New Religion. http://www.cesnur.org/testi/APA.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-18. "BSERP thanks the Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control for its service but is unable to accept the report of the Task Force. In general, the report lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur." 
39. ^ APA memo and two enclosures
40. ^ Case No. 730012-8 Margaret Singer v. American Psychological Association
41. ^ Amitrani, Alberto; Di Marzio R (2001). "Blind, or just don't want to see? Mind Control in New Religious Movements and the American Psychological Association". Cultic Studies Review. http://www.csj.org/infoserv_articles/amitrani_alberto_apaandmindcontrol.htm. 
42. ^ Brainwashed! Scholars of Cults Accuse Each Other of Bad Faith, Lingua Franca, December 1998.
43. ^ Richardson, James T. Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2004, p. 16, ISBN 9780306478871.
44. ^ Oldenburg, Don (2003-11-21). "Stressed to Kill: The Defense of Brainwashing; Sniper Suspect's Claim Triggers More Debate", Washington Post, reproduced in Defence Brief, issue 269, published by Steven Skurka & Associates
45. ^ Kent, Stephen A. (2008). "Contemporary Uses of the Brainwashing Concept: 2000 to Mid-2007". Cultic Studies Review (International Cultic Studies Association) 7 (2): 99–128. ISSN 1539-0152. http://www.icsahome.com/logon/elibdocview_new.asp?Subject=Contemporary+Uses+of+the+Brainwashing+Concept%3A+2000+to+Mid-2007. Retrieved 2010-02-09. "The brainwashing concept is sufficiently useful that it continues to appear in a wide variety of legal, political, and social contexts. This article identifies those contexts by summarizing its appearance in court cases, discussions about cults and former cult members, terrorists, and alleged victims of state repression between the years 2000 and mid-2007. In creating this summary, we discover that a physiologist has examined the biochemical aspects of persons going through brainwashing processes, and that (to varying degrees) some judges and others related to the judiciary have realized that people who have been through these processes have impaired judgment and often need special counseling. Most dramatically, a new brainwashing program may be operating in Communist China, a country whose political activities toward its own citizens in the late 1940s and 1950s spawned so much of the initial brainwashing research." 

Further reading

• Begich N (2006). Controlling the Human Mind. Anchorage, AK. ISBN 1-890693-54-5. 
• Langone MD (1993). Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-31321-2. 
• Lifton RJ (1989). Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4253-2. 
• Singer M et. al. (1986-11-01). "Report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC report)". American Psychological Association. http://www.rickross.com/reference/apologist/apologist23.html. Retrieved 2008-10-10. 
• Streatfeild D (2008). Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control. New York: Picador. ISBN 0-312-42792-1. 
• Zablocki, B (1997). "The Blacklisting of a Concept. The Strange History of the Brainwashing Conjecture in the Sociology of Religion". Nova Religio 1 (1): 96–121. doi:10.1525/nr.1997.1.1.96. 
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