Possible candidates include: People who have lost their jobs and fear for their future. Recently divorced people, particularly when the divorce was a bitter one.
People who have lost a loved one, particularly if they were very close to that person and had few other friends. Young people away from home for the first time. These are particular favorites of religious cult leaders. People who are regarded as socially awkward by their mainstream peers.
They frequently tend to be loners but seek like minded people who might be few and far between. One particular predatory tactic is to find out enough information about the person and his or her belief system to explain the tragedy the person has experienced in a manner consistent with that belief system. Be aware of people who try to isolate you or someone you know from outside influences. As people who are experiencing a personal tragedy or other major life change are inclined to feel lonely, a skillful brain-washer works to amplify those feelings of loneliness.
This isolation can take several forms. For young people in a cult, it may be preventing them from contacting their friends and family members. For prisoners in an enemy prison camp, it may involve isolating prisoners from one another while subjecting them to subtle or overt forms of torture.
Brainwashing only works when the brainwasher is in a superior position to the victim. This means that the victim has to be broken down, so the brainwasher can rebuild the victim in his or her image. This can be done through mental, emotional, or ultimately physical means for long enough to physical and emotionally wear down the target.
Mental tortures may begin with lying to the victim and then progress to embarrassing or intimidating the victim. Emotional tortures are not kind, of course, but may begin with verbal insults, then progress to badgering, spitting, or more dehumanizing things such as stripping the victim to be photographed or just looked at. The goal of these activities is to break down your natural instinct to fight back so that you become placid.
Physical tortures may include starvation, freezing, sleep deprivation, beatings, mutilations, and others, none are acceptable in society.. This can be done through a variety of methods: Allowing contact only with others who have already been brainwashed.
This creates a form of peer pressure that encourages the new victim to want to be like and be accepted by the new group. This may be reinforced through touch, rap sessions, or group sex, or by stricter means such as a uniform dress code, controlled diet, or other rigid rules. Repetition of the message through means ranging from singing or chanting the same phrases over and over, often emphasizing certain key words or phrases.
Never letting the victim have time to think. This can mean simply never letting the victim have time alone, or it can mean bombarding the victim with repeated lectures on topics beyond comprehension, while discouraging questions. The goal is to achieve blind obedience, to where the victim will commit his or her money and life to the brainwasher and his or her stated goals.
This can take anywhere from a few weeks to several years, depending on the circumstances of the brainwashing. An extreme form of this complacency is known as the Stockholm syndrome, where two bank robbers in Sweden in held four hostages for a period of hours. After the hostages were rescued, they found themselves identifying with their captors, to the point that one of the women became engaged to her captor and another set up a legal defense fund for the criminals.
Patty Hearst, kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in , is also considered a victim of Stockholm syndrome. Much of the retraining is done through some of the same operant conditioning techniques of reward and punishment that were used to break the victim down in the first place. Positive experiences are now used to reward the victim for thinking as the brainwasher desires, while negative experiences are used to punish the last vestiges of disobedience.
One form of reward is giving the victim a new name. Rinse and repeat. Although brainwashing can be effective and thorough, most brainwashers find it necessary to test the depths of their control over their subjects. Patty Hearst accompanying the SLA on one of their robberies is an example of this.
Part 2. Look for a mixture of fanaticism and dependency. Brainwashing victims can appear focused on the group and or its leader to the point of obsession. At the same time, they seem to be unable to solve problems without the help of the group or its leader. Look for signs of withdrawal from life. Brainwashing victims tend to be listless, withdrawn, and devoid of whatever personality marked them before they were brainwashed.
This is particularly noticeable in both cult victims and spouses in an abusive relationship. Some victims may internalize their anger, leading to depression and a host of physical disorders, possibly even to suicide. Others may vent their anger on anyone they see as the cause of their problems, often through verbal or physical confrontation.
Part 3. He also conducted official financial examinations of various non-profit organizations and for-profit corporations. This experience allowed him to learn the inner workings of almost any aspect of a company. It also taught him the value of building meaningful relationships with clients and having a strong ethical framework. James began his personal recovery journey in Throughout that process, he learned the importance of helping others and living by spiritual principles.
Throughout his recovery, James has used his personal story to help make a difference in the lives of others. Over the years he grew into becoming an advocate for people in recovery or seeking recovery from substance use disorders. James is a CCAR Recovery Coach and believes in developing meaningful relationships, and providing highly individualized therapy and client care.
In , James had the opportunity to combine his business experience and passion for recovery to start The Freedom Center. Being born and raised in Gaithersburg, Maryland, it was always a dream for James to start a program where he began his own recovery journey.
Having faced addiction in his own life, and having worked through recovery, James truly understands what it takes to get sober and stay sober. James now has the opportunity to do what he loves and help others achieve long-term recovery. James works alongside the clinical director and administrative team to help ensure that every client benefits from a customized treatment plan and holistic approach that offers freedom from the grips of addiction.
Meet Federico Douglas. Federico is a certified A. With strong ties to Victory Christian Church and the step community, Federico shares an amazing personal story of redemption and long-term recovery.
With over 32 years in the arena of addiction and sobriety, he uses his vast experience to provide a unique approach to mentorship and guiding our clients toward a supportive lifestyle of recovery. With a robust foundation in step philosophy, Federico can not only educate the clients on the model, but also integrate the tried-and-true principles in a more personal, clinical setting.
She joined The Freedom Center team to provide counseling for substance use disorders and related mental health issues on an individual basis, facilitate group sessions, provide assessments, and provide support to the clinical staff. Bunmi is dedicated to helping her clients reach their full potential and build their toolkit of resources to support their long-term recovery. Meet Cheryl Moore. Next, releasing the guilt is a key step.
The embattled target is relieved to learn there is an external cause of his wrongness, that it is not he himself who is inescapably bad — this means he can escape his wrongness by escaping the wrong belief system. All he has to do is denounce the people and institutions associated with that belief system, and he won't be in pain anymore. The target has the power to release himself from wrongness by confessing to acts associated with his old belief system.
With his full confessions, the target has completed his psychological rejection of his former identity. It is now up to the agent to offer the target a new one [source: Singer ].
Once those critical early stages of brainwashing are complete, it's time to move on to a more harmonious, if destructive relationship. The subject is then presented with a path to alleged progress and harmony.
In other words, "If you want, you can choose good. The target is made to feel that it is he who must choose between old and new, giving the target the sense that his fate is in his own hands. The target has already denounced his old belief system in response to leniency and torment and making a "conscious choice" in favor of the contrasting belief system helps to further relieve his guilt: If he truly believes, then he really didn't betray anyone. The choice is not a difficult one: The new identity is safe and desirable because it is nothing like the one that led to his breakdown.
Next comes the final confession and rebirth: I choose good. Contrasting the agony of the old with the peacefulness of the new, the target chooses the new identity, clinging to it like a life preserver. He rejects his old belief system and pledges allegiance to the new one that is going to make his life better. At this final stage, there are often rituals or ceremonies to induct the converted target into his new community.
This stage has been described by some brainwashing victims as a feeling of "rebirth" [source: Singer ]. A brainwashing process like the one discussed above has not been tested in a modern laboratory setting, because it's damaging to the target and would therefore be an unethical scientific experiment.
Lifton created this description from firsthand accounts of the techniques used by captors in the Korean War and other instances of "brainwashing" around the same time. Since Lifton and other psychologists have identified variations on what appears to be a distinct set of steps leading to a profound state of suggestibility, an interesting question is why some people end up brainwashed and others don't.
Certain personality traits of the brainwashing targets can determine the effectiveness of the process. People who commonly experience great self doubt, have a weak sense of identity, and show a tendency toward guilt and absolutism black-and-white thinking are more likely to be successfully brainwashed, while a strong sense of identity and self-confidence can make a target more resistant to brainwashing. Some accounts show that faith in a higher power can assist a target in mentally detaching from the process.
People who've suffered abuse in childhood, have been exposed to eccentric family patterns and who have substance abuse issues are also more likely to be influenced [source: Curtis ]. Mental detachment is one of the POW-survival techniques now taught to soldiers as part of their training.
It involves the target psychologically removing himself from his actual surroundings through visualization, the constant repetition of a mantra and various other meditative techniques.
The military also teaches soldiers about the methods used in brainwashing, because a target's knowledge of the process tends to make it less effective [source: Webb ]. While the U. Scholars have traced the roots of systematic thought reform to the prison camps of communist Russia in the early s, when political prisoners were routinely "re-educated" to the communist view of the world.
But it was when the practice spread to China and the writings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung "The Little Red Book" that the world started to take notice [source: Boissoneault ].
In , Mao Zedong , who would later lead the Chinese Communist Party, used the phrase ssu-hsiang tou-cheng translated as "thought struggle" to describe a process of brainwashing. Political prisoners in China and Korea were reportedly subjected to communist-conversion techniques as a matter of course.
The modern concept and the term "brainwashing" was first used by journalist Edward Hunter in to describe what had happened to American POWs during the Korean War. Hunter introduced the concept at a time when Americans were already afraid: It was the Cold War, and America panicked at the idea of mass communist indoctrination through "brainwashing" — they might be converted and not even know it! In the wake of the Korean War revelations, the U.
In one study, the CIA supposedly gave subjects including the famed Timothy Leary LSD in order to study the effects of mind-altering drugs and gauge the effectiveness of psychedelics at inducing a brainwashing-friendly state of mind.
The results were not that encouraging, and subjects were supposedly harmed by the experiments. Drug experimentation by the CIA was officially cancelled by Congress in the s, although some claim it still happens under the radar.
Public interest in brainwashing briefly subsided after the Cold War but resurfaced in the s and s with the emergence of countless non-mainstream political and religious movements during that era. Parents who were horrified by their children's new beliefs and activities were sure they'd been brainwashed by a " cult.
One supposed victim of brainwashing at that time was Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, who would later use a brainwashing defense when she was on trial for bank robbery. Hearst became famous in the early s after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army the SLA, which some deem a "political cult" and ended up joining the group. Hearst reports that she was locked in a dark closet for several days after her kidnapping and was kept hungry, tired, brutalized and afraid for her life while SLA members bombarded her with their anti-capitalist political ideology.
Within two months of her kidnapping, Patty had changed her name, issued a statement in which she referred to her family as the "pig-Hearsts" and appeared on a security tape robbing a bank with her kidnappers.
Patty Hearst stood trial for bank robbery in , defended by the famous F. Lee Bailey. The defense claimed that Hearst was brainwashed by the SLA and would not have committed the crime otherwise. In her mental state, she could not tell right from wrong.
But since it was not The O, it afforded me some distance and a welcome relief from thinking about my own experience. Newman had controlled the group for more than 40 years before his death in After interviewing former members, I learned that group members were brought in through the various programmes, but were all mandated to enter therapy that they had to pay for. Gradually, they abandoned outside jobs and worked for the group, often off the books.
They shared apartments, attended meetings late into the night, and restricted relationships with outsiders. Those with money were soon parted from it. Some women in the group were told by Newman to have abortions, and few had children while involved. The first of these characteristics is that the leader is both charismatic and authoritarian.
Without charisma, the leader would be unable to draw people to him or herself. Without authoritarianism, leaders would lack the internal motivation and the ability to bully and control followers.
Are you still corrupting people? Not all leaders want to get rich, gain sexual favours, or grab political power. But all want utter control over others. Money, sex, free labour or loyal combatants are all fringe benefits, and certainly most leaders take advantage of these, some in a big way.
But absolute control over their relationships is the key. These leaders rule over isolating, steeply hierarchical and closed structures, some with front groups serving as transmission belts to the outside world.
This isolating structure is the second characteristic of a totalist group. As the organisation grows, it develops concentric, onion-like layers with the leader in the centre providing the driving movement.
There might be several layers — from the leader, to the lieutenants, to the elite inner circle, to other varying levels of membership, down to mere fellow-travellers or sympathisers.
He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery. Meanwhile, the leader keeps the inner circle off-balance by sowing distrust, and promoting and demoting personnel seemingly at random. People in totalist organisations are pressed so tightly together that their individuality is erased — as are any trusting interactions among them. In fact, far from finding true comradeship or companionship, followers face a triple isolation: from the outside world, from each other within the closed system, and from their own internal dialogue, where clear thinking about the group might arise.
The exclusive belief system is controlled entirely by the leader, empowering him or her through the creation of a fictional world of secrets and lies. The lies created a fictional world that became more bizarre, elaborate and far from normality the further into the system one got. The fictional, invented quality of the total ideology reinforces the confusion and eventual dissociation experienced by followers. In the same way, Islamist fighters are promised heavenly rewards as they detonate suicide vests.
The extreme disconnect leaves the follower helpless to understand what is really happening. The fiction starts slowly, of course, with mere propaganda intended for the public and the wider world. The fabulous theology of Scientology — where alien beings hurled out of a volcano inhabit our bodies — was an inner ideology reserved for senior, well-indoctrinated members; it was released to the wider public only through a leak.
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