What is the psychology behind it? Dont we all have freedom of will to choose? How can we be brainwashed into something if we dont believe it? Can someone explain brainwashing to me? Isnt it similar to the withcraft trials in salem where one would say the witch made me do it you can now say i was brainwashed!
The Skeptic’s Dictionary offers a good definition:
… but is skeptical as to whether it really happens outside of fantasy.
If the term is used intelligently i.e. NOT in a way meaning aliens programmed me to mutilate cattle or whatever I think it can have somevalidity. Think of those people who end up helping out their own kidnappers or whatever, and victims who stay in really really abusive situations beacuse the a*hole abusing em has em so convinced that there’s no escape. Check out this case on crime library.com
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/sex_slave/index.html
I think you’re referring to stuff along the lines of the Stockholm Syndrome, Carl_A_Norris. In those cases, it isn’t the captor’s actions that spark off such emotions and reactions in the captive, but rather what lies within the captive themselves, in simplistic terms.
I don’t see this as coming under the “classic” definition or understanding of brainwashing.
Sometimes the opportunity to choose is not available (or at least it is kept somwhat out of reach by the cult(/ure) attempting to impose the views) - if you completely immerse an individual in a culture where views are strongly imposed (or any sign of failure to adhere is accompanied by negative repercussions), people will be conditioned into compliance, willing or otherwise - after a time this may become quite ingrained and difficult to differentiate from ‘own’ views/behaviours.
Sometimes the situation you are forced to do is just so horifying that as an internal defense you distance yourself from the horifying aspect, and in result learn how you could commit these horifying acts yourself and have it not effect you. The choice (free will) is when you are commiting such acts you choose to distance yoruself to stop the imeadiate pain.
I’m not so sure; the prevelance of rebellion among slaves in the US south wouls eem to indicate otherwise.
Perhaps; I’m not suggesting that brainwashing is inevitable, just that it is possible under certain circumstances.
With the slavery thing, I would say that a)it seems to have been more about control of conduct than control of thinking and b) the group upon which the control was attempted was very large and amorphous.
To at least a limited extent, you can short-circuit your way past the rational analytical part of a person’s mind and obtain behaviors to which you have trained them through Skinnerian reward-and-punishment based behavior modification techniques.
The most effective forms tend to depend on getting you (the subject) to accept some hierarchy of privileges and freedom, and to care about what others in the environment think about you and your behavior.
Among my other experiences with coercive psychiatry was a stay at an expensive private behavior-mod tank outside of Houston, Deer Park Hospital. As a newbie “resident”, you start off with Level 4 privileges, the lowest level. Everyone expresses joy at having you there and optimism that you will quickly be promoted up-rank as you get the hang of the program. Once a week, community meetings are held and residents are upgraded or downgraded based on how they have behaved and/or how their attitudes are perceived by others. All residents get to vote, but staff have veto powers. What this means in practice is that people who conform internally as well as externally (or who have very impressive skills for misrepresenting themselves as having conformed internally as well as externally) rise in the hierarchy and gain freedoms, privileges, and positions of authority over other residents. What this means furthermore is that among the behaviors and attitudes which are scrutinized most closely are your voting and commenting behaviors with regards to other residents and whether or not they should be promoted or demoted. If you get demoted, because you are not getting with the program, staff and other residents express disappointment in you, continued encouragement to change and reverse your unfortunate trajectory, and pity for your unhealthy self-destructive inner sicknesses which are getting the better of you.
You have to truly not care about their expressed opinion of your behavior, your beliefs, and your attitudes except insofar as they’ve made their case convincingly, before you ever see the iron hand and discover the anger and overtly coercive intentions. And even there, you’d probably first experience it in the form of anger from the other “residents”, who would find you threatening and representative of all that they are turning their backs on. But keep it up and the staff will start taking actions, i.e., if withholding rewards while dangling the possibility of them in front of your face won’t lure you into cooperating, they will eventually punish.
In my case, they demoted me by restricting my privileges even further, held gang-up sessions in community meetings in which everyone was encouraged to express their anger at me, and finally they brought out the psych meds (although the facility was officially “anti-drug” in all senses of the word) and threatened to commit me to the Texas state-run psych bin in Houston if I did not “voluntarily” take them. I finally got my hands on a table knife and used it to take apart a latchbolt holding together adjoining doors in the delivery corridor of the kitchen and escaped and got the hell out of the state.
Anyway, that’s the way it works. You don’t set out, frontally, to get the victim to internalize your beliefs; you get the victim to internalize a sense of community and community hierarchy, to make them vulnerable to peer pressure and to value status within the community, and then you manipulate how they get that and by so doing you can change their loyalties.
Umm…what kind of place what this, AHunter3?
Have there been any studies on the probability that the subject undergoing behavior modification is only “playing along” and not internalizing the behaviors?
If I were in AHunter3’s situation, I’d probably rely on my acting skills and wait for an easier method of escape, all while getting the good pudding at snacktime. O’course, I imaging the behavior specialists take into account people like that and have means for testing for it, or am I wrong about that?
-k
I have a friend who was brainwashed into being unable to orgasm by his former “master.” This master who is long since dead has ruined him for at least the last 10 years. He still dotes on this dead man but whenever he tries to orgasm he remembers the “chastity device” and immediately goes limp and starts crying in pain instead. He has been in therapy about it for a while, but whenever the therapists talk about his “master” negatively he stops going. That sure seems like brainwashing to me.
xvxdarkknightxvx:
Well, here is the resumé of the doctor who ran the place when I was locked up in it. Surprising find–I was expecting to find a link to the bin itself. Scroll down to “Previous Positions” and you’ll see where he was once Medical Director at Deer Park Hospital. Jason Baron. Jason Fucking Baron.
What kind of place? Primarily billed as a top-of-the-line, last-hope drug-detox-and-reprogramming institution for drug abusers. Big signs painted on the walls: Deer Park / Drug Proof (with a single “D” for “Deer” and “Drug” and a single “P” for “Park” and “Proof”). Heavily advertised nationwide in upper-middle-class communities where lots of kids develop drug problems. Apparently my parents asked around and were referred to it.
At my parents’ urging, I spoke with the intake staff. The DPH staff billed the place as a non-coercive ultra-modern place that would focus on nutrition and communication and interpersonal skills and interaction (which I felt was the locus of my problems) as well as being geared towards getting people to confront any substance abuse problems they might have and get them off drugs (which my parents viewed as the cause of my problems), so to my everlasting embarrassment, I signed myself in, circa summer 1982, and let them close the door behind me.
Results as described above. I was in there 6 weeks.
^^^ ran across this ancient thread and my post, linked above, which I had forgotten about.
The event in question is the specific subject of my latest book, Within the Box, not yet published and for which I’m (still) seeking (additional) beta readers for feedback. So if the above descrip sounds like something that would interest you, reply here or PM me.
(Definitely a case study in reprogramming, Skinner Box behavior mod, reward-and-punishment coercive training, etc)
(Wow, 21 years and the thread comes back)
They heavily relied on torture and terror tactics, which are effective at coercing people’s short term behavior but terrible at actually convincing them of anything. And in fact have been shown to increase aggression in the long term.
At any rates, cults and extremist groups have a number of techniques that work to “brainwash” people by exploiting flaws in human psychology. The widespread belief in free will makes it easier, because people who believe in free will refuse to believe that they can be manipulated like that. It’s much easier to manipulate someone who refuses to doubt their own motivations.
I suspect this is the case. I put brainwashing in the same category as hypnotism.
Human beans wanna be part of something.
To be in the “group” somewhere is better than not.
If you’re outside long enough that can be horrible on your psychology. You kinda go a little nuts.
A weak group member know they’re on the line, so to speak. Higher group member try to manipulate them.
I read a study on this about women’s prison pods. It seemed like to me everyone knew what was happening and accepted it.
Even without behavior modification rehabs and prisons it’s a thing in real life. Go to any highschool and it’s apparent.
Go watch the so-called country club set.
To me it’s a form of “brainwashing”.
It seems brave and just to fight it. Makes one a hero.
Unless it’s in a movie, TV show or other media. You’re a hero to no one. You’re still alone. Apart.
“No man is an island…”
Read my book as an advance reader. Then ask yourself if you would have handled it any better than I did.
This is not a good reason to bump a decades-dormant thread.