Trilby by George du MaurierBrainwashing is a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him. He loses touch with reality. Facts and fancy whirl round and change places.…
—Edward Hunter, Brainwashing
The most dangerous of all sciences is that of molding mass opinion, because it would enable anyone to govern the whole world.
—Talbot Mundy
In a world that leaves little to the imagination, where everything from our bodies to our sex lives is readily available for all to see via the new reality of social networking, where what we had for dinner and who we are divorcing becomes global information for whoever has the time and the inclination to care, where our photos and posts and e-mails are being perused not only by family and friends and colleagues, but secretive government agencies, we are as transparent as Saran Wrap. Yet, perhaps naively, we believe that the inner sanctum of the mind is our last bastion of privacy, where our most deepest, darkest secrets can remain buried in shadows, and our hopes and dreams and how we really feel about our mother-in-law or boss will never see the light of day (unless we choose to post it on our social networking!). The mind, to us, is ours and ours alone, and even our closest loved ones only get to know what we choose to share with them.
We and we alone control our behaviors, think our thoughts, plan our actions, and express our emotions, as autonomous beings in a conform-crazy world.
Yet from the beginning of time, others have desired to make us think, believe, and behave according to their minds, and the desire to control the most private and powerful part of our identity was a Golden Fleece, a Holy Grail, to those whom, for whatever motive or purpose, would benefit from being the puppet-master to our puppet.
Mind control is probably as old as our awareness that we each had a mind of our own.
Throughout the course of history, there are a number of names for mind control that describe a common goal: to take over a person’s innermost thoughts and control his or her behaviors and actions. Brainwashing, coercion, thought reform, mental manipulation, psychological warfare, programming, conversion, gas lighting, indoctrination methods, psychic driving, crowd control: They all describe a method by which a person’s individual thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions are disrupted, dismissed, and destroyed—even replaced with the thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions of someone else. Whether designed to create the perfect assassin or super soldier, indoctrinate prisoners of war, recruit members into a cult or religious belief system, or control the consuming masses and direct their behaviors in accordance to the political whims of the day, mind control has been used extensively in our past, is in use today, and no doubt will be used in the future.
And lest you think that the academic and scientific communities look upon mind control as a “tin foil hat” conspiracy, that is not the case. In fact, cult members have often spoken at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, calling for informed discourse on the need for more understanding of mind control victims, especially those involved in destructive cults and religious movements (including terrorist groups). In “Mind Control: Psychological Reality of Mindless Rhetoric,” for the November 2002 APA’s President’s Column, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo writes: “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,’ engage indoctrinated members to work tireless, give up their money—and even their lives—for ‘the cause.’” Zimbardo also goes on to say: “Understanding the dynamics and pervasiveness of situational power is essential to learning how to resist it and to weaken the dominance of the many agents of mind control who ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts.”
Those many faces and fronts include trusted authority figures, people in power, famous celebrities and world leaders, religious and spiritual figureheads and gurus, corporate giants, advertising agencies, the media, politicians, and even our own family and friends. We are assaulted on all fronts by people eager to take a piece of our minds and make them their own, for whatever purposes suit their agenda.
Our popular culture is filled with stories and images of what we think goes on when someone is brainwashed or under the influence of mind control tactics, whether by some mysterious government agency or a Svengali-like master manipulator on a more personal scale. War movies depict POWs being tortured and abused by their captors, even starved and deprived of sunlight and water, for the purposes of switching allegiances or coughing up valuable information. As a form of interrogation, manipulation of the mind and exposure of the body to extremes, such as heat, cold, deprivation, and beatings, can bring out the truth in even the most resisting person.
The term brainwashing actually comes to us from the Chinese, who used the phrase during the Maoist regime to describe the coercive techniques being used on individuals to get them into “right thinking” with the new social order. Brainwashing was first used in the English language in an article for the Miami News in October 1950 titled “Brain Washing Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party,” by reporter Edward Hunter. Hunter was actually a propaganda operative for the CIA working undercover as a journalist. Once the headline hit, the term stuck throughout the Cold War era and still is used to describe mind control techniques that literally “wash” the brain of thoughts, beliefs, and ideals, leaving it a clean slate for whatever those in control seek to write on it.
There has been a lot of controversy over whether or not POWs during the Korean War were victims of brainwashing tactics, which included prolonged interrogations designed to exhaust the victims, torture, and other abuses. The Army’s own 1956 documents included in “Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination, and Exploitation of Prisoners of War” state that there is no verifiable proof of brainwashing and mind control as the reasons behind any POW abuse. Abuse did take place, no doubt, but was it for purposes of changing the minds of the captors? That has not been proven, although many people continue to propose that American GI POWs who defected to the enemy camp of the Chinese were brainwashed into doing so.
Even the CIA has been accused of creating the whole concept of brainwashing, as a means to explain why some POWs cut and ran, and sided willingly with the enemy camp. Yet there are those who believe the CIA was, and still is, actively involved in mind control experimentation of its own (as we dig into in a future chapter).
Licensed counselor and former member of the Unification Church Steven Alan Hassan, who now runs the Freedom of Mind Center, states on his Website that the most destructive forms of mind control are those that take the “locus of control” away from the individual, and that four basic tactics are used to manipulate and even change another person’s individual identity: behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. Tactics involving these four aspects prove to be the most successful in achieving control over another’s entire mental reality and experience. This is most obvious in religious cults (which we explore in a later chapter), where isolation and the manipulation of information exposure can literally create an altered reality for the cult members—and not necessarily one they would choose voluntarily.
Our vision of mind control, brainwashing, and the possible reasons behind it often come from movies and spy novels, as well as headlines that scream of deadly cults and extreme religious indoctrination (you can join, but you can never unjoin!), satanic ritual abuse of children to create slaves with no independent will, the creation of the ultimate super soldier or warrior/spy, and the horrific human experimentation on unwilling victims in prisons or death camps using LSD or electroshock therapy. Rarely does anyone look deeper into the fiction and the media headlines to find the seeds of truth, or just the facts, ma’am. But the continuing popularity of conspiracy-related pop culture is a testament to the desire to know if we are being manipulated, how, and by whom.
From the earliest portrayals of mind control manipulators as strange, mad scientists performing hypnosis on poor, equally mad victims, to the more sophisticated stories today that combine fact and fiction and often feature actual technology being utilized by the manipulators (patented, too!), we love a good mind control story. Only when we stop, step back, and ask, “How much of this is story and how much might be real?” do we begin to grasp the serious nature of the subject and the depth of the rabbit hole it might take us down.
Probably the most well-known mind control–themed movie is The Manchurian Candidate, which began as a political thriller novel by Richard Condon and was adapted for the big screen twice: in 1962 featuring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in key roles, and in 2004 with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in the same roles. The story focuses on the son of a very prominent political family who is brainwashed into becoming a secret assassin. Set during the Korean War, Major Bennett Marco (played by Sinatra and later Washington) is kidnapped along with his platoon and taken to a place called Manchuria, where he and his unit are brainwashed. Later, upon returning to the States, Marco has horrible nightmares of betrayal and murder, at the hands of his sergeant, a man he thought was a hero. To avoid too many spoilers, basically Marco discovers others in his platoon suffering from said same nightmares, and uncovers a huge conspiracy involving brainwashing, sleeper assassins, and the potential assassination of a key political figure.
Behind it all is a powerful and quite evil bitch of a woman (played by Lansbury and later Streep), pulling the strings and the triggers behind the scenes.
The movie achieved critical acclaim for its acting, but also touched a nerve with audiences who had read about and heard of actual sleeper assassins and government-backed programs to create super soldiers (i.e., MKUltra; we will discuss that further later).
Another movie, Conspiracy Theory, introduces the MKUltra phenomenon to mainstream audiences courtesy of a crazy cab driver named Jerry, played by Mel Gibson, who tries to convince Alice, a lovely lawyer at the U.S. Justice Department, played by Julia Roberts, that his conspiracy blabberings are real, to tragic results. Sometimes, the crazy babble of a cab driver can actually be hiding the shattered memories and broken identity of a true MKUltra survivor—one who is starting to remember more and more. When he starts identifying men who are following him as CIA, Alice begins to pay attention, embroiling herself into the rabbit hole of conspiracy, which plays out with deadly results. This movie is chock full of classic MKUltra dialogue, torture, drugging, beating, stalking, harassment, terminology, and even triggers, which in this case is a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Triggers serve to “activate” sleeper assassins or agents into action, just as a trigger like clapping your hands might activate someone into (or out of) a hypnotic state.
Using mind control as a device for story-telling purposes is not only popular, but deeply affecting, because these pop culture offerings suggest that we are all potential victims, and that, if “they” choose to control us, there is often nothing we can do but sit back and be controlled. Other films of note that come to mind include the spooky and mind-twisting Shutter Island, a 2010 psychological thriller, directed by the great Martin Scorsese, in which star Leonardo DiCaprio struggles with his own sanity, and identity, while investigating a strange disappearance at a remote asylum devoted to brain and mind manipulation studies. Another DiCaprio movie, Inception, suggested that we can even master the means of getting inside people’s dreams and stealing their ideas.
Just a short sampling of some mind control/sleeper assassin/thought programming–themed entertainment would no doubt include:
Trilby by George du Maurier
The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
Firestarter by Stephen King
The Bourne Identity book series by Robert Ludlum (also motion pictures)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, later adapted into the classic Stanley Kubrick mindbender
The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Telefon, starring Charles Bronson
Gaslight
The Matrix
Scanners
Dreamscape
The Guyana Tragedy
Jacob’s Ladder
Salt, starring Angelina Jolie
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The Sleep Room
Hannah
Femme Fatale
Kill Bill
Closet Land
The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney
Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
The X-Men comic book series
The Prisoner TV series
Falling Skies TV series
Dark Skies TV series
The X-Files TV series
La Femme Nikita TV series
The Pretender TV series
Nowhere Man TV series
Fringe TV series
Homeland TV series
Dollhouse TV series
Legends TV series
Blacklist TV series
Even Star Wars gets in on the mind control action, with Jedi mind tricks allowing safe passage in dangerous places and control over both droids and humans. And good old Dr. Who wasn’t above using the story device, either, with The Master controlling minds by a form of hypnosis. Star Trek offered us the alien Borgs creating a hive mind of subservients. It appears that, once again, our entertainment industry mirrors reality, because many of these shows, books, and stories feature elements that are actually true, buried amid the more imaginative—leaving we, the audience, to wonder and grow ever more paranoid over whether what we are seeing could really happen, or did happen, or is just the made-up stuff of the writers’ minds. In the television series Fringe, lead scientist Walter Bishop sums it up in one episode, saying, “The brain is a computer, it’s an organic computer. It can be hijacked like any other.”
The previous list doesn’t even begin to cover the use of mind control as a device in modern young adult (YA) dsytopic literature, and in various movies and television shows. Whether it is used as a means for controlling lesser classes of the population, or as a type of hypnosis to get someone to have sex with you, or as a means by which someone can make another person crazy—or even a killer—the theme is rampant and indicative of its importance to our struggles with individualism in a world that seems hell bent on keeping us all in one safe and submissive state. It is a struggle that speaks to our deepest psyche, where we exist in our most raw state, even as we fight for freedom of expression among our peers and our enemies.
Basically, it scares the shit out of us. Even as it empowers us. Knowledge is power, so they say.
And therein may lay the fascination with mind control–themed entertainment. We are uber protective of our bodies and our material goods, yet only when confronted with these stories, often ripped from actual headlines or conspiracy Websites, or declassified government documents, do we realize we may have forgotten to protect our minds.
Though we can somewhat understand the desire for finding workable mind programming techniques during wartime on behalf of authority figures eager to win at all costs, it becomes a bit harder to swallow why mind control might continue to be a goal in times of general comfort and calm. Certainly, we hear the conspiracy theories about a new world order or one mind/one religion, and about government and corporate entities that want to control the masses and even decide for them how they will vote, purchase, and consume. Yes, we hear the theories about how dumbing us down makes us a more compliant public. Yes, we know that there are people who want nothing more than to use the populace as puppets to help generate more wealth and power for the very few, who already have so much of it. But when it comes to really examining the reasons why mind control might be just as pervasive today as it always was, maybe even more so, the answer is always the same: People want to control other people.
In a fascinating article for the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of MKZine, Dr. Allen Barker, a mind control expert and author with a powerhouse educational background, wrote about the “Motives for Mind Control.” His suggestions still stand today, although with the rise of technology and surveillance, we can certainly add to the list. Some of his ideas include:
Low-intensity warfare against the domestic population: using surveillance and harassment as a means to target anyone from a potential world leader to a whistleblower to activist groups.
Stealing and mining ideas from others: spying and getting “inside the minds” of brilliant geniuses in other countries for their technology using covert methods of surveillance.
Interrogation for secrets: an obvious method for wartime and terrorism, but could also be used on domestic soil to find out what your competition is up to.
PSYOPS: psychological operations used in government and military programs.
Suppression of technology: harassment, surveillance, and any method by which competition can be disabled.
Hired harassment squads for billionaires: the rich and powerful can use mind control and surveillance/harassment methods to destroy competition and render their enemies useless, without hiring an actual hit man!
To control a person, such as a world leader, a trained assassin, etc.: This would allow for a person groomed for a position of power to take control with a massive support system behind him or her, albeit a covertly operating one. Also, super soldiers and assassins under mind control to take out important world figures.
To infiltrate a group: such as installing a puppet leader in a cult or religious sect to get information and inside knowledge.
Human guinea pigs for medical and psychological research.
To predict and preempt actions: like the movie Minority Report, there are those who not only want to control the behavior of others, but actually predict it, which becomes a more powerful method of control.
These are just a few of the motives behind mind control and harassment programs, whether done on a large scale by some government entity, or via a small religious cult or sect. The acknowledgment of MKUltra and the government’s role in mind control programming proves this is happening, and that maybe what we have been exposed to is the tip of a gigantic iceberg, or one tentacle to a massive octopus whose reach permeates every aspect of our lives as individuals and as a collective.
We cannot examine motives for the use of mind control on a large scale without also looking at how we as mere human mortals use our own techniques on a daily basis with the people in our circle of influence. The interesting thing about this subject matter is that when you bring it up, people automatically think of insidious, evil, sinister government torture and mind programming, or a powerful and insane cult leader calling his followers to kill themselves. Rarely do they think about the myriad ways they are trying to control, change, intimidate, suppress, or manipulate those around them—and vice versa. We engage in this behavior regularly, whether we want to admit it or not, because it gets us a desired result.
Ask yourself this: Do you know of someone who is the victim of domestic abuse, or child abuse? Do you know someone who is suffering at the hands of someone with narcissistic personality disorder? Do you know a sociopath, or psychopath, and have actually had to attempt to deal with one? There are a number of mental illnesses or, as some might label them, behavioral disorders that are perfect examples of people exercising control, often via emotional and/or physical harassment, manipulation, deception, abuse, and torture, over another person, or a child.
Let’s take NPD, or narcissistic personality disorder, which seems to be rampant in today’s “me and only me” culture. Not just famous actors and rock stars and athletes and politicians wear this label, but regular folks just like mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, lovers and colleagues. Even friends. The hallmarks of NPD are simple, and yet insidious, especially for those who have struggled with “narcs” in their own immediate environments.
In order for a person to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) he or she must meet five or more of the following symptoms (according to the American Psychiatric Association’s “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”):
Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
Believes that he or she is “special” and unique, and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
Requires excessive admiration.
Has a very strong sense of entitlement (e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).
Is exploitative of others (e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).
Lacks empathy (e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others).
Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
Now, although that may account for about 80 percent of the people you know, true narcissism becomes a powerful form of mind control over a victim in that these predatory individuals, similar to sociopaths and psychopaths, use a variety of deceptive and manipulative behaviors to totally undermine their victims and destroy their very identity. These behaviors include:
Love bombing their victims and putting them on a pedestal in the first phases of the relationship, only to devalue and discard victims later.
Lying, cheating, and deceiving with a strong sense of entitlement because the narcissist believes he deserves to use whatever means necessary to get what he wants.
Projection and mirroring of her own sins, faults, and weaknesses onto the victim.
Gas lighting—the process of undermining the sanity of the victim by lying, changing stories, contradicting oneself, denying, and even using the silent treatment to punish the victim.
Narcissistic rage, or breaking out into unreasonably violent or virulent anger fits or rages when caught in a lie, cheating, deceiving, or when called out on bad behaviors.
Isolating the victim to make it easier to control him or her.
Stalking, harassing, and even threatening the victim to create an environment of fear and paranoia.
Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and even murder.
Not all narcissists reach some of these extremes, as there are “functioning” narcissists who can actually be quite successful members of society, even as there are “malignant narcissists” who are far more damaged and damaging, but the means by which they use mind programming, undermining, control, and brainwashing techniques to keep their victims co-dependent and emotionally fragile mirror many of the same methods used to dismantle the identities of men and women during cult indoctrinations, POW interrogations, and trauma abuse rituals (more on that later). Sociopaths and psychopaths take these behaviors to an even higher extreme than the average narcissist, and have become so much a part of our modern culture, we tend to revere and celebrate these people, even as they commit behaviors that would not be acceptable otherwise.
The links between narcissism and mind control are many. The need for utter and complete control over another is one of the diagnostic tools used by psychologists to define narcissistic personality disorder. People suffering from narcissism attempt to control others in order to enhance their own sense of power and entitlement. Narcissists must preserve their self-image at all costs, often while they devalue others to increase their own sense of self-worth. Narcissists have a strong sense of entitlement and believe they deserve special recognition for their intelligence and skills. Unfortunately, they also believe that because of their superiority, they have the God-given right to exploit, demean, and use others. And because their victims usually start out feeling as though the narcissist loved them, the recovery from this kind of emotional vampirism is difficult. An anonymous post on a narcissism forum sums up this most pervasive kind of mind control: “There is nothing worse than being set upon maliciously by someone you believed you could trust, someone you love, and someone you thought loved you and had your best interests at heart.”
These are the same behaviors exacted upon the public by tyrants and dictators, who will overlook and excuse torture, abuse, and even widespread slaughter because of their own self-righteousness. A tight rein of control over the hearts and minds of others in a necessity in any domineering relationship, whether between an abusive husband and his longsuffering wife, or an evil political or religious leader who believes he or she is the chosen one, superior to others.
Domestic abuse is not all that different from dictatorship abuse. In fact, some of the worst psychopaths the world has ever known have been determined by psychologists to often exhibit quite normal personality characteristics, including those responsible for war crimes. The New Yorker political theorist Hannah Arendt called this “banality of evil.” Arendt covered the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was examined before his trial by several psychiatrists. They unanimously declared Eichmann “normal.” Arendt later wrote in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil: “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
The idea that mind control abusers can be considered in any way “normal,” including those who commit the most heinous atrocities against humanity, is disturbing. But it’s true. We use narcissism as an example of how mind control doesn’t always have to look the way our entertainment industry portrays it, like Frank Sinatra being brainwashed in The Manchurian Candidate or some sexy female sleeper assassin being given a verbal trigger to kill a Congressman. Sometimes, the battle for the mind occurs on a much closer and much more normal, intimate level.
Sometimes it even occurs at home.