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Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

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Beginning with the stories of brainwashed American soldiers in the Korean War and ending with positive suggestions on how to avoid brainwashing, the author of this book takes the reader through a fascinating and very informative overview of the subject. Avoiding long-winded philosophical musings on free will and determinism, she instead supports her case on the reality of brainwashing with what is known about the human brain via research in neuroscience. The book is rich in information and gives the reader an understanding of to what degree the human mind can be controlled and manipulated. The author gives several examples of mental manipulation, all of these being quite frightening scenarios. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the election results of last year serve as a good contemporary example of how the press, government, public relations firms, and well-financed private interest groups can exert intense influence on the minds of a large portion of the American public. The outcome of that election serves as a grim reminder of how a passive, uncritical frame of mind can be filled with ideas and impressions that bear no resemblance to reality.

When reading the book, it is interesting to learn that the Chinese Communists did not view their methods as being coercive. They however viewed their "re-education" efforts as being "morally uplifting", and evidently applied them with the conviction that they were releasing their victims of "reactionary" or "imperialist" thoughts. This brings the issue of whether indeed anyone can claim that a certain collection of ideas is "bad", while another collection is "good". The author addresses this issue of "relativism" or "moral incommensurability" in the book, and acknowledges that there is a temptation to believe that it serves to enhance respect for other opinions. She cautions however that prospective brainwashers take full advantage of moral relativism, as it enables them to practice their mind-numbing indulgences without any outside interference. The author therefore rejects moral relativism, leaving judgments as to what kind of ideas are the most sensible to be those that reflect what the majority of people actually desire. She does not however dismiss the relevance of individual differences, acknowledging that two people may have different `value profiles', and that these may conflict from time to time. In addition, values become more abstract or ethereal as one moves from the individual to the group, the author asserts, and in the process of abstraction individual differences become lost. This has the consequence that the ethereal ideas cannot really be judged as good or bad, and thus their propagation may result in severe harm. This harm can be minimized according to the author by using the methods of politics. Her assertion here has a certain irony to it, given that many (including this reviewer) have believed consistently that those in the political profession are the major proponents and practitioners of brainwashing (with last year's election again giving a powerful example). The author though is pragmatic, and notes that not all ethereal ideas are dangerous. Some can benefit society, and so the goal should be to minimize the harmful consequences and allow the beneficial ideas to flourish. Her strategies for doing this she encapsulates into what she calls `FACET', which stands for Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking. She describes at length what is involved in this approach, emphasizing its pragmatism, but also giving some evidence of its efficacy.

Through her discussion of neuroscience, the author dispels any notion of the Cartesian `diamond minds' metaphor that has plagued Western thought for the last four centuries. Indeed, if the claims of contemporary research in cognitive neuroscience are correct, then the human brain is indeed a very dynamic object, sometimes undergoing radical change. As an example of this, the author quotes the `phantom limb' scenario. Altering personal identity however is impossible if the proponents of the diamond mind are correct. The author again though gives evidence to the contrary, this evidence coming from what is known about the brain. In the process of doing this, she gives an interesting introduction to what she calls the `schematic self'. This concept is motivated by the fact that human beings seem to take on a variety of different `identities' depending on the social situation in which they find themselves. These roles or `schemas' include a collection of behaviors, and the thoughts, attitudes, and emotions that accompany them. These schemas can contain beliefs that are incompatible however, especially if they are correlated with different situations that individuals find themselves in. This incompatibility helps to explain the somewhat perplexing or contradictory behavior that is observed in many people. There is a temptation to label an individual as a `hypocrite' when having observed him acting in one situation, he behaves totally different in another, this behavior being seemingly at odds with the behavior in the first situation. Therefore, the author concludes, it should not surprising that brainwashing can work, given this capacity for variation in the `self.' The reader interested solely in scientific explanations will of course demand that the author justify this schema theory with evidence from neuroscience. She does so, but only briefly, and concludes that the schemas are patterns of connections between neurons, and that the stronger the connections, the more automatically the schemas will be triggered under the activation by certain stimuli. Some of these stimuli might be subtle, such as those arising from advertising. These might strengthen the "weak" schema, but the individual does not experience it as a change in self. However, stimuli resulting from the use of force act to change the strong schemas. Brainwashing by force thus may radically change the individual's strongest beliefs, and the author again gives evidence from neuroscience that supports the assertion that this can indeed happen. Lacking in this discussion are actual case studies, but the arguments seem plausible. Further research is of course necessary, but overall the author seems to make a convincing case for the reality of brainwashing. It can be countered given the initiative however

I got this book hoping that it would provide me with scientific evidence that would help me develop a more informed opinion on the controversial issue of brainwashing. Unfortunately, Taylor points out that it is ethically impossible to conduct controlled brainwashing studies, so I did not find the specific evidence I was looking for. What the book does provide, however, is a detailed discussion of what science can tell us about how we come to believe what we do, and how influence attempts can impact that process.

Taylor's discussion of influence techniques is thorough, ranging from advertising and education through systematic techniques used by cult leaders to the physical abuse used on American prisoners during the Korean War. By diving into neuroscience to detail how concepts and ideas are established in the brain, Taylor offers insight into how different kinds of manipulation attempts try to change how people think about the world around them. Her discussion of how skilled manipulators work to link strong emotion to a new idea in attempt to bypass the critical thought processes that would make people stop and think is particularly important for people interested in cultic issues.

Not so much a 'how to ...' guide to brainwashing, as a 'how to avoid being brainwashed', Taylor's 15 chapter volume is a timely addition to the bookshelf. Presented as being as much a social, as a political method of persuasion, the author puts forward the topic of brainwashing as covering a wide spectrum of human activity, from the overt, deliberate and forceful breakdown in torture chambers, to the more subtle expressions of emotional blackmail from family members and loved ones. Perhaps lacking, however, was any in-depth discussion of the effects of various public media, product marketing strategies and corporate advertising, which are also geared toward the "alteration of a second person's thoughts and feelings". A further welcome addition, would have been some discussion of the value of brainwashing reversal, and torture victim rehabilitation, beyond that illustrated by Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange'. Taylor's examples of successful brainwashing cover both fictional (e.g., '1984' and 'The Manchurian Candidate') as well as non-fictional scenarios (incl. The Manson Family and the Jonestown Massacre) by way of introduction, but there is little new for the hardened conspiracy theorist to take away from these chapters.


In an attempt to explain the formation, development and cohesion of cult groups, and in particular their members willingness to perform anti-social and illegal acts, Taylor reviews a number of putative mechanisms underlying such conformative behavior, much of which will be familiar territory to both social and cognitive psychologists. But more importantly, the better value of this book may be revealed in its attempts to discuss the underlying neural mechanisms that are involved in the "business of changing people's minds".


At the risk of being regarded another emotional reaction Vs intellectual reaction argument, Taylor argues for a subtle, and I believe real, distinction to be drawn between the contributions of the cortical and sub-cortical parts of the brain in understanding the success of brainwashing techniques. In crude terms, the latter is the more willing participant in following the wishes of another, without so much thought beyond a more (albeit learned) reflexive reptilian behavioral repertoire. In contrast, those more inclined to "stop and think" prior to acting (for whatever reason), are likely to be employing the cortical parts of their brain during decision making, and especially so their pre-frontal cortical areas. The key example presented, (appropriately) involves our current understanding of the multi-layered neural systems underlying human eye-movement control (partly reflexive, but subject to override according to the demands of the cognitive task at hand), but perhaps a revised edition might also include more recent work conducted with ethical dilemmas and correlate action plan decision-making fMRI data (e.g., Greene et al, Science, 2001).


This book nonetheless offers the interested reader both psychological and neurological data to absorb in coming to better understand the processes thought to underlay human persuasion and the plasticity of thinking, especially in situations under which one's thoughts are obviously in conflict with available evidence (the hall mark of otherwise successful brainwashing?). I would highly recommend this volume to the reader in search of a self-defense guide against their being brainwashed, but more seriously suggest consideration of Taylor's "FACET" approach as at least providing useful hints for enhancing one's critical thinking skills. By so doing one might become better equipped to allay the attempts of many hidden persuaders "out there" who are seeking our otherwise unthinking co-operation in support of their activities and influence.


Dr. Tony Dickinson, McDonnell Center for Higher Brain Function,
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, USA.

'Brainwashing' is a fascinating and stimulating book exploring the many facets of Brainwashing. It looks at it's history, some methods, coercion in the media and education, the physical attributes of the brain that lend itself to coercion and persuasion, as well as methods to protect yourself from the various influences of Brainwashing you may experience. It is written in an engaging and captivating way and the ideas outlined will stimulate your mind to think in new or different ways. Kathleen Taylor's writing style is very eloquent and easy to read and she makes quite complex ideas extremely accessible. One minor quibble is that the text format is quite small and is therefore hard going on the eyes. It could quite easily of been a larger font. The notes are also very good, but some information could have been added to the main text to good effect. Overall it is an in depth and fascinating book and one that is well worth the effort to read.

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I am brainwashed after listening to lectures of Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips on youtube. I was brainwashed to register into his online Islamic school IOU! I am actually brainwashed with the following two memes of Bilal Philips: 1. It is compulsory to grow beard at least one fist long placed at the base of one's chin. 2. It is fundamentally haraam to put your child in a non-Muslim school. I found the sensation of getting brainwashed by him very unpleasant.

In the first fifty pages of Brainwashing, The Science of Thought Control, we encounter the theory of a framework for brainwashing identified by Robert Lifton. He asserts the following are identifiable elements of brainwashing. I theorize their corporate manifestations below in the context of de facto cult dominated corporations in America today:

1.Millieu Control - Control over a workplace and those who work there, as well as manipulation of related behavior, creates an environment in which it is easy to determine those with whom employees come into contact. Add bias in hiring based on identifiable membership in a group via behavior that can be probed by management or other "initiated" personnel. Empower this mode of employment bias long enough, and entire cities and regions could conceivably become subject to such an influence, inevitably causing it to arise with stealth at the core of a national agenda. Allow for the inevitable "feedback" of such bias and preferential treatment into government and law enforcement, and indoctrination could, in turn, rapidly be perceived as a force that can, without fear of prosecution or the threat of a day in court or jail, influence what is heard and what one encounters outside the workplace, reinforcing millieu control everywhere within an unindoctrinated person's environment. It is reasonable to assume that it may simply be a matter of time before the environment outside of workplaces becomes subject to millieu control once law enforcement is tainted in an affected city.
2.Mystical Manipulation - Create the appearance of the power to harass, debase, and acquire personal information regarding an individual by a mechanism that seems far-fetched, or, in time, even "mystical", and thus not something to which law enforcement seems likely to respond, or that can be used as a basis for resistance to such a response by indoctrinated members of law enforcement, or those in their employ fearful of retribution. Reinforce this with diluted attitudes within law enforcement regarding harassment and threats, which may be empowered by simply dismissing complaints under the banner of "free speech". Add potential for direct attempts to program an individual using hypnosis and classical conditioning, rewarded by avoidance of harsh treatment, or empowered via local, sexual encounters or promotions (during the interval when the brainwashing group is seeking to acquire influence, but may still face a threat from law enforcement). Introduce vague comments that may be calibrated to permit a person who has been terrorized and treated in a degrading manner to interpret as being fulfilled by later experience, and the power to keep a person "spinning" endlessly is suddenly granted via this "mystical manipulation". Add an element of threat to the predictions, and malice, and they may do more than merely "spin" as their sense of safety, and capacity to function, due to sleeplessness, and sanity is threatened. Reinforce this with hostile telephone calls from callers who refuse to give their names, "hang-up calls", and assignment of meaning to certain words later used in an awkward and emphasized manner that highlights them in proximity to a targeted person, and a "mystical" rise in hostility that can be difficult to prove, from a near zero ground state, can become plain when mystical manipulation, and coercive psychological theory, become conjoined in forced indoctrination into a cult, or, an attempt to destroy a career and a life by terrorizing a victim. Piggy-back the effects of medical disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or severe, hypertension based headaches, that may be induced via such exposure to threats and bizarre or deeply troubling conduct, and one might believe that one was subject to some mode of mystically induced pain or disability, reinforcing threats and attempts to acquire an influence over a targeted person via a reward system. There may well be more to it than what is described here, but in limited space, I'll leave it at that.
3.The Demand for Purity - The cult-like group can begin to employ coercion in its methods. A person may suddenly be accused of wrongdoing in the workplace, without specific explanation, or be called "a pervert". Sexual harassment may be manifested in the context of submission and proof of one's loyalty, or as a tool of abuse to break a target down, or to drive them out. More fundamentally, "purity" can simply correlate with cult indoctrination, including altered state behavior, participation in modes of harassment to break down targeted persons, and being open to ongoing involvement.
4.The Cult of Confession - This is one of the most common tools of corporate powers today. From the employment application's demand for confession of past criminal acts (or even the right to examine an applicant's credit rating) to a performance appraisal system designed to induce individuals to confess their sins or serve as corporate toilet paper, on pain of termination if one fails to acknowledge everything, regardless of one's sense of real culpability, confession has many potentially useful aspects to a management cult within a corporation that has been transformed in many respects into a cult syndicate. Confession is one of the most common levers used by corporate cults as they seek something, on the record, with your signature, that they can use against you.
5.Sacred Science - This is the corporate executive attitude, often extending into government and law enforcement agencies that are widely perceived as being supposed to protect "the little guy", that proclaims that a corporate manager is the closest thing to the fellow seated at the right hand of a deity that an employee can encounter in the real world. Their proclamations are not to be challenged, a requirement reinforced by corporate intimidation and management edict, and, of course, a value system in the United States that asserts that "they're well off financially and employed, and you aren't" as its most credible foundation. One might note, with regard to this foundation, that the former is also true for successful members of criminal syndicates, operating, as one mob informant is said to have asserted, under their own "government". Sacred Science could be empowered by selective acknowledgment of complaints by law enforcement agencies so as to prevent cult indoctrinated persons from being charged, by threats or hostile behavior by law enforcement representatives in response to efforts to bring such complaints, through refusal to conduct investigations by law enforcement in response to complaints by unindoctrinated persons, or other obstructive conduct by official agencies of government to suppress actions that would reduce or reverse the power of a cult-like influence, including efforts to undermine investigations through bias.
6.Loading the Language - This can take the form of phrases used by the corporate cultists to reinforce their victim's sense of being isolated and not "in with the group". This can include less targeted and degrading language over a long interval prior to a directed attack against a target, such as references to those in a privileged group as "A-players", "one of us", or "not one of us". Even casual references can be used to evoke a sense of exclusion or threat from a target in the latter two cases, if those who are "not one of us" are also described disparagingly in prior conversations by management in public areas, and one suddenly finds oneself being named in the group that is comprised of those "others" who are "not one of us". This concept can reinforce more overt modes of language loading. "Temperature" can, for example, become a metaphor for the level of hostility being directed at a target. Those who are "not one of us" may be referred to as "dogs", or worse. Mixing of the terms "to fire" and "to kill" are also employed to increase the sense of threat in conversations that are undertaken among others in contemplation of someone's future. Changing pronouns to refer to a male using the term "she" is another example of loaded language abuse. (The rationale of the "cult syndicate" model becomes plain given the level of threat that is implied or overtly stated.) The "language" can also be visual. The use of clothing of a particular color or colors by those involved, such as black and red, can reinforce the sense of threat. The "language" can be audio but non-verbal. If vehicles begin following a threatened person, close behind, with unprecedented frequency, or appearing outside their home, cruising past, with loud, sub-woofers penetrating the target's vehicle and subjecting them to the noise at stoplights on a recurrent basis that is inconsistent with past experience in that area over long periods of time. If a professional, seated behind a computer in an adjacent cubicle, suddenly decides to begin sharpening a knife on a whetstone at work, the intent of non-verbal "language loading", linked to a hostile presence, is clear. If sucking sounds are made when members of the group pass the targeted person's office, again, the non-verbal language of the office is being loaded.

There are, therefore, many dimensions to the "loaded language" phenomenon, some of which expand into the realm of millieu control. The verbal aspect of loading language may merit further description in context. The word "perfect", when applied to an individual, can take on a new meaning, seeming to suggest a thoroughly conditioned and responsive personality completely under the group's power relative both to behavior and attitudes. Classical conditioning may be evidenced. Specific phrases, like "nice person" or "someone who loves evil" can be asserted in a manner that seeks to attach a sexual link, as a means of linking a word or phrase to titillation in a sexually charged conversation that becomes a reward system premised on dopamine reactions in the brain while luring an inexperienced target down an unfamiliar path, leading eventually to a combination of hypnosis (as a variant on a sexual stupor) and a bizarre focus on sexual titillation (and perhaps more) as a reward system that has empowered the controlling word or phrase to have a unique effect relative to inducing sexual excitement or anticipation in an unprecedented manner.

Even local slang can adapt itself to the psychological conditioning process, if one can take a reference to someone having been "brain f-worded" as an indicator of the extent to which such manipulation becomes known over time in places where it is active. The spoken phrase, "be nice," can become an instruction used to induce a conditioned response, such as voicing an endless stream of gibberish (with a fixed gaze and smile) while the conditioned subject responds in what appears to be an altered state, in a manner that some indoctrinated, religious extremists might call, "speaking in tongues", and reinforcing the cult link.

Where a notorious sex industry exists, local law enforcement may respond to a newcomer's shocked by encountering what may be taken as a means of indoctrinating "fresh faces" into it by simply describing prostitution locally as a "victim-less crime", another loaded language artifact that may serve to legitimize modes of economic or sexual exploitation that can empower certain forms of indoctrination by providing a financial foundation by which to seed it anywhere. Where sexual exploitation, brainwashing, and psychological conditioning come together, elements of coercion, white slavery, genocide (particularly if members of a certain religion are targeted in an unusual manner), and criminal, human psychological experimentation (where experimentation occurs without express, written approval by subjects or public, professional committee oversight in the context of legitimate research within a legitimate institution) may all be elements of the perceived threat upon first contact with this phenomenon. Contemplate corporate executive and high ranking government officials' and related sex scandals in the news, and another basis for political concern arises. This can tempt those who seem most eager to participate in related psychological manipulation of targets to add another dimension to loaded language behavior, by asking if a target, who seems resistant or hostile to them, is going to be "the one", perhaps intending to suggest that successful legal action against such a group in the U.S. on the grounds of a cult-like syndicate succeeding in a long term program of genocide via forced indoctrination as an alternative to professional and financial ruin is so unlikely that the hostile party would have to have a messiah complex to even attempt it.
7.The Primacy of Doctrine Over Person - This can have many expressions. Discussions of time lines relative to the success of such campaigns of degradation and threat may also be enforced by comments of dissatisfaction with delays by certain parties in acting to bring about resolution, reinforcing the sense that a group eager to openly invoke a threat has an objective that they value above the individual's legal rights or long term standing with an employer, which could include attempts to suggest a violent alternative. The declaration that a targeted person must submit to what may be overt references to brainwashing or psychological conditioning via coercive methods, because they will face more threats and abuse, or worse, if they do not, can be openly stated. This is exploitation of an injured psychological state, after inducing the injury. It is like creating an office filled with employees wielding baseball bats at will, who then strike the injured leg of a limping employee repeatedly, while management trumpets loudly again and again that the person isn't walking properly and will be let go if that doesn't change. Contemplate the power of making certain that "A players", as acknowledged by an employer's indoctrinated management staff, are inevitably indoctrinated into a cult-like group, and the influence power that results renders such perspectives infinitely practical in terms of seeding other organizations, opening up new possibilities for those who are "indoctrinated" members of the "in group". One wonders if indoctrination in this sense should have a viable definition, perhaps something like "that time when an employee's performance becomes 'impeccable' ".
8.The Dispensing of Existence. - This is openly empowered by the legal concept of "employment at will" in the United States, where unemployment benefits are often inadequate to keep a person above the poverty level (even when cult indoctrinated speakers strive to make claims to the contrary among those who are ignorant of the facts, or substantial variations in maximum benefits exist from state to state in the U.S., with most states offering very little indeed.). Loss of adequate income can induce loss of one's home, vehicle, or inability to maintain it in good repair, and loss of retirement and employment potential. Loss of medical insurance can directly threaten one's health or one's ability to retain one's home or vehicle. (Hypertension and stress can induce effects that can kill. PTSD can produce episodes of self-directed violence.) It can take years to find a job in the United States, particularly for professionals, but only weeks to hire a replacement. Employment sponsored health insurance covers only 55.8% of people in the U.S. at this time, making it a significant lever in terms of empowering indoctrination. Federal law could have given managers less incentive to abuse by passing laws that made it inconvenient for them to continue their attacks long after a former employee is no longer working for them by simply making it impossible to fill a position before the employee who left it becomes employed again. When government law enforcement refuses to respond to the type of threats that have already been described, or amplifies the threats by pointing a gun at a complainant and issuing a threat, the sponsorship of genocide can seem readily apparent.

In summary relative to specific aspects of brainwashing just described (regardless of whether these perceptions are always the sort that can be supported by concrete evidence in specific instances), the experience of such a reality, reinforced often enough by the failure of political or legal paradigms that one has "bought into" in one's former life, usually without testing them, can be devastating. The corporate cult archetype already expressed, operating in an environment of corporate principalities under one, vague government that is both their client and partner is the reality of the present, not some vague, Orwellian possibility that we must avoid in an unlikely future. Federal offices around the country are staffed by employees hired via a narrow chain of management. A management cult is as likely to reflect indoctrination in a federal agency as anywhere else, particularly if corporate forces are not to seek to use complaints to influence a change in that regard, perhaps replacement with one they recognize as "impeccable". The federal government does not, as Ms. Taylor somewhat naively proclaims, rush to arrest those who brainwash. They are far more likely to call the activity a "lifestyle" and ignore it, or form an experimental program around it, as was done with MKULTRA, and pursue it in secret domestically, without acknowledging it or its victims.

Ms. Taylor does acknowledge the MKULTRA program, but with seemingly no evidence to support her claim that it was a failure, given that the CIA files on the program were largely and suspiciously burned, leaving only financial records and a history of Congressional testimony (much of it closed) that treated this inhuman scandal during questioning too often before the cameras like a matter of whether a federal ledger added up. Ms. Taylor insists that MKULTRA produced no effect. At the very least, the rise of LSD from an obscure chemical that could only be produced in extremely small quantities by a pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland for experimental purposes to a chemical that could be synthesized in large quantities for mass production and use by the CIA in their experiments on college campuses is credited with spreading and commercializing criminal interest in and production of the chemical in the U.S. The use of chemical and/or sexual dependencies as a basis for programming/brainwashing in addition to experiments in hypnosis was notably absent in Ms. Taylor's text, but were central to MKULTRA concepts.

The fact that MKULTRA was recognized to produce techniques that were unlikely to be effective in a hostile, foreign country, while undertaking experiments in the related series of programs at hundreds of sites in the U.S. over decades, does not mean that the program would not have had a domestic effect. The element of criminal involvement via prostitutes, and experiments carried on with a global scale in the U.S., in Canada, and Europe over many years hardly provide a basis for substantiating claims that MKULTRA failed, or that its purpose was solely premised upon the desire to manipulate foreign nationals in the context of matters of crucial, national defense during the Cold War. What was typically concluded in published books on MKULTRA by those formerly involved is that the various techniques that were developed could not work in a hostile environment in a foreign country where law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies would act to render its methods ineffective. (Of course, compromising law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies might have been the too obvious solution, using sex and money to purchase influence, and scandal to end careers. Both could be achieved by manufacturing prostitutes to generate income.) There was never a conclusion that during the most rabid days of the red scare in the U.S. coercive psychological techniques derived from or related to those used in MKULTRA would not or could not have been used domestically, and subsequently spread, potentially forming tangible or indirect links to religions or churches, organized crime or prostitution rings, and corporations, particularly those with links to the defense industry or related government offices and agencies.

Indeed, the very use of U.S. citizens as unwitting subjects in experiments suggests potential for just the opposite, both in terms of the domestic venue and aggressive attitudes regarding experimentation. Finally, one should recall that both the Navy and the Air Force were running larger human behavioral control programs through 1970 than the CIA, and the Army's experiments using LSD on soldiers are marked by a series of court cases in which the matter rose to the level of the Supreme Court, at which time it was determined that a soldier bringing such a case in protest of his unwitting use in an LSD experiment had no legal basis for suing the federal government. One might recall that the draft was a notable element of the war in Vietnam, a war that overlapped the behavioral experiments in the military over many years.

Ms. Taylor seems to mis-state the facts when she asserts that Stanley Millgram's experiments were run by an experimental subject, named as "teacher", and an "experimenter". At least one book on the subject asserts that Millgram used "actors" to play both the role of the experimental subject and the experimenter. Both were handed folded pieces of paper before the experiments began that were said to tell them whether they would be "teacher" or "learner". Both pieces of paper would read "teacher". The laboratory coat was merely a prop used by the actor playing the "experimenter" to assert authority. The initial, low level shock that was delivered to the "subject" in the context of negative reinforcement was said to be real to insure a real response. The subsequent, higher level shocks were merely simulated with a loud, buzzing noise using a device made by a company that had been selected because it produced real experimental equipment.

It was interesting to note that Ms. Taylor suggests that "ego based" killing is a possibility among some subjected to brainwashing and related psychological degradations by a person seeking to assert a coercive mode of behavioral control. She seems to link this to people who embrace a false basis for their elevated sense of self-esteem. An alternative is, of course, more consistent with the concept of "impeccable" as a synonym for "indoctrinated/brainwashed" used in a very selective manner by cultists eager to dominate all elements of a society and its economy through control over management, hiring, and retention. Those who are subject to degrading treatment are, by the definition of the brainwasher, inferior as "outsiders". In a regimen of brainwashing, even someone who might later be called "impeccable" would, prior to conversion, be "inferior" and subject to related degradation in public comments regarding their abilities by those who are not "outsiders". What better way to control the seeding of other organizations with "insiders" than with a standard that eliminates those who have become unemployed from consideration for employment while requiring the approval of former managers to complete an employment transition? Note that the power to induce unemployment can effectively deny the opportunity to leverage attorneys to counter hostile conduct by employers via loss of employment income, unemployment benefits that are inadequate to provide a financial foundation solid enough to permit an attorney to be hired, and loss of medical benefits that may affect one's family or produce economic ruin in a highly stressful situation.

Add a six month limit on bringing a discrimination charge to the federal government in the U.S., of which many may be unaware without professional, legal advice, and a complaint process that is as complex as an individual representative of the EEOC chooses to make it before a complaint is acknowledged, with no guarantee of timely acknowledgement or investigation by the EEOC if a complaint is made (see Edelman V. Lynchburg College, [available from the Cornell University Legal web site], a U.S. Supreme Court case seeking certiorari (denied out of hand by the court for cases brought by the poor "in forma pauperis", or "in the manner of a pauper"), then contemplate it as a statistical measurement from an assembly line that is supposed to be designed to acknowledge complaints but has instead produced a sample with a flaw in the context of modern, statistical quality control while recognizing that hiring an attorney to produce such a Supreme Court sample as evidence of a flawed process is too costly for most people trying to file their own complaints after becoming unemployed) , and the power to engage in ongoing psychological abuse in a cult-dominated urban or regional millieu so as to empower an "in group" becomes evident.

In another segment of the discussion in this book Ms. Taylor mentions mass media and advertising as being unlikely to exert a "brainwashing" effect because it is not under one, controlling will. (She adds to the notes of Chapter Three the assertion that some people will believe that seven foot lizards are in charge in the context of conspiracy theories.) As Noam Chomsky explains in his book, Necessary Illusions - Thought Control in a Democratic Society, corporations carefully control where they spend their advertising dollars. If a cult-like group were to begin to apply coercive psychological techniques in a "employment at will" environment while seeding other corporations with those it represents as "impeccable", and if law enforcement became so compromised by the rise of this influence in local employers and government that those who attempt to confront such behavior legally are reduced to what Ms. Taylor describes as an inevitable state of "depression" and "submission", convinced that they have no way to defend themselves from such an influence, perhaps rattled by PTSD, depression, hypertension, and a resulting sleep deprived and hyper-tense state, then the news that one is likely to hear from the media and the world that a media arm represents to the public will be the news and the world that groups who purchase advertising time will pay to support, or the source of a particular brand of news or entertainment will go away, either due to a dearth of advertising dollars, or the bankrupting of a media outlet due to want of advertising revenue and law suits seeking to undermine credibility, wreak financial and organizational havoc, or a contrary series of news stories from competitors that fatally damages credibility and polarizes potential jurors, making action in the courts of dubious potential to restore a corporate or individual brand. There may not be one person in charge of such an influence, but if there is one controlling agenda that has become adopted in the context of a strategy that must be embraced to win a zero sum financial game (as in derivatives in the banking industry prior to the U.S. financial collapse in 2008), the ones who remain in the game will inevitably be inclined, most of the time, to conform to the controlling agenda, or perish, even if it guides a nation or the world off a cliff. It will not, at least, threaten their standard of living.

I still believe that one should read Kathleen Taylor's Brainwashing, The Science of Thought Control if one hopes to begin to contemplate what further horrors the future may be able to present under the pretense of democracy and equal justice for all. Her conceptualization of brainwashing is easily comprehended and in many way realistic. It does not shy away from describing many of the ugly realities that can be recognized in everyday life, although it fails to acknowledge the gritty and often inhuman experience of many in the workplace. (Perhaps we should note that even federal employees complained, in one survey, of sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment is recognized by the Supreme Court as a mode of sex discrimination, but the federal employees in the survey also noted that they avoided making formal complaints by a wide margin.) Put another way:

Brainwashed

They say that madness is inherited,
An act of nature never merited.
I think perhaps it is more likely still,
Expressed as dark, passed down, religious will.

"Brainwashed" is a word that's long degraded,
Irrelevance is insinuated.
But where there's power in psychology,
Corporations force a dark odyssey.

Through your eyes and ears, you'll think they hear, see,
As they threaten you with death, poverty.
Left to scream at night in sudden panic,
They'll long laugh at the one they made manic.

And when you ask that justice deliver,
Free you from their poisoned, verbal slivers,
"We can't help you," the lawyers loudly bay.
"Corporate powers offer better pay."

Next you'll fly to a government office,
To warn them with fervor, "Something's amiss!"
"They're princes to us," they casually say.
"We make religious complaints go away."

At last in the dark, with mortgage unpaid,
After trying years, this fate to evade,
You'll wonder how it has come down to this,
Where billionaires say, "Not much is amiss."

While the author purports to be a research scientist, there is very little scientific thinking in this book. The writing is poor and meanders, frequently obscuring the point. The only real chapter with any science in it is chapter 7. And that information is found in any introductory physiology or neuroscience text, both of which are typically better written. The book relies almost exclusively on secondary sources, profound sounding quotes taken out of context, vague reasoning and weak and overused examples (e.g water channels on pg. 132 - after the Bertrand Russell quote). The word "cogweb" appears on almost every page in the second half of the book, yet if you do a pubmed search on published scientific research on "cogwebs" it turns out there is none. This is a word the author coined. There is no distinction between opinion, fact, and assumptions. For example, the book applies saccades to cult thinking (pg 215) but there is no published science that suggests they are related mechanisms.

In summary I found nothing new in this book and as a neuroscientist was disturbed by the lack of distinguishing between the author's opinion and fact. Unless you want to promote misinformation, I strongly suggest you avoid this book.

The title is misleading. But the book is not.

Taylor has an axe to grind. By the end, axe is pretty sharp.

She may have bitten off more than she could chew. But if the patient reader takes small bites and chews slowly, he or she will digest a =lot=.

Divided roughly into equal thirds, this version of "Brainwashing" (there are others; do not confuse them) does spend adequate time on the title topic, mostly in the first third. From thereon, it's a novel course in cognitive psychology and neurobiology, as well as considered examination of the world we live in, and the potentially disturbing effects thereof.

Some readers will get nightmares. Some readers will throw out their flat screen televisions and X Boxes. Some will even change the way they see and think about what they see, hear and even =believe=.

The culturally informed may see bits and pieces of Shane Hipps, Karen Dill, Noam Chomsky and even Marshall McLuhan. The cult-urally informed will recognize the influence of Roy Baumeister, Elias Canetti, Robert Cialdini, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The woman is nothing if not well read... and able to draw upon what she has, herself, =digested=.

Perhaps because I am so taken with Richard Wessler's, Sheena Hankin's and Jeffrey Young's, as well as Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck's and Donald Meichenbaum's notions of cognitive schematics, I was both drawn to and somewhat discomfited by Taylor's heuristic notion of "cogwebs." The view that the more of them there are, the weaker any single one of them may be, and the better off the mind is as the result, is real psychotherapeutic paydirt.

The "cogweb" concept =is= yet another accurate representation of how the mind-brain operates, moreover because it is one of the first to attempt - though not as clearly as I would have liked - to demonstrate that our beliefs, values, ideas, rules, assumptions, presumptions, prejudices and attitudes are all physical constructs of neural plasticity. (For =that=, look up Sharon Begley.)

Taylor's long route around Robin Hood's barn to get it across, however, may leave some readers frustrated. Ditto her over-simplified here, needlessly complex there, exploration of cranial components and their specific functions. She gets the points across - about the relationship between the pre-frontal cortex and the amygdala, for example - but takes much too long for most readers, I expect, to do so. I mighty even be tempted to suggest that one skip the middle third, but the final third may not quite make sense if one does so.

Insofar as the title topic is concerned, Taylor keeps a line open to Robert Lifton's "basic text," the formidable =Thought Reform and the Tradition of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China= (1961), throughout. This is a very good thing.

For though he did not understand Gregory Bateson's "double binding," Paul Watzlawick's "paradoxical injunction," or Ronald Laing's cult-like "crazymaking families," Lifton did see eight elements of brainwashing that have stood the test of time. They include milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the confessional, sacred (pseudo-) science, loaded language, doctrine over person, and fate control (the "dispensing of existence').

The attentive reader will come away with a fine grasp of each. And the psychotherapist will come away with more goodies for his or her tool belt.

Taylor sees brainwashing by stealth, as well as brainwashing by coercion. (She also explores the possibilities of brainwashing by surgical or other "medical" intervention. Ouch.) Taylor's brief treatise on the "media-tors" is one of the best grinds on the covert seduction and cult-ural conditioning of consumerism I have encountered. (I was one of the "M-ad Men." I =know= about these things. We have known for decades how to "create demand." Taylor describes =how= at the Chomskyan cognitive, Skinnerian behavioristic, and neurobiological levels.)

Could she have accomplished more? Only the =very= well-versed would have the smug self-righteousness to assert so, but I =am= pretty educated in psychodynamic, behavioristic, cognitive and neuro- psychology. And I am no shrinking violet.

Had Taylor been more familiar in 2003 with 1) the concepts of process addiction and codependence, and especially Anne Wilson Schaef's view of them as culture-wide; 2) Edward Khantzian's self-medication model of addiction, 3) the interpersonal psychology of Harry Stack Sullivan, Lorna Smith Benjamin, et al; 4) realpolitik authors like Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, William Domhoff, and Kevin Phillips; and 5) the modern, mindfulness-based cognitive therapies (e.g.: DBT, ACT, MBCT, SIQR+DD), I think she would have seen that her suggested solution ("FACET") is idealistic at best, but hopelessly naïve.

The "powers that be" have no fiduciary reason whatsoever to want the majority of people to see back of the Wizard's green curtain. People are educated in =degrees= for a reason that Taylor probably comprehends now but didn't think about at the time.

The curtain pullers, are, however, out there for those who, like Taylor, =really= want to know.

RG, Psy.D.

My purpose for reading this book was to understand why most people continue believing the official 9/11-lies, which for me is absolutely the greatest brainwashing ever performed in history. The irony is that the author gives a full account of all the methods used in (mass) brainwashing, but without those arguments having any effect on her whatsoever. She continues to stick to the official Bush-version of 9/11, although she literally says : "A clearly labeled enemy (e.g. Al-Qaeda) is always handy, especially if the enemy agents themselves are not always clearly identifiable". She even quotes Adolf Hitler : "The greater the lie, the greater the chance that it will be believed". But somehow, it doesn't trickle down on her. Therefore, this is a very weird reading experience. It's like having a teacher explaining some theory he doesn't understand at all.

Anyway, I still recommend this book, since all arguments are present to understand why the brainwashing of 9/11 was so successful. In chapter one, the author quotes the work of Robert Lifton on totalitarian states. More than half of those elements are copied by our *corporate-controlled* "democratic" states. Let me single those out:

a) The power of authority

Stanley Milgram demonstrated that 2/3 of the people commit murder if ordered so by somebody "showing authority". This translates specifically in the *desire to believe* anything a leader expresses - remember how the Democrats "backed up the president in this emergency" ? Of course, the leader abuses of his authority in democratic states the same way as Lifton found to be happening in totalitarian states. The same tricks are used :
1. "Loading the language" with thought-terminating cliches: "bin Laden is a terrorist and the mastermind behind 9/11". Those government lies have the advantage of *simplicity* over the 9/11-truth, *catchy one-liners* that can easily be used in the news, and repeated over and over again;
2. "Mystical manipulation" : "America is strong", and the use of big words like God and the Flag (the point is that a flag is a piece of cloth and I don't believe in God, but I do believe Bill Hicks was right when he said : "WE are the Evil Empire");
3. "The demand for purity" : "either you're with us, or with the terrorists" (this means that any 911-truthseeker is in fact... a terrorist... - Oh, my God !).

b) Milieu control

Thanks to the total corporate control over all mass media (including the so-called leftist publications like The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, etc), the official version is spread continuously. Now, there is a very good reason for this. The government has no other choice than reinforcing the belief that Al Qaeda was behind 9/11, if not why would the US-army still be occupying two foreign countries at this precise moment ? Anybody expressing a contradictory view is made fun of (a "conspiracy theorist", a "lunatic", etc.). 9/11-truthers must rely entirely on the *internet* to spread reason.

c) The use of science as ideology

Science used for propaganda is nothing but *junk science*. This is what the "reports" produced by the NIST are.

There is a fourth aspect that is important to mass brainwashing, also discussed by the author, and it is the use of *strong emotions* to impose the lies. Look at 9/11 : none less than *fear* and *anger* were employed, powerful *primary emotions*. It certainly deeply affected me. I was in shock when I saw the images of the people preferring to jump from the smoking twin towers instead of dying from asphyxiation. I felt very, very sorry for them. All news channels all over the world reproduced the speeches of Bush *live*. He was blaming Al Qaeda ! I remember thinking : who ? But I swallowed it entirely.

At the same time, the US administration came with the *solution* on what should be done about it, and went to war in Afghanistan first and later in Iraq. And I am not afraid to admit that I believed the reasons behind the first war, but on Iraq I knew they were lying before going in. So, at some point, reason begins slipping through. At some point, a *reality check* must be performed. For instance : (1) the FBI isn't accusing bin Laden for what happened on 9/11. (2) The hole in the Pentagon was way too small for a jet to enter. (3) Never before in history has a skyscraper collapsed due to a fire, and certainly not at free fall speed. So I finally ended up joining the Architects and Engineers for 9/11-truth, and gave up on the Bush account of what happened. I can assure anybody that giving up on Bush isn't as hard as giving up believing in Santa Claus.

Socrates considered the pursuit of the truth as the noblest task for a human being. Of course it can't be denied that the truth - any truth - is *complex*. You'll have to think, and you'll have to look for solid arguments. This requires certainly much more brain activity than believing in the emotional outcries of the government and the mass media, but hey : aren't we supposed to be "homo sapiens" ? Are people really happy being dummies ? I don't think so. Only in the pursuit of truth can happiness be found. Following Sonja Lyubomirski, the activity of concentrated thinking "leads us to be involved in life (rather than be alienated from it), to enjoy activities (rather than to find them dreary), to have a sense of control (rather than helplessness), and to feel a strong sense of self (rather than unworthiness). All these factors imbue life with meaning and lend it a richness and intensity. And happiness." She therefore recommends : "Learn until the day you die."

I am very satisfied with the timing of delivery and the conditions of the book. Have not read it yet but very pleased. Cheers