Hypnotism & Brainwashing

Some time ago, I wrote a piece on hypnotism after attending a talk on the subject. Last night, I attended another one on the relationship between hypnotism and brain washing at the UUHK. The talk was given by Jonathan Chui, a hypnotherapist.

According to Chui, one of the techniques used by various groups or people with special interest e.g. religious cults, empowerment training camps, sales promotion workshops, pyramid selling sessions etc. is concentrated indoctrination to produce value change (and hence behavioral changes) in conditions of physical, psychological and social isolation where participants are gathered together at a physical location e.g. in religious cult, at their place of worship at some out of the way small town or village, where they are advised or even prohibited to communicate with the outside world on the pretext that they should devote themselves whoeheartedly to their declared or previously accepted aims. This will cut down the chances of the participants being fed alternative information which may conflict with or contradict some or all of the ideas advocated by the leaders of the interest group.

Then usually, to entice the participants to join the group, the organizers or proselytizers will be extra "friendly" to the intended targets. The targets will often feel that they have been "accepted" and will often derive a certain emotional satisfaction of having met with others sharing similar aims. Coupled with this social and emotional acceptance as one of the members of this religious or ideological "inner circle" of the saved or specially "blessed" is a strong sense of group identity. Then they will systemmatically destroy the target's confidence in his former "self", convincing him that he is bad or otherwise incompetent or inadequate, unloved, unlovable and unwanted or misguided and should feel guilt about what he is and repent because of his faults and inadequacies and then offer to help and save him. They make him feel tired and then confused as to who and what he is and then suggest an alternative. The corollary of this is the inculcation in them, after their conversion, of a sense that they are "different" from "the others": the "outsiders" which are often viewed as the bad, evil , damned or at least "unenlightened" or even potential enemies and thus to be treated with suspicion or hostility or at least indifference or pity. They will usually make clear distinctions between "them" and "us", those outside and those inside. They will often play upon the target's hopes and desires for favourable outcomes and fear of loss, of being abandoned to fend for themselves or not being saved unless they accept their doctrine (e.g the concept of heaven and happiness and hell and eternal punishment and the like.) .

There is usually a systemmatically constructed "ideology" which purports to simplify complex and difficult problems and issues to a few essential core ideas which are then offered as a panacea and a definitive and asbolutely guaranteed solution or answers to such problems as people may often encounter in their personal life and the adoption of which will free them completely from all  further doubts doubts or uncertainties. What Chui says seems to accord with what is said by Philip Zimbardo: "cult leaders offer simple solutions to the increasingly complex world problems we all face daily. They offer a simple path to happiness, success, to salvation by following their simple rules, simple group regimentation and simple total lifestyles. Ultimately, each new member contributes to the power of the leader by trading his or her freedom for the illusion of security and reflected glory that group members hold out.".There is often an initial plausibility to such an ideology. Thus religion purport to give answers to such questions as "why is there something rather than nothing?" , "what is the purpose and meaning of life, suffering and death?" "What must I do to be happy not just for the moment but forever or for all eternity?"   To facilitate the acceptance of such an ideology, there will often be specially and carefully prepared and manipulated occasions e.g. the event will often be hyped in advance so that the participants will expect to receive some ideas of great value to his or her personal life or a part or aspect of that life. The crucial pep talk will often be delivered by a charismatic and authoritative leader or speaker or guru who is able to argue or persuade with a mixture of reason, good will, charm and apparent sincerity for our own good, and would often claim to have special  knowledge and insight or inspiration or connection with some supernatural  being or some other authoritative figure and possess gifts ordinary folks do not. He will usually employ emotive language. Often he will give concrete examples of why his ideas work either through unverified episodes or in some cases he will call upon certain "witnesses" on to the stage to tell those present their "personal conversion experience", usually some otherwise perfectly "ordinary" person with whom the target can easily identify. Such testimony may either be true or false or partly both and is often a mixture of fact and fiction or wishful thinking or superstition.

To get the target to accept the correctness of their ideology, the brainwasher will often ask at the  participant at the start certain "trap questions" which are multi-barrel questions containing many hidden presuppositions or hidden assumptions so that once the participant answer in the positive or negative, they will have implicitly accepted the hidden assumptions and be committed to certain positions which the brainwasher intends the participants or target to accept and they will then follow with other loaded questions which the target will be forced to accept because of their previous acceptance of their presuppositions and assumptions because the latter follow logically or are a necessary consequence of the acceptance of the prior assumptions. The manipulators will thus lead the target further and further into accepting their pre-set positions. To facilitate such acceptance, the target will be often subjected to continuous physical and psychological strain or duress e.g long hours of programmed activities so that their body will be physically tired or exhausted to such an extent that they are dying to be relieved of further stress by getting that much needed rest, so much that they will say they "accept" the manipulator's ideas. In brainwashing camps, the "prisoners" will often be physically assaulted or deprived of food, water and sleep and subjected to all forms of physical torture or long sessions of interrogative bombardment until their wills break down. This also happens to some extent in all empowerment camps and in some "religious camps" or "workshops". This type of practice also happens in army training camps and even some corporate induction courses for the newly recruited: the aim being order, power or money. 

From the above, we can see that similar "brainwashing techniques" are constantly being employed in milder forms either alone or jontly with some or all of the other techniques in church gatherings or religious revivalist meetings e.g the use of an ideology which has the appearance of some plasuibility (all men are imperfect, guilty, sinful and have a need to be delivered from their suffering but there is a solution: belief in God or some other magic formula) which purports to give instant easy answers to complex problems (trust in God), isolation (at least during the religious worhsip session), charismatic leader ( persuasive preacher able to tailor his words to the reactions of his faithful) the importance and the emotional impact of which may sometimes be reinforced by certain specially performed "rites" or "rituals" , ''witnessing" by other faithfuls, claims of "miracles" (often playing upon the common folks' lack of knowledge of the principles of operation of the laws of probability and the calculation of odds, abetted by the "recency effect" whereby we tend to place undue emphasis on something which has just occurred recently by wrongly attributing false cause and effect relation to certain things which just happen to occur by chance at the same time and which otherwise have no cause-effect relationship at all e.g the farmer waiting for another rabbit to hit a particualr tree after having personally witnessing a rabbit hitting against that tree), the fostering of a sense of identity of the "saved", and the shutting out of contrary opinion or doubts as the work of the "devil" or the result of our "sins". Is religion not a form of brainwashing or self-hypnosis or a socially acceptable form of large scale "self-hypnosis" by its adherents? Is the efficacy of religion not a kind of "placebo" effect or "self-fulfilling prophecy"?

According to my research, the term "brainwashing" in fact was first used in 1950 and then later by an American Edward Hunter, an ex-CIA agent and later journalist to refer to way the Chinese systematically break down the will of American prisoners of wars captured in the Korean War in the 1950s so that they "realized" and admitted how wrong they were and would willingly work for the cause of socialism. It refers to certain kinds of technique for mind or thought control, coercive persuasion, principally dehumanizing and physically and pyschologically abusive and harassing treatments through propaganda and indoctrination and group social pressure. The purpose of brainwashing is to make the target conform to the desires and ideals of the manipulators so that the target's mind, emotions, decisions and behavior conform to those set by the manipulators. Religion may thus be a form of mind control. William Walters Sargant e.g. thinks that the precursor of modern brainwashing technique was John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and also certain other Catholics and Protestant preachers. The only difference is that religion purports to bombard a person with "love" for the "good"of the target and simultaneously exploit man's fear by emphasizing man's guilt for his past wrongs. But we know how many crimes have been committed in the name of "love" of a person's "soul" e.g. physical and psychological torture, burning of witches during the Spanish Inquisition in the Middle Ages and more recently in  Salem witch hunt in Massachusetts in late 17th century. Brainwashing according to psychologist Philip Zimbardo aim to distort, modify perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavior of the target or victim. Robert Ciadini argues that mind control is possible through the covert exploitation of the rules governing the "normal" functioning of the human unsconscious in ordinary  human social interactions. But whatever may be the true causes or need for brainwashing techniques, their effects are seldom permanent. For those intestested, the phenomena has been studied first by Robert J Lifton, then later by such psychologists as Edgar H Schein, Donald Ewen Cameron, Abraham Maurits Meerlo, William Walters Sargant and Margaret Thaler Singer and Dick Anthony, sociologists Stephen Kent and Banjamin Zablocki.