Lilienfeld also expressed concern that the reconceptualizing of mental disorders as brain diseases obscures a rich understanding of these syndromes that clinicians rely on in treating patients.
Focusing on the biological explanations for addictions or criminal behavior, Lilienfeld argued, may reduce stigma but increase the likelihood that a person will not be held accountable for their actions and may become more likely to consider their condition hopeless or immutable. Both Greene and Buckholtz use neuroimaging in their research into morality and psychopathology, respectively. Buckholtz noted, however, that while Brainwashed provided a legitimate and thorough critique of some of the problems with neuroimaging research, the book uses this general critique to make a deeper, and more politically charged claim: that individuals should be held responsible for their own behavior, regardless of any neurobiological explanations.
In order to be brainwashed, a person only needs to have a dormant schema activated or have a new schema created, rather than have their entire persona modified. Both the input and output signals in a neuron are extremely specific, meaning that the representation of a single object in the brain is created by a group of neurons, not by any single neuron.
As a person experiences an object, they develop a schema for that object. This schema includes everything related to the object, including visual appearance, sounds, related emotions, and related actions.
Now the question becomes, how is the strength of the schemata determined? The more these schemata activate, the stronger they become.
This explains why people become used to things that they experience on a regular basis. In order for brainwashing to occur, the relative strength of the schemata must be altered. Taylor explains that evolutionary biologists believe emotion is used for survival, and is meant to suffice when there is not time to fully process information. Because of this, emotion is generally not coupled with logical reasoning.
This has the potential to lead people to strengthen schemata that they do not generally activate. The agent attaches the target's guilt to the belief system the agent is trying to replace. The target comes to believe it is his belief system that is the cause of his shame. The contrast between old and new has been established: The old belief system is associated with psychological and usually physical agony; and the new belief system is associated with the possibility of escaping that agony.
Next, releasing the guilt is a key step. The embattled target is relieved to learn there is an external cause of his wrongness, that it is not he himself who is inescapably bad — this means he can escape his wrongness by escaping the wrong belief system.
All he has to do is denounce the people and institutions associated with that belief system, and he won't be in pain anymore. The target has the power to release himself from wrongness by confessing to acts associated with his old belief system.
With his full confessions, the target has completed his psychological rejection of his former identity. It is now up to the agent to offer the target a new one [source: Singer ]. Once those critical early stages of brainwashing are complete, it's time to move on to a more harmonious, if destructive relationship. The subject is then presented with a path to alleged progress and harmony.
In other words, "If you want, you can choose good. The target is made to feel that it is he who must choose between old and new, giving the target the sense that his fate is in his own hands. The target has already denounced his old belief system in response to leniency and torment and making a "conscious choice" in favor of the contrasting belief system helps to further relieve his guilt: If he truly believes, then he really didn't betray anyone.
The choice is not a difficult one: The new identity is safe and desirable because it is nothing like the one that led to his breakdown. Next comes the final confession and rebirth: I choose good. Contrasting the agony of the old with the peacefulness of the new, the target chooses the new identity, clinging to it like a life preserver. He rejects his old belief system and pledges allegiance to the new one that is going to make his life better.
At this final stage, there are often rituals or ceremonies to induct the converted target into his new community. This stage has been described by some brainwashing victims as a feeling of "rebirth" [source: Singer ]. A brainwashing process like the one discussed above has not been tested in a modern laboratory setting, because it's damaging to the target and would therefore be an unethical scientific experiment.
Lifton created this description from firsthand accounts of the techniques used by captors in the Korean War and other instances of "brainwashing" around the same time. Since Lifton and other psychologists have identified variations on what appears to be a distinct set of steps leading to a profound state of suggestibility, an interesting question is why some people end up brainwashed and others don't. Certain personality traits of the brainwashing targets can determine the effectiveness of the process.
People who commonly experience great self doubt, have a weak sense of identity, and show a tendency toward guilt and absolutism black-and-white thinking are more likely to be successfully brainwashed, while a strong sense of identity and self-confidence can make a target more resistant to brainwashing. Some accounts show that faith in a higher power can assist a target in mentally detaching from the process. People who've suffered abuse in childhood, have been exposed to eccentric family patterns and who have substance abuse issues are also more likely to be influenced [source: Curtis ].
Mental detachment is one of the POW-survival techniques now taught to soldiers as part of their training. It involves the target psychologically removing himself from his actual surroundings through visualization, the constant repetition of a mantra and various other meditative techniques. The military also teaches soldiers about the methods used in brainwashing, because a target's knowledge of the process tends to make it less effective [source: Webb ]. While the U. Scholars have traced the roots of systematic thought reform to the prison camps of communist Russia in the early s, when political prisoners were routinely "re-educated" to the communist view of the world.
But it was when the practice spread to China and the writings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung "The Little Red Book" that the world started to take notice [source: Boissoneault ]. In , Mao Zedong , who would later lead the Chinese Communist Party, used the phrase ssu-hsiang tou-cheng translated as "thought struggle" to describe a process of brainwashing.
Political prisoners in China and Korea were reportedly subjected to communist-conversion techniques as a matter of course. The modern concept and the term "brainwashing" was first used by journalist Edward Hunter in to describe what had happened to American POWs during the Korean War.
Hunter introduced the concept at a time when Americans were already afraid: It was the Cold War, and America panicked at the idea of mass communist indoctrination through "brainwashing" — they might be converted and not even know it! In the wake of the Korean War revelations, the U. In one study, the CIA supposedly gave subjects including the famed Timothy Leary LSD in order to study the effects of mind-altering drugs and gauge the effectiveness of psychedelics at inducing a brainwashing-friendly state of mind.
The results were not that encouraging, and subjects were supposedly harmed by the experiments. Drug experimentation by the CIA was officially cancelled by Congress in the s, although some claim it still happens under the radar. Public interest in brainwashing briefly subsided after the Cold War but resurfaced in the s and s with the emergence of countless non-mainstream political and religious movements during that era.
Parents who were horrified by their children's new beliefs and activities were sure they'd been brainwashed by a " cult. One supposed victim of brainwashing at that time was Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, who would later use a brainwashing defense when she was on trial for bank robbery. Hearst became famous in the early s after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army the SLA, which some deem a "political cult" and ended up joining the group.
Hearst reports that she was locked in a dark closet for several days after her kidnapping and was kept hungry, tired, brutalized and afraid for her life while SLA members bombarded her with their anti-capitalist political ideology. Within two months of her kidnapping, Patty had changed her name, issued a statement in which she referred to her family as the "pig-Hearsts" and appeared on a security tape robbing a bank with her kidnappers.
Patty Hearst stood trial for bank robbery in , defended by the famous F. Lee Bailey. The defense claimed that Hearst was brainwashed by the SLA and would not have committed the crime otherwise. In her mental state, she could not tell right from wrong. Hearst was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison.
She only served two — in , President Carter commuted her sentence [source: Wilson ]. Kelly was found guilty of sexual exploitation of a child, bribery, racketeering and sex trafficking involving five victims according to NPR.
Parents of two young women as well as some of Kelly's inner circle said the singer brainwashed women and kept them in a cult where he controlled everything they did, according to BuzzFeed News.
There had been nearly 30 years of allegations of Kelly exploiting women, but in any case, "brainwashing" wasn't part of the list of things that he was charged with. Modern literature and film use the brainwashing scenario pretty liberally.
It gets to the very nature of humanity: Are we all ultimately reducible to puppets? The protagonist in George Orwell's " " undergoes a classic case of brainwashing that ends with the famous concession to his tormentors: "two plus two equals five.
Another "insanity by brainwashing" defense hit the courtroom in , when Lee Boyd Malvo stood trial for his role in the sniper attacks in and around Washington, D. The year-old Malvo and year-old John Allen Muhammad shot 10 people and wounded three in a killing spree. The defense claimed that the teenaged Malvo was brainwashed by Muhammad into committing the crimes, which he would not have committed if he weren't under Muhammad's control.
As Carlin Flora wrote in Psychology Today back in The argument was that Malvo was brainwashed, and because he was brainwashed he could not tell right from wrong, to the point that he laughed when describing the crimes.
Insanity defenses in general are rarely asserted and almost never prevail" [source: Flora ].
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