14 - Brainwashing

The human mind is a complex and fascinating processor and creator of ideas. A person’s mind functions uniquely and has a direct impact on who he or she is personality. For these reasons, the progressive societies of the world find the idea of forcibly controlling someone else’s mind very abhorrent and unethical. This position about mind control has not always been endorsed, even in our own society. Certainly during wartime, these high ideals denouncing the use of mind control were not followed.

For example, during the Korean War in the early 1950s, communist powers used brainwashing or mind control as a weapon against captured prisoners. The idea was to destroy the individual’s personality and beliefs, and then reprogram or implant new ideas that were in line with the “enemy’s beliefs”. It is a very vicious way of influencing people and causing them to abandon the philosophy of life they voluntarily chose as they became adults.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States government decided that they should experiment and collect data about brainwashing so that they, too, could use this means of control. They asked a psychologist at a Montreal institute if he would collect information on mind control that would be useful to them. Canadians who came to the clinic for help with their psychological problems were used in the mind control experiments without their consent or their knowledge.

What sorts of maltreatment did these mentally ill patients suffer? The first step was to de-pattern or, rather, destroy the person’s original personality. Then, the patients would be vulnerable to new ideas and beliefs that could be implanted. Erasing the patients’ original ideas was accomplished by forcing them to live under strict environmental control. Some were given the hallucinogenic drug, LSD. Some were controlled by forcing them to sleep for long periods of time—even days, by administering drugs or using insulin injections to create a coma. High-voltage shock therapy was another method applied to control and alter the personalities of depressed patients. Another technique used to subdue patients was called psychic driving, which means that the person had to listen to tape recordings with repetitive messages until they ceased resisting. In some cases combinations of these treatments were applied.

Were the brainwashing experiments successful in accomplishing the task of controlling the minds’ of the people unfortunate enough to become patients or rather victims of such treatment? Most people in the program experienced permanent harm from the unethical methods used against them to alter their personalities and beliefs. Some lost many of their early memories; many experienced lasting nightmares from the treatment they received at the Montreal clinic. These people and their families have sought justice by bringing lawsuits against the CIA for initiating such a destructive program. The patients have received payment, but that does not compensate for the terrible damage to their minds and to their self-concepts.