How to Recognize and Avoid Brainwashing

Co-authored by Natalie Feinblatt, PsyD

Last Updated: October 19, 2024 Fact Checked

The term “brainwashing” was first used in the 1950s by American journalist Edward Hunter, reporting on the treatment of American soldiers in Chinese prison camps during the Korean War.^{[1]
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Research source} Brainwashing techniques have been documented as far back as the Egyptian Book of the Dead and used by abusive spouses and parents, self-proclaimed psychics, cult leaders, secret societies, revolutionaries, and dictators to bring others under their thumbs and manipulate them seemingly willingly. These techniques don’t involve fantastic weapons or exotic powers, but they do involve an understanding of the human psyche and a desire to exploit it. By understanding these techniques better, you can learn how to protect yourself and others from them.

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Recognizing Brainwashing Tactics

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1
Understand that those who attempt to brainwash others tend to prey upon the weak and vulnerable. Not everyone is a target for mind control, but certain people are more susceptible to forms of it at different times. A skillful manipulator knows what to look for and targets people who are going through a difficult period in their life or a change that may or may not be of their own making.^{[2]
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Expert Source

Natalie Feinblatt, PsyD
Clinical Psychologist

Expert Interview. 30 July 2021.} Possible candidates include:
- People who have lost their jobs and fear for their future.
- Recently divorced people, particularly when the divorce was a bitter one.^{[3]
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- Those suffering from lingering illness, especially one they don’t understand.
- People who have lost a loved one, particularly if they were very close to that person and had few other friends.
- Young people away from home for the first time. These are particular favorites of religious cult leaders.
- People who are regarded as socially awkward by their mainstream peers. They frequently tend to be loners but seek like minded people who might be few and far between.
- One particular predatory tactic is to find out enough information about the person and his or her belief system to explain the tragedy the person has experienced in a manner consistent with that belief system. This can later be expanded to explain history in general through that belief system, while subtly modifying it to the brainwasher’s interpretation.
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Be aware of people who try to isolate you or someone you know from outside influences. As people who are experiencing a personal tragedy or other major life change are inclined to feel lonely, a skillful brain-washer works to amplify those feelings of loneliness. This isolation can take several forms.^{[4]
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- For young people in a cult, it may be preventing them from contacting their friends and family members.
- For a significant other in an abusive relationship, it may mean never letting the victim out of the abuser’s sight or permitting contact with family and friends.
- For prisoners in an enemy prison camp, it may involve isolating prisoners from one another while subjecting them to subtle or overt forms of torture.
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Watch for attacks on the victim’s self-esteem. Brainwashing only works when the brainwasher is in a superior position to the victim. This means that the victim has to be broken down, so the brainwasher can rebuild the victim in his or her image. This can be done through mental, emotional, or ultimately physical means for long enough to physical and emotionally wear down the target.^{[5]
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- Mental tortures may begin with lying to the victim and then progress to embarrassing or intimidating the victim. This form of torture can be done with words or gestures ranging from an expression of disapproval to invading the victim’s personal space.
- Emotional tortures are not kind, of course, but may begin with verbal insults, then progress to badgering, spitting, or more dehumanizing things such as stripping the victim to be photographed or just looked at. The goal of these activities is to break down your natural instinct to fight back so that you become placid.^{[6]
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  Clinical Psychologist
  
  Expert Interview. 30 July 2021.}
- Physical tortures may include starvation, freezing, sleep deprivation, beatings, mutilations, and others, none are acceptable in society. Physical torture is commonly used by abusive parents and spouses, as well as in prison and “re-education” camps.
4
Look out for those who try to make being “part of the group” more attractive than the outside world. Along with wearing down the victim’s resistance, it’s important to provide a seemingly more attractive alternative to what the victim has known before contact with the brainwasher. This can be done through a variety of methods:^{[7]
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- Allowing contact only with others who have already been brainwashed. This creates a form of peer pressure that encourages the new victim to want to be like and be accepted by the new group. This may be reinforced through touch, rap sessions, or group sex, or by stricter means such as a uniform dress code, controlled diet, or other rigid rules.
- Repetition of the message through means ranging from singing or chanting the same phrases over and over, often emphasizing certain key words or phrases.
- Mimicking the rhythm of the human heartbeat through the thought leader’s speech cadence or musical accompaniment. This can be enhanced with lighting that’s not too dim or too harsh and a room temperature to encourage relaxation.
- Never letting the victim have time to think. This can mean simply never letting the victim have time alone, or it can mean bombarding the victim with repeated lectures on topics beyond comprehension, while discouraging questions.
- Presenting an “us vs. them” mentality where the thought leader is right and the outside world is wrong. The goal is to achieve blind obedience, to where the victim will commit his or her money and life to the brainwasher and his or her stated goals.
5
Recognize that brainwashers often offer rewards when the victim has “turned.” Once the victim is completely broken and complacent, he or she can then be retrained. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to several years, depending on the circumstances of the brainwashing.
- An extreme form of this complacency is known as the Stockholm syndrome, where two bank robbers in Sweden in 1973 held four hostages for a period of 131 hours. After the hostages were rescued, they found themselves identifying with their captors, to the point that one of the women became engaged to her captor and another set up a legal defense fund for the criminals. Patty Hearst, kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, is also considered a victim of Stockholm syndrome.^{[8]
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Recognize new ways of thinking in the victim’s brain. Much of the retraining is done through some of the same operant conditioning techniques of reward and punishment that were used to break the victim down in the first place. Positive experiences are now used to reward the victim for thinking as the brainwasher desires, while negative experiences are used to punish the last vestiges of disobedience.
- One form of reward is giving the victim a new name. This is commonly associated with cults, but the SLA also did this with Patty Hearst when they gave her the name “Tania.” ^{[9]
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Rinse and repeat. Although brainwashing can be effective and thorough, most brainwashers find it necessary to test the depths of their control over their subjects. Control can be tested in several ways, depending on the brainwasher’s goals, with the results determining how much reinforcement the victim needs to remain brainwashed.
- Extorting money is one way to test control, as well as enrich the brainwasher’s pockets. Psychic medium Rose Marks used her control over author Jude Deveraux to bilk Deveraux out of $17 million in cash and property while ruining the writer’s career.^{[10]
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- Committing criminal acts, either with or for the brainwasher, is another. Patty Hearst accompanying the SLA on one of their robberies is an example of this.^{[11]
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Part 2

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Identifying the Brainwashed

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Brainwashing victims can appear focused on the group and or its leader to the point of obsession. At the same time, they seem to be unable to solve problems without the help of the group or its leader.
” Brainwashing victims will agree unquestioningly with whatever their group or leader dictates, without any regard to the difficulty of following in lockstep or the consequences of doing so. They may also withdraw from people who don’t share their interest in the brainwasher.^{[13]
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3
Look for signs of withdrawal from life. Brainwashing victims tend to be listless, withdrawn, and devoid of whatever personality marked them before they were brainwashed. This is particularly noticeable in both cult victims and spouses in an abusive relationship.
- Some victims may internalize their anger, leading to depression and a host of physical disorders, possibly even to suicide. Others may vent their anger on anyone they see as the cause of their problems, often through verbal or physical confrontation.

Part 3

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Rinsing Out the Brainwashing

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This realization is often accompanied by denial and anguish, as the subject begins to question things without having had practice in questioning things. Gradually, the subject should become aware of how he or she was manipulated.
2
Expose the subject to ideas that contradict the brainwashing. Exposure to multiple options, without overwhelming the subject with too many options at once, will provide the subject with a new, broader perspective from which to challenge the beliefs implanted by the brainwasher.
- Ask small questions in a non-judgemental way to restart their critical thinking processes. For instance, if the person belonged to a cult with a vow of poverty, say, "But I heard the leader lives in a Beverley Hills mansion. What do you think about that?"^{[14]
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  Expert Source
  
  Natalie Feinblatt, PsyD
  Clinical Psychologist
  
  Expert Interview. 30 July 2021.}
- Some of these contrasting ideas may, in themselves, come with their own forms of manipulation. In such cases, it’s helpful to also seek out as unbiased forms of those ideas as possible.
- A stronger form of this exposure is to force the subject to relive the brainwashing experience by having him or her act it out, but providing the subject with options to counteract the brainwashing. This type of therapy requires a therapist skilled in psychodrama techniques.
Let them come to their own conclusions as you ask questions.^{[15]
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Expert Source

Natalie Feinblatt, PsyD
Clinical Psychologist

Expert Interview. 30 July 2021.} At first, the subject may become anxious about making decisions for himself or herself or feel ashamed about making the “wrong” decision now or in the past. With practice, however, this anxiety will fade.

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Is brainwashing necessarily a bad thing?

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Yes. Anytime you are using mind control on a person to manipulate their thoughts, it is harmful. You are interfering with their free will.

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Is there a way to reverse the effects of brainwashing?

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Victims of brainwashing often develop executive and cognitive disorders because the associated skills have been de-patterned to make them less likely to disobey or question orders. In general, victims have been programmed to not value or trust themselves, but to instead grant highest trust and access to the abuser. The solution is to get the victim to trust and value himself again, and then replace the harmful programming through therapy.

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Can I realize when I've been brainwashed?

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Yes!! You no longer have opinions, thoughts, desires, or behaviors that are contrary to the leader. Then you can recognize mind control or brainwashing. When the desires of the leader are paramount, there is a problem. You are entitled to your own thoughts and beliefs. Once those are countermanded by an "authority" figure, you know you are no longer thinking for yourself.

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If you generally feel you have no free will or any form of control over yourself, you you might be being brainwashed.

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It is possible to recover from the effects of brainwashing without the assistance of someone else. Studies in 1961 by psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton and psychologist Edgar Schein showed that few of the POWs exposed to Chinese brainwashing techniques actually were turned to Communism, and of those few that were, they renounced those beliefs after leaving captivity.

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Warnings

While forms of hypnosis may be used in brainwashing, hypnosis is not synonymous with brainwashing. Brainwashing uses a superficial system of reward and punishment to affect its victims, and its goal is always to tear down the resistance of those who it is inflicted upon. Hypnosis normally begins with getting its target to relax, involves going deeper into the psyche, and usually does not involve rewards and punishments. In spite of its depth, hypnosis often works faster on a subject than does brainwashing.

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Certain specialists called de-programmers were often employed during the 1980s by concerned parents to forcibly rescue their children from cults. Many of these de-programmers, however, used techniques similar to brainwashing themselves in order to counter-indoctrinate the “rescued” subjects. Their deprogramming methods, however, often proved ineffective because of brainwashing’s need to be continually reinforced, and kidnapping their targets brought them up on criminal charges.

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