Brainwashed

I recently picked up from our local library the book Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control by Dominic Streatfeild - (2007 St. Martin's Press).  It's part of my recent inquiry into L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and the "church" of Scientology.  And though LRH's new religious movement is given only a few passing references there is much within this history that has connection to the practices and policies of Scientology.

Particularly the studies in hypnosis, sleep deprivation, and isolation.  These sound eerily like the accounts told by "blown" Scientologists - those who have fled the church.   Though Hubbard always denied the accusation of hypnosis in Dianetic "auditing" sessions, the state of reverie that he prescribes sounds very much like the very suggestible state brought about by hypnotists.  Accounts of sleep deprivation by former members of the Sea Org and the practice of cutting secluding members away from family members who might question or oppose the teachings of Scientology have followed Scientolgoy since it's inception.  It's not difficult to understand why they've been accused of brainwashing their victims...er members.

Streatfeild's book deals with numerous aspects of mind control - from the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930's, The CIA's development of LSD as a 'truth serum', the brainwashing of American POWs during the Korean War, Subliminal messages in advertisements,and thought control by New Religious Moments (a fancy euphemism for cults) such as the Unification Church and Scientology.  As a documentary filmmaker, Streatfeild is adept at interviewing his sources.  And it shows.  The book is a well written combination of narrative and pedagogy.  He tells the stories of the victims - and often of the perpetrators of thought control experiments -  with unnerving and disquieting acumen.

The chapter entitled Sleep was especially disturbing to me.  Steatfeild described the out-of-control psychiatric horrors of Dr. (Donald) Ewen Cameron.  His practice was surely the kind of psychiatry that L. Ron Hubbard so despised - indiscriminate use of Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT), aggressive prescription of powerful narcotics, and his "annihilation" therapy wherein he erased a patients mind through a combination of ECT and drugs and then, using endlessly repeating tape recorded messages, reprogrammed his patients.  Furthering this nightmare was Cameron's connection to the CIA's secret Project MKULTRA.

And though this kind of torture (not treatment) is rightly condemned... there is one aspect of Cameron's technique that reminded me of Dianetics.  Cameron would record psychiatric sessions with his patients.  Then he would snip out the portions of the tape where the patient had talked about the source of their issue and would force them to listen to this played back over and over and over and over again.

Similarly - during a Dianetic auditing session the auditor, when seeing a movement on the E-Meter's needle indicating an engram, will tell his patient (early Dianetics used the word patient, but later it was dropped from practice when it became apparent that LRH's techniques could provide no demonstrable health benefits) to "run that again" and again and again and again until there is no more movement on the E-Meter.

In the end Brainwashing and thought control is an impractical method of control.  While some forms have proved to have limited effect, they cannot be sustained long term.  Given time and a removal from the coercive practices used by totalitarian regimes (be they communist governments, unethical intelligence agencies, or religious cults) a person can regain their critical thinking abilities. 

Streatfeild's book is engaging and informative. I'd recommend it to anyone who values freedom of thought and critical thinking.