The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing (1956) | Hacker News Reader

The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing (1956)

archive.org

66 pointsOatseller25 comments

Just skimmed through a bit, but I found this particular part comparing modern hyper-communicative society to mental attacks to be interesting

These subtle menticidal forces operate both within the mind and outside it. They have been strengthened in their effect by the growth in complexity of our civilization. The modern means of mass communication bring the entire world daily into each man's home; the techniques of propaganda and salesmanship have been refined and systematized; there is scarcely any hiding place from the constant visual and verbal assault on the mind. The pressures of daily life impel more and more people to seek an easy escape from responsibility and maturity. Indeed, it is difficult to withstand these pressures; to many the offer of a political panacea is very tempting, to others the offer of escape through alcohol, drugs, or other artificial pleasures is irresistible.

Free men in a free society must learn not only to recognize this stealthy attack on mental integrity and fight it, but must learn also what there is in side man's mind that makes him vulnerable to this attack, what it is that makes him, in many cases, actually long for a way out of the responsibilities that republican democracy and maturity place on him.

Another interesting quote on his Wikipedia page [0]

"And yet one day men will have to grow up. Compared with the long ages of human existence on earth, our civilization is in its infancy. Sooner or later we must be ready to leave the dreamland of childhood, where imagination finds unlimited scope, and take our place in a world of limited freedoms. That world however, can in the long run give us something better than any vision conjured up in childhood." – Total War and the Human Mind, 1944.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_Meerloo

When I see the length of some of the articles featured on HN, I start to think that HN is just a giant conspiracy to stop me from getting anything done ;-)

The more dastardly conspirators upvote you, for obvious reasons.

Hey thanks I learned a new English word (I'm French).

I thought you wanted to wright "bastardly" at first ;-)

Interestingly, although Meerloo seems to think that the Reichstag fire was a Nazi plot, the Wikipedia article on the incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire) makes it sound like the current consensus is that Van der Lubbe set the fire after all.

I wouldn't trust wikipedia on any political controversy.

EDIT: I have no knowledge about this particular controversy though.

> makes it sound like the current consensus is that Van der Lubbe set the fire after all.

Does it?

> The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.

The German one is not quite so sure either: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstagsbrand

> Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested at the scene. However, the circumstances and especially who did it could never be cleared up without doubt, and are still an object of controversy today.

The English wikipedia article also says: "According to Ian Kershaw, writing in 1998, the consensus of nearly all historians is that Van der Lubbe did set the Reichstag on fire. Although Van der Lubbe was certainly an arsonist and clearly played a role, there has been considerable popular and scientific debate over whether he acted alone; the case is still discussed."

Wow. This article is the definition of tl:dr.

But it did remind me of a professor I had in College - he described himself as one of the two most expert hypnotists in the world - and described how the CIA kept asking for his help. He had discovered that people could be hypnotized to do things against their will, and with no memory of the hypnosis. He said that they would react just like Oswald to their actions under hypnosis. And my professor believed that the other expert worked with the CIA.

Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

You should nail down this story. Write the guy, ask for background, confirm your version of the story, etc. The reason I say this is, if your memory is off by a single degree, that could change the entire story here. If your professor's memory is off by a single degree, getting that resolved could prevent some other people from hearing the story and going down a rabbit hole and causing themselves unneeded anxiety. I've never read a hypnosis book that suggested people would do things against their will, but that is different from being open to suggestion.

Obviously, his work was very secret. He shared some of the techniques with some of his students - and there are more steps involved than normal hypnosis. You can believe it or not. As for "anxiety" - well, have you looked around at our world recently? Wars, aggression, suffering, struggling, greed. One might argue that we should rationally be feeling more than "anxiety".

Is there a difference between "doing things against [your] will" and being lead to - temporarily - believe that is it your will to do what is being instructed?

Who was your professor?

Would just like to check out his work.

His work was secret - even from other hypnotists. So I don't think anyone would be able to confirm anything. But I will say that I had reason to trust what he was describing - especially given his expertise.

Just half-read, half-skimmed through the article. The TL;DR is simply that almost all humans have a limit of mental breakdown, and torture tactics have proven to destroy the mental barrier.

What was more interesting was the author's analysis of human behavior and notions of fear, courage, and conformity.

I'm a member of a religion that is often thought of as a cult, and a website where I share my experiences in said religion is often Googled by people looking to confirm their cult-oriented thinking (edit: to clarify, they are googling to confirm that their assumption, that religion X as a cult, is true).

So I ended up doing a lot of reading up on brainwashing. My tack was to determine the objective signs of brainwashing or mind control, and it was a very productive exercise, even though I came up negative regarding my own experience.

What did fascinate me, though, was learning about Douglas Rushkoff's research on our consumer culture. "The Persuaders" (Frontline/PBS) is a pretty amazing show that gets at what I suspect is currently the biggest brainwashing-equivalent threat that we face.

I'm curious to know what you determined are the objective signs of brainwashing and mind control. Would you share?

It's been a while, but if it helps, I divided my research into different categories, like the signs that you'd expect from an organization using brainwashing techniques, the objective signs that you'd expect in a leader or leadership team using brainwashing, and the objective signs of someone affected by brainwashing.

Using #2 as an example, some people assume that because an organization has a publicly-visible leader, that person calls the shots (edit for clarity: when in fact the organization may rely most on local councils, etc. and not so much on the figurehead). That's why it's important to be clear on one's own status--outsider or insider. This was a huge research boon for me. That clarification results in a better idea of your own biases, and also gives you an idea of the way your opposites (outsiders if you're an insider) may be getting their information or education.

It is extremely easy to get one's own subjective thinking caught up in this, no matter what your position. For example, some frequently-listed signs of brainwashing are "emotional attachment" and "dependency." Not very helpful in some hopefully obvious ways; these terms are practically plug-n-play with confirmation bias. On the other hand, it _could_ be helpful information if you developed a set of criteria. Some have tried, as I recall. Nothing scientific because you essentially end up typologizing.

The other rather frightening thing was learning about government-sponsored anti-cult movements, like the fairly recent movement in Russia. TBH, the whole thing was pretty jacked up, and I cut it short when I started reading about possibly innocent people getting locked up in psych wards. Another surprising "anti-cult" force commonly listed is the media, and this seems like it could hold true at least to the degree that a news outlet is willing to sensationalize vs. provide solid reporting (then you get into what is solid reporting, etc.). After researching that, IMO if you're getting cult information from the media, it's a good idea to remind yourself that it's not the same as doing your own research, no matter what the facts are about the organization in question.

How can you determine who the insiders are if you are an outsider?

I'm not familiar with anti-cult movements. I'll have to look into it.

I might consider that if you find yourself referring to other people as outsiders, you might be in a cult (though, I may be using a different definition than you).

Ah, so just to clarify regarding insider / outsider terminology, I'm getting those terms from my research into religion in general and anthropology[1][2] rather than my own religion. But that made me chuckle a bit, the idea of a bunch of stepford wives chanting "outsider...outsider" and banishing someone. That is a familiar sort of stereotype to me as an insider, though many outsiders (again, not really my term, just a convenient abstraction) haven't usually seen such a mental concept through to completion via e.g. direct research, so it's still a shockingly common perception. I have some pretty hilarious anecdotes from encounters with those perceptions, but they are long to tell.

(BTW I'm happy to leave the non-scholarly use of terms like "outsider" to nation-states[3]...hehe)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Insider-Outsider-Problem-Study-Religio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaijin

Thanks for the links. I've started to look at them.

Sorry, I don't have much more to add to the conversation for now.

Interesting tome. I wonder how much of it is actually empirically accurate?

I'll skim it and see what's up. Obviously people will be jumping to call this some sort of conspiracy theory style document, but whatever, maybe the information is useful.

It reminds me of a floppy disk that came into my possession, in the days of floppy disks being actual things. The label read: "Dear Friend, Please tell my story. God bless you, Dave Koresh". I was intrigued, though I knew even then that its connection with the famous Branch Davidian leader was tenuous at the absolute best. After inserting it and carefully checking for viruses, I found that the contents were vaguely anarcho-punk, techno-liberwankian writings of unknown provenance, perhaps culled from USENET or similar. Many of them had no attribution.

In short, food for thought, but needs solid confirming data to be taken utterly seriously.

I submitted this link to HN but didn't upload the text to archive.org. I was doing some research on marketing and advertising methods used by politicians in their campaign material (just general interest, no particular party or conspiracy theories).

I don't know which article linked to this text (I had opened many tabs as I was reading) but it appeared interesting enough for a submission to HN. It didn't generate any interest initially, but I received an email from HN that it appeared to be an interesting post and that I should submit it again, so I did.

The second post has made it to the front page and generated some discussion, I was going to post a link to the downloadable formats provided by archive.org, but after checking the archive.org page I see that the text is actually a published book [0] (1956, by Joost Meerloo (1903-1976)) uploaded by someone with an Obama conspiracy theory that may not have the permission to release the text to archive.org under a Creative Commons license (there are links from Wikipedia to other online versions).

There's a Wikipedia page for Joost Meerloo[1] with links to online versions of this and one other of his books - Delusion and Mass Delusion (Meerloo 1949) [2], the Wikipedia bibliography list some other interesting titles authored by Meerloo.

The book is available on Amazon (and goodreads.com) but the publisher (Progressive Press?) appears to have many conspiracy-related releases so I don't know how reputable they are.

[0] The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing (1956, by Joost Meerloo (1903-1976)) http://www.amazon.ca/The-Rape-Mind-Psychology-Brainwashing/d... http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6736285-the-rape-of-the-m...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_Meerloo

[2] http://www.lermanet.com/exit/mass-delusion-meerloo.htm

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