Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, mind abuse, menticide, thought control, or thought reform) refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated". The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual's sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making. In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul maintains that the "principal aims of these psychological methods is to destroy a man's habitual patterns, space, hours, milieu, and so on."
Theories of brainwashing and of mind control were originally developed to explain how totalitarian regimes appeared to succeed in systematically indoctrinating prisoners of war through propaganda and torture techniques. These theories were later expanded and modified to explain a wider range of phenomena, especially conversions to new religious movements (NRMs).
Read more about Mind Control: Korean War and The Origin of Brainwashing, Army Report Debunks Brainwashing of American Prisoners of War, Cults and The Shift of Focus, Other Areas
Famous quotes containing the words mind and/or control:
“This is the essential distinction—even opposition—between the painting and the film: the painting is composed subjectively, the film objectively. However highly we rate the function of the scenario writer—in actual practice it is rated very low—we must recognize that the film is not transposed directly and freely from the mind by means of a docile medium like paint, but must be cut piece-meal out of the lumbering material of the actual visible world.”
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