洗脑术

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Brainwashing Techniques

Photo courtesy U.S. Army American POWs in the Korean War

In the late 1950s, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton studied former prisoners of Korean and Chinese war camps. He determined that they'd undergone a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner's sense of self and ended with what appeared to be a change in beliefs. Lifton ultimately defined a set of steps involved in the brainwashing cases he studied:

1. Assault on identity
2. Guilt
3. Self-betrayal
4. Breaking point
5. Leniency
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling of guilt
8. Releasing of guilt
9. Progress and harmony
10. Final confession and rebirth

Each of these stages takes place in an environment of isolation, meaning all "normal" social reference points are unavailable, and mind-clouding techniques like sleep deprivation and malnutrition are typically part of the process. There is often the presence or constant threat of physical harm, which adds to the target's difficulty in thinking critically and independently.

We can roughly divide the process Lifton identified into three stages: breaking down the self, introducing the possibility of salvation, and rebuilding the self.

Breaking down the self

• Assault on identity: You are not who you think you are.
  This is a systematic attack on a target's sense of self (also called his identity or ego) and his core belief system. The agent denies everything that makes the target who he is: "You are not a soldier." "You are not a man." "You are not defending freedom." The target is under constant attack for days, weeks or months, to the point that he becomes exhausted, confused and disoriented. In this state, his beliefs seem less solid.

• Guilt: You are bad.
  While the identity crisis is setting in, the agent is simultaneously creating an overwhelming sense of guilt in the target. He repeatedly and mercilessly attacks the subject for any "sin" the target has committed, large or small. He may criticize the target for everything from the "evilness" of his beliefs to the way he eats too slowly. The target begins to feel a general sense of shame, that everything he does is wrong.

• Self-betrayal: Agree with me that you are bad.
  Once the subject is disoriented and drowning in guilt, the agent forces him (either with the threat of physical harm or of continuance of the mental attack) to denounce his family, friends and peers who share the same "wrong" belief system that he holds. This betrayal of his own beliefs and of people he feels a sense of loyalty to increases the shame and loss of identity the target is already experiencing.

• Breaking point: Who am I, where am I and what am I supposed to do?
  With his identity in crisis, experiencing deep shame and having betrayed what he has always believed in, the target may undergo what in the lay community is referred to as a "nervous breakdown." In psychology, "nervous breakdown" is really just a collection of severe symptoms that can indicate any number of psychological disturbances. It may involve uncontrollable sobbing, deep depression and general disorientation. The target may have lost his grip on reality and have the feeling of being completely lost and alone.

  When the target reaches his breaking point, his sense of self is pretty much up for grabs -- he has no clear understanding of who he is or what is happening to him. At this point, the agent sets up the temptation to convert to another belief system that will save the target from his misery.

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The Possibility of Salvation

• Leniency: I can help you.
  With the target in a state of crisis, the agent offers some small kindness or reprieve from the abuse. He may offer the target a drink of water, or take a moment to ask the target what he misses about home. In a state of breakdown resulting from an endless psychological attack, the small kindness seems huge, and the target may experience a sense of relief and gratitude completely out of proportion to the offering, as if the agent has saved his life.

• Compulsion to confession: You can help yourself.
  For the first time in the brainwashing process, the target is faced with the contrast between the guilt and pain of identity assault and the sudden relief of leniency. The target may feel a desire to reciprocate the kindness offered to him, and at this point, the agent may present the possibility of confession as a means to relieving guilt and pain.

• Channeling of guilt: This is why you're in pain.
  After weeks or months of assault, confusion, breakdown and moments of leniency, the target's guilt has lost all meaning -- he's not sure what he has done wrong, he just knows he is wrong. This creates something of a blank slate that lets the agent fill in the blanks: He can attach that guilt, that sense of "wrongness," to whatever he wants. The agent attaches the target's guilt to the belief system the agent is trying to replace. The target comes to believe it is his belief system that is the cause of his shame. The contrast between old and new has been established: The old belief system is associated with psychological (and usually physical) agony; and the new belief system is associated with the possibility of escaping that agony.

• Releasing of guilt: It's not me; it's my beliefs.
  The embattled target is relieved to learn there is an external cause of his wrongness, that it is not he himself that is inescapably bad -- this means he can escape his wrongness by escaping the wrong belief system. All he has to do is denounce the people and institutions associated with that belief system, and he won't be in pain anymore. The target has the power to release himself from wrongness by confessing to acts associated with his old belief system.

  With his full confessions, the target has completed his psychological rejection of his former identity. It is now up to the agent to offer the target a new one.

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Rebuilding the Self

• Progress and harmony: If you want, you can choose good.
  The agent introduces a new belief system as the path to "good." At this stage, the agent stops the abuse, offering the target physical comfort and mental calm in conjunction with the new belief system. The target is made to feel that it is he who must choose between old and new, giving the target the sense that his fate is in his own hands. The target has already denounced his old belief system in response to leniency and torment, and making a "conscious choice" in favor of the contrasting belief system helps to further relieve his guilt: If he truly believes, then he really didn't betray anyone. The choice is not a difficult one: The new identity is safe and desirable because it is nothing like the one that led to his breakdown.

• Final confession and rebirth: I choose good.
  Contrasting the agony of the old with the peacefulness of the new, the target chooses the new identity, clinging to it like a life preserver. He rejects his old belief system and pledges allegiance to the new one that is going to make his life better. At this final stage, there are often rituals or ceremonies to induct the converted target into his new community. This stage has been described by some brainwashing victims as a feeling of "rebirth."

(See How Cults Work: Indoctrination for details on the thought-reform process that takes place specifically in destructive cults.)

A brainwashing process like the one discussed above has not been tested in a modern laboratory setting, because it's damaging to the target and would therefore be an unethical scientific experiment. Lifton created this description from first-hand accounts of the techniques used by captors in the Korean War and other instances of "brainwashing" around the same time. Since Lifton and other psychologists have identified variations on what appears to be a distinct set of steps leading to a profound state of suggestibility, an interesting question is why some people end up brainwashed and others don't.

Certain personality traits of the brainwashing targets can determine the effectiveness of the process. People who commonly experience great self doubt, have a weak sense of identity, and show a tendency toward guilt and absolutism (black-and-white thinking) are more likely to be successfully brainwashed, while a strong sense of identity and self-confidence can make a target more resistant to brainwashing. Some accounts show that faith in a higher power can assist a target in mentally detaching from the process. Mental detachment is one of the POW-survival techniques now taught to soldiers as part of their training. It involves the target psychologically removing himself from his actual surroundings through visualization, the constant repetition of a mantra and various other meditative techniques. The military also teaches soldiers about the methods used in brainwashing, because a target's knowledge of the process tends to make it less effective.

While the U.S. consciousness was turned to brainwashing in the 1950s in the aftermath of the Korean War, brainwashing has been around for longer than that. Scholars have traced the roots of systematic thought reform to the prison camps of communist Russia in the early 1900s, when political prisoners were routinely "re-educated" to the communist view of the world. But it was when the practice spread to China and the writings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung ("The Little Red Book") that the world started to take notice.

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连岳
    两天前，Digg有条新闻很受欢迎，叫做《洗脑是如何工作的》，严格地说，这属于科学新闻。科学家发现，人在接受观念时，信息先经过大脑的情感区（emotional brain），然后才到达理智区（rational brain）——翻译有可能不当，所以附上英文名称。
    除了邪教与传销，文明社会是反感洗脑的，也就是说，一定会尽量让信息进入每个人大脑的理智区，这样才能得到合理的结论。洗脑爱好者则相反，他们极力把信息留在情感区。
    这就可以解释“爱国主义是流氓最后的庇护所”这句话了，爱国主义本身显然是正当的诉求——而且几乎是每个人都认为是正当的，极其强势，所以相当具有情感挑动色彩，流氓自然是不爱国的，但是他们知道只要不讲道理，先把对手扣上“不爱国”的帽子，这些信息在经过听众的情感区时就会起作用。
    这句话还可以细分，“爱乡主义是地痞最后的庇护所”，也是成立的，经常可以看到有些腐败的官员，在对待正当的批评与建议时，不管三七二十一，就先脱离主题，恐吓批评者不得“抹黑我们的城市”、“抹黑我们的家乡”。
    当然，听众不是傻瓜，他们有正常判断力，当更符合理性判断的观点出现时，他们会接受——这也是不要替民众操太多心的原因之一，大家的判断力都差不了多少。所以，科学家认为“洗脑”还需要单一信息的重复灌输，不停地强化它们在情感区的印象。

訸訸

change your mind change yourself!

阿岩

俺英文水平不好啊

 

有没高手翻译一下

[em43]

偷着happy

很感兴趣，可以翻译一下吗？谢谢！

int

MGD！！太神奇了

1freesun

术业有专攻，洗脑业现在业蓬勃发展。

熊盼盼

sha ye bu ming bai

sui ran wo zhe ye shi yong ying wen da chu lai de

 

[em01][em01][em01]