DARK PERSUASION
A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media
BY JOEL E. DIMSDALE
Book Reviews
Table of ContentsPreface Prelude to Murder: from Rural Del Mar to Heaven’s Gate Part One Efforts by Government and Academe 1 Before Pavlov: Torture and Conversion 2 Pavlov’s Dogs and the Soviet Show Trials 3 Extracting Information with Drugs: the Military’s Quest in World War 4 A Cold War Prelude to Korea 5 The Korean War and the Birth of Brainwashing 6 The CIA Strikes Back: Dead Bodies 7 Dead Memories: the Canadian Legacy of Ewen Cameron Part Two Efforts by Criminals and Religious Groups 8 Flash Conversion of Hostages 9 Patricia Hearst: Where Stockholm Met Indoctrination 10 From Racial Harmony to Death in the Jungle 11 Heaven’s Gate: Beliefs or Delusions? Part Three Into the 21st century 12 The Beleaguered Persistence of “Brainwashing” 13 Brainwashing’s Future in the 21st Century |
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Overview
Brainwashing crept into the twentieth century insidiously, hiding from view in the dog labs of St. Petersburg. By the end of the century, the world was obsessed with it. It promised to make the new man, but it also provided harsh tools for interrogation. Government-sponsored researchers around the world raced to develop techniques to enhance persuasion and also to defend against it, while cult leaders employed it as a tool for indoctrinating followers.
This book traces the evolution of brainwashing in the 20th century. With its beginnings in torture and religious conversion, coercive persuasion was transformed when Pavlov introduced scientific approaches. His research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, and many believe Pavlov’s techniques helped elicit confessions during the Soviet Show Trials. When World War II erupted, governments raced to develop drugs for interrogation, but this work on coercive persuasion was hidden from public view.
Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep and hallucinogens. But it wasn’t just governmental agencies that were interested in dark persuasion: cults used the techniques as well. The outcomes, whether at the hands of governments or cult leaders, were all-too-often shatteringly destructive.
History is shaped by individuals acting in the context of vast impersonal forces. Who were the people who molded brainwashing? What did they think they were doing? What were their motivations? And how will social media and neuroscience research determine the evolution of brainwashing in the 21st century?
This book traces the evolution of brainwashing in the 20th century. With its beginnings in torture and religious conversion, coercive persuasion was transformed when Pavlov introduced scientific approaches. His research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, and many believe Pavlov’s techniques helped elicit confessions during the Soviet Show Trials. When World War II erupted, governments raced to develop drugs for interrogation, but this work on coercive persuasion was hidden from public view.
Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep and hallucinogens. But it wasn’t just governmental agencies that were interested in dark persuasion: cults used the techniques as well. The outcomes, whether at the hands of governments or cult leaders, were all-too-often shatteringly destructive.
History is shaped by individuals acting in the context of vast impersonal forces. Who were the people who molded brainwashing? What did they think they were doing? What were their motivations? And how will social media and neuroscience research determine the evolution of brainwashing in the 21st century?
Excerpts from Chapter 2
The dogs were restless. Penned in their cages in the basement of the Institute for Experimental Medicine, they were alone and weary from their daytime jobs in the professor’s laboratory. But it wasn’t the dark or the isolation or fatigue that got to them. It was the incessant dripping and lapping of water on the floor of their kennel.
Although September 22, 1924 started out as a fairly typical day in Leningrad, overcast and raining, the rain increased throughout the day until the Neva River once again overran its embankment. This time, the flood would become the largest in centuries and it headed straight for the dogs.
The water level in the kennel rose and the dogs started barking. At first, their paws sloshed around in the chilly water, but as the hours went by the water covered their bellies and shoulders until they were half floating in their cages with their nostrils pressed anxiously against the top wire mesh of the cages. They howled in fear and desperately snuffled the air while they could get it.
At the last moment, a dog handler raced through the flooded streets to the Institute where he encountered chaos—panicked dogs, floating cages, and the fetid water of the Neva. One by one, he rescued the dogs but first he had to force their heads under the water to get them out of their cages. The dogs resisted out of panic.
The dogs were never the same. Their dispositions changed dramatically: the meek became aggressive and the gregarious became shy. It was as if an entirely new “being” inhabited each dog. This was bad enough, but the researchers were also struck by the fact that the dogs had forgotten all the complex learning they had been taught in the laboratory. The dogs’ memories were wiped clean.
The staff talked about the dogs’ memory loss for weeks and the scientists wrote their colleagues about this strange event. This might all have been dismissed as a curiosity except that it took place in the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov built his career on meticulous observation and experimentation with dogs. For the rest of his life, he talked about the flood, and his comments about traumatic stress and memory reverberated widely, given his relationship with Russia’s Communist leaders….
In October 1919, Lenin visited Pavlov at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. He stayed for two hours; it was more than just a “photo op” visit. Lenin hoped that Pavlov’s experiments could bolster the State’s efforts to mold the New Man. As recounted by one of Pavlov’s colleagues, Lenin described the challenges of building the new world of Communism and asked Pavlov’s advice. How could he control individualism and shape human behavior so that it would conform to Communist thinking?
Pavlov: “Do you mean that you would like to standardize the population of Russia? Make them all behave in the same way?”
Lenin: “Exactly… That’s what I want… and you must help us…by your studies of human behavior.”
Lenin was fascinated when Pavlov described the details of how he was able to shape dogs’ behaviors. He immediately grasped the implications of Pavlov’s studies:
Lenin: “Does this mean that hereditary factors can be overcome by proper education?”
Pavlov: “Under certain conditions—yes. They can be overcome…. Conditioned reflexes can abolish unconditioned reflexes, or, as they are called, natural instinct.”
Lenin: “That’s fine. Excellent. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”
Although September 22, 1924 started out as a fairly typical day in Leningrad, overcast and raining, the rain increased throughout the day until the Neva River once again overran its embankment. This time, the flood would become the largest in centuries and it headed straight for the dogs.
The water level in the kennel rose and the dogs started barking. At first, their paws sloshed around in the chilly water, but as the hours went by the water covered their bellies and shoulders until they were half floating in their cages with their nostrils pressed anxiously against the top wire mesh of the cages. They howled in fear and desperately snuffled the air while they could get it.
At the last moment, a dog handler raced through the flooded streets to the Institute where he encountered chaos—panicked dogs, floating cages, and the fetid water of the Neva. One by one, he rescued the dogs but first he had to force their heads under the water to get them out of their cages. The dogs resisted out of panic.
The dogs were never the same. Their dispositions changed dramatically: the meek became aggressive and the gregarious became shy. It was as if an entirely new “being” inhabited each dog. This was bad enough, but the researchers were also struck by the fact that the dogs had forgotten all the complex learning they had been taught in the laboratory. The dogs’ memories were wiped clean.
The staff talked about the dogs’ memory loss for weeks and the scientists wrote their colleagues about this strange event. This might all have been dismissed as a curiosity except that it took place in the laboratory of the Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov built his career on meticulous observation and experimentation with dogs. For the rest of his life, he talked about the flood, and his comments about traumatic stress and memory reverberated widely, given his relationship with Russia’s Communist leaders….
In October 1919, Lenin visited Pavlov at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. He stayed for two hours; it was more than just a “photo op” visit. Lenin hoped that Pavlov’s experiments could bolster the State’s efforts to mold the New Man. As recounted by one of Pavlov’s colleagues, Lenin described the challenges of building the new world of Communism and asked Pavlov’s advice. How could he control individualism and shape human behavior so that it would conform to Communist thinking?
Pavlov: “Do you mean that you would like to standardize the population of Russia? Make them all behave in the same way?”
Lenin: “Exactly… That’s what I want… and you must help us…by your studies of human behavior.”
Lenin was fascinated when Pavlov described the details of how he was able to shape dogs’ behaviors. He immediately grasped the implications of Pavlov’s studies:
Lenin: “Does this mean that hereditary factors can be overcome by proper education?”
Pavlov: “Under certain conditions—yes. They can be overcome…. Conditioned reflexes can abolish unconditioned reflexes, or, as they are called, natural instinct.”
Lenin: “That’s fine. Excellent. That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”