Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 3
Contemporary Uses of the Brainwashing Concept: 2000 to
Mid-2007
Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D.
University of Alberta
Abstract
The brainwashing concept is sufficiently useful that it continues to appear in a
wide variety of legal, political, and social contexts. This article identifies those
contexts by summarizing its appearance in court cases, discussions about
cults and former cult members, terrorists, and alleged victims of state
repression between the years 2000 and mid-2007. In creating this summary,
we discover that a physiologist has examined the biochemical aspects of
persons going through brainwashing processes, and that (to varying degrees)
some judges and others related to the judiciary have realized that people who
have been through these processes have impaired judgment and often need
special counseling. Most dramatically, a new brainwashing program may be
operating in Communist China, a country whose political activities toward its
own citizens in the late 1940s and 1950s spawned so much of the initial
brainwashing research.
In relation to controversial religions, the brainwashing debate is particularly intense,
probably because so much is at stake. For groups themselves, avoiding a ‗spoiling
designation‘ as organizations that at least try to brainwash their members is vital for their
public images. Consequently, some groups have put out public relations statements
dismissing the validity of the concept (for example, The Family, 1993 Foundation for
Religious Freedom [Scientology], 2000:85-86), and they find support in the work of
scholars who argue that the concept itself has no social scientific validity (for example,
Aldridge, 2000, pp. 160-170 Anthony and Introvigne, 2006 Richardson, 1993). For several
academics and scholars on both sides of the issue, professional reputations are at stake,
which may explain why the debate over the concept has become acrimonious at times. For
others in the academic, legal, and ex-member communities, however, ‗brainwashing‘ is a
concept with great utility because it applies to intense programs of indoctrination that
various ideological groups impose upon members and/or potential members in efforts to
obtain social-psychological compliance and adherence.
In this article, I expand the discussion about the utility and applicability of brainwashing by
moving outside the comments of scholars (like myself) who have been involved in the social
scientific debate and bring forward examples of how professionals and laypeople in the
legal, political, financial, and ‗ex-cult‘ communities use brainwashing to make sense out of
their lives and events in them. In doing so, I introduce perspectives from people who are
not entangled in the rancorous exchanges within the social sciences about brainwashing but
who nevertheless use the concept. This article, therefore, proceeds inductively, as I gather,
organize, and present information about the use of brainwashing in descriptions that people
formulate about their own lives and the lives of others.
Methodologically, the data-gathering process that I use involves the examination of legal
documents and various presentations in newspapers, magazines, and biographical and
autobiographical accounts that mention brainwashing as possible explanations for intense,
(almost always) detrimental personality reformulation programs that people seemed to have
Contemporary Uses of the Brainwashing Concept: 2000 to
Mid-2007
Stephen A. Kent, Ph.D.
University of Alberta
Abstract
The brainwashing concept is sufficiently useful that it continues to appear in a
wide variety of legal, political, and social contexts. This article identifies those
contexts by summarizing its appearance in court cases, discussions about
cults and former cult members, terrorists, and alleged victims of state
repression between the years 2000 and mid-2007. In creating this summary,
we discover that a physiologist has examined the biochemical aspects of
persons going through brainwashing processes, and that (to varying degrees)
some judges and others related to the judiciary have realized that people who
have been through these processes have impaired judgment and often need
special counseling. Most dramatically, a new brainwashing program may be
operating in Communist China, a country whose political activities toward its
own citizens in the late 1940s and 1950s spawned so much of the initial
brainwashing research.
In relation to controversial religions, the brainwashing debate is particularly intense,
probably because so much is at stake. For groups themselves, avoiding a ‗spoiling
designation‘ as organizations that at least try to brainwash their members is vital for their
public images. Consequently, some groups have put out public relations statements
dismissing the validity of the concept (for example, The Family, 1993 Foundation for
Religious Freedom [Scientology], 2000:85-86), and they find support in the work of
scholars who argue that the concept itself has no social scientific validity (for example,
Aldridge, 2000, pp. 160-170 Anthony and Introvigne, 2006 Richardson, 1993). For several
academics and scholars on both sides of the issue, professional reputations are at stake,
which may explain why the debate over the concept has become acrimonious at times. For
others in the academic, legal, and ex-member communities, however, ‗brainwashing‘ is a
concept with great utility because it applies to intense programs of indoctrination that
various ideological groups impose upon members and/or potential members in efforts to
obtain social-psychological compliance and adherence.
In this article, I expand the discussion about the utility and applicability of brainwashing by
moving outside the comments of scholars (like myself) who have been involved in the social
scientific debate and bring forward examples of how professionals and laypeople in the
legal, political, financial, and ‗ex-cult‘ communities use brainwashing to make sense out of
their lives and events in them. In doing so, I introduce perspectives from people who are
not entangled in the rancorous exchanges within the social sciences about brainwashing but
who nevertheless use the concept. This article, therefore, proceeds inductively, as I gather,
organize, and present information about the use of brainwashing in descriptions that people
formulate about their own lives and the lives of others.
Methodologically, the data-gathering process that I use involves the examination of legal
documents and various presentations in newspapers, magazines, and biographical and
autobiographical accounts that mention brainwashing as possible explanations for intense,
(almost always) detrimental personality reformulation programs that people seemed to have
