Part 6: The Rape of the Mind

Breaking down the structure.

But what is the actual process to systematically and procedurally break down an individual during the brainwashing process?

The procedural steps can be broken down into several phases as follows (expanded upon in the excerpts from the book below) — in modern language.

1. Complete ‘structural demoralization’. The utilization of ‘tools’ (by the captor) like loneliness, intimidation, suggestion, and degradation in order to ‘break’ the captive.

2. The ‘inner surrender’ of the captive. The conversion and adaptation of one into a state of complete surrender. The victim at this point is becoming accepting of new ideology being imposed.

3. Political brainwashing & ideological conditioning. At this point, having already been broken, there are reinforcement mechanisms applied regularly. The captive is helped to ‘assume’ the thoughts of the captor at this stage.

4. Release & ‘freedom’ from captivity — however, the depth of penetration into the psyche matters as far as any healing process is concerned. The scars can linger.

Keeping in mind that the first-party victims of intensive brainwashing regimes are often not the only intended targets. The bystanders — common people witnessing these processes are also specifically intended, by way of second-order and third-order effect, to be demoralized and broken. In effect, the individual being ‘brainwashed’ and broken is intended to serve as a ‘warning’ to others of what may come to them.

Bear in mind that this information is meant to be applied to modern society.

It should be abundantly clear that there are victims of these processes — in more subtle forms — all around us. Consumer culture is one example of (but far from the only) the key driving forces behind these more subtle techniques — with marketers and public relations firms driving the strategy of mass demoralization — substituted in for Soviet or Nazi interrogators in a camp 80+ years in the past.

A Survey of Psychological Processes involved in Brainwashing and Menticide

PHASE I
ARTIFICIAL BREAKDOWN AND DECONDITIONING

The inquisitor tries to weaken the ego of his prisoner. Though originally physical torture was used -- hunger and cold are still very effective -- physical torture may often increase a person's stubbornness. Torture is intended to a much greater extent to act as a threat to the bystanders' (the people's) imagination. Their wild anticipation of torture leads more easily to THEIR breakdown when the enemy has need of their weakness. (Of course, occasionally a sadistic enemy may find individual pleasure in torture.)

The many devices the enemy makes use of include: intimidating suggestion, dramatic persuasion, mass suggestion, humiliation, embarrassment, loneliness and isolation, continued interrogation, over-burdening the unsteady mind, arousing more and more self-pity. Patience and time help the inquisitor to soften a stubborn soul. Just as in many old religions the victims were humbled and humiliated in order to prepare for the new religion, so, in this case, they are prepared to accept the totalitarian ideology. In this phase, out of mere intellectual opportunism, the victim may consciously give in.

PHASE II
SUBMISSION TO AND POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION WITH THE ENEMY

As has already been mentioned, the moment of surrender may often arrive suddenly. It is as if the stubborn negative suggestibility changed critically into a surrender and affirmation. What the inquisitor calls the sudden inner illumination and conversion is a total reversal of inner strategy in the victim. From this time on, in psychoanalytic terms, a parasitic superego lives in man's conscience, and he will speak his new master's voice. In my experience such sudden surrender often occurred together with hysterical outbursts into crying and laughing, like a baby surrendering after obstinate temper tantrums. The inquisitor can attain this phase more easily by assuming a paternal attitude. As a matter of fact, many a P.O.W. was courted by a form of paternal kindness -- gifts, sweets at birthdays, and the promise of more cheerful things to come.

Maloney compares this sudden yielding with the theophany or kenosis (internal conversion) as described by some theological rites. For our understanding, it is important to stress that yielding is an unconscious and purely emotional process, no longer under the conscious intellectual control of the brainwashee. We may also call this phase the phase of autohypnosis.

PHASE III
THE RECONDITIONING TO THE NEW ORDER

Through both continual training and taming, the new phonograph record has to be grooved. We may compare this process with an active hypnosis into conversion. Incidental relapses to the old form of thinking have to be corrected as in Phase I. The victim is daily helped to rationalize and justify his new ideology. The inquisitor delivers to him the new arguments and reasonings.

This systematic indoctrination of those who long avoided intensive indoctrination constitutes the actual political aspect of brainwashing and symbolizes the ideological cold war going on at this very moment.

PHASE IV
LIBERATION FROM THE TOTALITARIAN SPELL

As soon as the brainwashee returns to a free atmosphere, the hypnotic spell is broken. Temporary nervous repercussions take place, like crying spells, feelings of guilt and depression. The expectation of a hostile homeland, in view of his having yielded to enemy indoctrination, may fortify this reaction. The period of brainwashing becomes a nightmare. Only those who were staunch members of the resistance before may stick to it. But here, too, I have seen the enemy impose its mental pressure too well and convert their former prisoners into eternal haters of freedom.

The intent of these types of prison camps, whether Nazi or Soviet in origin, 80+ years ago was to structurally degrade the mind of those inside into a state of suggestibility, passive acceptance, and rationalization — so that the totalitarian imprint could be made to linger inside it long after potential freedom.

These same techniques have now been implemented against the public in another form.

The intent of modern mass-communications platforms, mass-media, advertising campaigns, and even cell phone apps like TikTok (and many others, even Twitter) — particularly the weaponization of tools like them — are all more or less the same, and with similar purposes in mind. The side effects are also more or less the same — the degradation of original thought and the structural and subtle ‘breaking’ of the psyche over time by varying forms of repetition. Menticide.

How else would you create an army of slaves enamored with their own captors?