Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control by Kathleen Taylor

November 25, 2004

Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon St., Oxford OX2 6DP, UK

ISBN 0192804960

Hardback, 324 pages

Ł18.99 (British pounds)

Challenging is one word I will use to describe this book. Kathleen Taylor challenges us all to "stop and think" in more ways than one, and for more than obvious reasons. Taylor is a research scientist in the physiology department of the University of Oxford. Her goal was to tackle the unwieldy topic of brainwashing as a legitimate pursuit of brain science. Anyone not familiar with the history of the term brainwashing will benefit from Taylor’s summary of its origin with writer Edward Hunter in 1950 and its subsequent insertion into the dialogues on influence, advertising, re-education, torture, thought reform, and cults. Taylor recounts what we know of early government experimentation with mind control. She relies heavily on the insights of Robert J. Lifton’s seminal work on thought reform and totalism in communist China to describe the social psychological frame. The author presents a discussion with illustrations about how the brain and neurological system respond to social and environmental stimuli and how the brain supports a reflective and responsive "self."

The author rejects a dualistic soul and body philosophy. Following a [more] materialistic and deterministic route along scientific principles Taylor argues convincingly that the self is malleable and more like clay than rock. Leaving arguments about the reason for existence aside, Taylor takes us into neurological territory about how reason works. The mutability of the cognitive webs that form the basis for consciousness she states is both a blessing and a curse. When properly exercised, the brain supports a healthy self that can "stop and think" before falling under the sway of undue influence. When neurological pathways and "cogwebs" (cognitive webs of neurons with their dendrites, axons, and synapses) become rigid or overly fixed, new information cannot impress the brain easily to stimulate a creative response "or to improve one’s own self-expression?" I’m not sure I catch the meaning here. In short, some brains are easier to wash than others, while others that might need washing for their own good do not budge.

The author defines "freedom" as ability to predict the future and reactance to circumstances that stimulate choice. In my words, if a rabbit hears a growl and sees spots on fur in the bush, it can predict danger and therefore it is more likely to stay alive. If that same rabbit also knows to run away in a zigzag pattern it has a still better chance of staying alive. Taylor’s examples include complex human social and intellectual interactions that both serve and betray the self as recorded in the brain. Flexibility that supports freedom (What is the antecedent?) depends on what kind of information we record and accept and how ingrained or "channeled" that brain pathway remains. Stubborn, ill-educated or brilliant persons might have strong pathways of pre-cortical and general brain functioning, but these very pathways might incline them to choose a harmful activity or ignore a healthy one. Taylor shows through neurological science just how what she calls "ethereal" or strong beliefs prevent more complex brain functions unless something surprises or shocks the system/person to rethink or reorganize pathways of response. To create a useful brain pathway we need repetition so that thought patterns facilitated by neural interaction can associate and flow properly toward decisions. However, influence can work by stealth, thereby tricking the brain to accept information, repeating pathways that are hard to change even if they are false.

Taylor divides her book into three parts. Part I examines "Torture and seduction," and how change agents use different approaches to influence and brainwash. Using infamous, well-documented cases like Jonestown, Patty Hearst, and the Manson Family as models, the author lays down a basis for what Part II ("The traitor in your skull") explains with brain science and neurology. Part II, Chapter 8 shows that we have an enormous capacity for self-deception, false memory, and confusing or not recognizing data. Taylor moves the reader through the brain and its parts to describe what happens when we make decisions and why we might seem to sway one way or another. I had the eerie sense as I was reading Brainwashing that I was also viewing how the author’s and my brain works.

For example, Taylor says brain science indicates that the "tolerance threshold (for challenging information) seems to be lower than we might expect." She is saying that we can be both lazy thinkers and we take in too much to process easily. In the next sentence she states without attribution: "Humankind cannot bear very much reality, it seems." (138) That triggered my memory of a quote I had written on my notebook cover in college in 1967: "For human kind cannot stand too much reality,"—T. S. Elliot. The connection exists in a different context of neurological fields in my brain than in hers, yet we both recognize the impact and meaning of the statement. There is no way for me to know that she knows that T. S. Elliot said it, or she may have merely forgotten that Elliot did. That I remembered it means that the quote had a deep enough meaning for me for it to remain readily accessible in my brain after all these years. Taylor explains how a change agent or manipulator can marshal our strong and weak memories to suit their needs by forcing us to bypass the "stop and think" modes of brain function.

Part III examines "Freedom and control," how we might lose these powers, and how we might protect them, not only by understanding how the brain works, but also how to make it work better. "Your susceptibility to brainwashing (and to other forms of influence) has much to do with the state of your brain," Taylor tells us on page 215. In this section Taylor proposes a FACET response to help humans avoid and overcome undue influence and totalist thinking. FACET is an acronym for Freedom, Agency, Ends-not-means (human beings are not merely means to an end but important in and of themselves), Thinking, and Complexity (somewhat rearranged) that the author applies to Robert Lifton’s eight themes of ideological totalism as antidotes. FACET is essentially a liberal approach to life, but one that demands effort and education to be effective. For example, Lifton’s first theme is milieu control. As an antidote "FACET emphasizes not only individual over group rights, but individual agency. By encouraging the development of critical thinking, …." Lifton called this approach a "Protean style."

 As Taylor explains, FACET is not merely a philosophical position. Taylor reasons from brain science how we might overcome a very real danger to the quality of human life. In Chapter 14, "Science and nightmare," Taylor discusses a host of potential abuses of human freedom stemming from the very science explored in the book. She lists movies like The Matrix, Blade Runner, and Soylent Green as examples or metaphors of very real scenarios for a human future gone awry if we allow our brains to fall into totalist patterning.

I enjoyed the book as a challenge to think about an area sorely neglected. I can imagine that some religious studies scholars might find the medical model of brainwashing troubling, but a careful reading indicates that the author is under no delusions about how much we know. Nor does she recommend legislation based on what we know. The FACET model is one that relies on informed consent and self-education, yet she warns, "individualism has its limits." There is strength in numbers, for after all we are social creatures, and our brains depend on interaction with our kind to sustain a healthy reality perspective. I applaud Taylor for opening up the brainwashing debate again. It seems that we in western society have been scared off or horrified by the very notion since films like The Manchurian Candidate and A Clockwork Orange first appeared to augment stories about horrible government and mental hospital "mind control" experiments.

I can recall only one significant attempt by a sociologist to describe "scientifically" what happens in brainwashing. In Cults in America (1983), Willa Appel tackles "The physiology of brainwashing" in one chapter. But Taylor, unlike Appel, did not write a social psychology text (36), although she summarizes that field in Part I. She does, however, build on research by neurologists like Michael A. Persinger that examines cult influence. (His 1980 book TM and Cult Mania has been a seminal scientific response to spurious claims made and odd behaviors exhibited by the Transcendental Meditation sect). Taylor takes the notion of brainwashing seriously as an extreme form of social influence that "is the ultimate invasion of privacy: it seeks to control not only how people act but what they think" (ix), and to apply what we know from science to the notion. I am not sure that the liberal, western perspective in Taylor’s proposed antidote to brainwashing will apply readily to all cultures. For example, Asian peoples that find value within group cohesion may resist an all-out individualistic approach. But the call to expand and exercise the information systems in our individual brains cannot be bad for any person from any culture.

Taylor makes an important distinction that she feels is lost on many skeptics that have a knee-jerk negative reaction to religious practice and faith. She takes issue with those who believe that "Science functions like a well-regulated brain, religion like a psychotic one." (141) To her, research demonstrates that "[m]uch religious practice is not concerned with abstractions, but with real life, testing out new approaches to social problems, experimenting with novel solutions, learning and applying ideas from around the world" (141). In other words, the more sophisticated faiths act reasonably within core ideas that are often ethereal. Taylor’s concern is with any human venture, be it science, religion, or politics, that restricts brain function from creative "stop and think" activity, which then becomes little more than another exclusive cult.