Brainwashing: Present And Future.

The article presents future potential developments in brainwashing. Dr. Albert Somit, of the Department of Government of New York University, has pointed out that there are four purposes, for brainwashing prisoners: to obtain military information; to obtain false confessions; to reindoctrinate the captive so that he will act in the approved political fashion; and to make the prisoner inform on his fellow captives. In each case it is apparent that the final end of brainwashing is to obtain undistorted information reliably from prisoners--to achieve predictable behavior, particularly accurate reporting of their conscious experiences. Regardless of the historical accuracy of the suggestion that brainwashing is explicit and intentional application of Pavlovian principles to the problem of changing behavior, it is questionable whether it is wise for scientists in serious discourse to oppose spiritual power and conditioned reflexes. To any modern personality theory this seems muddled thinking. The inputs of sensory information and of energy to captives being brainwashed by methods in use today differ markedly from their usual inputs.