Mind Control and Ideological Conformity: The Mechanisms of Brainwashing in Communist China
Investigation into Chinese Communist Thought Reform on Western Subjects
The Most Widespread and Developed Attempt at Brainwashing in the History of Mankind
… the official Chinese Communist program of szu-hsiang kai-tsao (“ideological re-molding” or “ideological reform) … has in fact emerged as one of the most powerful efforts at human manipulation ever undertaken. To be sure, such a program is by no means completely new: imposed dogmas, inquisitions, and mass conversion movements have existed in every country and during every historical epoch. But the Chinese Communists brought to theirs a more organised, comprehensive, and deliberate—a more total—character, as well as a unique blend of energetic and ingenious psychological techniques.
In 1954 an American Psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, arrived in Hong Kong. It was supposed to be a stopover, he was going home to the United States, after serving as a Psychiatrist for the Air Force in the Korean War.
Only a few months earlier, he had assessed American Prisoners of War exchanged in what is known as Operation Big Switch. Beside presenting with mental disintegration associated with war, many of the prisoners had suffered under a primitive version of Chinese Communist “confession and reeducation techniques.”
His curiosity heightened, he began discussing the Communist techniques with local officials and other psychologists and psychiatrists in Hong Kong. After being told shocking stories about victims on the mainland, he became increasingly concerned at not only the depth of these techniques, but the malice.
At his request, his new acquaintances arranged for him to meet both Western expatriates captured and finally released by the Chinese Communists, and Chinese nationals who had managed to escape after years of anguish and confusion. His first few interviews were soldered into his memory:
The impact of these first encounters was not something one readily forgets: an elderly European Bishop leaning forward in his hospital bed, so deeply impressed with the power of the prison program he had just experienced that he could only denounce it as “an alliance with the demons”; a young Chinese girl, still shaken from the group hatred that had been turned upon her at a university in Peking, yet wondering if she had been “selfish” in leaving.
Lifton quickly understood these were examples of a “much more powerful and comprehensive” form of mind modification he had encountered with the returning troops from Korea. He received two research grants and stayed to interview more victims.
After a year and half, he realised the Chinese Communist’s official program szu-hsiang kai-tsao, “ideological re-molding” or “ideological reform,” was likely the most widespread and developed attempt at brainwashing in the history of mankind.
He called it Thought Reform.
Thought Reform
Whatever its setting, thought reform consists of two basic elements: confession, the exposure and renunciation of past and present “evil”; and re-education, the remaking of a man in the Communist image. These elements are closely related and overlapping, since they both bring into play a series of pressures and appeals—intellectual, emotional, and physical—aimed at social control and individual change.
The events on mainland China marked the first time the word “brainwashing” was used, a literal translation of hsi nao (“wash brain”), derived from Chinese informants.
Yet “brainwashing” began to be used in situations it was not justified - an early form of concept creep - thus Lifton preferred the term “Thought Reform”. He also believed this term more accurately described the process of the program:
… it was the combination of external force or coercion with an appeal to inner enthusiasm through evangelistic exhortation which gave thought reform its emotional scope and power. Coercion and breakdown are, of course, more prominent in the prison and military programs, while exhortation and ethical appeal are especially stressed with the rest of the Chinese population; and it becomes extremely difficult to determine just where exhortation ends and coercion begins.
Thousands of expatriate Westerners, mostly doctors, businessmen, and priests, had been falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned. Some suffered for up to five years in shocking conditions in a penal institution called a “reeducation centre”.
Yet, the program was not aimed primarily at Westerners, but the Chinese people. At universities, invented “revolutionary colleges”, businesses, military barracks, government offices, prisons, and peasant organisations, the Chinese were subjected to focused, top-down and bottom-up, psychological and emotional control.
In Mao Zedong’s eyes, who had ascended to become the supreme leader of China in 1949, even his most devoted followers were failing to be the ‘ideal communist’. They needed “punishment” and “curing”. In a famous speech to high-ranking Party members in 1942, Mao specified Thought Reform’s two basic principles:
The first is, “punish the past to warn the future” and the second, “save men by curing their ills.” Past errors must be exposed with no thought of personal feelings or face. We must use a scientific attitude to analyse and criticise what has been undesirable in the past … this is the meaning of “punish the past to warn the future.” But our object in exposing errors and criticising shortcomings is like that of a doctor in curing a disease. The entire purpose is to save the person, not to cure him to death.
Mao Zedong
The last line reads curiously with the knowledge that as many as 65 million died under his regime (some estimates are as high as 80 million).Yet the Communist rule would be far more effective - and simple - if their subjects believed in the moral superiority of the system, and the near deity quality of its leader.
To the Communists, the “old society” in China - and any society failing to be Communist - was and is malevolent. This must be true, because of the diligent ‘scientific analysis’ that landowners, capitalists, and the bourgeoisie, have exploited the labour and the dignity of every one else.
All crimes have definite sociological roots. The evil ideology and evil habits left behind by the old society, calling for the injuring of others for self-profit and seeking enjoyment without labour, still remain in the minds of people to a marked degree. Thus if we are to wipe all crimes from their root, in addition to inflicting on the criminal the punishment due, we must also carry out various effective measures to transform the various evil ideological conceptions in the minds of the people so that they may be educated and reformed into new people.
Mao Zedong
Lifton, overall, interviewed 25 Westerners who had been subjected to the “punishment” and “curing” of Thought Reform. He presented his assessment of a select few individuals, chosen as exemplars or archetypes of a category of psychological response. Over hundreds of pages, he reconstructed their previous identities, including everything from personality traits, ideological beliefs, and intimate personal backgrounds, to explain why each person and archetype responded the way they did.
The Westerners
When you get back with your chains, your cellmates receive you as an enemy. They start “struggling” to “help” you. The “struggle” goes on all day to 8 p.m. that night. You are obliged to stand with chains on your ankles and holding your hands behind your back. They don’t assist you because you are too reactionary. . . . You eat as a dog does, with your mouth and teeth. You arrange the cup and bowl with your nose to try to absorb broth twice a day. If you have to make water they open your trousers and you make water in a little tin in the corner. . . . You are never out of the chains. Nobody pays any attention to your hygiene. Nobody washes you. In the room they say you are in chains only because you are a reactionary. They continuously tell you that, if you confess all, you will be treated better.
Dr Vincent
The Communist’s ultimate aim was always to “reform” the imprisoned Westerners. Practically, this meant a letter of confession, approved and signed off by a judge. To get there, each prisoner would have to suffer through various stages.
First, they were dehumanised while enduring many “struggle sessions”. The other prisoners would accuse them of being spies, working for foreign countries like the Americans or the Japanese, and of course, exploiting the Chinese people and the working class in general.
…their environment did not permit any sidestepping: they were forced to participate, drawn into the forces around them until they themselves began to feel the need to confess and to reform. This penetration by the psychological forces of the environment into the inner emotions of the individual person is perhaps the outstanding psychiatric fact of thought reform.
At the same time, often straight after or before the struggle sessions, the prisoner would be interrogated by the judge. Was he showing evidence of realising his immoral past? Of beginning to take the “people’s standpoint”?
If the prisoner was judged to do so, his status improved. Chains might be removed, and he was now given a chair when speaking to the judge. His position in the ‘cell hierarchy’ would rise. No longer would he become the focal point of other cellmates' attention, and - if he wanted to be treated even better - he would help persecute new prisoners.
In the cell, you work in order to recognize your crimes. . . . They make you understand your crimes are very heavy. You did harm to the Chinese people. You are really a spy, and all the punishment you received was your own fault. . . . In the cell, twelve hours a day, you talk and talk—you have to take part—you must discuss yourself, criticise, inspect yourself, denounce your thought. Little by little you start to admit something, and look to yourself only using the “people’s judgement.”
Dr Vincent
Often, the cell environment turned academic. They would discuss Marxist theory, international politics, and how the world could be improved if everybody had a “progressive standpoint”1 . They delved into the history of China, the glorious Communist victory over the Confucianists and the Nationalists, the three- and five-year plans to “arrive at socialist society”2. They would rave about Soviet propaganda, and how “living conditions of the Soviet state are very high; we see it in the movies, magazines, newspapers”3.
Over time, normally over years, the prisoner would improve in understanding his own wrongdoing. Most of the prisoners became guilty, some even were certain of their past criminal and immoral transgressions - many of them absurd accusations. Many became psychotic, losing track of time and what was real. They also would become skillful in criticising others, and exposing imperialist character flaws.
Eventually, if the judge agreed, they would reach the finale: The written confession. The confession was usually rejected several times, and needed much revision. When it was finally signed off, the ‘reformed’ criminal was ceremonially released. Within a few days they were expelled from the country.
When Lifton interviewed the Westerners in Hong Kong, many of them had only recently been released. All showed marked signs of psychological degradation: Borderline psychosis, split identities, suspicion that Lifton was a Communist spy and/or an Imperialist plant, utter pessimism and nihilism, a newfound respect and love for Communism and Marxism or a deep hatred or both, and perhaps most of all, a profound fear writhing at the foundation of their being.
Despite definite individual differences, the Westerners responded to Thought Reform - both inside and outside of prison - in three broad ways: The Obviously Confused; The Apparent Converts; and The Apparent Resisters.
Western Psychological Responses
The Obviously Confused
… the obviously confused … tended to suffer post-release identity crises which were visibly severe—partly because they had been emotionally stranded between the two worlds, and partly because they had brought to the surface emotions which in others remain buried.
Most of the Westerners Lifton interviewed fell into The Obviously Confused category. Though all of his subjects experienced confusion at some level, those in this category were defined by it, their ‘confusion’ was often explicitly stated, and repeated.
Indeed, it was this conscious awareness of their psychological struggle that separated them from the other two categories, whose reactions “were more rigid and hidden.” Of course, even for this category, much of the reform experience and the dark emotions it inspired, were still suppressed.
The confusion was due to the profound identity challenge of Thought Reform. All of Lifton’s subjects, but especially the expatriate Westerners - who were generally older and had established lives both before and after arriving in China - had a relatively secure identity before they were imprisoned. The aim of the prison staff was to break down and destroy this identity - metaphorical death - and grow a new identity in the Communist image - metaphorical rebirth.
Each prisoner would suffer through various psychological steps, from the initial assault upon their identity, their own betrayal of who they believed themselves to be, many stages of confession - not just of physical immoral acts but a confession of their previous self, and finally harmonising with the Communist way of viewing the world. In some subjects - like those in The Apparent Converts category - this harmony was achieved early in their prison experience, and lasted after release, even for their entire lives.
Post-release, those in The Obviously Confused category would oscillate between their previous identity, which was now suddenly a possibility, and their new Communist identity. They were unsure what was more true - in a metaphorical sense - but as their environment changed, their sympathy toward their Communist identity and the Communists in general, eroded.
I am just out from the door of the cell—only one step out. But if I take some more steps—and consider what is best for my character—perhaps I will again decide to be by myself. . . . In a Communist country everybody does the same thing—and you accept. Here it is different: you are still the master of yourself.
Dr Vincent
The Apparent Converts
… there is no doubt that these people did undergo a startling personal change in their view of the world. To talk with one of them immediately after his arrival in Hong Kong was, to say the least, an impressive experience. They seemed to speak only in clichés, parroting the Communist stock phrases, and defending the Communist position at every point.
Lifton initially struggled to interview in depth this category of response. After their reform experience, these ‘converted Westerners’ were now suspicious of Americans, and psychiatrists, who would likely re-excite the terrible emotions of Thought Reform and maybe even reveal to themselves the contradictions of their new and somewhat ludicrous identity.
But he would meet more of these ‘apparent converts’, some whose new identity was “brittle”, and some who were far more secure living reborn as a Communist. Overtime, he established a hypothesis for why they converted and were not merely confused.
First, they had a “readily accessible negative identity”, which is the formulation of self in contrast to others, and/or general society and its norms. They may have believed themselves outsiders, different, and underappreciated. Second, fueling their negative identity, was a susceptibility to guilt. Whether justified or not, they were used to feeling immoral or unworthy. Third, they were particularly susceptible to forms of Totalism, ideologies or organisational movements that would require complete submission of the individual and their thoughts. They would likely indulge in Splitting, a cognitive distortion now commonly called All or Nothing Thinking.
I realised that my professed feeling for liberals was not very deep. I was a scheming, small person … with a basically opportunistic philosophy. . . . When I reached the bottom, there was nothing more. …
Miss Darrow
These three characteristics influenced their conversion in overlapping and different ways. Once captured, they finally had an opportunity to eradicate the unpleasant tugs of their negative identity, and finally become ‘accepted’. In relatively simple terms when compared to self-actualisation in non-total societies, these prisoners were handed meaning on a plate, when before they might have worked tirelessly to find only disparate threads of meaning in a society that seemed to refuse them. Their susceptibility to guilt meant the Marxist narrative sliced through any emotional, logical, factual, and spiritual defence. To them, they would not reason that perhaps they are not guilty of their crimes - it is implicit in their nature they are guilty. And finally, the all or nothing reduction of Marxism to class tension and power dynamics was psychologically satisfying. They adopted Marxist thought-terminating cliches - a term Lifton invented and popularised, which provided them escape from the nuances of the World and their place in it.
Yet, this personal upheaval, that Lifton believed was the most dramatic out of any category, was largely invisible to the Apparent Converts. Though they experienced some confusion resulting from the identity challenge like the Obviously Confused group, questions were left unexplored and thus emotions were left to subsist deep underground in their psyche. On their return to the West, their new identity was challenged but this time in a far more moderate - and tolerant - way, even accounting for McCarthyism. Some expressed sadness of having to abandon what they now believed to be the ‘right way forward’.
Lots of things made me generally in admiration of this society. I felt very warmly toward it and couldn’t bear the thought that I would always be cut off from it. . . . It seemed right, the way of the future. . . .
Miss Darrow
The Apparent Resisters
Apparent resisters are the people who cross the border denouncing the cruelties of prison thought reform. At first encounter, many of them appear to be little affected by their ordeal, other than showing a certain amount of physical and mental strain; ideologically, they are bitterly anti-Communist, if anything, more so than they had been before imprisonment. …In talking with them, I too was impressed with their courage and endurance. As I probed more deeply, however, I found that their inner resistance was not nearly so complete as their external expression suggested.
Because this category was defined by the prisoners’ resistance, Lifton was able to establish a model of the ‘Methods of Resistance’. The psychiatrist reduced these methods down to five: Understanding, Emotional Participation, A Show of Humour, Humane Stoicism, and Pseudo-Strength.
Understanding was the awareness of the Communist’s desire to manipulate and to “wash brain”. Some resisters would recognise the “play” or the ‘game’ immediately and some over time. The understanding of the intentions of the prison staff, and what psychic weaponry they might employ, offered them an - albeit minor - sense of control. They were able to predict what was going to happen, and importantly, why. They then had the opportunity to “act”, to keep secure and hidden (from the prison staff) their ‘real identity’, and express identity falsehoods to escape brutal punishment and eventually, the reeducation centre itself. Most importantly however, “the prisoner was thus enabled to mobilise his defences and bring into play the other methods of resistance.”
Emotional Participation, or in fact the rejection of emotional participation, was the ability to keep oneself “outside the communication system of thought reform”. In their expatriate life, many of the resisters lacked intimacy with Chinese culture. Instead of the integration more common with the other groups, the resisters often had limited knowledge of written Chinese and even spoken Chinese. In prison, they kept emotional distance from cellmates. The lack of connection meant an avoidance of loyalty and thus avoidance of both implicit and explicit persuasion from ‘a friend’. Overall, these rejection methods allowed the resister “to maintain a private inner world of values, judgments, and symbols, and thereby keep a measure of independence from the ever-pressing environment.”
A Show of Humour was the ability to break the tension of psychological and physical oppression. Humour exposed the “self-righteousness” of Thought Reform and created a shared emotion of joy between cellmates, the joy of a community separate and wholly different from the ‘politically correct’ desires of Communism.
Since the judge is a tragedian before you, if you keep a smile this protects you, because the impressiveness of the tragedy is avoided.
Unnamed Subject
Humane Stoicism was the ability to act with dignity, integrity, and grace where possible. Through a “passive resistance in the Gandhian tradition”, often derived from a belief in a higher power, these prisoners were able to present - to themselves and other cellmates - “a moral position superior to the grandiose moral claims of thought reform.” Some resisters would interpret and ‘embody’ their struggle within a grand story, with themselves as protagonist. This allowed for continued identity reinforcement, what Lifton believed was the most important aspect of resistance.
To resist … you must affirm your personality whenever there is the opportunity. . . . When I was obliged to speak my views about the government, I would each time begin, “I am a priest. I believe in religion.” I said it strongly every time.
Unnamed Subject
The four above methods relied upon strength, and though often difficult to employ due to the oppressive nature of the cell environment, each method was essential to resistance. Pseudo-Strength, by contrast, was the superficial show of strength in the aim of hiding weakness. The acceptance of weakness, would bring into conscious awareness they might have come to accept some of the reformers' claims. Like the Apparent Converts, they used repression as a tool, only this time in the service of hiding their potential for identity change, rather than the fact they had markedly changed. In this way, they used a form of Totalism - the complete truth and sincerity of their previous ideology. As a result, Pseudo-Strength was a “potential psychological danger”, where it created “a paradoxical situation in which those who have been least influenced by thought reform unconsciously feel themselves to be most in danger of being overwhelmed by its influence. They struggle continually against a breakthrough of despair.”
Survival, Influence, and Recovery
Thought reform … fell far short of its more ambitious goal of converting Westerners into enthusiastic Communist adherents; for although none could avoid being profoundly influenced, virtually all prisoners showed a general tendency to revert to what they had been before prison, or at least to a modified version of their previous identity. The barter of influence for survival which Western prisoners made with their reformers turned out to be reasonable enough; only the unreasonable demands of their inner voice of conscience made some of these Westerners feel that their bargain had been a Faustian one.
Each prisoner needed to trade some part of him or herself in order to escape Thought Reform. The difference between each of the categories was how much. The Obviously Confused were defined by their openness and psychological flexibility, yet their conscious reasoning with the possibility of metaphorical truth in their Communist identity made them suffer. The Apparent Converts were seemingly not even aware that it was their submission to a radically new identity and worldview that allowed them to survive. The Apparent Resisters, in part fueled by a suppressed fear of a profound identity challenge, organised in a strategic and systemising fashion, a marked resistance to psychic influence.
To Lifton, each category had its own strengths and weaknesses, “none held a monopoly on human limitation, strength, or courage”. Yet, without saying it explicitly he seemed to favour simultaneously the openness of the Obviously Confused and the strength of the Apparent Resisters, while maintaining suspicion at the totalising thought patterns of the converts and resisters.
Certainly, for the Obviously Confused and Apparent Resisters categories, the Communist aim of metaphorical death and rebirth, failed to hold. Although Lifton mentioned it briefly, returning to a Western environment, especially for the confused category, must have been essential to the Westerners’ recovery. What if the confused category suffered for five more years and weren’t allowed to leave China? Would they eventually collapse into their Communist identity? Would the resisters accept martyrdom if they weren’t allowed to leave, as some suggested in their personal, heroic narratives?
Due to the extreme psychic disturbance of their experience, in the years following Thought Reform, the Westerners needed to ‘master their past’ and “regain integrity”. For most of them this meant dealing psychologically with their experience by integrating it into their personal story and thus identity. For the Obviously Confused and Apparent Resisters, the story was one of fighting evil and prevailing; for the Apparent Converts, one of realising their evil ways and redemption.
Intriguingly, many of the prisoners experienced sadness resulting from their departure from China and the reeducation centre itself. They had experienced deep emotional closeness with their cellmates, enduring a psychic war for years, prevailing, only to be left with no one else who would ever understand.
But one thing was strange. . . . For months after I came out, each time I saw a stairway in a house, I thought, “What a wonderful place to jump … to commit suicide.”
Unnamed Subject
But many of them also experienced “therapeutic effects”. They endured a psychic challenge so profound and dark, an adventure culminating in the slaying of a demon of epic propositions. They returned reborn, not in the Communist image, but in the mythic heroic. They had examined the deep recesses of their soul, normally invisible to the dandy life of the daily Westerner, and triumphed over their cowardliness and weakness. More “flexible and confident” in social interactions, they had also become more sensitive to their own and others’ feelings.
In the experience itself, and in the process of recovery and renewal which followed it, these men and women gained access to parts of themselves they had never known existed.
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Chur, and have a good day and night,
The Delinquent Academic
Dr Vincent
Ibid
Ibid
Truly frightening that people would do this to other people. Have you ever seen the movie "The Red Violin"? It is the history of a violin told through the stories of the various owners, one of whom was a Chinese woman during the great Cultural Revolution where anything Western was rooted out. You might want to view it.