Brainwashing from a Psychological Viewpoint, February 1956

Document: Brainwashing from a Psychological Viewpoint, February 1956 Released: 2022-01-11 The Black Vault Entry: https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/brainwashing-from-a-psychological-viewpoint-february-1956/ Canonical PDF: https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/mkultra/MKULTRA2/DOC_0000163356/DOC_0000163356.pdf This document, part of the MKULTRA collection, is a psychological viewpoint on brainwashing from February 1956. It was released to the public in 2022. The document begins with a quote from Jules Romains, stating that men can be made to do anything with the right means. The author notes that this should not be taken as the CIA's synthesis on brainwashing, but rather the progress of one working group. This paper reflects the work of several groups within the CIA, and it is not a final report. The scope and objectives of the paper are to provide a psychological viewpoint on brainwashing, relating it to basic psychological principles such as learning, perception, and motivation. The document aims to discuss the brainwashed person as an involuntarily re-educated individual. The author notes that all people are being re-educated continuously, as new information changes one's beliefs. However, the experience of brainwashing differs in that the information is forced upon the individual under controlled conditions, after the possibility of critical judgment has been reduced or removed. The document discusses the analysis of control fissures, how individuals will react to attempts to elicit information, confess falsely, or brainwash them. The reaction depends on the individual's intelligence, perception, and experience, as well as the knowledge and persistence of the captors. The author concludes that it is possible to bring individuals psychologically to a point where involuntary re-education will take place. Police methods developed by trial and error have not fully exploited the psychological building blocks for results obtained, nor have all restraints been cast aside in treatment of prisoners. The document ends with a view that brainwashing represents one extreme of a continuum of treatment by captors, ranging from voluntary collaboration to brutal treatment and degrees of resistance. This is what the public record looks like at its most ordinary. For more information, visit storyflo.com.