[rerevisionist]

Many people are concerned and alarmed about 'mind control', 'programming', 'indoctrination', 'brainwashing' in the US popularised sense, 'triggering', 'dissociation', 'lone assassins', 'public opinion manipulation', 'breaking point under stress', 'psychological warfare', 'neuro-linguistic programming', the Tavistock Institute, and so on. What's the truth?

As an example, I've put at the end of this piece extracts from an overview of the Tavistock Institute.
. . . Part of the alarmist effect is obtained by describing its activities in a hostile way. (E.g. it studied the effect of shellshock on British soldiers who survived World War I. Its purpose was to establish the "breaking point" of men under stress, and ... originated the mass civilian bombing raids carried out by Roosevelt and Churchill purely as a clinical experiment in mass terror, keeping records of the results as they watched the "guinea pigs" reacting under "controlled laboratory conditions". In both cases, IF it's accepted that people should be attacked by high explosives etc, presumably it makes sense to study the effects).
. . . Part of the effect is to suggest a huge amount of study and 'research'; there's a huge list of interlocked organizations: disciplines include anthropology, economics, organizational behavior, political science, psychoanalysis, psychology and sociology'.
. . . Part of the effect is obtained by suggesting there are deep secrets in psychology. For example, the name 'Freud' still has something of this effect, despite a number of efficient debunking.

It's not very easy to assess all this material. Trying to look at it afresh, there are a few rather obvious points.
(1) It's pretty obvious that people being shot or blown up will be harmed. It doesn't really need 'research'
(2) Many of the 'disciplines' have so little basis in fact that they're hardly worth calling 'disciplines' at all
(3) A lot of material is assumed; for example the Second World War is considered a 'good war'. This is a value judgment, not fact.
(4) A lot of material is unconsidered. What about interventions in the third world, for example? What about Jewish influence? What about media control? What about the CIA?
(5) Many of the people at a personal level aren't very impressive. Who'd take Kissinger seriously if he hadn't been secretly backed?
(6) The actual examples given by critics of evil practices aren't impressive: a handful of drug addicts, for example.
(7) From the viewpoint of this site, a lot of material is unscientific, notably the nuclear weapons issue which they all follow like sheep.

So what can we say about these concerns? Without trying to be too precise, and with apologies for this as a result being not very well-written,
[1] The brain is not understood. (There are in fact doubts even about its structure, as per the work of Harold Hillman and others). This means no precise prediction of human behaviour is yet possible.
[2] Does this mean psychology is not a science? It does mean that there's no way to fully predict behaviour. So psychology is empirical - if you can find regularities, that's the best that can be done. Psychologists spend much of their working lives trying to find patterns, with a degree of success that is perhaps not impressive. However, there must be psychologists who are better than others in their predications.
[3] Can psychology ever be fully scientific? Even if the brain were fully understood, my personal guess is that it's so complicated that a complete science is impossible. There's a possible analogy with dynamics and gravitation: there are too many particles for general predictions ever to be made. But it's possible for gross predictions to be accurate enough for general purposes of things like ballistics and building construction.
[4] What's the connection between the brain and body? We have to assume on processing power ground that tiny organisms haven't much brainpower. So that for example an insect scurrying away does not think to itself - 'if I increase the distance between me and a possible harmful life form, the probability of harm is reduced'. It must be an evolved action. I think we have to assume survival is a basic reaction - organisms which don't mind if they live or die aren't likely to survive in the long term.
[5] It follows that, if a brain emerges in the sense of an organ able to reason (OK - let's not go into this too closely!) it must still have a connection with basic survival. The human brain is (or was) described as though it had layers, with a primitive or reptilian brain in the middle, for example. Some of this no doubt handles the autonomic parts of the nervous system - breathing, balance, withdrawal from fire, etc.
[6] I think it must be necessary that the brain has some connection with the body, and not be a Platonic isolated thought organ. The idea that the brain and body are separate was much discussed when Christianity was in decay, and a 'soul' seemed unnecessary. The 'monist' idea was that the body contained the mind in some sense. (This was before computers - there was no machine analogy to draw on, so the idea may have seemed stranger than it does now). Not many people believed the mind contained the body - death and non-existence being rather conclusive counter-arguments. However the evolutionary argument that the brain 'is as much an organ for finding food as the snout of a pig' suggests that 'reasoning' was something of an optional add-on.
[7] Pavlov gained huge notoriety, which is a bit puzzling in retrospect. He was never popularised; very few people could give an account of 'conditioning' which includes excitation and inhibition, for example. So far as I know he never extended his work to anything particularly important. However, his work does suggest there must be some link between the brain and the body which is a by-product of the body's biology, and not necessarily useful. Other indications - such as feelings of dread or worry, or feelings of excitement - show that the brain can't be entirely in control.
[8] The point I'm working to is the possibility there may be a link between emotions and the working of the brain, which may be impossible to demonstrate, but only show empirically. In the same way it's possible that hair-trigger tempers, small-scale behavioural patterns, temperament etc might be inheritable - look at dogs for evidence - maybe in human being there are links between beliefs and inheritance. This is of course difficult to demonstrate in animals, though I'd guess dog breeders know that some breeds are more stubborn than others, for instance, or more credulous. It's a line of thought suggested by Jews, who seem to direct themselves into deceit and lies habitually, almost on auto-pilot. There's something similar in psychopaths, who are described or defined as having no moral sense - though this is obviously partly a dishonest piece of psychology, as the same reasoning is never allied to some militarists or some politicians.
[9] If people vary as regards the brain-body link, there are propaganda and political consequences. The media and education (as far as I know) use simple empricial methods - lies, repetition, 'greuelpropaganda', and so on. I don't think they have a well-thought out model of mental activity, any more than early Christians did. But there could be links with race, sex, and so on. This might be addressable with 'cerebro-emotional understanding' (CEU - my cpyright!).
[10] The whole 'Tavistock' conspiracy business isn't convincing to me as science, but it is convincing as a systematic effort to investigate ways of getting and holding on to power.

_________________________________________________________________
Here's a good overview of the Tavistock Institute presented from a rather alarmist point of view:--
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/nwotavistockbestkeptsecret.shtml
(It includes Dr. John Coleman's 1992 book, Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of The Committee of 300 and Freemasonry, its supposed independence with thousands of clients - many of them taxpayer-funded, a monthly journal Human Relations, 'range of disciplines include anthropology, economics, organizational behavior, political science, psychoanalysis, psychology and sociology'.
. . . 1921 ... the Marquess of Tavistock ... gave a building to the Institute to study the effect of shellshock on British soldiers who survived World War I. Its purpose was to establish the "breaking point" of men under stress, under the direction of the British Army Bureau of Psychological Warfare, commanded by Sir John Rawlings-Reese.
. . . ... Its prophet, Sigmund Freud, settled in Maresfield Gardens when he moved to England. ... Tavistock's pioneer work in behavioral science along Freudian lines of "controlling" humans established it as the world center of foundation ideology. Its network now extends ...University of Sussex ...Stanford Research Institute, Esalen, MIT, Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, Center of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, US Air Force Intelligence, and the Rand and Mitre corporations. The personnel of the corporations are required to undergo indoctrination at one or more of these Tavistock controlled institutions. A network of secret groups, the Mont Pelerin Society, Trilateral Commission, Ditchley Foundation, and the Club of Rome is conduit for instructions to the Tavistock network.
. . . ... A German refugee, Kurt Lewin, became director of Tavistock in 1932. He came to the U.S. in 1933 as a "refugee", the first of many infiltrators, and set up the Harvard Psychology Clinic, which originated the propaganda campaign to turn the American public against Germany and involve us in World War II.
. . . In 1938, Roosevelt ... agreed to let Special Operations Executive control U.S. policies. ... Roosevelt sent General Donovan to London for indoctrination before setting up OSS (now the CIA) under the aegis of SOE-SIS.
. . . ... CIA operations on the Christian Right.
. . . Tavistock Institute originated the mass civilian bombing raids carried out by Roosevelt and Churchill purely as a clinical experiment in mass terror, keeping records of the results as they watched the "guinea pigs" reacting under "controlled laboratory conditions". All Tavistock and American foundation techniques have a single goal---to break down the psychological strength of the individual and render him helpless to oppose the dictators of the World Order. Any technique which helps to break down the family unit, and family inculcated principles of religion, honor, patriotism and sexual behavior, is used by the Tavistock scientists as weapons of crowd control.
. . . The methods of Freudian psychotherapy induce permanent mental illness in those who undergo this treatment by destabilizing their character. .... Tavistock Institute has developed such power in the U.S. that no one achieves prominence in any field unless he has been trained in behavioral science at Tavistock or one of its subsidiaries.
. . . Henry Kissinger, whose meteoric rise to power is otherwise inexplicable, was a German refugee and student of Sir John Rawlings-Reese at SHAEF. Dr. Peter Bourne, a Tavistock Institute psychologist, picked Jimmy Carter for President of the U.S. solely because Carter had undergone an intensive brainwashing program administered by Admiral Hyman Rickover at Annapolis. The "experiment" in compulsory racial integration in the U.S. was organized by Ronald Lippert, of the OSS and the American Jewish Congress, and director of child training at the Commission on Community Relations. The program was designed to break down the individual's sense of personal knowledge in his identity, his racial heritage. Through the Stanford Research Institute, Tavistock controls the National Education Association. The Institute of Social Research at the National Training Lab brain washes the leading executives of business and government.
. . . Such is the power of Tavistock that our entire space program was scrapped for nine years so that the Soviets could catch up. The hiatus was demanded in an article written by Dr. Anatol Rapport, and was promptly granted by the government, to the complete mystification of everyone connected with NASA. ....
. . . ... Roosevelt's advisor, James Paul Warburg, son of Paul Warburg who wrote the Federal Reserve Act, and nephew of Max Warburg who had financed Hitler, set up the Institute for Policy Studies to promote the drug. ... One part of MK Ultra was the Human Ecology Fund; the CIA also paid Dr. Herbert Kelman of Harvard to carry out further experiments on mind control. ... All the records of the CIA's drug testing program were ordered destroyed by the head of MK Ultra.
. . . This is the legacy of the Warburgs and the CIA. Their principal agency, the Institute for Policy Studies, was funded by James Paul Warburg; its co-founder was Marcus Raskin, protege of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation. Bundy had Raskin appointed to the post of President Kennedy's personal representative on the National Security Council, and in 1963 funded Students for Democratic Society, through which the CIA operated the drug culture.
. . . Today the Tavistock Institute operates a $6 Billion a year network of Foundations in the U.S., all of it funded by U.S. taxpayers' money. Ten major institutions are under its direct control, with 400 subsidiaries, and 3000 other study groups and think tanks which originate many types of programs to increase the control of the World Order over the American people. The Stanford Research Institute, adjoining the Hoover Institution, is a $150 million a year operation with 3300 employees. It carries on program surveillance for Bechtel, Kaiser, and 400 other companies, and extensive intelligence operations for the CIA. It is the largest institution on the West Coast promoting mind control and the behavioral sciences.
. . . ... Ditchley Foundation, founded in 1957. The American branch of the Ditchley Foundation is run by Cyrus Vance, former Secretary of State, and director of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Winston Lord, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
. . . One of the principal but little known operations of the Rockefeller Foundation has been its techniques for controlling world agriculture. Its director, Kenneth Wernimont, set up Rockefeller controlled agricultural programs throughout Mexico and Latin America. The independent farmer is a great threat to the World Order, because he produces for himself, and because his produce can be converted into capital, which gives him independence. In Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks believed they had attained total control over the people; they were dismayed to find their plans threatened by the stubborn independence of the small farmers, the Kulaks. Stalin ordered the OGPU to seize all food and animals of the Kulaks, and to starve them out. The Chicago American, February 25, 1935 carried a front page headline, SIX MILLION PERISH IN SOVIET FAMINE; Peasants' Crops Seized, They and their Animals Starve. ... Many totalitarian regimes have found the small farmer to be their biggest stumbling block. The French Reign of Terror was directed, not against the aristocrats, many of whom were sympathetic to it, but against the small farmers who refused to turn over their grain to the revolutionary tribunals in exchange for the worthless assignats. In the United States, the foundations are presently engaged in the same type of war of extermination against the American farmer. ....
. . . Once the citizen becomes aware of the true role of the foundations, he can understand the high interest rates, high taxes, the destruction of the family, the degradation of the churches into forums for revolution, the subversion of the universities into CIA cesspools of drug addiction, and the halls of government into sewers of international espionage and intrigue. The American citizen can now understand why every agent of the federal government is against him; the alphabet agencies, the FBI, IRS, CIA and BATF must make war on the citizen in order to carry out the programs of the foundations.
. . . The foundations are in direct violation of their charters, which commit them to do "charitable" work, because they make no grants which are not part of a political goal. The charge has been made, and never denied, that the Heritage-AEI network has at least two KGB moles on its staff. The employment of professional intelligence operatives as "charitable" workers, as was done in the Red Cross Mission to Russia in 1917, exposes the sinister political economic and social goals which the World Order requires the foundations to achieve through their " bequests ". .... tax fraud, because the foundations are granted tax exemption solely to do charitable work, but it is criminal syndicalism, conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States of America, Constitutional Law 213, Corpus Juris Secundum 16. For the first time, the close interlocking of the foundation "syndicate" has been revealed by the names of its principle incorporators---Daniel Coit Gilman, who incorporated the Peabody Fund and the John Slater Fund, and became an incorporator of the General Education Board (now the Rockefeller Foundation); Gilman, who also incorporated the Russell Trust in 1856, later became an incorporator of the Carnegie Institution with Andrew Dickson White (Russell Trust) and Frederic A. Delano. Delano also was an original incorporator of the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
. . . There's a lot more..... not inserted here.
.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

I never thought of bombing as a psychological experiment. It does make sense. Everything is studied and calculated to gain mass control.

He said NASA was halted for nine years so the Soviets could catch up. He must not realize that NASA is a mind control device also.

There are stories out there that people who get organ transplants develop idiosyncrasies of the donor of the organ.

[rerevisionist]

Hi, FCS!

I'm trying to get at the reasons why people got - presumably - worried over things like 'brainwashing' and The Manchurian Candidate and The Ipcress File.

After all, they spent all their lives surrounded by other people - why would they take things like 'brainwashing' seriously?

It makes sense to loook at the evolution of brains and try to work out what is likely to have happened. As an example, Bertrand Russell's book on Leibniz says that Leibniz was the first to point out that an 'unconscious' mind is necessary, because, without it, there would be no learning - you'd have to repeatedly go through the same steps of reasoning. (This is my wording, and may be largely wrong - Leibniz wrote I think in German or Latin and was a verbose writer). I think there must be some link between the brain and action. For exmaple, if an alarm clock goes off, I feel a sort of anxiety and fear about not getting up. A completely idea-dominated mind wouldn't feel that. So I *think* there must be some biological connection between belief and activity, as suggested by 'hair-trigger temper' or 'felt impelled to act'. And possibly as a result of evolutionary effects Jews are more liable than most to feel pushed into lies and deceit.

So I *think* the worries over 'brainwashing' and all the rest are because of the doubts over the connection between impulses and ideas, which can presumably vary genetically. In the case of The Manchurian Candidate ordinary Americans were faced with strange anti-McCarthy and implicitly pro-Jewish propaganda, with a suggestion of Armageddon caused by weapons which they were told existed - no wonder they were a bit puzzled!

[FirstClassSkeptic]

I think the fear over 'brainwashing' comes about because so many people that one meets seem so, well, brainwashed.

[rerevisionist]

Derren Brown on British TV - Interesting Psychology Experiments

Four interesting TV programmes on Channel 4 in England, by Derren Brown, who is possibly not well-known in the USA.

His four latest (dated from 21 Oct 2011 to 11 Nov 2011) are standalone 50-or-so minute shows, collectively titled The Experiments:--
[1] 'The Assassin' - can someone be hypnotised etc to be made into an assassin? (The example he quotes is Sirhan Sirhan. The related issue - would it in fact be easier just to use an assassin? - is not examined). This includes preliminary material notably on inducing 'partial amnesia' http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-experiments/4od#3242945
[2] 'The Gameshow' shows Derren Brown running a pilot gameshow intended to test whether anonymous crowds behave in a way individuals wouldn't http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-experiments/4od#3245576
[3] 'The Guilt Trip' - Can someone (admittedly a rather weak character) be induced to confess to a murder which he (and indeed anyone else) didn't commit? http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-experiments/4od#3252139
[4] 'The Secret of Luck' in which a rumour is planted (in this case, a 'lucky dog statue') onto the good but painfully simple folk of a small Yorkshire town. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-the-experiments/4od#3256877

These are only available until mid-December - if you're interested, download them if you can.

There's a problem with all these programmes, which is they are televised and it's clear a small army of video techies has been used. It's not made clear whether failed projects have been pruned out, or never occurred. And although Brown assures the audience the material is genuine, it's hard not to doubt much of it: for example in #3, a rather drunk man is told by his TV set not to wake, then carried outside by a dozen people and deposited on a blanket, on grass, out of doors. It's hard to believe being carted out of bed and downstairs, taken to the cold outside, put down on hard ground, and indeed walking back on gravel in bare feet, is credible. And the shots in #1 of people being hypnotised on command, although part of the stock-in-trade, aren't very credible. What is credible is the large number of actors, and videographers, and sound recordists, and confederates with earpieces needed. This in #4, a rather gullible butcher (life savings £1,000) had to be followed by at least six people to try to get him to notice events staged specifically for him.

Derren Brown is a believer in the Milgram experiment (it occurs in one of his earlier programmes) - or says he is - and it seems fair to regard his TV material as scientific experiments. In #3 above, for example, he's careful to employ a lie detector operator to validate that his selected assassin type really believes he didn't remember something - in this case a restaurant incident in which most of the fellow eaters were in on the act.

Quite interesting. In his next series, can we please have a group of people telling lies about Germans to make money, please; TV news people censoring out stories of murder, sex crime etc on race grounds; and maybe also men in white coats pretending to have arranged space travel to the moon. And perhaps part 4 could be a group of men funding bombing of innocent peasants so they could make money from selling bombs and weapons.

Thanks, Derren. I'm looking forward to it!

[rerevisionist]

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-trick-or-treat/4od#3193909
Is another Derren Brown half-hourish TV programme, available indefinitely I think. (Ignore the strange comment about 'Dark and sinister adult content').

Interesting - shows a form of more or less unconscious speed reading (look at the video e.g. from about 15 mins and for a minute or two after - you'll be slowed by adverts). It's not a scientific assessment - you're not shown failed attempts.

An interesting consequence (not followed up by Derren Brown) is the presumption that years of exposure to TV, films, and the media must leave considerable traces behind....