Joost Abraham Maurits Meerloo (March 14, 1903 – November 17, 1976) was a Dutch/American
Doctor of Medicine and
psychoanalyst. He authored
Rape of the Mind, an analysis of brainwashing techniques and thought control in totalitarian states.
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Rape of the Mind
Meerloo's best-known
[2] book is
Rape of the Mind,[1] published in 1956. This book received wide attention in part because it dealt with totalitarian applications of brainwashing techniques during the
Korean War.[2] It explains how scientific brainwashing is done and argues that "hardly anyone can resist such." "Fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him by somebody else."
Like their totalitarian counterparts, democratic societies are subject to the insidious influences of mind control. Such influences surround the citizens of free societies, "both on a political and a nonpolitical level and they become as dangerous to the free way of life as are the aggressive totalitarian governments themselves." People must guard against the creeping intrusion into their minds by technology, bureaucracy, prejudice, and mass delusion.
Meerloo writes that freedom and democracy depend in part on education for mental freedom—helping children and adults to think for themselves and to see the essentials of a problem—helping them to understand concepts, not merely to memorize facts.
Throughout most of the book, Meerloo's targets are the historic roles of the Nazis and of the Communists in the post-1945 world. However, he also attacks the witch-hunting of individuals through the
House Un-American Activities Committee: "the Congressional right to investigate can be abused and misused. The power to investigate may become the power to destroy -- not only the man under attack, but also the mental integrity of those who, in one way or another, are witnesses to the investigation. In a subtle way, the current wave of
Congressional investigations may have a coercive effect on our citizenry."