Brainwashing Is Real and It’s Really Not Therapy

Dear People,

I would like encourage America to make brainwashing illegal. Would you please forward this email to fellow survivors, their families, psychologists, politicians, the media, anyone at all interested….

Brainwashing Is Real and It’s Really Not Therapy

I was a 16 year old pot head. I needed help and my parents decided I should be put in a program. When I mentioned this to a friend he said, “Don’t go Marcus, they’ll brainwash you in there!” I knew better though, there was no such thing as brainwashing. It only happened in cartoons, the cat would brainwash the mice, their eyes became turning spiral pinwheels and they held their little arms out in front of them like zombies. This was brainwashing, it was cartoon fiction and I wasn’t scared. I knew what would happen in there, I’d get help. I was going for therapy.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), all ethical therapy consists of proven, safe and effective practices that a client or client guardian has consented to. This is one reason that the practice of coercive persuasion and thought reform is officially non-therapeutic. The methods used have not been proven to be safe or effective, so why are they legal?

Verbal attack, isolation and forced exercise; food, water and sleep deprivations; communication and toilet restrictions; humiliation rituals, emotional abuse and manipulation are all practices currently employed on a daily basis, as “therapy” for troubled teens. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has acknowledged thousands of reported claims of abuse in today’s behavior modification programs, but no one has yet addressed the technology at work in these facilities. This technology is based on several forms of manipulation. These efforts to manipulate behavior through intentionally inducing stress, are inherently abusive, often violent and many teens have died while subjected to this type of “therapy.”
The APA does not officially acknowledge the existence of brainwashing. There are legal questions and implications that would be very difficult to address. There are also many crimes that could potentially be defended with a plea of “I’m innocent, I was brainwashed!” It’s a can of legal worms. But while focusing on brainwashing’s potential effects on the judicial system, the damaging effects of the process itself have been ignored. There is an overwhelming amount of personal testimony about the negative long-term side-effects that brainwashing can inflict. I personally believe there are also long-lasting physiological changes in the brain that occur when adolescents are subjected to thought reform and behavior modification in an institutional setting.

I believe that the underlying reason for the perpetual abuses in the troubled-teen industry is that the “theory of brainwashing” has not yet been officially “proven.” The technology cannot be banned until it is proven to exist. There is a system at work within the systematic abuses. Until the system itself is identified and dismantled, the tell-tale “symptoms” will persist.
Physical and psychological abuse is built into many of these programs by design. According to several different experts on the subject, the exhaustion and pressure that is induced by sleep deprivation, hunger, fatigue and emotional manipulation, “unfreezes” the psychological framework. Through this orchestrated crisis, a new identity is instilled by manipulating the environment and the emotions of the subject to an extreme degree until the “changed” mind of the subject has undergone “re-freezing.” This process requires varied amounts of time according to the individual character of each client, which is why there is no fixed length of time to “complete” this type of treatment.

Much of the power of this process relies on the secretiveness surrounding it. The methods work best if the intention behind them is not revealed to the subject. Understanding the principles and dynamics involved in this behavioral technology, reduces their effectiveness. Could you give an informed consent to treatment if it were described like this?… “The process then is the abrupt dissolution of the structure of intentionality by an electrochemical discharge in the brain, leaving the brain in a state of malleability for the construction of a new belief structure by which to guide behavior.” (Walter J. Freeman, Chaotic State Transitions in Brains As a Basis For the Formation of Social Groups, 1995) While these underlying principles and dynamics are not revealed to the client or the legal guardian, a consent to treatment is impossible.

The effectiveness of coercive thought reform upon teens has not been proven and the ethical questions have been quietly ignored. The debate within the APA has centered around various legal implications but questions about the potential for harm have been avoided. By ignoring the unproven “theory of brainwashing,” the APA has been ignoring the damage done by the practice of brainwashing.

These practices have never been proven safe and as an unproven treatment, are technically experimental. Also, according to several prominent experts that I’ve spoken with, there has not been any research on the long-term side-effects of this type of treatment upon adolescents. Perhaps the most relevant research is a European study that was recently conducted, which showed that 80% of adult survivors of institutional child abuse in Ireland, still suffer from psychological damage.

Adolescents who have been subjected to “brainwashing” were often witness to a heartbreaking cruelty. These stories combined tell the larger story of an invisible monster, sold to parents and the public as therapeutic growth. “Brainwashing” is not therapy, it’s refined torture. Merely addressing the symptoms of the process has enabled the abuses to continue.

-Marcus Chatfield

(please write and call the APA if you have any questions or if you would like to share your brainwashing experiences with them.)
executiveoffice@apa.org
public.affairs@apa.org
pracgovt@apa.org

APA Main Telephone (800) 374-2721 or (202) 336-5500
APA Ethics (800) 374-2721 or (202) 336-5930

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-146T GAO Report on Deaths and Abuses in Troubled Youth Programs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control General information on “brainwashing”

http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FreemanWWW/manuscripts/V1/95.html Walter J Freeman, Chaotic State Transitions of the Brain, 1995

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1996/150-18/15018-13.pdf Walter J Freeman, the physiology of thought reform

http://www.meadowhaven.org/liftoncriteria.pdf Lifton’s conditions for thought reform

http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studymindctr/study_mindctr_singer.htm Margaret Singer’s Conditions for thought reform

http://www.factnet.org/rancho1.htm information about coercive persuasion

http://www.ninehundred.net/control/ Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind

http://icsahome.com/infoserv_respond/info_researchers.asp?Subject=Academic+Disputes+and+Dialogue+Collection%3A+Preface Michael Langone, Preface to Academic Disputes and Dialogues Collection

http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/UN-declaration/ 1959 UN Declaration of Rights of the Child

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36428&Cr=children&Cr1= Request From UN to the US and Somalia to Ratify the Rights of the Child

http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing3.html APA Memorandum on Brainwashing 1983
http://www.rickross.com/reference/apologist/apologist23.html APA Task Force Report

http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing4.html APA Memorandum on
Brainwashing 1986

http://www.apa.org/news/press/statements/juvenile-justice.aspx APA Statement on reforming the Juvenile Justice System 2010

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Brainwashing more info on “brainwashing”

http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL5-03.pdf 2010 Report on Irish adult survivors of institutional child abuse

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-911 Congressman George Miller’s proposed legislation to establish federal regulations

I Went to the ELAN School by Cristine Martino Slingerland

Thank you Morgan Mitchell for courageously telling your story. I totally agree with you that Elan is not the place to send your children. My parents were clueless and to this day, not that I bring it up anymore, they shut down anytime I bring up what happened to me there. My mother one time said, “I know you went through hell there, but as horrible as it was, at least it saved your life.” Really? I am alive in spite of Elan. I came to the realization after 15 months at Elan, countless general meetings, and being shot down nine times, that I was the only one that was going to save my own life.

It was July of 1981 and I was scrubbing the bathroom floor in a costume that made me look like a mental patient. Earlier that day I was given a general meeting and I was told that the house was sick of me. My biggest offense was cracking jokes and clowning around. Joking around and finding humor in the horror that was Elan made being there bearable, or at least it kept me sane. I mean who could stare at a corner for hours at a time without looking away. And, GOD forbid you did, someone would scream Cris Martino Stupid, Stare at the Corner! If I took that seriously, I would have lost my mind. Once Mark Rosenberg threw me in the boxing ring for laughing at a general meeting. He announced to everyone as he threw me in the ring with these three hefty women, that they were going to beat the guilt out of me.

Getting back to the story, I was thrown out of my house, dressed in a lunatic costume, and I had to do hard labor outside lifting rocks, and digging holes. I was not allowed to speak to anyone, and I ate my meals outside. I had a resident personal overseer who watched me. At night I scrubbed pots and pans in the big house, and I slept on a mattress in the bathroom. That day it was raining outside so my personal overseer asked the director of the house what to do with me, she said I could care less, throw her in the bathroom. So there I was seventeen years old scrubbing the bathroom door seriously weighing the options of splitting or killing myself. In my mind I was not going to live through this “learning experience.” So, I held my breath. In my seventeen year old mind, I am going to hold my breath, pass out and die. NOT! I kept letting go. I figured it was a sign I wanted to live. Next, I explored splitting. Where is a seventeen year old with no high school education dressed in shorts and laceless sneakers going to go? I will run through the back woods, get to a main road and hitch hike. To where? Where am I going? I am a walking advertisement for vulnerability and take advantage of me. Sadly, many years later, a girl my age did the same thing, got a ride from a trucker and was killed. I had enough sense to know that I did not want that life or lack of it for myself. It was at that point that I realized I was the only who could save my own life and get myself out of there.

I lived through that learning experience for two weeks. I am grateful to the humane personal overseers who would talk to me, and let me rest once in a while. Although I know Joe Ricci was not a saint, it was he who took the time to talk to me and tell me I was not crazy. He was the one who told our director to end this “learning experience.” Thanks to the help of Joe, I was out of that place in nine months.

So here I am a 47 year old woman who is writing about something that happened 30 years ago. ELAN HAS LEFT ITS SCARS! This is just one in many horrific incidents that I either directly experienced or witnessed the hell of someone else’s horror. Even after 30 years I still have nightmares about that place. Anytime I hear the name, or read a story like Morgan’s it resonates so deep in me. WE ARE TRUE SURVIVORS. Sadly, there were many who walked our path and did not survive.

I am so grateful to all of you who have told your stories, and for starting this page. It is so healing to have a place to write, and express myself. It is difficult to articulate to those who have not been there what it was like to live through it. For people like my husband, it is just too painful to listen to. Thank you to all of you who are reading this, and for giving me space to show my unhealed wounds to give them the light and air they so richly crave.

For those of you who are part of the Core campaign who are publishing these stories, you have my permission to publish this or anything else I have written on the various Elan web sites. I have written comments on I WENT TO THE ELAN SCHOOL.

Straight Inc., Legacy of Torture as Treatment

Clips from Surviving Straight Inc.

Clips from the upcoming documentary Surviving Straight Inc.

First Look: Surviving Straight Inc.