Brainwashing and mind control involves a number of different techniques. These include:

• Isolation – separated from family and friends
• Sleep deprivation – long hours chanting, exercise or any hours of overwork
• Sensory deprivation – locked in empty rooms
• Financial abuse
• Emotional abuse – constant cruelty or demeaning someone. This can include name calling and insults as well as constant criticism.
• Dehumanisation – losing your sense of self and replacing it with the needs / style of the group. For instance, changing your name to something insulting (one of the most basic types of knowledge of self from infancy)
• Repetitive music or chanting – Induces alpha waves in the brain leaving the subject more susceptible to suggestion.
• Humiliation
• Peer pressure
• Positive and negative reinforcement
• Fear – threats and lies
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Drug use – LSD and other drugs used to destabilise the person and their sense of self
• Total reliance on the group – emotional, financial, housing, jobs, relationships
• Language manipulation where the meaning of words has special significance to the group. Creating internal logic for the group and making it difficult to break out of the group ideology and indoctrination
• Using therapy and healing as a tool of indoctrination

The first step is getting to know you and your habits 

The security services use a trained operative to fact find about someone’s life. They will access and exploit any vulnerabilities the person has. The handler will appear knowledgeable about the subjects interests and have learned exactly how to befriend them. This is the beginning of seeking to control their life. 

It is a human instinct to bond with people who offer help, and seem to have all the answers. This is how the security services and cults will sometimes appear, as a new best friend.  Be suspicious of your new acquaintances and their objectives. If they seem too good to be true, then be cautious

Another technique is introducing the subject to others in the handler’s group, and to surround them with a new social circle, This enables the new group to gradually isolate them from previous social contacts. This also increases the effectiveness peer pressure. The more they are isolated from others, the easier it is to manipulate and control. This is often a long-term plan to surround the subject over a lifetime and maintain total control.

We are all vulnerable to this level of brainwashing and exploitation. We all belong to many different social groups and are reliant on others to meet our human need for social contact. Even high intelligence does not mean you’re immune. Social isolation leaves the subject nowhere to turn, as domestic abusers know and systematically isolate their victims.

Using lies and misinformation to isolate the ect from others

This can be done by taking a small grain of truth from you then building layers of lies. They make false allegations about what other people have said or done. This induces paranoia and hostility in the subject to formerly good relationships. The handler may be prepared for the criticisms of family members or friends and be ready with all the answers why they are wrong.  This makes it harder for someone to use their logic and listen to others. These strategies isolate the subject from support and critical thinking.

Creating a parent / child relationship of dependence

This is one of the key emotional mechanisms to bond someone with their handler. Learning all about their interests and pretending to have a much higher level of knowledge enables the handler to have control, whilst humbling the subject into believing they are inferior. The objective is to break down the subject’s faith in themselves and their own knowledge.  It leaves the person vulnerable to further exploitation and manipulation. They believe they have found a teacher and mentor, someone they can believe in and follow.

Fear is a great motivator

It is harder to use logic if you panic. Fear increases dependence because the subject needs a saviour. People avoid fear and find fear harder to face alone.  The handler generates fear in one direction and then offers help in another. For instance, saving someone from a fake mugging or other disaster. This generate a bond of trust immediately as well as gratitude.

Using language to manipulate the subject 

This includes language used just within the new group. This interferes with the subject’s logic. The use of language to manipulate the subject’s world view. Previous beliefs and social norms are criticised. Neuro linguistic programming can be used as well as hypnosis to programme the subject into trained responses and post hypnotic suggestions.  When a subject is relaxing, such as listening to music, going out dancing or watching television the brain is in an alpha wave state and is much more susceptible to suggestion. This is when subliminal suggestion can be used to alter a person’s thoughts.

Sleep deprivation

This is used to make the person more vulnerable to control.  It wears them down gradually, without totally destroying them.  It creates depression, fear and panic, it makes it hard to think.  It makes the victim desperate to please the person who causes them suffering, to try and make them stop. It induces further dependence. Many hours spent chanting or working for the gropu can increase their susceptibility to brainwashing.

Peer pressure

This creates another layer of control. In military training if one person makes a mistake then the whole group suffers. This increases the need to conform to the group and furthers dependence. It is meant to foster teamwork in the military but increases the need to conform or suffer pressure from the rest of the group. Instead of blaming the leader of the group for the suffering – they blame each other.

Pain motivates people

During torture someone can be made to exercise until they are exhausted. They may tell subject to stand in a painful position for hours.  Beatings and physical torture are used to further break a person down. This may increase the probability of collaboration with captor, as with the Korean POW’S in the 1950’s, to avoid physical pain and further beatings.

Good cop bad cop

One person will provide discipline, the other kindness. This is often used to manipulate people during interrogation. The subject will confess to the good cop to avoid the bad cop. We bond with people who try and help us in a crisis. We trust people who are kind to us.

Using therapy and healing as a tool of indoctrination

Although Scientologists allege they are a church, they are often described as a cult, and their tactics to recruit and retain people indicate this. People who practise psychology or psychiatry are banned from the organisation and are criticised by Scientologists. Their training would make them aware of the techniques used in Scientology to control and manipulate their followers. Their practises do not measure up to modern scientific standards for psychology.

Scientology is a good example of using therapy as a tool to extract confessions from people which can be used later. It is a process called auditing, using an
e-meter, which is alleged to show when emotional blocks exist and remove them by discussing the matter. Therefore, Scientologists have difficulty leaving the group due to threats of exposure of private information. 

Scientologists are well known to harass anyone who speaks out against them.  Scientologists have to leave the room whenever their religion is discussed critically in public or private. They are never allowed to hear anything negative of the church and therefore cannot reduce their level of indoctrination. Scientologists cannot talk to family members or friends who have left, thereby isolating them from loved ones and alternative information.