[2004] Brainwashing - The Science of Thought Control.pdf

The book was "highly commended" and runner-up in the 2005 Times Higher Education Supplement Young Academic Author Award, and was shortlisted for the 2005 MIND "Book of the Year Award". It received positive reviews in The Guardian and Skeptical Inquirer, critical reviews in The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times, and has been used as a resource in books including Marketing Dictatorship and Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society.

Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control is a non-fiction book analyzing brainwashing, thought reform and mind control, by neuroscientist and physiologist Kathleen Taylor. It was first published in hardcover on December 16, 2004 by Oxford University Press. Taylor reviews the history of the term brainwashing, from its usage in 1950 by journalist Edward Hunter to its application to cults, marketing, influence, thought reform, torture and reeducation. She references the book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton and cites his research on indoctrination techniques experienced by prisoners of war during the Korean War.
Taylor explains the neurological basis for reasoning and cognition in the brain, and proposes that the self is changeable while describing the physiology of neurological pathways. She utilizes case studies including Patty Hearst, the Manson Family, and the mass murder/suicide of members of Peoples Temple at Jonestown, and compares the techniques of influence used by cults to those of totalitarian and communist societies.
She lays out a model FACET - Freedom, Agency, Complexity, Ends-not-means, and Thinking - which she believes can be used to negate the influence of brainwashing techniques.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing:_The_Science_of_Thought_Control