Month: January 2019

Steve Hassan makes an interesting distinction between mental control and brainwashing. He says that in brainwashing the victim knows that the aggressor is an enemy. For example, prisoners of war know that the person doing the brainwashing and/or torture is an enemy and often they understand that remaining alive depends on changing their belief system. They are coerced, often with physical force, into doing things they would not normally do. However, when the victim escapes from the influence of the enemy, the effects of the brainwashing frequently disappear.

Mind control is more subtle and sophisticated because the person doing the manipulations is often considered a friend or a teacher, so the victim is not actually trying to defend themselves. In fact, he or she may be a ‘willing’ participant, and, believing that the manipulator has their best interests in mind, they often providing private information willingly, which is then used against them to continue the mind control.

This makes mind control as dangerous, if not more so, than physical coercion. In other words, it can be even more effective than torture, physical abuse, drugs etc.

http://changingminds.org/techniques/conversion/lifton_brainwashing.htm

Who Is Thinking My Thoughts?

Before you can become the master of your mind, you must recognize that you are currently at the mercy of several unwanted “squatters” living in your mind, and they are in charge of your thoughts. If you want to be the boss of them, you must know who they are and what their motivation is, and then you can take charge and evict them.

Here are four of the “squatters” in your head that create the most unhealthy and unproductive thoughts:

So what is mind control?

It’s best to think of it as a system of influences that significantly disrupts an individual at their very core, at the level of their identity (their values, beliefs, preferences, decisions, behaviors, relationships etc.) creating a new pseudo-identity or pseudopersonality.

It can of course be used in beneficial ways, for example with addicts, but here we are talking about situations that are inherently bad or unethical.

The psychologist Philip Zimbardo says that mind control is a “process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes” and he suggests that everyone is susceptible to such manipulation.

It is not some ancient mystery known to a select few, it is a combination of words and group pressures, packaged in such a way that it allows a manipulator to create dependency in his or her followers, making their decisions for them while allowing them to think that they are independent and free to decide. The person being mind controlled is not aware of the influence process, nor of the changes occurring within themselves.

Mind control is also known as manipulation, thought reform, brainwashing, mental control, coercive persuasion, coercive control, malignant use of group dynamics, and many others. The fact that there are so many names indicates a lack of agreement which allows for confusion and distortion (especially by those using it covertly for their own benefit!!)

Let’s agree that mind control comes under the umbrella of persuasion and influence – how to change people’s beliefs and behaviors.

Some will argue that everything is manipulation. However, in saying this, important distinctions are lost. It’s much more useful to think of influence as a continuum. At one end we have ethical and respectful influences which respect the individual and his or her rights. At the other end we have destructive influences which strip the person of their identity, independence and ability to think critically or logically.

Modern literature and film use the brainwashing scenario pretty liberally. It gets to the very nature of humanity: Are we all ultimately reducible to puppets? The protagonist in George Orwell’s “1984” undergoes a classic case of brainwashing that ends with the famous concession to his tormentors: “two plus two equals five.” In 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate,” brainwashing produces a robot-like assassin incapable of overriding the control commands he’s been programmed with. “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) positions institutional brainwashing as an option for violent convicts looking to shorten their sentences, and in 1997’s “Conspiracy Theory,” a mentally unstable, government-brainwashed assassin seeks to prove that some very powerful people have been tampering with his mind.

Parents who continue to expose their children to Hostile–Aggressive Parenting need to be warned by the court that if they do not end their hostile parenting patterns, court sanctions will be imposed upon them, including reversal of primary care or even custody of the child. Court sanctions not only serve to “remind” the hostile parent to cooperate and to behave in a civil manner, but are very useful for the children as well. Effective sanctions set an example to the children and all family members that Hostile-Aggressive Parenting is not acceptable behaviour to our society and that the courts will not tolerate it. When a child feels reassured that the system will protect him/her from their hostile-aggressive parent it will give the child the courage to express their love to the more reasonable parent and will ease the fear they might otherwise feel if they were to admit to the HAP parent that they themselves really want to see the other parent. In such situations, the child can say what they know they must to satisfy the hostile parent’s need to feel that the children love them more than the other parent but knowing at the same time that the hostile parent must take them to see the other parent and that what they say to the hostile-aggressive parent will not be somehow used against the friendly parent. Many times HAP parents will pressure the child to say that they don’t want to see the other parent. This of course is used as part of the strategy to justify what the child should not be seeing the other parent. Unfortunately, in most communities there are a number of biased social workers and counsellors who have no knowledge of HAP who will support the hostile-aggressive parent’s campaign to alienate the child from the other parent.

Hostile-Aggressive Parenting is a very serious and damaging form of abuse and maltreatment that parents and even other family members can engage in. HAP is most often identified in individuals with controlling and bullying personalities or those with mild to severe personality disorders. HAP can be a factor in all types of parenting arrangements including sole maternal custody, sole paternal custody and joint custody. Interestingly, it is sole custodial parents who are most often reported to practice Hostile-Aggressive-Parenting, especially in its most severe form.

In general, parents exhibiting Hostile-Aggressive-Parenting have not succeeded in getting on with their own life and remain, instead, controlled by their negative emotions and continue to exercise power and control over their ex-spouse’s life, their ex-spouse’s parenting and to a large extent, over the children of the relationship as well. HAP parents will blame everyone else except themselves.

High degrees of conflict during custody settlements and litigation are almost sure signs in these affected families. Hostile-aggressive parents are unable to appreciate the needs of their child and in many cases view their child as a possession belonging to them and no other persons have any right to the child, especially not the child’s other parent or other persons that the HAP parent does not like. Hostile-aggressive parents will use the child as a weapon against the other spouse and family members whenever they have the opportunity. A parent engaged in Hostile-Aggressive Parenting will also take comfort in that the community in general will choose not to get involved, probably because they don’t know what to do. Angry and vindictive HAP parents are often able to bring a reign of terror and revenge on to a non-custodial parent and their family, their goal being to get them out of the child’s life or at the very least to severely damage their child’s relationship with the other parent and other parent’s family.

Hostile-Aggressive Parenting is considered by many health care and legal experts unhealthy, anti-social, abusive behaviourwhich is emotionally damaging and contrary interest of a child. Simply stated, it is dysfunctional parenting, emotional child abuse parent who is the target of Hostile-Aggressive Parenting, a form of discrimination.

Method : an exhaustive search through the internet identified 27 quantitative studies that examined the PTSD of the parents in relation to the parenting domains.

Results : several parenting domains were investigated, including: parental satisfaction, parental stress, parent-child relationship and specific parenting practices. The sample sizes ranged between 19 and 3931 parents. A variety of parental traumas were investigated, which included traumatic experiences of birth, military trauma and couple violence. The findings indicated associations between parental PTSD and several parenting domains, but there were inconsistencies between the studies.

Conclusions : the findings suggested that PTSD of parents is associated with poor functioning in several parenting domains, including a higher level of parental stress, lower parental satisfaction, less optimal parent-child relationships, and more frequent use of negative parenting practices, such as overt hostility and controlling behavior. However, methodological limitations in the literature as a whole limited the potential for inferring the causal impacts of PTSD on parenting. More studies are still needed to advance our current understanding of the impact of different types of trauma on the parenting domains.

Relational aggression—a psychological form of aggression—has numerous negative consequences for physical and emotional health. However, little is known about the risk factors that lead youth to engage in relational aggression. Using multimethod data from a longitudinal research of 674 Mexican‐origin youth, this study examined the influence of parents, siblings, and peers on the development of relational aggression. Increases in relational aggression from age 10 to 16 were associated with: (a) low levels of parental monitoring and (b) increased association with deviant peers and siblings. These results held across gender and nativity status. The findings suggest that multiple socialization agents contribute to the development of relational aggression. We discuss the practical implications for reducing relational aggression during adolescence.