People’s susceptibility to being brainwashed largely depends on their socio-emotional and psychological development during childhood. In the book “The Rape of the Mind,” the author explicitly explains some innate upbringing issues that can be exploited for mind-controlling or brainwashing agendas (Meerloo, 2015). The basic premise is that parents form the entire environment of a person’s upbringing. When there is parental conflict, this environment will cause certain emotional damage that can later be exploited in their adulthood days. During their upbringing children, the child will experience varying levels of frustration and guilt depending on the explicit bond between the parents. Perpetrators of mind-controlling activities will use these instinctive feelings to control a person’s perception of the world for their selfish gain. Apart from utilizing other effects of parental conflicts, such as low self-esteem during adulthood, Meerloo (2015) shows that the absenteeism of a father figure or a conditioning type of person can also be exploited for brainwashing practices. Because of the essence of a loving and stable environment, parental conflict has detrimental effects such as the accumulation of frustration and guilt throughout the development years of an individual and the yearning for love, reassurance, and a sense of belonging, which can be exploited for brainwashing and mind-controlling purposes.
Because of the emotional growth needed, parental conflict is dangerous in childhood as the child is physically and psychologically dependent on the skills and resources they glean from their parent’s world. The child learns everything from their environment through their parents since they were a fetus. There is a non-verbal or unconscious conveyance of lessons from the moment they are in the mother’s womb (Meerloo, 2015). Meerloo (2015) further explains that the child has been utterly dependent on the parents for warmth, love, and food since inception. As providers of these sources of life, the child has to trust their parents as the instigators of what is right and wrong. To trade for more warmth and love, they learn the right civilized way of taking a bath or going to the toilet and slowly depart from their desired instinctual or primitive methods of living. That said, Mueller and Tronick (2019) explain that parents who are engaged in violence portray lack the resources for self-regulation qualities. Through physical and physiological transference, children who experience this conflict learn that little to no help from self-regulation is used to combat emotional vulnerability. Children learn their entire way of living from parents, which means an unstable home indirectly teaches emotional vulnerability that makes them susceptible to being controlled and brainwashed in the future.
Considering that children are entirely dependent on the environment their parents portray, a loving and stable upbringing will allow a child to emotionally mature since a child can learn a response without accumulating any damaging frustration. Meerloo (2015) stresses that hired interrogators can negatively exploit any accumulated frustration during childhood to control or brainwash a person. The author explains that the basic processes of how to take a bath, eat, or talk are learnt easily when the child is under the tutelage of loving parents. Their parents can correct them without making them feel frustrated that their instinctive method of achieving survival is the best since the child has a clear sense of identity to what their supporting parents want. On the flip side, when there is no love in the parental home, the child will find it difficult to identify with the ideals the parents teach. Together with the fact that during the parental conflict, the parents also direct their anger at the child (Mueller & Tronick, 2019), the child ends up being more confused and frustrated concerning their total devotion to an upbringing that is not grounded in affirming love. Unfortunately, witty interrogators will endlessly pursue this pent-up frustration from a broken home and make individuals choose between a comrade and their father or mother.
The psychological warfare used by such interrogators will also exploit a person’s instincts by weakening their resolve over a long period of time through methods such as deprivation of food and sleep. The book by Meerloo (2015) posits that we naturally tend to feel offensive instincts against our parents and are only suppressed or repressed during our growth stages. These criminalistic instincts are supported by the sheer number of villains in detective stories that people relate to and find interesting. Meerloo (2015) propounds that these feelings are associated with the guilt our parents used to bend us to their will. It can be exploited by defining it to an unknowing person as feelings of rebellion towards a certain body of authority (something that parents stand for in our upbringing). To flesh out these natural instincts, interrogators use different methods of torture such as starvation and lack of sleep to sever a person’s connection between the real world and the emotional world. For instance, Ben Simon, Vallat, Barnes, and Walker (2020) illustrate that sleep loss boosts instinctive emotional reactivity, which is linked to negative states such as anxiety, depression, and even suicidality. Furthermore, Mueller and Tronick (2019) add that parental conflict at home causes children to grow up with less resilience and emotion regulation strategies, which, Meerloo (2015) asserts, increases one’s susceptibility to manipulation during these highly stressful events.
The more severe parental conflict that leads to the father’s absence can be exploited by certain social movements, as they will tend to replace the father. He acts as the guidance for every child transitioning into the world. Meerloo (2015) explains that the conditioning type does not have to be the father but any presence outside the maternal world that will act as a bridge to experiencing the external social world. In other cases, the mother can be the dominant force in the relationship while the father is the caring that is indicative of the material world. Most importantly, the absence of this conditioning type in a child’s upbringing can be exploited as the children will seek reassurance and a sense of belonging in external environments such as certain social movements. Meerloo (2015) offers a case study of an individual who lacked the care and support of his father throughout his childhood and ended up taking the submissive role in a homosexual relationship. However, when the individual later found the Nazi movement, he was overwhelmed by the aggression. Unknowingly, the Nazi movement exploited his need for reassurance from a paternal figure as he joined the organization. The author explains that a psychological assessment shows that the man was still a maturing boy with no knowledge of the totalitarian ideals he was supporting. Such control and manipulation are deeply psychological and directly related to the absenteeism of a paternal figure during childhood.
Another effect of an absent father figure is that the lack of affection from a father figure will lead to an ever-rising frustration and resentment towards a certain figure of authority during a person’s lifetime. Meerloo (2015) explains that the conditioning figure teaches the child how to connect with society outside the emotional maternal world. However, the father figure has to be similar to the warm, loving care of the mother; otherwise, the child will not feel the reassuring love from the conditioning type. Consequently, when a child does not experience a conditioning presence during their upbringing, it will build frustration and resentment against certain bodies of authorities in the adult world (Meerloo, 2015). Assisted by most people’s lack of knowledge of this effect, political societies will exploit this emotional resentment by spreading political propaganda and hate against an antagonist body of authority. This plot relieves emotionally immature individuals from all the stored frustration and resentment towards an authoritative fatherly figure. Because of the lack of self-differentiation of emotional and independent thinking instigated by the lack of a conditioning type during childhood, a person’s political inclinations can be exploited by directing their passionate resentment against a paternal figure toward another authoritative figure.
Lastly, cults use recruitment processes that exploit a person’s emotional weaknesses cultivated during their childhood days. Meerloo (2015) explains that the conditioning type is the determiner of a person’s emotional growth during childhood, and when absent, the child becomes emotionally immature. The need for reassurance and love from a conditioning type is aptly satisfied by joining such cult movements (Meerloo, 2015). Mueller and Tronick (2019) further explain that such children grow up with less self-esteem and poor social skills throughout adulthood. Parental conflict, especially one that becomes violent, fosters lower self-esteem in children as they grow up observing the victimization of a parent. Cults will use this low self-esteem and the need for belonging to offer a semblance of a complete family away from the world to elicit excessive devotion from a person. Therefore, cult movements will exploit a person’s emotional weakness and immaturity to isolate them from the external world and control them by utilizing their need for a conditioning figure during childhood.
In conclusion, parental conflict disturbs the emotional growth a child needs to achieve independence of thought from emotional thinking. The accumulation of guilt and frustration during their childhood will leave them with harmful effects such as the yearning for reassurance which can be exploited for mind control. Parental love between parents is essential as it provides the child with the resources needed for self-regulation throughout their childhood into adulthood. Furthermore, a loving bond between parents makes it easy for a child to identify with during their development process. However, if there is conflict, the child becomes frustrated and confused, which can be used to psychologically stress an individual during adulthood through various brainwashing techniques involving tactics such as sleep and food deprivation. The lack of self-regulatory growth means a child will lack the resilience and drive to break from the maternal world and interact with the external world. This deprivation leads them to develop low self-esteem and is amplified by the absenteeism of a father figure who mostly acts as a conditioning figure. Meerloo (2015) explains that the absence of a conditioning type causes emotional resentment in individuals, which certain social movements can tap into without the individual’s knowledge. Therefore, people must be armed with such knowledge on the effects of their upbringing to strengthen their independent thinking throughout their lives.
References
Meerloo, J. (2015). The Rape of the Mind. Picker Partners Publishing.
Mueller, I., & Tronick, E. (2019, July 9). Early Life Exposure to Violence: Developmental Consequences on Brain and Behavior. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00156/full
Ben Simon, E., Vallat, R., Barnes, C. M., & Walker, M. P. (2020). Sleep Loss and the Socio-Emotional Brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.02.003
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