The Realities of Mind Control - What can actually be done?

[Checkmite]

I think the points you raise are very good. They get to the essence of the problem of brain washing, which I see here as the obvious fact that some people join weird groups and do stuff you would never predict from their demographic background.

I don't know much about any of these weird groups, except the Family of Love. The Family is a Christ-based sex cult. They use sexually available women to lure people into their group. At one time, they used to send them to bars and other places to meet people. Once in the group, you live in communal houses, follow a strict regime, and have what appears to be unlimited access to women. At one time, they claimed a vast membership. My understanding is that these days, almost all members are born into the group. Apparently they're even having trouble keeping kids of members in the group. As much as that would be this powerful thing you're talking about, it hasn't worked very well for The Family.

Well, but you're neglecting to account for another thing too, which is that groups like The Family and Scientology aren't run by the same people as they used to be, and their methods and priorities have changed over time with new leadership. Although it still offers its silly personality tests and will take money from anyone who comes, Scientology has shifted its focus toward recruiting celebrities by being trendy; these folks never have to be taught the "Xenu" lore at all - in fact, they aren't. They're content to do their auditing sessions to remove their "engrams" without ever getting to the part where the engrams aren't really traumatic memories, but the souls of dead space aliens. Why bother? The celebs will keep paying - and the "Xenu" thing may have been important to Hubbard, but the new leaders feel differently. The Family, as I understand it, was hit by a child molestation scandal and the murder-suicide of Ricky Rodriguez; it will never be able to recover from the bad publicity in the wake of these things and so is pretty much doomed to death. They barely even bother trying to recruit anymore.

But you are right; many "new religious groups" are suffering the same fate. Why? Well, I think it's because they're largely irrelevant nowadays. There was a reason these groups were a big hit in the 70's and 80's, and the wants they exploited back then just don't need to be filled by as many people anymore. The rise of secular thought is largely to be credited with that, I think, along with a trend of the return of the religious to tradition and fundamentalism.

Are there any groups taking these peoples' place? Not to the same degree...but there are groups using the same tactics, where initiation is effectively a mental assault designed to invalidate your current point of view and replace it with something else, something pointedly inclined to justify paying your new best friends lots of money, and recruiting other people to give theirs. Again, it doesn't work on everybody (mostly on those who are in a state of vulnerability) - and again, it's not the "strap people to chairs and drug them or zap them into submission" that many conspiracy theorists evoke when they use the term "mind control"; although in some ways it can be just as reprehensible.

An example of this kind of group which immediately comes to mind is a private company that runs "tough love teen rehabilitation" camps, which used to be called at different times Teen Help, Teen Challenge, and WWASP but is probably called something else by now, as it changes its name occasionally to dodge bad publicity. WWASP schools, which are mostly located in foreign countries and have a habit of being closed down by those governments for egregious maltreatment of their "students", are advertised to parents of "out-of-control" children and portrayed as tough but safe and effective treatment centers where these kids will learn to respect themselves and others more, and earn an education to boot. Well of course the facilities are largely basically just prisons; the staff hired in these countries tend to be brutal and are never actually trained, and the schools' curriculum is accredited by essentially a front organization run by the same people who run the schools themselves. But the parents are kept from knowing about this, and in fact end up being required themselves to attend a set of weekend seminars (the first one is free!) that seem to be designed to psychologically torture them into becoming fervent advocates of the program, to the point of dismissing out-of-hand any negative criticism of it - including from their own children whom, the parents are told, will make up fiction about abusive and degrading conditions in order to manipulate them into feeling guilty and withdrawing their children from the program. For fun I would suggest reading this, an account by a parent who attended one of the seminars - in the article there's a link to a separate account of the same event written by his wife from her perspective - as it illustrates a bit of what I'm describing; I'm not going on about high-pressure sales or team-building exercises here.

 

[Scott Sommers]

I agree there are things you can do to people that will cause them terrible grief and transform the way they look at life. I agree that some organizations sell these practices as therapeutic. My point is that there is no known procedure that gives someone 'control' over people's volition. I agree you can beat people into submission. You can traumatize people so they suffer shock and are not capable of making choices in the same way. But everybody knows this.

Teen Help looks like a bunch of New Age goobly gook psychology stuff that they sell to desperate parents. I doubt if they did not have the New Age goobly gook psychology stuff that parents would buy into the idea that Teen Help has a new therapy to try on their kids, who have probably been through many conventional interventions. These are exactly the people I'm talking about. They are paying huge amounts of money for something that has to look different.

The parental description you link to is full of this New Age goobly gook psychology stuff. What I don't see is any understanding of experimental psychology. It is no coicidence, I think, that your article about Teen Help refers to what occurred to American POWs during the Korean War. This is pretty standard comparison that gets made all the time as a sign that something is going on that's far-out and funky and beyond our what scientists know about the mind. And there is a clear understanding among psychologists of what that was. As The Great Wiki says it,

After the war, two studies of the repatriation of American prisoners of war by Robert Jay Lifton[8] and by Edgar Schein[9] concluded that brainwashing (called "thought reform" by Lifton and "coercive persuasion" by Schein) had a transient effect. Both researchers found that the Chinese mainly used coercive persuasion to disrupt the ability of the prisoners to organize and maintain morale and hence to escape. By placing the prisoners under conditions of physical and social deprivation and disruption, and then by offering them more comfortable situations such as better sleeping quarters, better food, warmer clothes or blankets, the Chinese did succeed in getting some of the prisoners to make anti-American statements. Nevertheless, the majority of prisoners did not actually adopt Communist beliefs, instead behaving as though they did in order to avoid the plausible threat of extreme physical abuse

In other words, they beat the crap out them and told them if they'd support communism, the beatings would stop and they'd get nice food. But everybody how that knows that works. I don't doubt it really messed with them and traumatized them for the rest of their lives. But were they communists after that? Apparently not. And in the late 20th century, we started dressing this up in a cool kind of science lingo that made it sound technical.

I'm sure that Scientology and The Family and Teen Help and North Korean POW camps can do a mess a' bad to people. Can it do anything that's systematic and controllable and has a predictable long-term outcome - other than just messing up people's mind? No chance.

So I'm still left confused about what this 'mind control' thing could be. Is it beating people up? Is it scaring the crap out them? Is it a thing that only lasts until the pain and the fear go away? Is it a selection process to find the people that respond to this kind of training?

 

[Checkmite]

Teen Help looks like a bunch of New Age goobly gook psychology stuff that they sell to desperate parents. I doubt if they did not have the New Age goobly gook psychology stuff that parents would buy into the idea that Teen Help has a new therapy to try on their kids, who have probably been through many conventional interventions. These are exactly the people I'm talking about. They are paying huge amounts of money for something that has to look different.

No, I disagree. It certainly is New Age nonsense - and quite frankly, I'm dubious as to whether it's actually an organized system of woo that its purveyors believe in, or just a bunch of random filler chosen to make it seem like the "program" has a purpose (aside from getting money out of parents) - but the major beef the man in that article you read had was that they were ambushed by the nonsense; they never expected it, were never given any information that would've led them to suspect it.

Here's an archived webpage of one of their overseas facilities, which was raided by the Mexican government and closed in 2004. Take a look at how the facility presents itself, its goals, and its techniques. Here's another, rather painfully-bad website, whose Montana facility was closed in 2009. The information presented about the program run at these places is not very comprehensive on these webpages - but I'm sure you'll agree with me that neither of them at any time claim to be using anything new, mystical, or particularly avant garde. They use colloquial psychology terms, and make statements that seem to gibe with what a layperson knows (or is likely to think he knows) about psychology. According to these sites, their children are seen and have daily contact with what they're told is a professional therapist; that they'll be taught about very down-to-Earth concepts like respect, integrity, and self-esteem; they're assured the facilities are licensed and well-kept, and are shown pictures of happy teens with big smiles riding horses and looking for sea shells and all that other sunshine-and-rainbows goodness that these parents want their children to be experiencing in a therapeutic setting. On top of it, they're given "testimonials" from parents and former students in the program that back up the program's claims. These folks didn't go to a psychic fair and get wrapped up in a seminar about ion water; a reasonable person could read the information they were given and conclude that this was something endorsed by professionals and technically above-board.

The parental description you link to is full of this New Age goobly gook psychology stuff. What I don't see is any understanding of experimental psychology. It is no coicidence, I think, that your article about Teen Help refers to what occurred to American POWs during the Korean War. This is pretty standard comparison that gets made all the time as a sign that something is going on that's far-out and funky and beyond our what scientists know about the mind. And there is a clear understanding among psychologists of what that was. As The Great Wiki says it,


In other words, they beat the crap out them and told them if they'd support communism, the beatings would stop and they'd get nice food. But everybody how that knows that works. I don't doubt it really messed with them and traumatized them for the rest of their lives. But were they communists after that? Apparently not. And in the late 20th century, we started dressing this up in a cool kind of science lingo that made it sound technical.

I agree with this, and that's why I said way back that the use of "mind control" and "brainwashing" to describe these things is somewhat unfortunate. And the article author obviously is not a psychologist and seems to have mixed his political views in with his assessment of the events he experienced - his wife's account is more detailed about the activities themselves. I wanted to direct you not so much toward his assessment and conclusions about what was happening, but rather his description of the proceedings themselves. Although the program's stated philosophy seems like ineffectual gibberish, the techniques it uses while "teaching" the philosophy are used to accomplish an unstated goal and are practically effective at doing so.

No, it's not "control" in the sense that the person can be directed like a video game character, or that once it's done the perpetrators can "plant suggestions" or "programmed actions" and send these people back out in the world to be "activated" with radio waves or code words. That is certainly a bunch of nonsense. And yes, once free from the influence - like the returning Korean War POWs - they tend to return to the way they were before given time. Without higher-level Scientologists around to constantly call them and visit them and remind them to do their audits and rundowns and guilt them into buying more and obeying the rules, pleb Scientologists would certainly begin to slack off and eventually stop paying. But it's the part that happens while they're under the influence - when those higher-ups keep calling and visiting and reminding - that's important. It's a no-brainer that if you torture someone (psychologically or otherwise) and tell them "if you support Communism the pain will stop", eventually they'll start to support Communism - at least while you're watching. But what if you're always watching? And what, exactly, does supporting Communism actually entail? What if the war doesn't end, or it does but nobody comes to get them back? They might well spend the rest of their lives (pretending to be) "supporting Communism" via the methods you demand from them - and in that case what's really the difference between whether they're genuine or pretending to be changed?

What happens in programs like those above is non-consented abuse for profit and is despicable. Agreeing to go to seminar about how to repair relationships with your teen children and ending up being subject to this torture is not "receiving a service they paid for"; it's a little unfair to portray these things like that. Even the people running the program themselves told the article's author, after he complained that he was never informed of what would go on, that if they had done so "nobody would ever come to the seminars". To me that's a tacit admission that they know they're doing something that is not on the level either way you cut it.

 

[Scott Sommers]

So you agree with almost anything? Everything?

It almost seems to me now, the only question left is whether groups like the ones you link to actually believe they can help people or if they are just setting up a scam to get desperate parents to cough up bucks. I can believe there are people who think this sort of thing works to sort out damaged kids and their families. I can also believe it's the latter.

Complaints filed against Casa by the Sea makes it seem as though there was little attempt to establish a therapeutic community or hire proper staff and instead it was a scheme set-up to raise money staffed with violent people.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/...troubled-teen-schools-subject-of-lawsuit.html
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PKK5080.htm
The Great Wiki tells me the school was closed because of violations related to qualification of staff and the improper storage of medication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_by_the_Sea
This makes me think the reason they were located in Mexico was because of the ease of getting pharmaceutical drugs.

It looks pretty much the way I thought it did in the beginning. Psycho-Babble sold to desperate people with messed up kids that turns into warehousing them with drugs and abuse because - after all - they never had anything else.

In fact, I have found there seems to others with the same impression of this industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_at_Any_Cost

You do make one point that seems a little different from this.

But what if you're always watching? And what, exactly, does supporting Communism actually entail? What if the war doesn't end, or it does but nobody comes to get them back? They might well spend the rest of their lives (pretending to be) "supporting Communism" via the methods you demand from them - and in that case what's really the difference between whether they're genuine or pretending to be changed?

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you mean this in a philosophical sense? As in, what about that person who pretends for their whole life they are a communist? Are they really a communist? And how could you tell? Or is this more about the effectiveness of such programs to make people pretend for their whole lives?

 

[Scott Sommers]

My God my typing is bad. This is a corrected version of the above post. I'll leave it to the mods to handle this one,

So you agree with almost everything? Everything?

It almost seems to me now, the only question left is whether groups like the ones you link to actually believe they can help people or if they are just setting up a scam to get desperate parents to cough up bucks. I can believe there are people who think this sort of thing works to sort out damaged kids and their families. I can also believe it's the latter.

Complaints filed against Casa by the Sea makes it seem as though there was little attempt to establish a therapeutic community or hire proper staff and instead it was a scheme set-up to raise money staffed with violent people.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...f-lawsuit.html
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D9PKK5080.htm
The Great Wiki tells me the school was closed because of violations related to qualification of staff and the improper storage of medication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_by_the_Sea
This makes me think the reason they were located in Mexico was because of the ease of getting pharmaceutical drugs.

It looks pretty much the way I thought it did in the beginning. Psycho-Babble sold to desperate people with messed up kids that turns into warehousing them with drugs and abuse because - after all - they never had anything else.

In fact, I have found there seems to others with the same impression of this industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_at_Any_Cost

You do make one point that seems a little different from this.

But what if you're always watching? And what, exactly, does supporting Communism actually entail? What if the war doesn't end, or it does but nobody comes to get them back? They might well spend the rest of their lives (pretending to be) "supporting Communism" via the methods you demand from them - and in that case what's really the difference between whether they're genuine or pretending to be changed?

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you mean this in a philosophical sense? As in, what about that person who pretends for their whole life they are a communist? Are they really a communist? And how could you tell? Or is this more about the effectiveness of such programs to make people pretend for their whole lives?

 

[Travis]

So we're agreed that Mind Control in the manner that the layperson thinks of is impossible. You can't just grab any person and turn that person into a programmed robot who will, on the uttering of a code phrase, execute some elaborate function with no regard to their own safety.

I like that someone brought up cults. The problem with cults is that there is certain self selection going on there. Most people are going to reject the proposition of a cult. So their behavior modification aims are only on people that have a predisposition to their ideas in the first place.

 

[Scott Sommers]

So we're agreed that Mind Control in the manner that the layperson thinks of is impossible. You can't just grab any person and turn that person into a programmed robot who will, on the uttering of a code phrase, execute some elaborate function with no regard to their own safety.

I like that someone brought up cults. The problem with cults is that there is certain self selection going on there. Most people are going to reject the proposition of a cult. So their behavior modification aims are only on people that have a predisposition to their ideas in the first place.

I think this is a good way to describe the problem. Some of these groups would be set up primarily as a commercial scam. They would just care about finding appropriate marks. Many would be sincere, in that their belief is genuine. I'm not sure they would see it as finding people with a predisposition, as much as they would see it as finding people susceptible to their message. Some groups would have a very distinct way to orienting you toward their message. It's this that is being called 'brain washing' or whatever. Where I think I diverge from some people here is that I see this less as indoctrination that has a psychological effect and more as a providing the kind of psychological package that certain people are interested in. It's a kind of marketing or branding of the group.

I was quite interested in something Checkmite said,

But it's the part that happens while they're under the influence - when those higher-ups keep calling and visiting and reminding - that's important. It's a no-brainer that if you torture someone (psychologically or otherwise) and tell them "if you support Communism the pain will stop", eventually they'll start to support Communism - at least while you're watching. But what if you're always watching? And what, exactly, does supporting Communism actually entail? What if the war doesn't end, or it does but nobody comes to get them back? They might well spend the rest of their lives (pretending to be) "supporting Communism" via the methods you demand from them - and in that case what's really the difference between whether they're genuine or pretending to be changed?

I'm not quite sure what he's getting at here, but that may be my problem.

 

[I Ratant]

Mind control occurs on some occasions... such as the "trample to death" hordes bursting into the stores to get their Tickle Me Elmo toys a year or so back.
Clever marketing that.

 

[Venom]

Project MKULTRA marked the first time in US History when the CIA used debilitating drugs, intravenous solutions, sensory deprivation, and exposure to the elements to observe certain states of mind.
Drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and the anesthetic sodium thiopental were used in heavy quantities on hundreds of test subjects.
Some of the patients actually went into coma after being administered high doses and subject to extensive hypnosis.
Heightened or depressed electrical signals from the cerebral cortex (PFC) were observed in conjunction with certain states of hypnosis after ingesting these drugs.
Do your research people. The U.S. is arguably the most technologically advanced developed nation on Earth. If mind control ever existed, it started here in our own soil.

 

[Checkmite]

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you mean this in a philosophical sense? As in, what about that person who pretends for their whole life they are a communist? Are they really a communist? And how could you tell? Or is this more about the effectiveness of such programs to make people pretend for their whole lives?

Sorry for leaving you hanging here; I'm not ditching the discussion, I just haven't had the time to dedicate to a proper reply. I'll be able to do so either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Scott Sommers]

Sorry for leaving you hanging here; I'm not ditching the discussion, I just haven't had the time to dedicate to a proper reply. I'll be able to do so either tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for letting me know. There's no rush on this. But I am quite interested in following this up.

 

[Checkmite]

Okay:

I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you mean this in a philosophical sense? As in, what about that person who pretends for their whole life they are a communist? Are they really a communist? And how could you tell? Or is this more about the effectiveness of such programs to make people pretend for their whole lives?

I was just using "communism" because it was the example we were running with - replace it with anything.

My point - rephrased - is that it's irrelevant whether people who are subject to these methods tend to return to "normal" once removed from them. The harmfulness of such techniques and "programs" isn't predicated upon the damage being permanent or lasting; it's predicated on what can be done to the person who is presently under their influence, or what they can be persuaded to do. Most of the time this "only" involves forking over tremendous amounts of money, volunteering work without compensation, and recruiting more "members". One can say "big deal, people are capable of voluntarily doing these things without being mind-controlled - for instance, when it comes to JREF and TAMs" and that's true enough - but it doesn't change the fact that in these cases it's the psychological torture that prompts the "voluntary" behavior. And anyway, these are the mildest cases; there are much worse ones. Jim Jones commanded his followers to assassinate a US Congressman and then poison themselves and their children. David Koresh commanded his followers to remain inside a burning building and roast themselves to death. Marshall Applewhite commanded his male followers to castrate themselves (and then drink poison). The bottom line: that these people, if taken away from these places, tend to "recover just fine", or indeed the fact that only those already "susceptible to the message"* might end up falling under the influence of these techniques to begin with, is largely unimportant to the facts of 1. whether they work or not, and 2. what people are capable of doing or can be directed to do under the influence of them.

* - I don't agree with this assessment. I think it would be more accurate to say that the individuals who end up in such situations are more susceptible to those types of coercion rather than any "message" delivered thereby, though the latter is certainly possible and would definitely "help".

 

[Scott Sommers]

I'm not sure where we disagree anymore, except perhaps on the label for this thing.
I agree completely that

it would be more accurate to say that the individuals who end up in such situations are more susceptible to those types of coercion rather than any "message" delivered thereby, though the latter is certainly possible and would definitely "help".

and that's why said back here

I agree there are things you can do to people that will cause them terrible Is it a selection process to find the people that respond to this kind of training?

and as such, it is completely relevant that almost everybody subjected to the procedures of whoever returns to 'normal' once they leave that group's clutches. In fact, it appears that large numbers of people who don't leave these situation appear to want to leave and are stopped from doing so. That was the case with the People's Temple, it remains the case with The Family, and it appears to be the case with the therapeutic communities you linked to.

My feeling is that if there wasn't this huge rejection of these communities and a forced coercion of remaining members, we wouldn't even know their names. The groups would either disappear or be we would just appear to be some mainstream group of people with weird ideas, like an old male virgin turning water into God's son's blood, or salvation through repeated chanting of some dead guy's name.

It's not clear what went on as the Branch Davidians burned but it is clear that some number of people who once followed Koresh were angry enough with him to leave and allege he was involved in quite serious acts of coercion. As the Great Wiki says,

The allegations of child abuse stem largely from detractors and ex-members

Besides, the number of people we're talking about here is very small and some quite young. With such small numbers, it's quite possible that those who stuck with him to end were the sort of person who hears voices and had suicidal thoughts long ago.

I don't see much that needs explanations beyond what most of us would give the situations.

 

[Checkmite]

I'm not sure where we disagree anymore, except perhaps on the label for this thing.

No; we agree on that as well: I've said a few times that I don't think "brainwashing" or "mind control" are effective terms to use for this kind of situation.

My only point in bringing any of this up at all is so that you know - if someone begins talking about "brainwashing" or "mind control", they may not necessarily be talking about "MK-ULTRA" Manchurian Candidate kind of stuff, they might be talking about this other thing, which is a legitimate set of complaints (if mislabeled); so don't be too quick to dismiss them as conspiratoids until you're sure.

Moving along - and bringing up MK-ULTRA; well...MK-ULTRA was a real project, and conspiracy theorists are fond of bringing it up as if it proves their "mind control" is a real thing. Problem is, while MK-ULTRA was certainly a real program designed to study the feasibility of mind control, IIRC it did not actually lead to the development of any actual working "mind control" techniques; it was concluded that such a thing can't actually be done.

 

[Scott Sommers]

No; we agree on that as well: I've said a few times that I don't think "brainwashing" or "mind control" are effective terms to use for this kind of situation.

That's pretty good. We've reached a consensus on this and we're still friends.

My only point in bringing any of this up at all is so that you know - if someone begins talking about "brainwashing" or "mind control", they may not necessarily be talking about "MK-ULTRA" Manchurian Candidate kind of stuff, they might be talking about this other thing, which is a legitimate set of complaints (if mislabeled); so don't be too quick to dismiss them as conspiratoids until you're sure.

My experience has been that the sophisticated version of this no longer talks about MK-ULTRA. The religious cult thing that came out of the 80s is a much more sophisticated description of 'mind control'. It's nonsense, but at least it is coherent. It's so coherent, it can be dispelled convincingly with factual evidence. I'm rough on these guys because they're conspiracy morons and not because the 80s version of 'mind control' is a moronic idea. But it is wrong.

Moving along - and bringing up MK-ULTRA; well...MK-ULTRA was a real project, and conspiracy theorists are fond of bringing it up as if it proves their "mind control" is a real thing. Problem is, while MK-ULTRA was certainly a real program designed to study the feasibility of mind control, IIRC it did not actually lead to the development of any actual working "mind control" techniques; it was concluded that such a thing can't actually be done.

As almost a psychologist, looking back on MK-ULTRA with the hindsight of contemporary knowledge, the whole thing was naive. There was nowhere near the understanding of human behavior or experimental design available to even begin to explore the idea. That's why the CIA had to hook up with nut bars like Cameron. The whole idea of a mechanical model of behavior is increasingly out-dated. Not because it's not true in some greater sense of the universe, but because it's just increasingly clear our knowledge of how things work still requires the concepts of choice and volition.

 

[Greedo]

The newest Skeptoid episode touches on the subject:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4278

 

[jakesteele]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

http://www.amazon.com/Father-Spin-Edward-Bernays-Relations/dp/0805067892

There is mind control all the time all around us in many different ways. As far as the totally sinister, black ops part of a government, there is some of that, but for the most part it is more of "crystalizing public opinion" and "manufacturing consent" by large corporations to buy or invest and my the military to create propaganda about the evil-ism type enemies like islamism.

 

[Scott Sommers]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

http://www.amazon.com/Father-Spin-Edward-Bernays-Relations/dp/0805067892

There is mind control all the time all around us in many different ways. As far as the totally sinister, black ops part of a government, there is some of that, but for the most part it is more of "crystalizing public opinion" and "manufacturing consent" by large corporations to buy or invest and my the military to create propaganda about the evil-ism type enemies like islamism.

Not again. I still don't know what mind control means. So it's not what anyone meant by it when the term originated during the Korean War. It's not what New Age religious groups were accused of doing during the 1980s. Now it's this thing that gets taught openly in a marketing class. So your supermarket manager who lives next door is using 'mind control techniques' to get you to buy a so-called new brand of soap. What does that mean?

My point is there's no such thing as 'mind control' - period. There's no such thing. Don't use the term because it doesn't describe anything. And as much as it's just some super-sexy term borrowed from the Cold War to imply some sort of unconscious control over people's volition - when there's nothing of the sort going on - but is really just an attempt to make something look really bad, using the term is just...well...brain washing.

It doesn't exist.

 

[Checkmite]

I see what you did there.

 

[JCM]

Would intoxicated suggestible human puppets be deemed as Mind Controlled?

drug experiments conducted by Victor H. Vogel and Harris Isbell of the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, Lexington, KY, found that Demerol’s first cousin Scopolamine or hyoscine make patients psychotic. Scopolamine intoxication can be used as a model of transient global amnesia. From recent reports of the abuse of Scopolamine, the drug removes free will, effectively turning victims into suggestible human puppets.