Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism

Robert Jay Lifton’s ‘Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China’ was published in 1961. In it, Lifton identified features common to expressions of ideological totalism: 1) Milieu control 2) Mystical manipulation 3) The demand for purity 4) The cult of confession 5) The “sacred science” 6) Loading the language […]