Battle For the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing

by William Sargant

Overview

How can an evangelist convert a hardboiled sophisticate? Why does a POW sign a "confession" that he knows is false? How is a criminal pressured into admitting his guilt? Do the evangelist, the POW's captor and the policeman use similar methods to gain their ends? These and other compelling questions are discussed in this definitive work by William Sargant. Sargant explains and illustrates the basic techniques used by evangelists, psychiatrists and brainwashers to dissolve existing, established patterns of belief and then to substitute new beliefs and behaviors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948013017
Publisher:	Malor Books
Publication date:	05/13/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

For many years until his death in 1988, William Sargant was a leading physician in psychological medicine. His research in World War II showed that with enough battle exposure, every soldier eventually shows the symptoms of battle fatigue, shell shock, or what we know now as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He went further to look at similar processes in religious conversion, spirit possession, brain-washing, political conversion, and the consultation of oracles in the ancient world. His basis was a Pavlovian theory, formulated more than seventy years earlier, but he extended Pavlov's model, sharing much with modern theories of PTSD.