A claim that the theory was mere political propaganda
According to research and forensic psychologist Dick Anthony, the CIA
invented the brainwashing ideology as a propaganda strategy to undercut
communist claims that American POWs in Korean communist camps had voluntarily
expressed sympathy for communism and that definitive research demonstrated
that collaboration by western POWs had been caused by fear and duress,
and not by brainwashing. He argues that the CIA brainwashing theory was
pushed to the general public through the books of Edward Hunter, who was
a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist" passing as a
journalist. He further asserts that for twenty years starting in the early
1950s, the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research (notably
including Project MKULTRA) in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing
techniques, and that their attempt was a failure.
Brainwashing controversy in new religious movements and cults
In the 1960s, after coming into contact with new religious movements (NRMs,
popularly referred to as "cults'), some young people suddenly adopted
faiths, beliefs, and behavior that differed markedly from their previous
lifestyles and seemed at variance with their upbringings. In some cases,
these people neglected or even broke contact with their families. All
of these changes appeared very strange and upsetting to their families.
To explain these phenomena, the theory was postulated that these young
people had been brainwashed by these new religious movements by isolating
them from their family and friends (inviting them to an end of term camp
after university for example), arranging a sleep deprivation program (3
a.m. prayer meetings) and exposing them to loud and repetitive chanting.
Another alleged technique of religious brainwashing involved love bombing
rather than torture.
In the early 1980s, some U.S. mental health professionals became controversial figures due to their involvement as expert witnesses in court cases against new religious movements, during which they presented anti-cult theories of brainwashing, mind control, or “coercive persuasion” as generally accepted concepts within the scientific community. The American Psychological Association (APA) in 1983 asked Margaret Singer, one of the most vocal proponents of coercive persuasion theories, to chair a taskforce called DIMPAC to investigate whether brainwashing or "coercive persuasion" did indeed play a role in recruitment by such movements. Before the taskforce had submitted its final report, however, the APA submitted an amicus curiæ brief in an ongoing case. The brief stated that "[t]he methodology of Drs. Singer and Benson has been repudiated by the scientific community", that the hypotheses advanced by Singer were "little more than uninformed speculation, based on skewed data" and that "[t]he coercive persuasion theory ... is not a meaningful scientific concept"[1]. However, the brief did not characterize the theory of brainwashing as disproven or as unscientific (as some commentators assert) -- only as not scientifically proven. The brief itself suggests the hypothesis that cult recruitment techniques might prove coercive for certain sub-groups, while not affecting others coercively. When the DIMPAC report finally appeared in 1987, the APA rejected it because it "lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur".
In their Handbook of Cults and Sects in America, Bromley and Hadden present one possible ideological foundation of brainwashing theories that they claim demonstrates the lack of scientific support: They argue that a simplistic perspective they see as inherent in the brainwashing metaphor appeals to those attempting to locate an effective social weapon to use against disfavored groups, and that any relative success of such efforts at social control should not detract from any lack of scientific basis for such opinions.
