Mind control is also known as brainwashing. “The belief in mind control is symptomatic of a general social disease that stems from the sensation that we have very little control over our lives. (Lifton) Mind control implies the forced shaping of a person’s attitudes, beliefs and personality. It works gradually by increasing control over individuals through various activities such as excessive repetition of activities, intense humiliation, or sleep deprivation. There are eight psychological themes which are predominant in mind control. They are milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession, the “sacred science,” loading the language, doctrine over person, and the dispensing of existence.

Milieu control is “the control of human communication.” (Lifton) It is not only the individual’s communication with the outside world (what he hears, sees, reads, writes etc.) that is controlled but also the inner communication, the communication he has with himself. “In order to be the engineers of the human soul, they must first bring it under full observational control.” (Lifton) Winston Smith,

The third psychological theme of mind control is the demand for purity. “The experimental world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good and the absolutely evil.” (Lifton) In Oceania, the government created the character of Goldstein, who is everything that is evil. The division exists between Big Brother who symbolizes all that is good in Oceania and Goldstein who symbolizes all that is bad in the Party; the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. Anything and everything that is not pure must be eliminated. The philosophical assumption underlying this demand is that “absolute purity is attainable, and that anything done to anyone in the name of this purity is absolutely moral.” (Lifton) They are able to use guilt and shame as emotional levers for their controlling and manipulative influences. “There is no emotional bondage greater than that of a man whose entire guilt potential- neurotic and existential- has become the property of ideological totalists.” (Lifton) In Oceania the government has made all sexual relations illegal unless they are for the purpose of procreation between husband and wife. If not, that too was a crime; sex crime. “What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship.” (Orwell 110) The Party believes the people only need to have two emotions; love and hate. They should love Big Brother and hate Goldstein. Big

All in all, there are eight psychological themes to mind control. The eight psychological themes are milieu control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, the cult of confession, the “sacred science,” loading the language, doctrine over person, and the dispensing of existence. They were all used on Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 to make him believe and accept what the Party wanted him to.

The eighth and final psychological theme of mind control is the dispensing of existence. The government chooses who they think has the right to exist and those who do not have the right to exist. “Impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed.” (Thought Reform) Winston had been tortured to the edge of lunacy by O’Brien. Winston actually considered him a friend and O’Brien even told Winton that he thinks that Winston’s mind resembles his own except that he is not insane. After the torture and the learning process “There were things, your own acts from which you could not recover. Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out.” (Orwell 239) O’Brien has said “what happens to you here is forever.” (Orwell 239) Winston’s whole psyche had been changed and he could never go back to the person he was before Room 101. Now he had been damaged and he was just like the rest of the masses. He was as faceless as the other ones and he loved Big Brother.

Some topics in this essay:
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