Organizations with a wide range of political and criminal agendas have historically relied on coercive interrogation and brainwashing of various types to force submission and information from enemies and victims, and to indoctrinate and increase cooperation in members and captives. In modern times, these techniques are used by political/military/espionage organizations, race/ethnic hate-groups, criminal groups (e.g., child pornographers and sex rings, and international traffickers of women, children, guns, and drugs) and exploitative and destructive cults with spiritual or other agendas. Methods of “thought reform” used by such groups include intimidation, social isolation, religious indoctrination, threats against victims or their loved ones, torture, torture of co-captives, and brainwashing through social influence or deprivation of basic needs, such as sleep or food (see Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000), by Steven Hassan).
Trauma-based mind control programming is a term generally used for thought reform that goes beyond the above-described overt torture, intimidation, and brainwashing of the conscious mind, to covert installation of information in the unconscious mind through sophisticated, often technological, Machiavellian means. Mental health and law enforcement professionals working with severe trauma are increasingly seeing victims of such torture (Boyd, 1991; Coleman, 1994b; Hersha, Hersha, Griffis, & Schwarz, 2001; Katchen & Sakheim, 1992; Keith, 1998; Marks, 1979; Neswald & Gould, 1993; Neswald et al., 1991; Noblitt & Perskin, 2000; Oksana, 2001; Ross, 2000; Rutz, 2001; Ryder, 1992; Sheflin & Opton, 1978; Smith, 1993; Weinstein, 1990), and evidence has begun to surface in the legal arena (e.g., Orlikow v. U.S., 682 F.S. 77 (D.D.C. 1988).
Trauma-based mind control programming can be defined as systematic torture that blocks the victim’s capacity for conscious processing (through pain, terror, drugs, illusion, sensory deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and often, near-death), and then employs suggestion and/or classical and operant conditioning (consistent with well-established behavioral modification principles) to implant thoughts, directives, and perceptions in the unconscious mind, often in newly-formed trauma-induced dissociated identities, that force the victim to do, feel, think, or perceive things for the purposes of the programmer. The objective is for the victim to follow directives with no conscious awareness, including execution of acts in clear violation of the victim’s volition, moral principles, and spiritual convictions.