The Rape of the Mind, Joost Meerloo
The Rape of the Mind, Joost Meerloo
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The Rape of the Mind
The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

Author: Joost Meerloo

Narrator: Chris Matthews

Unabridged: 10 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/05/2022


Synopsis

SINCE 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective "truth" on their victims' minds. The first two and one-half years of WWII, Dr. Meerloo spent under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at first-hand the Nazi methods of mental torture on more than one occasion...Then, after personal experiences with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially....

After the war, he came to the United States...As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed - Cardinal Mindszenty, Colonel Schwable, Robert Vogeler, and others - his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the word menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime...

It is Dr. Meerloo's position that through pressure on the weak points in men's makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a "traitor." And in The Rape of the Mind he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized "rape of the mind."

He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The Rape of the Mind is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Terese on February 24, 2014

"We live in a world of constant noise which captures our minds even when we are not aware of it." The above statement is even more true now than it was at the time of first printing and is part of what makes "The rape of the mind: ..." a highly relevant book still even though both the Berlin wall and......more

Goodreads review by A.J. on July 15, 2015

This is an important book. It's as relevant today as it was when it was written (1957), perhaps more so. Sadly, the author's warnings have not been heeded. Democracy has vanished, and we live under a lawless totalitarianism, fortified by mass propaganda, brainwashing, and menticide. I wonder what the......more

Goodreads review by Kerem on June 17, 2021

Though written in 50s and somehow outdated, it's a book really worth reading. Meerloo dives into the science of brainwashing, starting first with the individual and how mental torture, coercion and submission can be achieved at this level, with most examples and anecdotes provided from Nazi Germany......more

Goodreads review by Martin on August 04, 2015

Chapter 9 - Fear as a Tool of Terror The Fear of Living In our era the fear aroused by human relationships is so strong that inertia and mental death often seem more attractive than mental alertness and life. Classical psychology often spoke of the fear of death and the great unknown as the cause of m......more

Goodreads review by Lawrence on June 24, 2013

The most intelligent, realistic, honest and well-documented book on mind control, brainwashing and hypnosis. We experience the application of the proven techniques throughout our civilization, as carefully applied by secret agencies who forward to NWO agenda.......more