Terror, Love and Brainwashing

This book explains how people can be radically manipulated by extreme groups and leaders to engage in incomprehensible and often dangerous acts through psychologically isolating situations of extreme social influence. These methods are used in totalitarian states, terrorist groups and cults, as well as in controlling personal relationships.

Autorentext

Alexandra Stein is a social psychologist and visiting research fellow at London South Bank University (UK). She lectures and writes on cults and totalitarianism. As a young woman she was a member of a political cult, an experience she documented in her first book, Inside Out.

Inhalt

Introduction 1. The overthrow of the rulers of the mind 2. Fear: It's screamingly obvious 3. Recruitment: The accidental extremist 4. Totalist indoctrination: Isolation in a crowded place 5. Family and Friends: Not as Close as Chairman Mao 6. The Will of the Fuehrer is the Party's Law: Totalist leaders and the structures they create 7. Secrets and Lies: The Total Ideology 8. From the Inside Out 9. Deployable, but not Manchurian: It's a Human Thing 10. The Flute Player: What Should an Open Society Do?