Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism

Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
Author: Robert Jay Lifton
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807882887
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Informed by Erik Erikson's concept of the formation of ego identity, this book, which first appreared in 1961, is an analysis of the experiences of fifteen Chinese citizens and twenty-five Westerners who underwent "brainwashing" by the Communist Chinese government. Robert Lifton constructs these case histories through personal interviews and outlines a thematic pattern of death and rebirth, accompanied by feelings of guilt, that characterizes the process of "thought reform." In a new preface, Lifton addresses the implications of his model for the study of American religious cults.

Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes

Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes
Author: Aminda M. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2013
Genre: China
ISBN: 144221838X
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This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"--The prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smit.