The Rape of the Mind
represents one of the earliest and most notable studies of social control, political conformity, and menticide. Dutch physician and psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo, one of six children, but the only one to escape the Holocaust, had experienced firsthand the myriad of thought-control tactics employed by totalitarian states when he wrote
in 1956. In these pages Meerloo undertakes a systematic analysis of methods for brainwashing and control, exploring such subjects as coercion, mass delusion, false trials, mental contagion, semantic fog, the use of fear, and other techniques for mass submission, among much else. Many of Meerloo's predictions were ratified throughout the Cold War, and his ideas continue to take on new light in the hyper-novel technology- and media-driven world of today.