Mind control - more than science fiction?
In Dollhouse, Echo, Sierra and the other Actives are controlled through highly illegal methods of mind manipulation or mind control. Not only are their actual thoughts and memories taken away, the leaders of the Dollhouse replace those with memories and thoughts that favor whatever job the Active is assigned.
Joss Whedon has used mind manipulation as a storytelling arc before in Firefly. Now he’s at it again in Dollhouse. But in the real world, how prevalent is mind manipulation?
Well, first we must recognize that the United States Supreme Court rejected mind control as a legal defense in maybe the most well-known case of the mid-‘70s – the Patty Hearst story.
Hearst, a billionaire heiress and the granddaughter of famed newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA held the 19-year-old until she subsequently joined their movement. Hearst was later arrested after helping the SLA rob a San Francisco bank.
Hearst testified that the SLA subjected her to a number of things after her kidnapping – they blindfolded her, kept her locked up in the space the size of a closet, sexually abused her and made her listen to pro-SLA literature. Hearst’s mother defined her daughter’s treatment as “brainwashing.”
Psychologists would later say that Stockholm Syndrome likely played a part in Hearst’s turn from billionaire heiress to urban guerrilla war fighter.
Cases like the Patty Hearst story, the Charles Manson family murders and the stories of cults like Heaven’s Gate prove that mind manipulation can be a very powerful thing.
It may not be real in a scientific sense at this time, but it’s very real in a psychological sense. Cults, some religious groups, terrorist organizations and others rely on psychological mind manipulation to further their own causes. If people are told something enough or shown something enough, they believe it.
Is mind control more than just science fiction? Ask Patty Hearst. Ask the families of those that died in Jonestown.
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