Deprivation of selfhood (Brainwashing)

This condition is brought about as the first stage in thought reform when the individual is persuaded that he is not the person he thought he was, but that this was simply a cover for his real self. Verbal persuasion combined with physical and emotional deprivation brings about a regressive, helpless condition leading to surrender of personal autonomy and sometimes to a hypnagogic mode of awareness between sleeping and waking. This renders the individual more susceptible both to external influence and to internal aggressive and destructive impulses.

A stage reached in thought reform, a system of organized, deliberate and total psychological training which effects individual change through two basic elements – confession (renouncing of past beliefs and attitudes) and re-education (remaking of the individual in the required image).