Brainwashing

Brainwashing Brainwashing is the attempt to change the thoughts and beliefs of another person. In Doris Lessing’s book, Prisons we choose to live inside, she studies human behavior. Lessing talks about the tools people use to overcome their difficulties in life, but people tend not want to change them. Lessing analyzes a few human behaviors with her own personal stories. In 1986, Lessing studies brainwashing behavior and its effects. At this point, brainwashing was not fully understood but it had been used for many years and is still in practice. Today, this behavior can be seen in parents experiencing a horrible divorce. The children in these families are at high risk for trauma and manipulation. Most children can think for themselves and have their own opinion, but during divorce, parents can manipulate their child’s thinking. Even though children can have their own thoughts of their parents, brainwashing is, most times, inevitable in divorced families and various cases prove that parents do in fact influence their children. During a divorce case, parents talk bad about one another to their children to win custody and choose the “better” parent. Being the better parent would mean that parent is focused on the child’s sleeping habits, eating schedule and a parent who encourages a healthy lifestyle. Children can make their own opinions about their parent’s based off their behavior. The better parent is the parent who is most fit to take care of the child, but most times that does not happen. There was a story that was on the Toronto, Canada newspaper about a mother brainwashing her children to think that their father was a bad man. The mother brainwashed her three kids for more than a decade. The father at some point did have rights to see his daughters but was slowly taken from him by the mother. “Children are more susceptible at about age 10 or 11, after their brains have developed to the point where they can hold positive and negative information about a