Definition of "brainwashing" []

• Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs. (noun)
• The application of a concentrated means of persuasion, such as an advertising campaign or repeated suggestion, in order to develop a specific belief or motivation. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "British journalist Edward Hunter translated the term brainwashing in his 1953 book, “Brain-Washing in Red China,” which described communist techniques for controlling the minds of nonbelievers."
• "He agreed the term brainwashing can be used in two different senses, involving an element of physical force and no such physical element."
• "* Some one somewhere took the term brainwashing literally."