A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Postwar American Society Matthew W. Dunne. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.

A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Postwar American Society Matthew W. Dunne. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.In 1953, following the conclusion of hostilities in Korea, many Americans were shocked when some prisoners of war refused repatriation and elected to remain in North Korea. Coupled with American prisoners who apparently collaborated with the enemy, there was a national concern that young men lacked the discipline of earlier generations and were, thus, susceptible to Communist brainwashing. In A Cold War State of Mind, the impact of brainwashing upon American culture in the 1950s and 1960s is astutely analyzed by Matthew W. Dunne, who teaches history at Stonehill College and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Drawing upon a variety of sources, including the archives of the Eisenhower Presidential Library, journalistic accounts, and American popular culture, Dunne argues that brainwashing was initially perceived as sophisticated Communist psychology and science to re-engineer the brain and was pioneered by the Soviet Union to undermine the American way of life. Thus, Communism in American culture was considered an alien ideology that sought to destroy American individualism, and the Cold War was a struggle over the soul of humanity between slavery and freedom. In an important contribution to the study of Cold War culture, Dunne insists that fears about Communist indoctrination were replaced in the late 1950s and early 1960s by concern that American advertising, political campaigns, suburbia, corporations, and consumerism were fostering a sense of conformity which threatened individuality in a similar fashion to Communism and constituted a domestic form of brainwashing that was associated with capitalism. This is a significant addition to our understanding of post-Wo rid War Two America.The author credits the term "brainwashing" to conservative journalist Edward Hunter, who was convinced that only torture and indoctrination could possibly explain how any American could endorse Communism-the history of indigenous American radicalism was not acknowledged by Hunter or most Americans. No true American could possibly, by free choice, embrace Communism. Hunter's somewhat sensational journalism was given some scientific justification and support by the work of psychologist Joost Me er loo. Dunne maintains that government psychologists eventually rejected the concept of brainwashing. However, the efforts of the government to interrogate the Korean prisoners of war and try others for collaboration with the enemy reinforced the brainwashing thesis which was presented by Hunter and Meerloo. Dunne writes, "Despite official attempts to discredit the authenticity of Communist brainwashing, by middecade the government had lost control of the brainwashing narrative, and more severe interpretations of the concept eventually dominated popular culture and Cold War discourse" (36). Drawing upon perceptions of Communists as slaves, puppets, conformists, and robots, he traces how popular films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) captured the nation's fears of Communist indoctrination.Seeking to explain the insecurities of servicemen in Korea as contrasted with previous conflicts such as World War II, Dunne documents that commentators placed the blame for this weakness upon a culture that failed to develop the mental and physical toughness necessary to withstand the force of Communist propaganda. Young American men were vulnerable because they were pampered by mothers who responded to their every need. Growing up in the cozy confines of suburbia, boys were exposed to the feminization of American culture, which was also associated with threats of homosexuality. …