Summary of Memory Marathon 2012: Adam Curtis

00:00:00 - 00:20:00

The Memory Marathon 2012 video by Adam Curtis discusses how memory can be used to manipulate people, and how this can be dangerous. It also discusses how cults, new religions, and other new ideas can be seen as dangerous and pathological, and how this keeps people from exploring other possibilities.

• 00:00:00 Adam Curtis will be discussing the history and concept of brainwashing in a talk that will be shortened due to time constraints. This talk is relevant to contemporary society, as it has contributed to a paranoia and distrust of new ideas.
• 00:05:00 The video discusses the history of the concept of brainwashing, which was first theorized by American journalist Edward Hunter in 1951. The CIA became interested in the idea and began experimenting on prisoners in the Korean War. However, the experiments ended in disaster, as the memories of the subjects were not able to be replaced with new ones. This was due to the fact that memories are not simply slotted into a person like a tape recorder, but are instead shaped and controlled by them. As a result, the concept of brainwashing was abandoned by the CIA, but it continued to be believed in by some psychiatrists. After the Jonestown suicides in 1978, psychiatrists became involved in the concept and began to try to stop new religious movements from forming.
• 00:10:00 The video discusses the theory that children who join cults or new religious movements are being brainwashed, and that Margaret Singer, who argued this theory in the 1950s, was only studying kidnapped or forcibly deprogrammed individuals. The video also shows an academic psychology report which found that deprogrammed individuals often have psychological trauma.
• 00:15:00 The Memory Marathon 2012 video by Adam Curtis focuses on the psychological effects of cults and new religious movements on their members, as well as the psychological effects of deprogramming. The study by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Bromley, which rocked the academic world in the 1980s, showed that the vast majority of cult members left of their own volition and without harm. This contradicted the popular belief at the time that cults were brainwashing their members. The Memory Marathon 2012 video ends with a discussion of the lasting effects of this view of human beings, which has persisted in society despite being disproved by science.
• 00:20:00 The video discusses how memory can be used to manipulate people, and how this can be dangerous. It also discusses how cults, new religions, and other new ideas can be seen as dangerous and pathological, and how this keeps people from exploring other possibilities.