And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing.

What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they helped to create it.

It may sound terrible, but I often say that the military saved me from a conventional life in the United States and I've never really thanked them for it, because I haven't exactly been pro-military in my work.

Robert Jay Lifton Quotes