 Taylor provides background on the development of the term brainwashing , from its use in 1950 by journalist Edward Hunter and its later usage as applied to the spheres of cults , marketing , influence , thought reform , torture and reeducation . She references psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton 's work Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism as a resource throughout the book . Lifton based his research on interviews he conducted with prisoners of war who had been subjected to indoctrination and torture during the Korean War . Taylor argues that the term brainwashing is useful to when used to refer to a more coercive form of persuasion . 
