Self-betrayal (Brainwashing)

Protestations of innocence are treated as proof of guilt and the individual is persuaded that for self-survival he may as well confess those things which are already known to his interrogators. In doing so he betrays his previous friends and colleagues, and his own most cherished principles. This produces real feelings of guilt and a sense of disloyalty and self-betrayal. He becomes more and more involved with his captors and with the doubts and antagonisms beneath the surface of his loyalties. Turning back becomes progressively more difficult.

A stage reached in thought reform, a system of organized, deliberate and total psychological training which effects individual change through two basic elements – confession (renouncing of past beliefs and attitudes) and re-education (remaking of the individual in the required image).