You don't have to be mentally ill to be brainwashed. It is my own opinion that much religious education amounts to a form of steady and systematic brainwashing, from childhood on. Religion can be like a roadmap which has been impressed over and over into your mind until your mind equates the map with reality, with truth. For some people who have been raised in a very religious community it then comes as a huge shock to go out into the world and find that other people are using other maps.

Thank you all for the book recommendations. If you're interested in understanding more about what Lonesome EJ was talking about, look for Jon Krakauer's latest, called Under the Banner of Heaven.

PS - I should say that it's not just religious education that can resemble brainwashing - that claptrap we teach elementary students about the Pilgrims and the Indians at the First Thanksgiving is a form of brainwashing to my mind as well. It doesn't have to be about manipulation and mind control - we're just, as human beings, impressionable.

BTW, there was an interesting article in the Guardian Online today about a lawsuit by parents in one of the eastern states concerning a a school district that was persuaded to put stickers on the outside of all the science textbooks saying that evolution is just a theory. I think there'll be a lot more of these, in the next few years.