Brainwashing. What began as a simple way to influence employees to work their hardest was developed by corporations into a true discipline. Professional "washers" were employed by companies in their struggle to obtain the best and brightest employees, but it got to the point where several companies would send different washers after the same person, each washer overwriting the program from the previous one. At this point a fraction of elite washers broke away and became deprogrammers, people capable of breaking down programs and deconstructing the human mind. However, the very nature of deprogrammers posed a threat to the washers, and the deprogrammers themselves were hardly invincible...

(Source: Storm in Heaven)