 In 1962 "The Manchurian Candidate" (based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon) "put brainwashing front and center" by featuring a plot by the Soviet government to take over the United States by using a brainwashed sleeper agent for political assassination.The concept of brainwashing became popularly associated with the research of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, which mostly involved dogs, not humans, as subjects.In "The Manchurian Candidate" the head brainwasher is Dr.