Legitimate religious instruction and conversion would be based upon the indoctrinee being given access to transparent information about the group, and being allowed to make a decision without undo coercion and manipulation on the part of those doing the proselytizing.

Cult brainwashing would be achieved by lying to the indoctrinee and using coercive methods, such as love-bombing and rejection, threats of impending doom if doctrine is not accepted, etc.

(Of course, one threat is always inherent in Christian conversion, the threat of hell, and for this reason I believe non-coerced religious conversion is rarely possible in this religion, at least).

Brainwashing, like confidence games, always involves a series of lies.
In my opinion, the person being converted often has a sense of this on some level, but is seduced by the bait into gradually surrendering their critical thinking.
( I doubt that this will be a popular opinion, but in my experience there is always some form of bait that appears attractive to prospective converts.)

Victims of brainwashing are not responsible for their weaknesses, and claiming having been brainwashed is not merely an excuse for making bad decisions.
(Being aware of our own vulnerabilities might help to prevent us from being victimized, however.)

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nccg_concern

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upsidedownnewspaper
Irrespective of one's beliefs or not in brainwashing and mindcontrol, in order to at least combat the effects of a possible brainwashing and/or mind-control situation, one would have to assume oneself responsible for believing oneself brainwashed or mind controlled.

I cannot figure out what you mean in that post. Maybe you can say the idea in a different way, and/or come up with an example situation to help.

Sorry, I think I'd had a few wines. I was thinking about what it meant to be brainwashed and how one could escape being brainwashed.

I meant that in order to escape a brainwashing situation, the indoctrinee would have to accept he/she had been brainwashed and ultimately accept that he/she MADE THE CHOICE to be brainwashed. In that way, the indoctrinee can take back his/her own thought process.

I don't really have an example. And I am concerned I sound like a Landmarkian in suggesting that the victim accept responsibility for crimes against him/her (such as brainwashing). Which is ridiculous.

(Digressing: is the Landmark Forum tech just a learning technique that allows one to regain control rather than a philosophy to live by?? Is making the choice to accept responsibility a hardline approach to ultimately appreciating where true responsibility lies??)

Brainwashing is not something I profess to know much about. Just thinking about it. Your posts are interesting.

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barabara
Brainwashing, like confidence games, always involves a series of lies. In my opinion, the person being converted often has a sense of this on some level, but is seduced by the bait into gradually surrendering their critical thinking. ( I doubt that this will be a popular opinion, but in my experience there is always some form of bait that appears attractive to prospective converts.)

You had two separate thoughts there. One of them is that the victim can often sense at some level that there are lies going on, somewhere, as the brainwashing progresses. I suspect this is true for some kinds of cults but may not be for others, and due to my experience being limited, I have no idea about what percentages we are talking here. I can say that in the large cult I was referencing earlier that I had observed, this did not seem to be the case, but this cult did a great job of looking harmless, honest, wholesome, and entirely Bible-based. This particular cult depended heavily on glossolalia and inducement of a catharsis as an expected result of having succesfully done glossolalia. Tools used to get this result were love-bombing and the effectiveness of the cult leader's sermons in generating the initial desire to attempt glossolalia. There was limited exchange of real information during the process, and not much opportunity to suspect lies.

The other thought was that cults always present some kind of bait. Once again, I'll point out that my own experience is limited, but from what I have seen so far I would tend to agree with that. However I must add with complete certainty that I have seen a cult leader generate the bait for the victim during the brainwashing process. The cult leader used undue influence in very deeply-involved personal relationships with the victims to lead the victims toward new life ideals and goals that did not exist before. Those life ideals and goals were, of course, identical to what he wanted out of them, and were exploitive/destructive in nature.

In my experience, mind control and thought reform most definitely exist. It is commonly used in Large Group Awareness Training.

Take a look at the following article: [perso.orange.fr]

The outline in the article is typical or very similar to the format of most LGATs.

Mind control of thought reform happened to my girlfriend when all eight of the thought reform processes were used by a man supposed to be presenting a human potential seminar.

My girlfriend returned from the course and subsequent courses (because they do hard selling towards the end) a different person, someone I didn't know.

She has changed so much, is so different, and her ideas have all changed. She uses loaded language or jargon, something that is common in these LGATs.

She pulled away from me after we had been exceptionally close. In fact, we [u:e6b5f7e37d]never[/u:e6b5f7e37d] spent a day apart. Now, she hardly sees me and I cannot reach her.

There are numerous examples on the thread "Help, my wife just returned from PSI 7" at [board.culteducation.com] where women or men who attended that specific course returned home and walked out on their spouses.

Those walkouts were not a natural occurence; they were induced by the thought reform or mind control exerted on the course they attended.

It is criminal what these people who present them get away with. They don't need qualifications and they are usually not qualified to deal with the issues they tackle.

The methods they use are unethical because those attending the courses are not told what the methods are about. If they knew it was all about thought reform or mind control, they, I guess, would often opt out.

Some have people sign waivers declaring that they will not tell what goes on the courses. Some say it is so that the attendees will not spoil it for friends who might want to do the courses later. My guess is that it is mostly to prevent word of these unscrupulous practises getting out.

I wish there was a way to criminally prosecute these people. They have destroyed, and continue to destroy, so many relationships and lives.

Hey Brad,

The link you posted in another thread, [www.holysmoke.org] was a great article about brainwashing. I'm putting it in this thread too.

I googled and found the author's website, and it's actually a bit creepy. But that doesn't impact the fact that the text article above seems to have some great explanations about altered states and hypnosis as they are used in brainwashing, and so on.

I thikn that one of the author's biggest conclusions is this: Yes brainwashing is absolutely real, and it should be criminal to do this to someone without their consent, but if the person specifically wants it done to them while beforehand knowing exactly which suggestions are being placed, that's reasonable.

It's an interesting thought as he presents it, and I can't debate against the idea that it could be fair. The lack of fully-informed consent is, really, the biggest thing about all of this, and that's precisely what these cultic groups do not provide as they suck people in for their own purposes and gratification. For me on a personal level, I've seen so much use of brainwashing WITHOUT permission that I would never be able to bring myself to participate in such a thing. But that's just me, and as a personal thing I think that's understandable.

The part in the article where he discusses the problem of cult investigators who infiltrate being in danger of experiencing unwanted mental phenomena themselves was intriguing and correct. Even if you completely understand what's happening and that the messages are just someone's fantasy being applied to other people's lives, your brain is still a human one. They are using the techiques because they work to create altered states of consciousness and ultimately give you feelings and impressions that the rational part of your brain did not come up with. Yick.

--NCCG_Concern

Thanks, nccg_concern. I changed the link to Dick Sutphen's own page at [www.dicksutphen.com] - it was just a little easier to read.

On another thread - [board.culteducation.com] - I wrote about Sutphen and a bit follows about him, including input by the moderator. You might wish to take a look at that.

Anyone who believes mind control/thought reform/brainwashing doesn't exist is fooling him/herself.

As I quoted Sutphen on the other thread:

IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF MAN, NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN BRAINWASHED AND REALIZED, OR BELIEVED, THAT HE HAD BEEN BRAINWASHED.

He also wrote: If you think you can attend such gatherings and not be affected, you are probably wrong.

It's worth thinking about that!

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Brad69

He also wrote: If you think you can attend such gatherings and not be affected, you are probably wrong.

Yes indeed, that sounds entirely accurate.

An interesting point about this applies to infiltration kind of cult research, though: affected vs. [b:d43a1ef0ec]effected[/b:d43a1ef0ec], if you get my drift. I have some experience in this. Someone who happens to have the right set of mental characteristics should be able to endure some affects (at least to a point) and still walk away with a sound mind afterward. I say "happens to have..." because, in my opinion, it's not something that any individual can just decide they want to do and simply apply willpower to get the job done. That would be an awfully dangeous game to play.

For anyone who could do this safely, it seems that there could be a threshold where they had better be able to say to themselves "oops, this is getting too hot" and abandon the infiltration if necessary. I've heard rumors of cult researchers actually joining up with the cults (yikes). Surely those people were confident that they would be okay, and probably even had some prior experience before it happened.


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I think the phenomena of brainwashing and programming need to be considered seperately. A person, as a pre-vocal child, will uncritically receive programming from their parents and in many cases this will include deviant realities in the form of religious fantasies, whether these be mainstream or associated with groups employing mind control techniques. This programming would seem to be an essential part of socialisation. Brainwashing implies a component of deprogramming, which doesn't seem to have received much attention.

ughaibu:

See [www.culteducation.com]

This is a detailed description of "thought reform" frequently called "brainwashing.

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton explains that if an enviornment contains certain attributes as expressed by eight criteria then thought reform is ongoing.

They are:

Milieu Control
Mystical Manipulation
The Demand for Purity
The Cult of Confession
The "Sacred Science"
Loading the Language
Doctrine Over Person
The Dispensing of Existence

You can read the detals explaining each of these criteria.

Psychologist Margaret Singer offers further distincitons between thought reform and education, adverstising, propaganda and indoctrination.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Singer's "Six Condtions" are:

1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and the changes taking place.

2. Control the person's time and, if possible, physical environment.

3. Create a sense of powerlessness, covert fear, and dependency.

4. Suppress much of the person's old behavior and attitudes.

5. Instill new behavior and attitudes.

6. Put forth a closed system of logic; allow no real input or criticism.

Another paper by sociologist Richard Offshe of Stanford University is also helpful.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Thanks, I'll read up.