Initiate:
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discussion really belongs on another thread
No. This is directly relevant to any discussion about cults and their techniques of recruiting and retaining members. It is also important in the recovery process for former cult members to recognize what happened to them whle they were in the cult. It helps to sort through that experience and the previously linked information is directly applicable to that process.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Psychologist Margaret Singer who worked with thousands of former cult members had these observations in her seminal study "Coming Out of Cults."
[b:4365eac989]Blurring of Mental Acuity [/b:4365eac989]
Most cult veterans are neither grossly incompetent nor blatantly disturbed. Nevertheless, they report -- and their families confirm -- subtle cognitive inefficiencies and changes that take some time to pass. Ex-cultists often have trouble putting into words the inefficiencies they want to describe. Jack, the physiology graduate, said, "It's more that after a while outside, something comes back. One day I realized my thinking had gradually expanded. I could see everything in more complex ways. The group had slowly, a step at a time, cut me off from anything but the simplest right-wrong notions. They keep you from thinking and reasoning about all the contingencies by always telling you, ‘Don't doubt, don't be negative.' And after a while you hardly think about anything except in yes-no, right-wrong, simpleminded ways." Ira, the factory worker, or Jack, now working as a hospital orderly, have to take simple jobs until they regain former levels of competence.
[b:4365eac989]Uncritical Passivity[/b:4365eac989]
Many ex-cultists report they accept almost every thing they hear, as if their pre-cult skills for evaluating and criticizing were in relative abeyance. They cannot listen and judge: they listen, believe, and obey. Simple remarks of friends, dates, co-workers, and roommates are taken as commands, even though the person does not feel like doing the bidding, or even abhors it. One woman had gotten up in the middle of the night to respond to the telephoned command of a near stranger: "I borrowed my dad's car to drive about 65 miles out into the country and help this guy I had just met once in a coffeehouse to transport some stolen merchandise, because he spoke in such a strong and authoritative way to me on the phone. I can't believe how much I still obey people."
When this behavior comes up in our group sessions, we discuss the various cults' injunction's against questioning doctrine or directives, and the effects of living for months or years in situations that encourage acquiescence. Ex-members of some of the more authoritarian cults describe constant urging to "surrender your mind .. accept ... melt ... flow with it . . Don't question now, later you will understand." Reluctance or objections are reprimanded: "Don't be negative, don't be resistant, surrender."
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innocent victims
You seem to categorize former cult members into various groups. It is true that children most often never decided to join and that cult recruitment of disabled people is an especially evil act.
However, all former cult members were victimized by thought reform and essentially disabled through the process of "brainwahsing" as Singer points out repeatedly in her writings.
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The documents you referenced, while quite erudite and well researched essays on mind control and indoctrination use extreme examples (e.g., police interrogation) and describe coercive and aversive methods to demonstrate the thesis that man can indeed be “brain washed” to a point. However, none of these documents provides an accurate template for my experiences with the Krishna group in Hawaii.
The previously linked articles do not simply "use extreme examples" and they are applicable to all destructive cult groups by definition.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton, who wrote "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" defined cults as follows:
"Certain psychological themes which recur in these various historical contexts also arise in the study of cults. Cults can be identified by three characteristics:
1. a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power;
2. a process I call coercive persuasion or thought reform;
3. economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie."
Note the second criteria, which is "thought reform" or "coercive persuasion." Both Lifton and sociologist Richard Ofshe describe this as a subtle process.
Here is Lifton's Chapter 22 defining though reform, which does not simply "use extreme examples."
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Lifton's eight criteria 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
See [
www.culteducation.com]
This is Stanford University professor Richard Ofshe's paper on "coercive persuasion."
Ofshe says, "The key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:
1. The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance
2. The use of an organized peer group
3. Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity
4. The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified
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This model is more likely suitable to some cults, but also the U.S. Military, most governments, some bureaucracies and corporations, and some aspects of the public school system!
You seem to have confused different levels and categories of persuasion here with thought reform.
Singer breaks these levels down.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Singer says that persuasion can be identified in distinct categories as in education, advertising, propaganda, indoctrination and thought reform, but to varying degrees and within a different context and/or under different circumstances.
Regarding the military specifically Singer wrote a paper titled "How the United States Marine Corps Differs from Cults."
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Singer lists 19 differences, but the last is the most relevant to our exchange on this thread.
"In the USMC, the methods of instruction are military training and education, even indoctrination into the traditions of the USMC, but brainwashing, or thought reform, is not used. Cults influence members by means of a coordinated program of psychological and social influence techniques, or brainwashing."
Singer has stated there are six conditions in the cult conversion through coercion process.
They are as follows:
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.
Again see her chart that correlates those six conditions to Lifton's eight criteria.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Singer also correlates this to the three conditions described by MIT researcher and professor Edgar Schein, which are "unfreezing," "changing" and then "refreezing."
Singer adapts this to the following:
"Destabilize a person's sense of self."
"Get the person to drastically reinterpret his or her life's history and radically alter his or her worldview and accept a new version of reality and causality."
"Develop in the person a dependence on the organization, and thereby turn the person into a deployable agent of the organization."
Based upon the many observations of members on this thread and the repeated pattern evident in thier statements the Butler group appears to not only fit the definition of a "cult," but also the process of "brainwashing" or thought reform.
ISKCON is quite well known as a "cult" and it has long been linked to allegations of brainwashing. That is, ISKCON uses its own process of coercive persuasion or thought reform.
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cult deprogrammers have often used the same tactics as the cults themselves!
This is a false statement and doesn't describe cult deprogramming.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Singer says that such deprogramming "is, providing members with information about the cult and showing them how their own decision-making power had been taken away from them."
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I see many good organizations and religions slandered on this website by a few people who have had bad experiences. I was shocked to see some of these listed as potential cults.
What groups specifically are you referring to?
See [
www.culteducation.com]
This document is linked from every page throughout the site and includes the following statement.
"The information within The Rick A. Ross Institute archives has been collected to offer the public a resource concerning groups called "cults," controversial organizations and movements.
However, the mention and/or inclusion of a group or leader within this archive does not define that group as a "cult" and/or an individual mentioned as either destructive and/or harmful. Instead, such inclusion simply reflects that archived articles and/or research is available about a group or person that has generated some interest and/or controversy.
All the information archived must be evaluated critically, through a process of independent and individual judgment. Please note that there are links often prominently posted to a group or movement's own official website, which reflect their views. It is important to see what they have to say."
The introduction at the Home page of the database also makes these distinctions.
There are some sections within the database such as Free Masonry, Wicca, Santeria, Satanism and others that do much to disabuse people of the myths and notions they may have about these groups not based upon facts.
Additionally, in subsections like Opus Dei and Perverted Justice both sides of the controversy surrounding these groups is evident.
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In the end, it doesn’t matter who is to blame for being exploited by the cult (outside of any criminal or civil rights violations).
I completely disagree. It does matter and the media has served a useful purpose by exposing cult groups that exploit people through brainwashing and subsequent undue influence. Cults should be blamed for the bad things they do.
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In looking at your cult experience, if you can’t look at the fact that you had a part in allowing yourself to be brainwashed,
People don't knowingly allow themselves "to be brainwashed."
As you can see from the expert writings above, ignorance is an important part of the process. There is no decision or implicit knowing cooperation "to be brainwased."
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Only through education and laws can we prevent the exploitation of others.
Agreed.
And part of that education is understanding thought reform and how it works in cults, not blaming former cult members for their own brainwashing. People don't brainwash themselves.
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by realizing that just as you can be been duped and manipulated, you also have the ability to detect B.S. and have the power to build yourself back up.
Agreed.
And it is through thougt reform and coercive persuasion techniques as described above that people are "duped and manipulated."
By recognizing this and including that recognition as a part of your "B.S. Detector" system you can avoid falling into a similar situation and build yourself back up stronger and more meaningfully informed.
However, blaming people for their own brainwashing is not a way to build them up. It rather tears them down unfairly and frankly without any basis in fact as outlined in the expert research above about cults and coercive persuasion techniques.