International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 77
feeds that [...]neural network, is the
one that becomes predominant, that’s
the one that’s being fed day in and day
out. [Lavinia]
I’ve also thought about the cult identity
as a brain tumour requiring very special
surgery to remove without hurting my
brain [...]You need a proper surgeon
or medicine to remove without hurting
the host. [Lindsey]
Fluidity of relating, change, and life transitions
is not easily accomplished within the restrictive,
coercive, and controlling environment of an
abusive cult (Langone, 1993). There is little
opportunity for the individual to dislodge or
digest the introjects without leaving, being
punished, or becoming psychologically
destabilized (Jenkinson, 2008). The challenge is
to dislodge and digest these introjects—that is,
to free the restricted identity and recover—
which will result in freeing the authentic
autonomous identity.
To remove introjects, the individual does not
integrate them, but instead chews them over and
eliminates them and it is necessary for her to
...become aware of what is not truly
yours, to acquire a selective and critical
attitude toward what is offered you, and
above all, to develop the ability to “bite
off” and “chew” experience so as to
extract its healthy nourishment. (Perls et
al., 1951, p. 190)
Planned and Informal Intervention
For some of my doctoral participants,
identifying what was not truly theirs, which
reinstates the contact boundary, was achieved
with the assistance of others, by means of an
intervention, whether via planned exit
counselling or unplanned and spontaneous
support from a counsellor or family
member/friend.
The purpose of a planned exit counselling
(Hassan, 2013 Giambalvo, 1995) is that the
individual leaves physically (is removed from
the cult environment), rapidly followed by
leaving psychologically (receives information
that challenges her cult mindset and facilitates
her contacting her authentic identity Phase 1).
The process is condensed into a short space of
time and recovery is speeded up. The
psychological aspect of the intervention entails
creating differentiation to break through the
introjective coercive confluence. The process
also helps the individual challenge the negative
introjects about herself and her projection (also
an interruption to contact) onto and idealization
of the cult leader (the person needs to “unmask
the cult leader” [Jenkinson, 2016,
p. 262]). The exit counseling helps the person to
understand what happened to her and identify
the nature of the group that is, she identifies it
as an abusive cult (she can “call a cult a cult”
(Jenkinson, 2016, p. 259). This in turn results in
his incipient understanding of thought reform
and the abusive power dynamics.
Exit counseling is challenging and can be
traumatizing (Ikemoto &Nakamura, 2004), and
the individual initially may be unwilling to listen
or hear what is being said. For example, Daphne
was “shut down [...]I wasn’t willing to hear
anything” she would not listen to her family,
was disconnected from them, and was viewing
them as the enemy (dispensing of existence
Lifton, 1989, p. 433). Such resistance is in part
because the individual is likely to be angry at the
forced intervention, but also because the
intervention is challenging the confluential cult
mindset and the effects of the thought reform.
The process is a shock because conflicting
emotions arise as the individual is suddenly
confronted with the reality of her situation, with
shame and guilt, and with an incipient contact
with her. authentic identity. The individual may
initially resist undoing the confluence and
challenging the introjects— she resists throwing
up the metaphorical undigested food sitting in
her stomach (Perls et al., 1951) by resisting the
information. Being shown videos and TV
programs of other unrelated cult situations raises
the person’s awareness and helps her to
recognize the same dynamics that were at play
in her cult and for some, this approach aids in a
breakthrough. Research participant Daphne
“couldn’t deny it anymore,” and her experience
evidences the power of one beginning to
recognize the coercive and controlling
dynamics:

78 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019
I was almost having flashbacks in my
mind’s eye. I was remembering things
that didn’t sit well with me in the group
and I started remembering about the
humiliations that they didn’t think I was
giving enough money although I was
giving probably close to 50% of my
salary. It happened over the course of a
couple of days where, as they were
showing me talk shows and things like
that, of other groups that had been on
TV—I mean they weren’t talking about
my group—I could just relate to what
was being shown to me. [Daphne]
The recovery process began for her as she
understood the nature of the group. The
authentic self that had been “squeezed” naturally
began to “reinflate” [Daphne] she was raising
awareness of and chewing over the introjects.
She was also helped to undo confluence and the
confluential trance, thus reestablishing the
contact boundary and differentiation between
herself and the environment-field.
Others have an abrupt experience of leaving,
with an informal intervention resulting in the
confluential trance being undone, accompanied
by a strong physiological sensation. For
example, Nina described having a “snapping
moment”—that is, she suddenly snapped out of
the cult mindset. This occurred while she was
still a member, when she was seeing a counselor
who showed her an article containing
information about cults:
I was reading this line on a page of an
article about cults when I had what I
called back then a “snapping moment.”
You know, it was that clear cut. I was
done. Snap. It's like my brain just went
whoop. I was out of the cult mindset at
that moment. Now I still had a whole
bunch of recovery, but that piece of
information broke the spell.
I suggest that Nina’s breaking “the spell” was
coming out of the confluential trance, which was
brought on by confluence, introjection, and
ASCs and this process enabled her to see that
she no longer needed the cult. Before that point,
the confluential trance had ensured that she was
in a suggestible state whereby she could be
influenced because the trance bypasses both the
mind (evidenced by the sensation of the brain
coming back online) and the emotions, and
utilizes the cult pseudo identity as the individual
self-suppresses (milieu control Lifton, 1989, p.
420).
If the participant has physically left but is “still
there, kind of mentally,” as research participant
Reginald described, a direct challenge from
another former member or friend not to return to
the cult may be powerful:
[It was] like an idea that kind of flew in
the face of everything I had been
thinking about for 9 years, you know,
and so that sort of began to kind of stir a
little bit in my brain. [Reginald]
A challenge from a friend about the guru’s
motivation resulted in Jane feeling as if
…something just felt so wrong in the pit
of my stomach, then something just
switched. [Jane]
What is shown in these examples is that the
hypnotic confluential trance requires certain
strategies to “wake up” the individuals, to
“snap” them out of it. In these cases, the
incentives were cognitive challenges, and
encouragement, in the form of information, to
think for themselves that led to their “calling a
cult a cult” (Jenkinson, 2016, p. 259). and
increased understanding.
Reginald’s recounting illustrates his waking
from the “stale” confluential trance when
another former member from his group
challenged his assumption that he would return
to the group. He continued,
And then one day I went out, I sat on the
front yard on the grass and it was like
waking up all of a sudden it was as if
colours changed and everything. I just
went boi-ing. I felt like I had just
changed my perception of the entire
makeup of the universe. As if I had been
in a kind of a trance. And I wouldn’t
usually emphasise that, but it really did
have a quality of a sort of awakening
from a hypnotic trance that had gotten
stale. And, I thought, “wow, I'm