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
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
