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We wrote this description as an example of the extent to which one cult leader went to
discredit the parents of one of her members (Goldberg and Goldberg, 1989). We were used
to parents telling us that their cult member children were exaggerating and distorting
problems and issues from their past (minimizing the good memories and maximizing the
bad ones), but had never before encountered parents who said that their child had, with the
―help‖ of a cult leader, completely fabricated a past.
It would be unfairly biased to totally discount the idea that this young man might be telling
the truth. However, we were dismayed to learn that all of this therapist‘s patients had
memories of abuse and that this therapist appeared to be using narcissistically her patients
for her own dog-and-pony show and encouraging her patients to break all ties with family
members. Therefore, we hypothesized that this young man was likely to have responded to
this therapist‘s suggestion that he had been abused.
Since that incident the author has heard the same story from many parents. Their adult son
or, more commonly, daughter, announces to the family that with the help of a therapist she
has recovered previously repressed memories of being sexually abused, sometimes while
she was an infant, sometimes over many years, usually by her father. She presents the
accusation as a fact and states that if her father denies the ―fact‖ or gets angry, she will
leave and the family will never hear from her again. Having been pre-empted from any kind
of natural response, the parents are left speechless. Eventually, and almost inevitably, she
does cut off ties with the parents, because it has been suggested to her by her therapist
that this is an act of empowerment and growth. Contact with siblings is usually also stopped
unless the brothers and sisters acknowledge the validity of the accuser‘s claims. Thus, the
daughter (or, sometimes, son) simultaneously ensures the fact that she will hear only one
version of her supposed past and cuts herself off from the very people who would be most
likely to support her through a difficult period of her life. The author had no idea at the time
that she first heard this story of the young man and his publicity-seeking therapist that
these were the early signs of a new phenomenon and that it would be so widespread as to
be given a clinical title, the False Memory Syndrome, by some clinicians and family
members.
In my chapter on ―Guidelines for Therapists,‖ in the book, Recovery from Cults (Langone,
1994), I described a twenty-eight year old woman who came to see me one year after she
had left her cult. When this woman was a teenager in the cult she had been seduced by the
group‘s leader, who told her that it was G-d‘s will that they have sex. Believing him to be
speaking for G-d, the woman entered into an ongoing secret sexual relationship with him,
only to discover, many years later, that he was having a similar relationship with at least
twelve of the women in the cult. This discovery propelled her to leave the cult. The young
woman was filled with self-loathing and shame when she left and she sought out therapy
with a woman who claimed to be an expert in the area of sexual abuse. Either being
ignorant of the powerful effect of persuasion and mind control in cults or ignoring the
literature on it (Lifton, 1961, Ofshe and Singer, 1986, Hassan, 1988), this previous therapist
told the young woman that it was clear that she was reenacting a situation from her
childhood, otherwise she would not have permitted the cult leader to abuse her in this way.
She told her that, in all probability, her father had been the original perpetrator and that her
memories of a happy childhood were the result of denial and repression of childhood sexual
abuse. Although the patient was unable to recall any such abuse, she was placed in a group
for incest survivors and was told to participate in group guided imagery exercises to help
her recall the abuse that the therapist surmised was there. At first, she recollected feeling
uncomfortable when an alcoholic uncle bugged her after he had been drinking. She was
convinced that more memories would come in time. It was only after she attended a
seminar on cults and came to understand the phenomenon of mind control (intense power
of influence by a charismatic anti-social and/or narcissistic leader in a closed environment)

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that she recognized another plausible explanation for why she had permitted herself to be
exploited by the cult leader.
The author worked with another woman who was involved with an isolationist
psychotherapy cult in the Northwest. The group preached hatred of men and, by extension,
of society. Through the use of group processes, every single member of this cult discovered
that she had been sexually abused by her father and cut herself off from the family.
Another patient, who had experienced a gang rape while in college, decided to attend a
group for rape survivors in New York City. After getting a brief history of this patient,
including a history of depression and of an eating disorder, the group therapist asked her if
she had been sexually abused in childhood. This patient had no memory of such abuse. The
therapist informed her that she had all the ―classic symptoms‖ of someone who was
sexually abused and that she probably had repressed those memories.
As Freud (Freud, 1921), Lifton (Lifton, 1961), Ofshe and Singer (Ofshe, R. and Singer, M.T.,
1986) and Hassan (Hassan, 1988) explain, an authority figure can have tremendous
influence over group members. The process whereby this influence can be attained will now
be examined.
Authority Figure Influence on Group Members
In 1921, upon publishing Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud was among
the first to study the powerful influence that group leaders can have over group members.
In his paper, Freud referred to the contagious and regressive nature of groups described by
LeBon and McDougall, but he added the dimension of intra-psychic cathartic shifts that
could occur in groups. Freud described the similarity of such groups as the Catholic Church
and the army with the hypnotic situation. In all of these situations, there is a leader and one
or more followers. The follower obeys the leader and gives up his own superego and ego
ideal as he identifies with the leader‘s superego. Freud also compared the psychological
changes occurring in group members to changes that occur to those who fall in love. In both
cases, the ego can disregard the previous standards of the superego, because it gains a
sufficient amount of narcissistic support and gratification of instinctual wishes elsewhere.
After the Korean War, under assignment by the U.S. Army, Lifton Singer, West, and others
studied the effects of mind control techniques on the returning POWs. They described how
these soldiers had been influenced to accept communist ideology while captive. They
explained how these techniques of coercive persuasion went beyond normal group
influences described by Freud through the use of deliberate manipulation processes that
increased guilt, shame, and anxiety in the POW‘s (Singer and Ofshe, 1990). These mental
health professionals were the first to describe the fact that some of the same mind control
dynamics are used in modern day cults. Today there is a recognized body of literature by
mental health professionals about mind control techniques used in cults.
Of course, in addition to examining the coercive techniques, the clinician must examine the
vulnerability of the cult recruit. Individuals become vulnerable to cults at times of stress,
particularly during periods of transition (e.g., when dealing with loss of a relationship or
employment). The large majority of people who join cults do so in late adolescence or early
adulthood. With puberty, there is an increase in the sexual and aggressive drives. Along
with this, there is a revival of oedipal feelings and, therefore, there is a need for distancing
from the oedipal objects of childhood. Parents are de-idealized and healthy young adults
attempt to develop a vision of the world that is different from their parent‘s view. Also,
during this time, there often is physical distance from the family. This distance and the
concomitant feelings of separateness it engenders may trigger pre-oedipal anxiety and/or
depression. Additionally, there are specific personality dynamics of late adolescence which
were first described by Anna Freud—intellectualization, asceticism and idealism—which
make adolescents vulnerable to cults (Freud 1966). Furthermore, the adolescent superego