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contacts, all of which contribute to that person‘s self-identity. Moreover, people in some
segments of a person‘s life may comment upon or advise that individual about other
dimensions of his or her life. High-demand groups, however, are what sociologist Lewis
Coser called ―greedy institutions‖ (Coser, 1974) in that they attempt to encapsulate, or
envelop, all aspects of their members‘ lives. As Stahelski stated,
Cults cannot effectively condition joiners unless the cult group is the joiners‘
only group of affiliation. An individual who has only one group affiliation has
self-concept and self-esteem that are totally dependent on retaining
membership in that group. The completely dependent individual is then willing
to do whatever it takes to retain membership in the group (Stahelski,
2004:33).
Among previous group affiliations that joiners frequently relinquish are their families
(Stahelski, 2004:33). Although many people envision the new recruits giving up contacts
with their parents and siblings, quite a number of cases exist of parents either severing ties
or greatly reducing their contact with their own children.
A handwritten note by Scientology‘s founder L. Ron Hubbard, reproduced in an International
Association of Scientologists‘ magazine, clearly illustrates the depluralizing aspirations he
had regarding members:
We‘re not now in this for play. Our personal futures depend on keeping going
and making no major flubs. It isn‘t a question of is there something else.
There isn‘t. Nobody can be half in and half out of Scientology (Hubbard, in
CSI [Church of Scientology International], Inc. 1988).
Indeed, Scientology‘s version of ethics has, as one of its intentions, the elimination of all
non-Scientology activity and interests on the part of people under its control (Hubbard,
1976:179).
The consequences for children whose parents have total dedication to an organization are
not hard to predict. As a former Scientologist-turned-critic surmised in 1991,
Next to saving the world, caring for children may not seem so important.
―Scientology comes first and everything else is off-purpose,‖ said former
Scientologist Vicki Aznaran, who is suing the organization. ―Parents who want
to spend time with their children are looked down on. It‘s not socially
acceptable‖ (Aznaran, quoted in Krueger, 1991:12A).
A related consequence for children is that they might become part of their parents‘ ―saving
the world‖ efforts. A Florida newspaper, for example, in 1991 ran an article concerning
―Scientology‘s Children,‖ which reported that an eleven-year-old girl signed a billion-year
contract to join Scientology‘s dedicated corps called the Sea Organization (or simply, the
Sea Org), and she ended up working about fifty hours a week during the school year
(Krueger, 1991:14A).
Parents in the Children of God organization received specific instructions from their leader,
David Berg, to disassociate from their children, with Berg arguing that to do so was God‘s
will:
1. GOD WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM, NOT EVEN THE SANCTITY OF THE
MARRIAGE GOD!
2. THE FAMILY MARRIAGE, THE SPIRITUAL REALITY BEHIND SO-CALLED GROUP
MARRIAGE, IS THAT OF PUTTING THE LARGER FAMILY, THE WHOLE FAMILY, FIRST, even
above the last remaining vestige of private property, your husband or your wife! (Berg,
1972:1367 original capitalization and punctuation).

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005, Page 9
A few paragraphs later, Berg added
22. DON‘T FORGET THIS MEANS YOUR CHILDREN, ALSO! Special favoritism and partiality—
that is, selfish property interest! If you love your flesh-and-blood children more than you
love God‘s children of God‘s Family, then you haven‘t come to the realization of what God‘s
Family is all about! (Berg, 1972:1370 original capitalization and punctuation).
The stories about the Children of God group‘s maltreatment of children warrant book-length
studies on their own, but suffice it to say that many children rarely saw their parents, and
when they did, their emotional bonding was strained, at best. As the somewhat sympathetic
researcher on The Family, James Chancellor, reported, ―[d]islocation from parents remained
a very common feature of Family [i.e., Children of God] life. Until the reforms ...in the
mid-1990s, virtually every second-generation disciple spent considerable time apart from
parents before the age of sixteen‖ (Chancellor, 2000:217). No wonder members of that
generation are involved in a revolt of sorts against their parents‘ generation because of the
abuses they suffered (see Kent, 2004a).
Self-Deindividuation
The concept of deindividuation has extensive social psychological literature devoted to it.
Deindividuation originally emerged as a theory to explain antinormative, often violent acts
committed by people in crowds, mobs, gangs, and the like (see Postmes and Spears
1998:238). A newer theoretical variant called the ―social identity model of deindividuated
effects‖ (the SIDE model, for brevity) is more promising than older forms of deindividuation
theory, and this newer form might be most in line with how Stahelski used the
deindividuation term. ―According to this model, deindividuating settings do not lead to a loss
of personal identity rather, they can facilitate a transition from a personal to a more social
or collective identity‖ (Postmes and Spears, 1998:254). Surely, this transition to a collective
identity is what occurs in totalistic groups.
The consequences of such a transition are well known, and Stahelski gave numerous
examples. He mentioned internal transformations that involve giving up
any values, beliefs, attitudes, or behavior patterns that deviate from the
group values and expectations. Deindividuated joiners give up their personal
sense of right and wrong if it is different from that of the leader. Furthermore,
the joiners‘ broad view of reality—their view of how the past, present, and
future fit together to create the modern social world—becomes aligned with
that of the leader. Deindividuated persons stop thinking about their own
unique qualities. They absorb the concept that they simply are anonymous
parts of the greater whole, the cult (Stahelski, 2004:34).
A typical external manifestation, therefore, of deindividuation involves members dressing
alike (see Stahelski, 2004:34), as well as eliminating aspects of personal taste or self-
expression in their appearances.
Although few researchers who study high-demand ideological groups would disagree with
these general characteristics, we still must address the education processes that groups use
to induce deindividuation among their members. Having addressed those processes, we
then can see how educational programs that deindividuate adults also affect children. I
propose that groups attack and undermine the value of supposedly negative aspects in
people‘s lives at the same time that they replace these aspects with new, collective moral
and ethical systems based upon leaders‘ values. My assumption here is that negative
experiences and behaviours—things that we have done, seen, or suffered—provide
individual foundations for our moral and ethical decisions. By undermining the value of
these experiences and behaviors, deviant groups reduce people‘s ability to take moral and
ethical stands based upon their own individuated experiences. Concomitantly, the groups