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
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
