Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2010, Page 10
facilitated her departure from Eckankar, where she too suffered suppression of her
creativity.
The potential severity of this control of creativity in cults is well expressed by one survey
respondent, who writes,
Creativity wasn't suppressed... it was co-opted, harnessed, used, channeled...
from an emotional level, I want to use the word ―raped‖…
In cults, when the leader tells people they are or are not creative (Aesthetic Realism is
notorious for this), we must ask, ―According to what and whose definition of creativity?‖
Turning to the science of creativity to support the assertion that creativity is multifaceted
and cannot be comprehensively defined, I list three salient findings (Treffinger, Young,
Selby, &Shepardson, 2002) that are most relevant to my inquiry into the impact of cults on
creativity: 1) ―No one person possesses all the characteristics, nor does anyone display
them all the time‖ (p. viii) 2) ―No single assessment instrument or test provides evidence
about all the possible meanings or elements associated with the construct of creativity‖ (p.
xiii) and 3) ―The definition you adopt will determine the factors or characteristics you
consider to be essential to understanding‖ (p. viii). Creativity researchers argue that ―any
one indicator does not generalize across all domains of creative performance or
accomplishment, nor does it assess all the elements of creativity‖ (p. 28). Further, no part
of the brain, nor a distinct gene has been identified as a marker for creativity. Recently, The
New York Times reported that scientists are trying for the first time to track neurology of
the creative process in the brain by observing ―biochemicals, electrical impulses, and
regions‖ and the closing statement by an MIT professor of cognitive neuroscience is ―It
seems that to be creative is to be something we don‘t have a test for‖ (Cohen, 2010).
I stress these findings to underscore the presumptuousness of cult leaders defining who is
and who is not creative. Further, we must recognize that in this issue and the recent cults
and creativity study, the definition of creativity as freedom to imagine, feel, and express
one‘s internal world is reflective of a Western humanistic conception of creativity at this
particular time in history and is not comprehensive. In any case, this precise definition is
particularly relevant to cultic studies. When freedom is at stake, creativity is at stake.
Lifton writes: ―...penetration by the psychological forces of the environment into the inner
emotions of the individual person is perhaps the outstanding psychiatric fact of thought
reform‖ (1961, p. 66). Speaking of two of his subjects in his study on POWs in China in the
1950s, upon which he based his theories about cults, he writes,
Each was reduced to something not fully human and yet not quite animal, no
longer the adult and yet not quite the child instead, an adult human was
placed in the position of an infant or a subhuman animal, helplessly being
manipulated by larger and stronger ―adults‖ or ―trainers.‖ Placed in this
regressive stance, each felt himself deprived of the power, mastery, and
selfhood of adult existence.
In both, an intense struggle began between the adult man and the child-
animal which had been created, a struggle against regression and
dehumanization. (p. 67)
Building upon Lifton‘s description of thought reform in this extreme circumstance as a
dehumanizing process, my thesis is that dehumanization occurs in cults by suppression of
symbol formation to communicate subjective feeling, and therefore creativity. Lifton's
identification of ―the loading of language‖ as one criterion of mind control specifically speaks
to the replacing of subjectively created symbolic language with what he describes as
―thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are
facilitated her departure from Eckankar, where she too suffered suppression of her
creativity.
The potential severity of this control of creativity in cults is well expressed by one survey
respondent, who writes,
Creativity wasn't suppressed... it was co-opted, harnessed, used, channeled...
from an emotional level, I want to use the word ―raped‖…
In cults, when the leader tells people they are or are not creative (Aesthetic Realism is
notorious for this), we must ask, ―According to what and whose definition of creativity?‖
Turning to the science of creativity to support the assertion that creativity is multifaceted
and cannot be comprehensively defined, I list three salient findings (Treffinger, Young,
Selby, &Shepardson, 2002) that are most relevant to my inquiry into the impact of cults on
creativity: 1) ―No one person possesses all the characteristics, nor does anyone display
them all the time‖ (p. viii) 2) ―No single assessment instrument or test provides evidence
about all the possible meanings or elements associated with the construct of creativity‖ (p.
xiii) and 3) ―The definition you adopt will determine the factors or characteristics you
consider to be essential to understanding‖ (p. viii). Creativity researchers argue that ―any
one indicator does not generalize across all domains of creative performance or
accomplishment, nor does it assess all the elements of creativity‖ (p. 28). Further, no part
of the brain, nor a distinct gene has been identified as a marker for creativity. Recently, The
New York Times reported that scientists are trying for the first time to track neurology of
the creative process in the brain by observing ―biochemicals, electrical impulses, and
regions‖ and the closing statement by an MIT professor of cognitive neuroscience is ―It
seems that to be creative is to be something we don‘t have a test for‖ (Cohen, 2010).
I stress these findings to underscore the presumptuousness of cult leaders defining who is
and who is not creative. Further, we must recognize that in this issue and the recent cults
and creativity study, the definition of creativity as freedom to imagine, feel, and express
one‘s internal world is reflective of a Western humanistic conception of creativity at this
particular time in history and is not comprehensive. In any case, this precise definition is
particularly relevant to cultic studies. When freedom is at stake, creativity is at stake.
Lifton writes: ―...penetration by the psychological forces of the environment into the inner
emotions of the individual person is perhaps the outstanding psychiatric fact of thought
reform‖ (1961, p. 66). Speaking of two of his subjects in his study on POWs in China in the
1950s, upon which he based his theories about cults, he writes,
Each was reduced to something not fully human and yet not quite animal, no
longer the adult and yet not quite the child instead, an adult human was
placed in the position of an infant or a subhuman animal, helplessly being
manipulated by larger and stronger ―adults‖ or ―trainers.‖ Placed in this
regressive stance, each felt himself deprived of the power, mastery, and
selfhood of adult existence.
In both, an intense struggle began between the adult man and the child-
animal which had been created, a struggle against regression and
dehumanization. (p. 67)
Building upon Lifton‘s description of thought reform in this extreme circumstance as a
dehumanizing process, my thesis is that dehumanization occurs in cults by suppression of
symbol formation to communicate subjective feeling, and therefore creativity. Lifton's
identification of ―the loading of language‖ as one criterion of mind control specifically speaks
to the replacing of subjectively created symbolic language with what he describes as
―thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are
