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individual is totally isolated fosters regression and may impede the resident‟s ability to leave
the center. The underlying premise at the “cultic” residential treatment center is that
parents should be totally excluded from any participation in the treatment process. In this
context, parental objections toward any treatment decisions are deflected and dismissed.
As a result, the individual is denied contact with his or her biological family and the
residential treatment center becomes more than a “second-chance family” it becomes a
primary support system necessary to the individual‟s continuing survival.
Directors of residential treatment centers monitor the boundaries between the treatment
center and the external environment. Their activities alter the permeability of this boundary.
Ideally, directors should encourage the staff to obtain additional extramural training.
Inappropriate directors, however, may establish a climate in which the search for
extramural training is seen as a betrayal of the center‟s ethos. In this context, inappropriate
directors may create a collusive atmosphere between themselves and the staff, an
atmosphere in which they bond together against an ostensibly hostile outside world.
Directors may encourage staff members to change records (presumably to obtain funds
from recalcitrant sources or to “protect” residents). They may propagate the myth that only
they have sufficient ability and cunning to maneuver the staff and residents through the
impending shoals of financial or therapeutic disaster. These actions inevitably lead to the
director‟s self-aggrandizement and the formation of an increasingly isolated residential
treatment community with cultic overtones.
Mystical Manipulation
Cult groups may often claim to be imbued with a higher sense of purpose. They portray
themselves as members of an elite --the vanguard of a social or spiritual movement with a
mystical imperative, “the pursuit of which must supersede all considerations of decency or
of immediate human welfare” (Lifton, 1961, p. 422).
The goal of residential treatment is limited --the enhancement of personal autonomy. Yet,
both cults and residential treatment centers share a belief in the use of structure designed
to alter the human condition. They share a common discomfort with the dysfunctional
present and, by extension, a common vision of human perfectability. Hence, skillful
manipulators justify their rigid control over residents or followers and their cruel and/or
bizarre practices in the name of faith or of “therapeutic necessity.” Similarly, both residents
and followers are led to refocus their lives from a “pathological” past (or as some cults may
reframe it, a “satanic world”).
Isolation, sensory deprivation, and solitary confinement as forms of limit-setting, or the
reliance on self-revelation and public confession, are all rationalized as necessary sacrifices
along the road to Oz. These practices create a dramatic atmosphere that encourages
residents and staff to view the world in polarized terms. Polarization provides the incentive
for residents to forge increasingly symbiotic bonds between themselves and the director.
Indeed, in one case a group began to pray for the painful death of a recently departed
member. In such a polarized atmosphere, it is not surprising that other groups forestall
departures or stifle criticism by resorting to beatings and solitary confinement. (In Synanon,
for example, a rattlesnake was placed in a lawyer‟s mailbox to stifle his opposition.)
Demand for Purity
Cults portray a world divided into absolute good and absolute evil. Goodness is defined as
those ideas, feelings, and behavior consistent with the cult‟s totalist ideology (which may
reduce itself to the leader‟s whims of the moment). Anything done in the cult‟s name is
perceived as good and is therefore given moral validation. On the other hand, any thoughts
or actions that deviate from the group leader‟s wishes are viewed as inherently impure or
sinful. The individual who voices doubts about the group‟s ideology or actions is viewed as a

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1991, Page 35
traitor to be ostracized and humiliated. Doubters are publicly shamed to enforce conformity.
Reasoning and rational discourse are replaced with an atmosphere dominated by shame and
guilt. his process of public humiliation and the substitution of shame for doubt should be
alien to the residential treatment center whose only goal is to enhance the individual‟s
personal autonomy. Inappropriate actions cannot be justified by reference to a mystical
qua therapeutic imperative.
The residential treatment center is a place of moral (in the broadest sense of the word)
education. It is a forum in which to present the resident with alternate belief systems and
an enhanced sense that there is a good way of being in the world (Lothane, 1978).
Residents gain a sense of awareness of alternate paths in the world when staff members are
encouraged to voice their contradictory opinions and examine “arbitrary” treatment
decisions.
While the residential treatment center is a place where residents are presented with
precepts for actions (indeed, they may require detailed guidelines), it should not be an
environment where they are presented with arbitrary and punitive prescriptions.
Reeducation requires an appreciation of the values underlying choices, not the arbitrary
elimination of choice. Reeducation, unlike indoctrination, requires the creation of a holding
environment with boundaries defined by a permeable membrane not by an Iron Curtain.
When indoctrination is the goal of the “educational” process, the external world is inevitably
presented as a threat to the purity of the group‟s ideology. External sources of information
are treated with suspicion because they are judged primarily according to their potential for
diluting “the truth” rather than being judged objectively. Similarly, the resident‟s growth
and development may be regarded with suspicion, seen as a step in the direction of
“heresy.” Even acquiring personal skills or educational credentials may be discouraged. In
this world, growth is possible only at the expense of pure belief.
The Cult of Confession
An obsession with personal confession beyond any legal, religious, or therapeutic
boundaries is closely linked to the demand for purity. Cults create a milieu in which the
individual experiences intensified feelings of shame and guilt and is ultimately led toward
relief from pain by surrendering his or her individuality. Within this process, the alternation
of self-condemnation and purgation through confession leads to the creation of a false self
whereby individuals experience “pleasure” during self-degradation and ultimately attain a
sense of “oneness” by identifying with their persecutors and fellow confessors. The
indoctrination is complete when there is a final erosion of ego boundaries and a loss of
sense of self. This happens when the individual finally discards all previous belief systems,
replacing them with the ideology of the cult.
Staff may also be subject to the cult of confession. The supervisory process in the
residential treatment center requires sensitivity within the supervisor-supervisee
relationship. Narcissistic supervisors can manipulate staff meetings and supervisory sessions
into becoming arenas for public confession. In this context they may use personal material
to undermine the staff‟s self-confidence, thus creating a cultic atmosphere. Supervision may
be confused with “therapy” to obtain this material as the supervisor becomes a hybrid of
therapist cum administrator.
Treatment centers may require staff as well as residents to keep a personal diary of
thoughts, ideas, and feelings, in addition to reporting on their activities. Diaries may be
scrutinized by the directors and this private information may be shared with others in the
“therapeutic” community meetings. Because many of the staff of drug treatment centers are
themselves rehabilitated drug users it is particularly difficult for them to deal with this
abusive intrusiveness. For example, a staff member of a “therapeutic community” was
required to work 20-22 hours daily for $1.00/hr. Grateful for the help he had received from