Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 52
Conclusion: The Family’s Brainwashing Programs from a Social Scientific
Perspective
The Family‘s Teen Training Camps and especially the Victor program add a new dimension
to existing literature on the subject of brainwashing. This new dimension builds upon a
conceptual scheme that Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton, Jr. developed in their definitive
brainwashing study. Scheflin and Opton say that the Soviet brainwashing program wanted
compliance and confession from their victims. They wanted the brainwashed defendants in
the state‘s show trials to ―testify against themselves and confess error in their thoughts and
conduct. After their confessions, they were of no further use to the state‖ (Scheflin and
Opton, 1978: 88).
The Chinese Communist interrogators in the early 1950s also demanded compliance in their
brainwashing program, but they ―sought ideological conversion through a process of intense
indoctrination‖ into the new teachings of Mao (Scheflin and Opton, 1978: 88). Finally, the
North Koreans (during the Korean War in the early 1950s) ―modified Chinese thought
reform and Soviet interrogation techniques into an effort to induce compliance and
collaboration‖ as part of their efforts to denounce their Western enemies (Scheflin and
Opton, 1978: 89). In contrast to all of these programs, The Family‘s brainwashing efforts
demanded compliance as a means to achieve retention and/or re-conversion among people
who already held various degrees of ideological commitment. As Lord Justice Ward
concluded about the teen training camps:
they existed for the purpose of changing the children and shaping their lives
in order to mould them to The Family‘s image. The cost to the children was
to rob them of their personal identity. It was an invasion of personal freedom
(Ward, 1995: 157).
Specifically regarding The Family, the goal of its teen brainwashing program was to make
adolescents compliant and dependent upon the older leaders and the group‘s fundamental
doctrines, since these young people soon would be moving into administrative and
management responsibilities in the organization.
As Berg himself argued in 1985, ―[i]f we don‘t start training the teenagers now, who are
going to be the teenage leaders of tomorrow?‖ (Berg, 1985). In essence, by the mid-1980s
The Family experienced the crisis of the second generation–young members who held
differing amounts of commitment to the organization and its leaders, but who never had
undergone the intense conversion experiences of their parents. Family leaders, therefore,
attempted to force these conversion experiences on their teens through intensely coercive
and abusive programs around the world. In so doing, they reinvented techniques that other
ideologues have used over the centuries in attempts to mould the wills of captive
populations.
References
Anthony, Dick 1990. ―Religious Movements and Brainwashing Litigation: Evaluating Key
Testimony.‖ Pp. 295-344 in Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, Editors. In Gods We
Trust. Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. New Brunswick, New Jersey:
Transaction Publishers.
Auty. 1999. ―Reply to ‗I Thought I was Alone.‘‖ Posting on the ―EXCOGNET‖ website
http://www.excognet.com/wwwboard5/messages/1123.html (July 7).
Bainbridge, William Sims. 1997. The Sociology of Religious Movements. New York:
Routledge.
Balch, Robert. 1996. ―Review of Sex, Slander, and Salvation. Investigating The
Family/Children of God. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35 No.1 (March):
72.
Conclusion: The Family’s Brainwashing Programs from a Social Scientific
Perspective
The Family‘s Teen Training Camps and especially the Victor program add a new dimension
to existing literature on the subject of brainwashing. This new dimension builds upon a
conceptual scheme that Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton, Jr. developed in their definitive
brainwashing study. Scheflin and Opton say that the Soviet brainwashing program wanted
compliance and confession from their victims. They wanted the brainwashed defendants in
the state‘s show trials to ―testify against themselves and confess error in their thoughts and
conduct. After their confessions, they were of no further use to the state‖ (Scheflin and
Opton, 1978: 88).
The Chinese Communist interrogators in the early 1950s also demanded compliance in their
brainwashing program, but they ―sought ideological conversion through a process of intense
indoctrination‖ into the new teachings of Mao (Scheflin and Opton, 1978: 88). Finally, the
North Koreans (during the Korean War in the early 1950s) ―modified Chinese thought
reform and Soviet interrogation techniques into an effort to induce compliance and
collaboration‖ as part of their efforts to denounce their Western enemies (Scheflin and
Opton, 1978: 89). In contrast to all of these programs, The Family‘s brainwashing efforts
demanded compliance as a means to achieve retention and/or re-conversion among people
who already held various degrees of ideological commitment. As Lord Justice Ward
concluded about the teen training camps:
they existed for the purpose of changing the children and shaping their lives
in order to mould them to The Family‘s image. The cost to the children was
to rob them of their personal identity. It was an invasion of personal freedom
(Ward, 1995: 157).
Specifically regarding The Family, the goal of its teen brainwashing program was to make
adolescents compliant and dependent upon the older leaders and the group‘s fundamental
doctrines, since these young people soon would be moving into administrative and
management responsibilities in the organization.
As Berg himself argued in 1985, ―[i]f we don‘t start training the teenagers now, who are
going to be the teenage leaders of tomorrow?‖ (Berg, 1985). In essence, by the mid-1980s
The Family experienced the crisis of the second generation–young members who held
differing amounts of commitment to the organization and its leaders, but who never had
undergone the intense conversion experiences of their parents. Family leaders, therefore,
attempted to force these conversion experiences on their teens through intensely coercive
and abusive programs around the world. In so doing, they reinvented techniques that other
ideologues have used over the centuries in attempts to mould the wills of captive
populations.
References
Anthony, Dick 1990. ―Religious Movements and Brainwashing Litigation: Evaluating Key
Testimony.‖ Pp. 295-344 in Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony, Editors. In Gods We
Trust. Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. New Brunswick, New Jersey:
Transaction Publishers.
Auty. 1999. ―Reply to ‗I Thought I was Alone.‘‖ Posting on the ―EXCOGNET‖ website
http://www.excognet.com/wwwboard5/messages/1123.html (July 7).
Bainbridge, William Sims. 1997. The Sociology of Religious Movements. New York:
Routledge.
Balch, Robert. 1996. ―Review of Sex, Slander, and Salvation. Investigating The
Family/Children of God. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35 No.1 (March):
72.
