Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 82
Blind, or Just Don’t Want to See?
Brainwashing, Mystification, and Suspicion
Alberto Amitrani
Raffaella Di Marzio
GRIS, Roma
Abstract
This paper examines selected points of dispute among scholars and
professionals interested in /new religious movements: the degree to which
the reports of former group members should be accorded credibility the
meaning and existence of the concept of brainwashing the proper
interpretation of certain actions taken by European governmental
committees and the degree to which ideology and/or money provided by
new religious movements has or may in the future corrupt scholarly research
in this area. The paper concludes by embracing a pastoral letter on this
subject by the Italian Bishops‘ Conference.
From a letter written by a mother:
I am a desperate mother. Ten years ago, I lost my daughter to a ferocious
―cult‖…. The unfortunate people whom we meet are completely taken over …
they tell them that their mothers are devils who give out negative energy,
thus hindering their perfect introduction into cult life … I hardly ever hear
from my daughter now. She doesn‘t take part in our family meetings and
calls me only when she needs money. You can well imagine the tragedy of
this poor mother ...Please do something to help these poor people who are in
danger and want to live the life that Our Lord Jesus gave us … I am afraid she
will commit suicide like the others … do something, I repeat, we cannot leave
these kids at the mercy of gaolers, of murderers of the worst kind… I pray
the Lord will help you in your work to help all these kids who are prisoners of
murderous cults.
Says a former member:
I then started to write a farewell letter to my spiritual guide. This cost me a
lot: every word was like a dagger blow, and every now and then I had to
stop since the tears would block my vision. I wasn‘t able to do it all in one
stroke, but every now and then I went back to what was a small calvary for
me, a deserved one however, unlike that of the Lord. My mind went back to
the Good Thief and I hoped Jesus would answer me the same way. When I
got to the end of the letter, I had a feeling of liberation … It had been a long
trail, lasting over 20 years, but this was what had happened ...What I
thought was heaven was actually a pink-coloured hell, painted over with
falsehood ...I got hold of my ancestors and my roots again. For years,
everything which makes a person free and conscious of what he is doing had
been stolen from me. I was picking up my pieces one by one, slowly but
surely. However, many wounds would never close again. It was still hard for
me to free myself from what I had thought was reality but actually was
conditioning: the notion of being one of the elect, somebody different, one of
the Eternal‘s chosen … The feeling I had deep inside is hard to describe: like
being a flower which slowly raises its petals again after having spent a long

Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 83
time without any water and having risked death … When we realised that
what we had been through was a true cult, we understood we could no
longer go on this way, pretending nothing had happened, as other former
members had done before … All my fears went away one by one and were
replaced by a single, increasingly clear awareness: that diabolical thing, that
tremendous octopus, must stop, or at least we had to make others know it
existed … you can defend yourself from an enemy only when you know you
have one.
Who Says “Apostates” are Unreliable?
According to a certain current of scholars of new religions, these two testimonies --the first
by a mother whose daughter belongs to a magical-occultist group, the second by a person
who left a pseudo-mystical group --are not worthy of consideration by scholars of new
religions.
In the first case, with all due respect to the person involved, some might say that this is the
typical attitude of a parent who, upset by her daughter‘s making a choice that does not
agree with her mother‘s ideas, sees the ―cult‖ as the source of all evil. This attitude does of
course exist among families of members of New Religious Movements (henceforth NRM),
but one cannot generalize. When considering the suffering of a mother (which appears
clearly from the dramatic and even aggressive tone of this testimony), who can no longer
recognise her daughter, who has lost emotional contact with her, who sees her suffer from a
human and a spiritual point of view, we cannot simply say: ―Young people often make
different choices from their parents.‖ Each case should be looked into individually. While it is
true that there have always been cases of authoritarian interference by parents in the
spiritual life of their children, without any respect for their freedom of choice in such a
delicate field as that of spirituality, it is also true that there have been cases of young and
less young people taken into psycho-physical slavery inside certain organizations that call
themselves ―religious.‖ Those who are aware of this issue also meet with cases of young
people who, after difficulties and hesitation and thanks to far-sighted and respectful help
from their parents, realise that the group they had joined was not actually what they
thought it was. In such cases, the young person leaves the group freely, but support and
help from parents are an indispensable element. We must therefore avoid pronouncing
summary judgement, and must keep to the facts. Facts sometimes do not confirm what the
parents say in other cases they most definitely do.
In the second case, we have a former member who denounces the state of ―psychological
imprisonment‖ in which the group kept him. For a certain current of thought, this testimony
would not be reliable either, since this individual is certainly inspired by resentment against
the group he belonged to. Since the former member says he intends to denounce the
―atrocities‖ of the group, according to the scholars we have in mind, this would be a case of
―apostasy,‖ that is, a case in which the person who has left the group starts a war against it
for personal reasons or interests, or because he/she belongs to an ―anti-cult‖ movement.
Once the unreliability of this kind of testimony has been settled, to whom must we refer to
have the simple, objective, clear, and ―scientific‖ truth about the cult or NRM, always
following these same scholars? To the movement itself, of course, which will be happy to
cooperate, providing its own followers for interviews, its own documents for a study of the
doctrine, and everything else that may be needed for a successful scientific study! Is there
something out of place or wrong in this happy picture of loving concord? First of all, let us
ask, is it scientifically correct to study a movement only on the basis of its own sources and
of the documents it provides? Is it possible that our scholars never suspect that somebody
in the movement might have an interest in ―forgetting‖ some document? And what if those
who have left a group, showing authentic documents and using evidence, had something to