13 VOLUME 5 |ISSUE 3 |2014
Indoctrination and the Loss of Freedom
Cults take away freedom and then attack those who work to help
their victims get it back. A quote from Abraham Lincoln seems
appropriate:
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his
liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same
act, as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and
the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word
liberty and precisely the same difference prevails
today among human creatures. (Roe, 1907, p. 220)
ICSA sees the harms cults perpetrate as human-rights violations.
Cults and their proponents see activities of those of us in this
field as sometimes violating their right to religious freedom: “the
sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word
liberty.”
Paul Martin would have disagreed with some of his politics but
would have agreed with Noam Chomsky when Chomsky said,
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more
urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and
practices of indoctrination” (Otero, 2005, p. 212). The purpose
of indoctrination in cults is, in essence, to convince inductees
that what they are gaining is far more important than what
they are losing. All cultic
indoctrination is an attempt to
make inductees comfortable
exchanging the freedom to
think for themselves for the
group’s “ultimate truth.”
Robert Lifton, Margaret Singer,
and others were asked by the
military intelligence community
to interview former prisoners
of war after the Korean conflict.
Lifton detected similarities
between the prisoners’ stories of interrogation and the stories of
those who escaped to Hong Kong after having served sentences
in the forced-labor camps where their “counterrevolutionary
thoughts” were “reformed.” In both sets of stories, Lifton
identified processes that seemed unique to Asian interrogation.
Ironically, it was an American reporter, not Lifton, who first used
the term brainwashing in the media. The reporter simply looked
up the Chinese words reform and thoughts in his Chinese-English
dictionary, took the first English meanings he saw, wash and
brain, and a Hollywood phenomenon was born. Lifton never
used the term, and the two words were never used together in
public discourse in China after the Cultural Revolution.
Thought Reform
My view of Lifton’s work is based on Paul’s, as you might suspect.
Paul never shied away from modifying or adding to Lifton’s
work as he observed in the clients he treated the methods and
psychological effects of the eight processes Lifton described.
Neither have I. My view has been colored and textured by more
than four hundred stories, including my own, about being drawn
into a cultic group—all resulting in captivity and varying only by
degree, not kind. Today, I use some of these insights in my work
with substance abusers who suffer from an eerily similar kind
of captivity, one of which they are not usually fully aware at the
beginning of treatment.
As former members of cults hear these processes described,
they are able to identify in their experiences specifically what
happened to them and how they came to feel and think the way
they do. What is more, they now have names for what happened
and the assurance that, if the processes have names, they must
have been experienced by many other people. Former members
are able to normalize a phenomenon with which few other
people can identify.
Thought reform is the process of making an intelligent, thinking
person into a virtual slave without the person knowing what
has happened. The context of all thought reform is a differential
in power or worth between the indoctrinator and the inductee.
There are many ways this differential is established in cults
but power differential, either conscious or unconscious, is the
foundation of thought reform. Thought reform in the model
Robert Lifton proposed involves eight processes (italicized in
the following paragraphs) that, together, have the effect of
controlling three aspects of human experience that are central to
the notion of freedom: thinking, feeling, and conscience.
Controlling Thinking. Once a power differential has been
established, two of Lifton’s criteria, Sacred Science and Loading
the Language, work together to undermine inductees’ ability to
think critically, or outside the box
created by the group.
The teaching and views of the
group and its leader have a sense
of sacredness not to be challenged
by mere mortals. The means by
which logic may, and may not, be
applied to certain group beliefs
are controlled by the leader. The
sacred science enables the group
to inactivate in inductees the
ability to distinguish association
from causation. If the group prescribes a certain ritual that is
supposed to affect some other events or persons, there are
three scenarios, and all serve the needs of the leader. If the
expected outcome occurs, the sacred science of the group is
proved. Association is causation. If the outcome doesn’t occur,
it was because the followers did the ritual incorrectly, or with
improper inner attitude, again proving sacred science is true by
associating the “incorrect” practice as the cause of the improper
outcome. If the leader is performing the ritual and a negative
outcome occurs, it is due to a “hole in the pipe” somewhere,
proving that the followers were not in a frame of mind to
prevent such a travesty, and once again proving sacred science
is true: The followers caused the negative outcome because of
their shortcomings.
The group system or its leader also directs questions and
thoughts into a prefabricated box by controlling or Loading the
Language used in the group. Unfamiliar terms and familiar terms
used in esoteric ways are often employed more for emotional
effect than for logical content. Terms that are not familiar to
the inductees are used to enhance the appearance of authority
and uniqueness of the group. It is hard even to frame an
individualized question when the only terms one has are jargon
provided by the group.
Ironically, it was an American
reporter, not Lifton, who first
used the term brainwashing
in the media.
Indoctrination and the Loss of Freedom
Cults take away freedom and then attack those who work to help
their victims get it back. A quote from Abraham Lincoln seems
appropriate:
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat,
for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his
liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same
act, as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and
the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word
liberty and precisely the same difference prevails
today among human creatures. (Roe, 1907, p. 220)
ICSA sees the harms cults perpetrate as human-rights violations.
Cults and their proponents see activities of those of us in this
field as sometimes violating their right to religious freedom: “the
sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word
liberty.”
Paul Martin would have disagreed with some of his politics but
would have agreed with Noam Chomsky when Chomsky said,
“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more
urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and
practices of indoctrination” (Otero, 2005, p. 212). The purpose
of indoctrination in cults is, in essence, to convince inductees
that what they are gaining is far more important than what
they are losing. All cultic
indoctrination is an attempt to
make inductees comfortable
exchanging the freedom to
think for themselves for the
group’s “ultimate truth.”
Robert Lifton, Margaret Singer,
and others were asked by the
military intelligence community
to interview former prisoners
of war after the Korean conflict.
Lifton detected similarities
between the prisoners’ stories of interrogation and the stories of
those who escaped to Hong Kong after having served sentences
in the forced-labor camps where their “counterrevolutionary
thoughts” were “reformed.” In both sets of stories, Lifton
identified processes that seemed unique to Asian interrogation.
Ironically, it was an American reporter, not Lifton, who first used
the term brainwashing in the media. The reporter simply looked
up the Chinese words reform and thoughts in his Chinese-English
dictionary, took the first English meanings he saw, wash and
brain, and a Hollywood phenomenon was born. Lifton never
used the term, and the two words were never used together in
public discourse in China after the Cultural Revolution.
Thought Reform
My view of Lifton’s work is based on Paul’s, as you might suspect.
Paul never shied away from modifying or adding to Lifton’s
work as he observed in the clients he treated the methods and
psychological effects of the eight processes Lifton described.
Neither have I. My view has been colored and textured by more
than four hundred stories, including my own, about being drawn
into a cultic group—all resulting in captivity and varying only by
degree, not kind. Today, I use some of these insights in my work
with substance abusers who suffer from an eerily similar kind
of captivity, one of which they are not usually fully aware at the
beginning of treatment.
As former members of cults hear these processes described,
they are able to identify in their experiences specifically what
happened to them and how they came to feel and think the way
they do. What is more, they now have names for what happened
and the assurance that, if the processes have names, they must
have been experienced by many other people. Former members
are able to normalize a phenomenon with which few other
people can identify.
Thought reform is the process of making an intelligent, thinking
person into a virtual slave without the person knowing what
has happened. The context of all thought reform is a differential
in power or worth between the indoctrinator and the inductee.
There are many ways this differential is established in cults
but power differential, either conscious or unconscious, is the
foundation of thought reform. Thought reform in the model
Robert Lifton proposed involves eight processes (italicized in
the following paragraphs) that, together, have the effect of
controlling three aspects of human experience that are central to
the notion of freedom: thinking, feeling, and conscience.
Controlling Thinking. Once a power differential has been
established, two of Lifton’s criteria, Sacred Science and Loading
the Language, work together to undermine inductees’ ability to
think critically, or outside the box
created by the group.
The teaching and views of the
group and its leader have a sense
of sacredness not to be challenged
by mere mortals. The means by
which logic may, and may not, be
applied to certain group beliefs
are controlled by the leader. The
sacred science enables the group
to inactivate in inductees the
ability to distinguish association
from causation. If the group prescribes a certain ritual that is
supposed to affect some other events or persons, there are
three scenarios, and all serve the needs of the leader. If the
expected outcome occurs, the sacred science of the group is
proved. Association is causation. If the outcome doesn’t occur,
it was because the followers did the ritual incorrectly, or with
improper inner attitude, again proving sacred science is true by
associating the “incorrect” practice as the cause of the improper
outcome. If the leader is performing the ritual and a negative
outcome occurs, it is due to a “hole in the pipe” somewhere,
proving that the followers were not in a frame of mind to
prevent such a travesty, and once again proving sacred science
is true: The followers caused the negative outcome because of
their shortcomings.
The group system or its leader also directs questions and
thoughts into a prefabricated box by controlling or Loading the
Language used in the group. Unfamiliar terms and familiar terms
used in esoteric ways are often employed more for emotional
effect than for logical content. Terms that are not familiar to
the inductees are used to enhance the appearance of authority
and uniqueness of the group. It is hard even to frame an
individualized question when the only terms one has are jargon
provided by the group.
Ironically, it was an American
reporter, not Lifton, who first
used the term brainwashing
in the media.
