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Influence (Ciaidini, 1984)
1. When are we most likely to accept the actions of others as correct?
2. What are the eight weapons of influence? 3. How does this information
pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of
Totalism, Chapter 5 (Litton, 1961)
1. What does Lifton call the outstanding psychiatric fact of thought reform?
2. What are the eleven psychological steps to death and rebirth Lifton
outlines?
3. About what did the released prisoners have profound struggles? 4. How
does this information pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of
Totalism, Chapter 12 (Litton, 1961)
1. What were the four psychological principles faced when the prisoners
returned home?
2. What does each principle mean?
3. What is the fear and relief of total annihilation?
4. What were the beneficial effects of the prisoners' experience? 5. How does
this information pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of
Totalism, Chapter 22 (Litton, 1961)
Answer the following statements TRUE or FALSE. If a question is FALSE, what is
the correct answer?
1. Some potential for extremes exists within everyone. (T/F)
2. Loaded Language is the most basic feature of thought reform. (T/F)
3. Milieu Control seeks to establish control over the individual's
communication with the outside world and with himself. (T/F)
4. The pressure of milieu control causes the individual to close down as he is
deprived of external information and inner reflection. (T/F)
5. The mystique of the group makes manipulating others and oneself, no
matter how bizarre or painful, mandatory. (T/F)
6. The Demand for Purity allows plenty of room for every expression and

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idea. (T/F)
7. Ideological totalists are able to use the universal tendencies toward guilt
and shame as emotional levers for their controlling and manipulating
influence. (T/F)
&The Cult of Confession is a vehicle for personal purification, an act of
symbolic self-surrender and of exposure which makes it almost impossible
to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility. (T/F)
9. To the totalist the Sacred Science is one of several moral visions for the
ordering of human existence. (T/F)
10. The cliches of totalist language become the start and finish of any
ideological analysis. (T/F)
11. The effect of totalist language is the constriction of human thought and
emotion. (T/F)
12. Doctrine Over Person honors the uniqueness of individual experience.
(T/F)
13. The doctrine subordinates to (accommodate) human character and
experience. (T/F)
14. The `will to orthodoxy' allows for modification of the doctrine in
accordance with one's special nature or potentialities. (T/F)
15. The Dispensing of Existence draws a sharp line between those who have
a right to exist and those who do not. (T/F)
16. Totalists do not feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of
false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to
which they are committed. (T/F)
17. The totalist environment, even when it does not resort to physical abuse,
stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation. (T/F)
18. An environment need only express two of these eight psychological
themes to resemble ideological totalism. (T/F)
19. Every totalist milieu achieves complete totalism. (T/F)
20. The experience of ideological totalism carries a potential rebound effect
of retreating into all-or-nothing emotional patterns. (T/F)
21. The capacity for totalism is most fundamentally a product of human
childhood, of the prolonged period of helplessness and dependency
through which each of us must pass. (T/F)
22. How does this information pertain to you?
The following are essay questions:
1. What is the source of ideological totalism?
2. Under what conditions does man seek to become this guide? 3. How does