For previous sections of this series go to:
Captive Hearts, Captive Minds/Take Back Your Life
A NOTE regarding the book. The book is being revised and updated and will get a new title; Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (previously titled Captive Hearts, Captive Minds and this is the title I am working with) by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias"
Chapter 3: Understanding Thought Reform Part 2
Conditions for a Thought-Reform Program
After years of knocking on doors and offering the literature to people we know how little the message really attracts people. How are the JWs or any cult able to attain control over so much of a person’s life? On page 38 of the book there is a list of the necessary conditions. Dr. Singer points to 6 conditions as follows:
- Controlling an individual’s social and psychological envoronment, especially the person’s time.
- Placing an individual in a position of powerlessness within a high-control authoritarian system.
- Relying usually on a closed system of logic, which permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by executive order.
- Relying on unsophistication of the person being manipulated [that is, the person is unaware of the process], and he or she is pressed to adapt to the environment in increments that are sufficiently minor so that the person does not notice the changes.
- Eroding the confidence of a person’s perceptions
- Manipulating a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences to promote the new learning or inhibit undesired previous behavior. Punishments usually are social ones, for example, shunning, social isolation, and humiliation (which are more effective in producing wanted behavior than beatings and death threats, although these do occur.
Wow I can see the similarities. Do You? Where and how?
Cults use thought-reform programs because they work. A cult may use various methods to control people.
- Induced dissociation and other altered states (through speaking in tongues, chanting, trance induction via repeated affirmations, extended periods of meditation, lengthy denunciation sessions, publis trials, "hot seat" criticisms focusing on one individual, sexual abuse, torture, etc.)
- Control of information going in and out of the group environment
- Isolation from family and friends
- Control of members’ financial resources
- Sleep and food deprivation
- Peer and leadership pressure
- Extensive indoctrination sessions (through Bible lessons, political training, sales training, self-awareness lessons)
- Rigid security regulations and daily rules (p. 39)
Depending on the focus of the group they may use a different set of controls.
Just looking at the list. I never used to think the WTS used isolation. In the article they published a few years ago they basically said that since they didn’t force people into remote indoctrination camps they weren’t a cult. The reality is that as soon as family and friends reject the Truth™ they are to be avoided or contact should be limited.
Control of member’s finaces. They encourage people to NOT go to college or university. The pressure is to take minimal jobs that require a limted amount of time so thay can spend more time in service. People who do go on to post-secondary education are looked upon as "weak". And recently there is a huge effort to get people to hand over their money with no accounting for how it is spent.
Dissociation
One other control mechanism that cults use is Dissociation. Dissociation is a normal phenomenon. Daydreaming is something we all do and I know I did a lot of daydreaming when I went to meetings especially when I wasn’t falling asleep from the monotone that many JW speakers use.
Cults have ways to induce dissociation in their members. After leaving the group people will also find themselves continuing to dissociate. Events in their present life can trigger a dissociative episode. Lifton refers to dissociation as "psychic numbing," where a part of the person is separated from the self. This might explain how parents can shun their parents with little or no emotion.
Part 3 to come later