There's a very specific quality of a group that makes it a cult. Cult expert Margaret Singer in a video once remarked that a cult is a group that tries to control all or nearly all your decision making.
She had interviewed over four thousand ex cult members and found cults devoted to all sorts of activities. Cults may have or not have religious elements. She found mental therapy cults, business cults, exercise cults, drug rehab cults, political cults, carpet cleaning cults and even a horse grooming cult among many hundreds of examples.
Ultimately a cult takes away the independent and critical thinking of members and replaces it with the ideas the cult presents.
This is perhaps best proven by the example of the study of several religious groups presented in the book The Discipling Dilemma by Flavil Yeakley. The book describes how a church was accused of being a cult and sought proof they are in fact not.
Boston Churches of Christ was accused of being a cult and sought to prove they were no different than other mainstream Christians.
Boston Churches of Christ and several other groups including Scientology, the Unification Church (Moonies),The Way, Hari Krishnas, Maranatha and Children of God had members take personality tests using the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. This test has a person describe whether they prefer interacting with the world in one way or another across four aspects of personality.
The persons taking the test indicates these preferences for themselves. The test was given in a way to find the answers a member of each group would have given when they first joined their group, then after a certain amount of time, then significantly later in time.
Something interesting happened with the groups that are listed above, often called cults or high control sects, they all have members move from whatever personality types they started as to one personality type - the personality type of the leader or founder of the group as presented to the members in the doctrine of the group.
Several other groups were also examined in this way and the members were found to have their own personality types which membership in their groups did not change.
Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian church members all took the test and their personality types were not changed by membership in their groups.
Margaret Singer described what is a cult in a video interview.
Cults have been analyzed by several experts and in depth descriptions of the methods used in cults are often called thought reform. Thought reform is the process by which the thinking of a cult member is influenced by the cult.
These are useful for using as a checklist of traits to examine in a group and see if they are present in the group and to what degree. In many groups some traits are present. If only a few traits are present to a very slight degree it's far different from having the traits to an extreme degree.
Here are several examples of models that I have found useful.
Dr. Margaret T. Singer - 6 Conditions for Thought Reform
Dr. Margaret T. Singer's 6 Conditions for Thought Reform
These conditions create the atmosphere needed to put a thought reform system into place:
- Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time.Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group.The goal may be to make them deployable agents for the leadership, to get them to buy more courses, or get them to make a deeper commitment, depending on the leader's aim and desires.
- Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time.Through various methods, newer members are kept busy and led to think about the group and its content during as much of their waking time as possible.
- Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.This is accomplished by getting members away from the normal social support group for a period of time and into an environment where the majority of people are already group members.The members serve as models of the attitudes and behaviors of the group and speak an in- group language.Strip members of their main occupation (quit jobs, drop out of school) or source of income or have them turn over their income (or the majority of) to the group.Once stripped of your usual support network, your confidence in your own perception erodes. As your sense of powerlessness increases, your good judgment and understanding of the world are diminished. (ordinary view of reality is destabilized) As group attacks your previous worldview, it causes you distress and inner confusion; yet you are not allowed to speak about this confusion or object to it -- leadership suppresses questions and counters resistance.This process is speeded up if you are kept tired -- the cult will keep you constantly busy.
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity.Manipulation of experiences can be accomplished through various methods of trance induction, including leaders using such techniques as paced speaking patterns, guided imagery, chanting, long prayer sessions or lectures, and lengthy meditation sessions.Your old beliefs and patterns of behavior are defined as irrelevant or evil. Leadership wants these old patterns eliminated, so the member must suppress them.Members get positive feedback for conforming to the group's beliefs and behaviors and negative feedback for old beliefs and behavior.
- Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors.Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group's beliefs, and compliance are rewarded while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, he or she is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning.The only feedback members get is from the group, they become totally dependent upon the rewards given by those who control the environment.Members must learn varying amounts of new information about the beliefs of the group and the behaviors expected by the group.The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system in and the more difficult it is to learn, the more effective the conversion process will be.Esteem and affection from peers is very important to new recruits. Approval comes from having the new member's behaviors and thought patterns conform to the models (members). Members' relationship with peers is threatened whenever they fail to learn or display new behaviors. Over time, the easy solution to the insecurity generated by the difficulties of learning the new system is to inhibit any display of doubts -- new recruits simply acquiesce, affirm and act as if they do understand and accept the new ideology.
- Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order.The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.Members are not allowed to question, criticize or complain -- if they do, the leaders allege that the member is defective -- not the organization or the beliefs.The individual is always wrong -- the system, its leaders and its belief are always right.Conversion or remolding of the individual member happens in a closed system. As members learn to modify their behavior in order to be accepted in this closed system, they change -- begin to speak the language -- which serves to further isolate them from their prior beliefs and behaviors.
Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform
Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Eight Criteria for Thought Reform
- Milieu Control. This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.
- Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.
- Demand for Purity. The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.
- Confession. Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members' "sins," "attitudes," and "faults" are discussed and exploited by the leaders.
- Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.
- Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking.
- Doctrine over person. Member's personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.
- Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group's ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also. (Lifton, 1989)
From
Steve Hassan also have created the BITE model and it goes into extreme detail.
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