The ideas of a cult personality being created to replace a genuine personality and the process of using unfreezing, changing, and refreezing are both referenced by cult expert Steve Hassan.
Here is a quote from Steve Hassan and his blog:
Cult of Personality: The Effects of Indoctrination on Personal Identity
Unfreezing
To ready a person for radical change, their reality must first be shaken up. Their indoctrinators must confuse and disorient them. Their frames of reference for understanding themselves and their surroundings must be challenged and broken down. Upsetting their view of reality disarms their natural defenses against concepts that challenge that reality. Unfreezing can be accomplished through a variety of approaches. Disorienting a person physiologically can be very effective. Sleep deprivation is one of the most common and powerful techniques for breaking a person down. In addition, new diets and eating schedules can also have a disorienting effect.
Unfreezing is most effectively accomplished in a totally controlled environment, like an isolated country estate, but it can also be accomplished in more familiar and easily accessible places, such as a hotel ballroom. Hypnotic processes constitute another powerful tool for unfreezing and side-stepping a person’s defense mechanisms. One particularly effective hypnotic technique involves the deliberate use of confusion to induce a trance state. Confusion usually results whenever contradictory information is communicated congruently. For example, if a hypnotist says in an authoritative tone of voice, “The more you try to understand what I am saying, the less you will never be able to understand it. Do you understand?” the result is a state of temporary confusion. If you read it over and over again, you may conclude that the statement is simply contradictory and nonsensical. However, if a person is kept in a controlled environment long enough, and is repeatedly fed such disorienting language and confusing information, they will usually suspend their critical judgment and adapt to what everyone else is doing.
In such an environment, the tendency of most people is to doubt themselves and defer to the group. Sensory overload, like sensory deprivation, can also effectively disrupt a person’s balance and make them more open to suggestion. A person can easily be bombarded by emotionally laden material at a rate faster than they can digest it. The result is a feeling of being overwhelmed. The mind snaps into neutral and ceases to evaluate the material pouring in. The newcomer may think this is happening spontaneously within themselves, but the cult has intentionally structured it that way. Other hypnotic techniques, such as double binds, can also be used to help unfreeze a person’s sense of reality. A double bind forces a person to do what the controller wants while giving an illusion of choice. For example, a cult leader may say, “For those people who are having doubts about what I am telling you, you should know that I am the one putting those doubts inside your mind, so that you will see the truth that I am the true teacher.” Whether the person believes or doubts the leader, both bases are covered. Another example of a double bind is, “If you admit there are things in your life that aren’t working, then by not taking the seminar, you are giving those things power to control your life.” The message is: Just being here proves you are incompetent to judge whether or not to leave. Exercises such as guided meditations, personal confessions, prayer sessions, vigorous calisthenics and even group singing can also aid unfreezing. Typically, these activities start out quite innocuously, but gradually become more intense and directed. They are almost always conducted in a group. This enforces privacy deprivation and thwarts a person’s need to be alone, think and reflect. At this stage of unfreezing, as people are weakening, most cults bombard them with the idea that they are seriously flawed— incompetent, mentally ill or spiritually fallen. Any problems that are important to the person, such as doing poorly in school or at work, being overweight, or having trouble in a relationship, are blown out of proportion to prove how completely messed up the person is. Some groups can be quite vicious in their attacks on individuals at this stage, often humiliating them in front of the whole group. Once a person is broken down, they are ready for the next phase.
Changing
Changing consists of imposing a new personal identity— a new set of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions— to fill the void left by the breakdown of the old one. Indoctrination in this new identity takes place both formally (for instance, through seminars and rituals) and informally (by spending time with members, reading, and listening to recordings and videos). Many of the same techniques used in the unfreezing phase are also carried into this phase.
Material is repeated over and over and over. If the lecturers are sophisticated, they vary their talks somewhat in an attempt to hold interest, but the message remains pretty much the same. During the changing phase, all this repetition focuses on certain central themes. The recruits are told how bad the world is and that the unenlightened have no idea how to fix it. This is because ordinary people lack the new understanding that has been provided by the leader. The leader is the only hope of lasting happiness. Recruits are told, “Your old self is what’s keeping you from fully experiencing the new truth. Your old concepts are what drag you down. Your rational mind is holding you back from fantastic progress. Surrender. Let go. Have faith.’’
Behaviors are shaped subtly at first, then more forcefully. The material that will make up the new identity is doled out gradually, piece by piece, only as fast as the person is deemed ready to assimilate it. The rule of thumb is, “Tell the new member only what they are ready to accept.”
But the changing process involves much more than obedience to a cult’s authority figures. It also includes numerous “sharing” sessions with other ordinary members, where past evils are confessed, present success stories are told, and a sense of community is fostered. These group sessions are very effective in teaching conformity, because the group vigorously reinforces certain behaviors by effusive praise and acknowledgement, while punishing non-group ideas and behaviors with icy silence.
Human beings have an incredible capacity to adapt to new environments. Charismatic cult leaders know how to exploit this strength. By controlling a person’s environment, using behavior modification to reward some behaviors and suppress others, and inducing hypnotic states, they may indeed reprogram a person’s identity. Once a person has been fully broken down through the process of changing, they are ready for the next step. Refreezing The recruit must now be built up again as the “new man” or “new woman.”
Refreezing
They are given a new purpose in life, and new activities that will solidify their new identity. Cult leaders must be reasonably sure the new cult identity will be strong when the person leaves the immediate cult environment. So the new values and beliefs must be fully internalized by the recruit. Many of the techniques from the first two stages are carried over into the refreezing phase.
During this phase, an individual’s memory becomes distorted, minimizing the good things in the past and maximizing their sins, failings, hurts and guilt. Special talents, interests, hobbies, friends, and family usually must be abandoned— preferably in dramatic public actions— if they compete with commitment to the cause. Confession becomes another way to purge the person’s past and embed them in the cult.
During the refreezing phase, the primary method for passing on new information is modeling. New members are paired with older members, who are assigned to show them the ropes. The “spiritual child” is instructed to imitate the “spiritual parent” in all ways. This technique serves several purposes. It keeps the “older” member on their best behavior, while gratifying their ego. At the same time, it whets the new member’s appetite to become a respected model, so they can train junior members of their own.
From
Some people have credited Kurt Lewin with creating the unfreezing, changing, and freezing model but it is not clear if he did.
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