Several people have put forth models to describe this.
The one that is probably most used is the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton. It is very concise and the words have helped thousands of people to recognize and understand their own experiences as cultic and to reframe them into a more useful context.
This was first presented as a chapter in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. He has presented it free online to help people.
I recommend it myself as something that you have to know cold to understand cults.
First I will give you an abridged description.
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)
Margaret Singer presented a model in her book Cults In Our Midst and the book is superb as a first book on the subject.
Professor Margaret Singer the late great cult expert wrote her own highly authoritative work in this field : Cults in Our Midst . In this, Prof. Singer set out 'six conditions' in which totalistic thought-reform can be achieved:
Quote :
1).Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how attempts to psychologically condition him or her are directed in a step-by-step manner.Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioural-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.
2). 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.
3). Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.This is accomplished by getting members away from their 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 behaviours 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 the target is stripped of their usual support network, their confidence in their own perception
As the target's sense of powerlessness increases, their good judgement and understanding of the world are diminished (ordinary view of reality is destabilized).As The group attacks the target's previous worldview, it causes the target distress and inner confusion; yet they are not allowed to speak about this confusion or object to it - leadership suppresses questions and counters resistance.This process is sped up if the targeted individual or individuals are kept tired - the cult will take deliberate actions to keep the target constantly busy.
4).Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behaviour 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.The target's old beliefs and patterns of behaviour 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 behaviours and negative feedback for old beliefs and behaviour.
5).The group manipulates a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviours.Good behaviour, 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. Anyone who asks a question is made to feel there is something inherently disordered about 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 behaviours expected by the group.
The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system is 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 behaviours and thought patterns conform to the models (members). Members' relationship with peers is threatened whenever they fail to learn or display new behaviours. 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.
6).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 the member is defective, not the organization or the beliefs.The targeted individual is treated as always intellectually incorrect or unjust, while conversely the system, its leaders and its beliefs are always automatically, and by default, considered as absolutely just. Conversion or remolding of the individual member happens in a closed system. As members learn to modify their behaviour 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 behaviours. End quote
Steve Hassan presented the BITE model in his book Freedom of Mind and it is excellent as a first book on the subject.
The book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein describes the indoctrination process with integration of information from several fields and is a must for this specific aspect of cults.
In Depth Analysis of Books and Videos
I have written on each of these experts and their work at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology.
Here are the eight criteria for thought reform by Robert Jay Lifton.
Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Criteria For Thought Reform
Any ideology -- that is, any set of emotionally-charged convictions about men and his relationship to the natural or supernatural world -- may be carried by its adherents in a totalistic direction. But this is most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious or messianic in their claim, whether a religious or political organization. And where totalism exists, a religion, or a political movement becomes little more than an exclusive cult.
Here you will find a set of criteria, eight psychological themes against which any environment may be judged. In combination, they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which at the same time pose the gravest of human threats.
(a brief outline)
MILIEU CONTROL
- The most basic feature is the control of human communication within an environment
- If the control is extremely intense, it becomes internalized control -- an attempt to manage an individual's inner communication
- Control over all a person sees, hears, reads, writes (information control) creates conflicts in respect to individual autonomy
- Groups express this in several ways: Group process, isolation from other people, psychological pressure, geographical distance or unavailable transportation, sometimes physical pressure
- Often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures, group encounters, which become increasingly intense and increasingly isolated, making it extremely difficult-- both physically and psychologically--for one to leave
- Sets up a sense of antagonism with the outside world; it's "us against them"
- Closely connected to the process of individual change (of personality)
MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (PLANNED SPONTANEITY)
- Extensive personal manipulation
- Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated
- Totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative
- The "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)
- The individual then develops the psychology of the pawn, and participates actively in the manipulation of others
- The leader who becomes the center of the mystical manipulation (or the person in whose name it is done) can be sometimes more real than an abstract god and therefore attractive to cult members
- Legitimizes the deception used to recruit new members and/or raise funds, and the deception used on the "outside world"
THE DEMAND FOR PURITY
- The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group)
- One must continually change or conform to the group "norm"
- Tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences
- Once a person has experienced the totalist polarization of good/evil (black/white thinking), he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality
- The radical separation of pure/impure is both within the environment (the group) and the individual
- Ties in with the process of confession -- one must confess when one is not conforming
CONFESSION
- Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself
- Sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change
- Is an act of symbolic self-surrender
- Makes it virtually impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility
- A person confessing to various sins of pre-cultic existence can both believe in those sins and be covering over other ideas and feelings that s/he is either unaware of or reluctant to discuss
- Often a person will confess to lesser sins while holding on to other secrets (often criticisms/questions/doubts about the group/leaders that may cause them not to advance to a leadership position)
- "The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you"
SACRED SCIENCE
- The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence
- Questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited
- A reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine
- Offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology
LOADING THE LANGUAGE
- The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers)
- Repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon
- "The language of non-thought"
- Words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase
DOCTRINE OVER PERSON
- Every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the experience of truth and feel it
- The pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or ideology says one should experience
- If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly
- The underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth"
- The experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt
- One is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil
- When doubt arises, conflicts become intense
DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE
- Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist
- "Being verses nothingness"
- Impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed
- One outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group
- Fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their transformation, for something bad will happen to them
- The group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc.
Excerpted from: Thought Reform And The Psychology of Totalism, Chapter 22, (Chapel Hill, 1989) & The Future of Immortality, Chapter 155 (New York 1987).
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