Combatting Cult Mind Control, Steven Hassan. Rochester,
Vermont: Park Street Press. 1988. Pp 226. $16.95. ISBN 0--892812435.
There is a new group of patients not yet encountered by most doctors
-- those who seek to overcome the baleful influences of organisations
that penetrate the psyche and alter the identity. Newspaper accounts
of the doings of such organisations -- most horrifyingly the Jonestown
mass suicide and massacre in Guyana ten years ago, but also court
cases in which the Unification Church (the Moonies), the Scientologists,
and Rajneesh Bhagwan invariably seem to be accused of tax evasion
-- have a somewhat unreal quality about them; it is difficult to
believe that normal people can change into automata who reject their
families, occupation, and former value systems in favour of cults
headed by figures who in other settings would be ridiculous, pompous,
and self-important non-entities. A common rationalisation is to
conclude that only oddballs could be taken in by these cults.
Steven Hassan shows that this view is dangerously complacent. He
is a former member of the Unification Church (headed by Sun Myung
Moon) who escaped from its influence with some difficulty and used
his experiences to develop the skills to help others. He calls himself
and exit-counsellor (an unfortunate term because of its connotations
with euthanasia) and his descriptions of the emotional intensity
of this work are impressive. His thesis is that much of the influence
of cults can be explained by Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory;
if people change their behavior their thoughts and feelings will
change to minimize the dissonance. Successful cults introduce rigid
behaviour patterns reinforced by group pressure, which is most easily
achieved by an authoritarian system with a single charismatic leader.
A similar rigidity is then achieved in thinking and emotions, and
this is reinforced by endless repetition of doctrine and dogma.
Once an individual is introduced to a cult all routes are towards
greater involvement, with escape anticipated by paranoid thinking
-- a position summarised as "nobody joins a cult; they just
postpone a decision to leave". Deprogramming is frustrating
and lengthy, because it is so difficult to get beyond the parotings
of loyalty that also entrap members, and repel doubt and self-criticism.
Hassan gives a moving account of his own escape from the Moonies,
only achieve after be broke his leg and was separated from them.
His book is well worth reading by professionals in mental health,
particularly those involved with students, because early recognition
and appropriate intervention depend on greater awareness of this
menace. Cult and possession states are now recognised as a mental-state
diagnosis among dissociati ve disorders and have many features in
common with these. Hassan includes amongst them transcendental meditation,
and some organised treatments that rely on hypnosis and the wilder
psychotherapies are similar. Mind control is an emotive couplet,
but it is not only a delusion in schizophrenia -- it is a subtle
fact in many people's lives.
Freedomofmind.com fully supports religious
freedom and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The fact that a person’s name or group appears on our website
does not necessarily mean they are a destructive mind control cult.
They appear because we have received inquiries and have established
a file on the group.
The Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc. was established by cult expert Steve Hassan.
