Bent
Minds
The short
description below comes from Dr Margaret
Singer professor emeritus at the University
of California at Berkeley the acknowledged
leading authority in the world on mind
control and cults. This document, in
substance, was presented to the U.S. Supreme
Court as an educational Appendix on coercive
psychological systems.
Coercion
is defined as, "to restrain or constrain by
force..." Legally it often implies the use
of PHYSICAL FORCE or physical or legal
threat. This traditional concept of coercion
is far better understood than the
technological concepts of "coercive
persuasion" which are effective restraining,
impairing, or compelling through the gradual
application of PSYCHOLOGICAL FORCES.
A coercive persuasion program is a
behavioral change technology applied to
cause the "learning" and "adoption" of a set
of behaviors or an ideology under certain
conditions. It is distinguished from
other forms of benign social learning or
peaceful persuasion by the conditions under
which it is conducted and by the techniques
of environmental and interpersonal
manipulation employed to suppress particular
behaviors and to train others. Over time,
coercive persuasion, a psychological force
akin in some ways to our legal concepts of
undue influence, can be even MORE effective
than pain, torture, drugs, and use of
physical force and legal threats.
The Korean War "Manchurian Candidate"
misconception of the need for
suggestibility-increasing drugs, and
physical pain and torture, to effect thought
reform, is generally associated with the old
concepts and models of brainwashing. Today,
they are not necessary for a coercive
persuasion program to be effective. With
drugs, physical pain, torture, or even a
physically coercive threat, you can often
temporarily make someone do something
against their will. You can even make them
do something they hate or they really did
not like or want to do at the time. They do
it, but their attitude is not changed.
This is much different and far less
devastating than that which you are able to
achieve with the improvements of coercive
persuasion. With coercive persuasion you can
change people's attitudes without their
knowledge and volition. You can create new
"attitudes" where they will do things
willingly which they formerly may have
detested, things which previously only
torture, physical pain, or drugs could have
coerced them to do.
The advances in
the extreme anxiety and emotional stress
production technologies found in coercive
persuasion supersede old style coercion that
focuses on pain, torture, drugs, or threat
in that these older systems do not change
attitude so that subjects follow orders
"willingly." Coercive persuasion changes
both attitude AND behavior, not JUST
behavior.
THE PURPOSES AND TACTICS OF COERCIVE
PERSUASION
Coercive persuasion or
thought reform as it is sometimes known, is
best understood as a coordinated system of
graduated coercive influence and behavior
control designed to deceptively and
surreptitiously manipulate and influence
individuals, usually in a group setting, in
order for the originators of the program to
profit in some way, normally financially or
politically.
The essential
strategy used by those operating such
programs is to systematically select,
sequence and coordinate numerous coercive
persuasion tactics over CONTINUOUS PERIODS
OF TIME. There are seven main tactic types
found in various combinations in a coercive
persuasion program. A coercive persuasion
program can still be quite effective without
the presence of ALL seven of these tactic
types.
TACTIC 1. The individual is
prepared for thought reform through
increased suggestibility and/or "softening
up," specifically through hypnotic or
other suggestibility-increasing techniques
such as: A. Extended audio, visual, verbal,
or tactile fixation drills; B. Excessive
exact repetition of routine activities; C.
Decreased sleep; D. Nutritional restriction.
TACTIC 2. Using rewards and
punishments, efforts are made to establish
considerable control over a person's social
environment, time, and sources of social
support. Social isolation is promoted.
Contact with family and friends is abridged,
as is contact with persons who do not share
group-approved attitudes. Economic and other
dependence on the group is fostered. (In the
forerunner to coercive persuasion,
brainwashing, this was rather easy to
achieve through simple imprisonment.)
TACTIC 3.
Disconfirming information and
nonsupporting opinions are prohibited in
group communication. Rules exist about
permissible topics to discuss with
outsiders. Communication is highly
controlled. An "in-group" language is
usually constructed.
TACTIC 4.
Frequent and intense attempts are made to
cause a person to re-evaluate the most
central aspects of his or her experience of
self and prior conduct in negative ways.
Efforts are designed to destabilize and
undermine the subject's basic consciousness,
reality awareness, world view, emotional
control, and defense mechanisms as well as
getting them to reinterpret their life's
history, and adopt a new version of
causality.
TACTIC 5. Intense and
frequent attempts are made to undermine a
person's confidence in himself and his
judgment, creating a sense of powerlessness.
TACTIC 6. Nonphysical punishments are
used
such as intense humiliation, loss of
privilege, social isolation, social status
changes, intense guilt, anxiety,
manipulation and other techniques for
creating strong aversive emotional arousals,
etc.
TACTIC 7.
Certain secular psychological threats
[force] are used or are present: That
failure to adopt the approved attitude,
belief, or consequent behavior will lead to
severe punishment or dire consequence, (e.g.
physical or mental illness, the reappearance
of a prior physical illness, drug
dependence, economic collapse, social
failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to
find a mate, etc.).
Another set of
criteria has to do with defining other
common elements of mind control systems. If
most of Robert Jay Lifton's eight point
model of thought reform is being used in a
cultic organization, it is most likely a
dangerous and destructive cult. These eight
points follow:
Robert Jay Lifton's Eight Point Model
of Thought Reform
1.
ENVIRONMENT CONTROL. Limitation
of many/all forms of communication with
those outside the group. Books,
magazines, letters and visits with
friends and family are taboo. "Come out
and be separate!"
2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION. The
potential convert to the group becomes
convinced of the higher purpose and
special calling of the
group through
a profound encounter / experience, for
example, through an alleged miracle or
prophetic word of those in the group.
3. DEMAND FOR PURITY. An explicit
goal of the group is to bring about some
kind of change, whether it be on a
global, social, or
personal level.
"Perfection is possible if one stays
with the group and is committed."
4. CULT OF CONFESSION. The
unhealthy practice of self disclosure to
members in the group. Often in the
context of a public gathering in the
group, admitting past sins and
imperfections, even doubts about the
group and critical thoughts about the
integrity of the leaders.
5.
SACRED SCIENCE. The group's
perspective is absolutely true and
completely adequate to explain
EVERYTHING. The doctrine is not subject
to amendments or question. ABSOLUTE
conformity to the doctrine is required.
6. LOADED LANGUAGE. A new
vocabulary emerges within the context of
the group. Group members "think" within
the very abstract
and narrow
parameters of the group's doctrine. The
terminology sufficiently stops members
from thinking critically by reinforcing
a "black and white" mentality. Loaded
terms and clichés prejudice thinking.
7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON.
Pre-group experience and group
experience are narrowly and decisively
interpreted through the absolute
doctrine, even when experience
contradicts the doctrine.
8.
DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE.
Salvation is possible only in the
group. Those who leave the group are
doomed.
COERCIVE PERSUASION IS NOT PEACEFUL
PERSUASION
Programs
identified with the above-listed seven
tactics have in common the elements of
attempting to greatly modify a person's
self-concept, perceptions of reality,
and interpersonal relations. When
successful in inducing these changes,
coercive thought reform programs also,
among other things, create the potential
forces necessary for exercising undue
influence over a person's independent
decision-making ability, and even for
turning the individual into a deployable
agent for the organization's benefit
without the individual's meaningful
knowledge or consent.
Coercive
persuasion programs are effective
because individuals experiencing the
deliberately planned severe stresses
they generate can only reduce the
pressures by accepting the system or
adopting the behaviors being promulgated
by the purveyors of the coercion
program. The relationship between the
person and the coercive persuasion
tactics are DYNAMIC in that while the
force of the pressures, rewards, and
punishments brought to bear on the
person are considerable, they do not
lead to a stable, meaningfully
SELF-CHOSEN reorganization of beliefs or
attitudes. Rather, they lead to a sort
of coerced compliance and a
situationally required elaborate
rationalization, for the new conduct.
Once again, in order to maintain the new
attitudes or "decisions," sustain the
rationalization, and continue to unduly
influence a person's behavior over time,
coercive tactics must be more or less
CONTINUOUSLY applied. A fiery, "hell and
damnation" guilt-ridden sermon from the
pulpit or several hours with a
high-pressure salesman or other single
instances of the so-called peaceful
persuasions do not constitute the
"necessary chords and orchestration" of
a SEQUENCED, continuous, COORDINATED,
and carefully selected PROGRAM of
surreptitious coercion, as found in a
comprehensive program of "coercive
persuasion."
Truly peaceful
religious persuasion practices would
never attempt to force, compel and
dominate the free wills or minds of its
members through coercive behavioral
techniques or covert hypnotism. They
would have no difficulty coexisting
peacefully with U.S. laws meant to
protect the public from such practices.
Looking like peaceful persuasion is
precisely what makes coercive persuasion
less likely to attract attention or to
mobilize opposition. It is also part of
what makes it such a devastating control
technology. Victims of coercive
persuasion have: no signs of physical
abuse, convincing rationalizations for
the radical or abrupt changes in their
behavior, a convincing "sincerity, and
they have been changed so gradually that
they don't oppose it because they
usually aren't even aware of it.
Deciding if coercive persuasion was used
requires case-by-case careful analysis
of all the influence techniques used and
how they were applied. By focusing on
the medium of delivery and process used,
not the message, and on the critical
differences, not the coincidental
similarities, which system was used
becomes clear. The Influence Continuum
helps make the difference between
peaceful persuasion and coercive
persuasion easier to distinguish.
Jim Jones of
JonesTown
VARIABLES
Not all tactics
used in a coercive persuasion type
environment will always be coercive. Some
tactics of an innocuous or cloaking nature
will be mixed in.
Not all
individuals exposed to coercive persuasion
or thought reform programs are effectively
coerced into becoming participants.
How individual
suggestibility, psychological and
physiological strengths, weakness, and
differences react with the degree of
severity, continuity, and comprehensiveness
in which the various tactics and content of
a coercive persuasion program are applied,
determine the program's effectiveness and/or
the degree of severity of damage caused to
its victims.
For example, in
United States v. Lee 455 U.S. 252, 257-258
(1982), the California Supreme Court found
that
"when a
person is subjected to coercive
persuasion without his knowledge or
consent... [he may] develop serious and
sometimes irreversible physical and
psychiatric disorders, up to and
including schizophrenia,
self-mutilation, and suicide."
WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA OF A
COERCIVE PERSUASION PROGRAM?
A).
Determine if the subject individual held
enough knowledge and volitional capacity
to make the decision to change his or
her ideas or beliefs.
B).
Determine whether that individual did,
in fact, adopt, affirm, or reject those
ideas or beliefs on his own.
C). Then, if
necessary, all that should be examined
is the behavioral processes used, not
ideological content. One needs to
examine only the behavioral processes
used in their "conversion." Each alleged
coercive persuasion situation should be
reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The
characteristics of coercive persuasion
programs are severe, well-understood,
and they are not accidental.
COERCIVE PERSUASION IS NOT VOLUNTARY,
PEACEFUL, RELIGIOUS PRACTICE OR CENTRAL TO
ANY BONA FIDE RELIGION.
Coercive
persuasion is not a religious practice, it
is a control technology. It is not a belief
or ideology, it is a technological process.
As a PROCESS, it
can be examined by experts on its technology
COMPLETELY SEPARATE from any idea or belief
content, similar to examining the technical
process of hypnotic induction distinct from
the meaning or value of the post-hypnotic
suggestions.
Examining
PROCESSES in this manner can not violate
First Amendment religious protections.
Coercive
persuasion is antithetical to the First
Amendment. It is the unfair manipulation of
other's biological and psychological
weaknesses and susceptibilities. It is a
psychological FORCE technology, not of a
free society, but of a criminal or
totalitarian society. It is certainly not a
spiritual or religious technology.
Any organization
using coercive persuasion on its members as
a CENTRAL practice that also claims to be a
religion is turning the SANCTUARY of the
First Amendment into a fortress for
psychological assault. It is a contradiction
of terms and should be "disestablished."
Coercive
persuasion is a subtle, compelling
psychological force which attacks an even
more fundamental and important freedom than
our "freedom of religion." ITS
REPREHENSIBILITY AND DANGER IS THAT IT
ATTACKS OUR SELF-DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL,
OUR MOST FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL
FREEDOMS.
PSYCH