Tag: Group Abuse
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The Psychology of Brainwashing
Cognitive Consistency —Michael Rogge A Quote from “Basic Psychology”, Henry Gleitman, Norton 1983 … people try to make sense of the world they encounter. But how? In effect, they do this by looking for some consistency among their own experiences and memories, and turning to other people for comparison and confirmation. If all checks out,…
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Ways to evaluate a group’s control over person freedom
From Chapter Four of Combating Cult Mind Control (Park Street Press, 1990) by Steven Hassan (with comments by Diane Muir) Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE: 1. Behavior Control 2. Information Control 3. Thought Control 4. Emotional Control These four components are guidelines.…
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Deception, Dependency & Dread
By Michael Langone, Ph. D. American Family Foundation (With comments by Diane Muir) THE CONVERSION PROCESS Farber, Harlow, & West (1957) coined the term “DDD syndrome” to describe the essence of Korean War thought reform with prisoners of war: debility, dependency, and dread. Lifton (1961), who also studied thought reform employed in Chinese universities, demonstrated…
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Spiritually Abusive Groups
Abusive groups are not outward-looking, but inward-looking, guiding members to find comfort and support and a replacement family within the group. Designed bonding to the group creates isolation from friends, relatives, previous relationships; abusive groups over time feed ideologies into their consciousnesses, saturating their senses with specific doctrines and requirements of the group. The seed…
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A question and answer that was in the Seattle PI not long ago
Question: “I work at a community college where two instructors teach the same science course. One explains concepts clearly, and his students do well on standardized tests. The other is scattered and confusing, and his students perform poorly. But the students believe the latter instructor is brilliant: They think that his explanations are simply over…
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Characteristics of a Destructive Group
Authoritarian pyramid structure with authority at the top Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (Messianic meaning they either say they are God OR that they alone can interpret the way…..these leaders are self-appointed.) Isolation from society — not necessarily physical isolation, but this can be psychological isolation — the rest of the world is not saved, not…