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Terminology
note: Today Mind control or brainwashing in academia is commonly
referred to as coercive persuasion, coercive psychological systems
or coercive influence. 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 in the case Wollersheim v.
Church of Scientology 89-1367 and 89-1361. The Wollersheim case
was being considered related to issues involving abuse in this
area.
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.
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.
Read
More about Margaret Thaler Singer
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