Cult Mediation Specialist Patrick Ryan discusses how cults operate and how to intervene when someone needs help.
Deprogramming, Exit Counseling, and Ethics: Clarifying the Confusion
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From Deprogramming to Thought Reform Consultation
AFF Conference,
Chicago, IL
November 1998
Deprogramming
Exit Counseling
Thought Reform Consultation
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American Association for Marriage & Family Therapy
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National Association of Social Workers
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Standards for the Private Practice of Clinical Social Work
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American Psychiatric Association
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National Academy of Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselors
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Margaret Singer, Ph. D.
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Michael Langone, Ph. D.
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Herbert Rosedale, Esq.
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David Bardin, Esq. and Livia Bardin, M.S.W.
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Bill Goldberg, M.S.W. & Lorna Goldberg, M.S.W.
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Paul Martin, Ph. D.
- The family team experiences how they work together under pressure and how the thought reform consultants work together.
- Enables the thought reform consulting team to observe how the family works together under pressure and who may or may not be appropriate for major roles in the intervention
- Improves family communication with the group memberEnables the family to understand the culture of the group, its teachings and how thought reform techniques impact the group member
- Prepares the family for how to communicate in the intervention and what practical arrangements should be made
- Emphasizes the recovery process and their responsibility in it
- Emphasizes the seriousness of an intervention and all its repercussions
- Facilitates the family in making a fully informed decision about doing an intervention
- Thought reform consultation involves even more assessment, as you see — and places much more responsibility on the family.
- They realize that a team is not just going to come in and perform some magical process and things will forever be okay.
Thought reform consultation involves much, much more family preparation. It is necessary for a 2-3 day, sometimes more, formal family preparation involving all members of the family team and all thought reform consultant team members. This formal preparation accomplishes the following:
- The family team experiences how they work together under pressure and how the thought reform consultants work together.
- Enables the thought reform consulting team to observe how the family works together under pressure and who may or may not be appropriate for major roles in the intervention
- Improves family communication with the group member
- Enables the family to understand the culture of the group, its teachings and how thought reform techniques impact the group member
- Prepares the family for how to communicate in the intervention and what practical arrangements should be made
- Emphasizes the recovery process and their responsibility in it
- Emphasizes the seriousness of an intervention and all its repercussions
- Facilitates the family in making a fully informed decision about doing an intervention
Thought reform consultation involves even more assessment, as you see — and places much more responsibility on the family. They realize that a team is not just going to come in and perform some magical process and things will forever be okay.
Ethical Standards for Thought Reform Consultants
Cult Intervention, deprogramming, exit counseling RATIONALE (History of cult interventions, deprogramming, exit counseling) Thought reform includes the use of highly manipulative methods and processes such as undue social and psychological influence, behavioral modification techniques, disguised hypnosis and trance induction, and other physiological and psychological influence techniques. These techniques are used in…
Cults
On Using the Term "Cult"
Review of Definitions
Using the Term: Considerations
References
Chambers, W., Langone, M., Dole, A., & Grice, J. (1994). The Group Psychological Abuse Scale: A measure of the varieties of cultic abuse. Cultic Studies Journal, 11(1), 88-117.
Lifton, R. J. (1961). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism. New York: Norton.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary, tenth edition. (1994). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.
Ofshe, R., & Singer, M. T. (1986). Attacks on peripheral versus central elements of self and the impact of thought reforming techniques. Cultic Studies Journal, 3(1), 3-24.
Robbins, T. (1988). Cults, converts, and charisma. London: Sage.
Singer, M. T., & Ofshe, R. (1990). Thought reform programs and the production of psychiatric casualties. Psychiatric Annals, 20, 188-193.
Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. (1985). The future of religion: Secularization, revival and cult formation. Berkeley: University of California (cited in Robbins, 1988).
The compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. (1980). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
West, L. J., & Langone, M. D. (1986). Cultism: A conference for scholars and policy makers. Cultic Studies Journal, 3, 117-134.
Zablocki, B. (1997). Paper presented to a conference, “Cults: Theory and Treatment Issues,” May 31, 1997 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Definitional Ambiguity of “Cult” and ICSA’s Mission
- Groups – religious, political, psychological, commercial – in which the leader(s) appear(s) to exert undue influence over followers, usually to the leader’s(s’) benefit.
- Fanatical religious and political groups, regardless of whether or not leaders exert a high level of psychological control.
- Terrorist organizations, such as Bin Laden’s group, which induce some members to commit horrific acts of violence.
- Religious groups deemed heretical or socially deviant by the person attaching the “cult” label.
- Any unorthodox religious group – benign or destructive.
- Covert hypnotic inductions.
- Communes that may be physically isolated and socially unorthodox.
- Groups (religious, New Age, psychotherapeutic, “healing,”) that advocate beliefs in a transcendent order or actions that may occur through mechanisms inconsistent with the laws of physics.
- Any group embraced by a family member whose parents, spouses, or other relatives conclude – correctly or incorrectly – that the group is destructive to the involved family member.
- Organizations that employ high-pressure sales and/or recruitment tactics.
- Authoritarian social groups in which members exhibit a high level of conformity and compliance to the expectations and demands of leaders.
- Extremist organizations that advocate violence, racial separation, bigotry, or overthrow of the government.
- Familial or dyadic relationships in which one member exerts an unusually high and apparently harmful influence over the other member(s), e.g., certain forms of dysfunctional families or battered women’s syndrome.
- We can pretend that a particular term, e.g., “cult,” is more precise than it actually is, thereby inviting misapplication of the concept to which the term refers.
- We can so narrowly define the term that it becomes useless in a practical sense.
- We can strive for a practical level of precision while acknowledging the unavoidable ambiguity in our terminology.
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It treats people as objects to be manipulated for the benefit of the leader(s).
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It believes that and behaves as though the group’s supposedly noble ends justify means that most people deem unethical.
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It harms some persons involved with or affected by the group.