Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones
RMA staff I remember from RMA, you post yours from CEDU
Awake:
I think anyone at Cedu will relate to this. It doesn’t fill in all the gaps of course, Cedu was a hodgepodge of things. Overall though I do think using terms like brainwashing or cults signifies a lack of terminology for something that has slipped unchallenged into our society. I feel this terminology translates neatly into the epistemology of family therapy theory, cybernetics, and Double Bind theory, which historically has an appropriate connection with therapeutic communities. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30423
BRAINWASHING: Dysfunctional groups, cults, sects and Mind Control: AN EXPLORATION OF DYSFUNCTIONAL GROUPS, SECTS AND CULTS.
Some Broad Definitions
……
Cults.
This is a negative term. It generally refers to a group or sect that has sinister aspects to it, such as attempts at coercion. In various ways they are dysfunctional, unhealthy groups.
CULTS
There are four main types: Religious, Political, Therapy/educational, and Commercial.
They do not carry out brainwashing. Brainwashing is overt, coercive and it is plain who the enemy is. Rather they carry out mind control or thought reform. Here, the perpetrators are
a) regarded as friends or peers making the candidate less defensive.
b) The candidate participates unwittingly with their controllers, for example by giving private information.
c) The new belief system is internalised into a new identity structure.
d) The group may use hypnotic processes and group dynamics.
THE COMPONENTS OF MIND CONTROL
1) BEHAVIOUR CONTROL
By regulating the environment:
a) Where you live
b) What clothing you wear
c) What food you eat
d) How much sleep you have
e) What jobs and goals you have.
f) Rituals and indoctrination
g) Restriction of free time – sometimes an apocalyptic sense of urgency
h) Financial dependency
i) Permission required to do things, i.e. phone relative
j) Suppression of individuality to group conformity
k) Pyramidical authoritarian command structure
l) Use of punishment and reward, often keeping members off balance – praised one day, punished the next.
m) Use of mannerisms of speech and posture
n) Regulation of interpersonal relationships – emotional allegiance to leader – no real friends because if the person leaves they may take others with them.
o) Group activities which creates privacy deprivation and thwarts reflection.
2) THOUGHT CONTROL
By indoctrination, such that beliefs are internalised.
a) Group has the Truth – the only map of reality. This moulds and filters incoming data. The doctrine is reality, the most effective being those which are unverifiable – global yet vague but apparently consistent. Reality is externally referenced via an authority figure and other members who are looked to for direction and meaning.
b) Black and white thinking – Group is good, outsiders bad. Thus good vs evil, Us vs them, Spiritual vs physical. No pluralism or multi perspective taking.
c) Group beliefs are scientifically proven and explain everything
d) Loaded language. E.g. A Cain and Abel problem
e) Blocking out critical thoughts by:
i) Denial: “What you say is not happening at all”
ii) Rationalisation: “It is happening for a good reason”
iii) Justification: “It is happening because it ought to”
iv) Wishful thinking: “I would like it to be true so maybe it is”
v) Demonising: “Lies put about by Satan/Persecution that we would expect”.
vi) Thought stopping: By chanting/ tongue speaking
vii) Punishment: Being given the silent treatment or transfer to another group e.t.c.
3) EMOTIONAL CONTROL
Emotions are controlled by the use of:
a) Guilt: in order to produce conformity and compliance. Guilt takes a number of aspects:
i) Historical guilt. – We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima
ii) Identity guilt – “I’m not living up to my potential”
iii) Past guilt – “I cheated on a test” A persons past is rewritten: everything is dark
iv) Social guilt – People are dying of starvation
v) Quality guilt- not meeting standards
b) Fear: By creating an outside enemy – unbelievers, Satan, therapists. Of discovery and punishment by leadersA major motivator.
c) Happiness: As defined by the group. Obtained by good performance and/or confession.
d) Loyalty and devotion.
e) Confession of past sins – this is often used against the person.
f) Phobia indoctrination. Induced panic reaction at the thought of leaving. Dark stories are
told of those who have left both in lectures and informal gossip. The idea of the Devil waiting to seduce and tempt, kill or drive insane. The more vivid and tangible, the more intense the cohesiveness it fosters.
4) INFORMATION CONTROL
The control of destabilising information by:
a) Denial of information so that sound judgements cannot be made. E.g. minimal access to T.V., non-group magazines, newspapers or radio. Partially achieved through busyness.
b) Criticism of the leader with peers not allowed
c) Members report improper activities to leader.
d) New converts do not talk to one another without a chaperone
e) Contact with ex members and critics avoided.
f) Compartmentalisation of information so that members do not know the ‘big picture’.
g) Multi levelled truth- the higher you are, the more is revealed.
i) For outsiders
ii) For members
iii) For leaders
iv) For high leaders
THE PROCESSES OF MIND CONTROL
There are three steps:
1) Unfreezing
2) Changing
3) Refreezing
1) UNFREEZING.
This is a shaking up and disorientation. A breaking up of the frames of reference used by the person for understanding themselves and their surroundings. This disarms the person’s defences against concepts that challenge reality.
Approaches include:
a) Physiological disorientation via sleep deprivation, new diets and eating schedules. Often best accomplished in a totally controlled environment such as a retreat at amcountry estate.
b) Hypnotic processes such as the deliberate use of confusion via contradictory information.
c) Sensory overload – being bombarded with material faster than it can be digested.
d) Use of double binds – “I am putting doubts in your mind”.
e) Group exercises –
1) Guided meditation.
2) Personal confession
3) Prayer sessions
4) Group singing
5) Vigorous callisthenics
Group activities enforce privacy deprivation and reflection.
f) As people weaken – A bombardment with the idea that the person is badly flawed, mentally ill, incompetent or spiritually fallen. Any identified problems are blown out of all proportion. There may be humiliation in front of the group.
2) CHANGING
The imposition of a new identity, a new set of thoughts, emotions and behaviours to fill the void of unfreezing. This takes place:
a) Formally – in lectures, seminars and rituals
b) Informally –in spending time with members, reading, listening to tapes, watching videos.
The approaches to change include:
a) Repetition, monotony and rhythm – the hypnotic cadences in which formal indoctrination is delivered
b) A focus on central themes:
1) The world is bad.
2) The unenlightened do not know how to fix it
3) The old self keeps you from experiencing the new truth fully.
4) Old concepts drag you down.
5) The rational mind holds you back – let go.
c) The material for the new identity is given out gradually – “Tell him only what he can accept.” “Milk for the baby, meat for the adult”
d) Artificially induced spiritual experience. Private information is secretly passed and revealed at the appropriate time as an ‘insight’.
e) Asking for God’s will for them. Via prayer and study. The implication is that joining the group is God’s will, leaving is not.
f) Group processes:
1) Being surrounded by people who are convinced that they know what is best for you.
2) Via cells or small groups- questioners and doubters may be isolated into their own group.
3) Sharing sessions with ordinary members, where past evils are confessed, present successes told and a sense of community fostered.
3) REFREEZING.
This is the building up of the new person, giving them a new purpose and new activities to solidify the new identity. New beliefs are internalised by the person.
Approaches include
a) Denigration of the old self, maximising sins, failings, hurt and guilt.
b) Modelling. The new member is paired with an older member whom they should emulate.
c) The group is the member’s new family.
d) Possible giving of a new name.
e) Turning over the bank account – subsequently it may be too painful to admit this mistake.
f) Sleep deprivation, lack of privacy, diet changes continued.
g) New location – no links with the past – only the new identity here.
h) Evangelising/prosteletizing – selling one’s own beliefs to others to firm up one’s own beliefs.
i) Difficult and humiliating fund raising. Can provoke a sense of glorious martyrdom.
General comments
There is no legitimate way to leave a cult.
The result of these processes is a dual identity - the old self does not disappear, but occasionally surfaces in humour, and greater emotional range and spontaneity. But it is clothed in the new cult self such that the person is more robot-like, rigid and cold-eyed. But the real identity holds the key to escape and to the inner desires. These emerge via psychosomatic illness, requiring outside treatment, dreams of being trapped, concentration camps e.t.c. and spiritual experiences, of voices telling them to leave e.t.c..
Problems in the group are always the fault of the member, due to:
a) His weakness
b) His lack of understanding
c) Bad ancestors
d) Evil spirits
e) His inadequacies.
ANALYSING AND ASSESSING GROUPS
Look at what the group does, not at what it believes. They have the right to believe what they want, but they do not have an automatic licence to act on those beliefs, else white supremacy groups would kill all blacks for example. Destructive groups undermine individual choice and liberty.
…. (end)
I found this http://www.scribd.com/doc/17647941/BRAI ... nd-Control
I’ve certainly seen this model, the BITE model, and the ‘Unfreezing, change, refreeze’ concept, but I thought this was about as thorough and concise a presentation that I had come across.
.
Anne Bonney:
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---I dunno 'bout you, but if a peer of mine in program were to die or even to suffer long term trauma as a direct result of the "programming" we were subjected to... it wouldn't matter how "great" a time I had, the experience would be seriously tainted for me.
--- End quote ---
You have no personal experience with this, so your whole statement is speculative. You don't know this.
Hmmmmm.........drama.
danny
--- End quote ---
Ok...Well, I do have personal experience with it and his statement is dead on accurate.
Anne Bonney:
Yep. I think one of the things that helped me the most, when researching and trying to make myself whole again after Straight, was the Ex Cult Resource website. When I read Lifton, Singer, Hassan, Groenveld etc.....it all made complete sense to me.
http://www.ex-cult.org/
General Information
* Lifton's Criteria for Thought Reform
* Conditions for Mind Control (Margaret Singer)
* Mind Control - The BITE Model (Steven Hassan)
* A Behavioral Definition (of 'cult') (Kevin Crawley)
* Identifying a Cult (Jan Groenveld)
* Totalism & Group Dynamics (Jan Groenveld)
* Academic Research into Cults (Jeff Jacobsen)
--- Quote from: "Awake" ---I think anyone at Cedu will relate to this. It doesn’t fill in all the gaps of course, Cedu was a hodgepodge of things. Overall though I do think using terms like brainwashing or cults signifies a lack of terminology for something that has slipped unchallenged into our society. I feel this terminology translates neatly into the epistemology of family therapy theory, cybernetics, and Double Bind theory, which historically has an appropriate connection with therapeutic communities. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30423
BRAINWASHING: Dysfunctional groups, cults, sects and Mind Control: AN EXPLORATION OF DYSFUNCTIONAL GROUPS, SECTS AND CULTS.
Some Broad Definitions
……
Cults.
This is a negative term. It generally refers to a group or sect that has sinister aspects to it, such as attempts at coercion. In various ways they are dysfunctional, unhealthy groups.
CULTS
There are four main types: Religious, Political, Therapy/educational, and Commercial.
They do not carry out brainwashing. Brainwashing is overt, coercive and it is plain who the enemy is. Rather they carry out mind control or thought reform. Here, the perpetrators are
a) regarded as friends or peers making the candidate less defensive.
b) The candidate participates unwittingly with their controllers, for example by giving private information.
c) The new belief system is internalised into a new identity structure.
d) The group may use hypnotic processes and group dynamics.
THE COMPONENTS OF MIND CONTROL
1) BEHAVIOUR CONTROL
By regulating the environment:
a) Where you live
b) What clothing you wear
c) What food you eat
d) How much sleep you have
e) What jobs and goals you have.
f) Rituals and indoctrination
g) Restriction of free time – sometimes an apocalyptic sense of urgency
h) Financial dependency
i) Permission required to do things, i.e. phone relative
j) Suppression of individuality to group conformity
k) Pyramidical authoritarian command structure
l) Use of punishment and reward, often keeping members off balance – praised one day, punished the next.
m) Use of mannerisms of speech and posture
n) Regulation of interpersonal relationships – emotional allegiance to leader – no real friends because if the person leaves they may take others with them.
o) Group activities which creates privacy deprivation and thwarts reflection.
2) THOUGHT CONTROL
By indoctrination, such that beliefs are internalised.
a) Group has the Truth – the only map of reality. This moulds and filters incoming data. The doctrine is reality, the most effective being those which are unverifiable – global yet vague but apparently consistent. Reality is externally referenced via an authority figure and other members who are looked to for direction and meaning.
b) Black and white thinking – Group is good, outsiders bad. Thus good vs evil, Us vs them, Spiritual vs physical. No pluralism or multi perspective taking.
c) Group beliefs are scientifically proven and explain everything
d) Loaded language. E.g. A Cain and Abel problem
e) Blocking out critical thoughts by:
i) Denial: “What you say is not happening at all”
ii) Rationalisation: “It is happening for a good reason”
iii) Justification: “It is happening because it ought to”
iv) Wishful thinking: “I would like it to be true so maybe it is”
v) Demonising: “Lies put about by Satan/Persecution that we would expect”.
vi) Thought stopping: By chanting/ tongue speaking
vii) Punishment: Being given the silent treatment or transfer to another group e.t.c.
3) EMOTIONAL CONTROL
Emotions are controlled by the use of:
a) Guilt: in order to produce conformity and compliance. Guilt takes a number of aspects:
i) Historical guilt. – We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima
ii) Identity guilt – “I’m not living up to my potential”
iii) Past guilt – “I cheated on a test” A persons past is rewritten: everything is dark
iv) Social guilt – People are dying of starvation
v) Quality guilt- not meeting standards
b) Fear: By creating an outside enemy – unbelievers, Satan, therapists. Of discovery and punishment by leadersA major motivator.
c) Happiness: As defined by the group. Obtained by good performance and/or confession.
d) Loyalty and devotion.
e) Confession of past sins – this is often used against the person.
f) Phobia indoctrination. Induced panic reaction at the thought of leaving. Dark stories are
told of those who have left both in lectures and informal gossip. The idea of the Devil waiting to seduce and tempt, kill or drive insane. The more vivid and tangible, the more intense the cohesiveness it fosters.
4) INFORMATION CONTROL
The control of destabilising information by:
a) Denial of information so that sound judgements cannot be made. E.g. minimal access to T.V., non-group magazines, newspapers or radio. Partially achieved through busyness.
b) Criticism of the leader with peers not allowed
c) Members report improper activities to leader.
d) New converts do not talk to one another without a chaperone
e) Contact with ex members and critics avoided.
f) Compartmentalisation of information so that members do not know the ‘big picture’.
g) Multi levelled truth- the higher you are, the more is revealed.
i) For outsiders
ii) For members
iii) For leaders
iv) For high leaders
THE PROCESSES OF MIND CONTROL
There are three steps:
1) Unfreezing
2) Changing
3) Refreezing
1) UNFREEZING.
This is a shaking up and disorientation. A breaking up of the frames of reference used by the person for understanding themselves and their surroundings. This disarms the person’s defences against concepts that challenge reality.
Approaches include:
a) Physiological disorientation via sleep deprivation, new diets and eating schedules. Often best accomplished in a totally controlled environment such as a retreat at amcountry estate.
b) Hypnotic processes such as the deliberate use of confusion via contradictory information.
c) Sensory overload – being bombarded with material faster than it can be digested.
d) Use of double binds – “I am putting doubts in your mind”.
e) Group exercises –
1) Guided meditation.
2) Personal confession
3) Prayer sessions
4) Group singing
5) Vigorous callisthenics
Group activities enforce privacy deprivation and reflection.
f) As people weaken – A bombardment with the idea that the person is badly flawed, mentally ill, incompetent or spiritually fallen. Any identified problems are blown out of all proportion. There may be humiliation in front of the group.
2) CHANGING
The imposition of a new identity, a new set of thoughts, emotions and behaviours to fill the void of unfreezing. This takes place:
a) Formally – in lectures, seminars and rituals
b) Informally –in spending time with members, reading, listening to tapes, watching videos.
The approaches to change include:
a) Repetition, monotony and rhythm – the hypnotic cadences in which formal indoctrination is delivered
b) A focus on central themes:
1) The world is bad.
2) The unenlightened do not know how to fix it
3) The old self keeps you from experiencing the new truth fully.
4) Old concepts drag you down.
5) The rational mind holds you back – let go.
c) The material for the new identity is given out gradually – “Tell him only what he can accept.” “Milk for the baby, meat for the adult”
d) Artificially induced spiritual experience. Private information is secretly passed and revealed at the appropriate time as an ‘insight’.
e) Asking for God’s will for them. Via prayer and study. The implication is that joining the group is God’s will, leaving is not.
f) Group processes:
1) Being surrounded by people who are convinced that they know what is best for you.
2) Via cells or small groups- questioners and doubters may be isolated into their own group.
3) Sharing sessions with ordinary members, where past evils are confessed, present successes told and a sense of community fostered.
3) REFREEZING.
This is the building up of the new person, giving them a new purpose and new activities to solidify the new identity. New beliefs are internalised by the person.
Approaches include
a) Denigration of the old self, maximising sins, failings, hurt and guilt.
b) Modelling. The new member is paired with an older member whom they should emulate.
c) The group is the member’s new family.
d) Possible giving of a new name.
e) Turning over the bank account – subsequently it may be too painful to admit this mistake.
f) Sleep deprivation, lack of privacy, diet changes continued.
g) New location – no links with the past – only the new identity here.
h) Evangelising/prosteletizing – selling one’s own beliefs to others to firm up one’s own beliefs.
i) Difficult and humiliating fund raising. Can provoke a sense of glorious martyrdom.
General comments
There is no legitimate way to leave a cult.
The result of these processes is a dual identity - the old self does not disappear, but occasionally surfaces in humour, and greater emotional range and spontaneity. But it is clothed in the new cult self such that the person is more robot-like, rigid and cold-eyed. But the real identity holds the key to escape and to the inner desires. These emerge via psychosomatic illness, requiring outside treatment, dreams of being trapped, concentration camps e.t.c. and spiritual experiences, of voices telling them to leave e.t.c..
Problems in the group are always the fault of the member, due to:
a) His weakness
b) His lack of understanding
c) Bad ancestors
d) Evil spirits
e) His inadequacies.
ANALYSING AND ASSESSING GROUPS
Look at what the group does, not at what it believes. They have the right to believe what they want, but they do not have an automatic licence to act on those beliefs, else white supremacy groups would kill all blacks for example. Destructive groups undermine individual choice and liberty.
…. (end)
I found this http://www.scribd.com/doc/17647941/BRAI ... nd-Control
I’ve certainly seen this model, the BITE model, and the ‘Unfreezing, change, refreeze’ concept, but I thought this was about as thorough and concise a presentation that I had come across.
.
--- End quote ---
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---Sorry, Whooter, I really don't need to believe anything, and whichever way it was or is ... is not going to "shake my world too much" one way or another at this point. It is what it is, and perhaps it's time that you came to terms with the fact that the propaganda that you spew is not a harmless moneymaker or stock price booster but in fact, fraudulent advertising for programs that affect some kids and their families in very real, tangible, and not in the least bit beneficial ways. And sometimes, with all too fatal consequences.
--- End quote ---
Jeesh, you have no personal experience with fraudulent advertising that I have read and you have no personal experience of the "all too fatal consequences". I could be wrong, did your parents feel deceived and was their a death at Hyde while you were there.
--- End quote ---
You really don't have any basis to make any of the above assumptions about me, Danny.
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---One really has to wonder about what sort of life lessons these kids' peers learn, the ones who ostensibly "do well in programs and move on with their lives."
--- End quote ---
This is not something you are using any energy to find out, that's for sure. So what is this a rhetorical statement/question ??????
--- End quote ---
Again, you really do not have any basis to make that assumption, Danny.
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---I dunno 'bout you, but if a peer of mine in program were to die or even to suffer long term trauma as a direct result of the "programming" we were subjected to... it wouldn't matter how "great" a time I had, the experience would be seriously tainted for me.
--- End quote ---
You have no personal experience with this, so your whole statement is speculative. You don't know this.
Hmmmmm.........drama.
--- End quote ---
No. What *IS* pure speculation, however, is what you relied upon to make your baseless assumption. It is YOU who knows not a thing about my personal experience, not I.
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---And if I had any kind of moral backbone in me.......
--- End quote ---
You said it.....IF
--- End quote ---
It's called "phrasing," Danny. Emphasis in the first part of that sentence is on MORAL BACKBONE, which you curiously overlooked.
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---...I would probably begin to seriously QUESTION the veracity of said methodologies used. And probably also the ideology behind it as well, as I got in deeper.
--- End quote ---
What I have seen of you over the last 6 months I would agree with this under one condition you tone down the drama....you are looking deeper into it right now, although I don't feel all this heartfelt emotion your trying to convey.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---Doncha think?
--- End quote ---
It depends......
--- End quote ---
Sorry if there's been any misperception here, Danny, but you don't get to tell me what I post about. Nor how I post ... what I do post about. I'm not exactly going to lose any sleep over whether or not you "agree" with me, let alone under any artificial "conditions" you wish to impose upon me. LOL. Ya can always check with the Admins, but it's my understanding that you have no such authority here; you are just another poster, just like the rest of us.
If my posting style so seriously disturbs you, you have the option of blocking my posts from your view, as does everyone else here. Feel free to avail yourself of this option.
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---I was hoping this wasn't another of your comparisons of program with summer camp. Care to spell it out a bit more explicitly, Whooter?
--- End quote ---
You get upset when I compare programs to summer camp yet it is acceptable to compare programs to Russian gulags and cults? Hmmm
--- End quote ---
Lol. You take something which offends you, which one or more users here have posted, and simply assume that all posters are in complete and total agreement with the vernacular. Knee-jerk presumptions, anyone? :D
Moreover, you assumed I "got upset." Lol. At this point, I pretty much expect this type of verbal manipulation from you.
I take it that it was summer camp at which you experienced a souring note.
--- Quote from: "Whooter" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---Also, please provide a link to where I allegedly provided you with the grist for this statement:
"You stated yourself that you cannot relate at all to all these kids who do well in programs and you cannot understand what life lesson they learn."[/list]
Since I cannot remember saying such a thing (as written), nor even recognize that statement (as written), it appears, IF indeed I said such a thing, that you have taken it grossly out of context.
--- End quote ---
Look above (previous post) where you said:
One really has to wonder about what sort of life lessons these kids' peers learn, the ones who ostensibly "do well in programs and move on with their lives."
But even without the quote it is evident, via your postings, that you cannot relate to kids who do well in programs.
--- End quote ---
Oh, I'm looking at the two statements, Whooter, and I cannot for the life of me see how you used one to extrapolate to the other. Postulating that "one has to wonder" does in no way imply that one "cannot understand." In fact, more often than not, when people use that former phrase, they often already have some conclusions and/or understanding kicking around in their head, and are using this literary device to elicit some focused contemplation on the part of the reader.
As for your claim that I "cannot relate," this would appear to be yet another presumption on your part. Transference, anyone? :D
If the above examples epitomize your reasoning capabilities, they certainly could serve to shed some light on how you are able to continue extrapolating "program success" from insider generated "studies," not to mention press releases geared towards investors, while conveniently bypassing any evidence to the contrary.
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