Hello,
I hope you’ll enjoy these thought-provoking
quotes:
“Robert Lifton's book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961) is still a standard text in identifying the marks of cult mind control (Hassan & Das, n.d.). The book comes as a result of his studies of the techniques of 'brainwashing' or 'thought reform' used by the Red Chinese during the Korean war on American prisoners and now more and more researchers and psychologists have noted similar patterns within cultic groups (Gordon, n.d.).
In chapter eight, Lifton lists eight criteria to judge whether mind control is being used.
These criteria consist of eight psychological themes which are predominant within the social field of the thought reform milieu. Each has a totalistic quality; each depends upon an equally absolute philosophical assumption; each mobilises certain individual emotional tendencies, mostly of a polarising nature. Psychological theme, philosophical rationale, and polarised individual tendencies are interdependent; they require, rather than directly cause, each other. In combination they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energise or exhilarate, but which at the same time poses the gravest of human threats. (Lifton, 1961:420 quoted by Groenveld, n.d.)
The organisation seeks to control the environment and human communication within the environment (Characteristics of a Destructive Cult, n.d.). The control of communication includes inter-personal control, informational control, and intra-personal thought control (Hassan & Das, n.d.).
Reading critical literature or thinking critical thoughts is banned. The thought reform environment aims is to control "what the individual sees, hears, reads, writes, experiences and expresses" (Groenveld, n.d.). Truth is the sole possession of the organisation and reality is defined by its standards and interpretations (ibid). Independent judgement must be thwarted to maintain obedience to and dependence on the organisation.”
Any …similarity ???
Agape J.C.MacHislopp