The techniques of many cults fall under the general rubric of brainwashing… Consciously and manipulatively, cult leaders and their trainers exert a systematic social influence that can produce great behavioral changes. – Margaret T. Singer, professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley
Deprogramming the neighbors.
My inclination would be to explain quietly, then shout, maybe grab them by the shoulders and shake hard.
Last resort, calmly backhand’em across the face two or three times.
“GODDAMN. SNAP OUT OF IT!!!”
But nothing seems to work.
You would hope the well-to-do “sophisticates” – the Supreme Court packed with Christo-fascists and huge tax cut in their wallets – would back away from their orange god.
But what about the rest of his followers?
”Many cult groups have developed basically similar and quite compelling conversion techniques for exploiting the vulnerabilities of potential converts,” said John G. Clark Jr., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard University Medical School.
Professor Clark said that in 1982. Guessing he didn’t anticipate forty years later today’s Republican party.
I did, by the way. But you probably guessed that.
Donald rhymes with Ronald.
The Marks of a New Disease
Dr. Clark has, in his private practice and with colleagues in Boston, treated and studied more than 500 current and former cult members since 1974. ”In some respects,” he said, ”the destructive effects of cult conversions amount to a new disease in an era of psychological manipulation.”
The researchers said that some of those who had joined cults had simply chosen the lesser of two evils – especially teen-agers who had escaped destructive family situations by joining cults.
[Teenagers. You know, humans whose brains haven’t fully developed.]
A number of those interviewed, including Dr. Cath and Dr. Clark, said they had successfully treated former cult members. ”Usually we can put the pieces back together again with the help of family and friends,” said Dr. Clark.
A Bearing on Brain Research
Several of the researchers believe the studies of cult members may revise current theories about the workings of the brain.
Dr. Cath and Dr. Clark, working independently, have been intrigued that the experiences described by cult members resemble personality changes regularly associated with disorders of the temporal lobe of the brain.
”The symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy,” said Dr. Clark, ”are similar to those seen or reported as resulting from cult conversions: increased irritability, loss of libido or altered sexual interest; ritualism, compulsive attention to detail, mystical states, humorlessness and sobriety, heightened paranoia.”
Dr. Cath said: ”Keeping devotees constantly fatigued, deprived of sensory input and suffering protein deprivation, working extremely long hours in street solicitation or in cult-owned businesses, engaging in monotonous chanting and rhythmical singing, may induce psychophysiological changes in the brain. The rhythmical movement of the body can lead to altered states of consciousness, and changes in the pressure or vibration pattern of the brain may affect the temporal lobe.”
Dr. Clark hypothesized that what he calls the ”cult-conversion syndrome” represents an overload of the brain’s ability to process information.
He said: ”The unending personalized attention given to recruits during the conversion experience works to overload the prospect’s information-processing capacity. This has another important function: the induction of trancelike states. Cult proselytizers then exploit the recruit’s suggestibility.”
As for suggestibility, once you get them to send money they can’t afford to a preacher, so he can purchase a new private jet, once you get them to buy vitamins from a fat man looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, well, hell, they will fall for anything.
Excerpted from THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CULT EXPERIENCE
By Glenn Collins for The New York Times. March 15, 1982
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/16/opinion/16focusgroup-Wyoming-primary.html