Critical Thinking on Cults & AntiCults
Social science is that branch of science which studies the relationship between groups and individuals. There is a kind of war between psychology and social science on how to define, approach, and think about ‘cults’.
The subject of religion, especially other peoples’ religions, has always been a somewhat hysterical area for human beings, to say the least. Social science uses quantitative scientific techniques to attempt to objectively find out what’s going on with minority religions, to delete the hysteria, and to provide perspective on ‘cults’ vs. religions and the truth of their effects.
My main criticism of psychology with respect to cults is that practitioners have been extremely exploitative of the process of re-enculturalization of Ex-members of minority religions. Psychologists since before Margaret Singer have used Ex-members in their own practice-building and marketing and, I believe, made up non-existent maladies that most Exes would not suffer from if they had not been convinced they had these maladies by psychologists.
Social scientists just write papers and books. They don’t really have a financial incentive to blow up the hysteria around other peoples’ religious beliefs like psychologists do, or to make up mental problems that they can charge to fix. This is only one reason I believe you get a much better perspective on the phenomena of ‘cults’ from social scientists.
There are many others.
‘Cults’ are primarily a social phenomenon, and not a psychological one. Where there has been abuse, just like anywhere else there has been abuse, then psychology has a role to play to help heal from that abuse. But being a member in a cult is not inherently abusive and having been a member of a cult is not some kind of a disease. The diseasification and catastrophication of cult membership by psychologists in the anti-cult movement is the most damaging thing that they have done to Ex-members. In most cases, the damage psychologists have done to Exes by far exceeds the damage any cult membership has caused them.
Whether you agree with social science on cults or not, I think it is vital that any Ex studies their work, and takes some time to think with their ideas after Scientology.
Adopting the beliefs of the anti-cult movement dramatically changes the views and attitudes of those who experience a loss of faith. Those changes have a profound effect on how Exes make sense of their own past. So we must ask: How helpful is the ideology of the anti cult movement in making sense of your life?
After 16 years in a cult, 15 years in an Anticult, and 9 years out of both, I know what it means to recover from a cult.
What if being a Scientologist was never a really a disease in the first place that you needed to “recover from”? What if it was just one part of your own much longer spiritual journey that taught you many important lessons, and from which you emerged stronger and wiser than ever?
How would you know?
Former members of NXIVM’s secret sorority called DOS discuss their decision-making, and their consent, in joining the group.
The Dossier Project provides new details about how government prosecutors, using threats of prosecution with life imprisonment, coerced members of DOS to change their stories.
The metaphor of ‘brainwashing’ is best understood as a social weapon for religious persecution which provides a “libertarian” rationale for the suppression of unpopular social movements and belief systems.
I used to think that as long as I was not in the cult of Scientology, I would never fall into the unquestioning, partisan mindset I’d adopted when I was a Scientologist.
The brainwashing myth Rebecca Moore, San Diego State University Nearly 40 years ago, my two sisters, Carolyn Layton and Annie Moore, were among those who planned the mass deaths in Jonestown on Nov. 18, 1978. … Read more
Anti-Cultists Steve K. D. Eichel and Stephen Hassan had a conversation with me about cults and brainwashing on my Facebook Page. Here’s how it went.
Does Stephen Hassan personally profit from his exit counseling & deprogramming business using the hysteria he creates around minority religions?
Why do you think anti-cultists reject science so much? And when they call a social scientist a “shill” or a “quack”, where is their quantitative data that disputes their work? Nowhere.
If there is such a thing, an intellectually honest anticultist should understand the arguments from social science which won in court during the deprogramming hysteria in the 70’s & 80’s.
This is a paper written in 1980 on the AntiCult Movement, as it existed when the authors estimated when it was 10 years old. Can you see any differences in the AntiCult Movement today? _______________________________________ … Read more
The recovery paradigm of Ex-Scientology sets up a whole bunch of things you think you need to “recover” from because you were in a cult.
Social scientists like Eileen Barker traveled to Moonie recruitment seminars where brainwashing & mind control was claimed to be in use. They found that more than 90% of the people in those “brainwashing” seminars did not sign up to be a Moonie, and all were gone from the Moonies within 2 years.