This article is an electronic version of an
article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1991, Volume 8, Number
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Cult Formation
Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Abstract
Cults represent one aspect of a
worldwide epidemic of ideological totalism, or fundamentalism. They tend to be
associated with a charismatic leader, thought reform, and exploitation of
members. Among the methods of thought reform commonly used by cults are milieu
control, mystical manipulation, the demand for purity, a cult of confession,
sacred science, loading the language, doctrine over person, and dispensing of
existence. The current historical context of dislocation from organizing
symbolic structures, decaying belief systems concerning religion, authority,
marriage, family, and death, and a "protean style" of continuous psychological
experimentation with the self is conducive to the growth of cults. The use of
coercion, as in certain forms of "deprogramming," to deal with the restrictions
of individual liberty associated with cults is inconsistent with the civil
rights tradition. Yet legal intervention may be indicated when specific laws
are broken.
Two main concerns should
inform our moral and psychological perspective on cults: the dangers of
ideological totalism, or what I would also call fundamentalism; and the need to
protect civil liberties. There is now a worldwide epidemic of totalism and
fundamentalism in forms that are political, religious, or both. Fundamentalism
is a particular danger in this age of nuclear weapons, because it often includes
a theology of Armageddon -- a final battle between good and evil. I have
studied Chinese thought reform in the 1950s as well as related practices in
McCarthyite American politics and in certain training and educational programs.
I have also examined these issues in work with Vietnam veterans, who often
movingly rejected war-related totalism; and more recently in a study of the
psychology of Nazi doctors.
Certain psychological themes
that recur in these various historical contexts also arise in the study of
cults. Cults can be identified by three characteristics: 1) a charismatic
leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles
that may have originally sustained the group lose their power; 2) a process I
call coercive persuasion or thought reform; 3) economic, sexual, and other
exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
Milieu Control
The first method
characteristically used by ideological totalism is milieu control: the control
of all communication within a given environment. In such an environment
individual autonomy becomes a threat to the group. There is an attempt to
manage an individual's inner communication. Milieu control is maintained and
expressed by intense group process, continuous psychological pressure, and
isolation by geographical distance, unavailability of transportation, or even
physical restraint. Often the group creates an increasingly intense sequence of
events, such as seminars, lectures and encounters, which makes leaving extremely
difficult, both physically and psychologically. Intense milieu control can
contribute to a dramatic change of identity which I call "doubling": the
formation of a second self which lives side by side with the former one, often
for a considerable time. When the milieu control is lifted, elements of the
earlier self may be reasserted.
Creating a Pawn
A second characteristic of
totalistic environments is mystical manipulation or planned spontaneity. This
is a systematic process through which the leadership can create in cult members
what I call the psychology of the pawn. The process is managed so that it
appears to arise spontaneously; to its objects it rarely feels like
manipulation. Religious techniques such as fasting, chanting, and limited sleep
are used. Manipulation may take on a special intense quality in a cult for
which a particular "chosen" human being is the only source of salvation. The
person of the leader may attract members to the cult, but can also be a source
of disillusionment. If members of the Unification Church, for example, come to
believe that Sun Myung Moon, its founder, is associated with the Korean Central
Intelligence Agency, they may lose their faith.
Mystical manipulation may
also legitimate deception of outsiders, as in the "heavenly deception" of the
Unification Church and analogous practices in other cult environments. Anyone
who has not seen the light and therefore lives in the realm of evil can be
justifiably deceived for a higher purpose. For instance, collectors of funds
may be advised to deny their affiliation with a cult that has a dubious public
reputation.
Purity and Confession
Two other features of
totalism are a demand for purity and a cult of confession. The demand for
purity is a call for radical separation of good and evil within the environment
and within oneself. Purification is a continuing process, often
institutionalized in the cult of confession, which enforces conformity through
guilt and shame evoked by mutual criticism and self-criticism in small groups.
Confessions contain varying
mixtures of revelation and concealment. As Albert Camus observed, "Authors of
confessions write especially to avoid confession, to tell nothing of what they
know." Young cult members confessing the sins of their pre-cultic lives may
leave out ideas and feelings that they are not aware of or reluctant to discuss,
including a continuing identification with their prior existence. Repetitious
confession, especially in required meetings, often expresses arrogance in the
name of humility. As Camus wrote: "I practice the profession of penitence, to
be able to end up as a judge," and, "The more I accuse myself, the more I have a
right to judge you."
Three further aspects of
ideological totalism are "sacred science," "loading of the language," and the
principle of "doctrine over person." Sacred science is important because a
claim of being scientific is often needed to gain plausibility and influence in
the modern age. The Unification Church is one example of a contemporary
tendency to combine dogmatic religious principles with a claim to special
scientific knowledge of human behavior and psychology. The term "loading the
language" refers to literalism and a tendency to deify words or images. A
simplified, cliché-ridden language can exert enormous psychological force,
reducing every issue in a complicated life to a single set of slogans that are
said to embody the truth as a totality. The principle of "doctrine over person"
is invoked when cult members sense a conflict between what they are experiencing
and what dogma says they should experience. The internalized message of the
totalistic environment is that one must negate that personal experience on
behalf of the truth of the dogma. Contradictions become associated with guilt;
doubt indicates one's own deficiency or evil.
Perhaps the most significant
characteristic of totalistic movements is what I call "dispensing of
existence." Those who have not seen the light and embraced the truth are wedded
to evil, tainted, and therefore in some sense, usually metaphorical, lack the
right to exist. That is one reason why a cult member threatened with being cast
into outer darkness may experience a fear of extinction or collapse. Under
particularly malignant conditions, the dispensing of existence is taken
literally; in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere, people were put to
death for alleged doctrinal shortcomings. In the People's Temple mass
suicide-murder in Guyana, a cult leader presided over the literal dispensing of
existence by means of a suicidal mystique he himself had made a central theme in
the group's ideology. The totalistic impulse to draw a sharp line between those
who have the right to live and those who do not is especially dangerous in the
nuclear age.
Historical Context
Totalism should always be
considered within a specific historical context. A significant feature of
contemporary life is the historical (or psychohistorical) dislocation resulting
from a loss of the symbolic structures that organize ritual transitions in the
life cycle, and a decay of belief systems concerning religion, authority,
marriage, family, and death. One function of cults is to provide a group
initiation rite for the transition to early adult life, and the formation of an
adult identity outside the family. Cult members have good reasons for seeing
attempts by the larger culture to make such provisions as hypocritical or
confused.
In providing substitute
symbols for young people, cults are both radical and reactionary. They are
radical because they suggest rude questions about middle-class family life and
American political and religious values in general. They are reactionary
because they revive pre-modern structures of authority and sometimes establish
fascist patterns of internal organization. Furthermore, in their assault on
autonomy and self-definition, some cults reject a liberating historical process
that has evolved with great struggle and pain in the West since the
Renaissance. (Cults must be considered individually in making such judgments.)
Historical dislocation is one source of what I call the "protean style." This
involves a continuous psychological experimentation with the self, a capacity
for endorsing contradictory ideas at the same time, and a tendency to change
one's ideas, companions, and way of life with relative ease. Cults embody a
contrary "restricted style," a flight from experimentation and the confusion of
a protean world. These contraries are related; groups and individuals can
embrace a protean and a restricted style in turn. For instance, the so-called
hippie ethos of the 1960s and 1970s has been replaced by the present so-called
Yuppie preoccupation with safe jobs and comfortable incomes. For some people,
experimentation with a cult is part of the protean search.
The imagery of extinction
derived from the contemporary threat of nuclear war influences patterns of
totalism and fundamentalism throughout the world. Nuclear war threatens human
continuity itself and impairs the symbols of immortality. Cults seize upon this
threat to provide immortalizing principles of their own. The cult environment
supplies a continuous opportunity for the experience of transcendence -- a mode
of symbolic immortality generally suppressed in advanced industrial society.
Role of Psychology
Cults raise serious
psychological concerns, and there is a place for psychologists and psychiatrists
in understanding and treating cult members. But our powers as mental health
professionals are limited, so we should exercise restraint. When helping a
young person confused about a cult situation, it is important to maintain a
personal therapeutic contract so that one is not working for the cult or for the
parents. Totalism begets totalism. What is called deprogramming includes a
continuum from intense dialogue on the one hand to physical coercion and
kidnapping, with thought-reform-like techniques, on the other. My own position,
which I have repeatedly conveyed to parents and others who consult me, is to
oppose coercion at either end of the cult process. Cults are primarily a social
and cultural rather than a psychiatric or legal problem. But psychological
professionals can make important contributions to the public education crucial
for dealing with the problem. With greater knowledge about them, people are
less susceptible to deception, and for that reason some cults have been finding
it more difficult to recruit members.
Yet painful moral dilemmas
remain. When laws are violated through fraud or specific harm to recruits,
legal intervention is clearly indicated. But what about situations in which
behavior is virtually automatized, language reduced to rote and cliché, yet the
cult member expresses a certain satisfaction or even happiness? We must
continue to seek ways to encourage a social commitment to individual autonomy
and avoid coercion and violence.
Acknowledgement
Except for the abstract,
which was written by this journal's editor, this article first appeared in the
February 1991 issue of The Harvard Mental Health Letter. It is reprinted with
permission from The Harvard Mental Health Letter, 74 Fenwood Road, Boston, MA
02115. This article appeared in Cultic Studies
Journal, Volume 8, Number 1, 1991.
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