By Gordon Neufeld

This is the first part of a series of postings to explain the concept of mind control, and why I find this concept so persuasive. I will make frequent references to expert sources such as Steven Hassan and Robert J. Lifton, but will also use my own words.

The most obvious first problem is that many people in this newsgroup are troubled by the term itself. One person wants to characterize "mind control" as meaning "mental discipline"; another wants to equate the term to perpetual robotic behavior. Both are erroneous approaches. To add to the confusion, related but ultimately dissimilar terms, such as "brainwashing", are used interchangeably with "mind control". So here is how Steven Hassan defines "mind control" in his book, "Combating Cult Mind Control" (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1990), p. 7:

"'Mind control' may be understood as a *system* of influences that disrupts an individual's identity (beliefs, behavior, thinking, and emotions) and replaces it with a new identity. In most cases, that new identity is one that the original identity would strongly object to if it knew in advance what was in store."

Thus, mind control cuts to the heart of who a person is. It is an invasive process which employs sophisticated techniques, (which I will discuss in later postings), to completely alter a person by an unnatural process that produces what amounts to a split personality, with a new identity overlaying, but not quite destroying, the old."

As for the issue of distinguishing the term "mind control" from "brainwashing", Hassan writes (p.55):

"'Brainwashing' is a term coined in 1951 by journalist Edward Hunter. He used it to describe how American servicemen captured in the Korean War suddenly reversed their values and allegiances and believed they had committed fictional war crimes. Hunter translated the term from the Chinese *hsi nao*, 'wash brain.'

"Brainwashing is typically coercive. The person knows at the outset that he is in the hands of an enemy. It begins with a clear demarcation of the respective roles -- who is a prisoner and who is jailer -- and the prisoner experiences an absolute minimum of choice. Abusive mistreatment, even torture, is usually involved."

Later, Hassan adds (p.56):

"Mind control, also called 'thought reform,' is more subtle and sophisticated. Its perpetrators are regarded as friends or peers, so the person is much less defensive. He unwittingly participates by cooperating with his controllers and giving them private information that he does not know will be used against him. The new belief system is internalized into a new identity structure."

It is clear that "brainwashing" would be an inappropriate term to describe the kind of techniques used to indoctrinate new cult members. While they are not literally prisoners, they are usually in an isolated place, away from their family and friends apart from those in the group. They may leave, but cannot easily do so, because they are subjected to intense peer pressure to remain.

In future postings, I will explore the eight main conditions employed by cults to produce this sudden and destructive transformation of personality, and I will demonstrate that even when these conditions are removed, the effects of the thought reform process continue to plague the member, and therefore they must be addressed even years after he or she has departed from the group.

The fundamental element which is required to create mind control, for at least a formative period of time, is "milieu control", or the control of a person's environment to such an extent that the only information he or she receives is dictated by the party who controls the environment.

In Robert J. Lifton's "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", in his Chapter 22, titled "Ideological Totalism", he writes:

"The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual's communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences and expresses), but also - in its penetration of his inner life - over what we may speak of as his communication with himself."

To achieve such a commanding control of the information from which an individual forms his or her concept of reality, it is necessary to isolate the individual from the world in which they normally have interaction and discourse. In the case of the Unification Church, this is accomplished by taking the person to a farm or rural house which is away from the cities in order to teach Divine Principle.

Next, that person's entire time is dominated by activities dictated by the church - first, a lecture, then a group discussion, then another lecture, then lunch, then organized sports - which leaves virtually no time for the individual to communicate informally with those outside of the ones who set the agenda. For example, when I was at Boonville, California in 1976, a Unification Church "shadow" was assigned to me and to every new person at the indoctrination camp, who would interfere with any communication between one new recruit and another. Basically, such communications were discouraged and deflected before they developed very far.

This constriction of an individual's reality means that in effect their world has been artificially reconstructed around them. It no longer contains the information they require to make an informed judgment about the religious teachings they are being exposed to.

Even though this most absolute form of "milieu control" usually only occurs during the earliest stage of a member's cult involvement, and continues in a reduced form during their most active stage, it remains potent for as long as they are members. Their entire world was reconstructed; now, they judge reality according to that artificial reconstruction. This means that they even refuse to believe information which contradicts the artificial world they have been thrust into. Thus, even though Unification Church members are allowed much more freedom as they grow older in the church, they remain in some ways limited by the reconstructed reality which was imposed on them during their first days in the Unification Church.

It would be difficult to overstate the power of those first few weeks in the Unification Church, in which a person's fundamental worldview is totally overthrown. This is such an emotionally powerful (and in many ways painful) experience that even long after the exhilarating rush of the initial idealism has long faded, the memory of this experience continues to exert force over the member, causing them to want to remain inside the fictitious worldview.

Thus, even though milieu control is usually relaxed after a person has belonged to a cult for a few years, and the individual may be allowed to start a family and hold down their own job, the power of the initial exposure to milieu control is still potent and continues to affect them, down through all the sad and frustrating days of their lives, until they finally understand mind control and break free. While milieu control is essential in the early stages in order to impose mind control, it is often not required later on in order for mind control to continue to have effect. Similarly, another aspect of mind control which is important mainly in the early stages of indoctrination is what Robert J. Lifton called "mystical manipulation" (Chapter 22, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, 1961). Lifton writes:

"Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment. This element of planned spontaneity, directed as it is by an ostensible omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality."

A less complicated way of explaining "mystical manipulation" is to describe it as a way to make a carefully planned event appear to be something that is happening out of the blue. In Boonville, where I received my indoctrination, the lectures would often be interrupted by seemingly "spontaneous" outbursts from the audience. Noah Ross, the main lecturer in that era, would make some comment about God calling Noah and then an audience member would burst out with some skeptical comment directed at Noah. This was all done with comic effect, and appeared to be unplanned. Nevertheless, as I stayed on for several weeks at Boonville, I saw that these outbursts from the audience were all intentional and were in fact part of the lecture. (Oddly, I found these comments more amusing, not less, the longer I stayed in Boonville. I became like a little child, where no joke could ever grow stale, and each repetition merely rendered the joke more humorous. Likewise, the famous "Choo-choo-choo, choo-choo-choo, choo-choo-choo, yeah, yeah, pow!" slogan from the Oakland Family seemed embarrassing at first, but later I found it wildly amusing).

Thought reform consultant Carol Giambalvo explains "mystical manipulation" in a slightly different way: she sees it as that feeling of euphoria, the "buzz" that a new cult member feels when they first fully participate in the cult environment. This euphoria feels purely spontaneous, but is in fact intentionally created by the manipulations of the cult leaders. For my part, I experienced this feeling especially after the late-night group sessions in Boonville, when, after an exhausting day and many lectures, the group would gather in a circle for reassuring words and soft songs. Again, this was a bit like a regression to a child-like atmosphere, with the singing of soft lullabies to put the kids to bed. I found this soothing, and it went a long way towards quelling my puzzlement and anger over questions left unanswered or dismissed, and other points of dispute that had arisen throughout the day.

Lifton adds that such manipulations are not seen as manipulation or trickery by the cult leaders. Rather, they see it as a kind of necessary sneakiness that serves a "higher purpose", and they therefore feel themselves mystically identified with the higher purpose itself; they feel uplifted, glorified, even as they engage in an act of trickery. Lifton writes:

"This same mystical imperative produces the apparent extremes of idealism and cynicism which occur in connection with the manipulations of any totalist environment: even those actions which seem cynical in the extreme can be seen as having ultimate relationship to the 'higher purpose'." The primary goal of mind control is to impose an artificial identity while suppressing the original identity. In order to reinforce the rejection of the original identity, it is necessary to associate it with all that is evil, negative, or corrupt. The individual caught up in a thought reform environment is thus placed on a treadmill in which they are forever chasing the dream of perfect spiritual and moral purity, without ever actually getting any closer to it. At the same time, they are also running as hard as possible away from that which is perceived as evil, namely, their old identity, but also without ever actually getting anywhere. The analogy of cultists being like hamsters running vainly on an exercise wheel is an apt one. Eventually they grow weary and give up the struggle; but far from being concerned about their fate, the cult leader merely goes out looking for new "hamsters" to replace the ones he has burned out.

About this "demand for purity", Robert J. Lifton wrote in Chapter 22 of his 1961 study, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism":

"In the thought reform milieu, as in all situations of ideological totalism, the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions which are consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. Nothing human is immune from the flood of stern moral judgments. All 'taints' and 'poisons' which contribute to the existing state of impurity must be searched out and eliminated. ... Nor can this paradox be dismissed as merely a means of establishing a high standard to which all can aspire. Thought reform bears witness to its more malignant consequences: for by defining and manipulating the criteria of purity, and then by conducting an all-out war upon impurity, the ideological totalists create a narrow world of guilt and shame. This is perpetuated by an ethos of continuous reform, a demand that one strive permanently and painfully for something which not only does not exist but is in fact alien to the human condition."

Lifton's was primarily looking at the Communist Chinese regime, but it is not hard to see how these words apply to Sun Myung Moon's Unification movement, which, like China, has seen repeated campaigns of reform, such as the bizarre one led by the false Heung Jin Moon, which focussed on sexual purity. By constantly demanding an unattainable standard of purity (which even Moon himself has never attempted to follow) the Unification Movement fixes the member's focus on an impossible dream, thereby stopping them from thinking deeply about their own situation. What is worse, this creates a kind of permanent shame of the self, which is always inadequate. As Lifton notes:

"The individual thus comes to apply the same totalist polarization of good and evil to his judgments of his own character: he tends to imbue certain aspects of himself with excessive virtue, and condemn even more excessively other personal qualities - all according to their ideological standing. He must also look upon his impurities as originating from outside influences ... Therefore, one of his best ways to relieve himself of some of his burden of guilt is to denounce, continuously and hostilely, these same outside influences. ... Moreover, once an individual person has experienced the totalist polarization of good and evil, he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality. For there is no emotional bondage greater than that of the man whose entire guilt potential - neurotic and existential - has become the property of ideological totalists."

In these last two sentences, Lifton points out the excruciating emotional conflicts of those who have fled from a totalist environment such as the Unification Church. After such an experience it is difficult to regain a normal perspective, and to stop seeing things in absolute terms. It is also difficult to stop imagining the future as being destined to culminate in an absolute victory of one viewpoint over another.

For example, when I left the Unification Church in 1986, I knew I could no longer support Moon's movement, but I was equally sure that I did not support the evangelical Christian worldview, either. So I told an ex-member who had converted to Christianity that "I would rather destroy the world than let them have it!" This extremist viewpoint came directly from having spent a decade in the totalist mindset. I saw the future as being a matter of either one group coming to totally possess the world, or another. This, of course, is not reasonable: there is no danger of the Unification Church, or the evangelical Christians, or any other group for that matter, gaining total possession of the world.

One of the most common features of mind control cults is the extreme degree to which the members feel a need to constantly confess their own failures, and to repeat confessions of their own past failures, whether real or exaggerated. They soon become paralyzed by the fear that if they do not constantly maintain the confessional process, they will return to the alleged evils of their pasts. The life of a person in a mind control cult is therefore a life of unceasing shame and guilt. Whenever an unfortunate event happens to the group, whether from an accidental cause or due to the errors of the leaders, it is often used to further increase the guilt of ordinary members.

While confession in the Catholic Church has traditionally been a means of obtaining solace and relief, confession in a mind control cult has exactly the opposite purpose: it is intended to fix the guilt and to magnify it (perhaps in part because Catholic confession is done privately with the priest, whereas cultic confessions are usually done publicly). As Robert J. Lifton writes in Chapter 22 of his 1961 study, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism":

"There is the demand that one confess to crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that is artificially induced, in the name of a cure that is arbitrarily imposed. Such demands are made possible not only by the ubiquitous human tendencies toward guilt and shame but also by the need to give expression to these tendencies. In totalist hands, confession becomes a means of exploiting, rather than offering solace for, these vulnerabilities."

It might seem like no-one would want to live in an environment of constant guilt, but in fact the repeated self-shaming of the public confessional does have one emotional pay-off: the member feels that by making these admissions, they have are more totally merged with the group, or as Lifton puts it: ". . . the sharing of confession enthusiasms can create an orgiastic sense of 'oneness,' of the most intense intimacy with fellow confessors and of the dissolution of the self into the great flow of the Movement."

However, the price of maintaining this feeling of larger oneness is the necessity to constantly repeat the confession, often to the point where it becomes a performance and the original alleged misdeeds are exaggerated or even fabricated. Ironically, the person making the confession then comes to believe that the exaggerated claims about his past are actually true. For example, before I joined the Unification Church, I worked occasionally as a volunteer for the New Democratic Party, a moderately left-of-center political party in my native Canada. After I joined the church and completely discarded my former political views, I sometimes told other members that I had been practically a Communist before the church! This of course was a wild exaggeration, but I never doubted it at the time.

Members of a mind control cult feel obligated not only to constantly confess their old "sins" from the time before they joined, but also to confess any new "sins" which are the normal doubts or hesitations they may have in unconditionally accepting the doctrine. These confessions may then be used against them by the cult leaders, if they want to publicly shame the member or otherwise manipulate them.

Finally, the cult of confession will often become a tool whereby the cult member, who has thus ruthlessly judged himself and always found himself wanting, to apply the same standard to others. In the Unification Church, however, this happens in a rather convoluted way. Since members are told that they must not "judge" others or "accuse" themselves, even though they live in an environment of constant heavy-handed judgment from church leaders and from Sun Myung Moon, they can achieve it by only indirection: they pretend to be polite and reasonable, but privately they dismiss their critics as "Satanic" and destined to a bad end. (This quiet contempt is often visible in the postings made by Unificationists on this newsgroup). As Lifton notes: "The enthusiastic and aggressive confessor becomes like Camus' character whose perpetual confession is his means of judging others: '[I] . . . practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge . . . the more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you."

The cult of confession is likely to be prominent in Unification culture for the next few weeks, as members shift the blame for the death of Young Jin Moon onto themselves; indeed they have been directed to do so by the repellent notice from Tyler Hendricks of HSA-UWC America, who advised: "Young Jin Nim has gone now as the historic indemnity offering for the fruition of such blessing. Now is a time for us all to repent and reflect deeply, offer our prayers for Young Jin Nim, who has become an offering for our own inadequacies and inability, and make our determination to fulfill the path of the providence in his place." Hendricks issues this callous direction despite the fact that Young Jin was already in the prayers of all the members, whether by name or as part of daily prayers for the "True Family." What more could average members have done to protect Young Jin's life? Nevertheless, public confessions will be made at Sunday sermons, and tearful Japanese sisters, who seem able to cry on command, will announce their "repentance" for having caused this death, even though they could have done absolutely nothing about it.

In any mind control environment, certain words and phrases become standardized expressions that are used by everyone in the environment, not to encourage thought, but to diminish thought. Their purpose is to provide a fixed response to any challenge to the cultic mindset. Thus, whatever the original idea behind the word or phrase, in the end it becomes a mere emblem or shield, representing the totality of the ideology, and the true believer brandishes it without reflecting deeply on its meaning. Their response to these words is more visceral than mental. Robert J. Lifton in Chapter 22 of his 1961 study, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism," commented as follows:

"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche;. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In thought reform, for instance, the phrase 'bourgeois mentality' is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments."

Lifton here refers to the Marxist expression, "bourgeois mentality", howoever, the Unification Church expresses the same idea with the words "fallen nature." Both terms are used to attack and dismiss any fleeting desire to break out of the ideological confines of the totalist environment.

Other thought-terminating cliches in Unificationism are "indemnity", "restoration", "give-and-take action", "Chapter 2 problem", and so on. Although Unificationists understand the meaning of these words, when they use them they are not really thinking about their meaning, just erecting them as a barrier against thought. Worse, it becomes unacceptable or even offensive to use related terms rather than using the ideologically sanctioned words when speaking to other members.

George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" wrote about the way that totalitarian authorities try to restrict language, knowing that thought becomes constricted along with words. In his classic novel, English speakers are taught a simplified language known as "Newspeak." With each successive edition of the Newspeak dictionary, words and shades of meaning are discarded. As one character, Syme (who is working on the latest edition of the dictionary) proclaims:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. ... Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. ... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will *be* no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

As Lifton notes, however, heavy use of thought-terminating clichés (or "loaded language") is often exhibited by those who are secretly fearful of their own growing doubts, which they seek to mask by laying on the jargon all the more densely. Lifton remarks: "As in other aspects of totalism, this loading may provide an initial sense of insight and security, eventually followed by uneasiness. This uneasiness may result in a retreat into a rigid orthodoxy in which an individual shouts the ideological jargon all the louder in order to demonstrate his conformity, hide his own dilemma and his despair, and protect himself from the fear and guilt he would feel should he attempt to use words and phrases other than the correct ones."

In any totalistic environment, when real experience contradicts doctrine this is not seen as proof that the doctrine is wrong. Rather, doctrine remains pre-eminent over experience, and the true believer is required to dwell in a half-world in which only some aspects of life can be tested and confirmed through experience, while other aspects are not subject to any testing whatsoever. Robert J. Lifton, in his 1961 study "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism", called this trait "doctrine over person," which he clarified as "the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine."

This could be used as a passable definition of insanity. A truly psychotic person believes their delusions ahead of the evidence of their senses. So, too, a true believer will believe what the doctrine says he ought to believe rather than what his own experience clearly attests is true.

This warping of perception can also be applied retroactively, to the reinterpretation of historical events to suit doctrinal purposes. As Lifton notes, "... when the myth becomes fused with the totalist sacred science, the resulting 'logic' can be so compelling and coercive that it simply replaces the realities of individual experience. Consequently, past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored, to make them consistent with doctrinal logic. This alteration becomes especially malignant when its distortions are imposed upon individual memory as occurred in the false confessions extracted during thought reform."

For example, Unificationism's so-called "Parallels of History" represent a muddled rewriting of history to make it consistent with doctrinal logic. The Biblical record in the Book of Samuel clearly shows that God disapproved of the demand by the Israelites to have a king placed over them. But in Divine Principle, this is seen as an inevitable part of God's plan for the Israelites.

Rearranging history (or even totally fabricating it as in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) is a serious enough violation, but as Lifton notes, it is even more egregious when a person's own memories are replaced by fabrications that are aimed at serving the doctrine over the needs of the person.

Lifton studied Western victims of Communist China's thought reform program who had repeatedly confessed to "crimes against the people", most of which boiled down to "bourgeois mentality", i.e. not thinking right. Gradually, these people came to believe that they actually had been effectively spies of foreign powers intent on sabotage, even though they were actually not guilty of these things.

Similarly, in a totalist group, one's confessions of former sins become exaggerated over time, until one starts to believe them literally. In Unificationism, for example, members will often obsess about the alleged "sins" of their former lives before joining the church. They thus develop an unrealistic horror of their own former lives and identities, and believe that they will revert to their former "degradation" if they leave the church.

Lifton also points to a word that is often misused in the Unification Church - the word "sincerity." He comments: "In a totalist environment, absolute 'sincerity' is demanded; and the major criterion for sincerity is likely to be one's degree of doctrinal compliance - both in regard to belief and to direction of personal change." Thus, for a true believer, "sincerity" means simply a reflexive ideological conviction, and it loses its proper meaning, which is to say, genuine expression of what a person actually thinks and feels. In a totalist environment, he or she must say and do only what is doctrinally correct in order to be "sincere." (I recall a former Unificationist whose Japanese wife decided to end their "Blessing" because he was too much of an individualist. He was, in fact, simply striving to rediscover, and become, who he really was. But in her "Dear John" letter, she told him she didn't want to marry him because he wasn't a "sincerity person.")

I mentioned before that "doctrine over person" is actually a form of insanity -- a denial of reality. Sadly, this collective insanity is becoming more and more visible in the Unification movement during these years of its final decline. The remaining believers are refusing to accept the evidence of their senses that the church has lost members; that some of Sun Myung Moon's own family have deserted him; that the Blessing -- once a holy and rare thing given only through the Holy Wine Ceremony -- is now dispensed through the casual handing out of candies; and that many Unification-related businesses have gone bankrupt. Though they see all these things, they persist in claiming that one day soon all people will embrace Moon as the True Father of mankind. Now that's true faith! Unfortunately, it is also insanity.

Little more than one hundred years ago, the claim that a religious doctrine is "scientific" would not have been as persuasive as it has now become. In a mind control environment, therefore, it is now necessary to endow the teachings with more than the claim that it is from God, or an ultimate truth; it must also be declared to be scientifically sound and rationally provable. As Robert J. Lifton remarks in Chapter 22 of his 1961 study, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism:

"The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence which is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute 'scientific' precision. Thus the ultimate moral vision becomes an ultimate science; and the man who dares to criticize it, or to harbor even unspoken alternative ideas, becomes not only immoral and irreverent, but also 'unscientific.' In this way, the philosopher kings of modern ideological totalism reinforce their authority by claiming to share in the rich and respected heritage of natural science."

An obvious example of this "exaggerated claim of airtight logic" in the Unification context can be seen in the excessive claims made for the so-called "parallels" of history which are found in Part II of the Divine Principle. These parallels roughly equate three supposed periods of human history, being the time period from Adam to Abraham, of which little is known save Biblical accounts and related myths; the period from Abraham to Jesus, for which only spotty historical records exist; and the period from Jesus to the present. The Divine Principle holds that these three periods followed roughly similar patterns, with each culminating in the appearance of a founder of faith: firstly Abraham, the founder of Judaism; secondly Jesus, the founder of Christianity; and finally Moon, the founder of Unificationism.

Despite attempts by some members to back away from authoritativeness of these parallels -- I have heard it said that Part II of the Divine Principle was written by one of Moon's disciples and not Moon himself, and therefore is not as reliable -- the fact remains that this part of Divine Principle is crucial to the whole theological structure. If believed, it would confirm that this present era is a significant era when the Messiah will appear, and it points the finger at Sun Myung Moon as being that person. However, the parallels are historically inaccurate, relying on numbers that are violently bent to fit the theoretical construct. Worse, the entire first parallel rests solely upon numbers that are impossible to verify.

Recent archaeological studies in Israel indicate that many of the Biblical accounts may not be accurate. Lately I have read in several newspapers that an archaeologist has discovered that there is no evidence that the Exodus from Egypt ever took place at all, since Egyptian border patrols kept surprising good records, which have now been uncovered, and which make no mention of this event. Furthermore (as even rabbinical scholars now concede) it appears that Jericho was already a deserted ruin at the time of the alleged arrival of the Israelites (c. 1400 BC).

Whether or not these archaeological findings are verified, the fact remains that the Divine Principle's parallels are merely a rearrangement of historical and mythical events to suit a predetermined pattern. In a like fashion, other such "patterns" have been discerned to support conspiracy theories, which have proven surprisingly persuasive to some people. It appears that people actually want to believe that there is a pattern to history, and so are prone to believing such theories, even though believing in them requires abandoning normal standards of scientific proof.

Yet once the claim of "scientific" truth is made, the doctrine appears even more immune to doubt for its adherents, no matter what evidence may pile up to discredit it. Again, Lifton comments:

"Yet so strong a hold can the sacred science achieve over his mental processes that if one begins to feel himself attracted to ideas which either contradict or ignore it, he may become guilty and afraid. His quest for knowledge is consequently hampered, since in the name of science he is prevented from engaging in the receptive search for truth which characterizes the genuinely scientific approach. And his position is made more difficult by the absence, in a totalist environment, of any distinction between the sacred and the profane: there is no thought or action which cannot be related to the sacred science. ... Whatever combination of continued adherence, inner resistance, or compromise co-existence the individual person adopts toward this blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion, it represents another continuous pressure toward personal closure, toward avoiding, rather than grappling with, the kinds of knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-expression and for creative development."

The most terrifying, and yet the most inevitable, of all the features of a totalistic group is their claim to be the ultimate arbiters of life and death. That they would make such a claim is an unavoidable offshoot of their claim to be the sole repositories of ultimate Truth. Since they claim to know what a True Man must be, then by the same token they can declare all those who do not agree with them to be not truly men or women. For the Marxists, this took the form of declaring that those who opposed them were not "of the people." This had the effect of depriving the word "people" of its true meaning; "people" came to mean only a relatively small elite group who were in power and who dictated the Truth; everyone else was only "one of the people" as long as they obeyed this tiny elite.

The ultimate extension of this "dispensing of existence" is the belief that the totalistic group has the right to actually end the existence of those the group considers unfit to be. The Nazis certainly followed this practice, with their "Final Solution" for those considered "life unworthy of life," as Robert J. Lifton described in his 1985 study, "The Nazi Doctors." Similarly, in Lifton's most recent book, "Destroying the World To Save It," he recounts the bizarre doctrine of "poa" that was seized upon by Aum Shinri Kyo. Aum derives from Buddhism, which in theory is the most peaceful of religions, yet by putting Buddhism into a totalistic context, it became the ideological framework for murder. The Aum devotees literally believed that if a person was killed by someone of a higher spiritual ranking, they would be elevated in their next lives, and thus were actually being done a favor by being murdered. Lifton even recounts that one follower declared wistfully of Shoko Asahara, the sect's leader, "I wish he would just poa [murder] me!"

This last comment reveals another aspect to the dispensing of existence; that even for those on the inside of a totalistic group, existence is conditional, and always in danger of being withdrawn. Cult members are on a treadmill in which they constantly strive to perform up to a standard that would make them true men and women (thus worthy of existence) and are constantly found wanting, perhaps even deserving death. Thus, "dispensing of existence" can be a rationale not only for murder, but also for suicide.

While I was a member of the Oakland Family in the late 1970s, this attitude was evidenced by the doctrine that it would be better to die than to leave the so-called"Family." A person's life was seen as worthless outside of the Unification Church; thus, I and other Oakland members were instructed (during very serious evening meetings) on what might be done in the event of being kidnapped for deprogramming. In one meeting, for example, church leaders pointed out that light bulbs could be smashed, to create sharp edges. On another occasion I was told that a sister in the Unification Church would be better off to kill herself if she feared she was about to be raped, so as to preserve the purity of her spirit.

Thus, a member of a totalistic cult like Unificationism sees leaving the movement as the equivalent of annihilation, of passing into non-existence. Hence the fear of leaving is so extraordinary that many prefer to endure years of emotional and spiritual abuse rather than risk this step. As Lifton writes in Chapter 22 of his 1961 study, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism":

"The totalist environment - even when it does not resort to physical abuse - thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation much like the basic fear experienced by Western prisoners. A person can overcome this fear and find (in Martin Buber's term) "confirmation," not in his individual relationships, but only from the fount of all existence, the totalist Organization. Existence comes to depend upon creed (I believe, therefore I am), upon submission (I obey, therefore I am) and beyond these, upon a sense of total merger with the ideological movement. Ultimately of course one compromises and combines the totalist 'confirmation' with independent elements of personal identity; but one is ever made aware that, should he stray too far along this 'erroneous path', his right to existence may be withdrawn."

When I myself left the Unification Church (on my own without the aid of a deprogrammer), I feared that I was taking a step that would lead to an empty, meaningless life; yet I felt I had to take it, because I knew that I could no longer continue as a church member, just going through the motions. My life, of course, has not subsequently turned out to be meaningless at all, yet at the time this seemed to me to be my likely fate. It felt as though I was choosing death - and yet in fact, by leaving the Unification Church, I chose life, a life no longer dominated by impossible demands and groundless terrors. I left, not life, but what the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described as a "Nightmare Death-in-Life", and the release has liberated all of my creative powers. I would urge the few remaining Unification Church members to likewise abandon this Nightmare Death-in-Life, before Sun Myung Moon decides that since he will soon die, he no longer requires you, and can therefore dispense with your existence at his pleasure.

Up to this point I have focused on the eight main criteria that determine a totalistic environment where mind control comes into play. The eight criteria were all taken from Chapter 22 of Robert J. Lifton's 1961 study, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism," in which, using interviews with people who had endured mind control or "brainwashing" in Communist China, Lifton identified the elements of a totalism: milieu control; mystical manipulation; the demand for purity; the cult of confession; the "sacred science"; loading the language; doctrine over person; and the dispensing of existence. I have shown how all of these elements occur in the lives of Unificationists to greater or lesser degrees, most importantly during the initial phase when the individual is introduced into the cult. The fact that milieu control, for example, has now been relaxed for most Unification Church members does not mean that the initial experience of milieu control is no longer having any effect. In fact, the presence of Lifton's eight themes during the "Divine Principle workshop" phase of a member's life is sufficient to leave an enduring mark on a person's life, and they will continue to be affected by mind control until they understand it and deal with it.

But what is the underlying goal behind these eight characteristics? All eight themes have the effect of causing a person to view themselves as fundamentally unreliable, and of being unable to form sound judgments without the unceasing aid of authority figures. In short, it is a return to the infantile state of total dependency on the parent. Moon, in fact, makes this connection explicit by styling himself as "True Father" to his followers. As Lifton notes:

"It may be that the capacity for totalism is most fundamentally a product of human childhood itself, of the prolonged period of helplessness and dependency through which each of us must pass. Limited as he is, the infant has no choice but to imbue his first nurturing authorities - his parents - with an exaggerated omnipotence, until the time he is himself capable of some degree of independent action and judgment. And even as he develops into the child and the adolescent, he continues to require many of the all-or-none polarities of totalism as terms with which to define his intellectual, emotional, and moral worlds. Under favorable circumstances (that is, when family and culture encourage individuation) these requirements can be replaced by more flexible and moderate tendencies; but they never entirely disappear."

Humans are inherently vulnerable to thought reform because it is a reversion to the total dependency of the infantile state. Hence any totalistic environment may imbue a strangely comforting feeling, because of this element of reversion to a familiar mindset.

The difference is that for a person caught up in a mind controlling environment, the infantile state is only obvious in matters of authority; in every other respect, the person appears adult and responsible. They will thus hotly deny that they are under control, while at the same time surrendering significant aspects of their lives to the control of others. They may even surrender the right to choose a suitable mate and the right to choose the time of their marriage.

This contradiction between their insistence on their own adult responsibility and their nevertheless massive surrender of responsibility is thus invisible to them, yet obvious to any outside observer.

The purpose of causing such a reversion is that in this infantilized state, a person has effectively returned to the situation where their identity and personality were originally formed. Certainly, the goal of a Divine Principle workshop is to substitute a new identity and personality; one that is reflexively obedient to the demands of church authority. This substitution would not be possible without first causing the person to revert to infantilism on an internal level. He or she thereafter becomes a "doubled" personality, with the original personality suppressed but not eliminated, and the imposed personality overlaying it. Conversing with such a person may allow you to see both personalities emerging at various times; for example, if you can get them talking about their own passions and hobbies, their original personality may surface; but at the drop of a hat, as soon as some trigger reminds them of their ideological stance, they will snap back into the personality that has been imposed on them.

In the final segment of this series, I will be examining some of the commonly-held myths about mind control and showing why they are not valid. In particular, I will address the misconception that mind control implies some kind of robotic state, and the fallacy that the mind control model somehow represents a denial of personal responsibility.

In previous posts in this series I have defined mind control, and then elaborated on particular conditions or themes which are likely to occur in a totalistic mind controlling environment, based on the work of Robert J. Lifton; and I have summarized these eight elements, showing that their common theme is the infantilization of the person subjected to mind control, in which he or she is brought back to an immature state of mind which makes him or her more vulnerable during the initial phase of their involvement.

In this section I would like to refute certain common myths about mind control, which are routinely thrown up by critics of the mind control model.

MYTH #1: "MIND CONTROL" MEANS ROBOTIC, UNTHINKING BEHAVIOR.

This is essentially a "straw man" argument, in which mind control is equated to turning people into "zombies" or "robots" who cannot think for themselves at all. Since this is patently untrue, the argument is then put forward that therefore the mind control model is discredited. However, those who advocate the mind control model never argued that it meant robotic, unthinking behavior in the first place.

Mind control is much more subtle. It is put into place to force a person to *not* act in certain ways, to make certain kinds of thoughts too fearful to be examined, and certain actions too frightening to be contemplated.

Mind control does not, however, seek to control every single action or thought of a person. It is more like an invisible prison placed around the individual; within those confines, he or she is free to act and think normally. It is only when the individual considers stepping outside the boundaries of the prison that mind control kicks in. The thought of leaving a mind-control cult is so paralyzing that many people cannot consider it seriously, nor act diligently to gather the information about the cult that they need to free themselves. For example, instead of reading a book that might have devastating implications for their beliefs, they simply shut themselves behind a wall of denial, insisting that the book is false, the authors had ulterior motives, and that, even if true, the book's implications would not be fatal to belief. Why would they fight so desperately to remain ignorant, when in every other area of life -- for example, while conducting a job search -- they would of course gather all the information they need? The answer is mind control: for them, the thought of leaving the group is too overwhelming to be borne.

MYTH #2: MIND CONTROL IS A THEORY THAT HAS BEEN DISCREDITED BY ACADEMICS.

This argument is usually put forward without evidence. It is often stated dismissively, sneeringly, as if by stating it alone the argument can be considered true. However, it is false. The mind control model is mostly challenged on its details, not for its overall existence. There is little doubt that the Communist Chinese and the North Koreans carried out frighteningly effective experiments with mind control, and that these experiments have been imitated elsewhere.

Robert J. Lifton, Margaret Singer and numerous other scholars all believe that mind control exists. By the way, Singer has often been slandered with the false claim that the American Psychological Association has declared her work "lacked rigor." In fact, the APA never said this and no-one has been able to produce a source for these words. It is simply a fabrication that has been repeated so often it is considered true by those who are anxious to believe in it.

MYTH #3: MIND CONTROL IS MERELY AN ATTEMPT TO EVADE RESPONSIBILITY.

This argument is essentially an "ad hominem" attack masquerading as an intellectual viewpoint. It gains its power because cult advocates claim that those who allege mind control, especially former cult members, are merely trying to deny that they had any active part in their own apparent decision to join the cult. From this claim, cult advocates then become contemptuous of these people, calling them "spineless." In this way, by attacking the person putting forward the mind control model, they imagine that they have somehow dismissed the argument. That is a logical fallacy.

A further logical fallacy in this argument is that it relies on "reductio ad absurdem." By insisting that mind control does not exist, cult advocates are effectively claiming that all human decisions not made expressly under the threat of physical force are necessarily free and independent decisions. In doing so, they are ignoring all the evidence that there is a whole range of human decision-making lying between the two extremes of, on the one hand, a freely-made, independent decision, or, on the other hand, a decision that is made while a person is held at gunpoint (or the equivalent).

Most people know that in fact, "emotional blackmail" can be used with varying degrees of effectiveness to influence people. Even advertisers take advantage of these tools, for example by making people feel that they will be "nerds" or failures if they don't buy their products.

Let us take the example of a person named, for the sake of discussion, Jill, and how she is emotionally coerced into staying with a cult even though she is under no physical compulsion to do so. Jill was invited to a vaguely-described workshop that took place on a farm well away from the city where she lived. Upon arrival, she found that the routine was far more structured than she had been led to believe, and the content of the lectures was far more religious than she expected, and contained religious concepts that were strange to her. On the other hand, she enjoyed the company of the people, and decided that she could put up with the rigid routine and the strange concepts for a few days. After all, Jill thought, this workshop is just for one week. But when the week ended, suddenly the person who had invited her was terribly upset that she would want to leave. A series of other people she had befriended during the week also came up to her to plead for her to stay on "just one more week." Jill is told (mostly by implication) that her desire to leave is just for "selfish" purposes; but if she stayed, that would be unselfish. She is also told that if she returns to her old routine, she is turning her back on a wonderful truth that will transform her life, and will be an unimaginative, boring person, not one brave and daring. She is also told that she should consider her stay as a "scientific experiment": if she stays on longer, and then begins to like it, that "proves" that this new belief system and lifestyle is the right one to choose.

All of these tactics are designed simply to get Jill to act as if she already believes in the group, because if she behaves that way for long enough, it becomes almost automatic that her thinking will change to rationalize her new situation. Jill, of course, does not want to be thought of as selfish, unimaginative or unwilling to experiment, nor does she want to disappoint her new-found friends, so she agrees to stay for another week. At the end of the second week, of course, the same scenario is replayed, only this time Jill's resolution is considerably weakened, if it has not already been dissolved.

This is emotional blackmail, a form of "coercive persuasion" that does not use physical force but uses other more subtle means to gain control of a person's will. Since everyone is vulnerable to being persuaded by these tactics, and would indeed have to be overtly hostile or rude to repel them, it is not "spineless" for a person to later admit, "Yes, I was persuaded by these sneaky tactics. Yes, they did use emotional blackmail to draw me into a totalistic environment I would otherwise never have joined." In fact, to admit this is not spinelessness at all: it is the very essence of courage and wisdom.

Sincerely, K. Gordon Neufeld