[Generated this for freekatie.net and decided to put it here for the record. HKH]

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Been an active critic since Scientology tried to destroy part of Usenet, alt.religion.scientology, back in 1995. (Never was in the cult.)

On that news group the question often comes up of *why* otherwise sensible people join cults and start acting like irresponsible drug addicts. There seem to be two psychological traits activated. One of them is the Stockholm syndrome or "capture-bonding."

A lot of Stone Age brides were captured from what we see in primitive peoples.

This went on for millions of years, long enough for us to evolve a response. We rapidly bond to those who capture us. There is more detail here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

The other trait is a drug-like attention reward. The Moonies version is called "love bombing." Scientology's is called TRs, "training routines," where two people stare into each other's eyes for hours.

A woman who had been a scientologist came up to me at a party and said she knew it was BS now, but 15 years ago her time in Scientology had been "the peak experience of my life."

She said it in the same awed tone of voice a woman I knew had describe the rush she got from shooting heroin and speed into a vein on her thumb.

The similarity mystified me for months but eventually (with help) I figured out how drugs and cults are alike.

The intense social attention cults induce between their members (love bombing, TRs, auditing) releases brain chemicals, dopamine and endorphins. Those chemicals cause a feeling of intense reward. Actors are particularly vulnerable to attention rewards. (That's why they *are* actors.)

Shooting drugs bypasses social attention and directly fires the reward circuits. The result in either case is "Do that again!"

These two traits and perhaps others are activated when people like Katie Holmes get sucked into a cult. (The Moonies used to love bomb newbies *and* activate capture-bonding by taking them 60 miles out of town to a "retreat" where they could not escape easily.)

The best way to think about such people is between a Stockholm syndrome victim (such as Elizabeth Smart) and a drug addict.

The prognosis for Katie isn't good. The fast way to get a person out of a cult is illegal (kidnap and deprogram them).

Keith Henson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson

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