In three minds
New Therapist 24
By John Soderlund

Mind control introduction

Psychology's had a questionable relationship with the general public for decades. Ask why and, if you can sift through the platitudinous apologetics, you'd probably find its about the irrational fear that many people harbour about the capacity of psychologists for insight into and manipulation of the thoughts and feelings of the average Joe Citizen.

You may find that assuring people of the falsity of the assumption doesn't lead them to linger any longer over their cocktail alongside the stranger they have just discovered is a shrink.

And, to be fair, mind control has been part of our professional agenda often enough to understand why it's not so easy to dismiss the fears of cocktail party-goers out of hand.

Mind control 101

B. F. Skinner, perhaps the archetypal proponent of the capacity for controlling thoughts and behaviours, was unashamed about it. So unashamed that he set about raising his daughter, Debbie, in a Skinner Box, a small box in which the stimuli could be carefully controlled to engineer the kind of daughter he thought he most wanted.

Skinner's assertion, both theoretical and in the dispatch of his daughter to the Skinner Box, was that:

"... it should be possible to design a world in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs. We try to design such a world for those who cannot solve the problem of punishment for themselves, such as babies, retardates, or psychotics, and if it could be done for everyone, much time and energy would be saved." (Skinner, 1971)

Debbie Skinner took her own life at the age of 20.

But some way from the efforts of Skinner, a landmark book, first released in 1969, had also been annexing some of the mind control turf as a psychological domain. Zimbardo and Ebbesen's (1969) Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behaviour was a most convincing and thorough early attempt to delineate the parameters of what most powerfully influenced the attitudes of people.

But even that far back, Zimbardo and Ebbesen were well aware of the potential implications of their work:

"We are avoiding any editorializing about the moral or ethical value of any of these practical approaches to changing attitudes and behavior. They exist in our lives and are in constant use, to the advantage of some people and to the possible detriment of others. Those who object to these methods must first understand how and why they are so effective." (p 113)

Deprogramming the programmed

Arguably those who most insistently claimed to understand the machinations of mind control are what are referred to as exit counselors, deprogrammers, anti-cult counselors and mind control experts.

They abound on the internet and seem to work up against the thin membrane between alleged cult-like organisations and family members who'd like to see their kin out of what they perceive to be a dangerous place.

Steve Hassan is a good example. He began his "apprenticeship"

in the late 1970's with a self-professed religious adherence to the teachings of Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean leader of the Unification Church. As a prominent and upwardly mobile member of the church, he was a vigourous and committed fundraiser.

Shortly after his departure from the Moonies, his anti-cult feelings now on the boil, Hassan turned his sights on the Church of Scientology, which he has charged exists primarily for unholy profit.

In 1976, he was involved in the "exit counseling" of Arthur Roselle from the Church of Scientology, which resulted in Roselle accusing Hassan in an affidavit of kidnapping and imprisoning him for the purposes of deprogramming.

Hassan insists the counselling was conducted with the cooperation of Roselle's parents and close friends, and, although Roselle later rejoined the church, Hassan says no charges were ever filed against him.

But Hassan's survival of the vicissitudes of anti-cult work propelled him to produce his first book in 1988, entitled Combatting Cult Mind Control. It sold 250,000 copies and was translated into five languages.

And in the past decade or so, mind control experts of various flavours have emerged from the wings, albeit that they managed to attract little mainstream attention.

Organized psychology on mind control

Rewind to 1986, when a group of psychologists had apparently formed a task force, entitled Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control (DIMPAC)-and had submitted a report to the American Psychological Association (APA) that condemned cults for using brainwashing.

But the APA's Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology found the report "unacceptable, lacking in scientific evidence, relying too much on sensational anecdotes and providing insufficient information for APA to take a position on the issue,"

the association's mouthpiece the Monitor reported recently.

But they got a more formal cue from the body last year at its 2002 Annual Convention in Chicago.

Joining the usual crew of psychological movers and shakers at this cyclopean gathering were a few more liminal figures than usual, ones who had failed to crack the nod at earlier gatherings.

They were the mind control authorities.

So, have the mind control experts cleaned up their scientific act, or is something else-perhaps more to do with political jostling-to account for the more respectable face of mind control theorists.

Hassan featured on the podium, and perhaps inadvertently gave a clue to a now rather hackneyed factor which may have given impetus to the sea-change in the level of respectability he and his colleagues now enjoy:

"Al Qaeda fulfills the criteria for a destructive cult," Hassan noted. "We need to apply what we know about destructive mind-control cults, and this should be a priority with the war on terrorism.

We need to understand the psychological aspects of how people are recruited and indoctrinated so we can slow down recruitment.

We need to help counsel former cult members and possibly use some of them in the war against terrorism."

That kind of band-wagoneering probably did the mind controllers little good in the minds of the skeptical, but even the most cynical can't deny that the past 50 years is smattered with examples of the terrible disasters that have spilled from the most visible of the cults.

The Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which 913 followers of Jim Jones were killed en masse, was probably the most visible and convincing. But at the softer end of the spectrum, potential impingements on civil liberties vie for credibility with mind control "deprogrammers" and claimed experts who would assert that to remove somebody from a particularly fanatical church is preferable to allowing them to find their own way out using their constitutionally enshrined freedom of religious association.

Cult or culture

The further one moves in the direction of conservatism about the mind control issue, the more likely one is to find others who are terribly wary of the methods mind control "counselors"

have been known to use. And, perhaps more fundamentally, they're wary of the means by which a mind control expert might decide who's okay and who's not among the astonishing array of New Religious Movements, churches and organizations that might be eligible for the label "destructive cult".

Marcia Rudin (2002) noted recently that many cultic groups today are not religious or spiritual in nature:

"They are also large group-awareness trainings, psychotherapy, business, political, and 'New Age' groups. Hence, cults appeal not only to the young 'counter-culture' seekers of the 1960s and 70s, but to older, affluent, established, 'normal' people as well. Rather than promising spiritual salvation or ultimate meaning they skillfully market themselves to a new clientele by offering sure financial success, happiness, social success, or self-fulfillment."

And the label of 'cult' comes closer to home than many psychologists would like.

Psychotherapy as cult

Fred Newman, the founder of the controversial brand of intervention he calls 'social therapy', centered in New York, has seen his fair share of accusations of this order. A number of web sites, newspapers and magazines, have carried articles, testimonials and pointed questions alleging highly irregular and ethically questionable behaviour. They suggest that too many social therapy recruits become involved in the recruitment of others to the political activities of Newman's International Workers Party (IWP), formerly the New Alliance Party (NAP).

Worse perhaps, is that several of the most damning allegations of Newman's controversial social therapy come from formerly very involved participants, trainee therapists and journalists.

New Therapist approached social therapists Lois Holzman and Newman for comment on the allegations, their responses to which are reproduced verbatim later in this feature.

Re-evaluation Counseling, also known as co-counseling or RC, has also been singled out as a potentially dangerous psychotherapy cult over the years, operating in some cases in a manner that engenders inappropriate dependence on the organization and control and manipulation by other members (Tourish and Irving, 2000).

But even with psychotherapy cults, which are potentially more easily subject to the ethical and legal guidelines of the profession, the line between appropriate influence and indoctrination becomes as hazy as it does with religious or spiritual institutions.

Comments Thomas J. Brady, a San Francisco psychiatrist specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry:

"In a milder version, media telling us we should be beautiful, thin, rich, and we deserve it all-that is a form of mind control.

It's just that media messages are part of a cacophony of manipulations that tend to cancel themselves out, in some way, while retaining the fundamental concepts (thin, rich, beautiful). "

But, he adds, "Media don't isolate us, disorient us, sleep deprive or starve us." Or, if you'd like to explode the idea a little further:

"Psychiatrists certainly do [mind control] with their patients-how do you persuade a paranoid schizophrenic who is convinced his delusional system is just a fantasy. It's by manipulation (drugs, an isolated, consistent hospital environment where they are held against their will and restrained and sedated if they become too unruly. We have to balance freedoms, and protecting people from making the mistake of joining a cult borders on Big Brother, which in itself becomes it's own cult."

So, where does one draw the line. Or, more importantly, who should be drawing the line? The psychiatrists, the cult leaders, the deprogrammers or the member of the organisation?

Enter Deborah Layton, one of the few survivors of Jonestown, who managed to escape in 1978, just six months before 913 members of Jim Jones' organisation were found dead in their compound, poisoned by their own hand or shot to death by members of the cult.

On her escape from the People's Temple at Jonestown, her understanding of the stakes involved appears to have been remarkably lucid for somebody indoctrinated by such a powerful cult leader.

The affidavit reads: "The purpose of this affidavit is to call to the attention of the United States government the existence of a situation which threatens the lives of United States citizens living in Jonestown, Guyana."

Did Deborah Layton have unusual resilience in the face of such pressure? Were there situational factors which made it possible for her to leave the compound at the risk of losing her life and that of her mother who remained there? And what might the answers to these questions tell us about the people we see who appear to be under the persuasive stranglehold of another, be that a church, a business, a cult or even an abusive partner or other family member?

Making sense of these questions is a vexed and often conflictual business, especially for those most involved in mind control matters.

And with this difficulty in mind, New Therapist put some mind control questions to some of the figures who've featured in this overview of the field.

Steve Hassan pulls no punches when he lashes out at the mind controllers. He pulls none here.

Fred Newman, the founder of social therapy and alleged cult mastermind, doesn't take the punches lying down.

And Deborah Layton, who chiselled herself out of the emotional stranglehold of Jim Jones, gives a take on the mind control issue which, perhaps, touches the work of therapists most acutely when she talks of her climb from the confusion and shame of Jonestown to the space where she can reflect on the distance she's covered in the past 25 years.

Interviews with each of the three are reproduced verbatim in the feature in the print edition.

Further reading

Rudin, Marcia R. (2002) Twenty-Five Years Observing Cults: An American Perspective. In Cultic Studies Review, vol 1, 1, available http://www.cultsandsociety.com/csr_articles/rudin_marcia.htm

Tourish, D. & Irving, P. (1998) Group influence and the psychology of cultism within Re-evaluation Counseling: A critique. Available:

http://www.cocowebs.com/liberaterc/psychol.htm

Skinner, B. F. (1971) Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York:

Bantam.

Zimbardo, Philip and Ebbesen, Ebbe B. (1969) Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behaviour. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.

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