Cults You Know
Jim Jones
The People's Temple
Time of rapid social and economic shifts in US society, when many new religious groups, known as sects, arose during the 19th Century.
Second Great Awakening
Scholar who defines a cult as “either a sharply bounded social group or a diffusely bounded social movement held together through shared commitment to a charismatic leader. It upholds a transcendent ideology (often but not always religious in nature) and requires a high level of personal commitment from its members in words and deeds.”
Lalich
Charismatic Authority, Transcendent Belief System, Systems of Control, and Systems of Influence.
Lalich's four social dynamics of cults.
Defines brainwashing as "the result of a series of intense social-psychological influences aimed at behavior modification. It is a complex, multilayered, and time-consuming process.”
Janja Lalich
MotherGod / Amy Carlson
Love Has Won
Regenerative, Schismatic, Cultic, and Quasi-religious are the four main categories of this.
Sects
Some cults can be described as this, which involves being exclusive in ideology (the one true way) and imposing, on members, systems of social control that are confining and encompass nearly all aspects of life.
Totalistic Organization
A system that is so closed in that it allows no consideration of disconfirming evidence or different points of view.
Self-sealing system.
The number of conditions Singer says are necessary for an effective thought reform program.
Six
Do / Marshall Applewhite
Heaven's Gate
Are different from cults in that they tend to minimize organizational structure and deflate or expel power seekers, and they invoke general commitments to peace and libertarian freedoms and a distaste for the parent culture’s establishments.
Commune
According to Lalich, a combination of charismatic commitment with reduced individual power and personal decision-making.
Bounded Choice
A key moment “when the believer becomes a ‘true believer’ in service to the charismatic leader, due to a fusion between the ideal of personal freedom (as promised in the stated goal of the group or its ideology) and the demand for self-renunciation (as prescribed by the rule and norms).”
Charismatic Commitment
When Singer says "packaged persuasion," she is referring to bringing these two things together.
Words and Groups pressures
John Humphrey Noyes
The Oneida Community
Transformational, Political, LGAT, and Spiritual.
Cults of the 1970s
Lalich's term for conversion, or the process by which a person develops a new perspective on life. This leads to a new sense of purpose and belonging, and a new self (which changes how the person sees and understands the world).
Worldview Shift
A new identity gradually constructed by the cult environment that suppresses or replaces the person’s previous values, behaviors, and relationships.
Pseudopersonality
1.Destabilize a person’s sense of self = self-concept
2.Drastically reinterpret life history + radically alter worldview -> Replace with new version of reality
3.Develop dependence on the organization -> Becomes deployable agent
Goals of a Thought Reform Program
Christian Metz
Amana Society
According to Singer, youth of the '60s were fighting economic monopolies, racial injustice, and...
Materialism
A group in which Singer describes the following characteristics as being important: the origin of the group and the role of the leader, the power structure, or relationship between the leader(s) and the followers, and the use of a coordinated program of persuasion (which is called thought reform or, more commonly, brainwashing.
Cult
A narrow realm of constraint and control, dedication and duty.
Bounded Choice
Singer places this at the opposite end from thought reform on the continuum of influence and persuasion.
Education
OSHO / Bhagwan Rajneesh
Rajneesh
Spiritualism, Novelty of Eastern practices, and Transcendence.
What charismatic leaders of the '60s offered.
The main characteristic that Singer and Lalich agree makes someone most likley to be pulled into a cult organization.
Experiencing an especially vulnerable time.
A person psychologically conditioned to act on behalf of the group or leader while believing they are acting freely.
Deployable Agent
He says there are eight psychological themes of successful though reform programs.
Lifton