Overcoming The Bondage Of Victimization
A Critical Evaluation of Cult Mind Control Theories
By Bob and Gretchen Passantino
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This article first appeared in Cornerstone Magazine
“You’ve got to get my daughter back,” Margaret pleaded. “She was such a beautiful girl, such a good student! It’s like she’s another person. She used to think for herself, she used to spend time with us. Now her whole life is consumed by the Center. Please help us — I don’t care what it costs or how long it takes!”
Margaret’s adult daughter had joined a religious cult, and she was now talking to an exit counselor, a professional who specialized in “interventions” for persons supposedly trapped under mind control in cultic movements.
The exit counselor explained that Margaret’s daughter was a victim of mind control and described its four components:
(1) behavior control,
(2) thought control,
(3) emotional control, and
(4) information control.
He said these techniques had combined to rob her daughter of the ability to make responsible and rational choices. The counselor informed them that neither the family nor the daughter were to blame for this cult involvement: at the right time, mind control could bring anyone into a cult.
The exit counselor said he would seek to break through her daughter’s bondage to the cult leader and restore her to mental, emotional, and physical freedom. He assured her his work was not the same as the deprogrammers of the 1980s who forcibly kidnapped cult members and held them against their will. If the intervention were successful, Margaret’s daughter would return to the mental stability she possessed before joining. Away from the pressures of the cult, she would be free to make an informed religious choice, unlike the controlled “choices” presented to her while in the group.
Finally, the terms of the agreement were discussed. Margaret assured the exit counselor that her daughter had voluntarily agreed to come home for the weekend specifically to discuss her devotion to the Center. The daughter understood that her mother and father would have a knowledgeable friend with them to speak with her, though she did not realize that the “friend” would be the exit counselor. For the fairly typical sum of $3,000 plus expenses, the exit counselor and his assistant would devote the next four days to the intervention. Of course, there were no guarantees: some ex-cultists needed additional in-patient counseling at a special “recovery” center, and one study put deprogramming failure rates at above 35 percent.
Margaret left her meeting with the exit counselor with confidence and optimism. With a trained professional, a backlog support of sociological and psychological literature, and her own determination to rescue her daughter, Margaret actually looked forward to the coming weekend.
Countless times across America scenes like this are played out for real as desperate parents of adult cult converts seek to understand how their children could change so drastically and pledge their lives to bizarre, exclusivistic religious movements. For many people, especially secular cult observers, the theory of mind control is used to explain this phenomenon. The cult mind control model is so commonly raised in explanation that many people assume its validity without question.
In this article, we look behind the assumptions of the mind control model and uncover the startling reality that “cult mind control” is, at best, a distorted misnomer for cult conversion that robs individuals of personal moral responsibility. While mind control model advocates rightly point out that cults often practice deception, emotional manipulation, and other unsavory recruitment tactics, we believe a critical, well-reasoned examination of the evidence disproves the cult mind control model and instead affirms the importance of informed, biblically based religious commitment.