Objection: The Double – Bind
Hassan provides no means of knowing, testing, or proving whether people who are under emotional pressure, personal stress, or actual deception are in fact “not responsible” for their actions or not making free choices. Nor does Hassan suggest any way to clearly determine when techniques of “influence” or “persuasion” might become so great that one being influenced is no longer responsible, no longer rational, or no longer has a personal will. Medical doctor J. Thomas Ungerleider and Ph.D. David K. Wellish show the fallacious presuppositions used by the deprogrammers (now exit counselors):
If the member never does renounce the cult then he or she is regarded by the deprogrammers as an unsuccessful attempt or failed deprogramming, not as one who now has free will and has still chosen to remain with the cult.
Whether this is called this circular reasoning or a “double-bind,” the net result is that the “proof” that the cultist has been coerced is unfalsifiable, and he cannot prove that he has freely chosen to join his group. If you leave the cult as a result of deprogramming (or exit counseling), that proves you were under mind control. If you return to the cult, that proves you are under mind control. The standard for determining mind control is not some objective evaluation of mental health or competency, but merely the assumed power of mind control the critic accords to the cult.
Recently certain of the model’s proponents seem to blur the definition of mind control, perhaps because there is no corroborating evidence that mind control techniques produce qualitatively different results in religious conversion.
It appears that some evangelicals especially have problems reconciling a classic cult mind control model with other religious considerations and with later developments in this area. For example, sociologist Ronald Enroth, an evangelical professor at Christian Westmont College, is reluctant to be perceived as a mind control model advocate, even though he his support appeared clear in the late 1970s and continues at least tacitly today.
Enroth promoted the model in his 1977 book Youth, Brainwashing, and the Extremist Cults and also in a 1977 Christian magazine article, “Cult/Countercult.” His most recent book (1992), Churches that Abuse, is peppered with language concerning victimization, lack of personal control, and autocratic decision-making control. Additionally, he endorses the work of other mind control advocates such as Hassan (1990) and Singer, and serves on the editorial advisory board of the pre-eminent mind control model journal, Cultic Studies Journal, edited by Langone. In a personal letter to us he describes Martin and Langone’s Christian Research Journal “Viewpoint” article as “a helpful correction to the earlier article and it, too, reflects my own thinking re exit counseling, even though I have never personally witnessed or engaged in formal exit counseling.”
Despite these several apparent (sometimes tacit) endorsements of the mind control model, in the same letter to us he declared, “You do NOT have my permission to represent my 1977 writing about thought reform and brainwashing as my current position on the topic. That doesn’t mean that I necessarily disavow what I said then; it means that it is not academically/professionally current and I have not had time nor inclination to update, in writing, in this area.”
Geri-Ann Galanti and co-authors Philip Zimbardo and Susan Andersen reflect this change in the recent book, Recovery from Cults, edited by Michael Langone of the American Family Foundation.
Galanti says that mind control (which she equates with brainwashing) “refers to the use of manipulative techniques that are for the most part extremely effective in influencing the behavior of others.” These influence techniques work to change our beliefs and attitudes as well; we encouter these pressures constantly “in advertising, in schools, in military basic training, in the media.” They are a part of the socialization process, a part of life, Galanti maintains.
Yet when describing her own visit to a Moonie indoctrination center, where contrary to expectations, she was allowed plenty of sleep, food, and to observe horsing around among the Moonies (some even joking about brainwashing!), Galanti concludes: “What I found was completely contrary to my expectations and served to underscore both the power and the subtlety of mind control.” While she was there, she felt much of the experience to be a positive one.
Later, Galanti decides that what she really experienced, despite all evidence to the contrary, was an even more seductive, subversive form of mind control than she’d previously imagined could exist. It nearly fooled even her. In short, the lack of evidence for mind control among the Moonies was really evidence for just how insidious their methods of mind control had become! Such argumentation points to the frustrating nature of the belief in mind control; so often evidence offered against the mind control model is mis-used to illustrate how true it must be.
Zimbardo and Andersen offer a mind control definition similar to Galanti’s: a tool to “manipulate others’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior within a given context over a period of time . . . ” The chapter deals at length with common uses of manipulation so that definitions of mind control techniques multiple to include anything from flattery to social etiquette to hard-of-hearing salesmen. Again, the move is apparently away from seeing mind control as insidious, powerful techniques that rob individuals of personal freedom, and toward a new, “broader” definition which sees mind control as a synonym for “means of persuasion.” However, if mind control loses its distinctive power and unique techniques, then it ceases to have any relevance as a term descriptive of special cult indoctrination processes.
By almost interchanging the terms “persuasion” and “manipulation,” Zimbardo and Anderson gloss over ethical, connotative differences between these two terms. Second, and more important, the new trend to define mind control to include nearly all “manipulative techniques” implicitly contradicts a key element of the traditional model, namely, that mind control renders its subjects unable to think rationally or choose independently.
A definition of mind control that removes its involuntary component is intrinsicaly at odds with the prevailing teachings of Singer, Langone, Hassan, Martin, and others that cult victims are unable to think for themselves or make decisions. Instead, it is more in agreement with the case we have been arguing — that cult members are capable of independent thought and rational choice-making, but because of factual and spiritual deception, faulty presuppositions, fallacious reasoning, and improper religious commitments, they make unwise choices and adopt false beliefs instead.
Contemporary mind control model advocates want to have the best of both worlds: They want to distinguish cult recruitment techniques from normal socialization activities to substantiate their claims about the insidious powers of the cults, even to the point of pressing for anti-cult legislation; But as soon as anyone asks for concrete evidence and qualitative definitions, mind control becomes just another term for the myriads of forms of non-candid persuasion.