Criteria for Thought Reform
My previous post about how RJ Testerman’s cult community works, used the Thought Reform Continuum and how to know when something is education, propaganda, indoctrination or thought reform.
The following post continues using Singer’s book, Cults in Our Midst, and the Criteria for Thought Reform grid to describe the “conditions that create the atmosphere needed to put a thought reform process into place.” Also, specifically how it is interwoven into RJ’s businesses and organizations.
It is important to point out that you do not have to live with a cult to be changed by it and have your life impacted. Plenty of people surround the Welcomed Consensus and Free the Need and support them monetarily and socially. If you are one of those people still supporting them and/or protecting them, you should know what your efforts are supporting.
Singer’s 6 Conditions
“The degree to which these conditions are present increases the level of effectiveness enforced by the cult and the overall effectiveness of the program.”
-Singer
1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time
Marketed and sold as an educational group, RJ’s organizations, the Welcomed Consensus (WC) and the WC properties operate with no transparency. (Check out the Continuum of Influence and Persuasion and/or my post about it here, if you have any doubts where the organization lands on the scale.) They sell all new “fun” viewpoints and practices coupled with orchestrated peer acceptance and pressure make it all seem like a good time.
The rhetoric that this “pleasurable” living is a “higher” goal helps all the followers feel like they are manipulating you for your own good. Teachers/Leaders/Recruiters are unclear in their advertising and evasive in the face of direct questions. The secretly orchestrated manipulation of group members through multi-level “house meetings”, peer pressure, and addictive daily practices, amounts to a double agenda and non-informed consent.
The power of “DOing” cannot be underestimated. Yes, it is a great tool for the sensual tool box (and you can find others teaching it transparently without the need to control you and sap your resources).
“The lateral orbitofrontal cortex becomes less active during sex. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for reason, decision making, and value judgments. The deactivation of this part of the brain is also associated with decreases in fear and anxiety,”
-Clinical Psychologist, Daniel Sher
Read more about your brain on sex here.
2. Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially the persons time
The longer you are involved with the group, and the farther you move through the inner circles, the more every moment of your day is filled with the community’s practices (DOing and Withholds) and garnering resources (Recruiting for Welcomed Consensus courses and volunteering for Free the Need). Once you move in, full-time immersion is expected.
At “The Ranch”
Everyone sleeps in group bedrooms, except for RJ, Rachel, and Susan who sleep in a separate house on the property in Klamath California.. The longer you live in the cult, the more your schedule is controlled from what time you get up, to how many “Withholds” and “DO dates” you are expected to have. In the beginning you are made to feel you are choosing, or taking people up on friendly offers, but actually it has all been decided and is being tracked. The women of the Welcomed Consensus do Withholds and have DO dates as prescribed, usually when they are “out of agreement” with the group doctrine. RJ never does formal Withhold sessions. RJ’s Withholds are called “house meetings.”
When I lived there, everyone did an hour each of Withholds every morning and pulled (meaning asked for the withholds instead of being offered) an hour from a housemate, as well. We got up in the morning when RJ decided, usually 6 am. The Withholds time and the partner chosen are discussed and chosen by RJ and the other members of the Welcomed Consensus. This way two people with the same doubts about the group won’t “close terminals” with each others Withholds. To “close terminals” means agreeing about something negative and/or not allowed.
Journaling
These days, group members are required to write an online journal that higher-ups with the Welcomed Consensus have access to. It gives them the inside track as to whether a member is “coming their way” (moving closer to them)or “going away” (moving away from them). This is always being monitored and members are writing for their ears and thereby constantly reinforcing the group’s points of view.
I’ve been told Life 360 is used to track members and their movements. Attendance at BenchMarks is mandatory, as is volunteering every Friday for Free the Need. Everyone eats almost every night, ritualistically. “House meetings” and “house projects” and Welcomed Consensus courses help fill in any down time in the schedule. It is a full week of group commitments and an exhausted brain is a pliable one.
3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person
The removal of any outside support system (the friends and family you no longer see because they don’t understand what you are doing) and the lack of freedom to act independently (especially if you left a career because it was, allegedly, more “fun” to be “home” together) fosters powerlessness in a person. As your usual group recedes, taking their varied points of view with them, the new “friends” simultaneously bombard you with new beliefs to fill in the gaps and explain the world.
“Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.”
-Erica Jong
No one is allowed to dissent or question these views; any resistance is put down to “resistance to pleasure.” RJ says working outside of the house is only necessary when you are not “house trained”, if you are a man, or not “fun enough”, if you are a woman. This obviously makes people want to give up their careers and strive to be “fun” enough to stay home and find a place in the hierarchy of the community.4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.
The manipulation begins in the BenchMarks where newcomers learn the language and appropriate behavior to get the love bombing the group is so well-trained to supply. In the formal groups or when socializing, speaking any alternative views will bring public humiliation by the leadership and/or others in the group jockeying for position. This quickly teaches people to “fake it ’til you feel it.” The “viewpoints” and courses will not only revise your complete sexual history, but also prompt you to divulge intimate sexual details. The higher the course the more divulging that is required and therefore the more vulnerable a person becomes.
Any personal viewpoints, experiences, and practices that aren’t in alignment with the group’s beliefs are squashed. Participation in any outside practice is frowned upon and often mocked. The removal of all usual markers leaves a person off-balance and unclear of the truth. The vacuum created when your world view is removed leaves you vulnerable to the complicated ins and outs of RJ’s belief and status system and the rhetoric used throughout the group.
There are people whose names were changed by RJ. He did that whenever he believed someone’s old identity was “holding them back.” Some people still use their new names even after moving out; they cling to it as long as they cling to the identity created by the group. RJ is the only person whoever called me Chrissy. You might call me Chrissy because you knew both of us, but that person is not me any longer. In the cult it gave me street cred and but it was all about fitting in, not belonging. Fitting in is more than a limited social strategy. It opens the door to being dangerously manipulated and diminished.
“(F)itting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
-Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection.
From the website
5. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and group approved behaviors
The hierarchy is the main thrust behind this group. The more “fun” you are, willing to have DOdates, use the language and practices of the group, the deeper you will access the inner circles. Loving attention is lavished upon you when you do something they approve of and the cold shoulder is offered when you have a desire that doesn’t align with their ideology.
It’s not about how good you feel, only about your willingness to be pimped for sex and resources. Trying to grasp all the new rules is impossible so mimicking is how people learn to get by. All the men mimic RJ and the women copy the women of the Welcomed Consensus, down to how they dress.
Self-esteem and affection are important individually and in community so any negative feedback from peers feels hurtful and shameful. Followers learn to suppress doubts and act as if they understand or accept the philosophy because requests for further explanation are usually ignored or treated like dissent. This is exacerbated in the context of the orgasmic practice where your level of agreement and submission are judged by your sexual performance, which can be so tender and scary already. As seen in Denise’s Story, and my own, the language used to induce this transformation can be lodged in a person’s mind for decades.
6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order
No other points of view are welcome unless they support the existing philosophy, period. Movies, books, and all culture, are seen and judged through the lens of the ideology. Any problems you have are always with you, your lack of understanding, and your limits to being “fun.” The system is right, the individual is the problem. Anything in the system that doesn’t add up is put down to not understanding the idea, not being “enlightened” enough, and, of course, not “fun” enough.
Lifton’s Eight Themes
Authoritarian structures of all kinds follow some basic themes. Singer included Lifton’s research that defined these in Cults in Our Midst. Below are the 8 themes that are central to totalistic environments. They parallel the conditions described above and support the thought reform process.
1. Milieu Control; No gossiping in or out of the group, and absolutely no telling anyone outside the information or workings.
2. Loading the Language; Persistent dogma helps shut down critical thinking and slow down the ability to resist.
3. Demand for Purity; Us vs them mentality, outsiders are denounced as uptight, unenlightened, and unable to understand the lofty ideas.
4. Confession; Monitored journaling, Withholds and house meetings are all forms of confession.
5. Mystical Manipulation; Insistence that this is a higher purpose and enlightenment and only a select few can understand. Manipulated to believe feelings are spontaneous in the atmosphere.
6. Doctrine Over Person; Rewriting of personal histories, even violent and traumatic ones, to fit the ideology.
7. Sacred Science; Using highly selective parts of scientific studies to add credibility and show how their philosophy should be applied to all humankind.
8. Dispensing of Existence; The selectiveness and elitism in the basic message confirms the Us vs Them mentality allowing the members to manipulate “for everyone’s good” without guilt or shame.
Schein’s Three Stages
Singer also included Schein’s research about the three overarching stages people go through when going through the thought reform process described above. Singer’s, Lifton’s, and Schein’s research are all included above in the table from Cults in Our Midst.
1. Unfreezing; This is the stage where your old self is being dissolved, or unfrozen from the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs you learned so far in life.
2. Changing; The group seems to have solutions to your problems, you begin to emulate the leaders. If you say it in front of others you’ll do it. “Once you do it, you’ll think it. Once you think it (in an environment you do not perceive to be coercive), you’ll believe you thought it yourself.” (Schein).
3. Refreezing; “The more you display the group-approved attitudes and behavior, the more your compliance is interpreted by the leadership as showing that you now know that your life before you belonged to the group was wrong and your new life is “the way”. (Schein)
What Now?
Thought reform is an impermissible or “forbidden” experiment because of the extreme ethical violations. No one is allowed to conduct such a study and subject people to the conditions, themes and stages that will produce a new identity. While it is legal for cults to operate with consenting adults under the guise of self improvement, it does not make The Welcomed Consensus group morally or ethically acceptable. Nor is it ethical to support this group socially or monetarily without addressing there lack of transparency and responsibility for abuse.
If you would like to know more about how cults work or how to support a loved one who has been taken in by a cult, check out this site and their resources for those healing from spiritual abuse and their families.
Thanks for reading and just for fun, check this out:
How the United States Marine Corps Differs from Cults
By Margaret Singer, Ph.D.
1. The Marine recruit clearly knows what the organization is that he or she is joining…. There are no secret stages such as people come upon in cults. Cult recruits often attend a cult activity, are lured into “staying for a while,” and soon find that they have joined the cult for life, or as one group requires, members sign up for a “billion year contract….”
2. The Marine recruit retains freedom of religion, politics, friends, family association, selection of spouse, and information access to television, radio, reading material, telephone, and mail.
3. The Marine serves a term of enlistment and departs freely. The Marine can reenlist if he or she desires but is not forced to remain.
4. Medical and dental care are available, encouraged, and permitted in the Marines. This is not true in the many cults that discourage and sometimes forbid medical care.
5. Training and education received in the Marines are usable later in life. Cults do not necessarily train a person in anything that has any value in the greater society.
6. In the USMC, public records are kept and are available. Cult records, if they exist, are confidential, hidden from members, and not shared.
7. USMC Inspector General procedures protect each Marine. Nothing protects cult members.
8. A military legal system is provided within the USMC; a Marine can also utilize off-base legal and law enforcement agencies and other representatives if needed. In cults, there is only the closed, internal system of justice, and no appeal, no recourse to outside support.
9. Families of military personnel talk and deal directly with schools. Children may attend public or private schools. In cults, children, child rearing, and education are often controlled by the whims and idiosyncrasies of the cult leader.
10. The USMC is not a sovereign entity above the laws of the land. Cults consider themselves above the law, with their own brand of morality and justice, accountable to no one, not even their members.
11. A Marine gets to keep her or his pay, property owned and acquired, presents from relatives, inheritances, and so on. In many cults, members are expected to turn over to the cult all monies and worldly possessions.
12. Rational behavior is valued in the USMC. Cults stultify members’ critical thinking abilities and capacity for rational, independent thinking; normal thought processes are stifled and broken.
13. In the USMC, suggestions and criticism can be made to leadership and upper echelons through advocated, proper channels. There are no suggestion boxes in cults. The cult is always right, and the members (and outsiders) are always wrong.
14. Marines cannot be used for medical and psychological experiments without their informed consent. Cults essentially perform psychological experiments on their members through implementing thought-reform processes without members’ knowledge or consent.
15. Reading, education, and knowledge are encouraged and provided through such agencies as Armed Services Radio and Stars and Stripes, and through books, post libraries, and so on. If cults do any education, it is only in their own teachings. Members come to know less and less about the outside world; contact with or information about life outside the cult is sometimes openly frowned upon, if not forbidden.
16. In the USMC, physical fitness is encouraged for all. Cults rarely encourage fitness or good health, except perhaps for members who serve as security guards or thugs.
17. Adequate and properly balanced nourishment is provided and advocated in the USMC. Many cults encourage or require unhealthy and bizarre diets. Typically, because of intense work schedules, lack of funds, and other cult demands, members are not able to maintain healthy eating habits.
18. Authorized review by outsiders, such as the U.S. Congress, is made of the practices of the USMC. Cults are accountable to no one and are rarely investigated, unless some gross criminal activity arouses the attention of the authorities or the public.
19. In the USMC, the methods of instruction are military training and education, even indoctrination into the traditions of the USMC, but brainwashing, or thought reform, is not used. Cults influence members by means of a coordinated program of psychological and social influence techniques, or brainwashing.
Adapted from Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich, Jossey-Bass, 1995
