Preamble
The cognitive-behavioural perspective on obsessions recognises that cultural experiences like religious belief in strict mental control may increase the propensity for obsessional symptoms by adopting faulty appraisals and beliefs about the unacceptability and control of unwanted intrusive thoughts.
According to Fitz (1990) and Rachman & Hodgson (1980), stringent religious and moral rules might affect the content and intensity of obsessional symptoms. Most empirical studies have found a positive association between religiosity and OCD symptoms, despite some discrepancies. However, the cause of this increased obsessionality in highly religious people is unknown, as is whether this association exists in other religions like Islam.
Scholars indicate that very religious Muslims and Christians may have different control-related maladaptive beliefs and obsessional symptoms. Doctrinal distinctions between different religions may explain these findings. Christianity emphasizes individual conscience and beliefs, while Islam emphasizes rituals and pre-defined behaviours (Ghassemzadeh et al., 2002; Karadağ, Oğuzhanoğlu, Özdel, Ateşçi, & Amuk, 2006; Okasha, 2002; Siev & Cohen, 2007).
Lashar Oneil believes religion controls people through their subconscious. No religious text captivated you when you were born. Many religious groups utilize fear to induce you to give up your conscious thought. You become a zombie. Light comes from darkness. Differences between world history and its future. Everything was a way to study and connect with the cosmic consciousness. Since everything has a solution, people do their own field study. Peace and love to all.
Cult structure
Hassan classifies cults four ways:
1. Most people imagine religious cults. Many cults feature a divine leader and end-time prophecies.
2. Political Cults: Aryan Nation and defunct Democratic Workers Party of California.
3. Psychotherapy/Educational Cults: Luxury self-help and empowerment workshops recruit members. They offer emotional “peak experiences” throughout recruitment to keep prospects coming back. To foster “integration.” this cult concentrated on mental health and relationships.
4. Commercial Cults: These cults like multi-level marketing require members to recruit others for money.
Most cults have top leaders, sub leaders, core members, regular members, and fringe members, depending on dedication.
Ten major principles are taught in many cults:
1. Doctrine is fact
2. Good vs. evil.
3. Elitist mindset
4. Group will over individual
5. Obeying the leader strictly
6. Perform well to be happy
7. Fear/guilt control
8. Ups and downs emotionally
9. New timeframe
10. No escape
Manage Your Mind
Steven Hassan (1988) calls mind control “a system that disrupts an individual’s healthy identity development.”[1] Identity includes thoughts, actions, and feelings. Indoctrination in cults masks genuine identity. Hassan says this might happen quickly, but it usually takes days or weeks, even if the person fakes a cult persona to fit in without believing in it. While some mind control or influence methods can be helpful, such as helping drug users or biofeedback, his book only discusses harmful, non-altruistic ones.
Hassi thinks modern cults recruit through NLP and hypnosis. Once their recruitment strategies improve, they stop targeting college students. Anyone can be a victim, especially during an emotional shift. Hassan tailored his approach to “thinkers,” “feelers,” “doers,” and “believers” to recruit Moonies. Cult recruiters use what victims want and fear losing to recruit them. Moonies use “love bombing,” or complimenting and praising newcomers, to keep Hassan connected and from upsetting anyone.
Destructive cults promote fear of leaving to keep members. Hassan disclosed members’ terrible deprogramming experiences, which drove him to cut off family and friends to avoid kidnapping. He remembers being called a “brainwashed robot” but accepting it as “expected persecution,”[2]. His commitment was strengthened by outsiders’ comments and harshness.
[Brainwashing]
Hassan distinguishes brainwashing from mind control. Brainwashing is his method. In 1951, Edward Hunter invented the term to describe American POWs in Korea who believed they had committed crimes and allied with Korea. Hassan calls brainwashing “overtly coercive” and used when victims are “in the hands of an enemy.”[3] Abuse and torture occur.
Brainwashing rarely lasts when victims return home to their families and a safe environment, unlike subtler cult mind control. Most mind control uses “group dynamics” and “hypnotic processes.”, not violence.
BITE Model
Mind control is action, information, cognition, and emotion, says Hassan. He says a harmful cult will dominate the rest if it controls one or more components. Information restriction can control thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. Hassan’s BITE model adds information as a fourth control area to Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory.
Behaviour
Destructive cults can control behaviour by making members live on a commune and busy. Structured days allow cults to manage behaviour by depriving them of sleep. Cult leaders must let many members leave or contact family. All members of some cults must donate money and goods, making them financially dependent. The damaging cult may limit alone time and assign permanent companions or groups.
Hierarchical control simplifies rewards and punishment. Superiors may praise a member in front of everyone, inspiring pride, or accuse them of sin and convince everyone, including the member, that punishment is essential. Starvation, chores, and staying up all night impair cognition and resistance.
Many cults have rituals and discourse. Members form an in-group and outsiders an out-group. People feel important when they work together, “social proof.”
Information
Keeping members on communes or cult property away from external influences helps cults “rob people of the ability to make informed decisions.” Even without isolation, cults might designate outside sources propaganda, satanic, or phony. When they can think or read, cult members get propaganda.
Members are discouraged from cult criticism. They learn to ask higher-ranking members and mentors for aid. Because they can best explain the cult to potential members, family, friends, and ex-members should be avoided. Some cults censor calls and mail.
Destructive cults seal information until they’re ready. Is a Moonie recruiter aware that they bow to Moon, their cult leader? Learning that bothered the new hire. Left the Unification Church. Indoctrination may have stopped him from rejecting this information.
Hassan distinguishes between “outsider” and “insider doctrines,” which are mild and harmless and revealed when superiors deem it ready.[6] Moonies believed that lying was Satan’s tool but that it was appropriate to lie to attract outsiders since the ends justified the means.
Thought
Absolutist cult doctrines make all situations two-sided and nuanceless. Cult leaders do and believe good things. Outsiders’ actions and thoughts are bad. cognition mind control eliminates the need for independent cognition because cult dogma answers all questions.
Hassan claims that using certain words and ignoring others alters human perception. The “Cain-Abel problem” in the Unification Church is an example of oversimplified language in destructive cults. Members who disagreed with mentors were told it was a Cain-Abel conflict and to.
A destructive cult teaches members to “block out any information that is critical of the group.”[8] This includes denial, rationalization, justification, and wishful thinking. Hassan chanted hymns to ignore ex-members.
To stop negative thoughts and think only good ones, pray, chant, meditate, speak in tongues, sing, and hum. They “center themselves” and block out negative thoughts to prevent cult challenge, even in their own heads.
Hassan says that stopping makes it impossible to think badly of the group or leader, so any problems must be their own, which might drive members to work more.
Emotion
Hassan outlines how cults can make members feel great when they obey and guilty or afraid when they disobey. History, identity, deeds, and social groups can cause guilt. Many cultists blame themselves if teachings don’t make sense or work.
Fear connects cults by establishing a terrifying outside world that persecutes members and a scary internal world where cult leaders may uncover and punish a bad member. Some groups say cultists will cause the apocalypse if they don’t work and believe strongly.
Cults can redefine emotions. A religious cult teaches that happiness is closer to God, says Hassan. Being miserable and suffering are the truest happiness because God is unhappy. Other cults teach that happiness is obeying the leader and growing the cult.
Hassan said only their boss or a proxy could allow Moonies members to marry. Destructive cults may also restrict marriage and interaction.
Mind Control: Three Steps
Unfreezing, altering, and refreezing are needed to control someone’s thinking, argues Hassan. Unfreezing is “breaking a person down,” modifying is indoctrination, and refreezing is cult identity creation.
Hassan suggests depriving someone of sleep or food, changing their nutrition, or bombarding their senses on a three-day weekend excursion to unfreeze. Creating mental confusion and contradiction can also assist. Emotionally, making people feel like they can’t discern their own needs or that quitting the group means losing a chance to change.
The cult communicates the new identity through repetitive motions or lectures and seminars on how horrible the world is and how only the enlightened can repair it during the transformation phase. Community can reinforce behaviours through praise and shunning among cult members.
Demeaning the old self is the most critical component of refreezing, says Hassan. Cult members must not wish to return to their old life and identity, including giving up hobbies, friends, and family in public and confessing their misdeeds. They may have distorted memories during this phase.
Christianity and Islam
Christianity and Islam utilize several brainwashing strategies to convert and keep members. As an example: Have you attended a church service with repeated music? Like many, I did from childhood. This subtle but efficient brainwashing approach is unknown to most churchgoers. The song’s repetition removes mental barriers and makes people suggestible. Church hymns and praise songs should be noted. Most people’s defences (and critical thinking skills) are down while relaxed, so they may not think through what they’re told. Brainwashing and indoctrination happen when barriers are down.
Hell doctrine is not unique to modern religions. A blend of Zoroastrian hell and Greek Hades. Later Islam repeated them and depicted infidels’ horrific torture more graphically. This mind control technology works for any religion if people believe.
Brainwashed people avoid the truth and reject contrary facts. Brainwashing and terror tactics confuse religious people between fact and imagination. Religious delusion excludes truth.
Boko haram is an example of religious extremism that harms. Any group that recruits by brainwashing and fear is unethical.
Despite their beliefs, cults use the same mind control methods. Take this quiz to check if you’re a victim of well-known manipulative mind control tactics. The following questions do not single out any religion. The material below was obtained with several mind-controlling groups in mind. Note that these inquiries are not confined to religious organizations. Many non-religious secular, corporate, and political entities use mind control.
So what’s to lose? Will you take the test?
Test Yourself
Please answer these questions truthfully.
- Do your group’s “good deeds” never seem enough, no matter how hard you try?
- Because of this, do you often feel guilty?
- Why are you driven?
- Fear of failing to achieve standards or real love for God and the group?
- Is questioning the group or leaders frowned upon?
- Does your group think it’s an elite, exclusive group with the truth and life’s answers?
- Does it criticize and mock other Christian churches’ Bible interpretations?
- Do you discourage reading group-critical literature?
Many cults encourage members not to read anything critical of the group, especially if published by an ex-member (labeled “apostate”, “hardened”, or “of the devil” etc.). This is a common information control method to prevent members from realizing the cult’s obvious mistakes. This disables members’ independent thought. Instead, they will think more like the group. Examine the group’s appearance and behaviour. Do most people dress, act, and speak similarly?
He stated a cult urged its members “to pray, look, and talk the same. This is classic group conformity in psychology. Its goal is to prevent dissidents and anyone from questioning the status quo.” (Andrew Hart, January 1999).Does the group prohibit hanging out with non-members (unless to recruit them)?
Do the group give “black and white” answers—what they agree on is right and what they disagree on is wrong?
Do all group members believe what their leaders say?
Are there no personal opinions, even in little matters?
Has the group “two faces”?
Does it portray itself to potential converts and the public as a huge family full of love and equality?
Do many group members feel dissatisfied and emotionally exhausted?
Do you try to suppress your God-given critical thinking by “shelving” doubts about the group or its teachings? Are group members who don’t follow the movement’s teachings presumed to be second-class?
Does the group withhold information from potential converts?
Are the group’s odd doctrines not discussed until a member is more involved?
Are you afraid about quitting the group? Many cults employ subliminal terror to keep members. The organization may imply that individuals who quit will be assaulted by the Devil, have a bad mishap, or fail because they left “the truth”.
If you responded “yes” to most of the questions on the previous pages, your group uses manipulative mind control.
With this knowledge, what will you do?
You must know that your group does not monopolize God. Many mind control cultists believe leaving means leaving God and losing salvation.