The Books: Cults In Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, by Margaret Thaler Singer

Next book on the Cults shelf (and everyone should have a “cults shelf”):

Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, by Margaret Thaler Singer

This is the Cult Bible. First published in 1996, it continued to be re-issued, with updated information on new cults and “cultic groups” (in Singer’s terminology). Margaret Singer’s book, well-researched, and academic (yet totally readable) is still a landmark – the landmark – in cult studies and brainwashing. It will never be out of date, as long as there are dangerous individuals and groups who operate outside the law, depriving people of the freedom of thought. Margaret Singer was a psychologist (she died in 2003), who made many breakthroughs in her field, not just in regards to brainwashing. She also did important work in schizophrenia research and the field of family therapy/counseling. But it was her work at Walter Reed hospital, counseling US soldiers who had been POWs in the Korean War, that led her into the study of thought control, and what she called “coercive persuasion”. This was at the start of the 1960s, and the 1960s brought cults to the forefront in ways they never had been before, and this continued into the 1970s, culminating with the Jonestown massacre. There was plenty to keep Margaret Singer busy.

It’s interesting that the whole POW thing was really the birth of modern cult studies. I wrote about that in the piece on the first “cult book” on my shelf, Snapping (excerpt here). POWs returned to America, still brainwashed. In a matter of days, they “snapped” back. There were people who noticed this, and who were curious enough about it to take it into further areas of study. What is it in the brain that is susceptible to brainwashing – with the corollary question: what is required to make brainwashing successful? How does brainwashing actually WORK? And also: what is it in the brain that makes “snapping out” of the loop possible? These are multiple complex interconnected questions, but they all derive from the same source. “Cults” weren’t on the table at that time. The problem initially had to do with brainwashed POWs, but cult studies came out of that. Robert Jay Lifton (I wrote about him in that snapping piece) is the “father” of brainwashing studies, and he also “cut his teeth” on working with the POWs from the Korean War. His 8 criteria for thought reform remains definitive. If you think you are in a cult, or if you worry about an organization a loved one is involved in, then pull out those 8 criteria, and ask yourself some hard questions. It’s the gold standard.

Speaking of cults, I cannot WAIT to see this movie.

Singer set about to discover what was happening in these homegrown groups in America, feeling that whatever was going on there was similar to what the POWs experienced in Korea. The result is a massive study, not just of different groups and how they operate, but putting together a system of analysis for anyone looking to understand cults. It’s not just WHAT cults are, but HOW they do what they do that remain the ultimate question. (Robert Jay Lifton, in a swift and elegant manner, laid out the “How” in his 8 criteria. Singer’s work is a continuation of that.)

She came up with theories and systems, breaking down the complexity into its parts, with things like: Theory of Systematic Manipulation of Social and Psychological Influence. Based on interviews with ex-cult-members, who opened up their deepest darkest secrets to her (evidence of her psychological training), she began to see the similarities in how all of these different groups worked. There was a method to the madness. The people running cults may not have studied Robert Jay Lifton’s 8 Criteria, but they understood it. They knew what they were doing. Don’t give people time to think. Make them meditate 24/7. Don’t let them sleep enough. Give them slogans to chant. Slowly put the pressure on. Etc. It’s very sinister. Singer was interested in helping people. She has a psychologist’s mindset, not an academic mindset. The book is meant to be a guide – for those in a cult, coming out of a cult, or loved ones who are concerned.

Singer ran into tons of legal trouble in her career. Landmark Education (“Landmark Forum,” the corporatized step-son of EST) sued her for defamation. She hadn’t called them out in particular as a cult, but they were referenced in Cults In Our Midst. The financial pressure was huge enough from that lawsuit that she removed references to Landmark in later editions. (Her reputation among cult-watchers suffered as a result. As in: Oh Noes, she caved!!) Notoriously, she treads very lightly on the most famous cult in America in her book. It only gets passing reference. It was the 1990s. That cult had sued Time magazine so heavily for an expose that it nearly sunk the magazine. The writer of that Time article was harassed for decades following. Enemy #1. Singer knew that her message was bigger than that one particular organization and she didn’t want her important work to be derailed by a punishing lawsuit that she knew she could never win. So except for a couple of references, comments from ex-members, that cult doesn’t really play in Cults in our Midst. It was a deliberate choice on her part. Leaving it out of the book still didn’t save her from harassment. She – and her family – were harassed until the day she died by that cult, in horrifying and invasive ways. They wanted to “destroy her utterly” (actual words from the cult leader as to how to deal with “critics”).

So it was dangerous waters to tiptoe into. Margaret Singer’s work is still extremely important in the world of cult studies. Her book is compulsively readable. It’s filled with anecdotes and long interviews with ex-cult-members, about what they experienced during the recruitment phase (so important for people to understand, because there’s so much confusion about how these smart people would get sucked into something so controlling), about what life in a cult was like, about how the leaders ran things, how the deputies ran things, about how difficult it was to get out. The importance of her work is really in her “systematizing” all of this information. So you get diagrams showing how the power flows throughout the cult, visuals to help you understand the inner workings. The book is broken up into small sections, with Singer’s categorization models, providing explanations and examples.

It’s an extraordinary accomplishment, this book, and still relevant. Still helpful.

In this excerpt, she discusses Robert Jay Lifton’s 8 criteria, expanding on them with explanations and examples of what he means by his terminology. She makes things concrete. (You’ll notice that she references the most famous cult in America – I still hesitate to name them outright, even though they are now a wounded giant – but she doesn’t name them either.) Robert Jay Lifton wrote the foreword to Margaret Singer’s book, a stamp of approval from the Master.

Excerpt from Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, by Margaret Thaler Singer

Paralleling Singer’s six conditions are the eight psychological themes that psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has identified as central to totalistic environments, including the Communist Chinese and Korean programs of the 1950s and today’s cults. Cults invoke these themes for the purpose of promoting behavioral and attitudinal changes.

1. Milieu control. This is total control of communication in the group. In many groups, there is a “no gossip” or “no nattering” rule that keeps people from expressing their doubts or misgivings about what is going on. This rule is usually rationalized by saying that gossip will tear apart the fabric of the group or destroy unity, when in reality the rule is a mechanism to keep members from communicating anything other than positive endorsements. Members are taught to report those who break the rule, a practice that also keeps members isolated from each other and increases dependence on the leadership.

Milieu control also often involves discouraging members from contacting relatives or friends outside the group and from reading anything not approved by the organization. They are sometimes told not to believe anything they see or hear reported by the media. One left-wing political cult, for example, maintains that the Berlin Wall is still standing and that the “bourgeois capitalist” press wants people to think otherwise in order to discredit communism.

2. Loading the language. As members continue to formulate their ideas in the group’s jargon, this language serves the purpose of constricting members’ thinking and shutting down critical thinking abilities. At first, translating from their native tongue into “groupspeak” forces members to censor, edit, and slow down spontaneous bursts of criticism or oppositional ideas. That helps them to cut off and contain negative or resistive feelings. Eventually, speaking in cult jargon is second nature, and talking with outsiders becomes energy-consuming and awkward. Soon enough, members find it most comfortable to talk only among themselves in the new vocabulary. To reinforce this, all kinds of derogatory names are given to outsiders: wogs, systemites, reactionaries, unclean, of Satan.

One large international group, for example, has dictionaries for members to use. In one of those dictionaries, criticism is defined as “justification for having done an overt.” Then one looks up overt and the dictionary states: “overt act: an overt act is not just injuring someone or something; an overt act is an act of omission or commission which does the least good for the least number of dynamics or the most harm to the greatest number of dynamics.” Then the definition of dynamics says: “There could be said to be eight urges in life …” And so, one can search from term to term trying to learn this new language. One researcher noted that the group’s founder has stated that “new followers or potential converts should not be exposed to [the language and cosmology of the group] at too early a stage. ‘Talking whole track to raw meat’ is frowned upon.”

When cults use such internal meanings, how is an outsider to know that the devil disguise, just flesh relationships, and polluting are terms for parents? That an edu is a lecture by the cult leader or that a mislocation is a mistake? A former cult member comments, “I was always being told, ‘You are being too horizontal.'” Translated, this meant she was being reprimanded for listening to and being sympathetic to peers.

A dwindling group in Seattle, the Love Family, had a “rite of breathing.” This sounds ordinary, but in fact for some members it turned out to be a lethal euphemism. The leader, a former California salesman, initiated to this rite, in which members sat in a circle, passing around and sniffing a plastic bag containing a rag soaked with toluene, an industrial solvent. The group called the chemical “tell-u-all.”

3. Demand for purity. An us-versus-them orientation is promoted by the all-or-nothing belief system of the group: we are right; they (outsiders, nonmembers) are wrong, evil, unenlightened, and so forth. Each idea or act is good or bad, pure or evil. Recruits gradually take in, or internalize, the critical, shaming essence of the cult environment, which builds up lots of guilt and shame. Most groups put forth that there is only one way to think, respond, or act in any given situation. There is no in-between, and members are expected to judge themselves and others by this all-or-nothing standard. Anything can be done in the name of this purity; it is the justification for the group’s internal moral and ethical code. In many groups, it is literally taught that the end justifies the means – and because the end (that is, of the group) is pure, the means are simply tools to reach purity.

If you are a recruit, this ubiquitous guilt and shame creates and magnifies your dependence on the group. The group says in essence, “We love you because you are transforming yourself,” which means that any moment you are not transforming yourself, you are slipping back. Thus you easily feel inadequate, as though you need “fixing” all the time, just as the outside world is being denounced all the time.

4. Confession. Confession is used to lead members to reveal past and present behavior, contacts with others, and undesirable feelings, seemingly in order to unburden themselves and become free. However, whatever you reveal is subsequently used to further mold you and to make you feel close to the group and estranged from nonmembers. (I sometimes call this technique purge and merge.) The information gained about you can be used against you, to make you feel more guilty, powerless, fearful, and ultimately, in need of the cult and the leader’s goodness. And it can be used to get you to rewrite your personal history so as to denigrate your past life, making it seem illogical for you to want to return to that former life, family and friends. Each group will have its own confession ritual, which may be carried out either one-on-one with a person in leadership or in group sessions. Members may also write reports on themselves and others.

Through the confession process and by instruction in the group’s teachings, members learn that everything about their former lives, including friends, family, and nonmembers, is wrong and to be avoided. Outsiders will put you at risk of not attaining the purported goal: they will lessen your psychological awareness, hinder the group’s political advancement, obstruct your path toward ultimate knowledge, or allow you to become stuck in your past life and incorrect thinking.