Back to reality
What cult research tells us about healing our society & our relationships
It started, in true 2020 fashion, on my couch. Amid a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a fraught election cycle I found myself absorbed in not one but two docuseries about the despicable practices of the NXIVM cult that was headquartered 150 miles from my home.
Who would give their lives over to this nonsense? How can they possibly think that way? Why won’t they listen to reason? What could make a leader this evil? Why can’t they see it?
That’s when it hit me: These were questions I was already asking myself on a daily basis, but in a broader, more pervasive societal context.
Here in the U.S., much is made of our “divided” society. We are politically “polarized” and calls for “unity” abound. So do the quotation marks in this paragraph, because this simplistic terminology belies the complexity of the landscape with false equivalence galore. The positions in question are not equal opposites. One side champions justice, science and decency; the other is fueled by a potent mix of greed, hatred and delusion.
How is it possible that 74 million Americans—including our family members, friends and neighbors—supported a candidate who delights in dehumanizing everyone… except white nationalists?
For years, I came at this problem with the self-righteousness, judgment and rage, which brings us back around to the questions listed above. None of which got me any closer to gaining insight or having impact. As I started to see the distorted thinking of the NXIVM cult as a microcosm of what was happening across my country, new questions started to form in my mind:
What has happened to these people? How can we help them?
These questions actually yield answers, but as we’ll see they also bring up more questions, about our own susceptibility, about who we follow and how we lead.
What is a cult?
We tend to associate cults with religion, but a cult is generally defined by its behaviors rather than its beliefs. In the seminal book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton boiled down the common characteristics of destructive cults into three criteria:
A charismatic leader, often with narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the principles that originally unified the group lose their power.
Thought reform processes that lead to the breakdown of critical and independent thinking, replacing these skills with a dependence on the group, and in particular the leader, to make sense of the world and make value judgments.
Members are controlled and exploited to amass more status, power and wealth for the leader. They are often compelled to act against their own best interests; those who serve faithfully are promised rewards (which they may never receive) but any who question the leader or operation are attacked and ostracized.
These characteristics do arise in religious groups such as Scientology and ISIS, but also in multi-level marketing schemes like Amway, self-help groups like NXIVM and throughout the wellness industrial complex. You’ll also find them fueling “fake news” and conspiracy theories, powering toxic work environments, underpinning white supremacy and, most recently, inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government.
Armed with this definition, I stopped thinking about cults as isolated fringe groups and began to see that these dynamics are at play behind much of the suffering in our modern world—and that understanding this may help us more swiftly and skillfully intervene.
How does thought reform work?
Thought reform (aka coercive persuasion or brainwashing) is “a process of ideological resocialization carried out within a structure of charismatic authority” according to Benjamin Zablocki, professor of sociology at Rutgers University. This process is highly consistent across cults, as if they’re all following the same playbook. On an individual level, these are the three stages of thought reform as defined by MIT professor Edgar Schein:
Stage 1: Unfreeze the person
First, the leader needs to create the need for a new, deep attachment. Intense psychological attacks destabilize an individual’s sense of self to create a sense of powerlessness and fear, and promote compliance. This is always done under deceptive pretenses: It’s “for my own good.” As is often said, no one knowingly joins a cult.
Stage 2: Change their perceptions
Next comes reframing the individual’s worldview such that they reinterpret their own history and accept a new version of reality and causality. Former cult member and psychologist Steven Hassan created the BITE model to summarize the four dimensions of life that are controlled in the thought reform process:
behavior: excessive busyness, limited rest, individualism discouraged, etc.
information: us/them narratives, info distorted or withheld to confirm beliefs
thoughts: rejection of rational analysis and constructive criticism, alternative systems labeled illegitimate
emotions: some emotions deemed wrong or evil while shame, guilt, fear and feelings of unworthiness are systematically instilled and triggered
This stage also involves continual interpersonal pressure to conform. It’s a cycle of abuse, using threats and then comfort to activate and further engage the individual.
Stage 3: Refreeze the person in the changed state
The new personality is experienced as a sort of rebirth, which is achieved by manipulating the individual’s environment and experience to stabilize behavior once modified. The individual feels part of something important, and their identity is inextricably tied to it. This relationship is protected by a closed system of logic with no outside input or criticism, and what Lifton describes as thought-terminating cliché. “The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” Consider these examples of this “language of nonthought”: it is what it is, you think too much, it was Antifa.
Altogether, these three stages of thought reform lead to the breakdown of critical thinking, and result in a perception of reality that is more informed by ideology than one’s own personal experience. In their book Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman defined a new category of cognitive disorders resulting from these methods of control as “information disease: an alteration through experience of a person’s information processing capabilities—everyday powers of thinking, feeling, perception, memory, imagination and conscious choice.” This alteration, they say, “marks a lasting change of awareness at the most fundamental level of personality.”
How far does it go?
Can we see how power-hungry politicians and media destabilize, manipulate and exploit those who look to them for a sense of security that will always be just out of reach?
Could it be that narratives and systems of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, patriarchy and late capitalism represent thought reform on a societal scale?
Have we seen these dynamics in our workplaces, in cults of personality that form around leaders who are authoritarian and even abusive?
How might we be susceptible to these forces? What dogma, propaganda or clichés have we internalized? Where can we look to disrupt our own narratives of division to reconnect to the reality of our shared humanity?
And then, how might this change how we see:
The yoga mom whose search for purpose took her down a rabbit hole into conspiracy theories and institutional distrust?
The older white man living in poverty who suffers from an untreated illness rather than register for public healthcare?
The beloved relative who doesn’t see why you’re so upset about who they vote for?
The accomplished executive who is suddenly incapable of independent thought, and throws colleagues “under the bus” to avoid scrutiny from above?
I’m not suggesting that these people aren’t responsible for their choices, merely that there is more to the story. None of us exist in a vacuum, and many of us are living in a distorted reality of someone else’s design.
It’s in this realization that I’ve been able to access the compassion I needed to unlock new strategies.
What is the antidote?
The goal of “deprogramming” a cult member—or anyone subject to thought reform—is to reignite their critical thinking. This will not happen if we attack, vilify or judge. It can only happen if we:
Maintain relationships, providing a positive, loving alternative to the narrative they’ve bought into (which is always heavily dependent on us/them mechanics).
Educate ourselves about the ideology in question, keeping this information at the ready but never using it as a weapon.
Ask questions. Make them open-ended. Focus on behaviors and outcomes, not beliefs. Respond to any answers with more questions. Point out contradictions, ask them to explain further. This is not an attack, lead with curiosity and respect.
Follow the person’s interest and energy. If you find a topic that gets wheels turning and conversation going, stay with it. Go deeper.
Don’t react. Don’t take anything personally. It’s not your success or failure. It’s not about you. It’s about them, finding their way back to reality. You’re here to help.
Give space. Be patient. Share information as needed, with care and permission. Breathe.
If we choose to engage with someone who has in some way lost touch with reality, we need to proceed with care. We are offering a safe space for a person whose sense of self has been broken down and rebuilt within a narrative of fear.
We will only succeed if we lead with love.
This is the work we are training to do in the upcoming Breaking Open courses: learning to relate to ourselves and others with openness and curiosity, engaging in change despite our discomfort, and emerging as safe people in the world. These courses are open to anyone, are pan-partisan and interfaith, and are a judgment-free zone where we can do the work of resisting the urge to break down or break apart, and instead to break open.
Recent posts: