Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion

By Marc Galanter

Book Overview

From the mass weddings of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church to the mass suicides at Jonestown, charismatic cults and their devotees have become facts of American life. Once exotic offshoots of the Sixties counterculture exciting suspicion, scorn, terror, and counter-terror (as in the brief vogue of "deprogrammers"), cults have grown so common and entered so many areas of public life--managing everything from roadside flower-sellers to major metropolitan newspapers and nation-wide political campaigns--that only spectacular disasters like the immolation of the Philadelphia cult MOVE seem to remind us how extraordinary their burgeoning really is. Using material gleaned from fifteen years of direct encounters with cults and their detractors, as well as a wide range of his quantitative research, Marc Galanter shows not only how cult members feel and think at all stages of their involvement but also how larger social and psychological forces interact within the cults to command and reinforce individual commitment. After examining the powerful combination of social cohesiveness, shared beliefs, and altered consciousness that cults offer potential recruits, Galanter shows how these forces are orchestrated into self-contained social systems that relieve anxiety within while warding off threats--real or imagined--from without. Finally, he demonstrates this basic system in action, both in apparently successful movements like the Unification Church and in catastrophic failures such as MOVE and Jim Jones's People's Temple, and reflects on how and why some groups turn to violence. The book is full of compelling stories--first-person accounts of conversions, daily life under the rule of charismatic leaders, disillusionments, and departures both voluntary and forced--and fascinating overviews of many of the most influential cults, including the most comprehensive psychological analysis ever published of the evolution of the "Moonies." Many of Galanter's findings, especially his account of the similarities between cults and "zealous" self-help movements, are highly controversial, and his discussion of the powerful influence that Alcoholics Anonymous exerts over its members will spark much debate. Moving beyond the expos s and confessions that have characterized so much of the literature on this subject, Galanter offers the most extensive psychological analysis of cults available. Although based on extensive on-site research, it is immediately accessible to both the general reader and to anyone personally or professionally concerned with cults.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195056310
• ISBN13: 9780195056310
• Release Date: May 1989
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Exceptional

This book is hard to put down--it is thoroughly fascinating. It is also an excellent introduction to the dynamics of social psychology in general. The author uses systems theory as a method for thinking about cults--reflecting, for example, on how feedback, monitoring, and group border control can assist us in thinking about insular religious movements. One interesting aspect of cults that the author discusses, and that I had not ever read elsewhere, is their ability to induce in members the 'Stockholm Effect.' This is a term borrowed from a hostage bank robbery in Stockholm some years back, in which hostages began to identify with the person holding them hostage. The author argues that something like this is going on in charismatic religious movements, where initiates are both threatened with abuse and derive their emotional comfort from the same source. People are made to feel abandoned or damned if they stray from the group's norms, but are given family comfort and safety if they adhere closely to the group's beliefs and goals. Like a roach motel, you check in, but have difficulty checking out. I feel that this book's insights into the social psychology of cults is also valuable in understanding propagandistic movements and charismatic manipulation generally.

Now if only

If only someone would apply what we learn from this book to the Islamic radicals that have taken hold of entire populations, we'd be getting somewhere. In the West Bank, for example, more than 70% of the population supports suicide bombings inside Israel. Brainwashing and coersion are used in the schools and mosques to teach hatred and murder. It's the ultimate cult.

Charismatic Coercion Studies

This is a fairly rigorous scientific study of the processes composing cults and charismatic groups. The author provides many examples and case studies, then develops a general theory into a process model. In engineering, we call this a control system. A system has various inputs and outputs and setpoints, or references. The setpoints are the desired results (outputs). Effective systems have a feedback mechanism assuring that the group produces the correct results. This is called monitoring. The leader of the group monitors the thoughts and the actions of the members almost fanatically and foresees contradictory evidence from the outside world and immediately attempts to rationalize it and reinterpret it in the mindset of the group. The group induces extreme stress, then provides relief of that same stress by conformance to the group's doctrines or ideas. So great can be the stress induced on suspecting people, that sometimes the sanity of the person is threatened. There is a conflict between what the person's needs are and what the group's needs are. The person is expected to meet the needs of the group. The group provides stress relief after the member conforms. Of course, this constant stress inducement and relief is the technique used by the leaders to assure themselves that the people are in line both in mind and in action. Someone who sacrifices so much for the group is more likely to be a true believer. It also gives an idea of those most likely to join such groups: those in the midst of great personal problems and distress; in response to the recruit's current psychological distress where the world seems so messy and hard to understand, the group gives the person a false sense of certainty in their doctrines. Of course, I give here only a rough sketch.The techniques identified are eye-opening and scary. It appears that not too many people are immune to some sorts of mind coercion. I suppose that knowledge is power and the more one knows about cults and charismatic groups and their repressive psychological terror tactics, the less the subject will be suceptible to recruitment. This study explains who some seemingly rational people can fall for such obviously deviant groups.

SUPERB

As an Exit Counselor, I found your publication very helpful in further helping me distinguish between mind control organizations and their effects on those who join. The author breaks his subject down to "forces responsible in the Charismatic groups". He also shows followers of these mind control organizations case histories of these groups. I find his book excellent because while he shows a description of these organizations, he also shows recovery principles. I recommend anyone reading this who knows someone who has been involved with not-only religious mind control organizations, but someone who has become involved with pyramid-scheme marketing companies and even people who exert a strong influence. I recommend you reading this publication so you can learn how people are influencing you to do things you may not want to do. Other recommended categories to research includes confidence schemes, mind-control and charismatic groups. This book is a recommended first-reading.