FDR Liberated

Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category

This is the third article of a three-part series. Part One is here.

Part 3. Caught in the wild!

All the theoretical stuff is fine, but most of us look for proof—evidence of a destructive cult changing members’ personalities, even though they are unaware.

We want to see it in action.

What we’d need then, is a way to analyze the differences between a member’s previous personality and their cult-created behavior. At the same time, we’d need some assurance that the personality change happened without the member’s awareness. Of course, it’s nearly impossible for current members of destructive cults to do this. They are unlikely to have the insight/ability to recognize those differences and would be entirely unmotivated to try.

Psychologists often refer to a personality that has been created by a destructive cult as “ego-alien” (or sometimes ego dystonic) behavior. In short, it means that the cult member’s former belief set/behavior/personality still exists but is buried and now subordinate to a personality and behavior that is alien, foreign—or even at odds—with his/her former self.

That’s a more accurate way of understanding the destructive-cult mindset than to simply say a person has “changed.” Actually, their prior personality is still there, intact, aware, but it is no longer the executive personality in charge. The member has adopted a new, ego-alien personality that acts as a filter.

For families and loved ones, that offers a bit of good news because the person they know and love is still there and may be reachable. Sometimes the member begins questioning some of the contradictions in the cult’s teaching or begins to recall the happier times of his or her former life. Whatever the trigger may be, the original personality can begin to fight back and resume control as the personality in charge.

That’s why many cult experts believe that thought reform is most often “situational” and temporary. A cult exit counselor who often posts on Liberating Minds under the name conspeclst26 often says “I truly believe it is not if the loved one returns and leaves the group but when.” (In addition to the other research I’ve conducted, I have learned a great deal about the nature of destructive cults from reading conspeclst26’s posts and a lot of that is reflected in this series.)

But that new “created” personality—the one acting as a filter? What is the nature of that personality? What can we learn about it?

Let’s see what one reseacher discovered.

Yeakely vs. McKean

Several years ago, a religious group opened a window to an outsider in effort to prove it was not a destructive cult. And the outsider discovered an innovative way to reveal an astonishing truth.

Why would a group take such a risk? Simple. Many cults—from the leader on down—don’t have the self-awareness to realize they are destructive. In general, destructive cults sincerely believe they hold the key to truth, the very key to existence. They only wish everyone else could see it.

In his book Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves, author Steven Hassan (who might arguably be the current foremost authority on destructive cult mind control) tells the story.

It started in Boston in a congregation known as the Boston Church of Christ. Overall, the Church of Christ is unique among Christian denominations in that it has a decentralized structure. Unlike the strict hierarchy of the Catholic Church, for example, individual Church of Christ congregations have a great deal of latitude in their beliefs and practices. Some of them appear to be affiliated in name only.

Kip McKean led the Boston Church of Christ. The Boston Church believed in a new movement found within some of the affiliated churches. It was known as “discipling” and it was something that was being greeted with a lot of skepticism among mainline church leaders. As the investigator would later write:

The word “discipling” is used in this movement to mean much more than making converts. It is used primarily to describe a system of intense training and close personal supervision of the Christians being discipled. Disciples are regarded as being superior to mere Christians. Disciples are said to be Christians who have received special training. This training includes much more than mere teaching. There is an intense one-on-one relationship between the discipler and the Christian being discipled.

McKean was also heavily recruiting members from the more mainline Church of Christ. The Boston church was growing rapidly, rapidly enough that the mainline Church of Christ grew concerned—especially so due to this mysterious practice of discipling. In response, McKean and other leaders of the Boston church decided to hire an outside investigator to allay those concerns. As the investigator said later, “leaders of the Boston Church of Christ felt that the story of their amazing growth needed to be documented by a qualified church growth researcher. They felt that such a study would be more credible if conducted by someone not identified with the discipling movement.”

That investigator was Dr. Flavil Yeakley. He was a member of the mainline church. (To be precise, Yeakley has a BA in psychology but his PhD is in speech communications. Hassan refers to Yeakley as a psychologist, but I’m not sure if that’s correct.)

Psychologist, or not, what Yeakley did was brilliant. If, he reasoned, the main result of thought reform is personality change, there must be a way—now that there is a cooperative group of test subjects available—to measure that change.

He found his answer in the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator.

About the Meyers-Briggs test

The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator was created in 1942, based on the “psychological types” theories of Carl Jung. According to the theory, our cognitive functions can be identified as four distinct Dichotomies. For example, you’re either more likely to be an introvert or an extrovert. A single letter is used as an abbreviation for each dichotomy.

Meyers-Briggs Dichotomies

(A full explanation of the four dichotomies can be found in the Wikipedia link above.)

So, according to the Meyers-Briggs model, an insight into your personality can be obtained by determining the answer to each of the above dichotomies, which are then captured in shorthand based on their single-letter abbreviations (e.g., are you an ESTJ? An ISFJ?).

Mathematically, there can be only 16 different variations; therefore, the test reveals 16 distinct personality types.

The Yeakley strategy

Yeakley asked the congregation of the Boston church, McKean included, to take the test. Then he asked them to think about their lives five years ago—who they were and what they thinking—and take the test again answering as they would have back then. Then he asked them to think about where they will be in their “discipling” five years from now. And he had them take the test a third time, answering as their projected future selves might.

The results were amazing.

When Yeakley examined the “five years ago” tests, he found the expected random distribution of personality types. All different types of people were initially drawn to the church. But when he examined the “now” and “five years from now” tests, he found significant changes.

Chillingly, the members were all slowly moving from the random personalities they brought into the church toward a single personality type.

Yeakley concludes:

• “A great majority of the members of the Boston Church of Christ changed psychological type scores in the past, present, and future versions of the MBTI. Among the 835 individuals who took all three forms of the MBTI, less than five percent showed no change at all and less than seven percent had the same past and future type. Among the rest, a comparison of past and future types showed that almost 20 percent changed on one MBTI scale, 35 percent changed on two, over 26 percent changed on three, and over 12 percent changed on all four scales, thus experiencing a total reversal of type.”
• “The observed changes in psychological type scores were not random since there was a clear convergence in a single type. Ten of the 16 types show a steady decline in the percentage who came out as that type in the past, present, and future versions of the MBTI. Three transitional types show an increase from past to present and then a sharp decline in the future outcomes. There were three popular types in this study: ESFJ, ESTJ, and ENFJ.”
• “There was a clear pattern of changing from introversion to extraversion, from intuition to sensing, from thinking to feeling, and from perceiving to judging.”

Yeakley also managed to conduct the three-part test with members of the mainline Church of Christ (that were not part of the discipling movement), as well as local congregations in the Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. In each case, the tests revealed an appropriately random distribution of personality types. At no time did he find any indication of personality changes trending in any observable direction. In other words, for every I member who evolved into an E, he was just as likely to find another congregation member doing the reverse.

So, there was an observable mass convergence of personality types in the Boston Church but none in the mainstream congregations. Fluke?

Now that he had his methodology, Yeakely took it one step further. This time, he somehow managed to conduct his test with another collection of groups—the Church of Scientology, the Hari Krishnas, Maranatha, the Children of God, the Unification Church (“Moonies”), and the Way. All of these groups have been accused at one time or another of being destructive cults.

The result? In these tests—in a way very similar to the Boston Church of Christ, member personalities were unifying into a single personality across the group. They were becoming ESFJs, ESTJs, or ENFJs, depending on the group.

Because no one was aware of or expected this strange convergence of personalities, Yeakley had discovered the holy grail: a difficult-to-refute identifier for groups that change your personality without your prior knowledge or consent.

McKean’s Boston church was soon after disfellowshiped by the mainline Church of Christ. He continued his discipling movement in other churches and today operates the City Of Angels International Christian Church in Los Angeles.

Yeakely wrote about his study of the Boston church in a document he called “The Discipling Dilemma,” which is available on-line here.

And now, bring on the controversy

And so ends my three-part discourse on destructive cults, leaving you with a nifty identification tool, a little history, and some insight on how to catch ‘em in the wild.

And how, exactly, does all this relate to FDR?

For the most part, I’m going to leave that up to you.

For now.

Perhaps in the near future, I’ll revisit this series with a specific and close examination of FDR—with all the usual long-winded reason and evidence. But for now, I’ll leave it to you to observe FDR with the above tools and facts in mind. What do you see?

In your view, does FDR provide some insights into whether its members have changed over time? Do they seem to be converging as personality types? For example, does the behavior and language of long-time members, such as Philosopher Kings, tend to emulate that of Molyneux himself—more so than new members? Are they aware of it? Does that matter? Is there a way to determine FDR’s role in this, if it is happening?

The hints of change

I would think the best place to look for evidence is in the defoo, specifically the member attitudes and events that precede it. Now, I’ll grant that there may be some people who fit the FDR narrative: after being shattered by horrific parenting, they found their way to FreeDomain Radio, and (through the support and strength shared by Molyneux and other FDR members) gathered their courage to commit the healthiest act of their lives—a total withdrawal from their toxic families.

But I suspect that in the majority of FDR defoos, that isn’t the case at all.

Why do I believe that? Empirical evidence.

For example:

• Why does FDR feel a need for the “But my parents were nice” podcast series?
• Why are there so many “convos” with members in which Molyneux spends 40 minutes or more building a case against the member’s parents?
• Why the need to write On Truth and insist every new member read it?
• Why are you supposed to ambush your parents with the comically bizarre and impenetrable dialogue suggested at the end of Real-Time Relationships to “prove” they don’t care about you as a person?
• Why are the desperate e-mails, calls, and letters from parents cheerfully analyzed and re-interpreted by Molyneux and True Believers—despite having no personal knowledge of those families—as nothing more than cold-hearted attempts at manipulation?

None of this fits the “narrative.” It doesn’t sound like the behavior of a group dedicated to helping victims of toxic families. It matches the behavior of a group trying to convince people that they were.

When you look at the history of defooers’ posts on FDR, does it ever seem to you as if they grow angrier at their parents in the posts leading up to the defoo? Why? Is it because the parents’ behaviors have radically changed, or is it something else?

This single question keeps coming back to me. If the majority of defooers are obviously victims of the worst child abusers imaginable, then why does there need to be so much…persuasion?

Persuasion that your parents aren’t really nice, despite what you think. Persuasion that parents are incapable of anything but selfish motives. Persuasion that everything you do not like about yourself is a direct result of their actions.

To me, there is no more glaringly obvious “smoking gun” at FDR than the relentless, omnipresent, utterly pervasive need to persuade you that your parents were abusive.

In his own words, Molyneux says he and his wife Christina built FDR “to reach the kiddies.” And when the “kiddies” listen to his podcasts again and again, this is what they hear:

Our childhoods—our collective childhoods were prisons. And I know I’m going to get even more emails about this…’Oh, I had a good relationship with my mom and dad.’ ‘Oh, they were fine.’ ‘They were this’ and ‘They were that’…

No. I’m sorry. I gotta tell you, and I hate to say it because I don’t mean to be a bully, but you’re wrong.

When FDR members defend FreeDomain Radio in forums outside of FDR, they consistently claim that Molyneux advocates defooing only in the most severe situations. And to outsiders who do not examine FDR closely, it all sounds reasonable. They do not see that those same FDR members are literally bathed in constant overt and subtle persuasions that virtually every family situation is severe. Every family is a prison.

And the road to the defoo, the first persuasion, often starts with On Truth.

The truth about On Truth

It’s vaguely understood at FDR that On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion is the first book you are supposed to read. Many new members posting for the first time on FDR have already listened to a number of podcasts and have read On Truth. If they become convinced that On Truth is the truth, then by the time they post on FDR they have already begun to recast their perceptions on their family.

In a conversation on Liberating Minds, someone offered the opinion that the introduction for On Truth proves that FDR is completely up front about its views and there is no “secret knowledge,” as I discussed in Part 2 of this series. Here is the intro to On Truth:

From a short-term, merely practical standpoint, you really do not want to read this book. This book will mess up your life, as you know it. This book will change every single one of your relationships – most importantly, your relationship with yourself. This book will change your life even if you never implement a single one of the proposals it contains. This book will change you even if you disagree with every single idea it puts forward. Even if you put it down right now, this book will have changed your life, because now you know that you are afraid of change.

I like that intro because I think it is clever and well-written marketing. It would entice many people to read the book, me included! But does it really tell you what the book is about?

Compare it to my version—the truth-in-advertising intro. It’s completely factual and it is the truth about On Truth:

From a short-term, merely practical standpoint, you really do not want to read this book. This book will mess up your life, as you know it. It will encourage you to think of your parents as prison guards and your childhood as a prison. If you believe this book, then you will revise your memories so that you no longer believe your parents were doing their best to share their values with you, but were instead using bullying and intimidation tactics to cover up their own corruption. For the next 72 pages, I am going to use every logical argument I can think of to convince you that you were a victim of abuse. If you believe everything in this book, you will be far more likely to consider completely discarding your family and friends—and convince yourself you are doing it without guilt or remorse.

My version sounds ugly. Almost sensationalized. But it is entirely accurate and—if you haven’t read On Truth—it probably came as a surprise to you.

The word “prison” alone appears 20 times in the book.

The question is the key

So, I leave you with a few tools and ideas to get you started on your own examination of FDR. And I offer you my question that may be the key to answering whether or not FDR is ultimately destructive to its most ardent members.

In the end, it’s your decision on whether it is a destructive cult that matters. And, for what it’s worth, that question is where I’d start. The question—if you’re truly honest with yourself—that you’ll begin asking again and again as you read the forums and listen to the convos.

The question that threatens to unravel all of the convincing Molyneux parent/family theories.

The question that points at the dark corners of identify change and thought reform.

The question that keeps poking little holes in Molyneux’s histrionic claims that members’ parents are “obviously monsters.”

The question that circles FDR like a spectre.

If defooing is for the extreme cases…if defooed parents are such satanic monsters…if it is all so obvious…then why does Molyneux need the relentless persuasion?

Click below to e-mail or DIGG, etc., this article! As always, I welcome your comments!

This is the second article of a three-part series. Part One is here.

What did you agree to?

Some who have read Part One of this article have let me know I did a pretty lousy job of explaining myself on the “Without your prior knowledge and consent” decision in my flowchart. In my clumsy way, I was trying to say that in some situations, giving your consent to participate in a cult doesn’t necessarily mean you’re exercising free will in the way we normally understand it—in other words, that it is you who are making the choices. It’s an important point, so I need to explain it well.

This is it in a nutshell: When you don’t fully know the cult’s agenda, your ability to give true consent is compromised.

In typical destructive cults, that information is being withheld specifically because it is something you’d be unlikely to agree to in the early stages of your involvement.

Consider this example:

Suppose a woman has decided that she has led a life of sin and wants to change her ways. So she sees this little church not too far from where she lives—a small church with a lone minister.

She meets with the minister and says she is ready to embrace Christ and change her ways. The minister says “that’s wonderful my child, are you ready to embrace all of His teachings? Are you ready to renounce Satan? Are you ready to change all of your past ways? Are you ready to do what you need to purify yourself in the eyes of the Lord?”

“Yes, yes, yes, to all of that,” she replies. And so she begins down the path to her reclamation. What she doesn’t know is this particular minister believes he talks to God directly. And God has told the minister that the way for a fallen woman to purify herself is through a “union” with a man of God.

But the minister knows she’s not ready to hear that yet, because she’s so “corrupt.” So he has to begin the process of elevating his status with her as a man of God and “work with her” until she completely embraces the guilt and shame of her past life. If all goes well, in a few months she’ll become one more member of the flock that he has had sex with.

I wish I completely made that up, but that sort of thing happens. The point is, the woman had no prior knowledge that she was a sexual target when she consented to “purify herself.” As a result, her ability to consent was compromised.

But…if the minister had said at the outset—”first, we need to do a little purification, and it starts with you and me doing the horizontal mambo. Wait here while I get my chaps”? (He’s a pretty weird minister, that one.)

If he had done that, she would have known to give him a good kick in the yarbles and move on.

For this reason, I have a very healthy suspicion about any group that has “secret knowledge” that you must acquire over time. All too often, the path on that journey is seeded with hidden agendas.

We’ll revisit this issue later in this article. But for now let’s get back to this part about identity change.

Part 2. Changing your
           mind

So how do they do it? What can be said of this secret and sinister process that can be used to change how you view yourself?

Well, it’s not secret, for one.

And it’s not sinister, either. In fact, it’s been known since the 1930s and is used mainly for positive reasons.

That’s why most “cults that change your identity” are considered benign on the flowchart I described in Part One. The basic steps of identity change were identified decades ago.

It’s a three-step process that was identified by Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in organizational psychology. His work has been applied mostly as the foundation of change management in the business world. The three steps Lewin identified are as follows:

• Unfreezing—bypassing the defensive mechanisms to overcome current patterns and deconstruct the current mindset.
• Transition—a time of confusion and flux as the old patterns are released and replaced with a new mindset.
• Freezing—the transition is complete, the new identity is sealed, and the subject begins to feel calm now that the period of stress and change is over.

Here’s a typical use for Lewin’s model. To survive, most businesses must change to keep pace with technology and market dynamics. Often, that means a business must also inspire its employees to change they way they think of themselves and the role they play in the organization. For example, if most of your workforce joined your company when it was known as a “quality manufacture” company, but the current marketplace demands that they operate as part of a “customer focus” company, then you’ll probably use some form of the Lewin model to help them adopt a “customer-centric” role—adopting not only behavioral change but also pride in their new self-image. This is a common practice in successful companies. And since the end result passes my little flowchart test, there’s nothing sinister about it.

No matter how employees think about themselves on the job, they go home after work more or less unchanged.

What’s a little xi nao among friends?

But some years after Lewin’s model was identified, Americans got a terrifying glimpse of other ways in which it could be employed. For some reason, a higher percentage of US POWs during the Korean War began defecting to the enemy side and signing “confessions” than in any previous war. It was discovered that these soldiers were being subjected to Chinese methods of coercion known as xi nao (literally, “wash brain”). The Lewin model was being used, but the methods were often brutal and the results anything but beneficial. Thus began our unending fascination for mind control techniques, both within the military and without.

One American psychiatrist, Robert J. Lifton, began studying the practice and effects of brainwashing techniques (now known by the less-sensational and more accurate term thought reform) employed on US soldiers. His initial work was captured in the groundbreaking book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.

While Lifton’s early work was focused almost exclusively on the thought reform techniques used by totalitarian regimes, it has influenced much of today’s thinking about the nature of destructive cults in general.

For example, one of the mistaken popular beliefs about thought reform and destructive cults is that the techniques are/were developed by sinister master psychologists. In fact, “there is no evidence that psychologists, psychiatrists, neurophysiologists, or scientists of any sort played any significant role in their planning, development, or execution…There is every reason to believe that they evolved pragmatically, empirically, and to some extent sui generis in response to the military and political needs of the Russian and Chinese governments over the past half-century.” (From an anonymous review of Coercive Persuasion by Edger H. Schien, CIA Web site)

This is particularly important when considering Molyneux and other people who may or may not be leaders of a destructive cult. If there are thought reform techniques being employed in such groups, the notion that they are consciously orchestrated by some genius-psychologist leader may owe more to fiction than science. As I’ve said elsewhere, whatever Molyneux may or may not be doing with his “community,” I do not believe his intentions are destructive. If he is actually manipulating thoughts, memories, and personalities of his True Believers, he may not even be aware of it. I tend to think he simply believes he is dispensing “the truth.”

Orchestrated or not, one still finds similarities among all groups that destructively change people’s identities without their consent. Lifton captures these similarities in his well-known Eight Criteria for Thought Reform:

1. Milieu Control—Control of communication both from without and within the group environment, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from the surrounding society. Includes other techniques to restrict members’ contact with outside world and to be able to make critical, rational judgments about information: overwork, busy-ness, multiple lengthy meetings, etc.
2. Mystical Manipulation—The claim of divine authority or spiritual advancement that allows the leader to reinterpret events as he or she wishes, or make prophecies or pronouncements at will, all for the purpose of controlling group members.
3. Demand for Purity—The world is viewed as black and white and group members are constantly exhorted to strive for perfection. Consequently, guilt and shame are common and powerful control devices.
4. The Cult of Confession—Serious (and often not so serious) sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed, either privately to a personal monitor or publicly to the group at large.
5. The “Sacred Science”—The doctrine of the group is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or disputing. The leader of the group is likewise above criticism as the spokesperson for God on earth.
6. Loading the Language—The group develops a jargon in many ways unique to itself, often not understandable to outsiders. This jargon consists of numerous words and phrases which the members understand (or think they do), but which really act to dull one’s ability to engage in critical thinking.
7. Doctrine over Person—The personal experiences of the group members are subordinated to the “Truth” held by the group. “Apparently” contrary experiences must be denied or re-interpreted to fit the doctrine of the group. The doctrine is always more important than the individual.
8. Dispensing of Existence—The group arrogates to itself the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. Usually held non-literally, this means that those outside the group are unspiritual, worldly, satanic, “unconscious,” or whatever, and that they must be converted to the ideas of the group or they will be lost. If they refuse to join the group, then they must be rejected by the group members, even if they are family members. In rare cases this concept gives the group the right to terminate the outsider’s life.

These criteria appear in Chapter 22 of Lifton’s aforementioned book. (A larger summary is here.)

While this list is one that Lifton created to help understand how totalitarian regimes practice thought reform, his work continues to offer insights into the destructive cults that soon followed and several cult experts have adapted this list to help others understand the operations of today’s religious- and non-religious- based destructive cults.

Sadly, now that I’ve begun to re-introduce lists and criteria to the discussion, I’ve also re-introduced ambiguity. Some may wonder—if a group meets only some, but not all, of the above criteria, is it automatically not a destructive cult? Personally I don’t think so. I still think it all comes down to the final answer on the flowchart.

Wikipedia notes that Lifton also popularized the phrase “thought-terminating cliché,” an aphorism with a ring of truth that is created to immediately quell any thoughts that might challenge group doctrine.

Coincidentally, I recently encountered a brilliant thought-terminating cliché that is commonly used at FreeDomain Radio to squelch any attempt at critically analyzing Molyneux’s “Universally Preferable Behavior (UPB).” Since UPB is considered to be Molyneux’s greatest work (and quite possibly philosophy’s greatest work) by FDR True Believers, it is essential that no serious critical analysis be permitted. (In my article The Promise and Failure of UPB, I note at least two instances of FDR members being banned simply for suggesting they might critique it.)

The FDR thought-terminating cliché for UPB criticism is: “the act of arguing against UPB actually validates it.” After that, there is no need for any FDR True Believer to think about UPB—there is nothing left but to accept it without question.

Enter the “New Religious Movements”

The fascination with thought reform increased in the 1960s, when a number of previously unknown or obscure religious groups began springing up in the US and elsewhere. Today, such groups are collectively known as New Religious Movements. They may be technically be cults, but because the distinction between “cults” and “destructive cults” doesn’t often exist in popular culture (and most of these cults aren’t destructive anyway), the term “New Religious Movement” is more palatable and most often more accurate.

However, many people were surprised at a new phenomenon seen in a few of those groups. A number of adolescent and late-adolescent baby boomers, upon joining them, almost immediately exhibited radical behavior change—sometimes discarding their family and friends in favor of the group. These groups were recruiting heavily, often focusing their efforts on students at college campuses.

That’s when the real controversy over “destructive cults” began. Do they actually exist? Do they practice a new kind of thought reform? If so, how do they do it?

The controversy has raged for years, despite an almost insurmountable degree of anecdotal and empirical evidence. Today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is tentative in affirming the existence of destructive cults in general but not thought reform (which has become an accepted synonym for brainwashing and coercive persuasion) in particular. The Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) specifically covers the concept of thought reform, as does the current proposed draft of DSM-V. However, the word “cultists,” which appeared in DSM-III, was removed when the work was updated to DSM-IV.

However, it is important to note that “not affirming” is not the same as “rejecting.” That’s an important distinction, since destructive cults will often defend themselves by implying just the opposite. The APA hasn’t rejected anything.

In fact, many physicians today use the diagnosis “Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified” for patients they believe are victims of destructive-cult thought reform. This applies not only to cult members but also to so-called walkaways or “throwaways.” (When ex-members of destructive cults do not seek sufficient therapy to help contextualize what they have just gone through, negative effects can linger for years.)

Cults and the American Psychological Association

Like the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association (another APA!) also struggles with understanding and defining destructive cults. However, before it can affirm the existence of destructive cults, it must wrestle with some very large issues—not only with a methodology for providing clinical proof but also with issues that expand into the legal, religious, and human rights arenas. In the article Mind control: psychological reality or mindless rhetoric? published on the APA site, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo writes:

Mind control: psychological reality or mindless rhetoric?
By Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo
November 2002, Vol 33, No. 10

One of the most fascinating sessions at APA’s Annual Convention featured presentations by former cult members. (See “Cults of hatred“). Several participants challenged our profession to form a task force on extreme forms of influence, asserting that the underlying issues inform discourses on terrorist recruiting, on destructive cults versus new religious movements, on social-political-”therapy” cults and on human malleability or resiliency when confronted by authority power.

That proposal is intriguing. At one level of concern are academic questions of the validity of the conceptual framework for a psychology of mind control. However, at broader levels, we discover a network of vital questions:

• Does exposing the destructive impact of cults challenge the principle of religious freedom of citizens to mindfully join nontraditional religious groups?
• When some organizations that promote religious or self-growth agendas become rich enough to wield power to suppress media exposés, influence legal judgments or publicly defame psychology, how can they be challenged?
• What is APA’s role in establishing principles for treating those who claim to have suffered abuse by cults, for training therapists to do so and for establishing guidelines for expert testimony?

Dr. Zimbardo characterizes the polar views of destructive cults in a particularly interesting way:

It seems to me that at the heart of the controversy over the existence of mind control is a bias toward believing in the power of people to resist the power of situational forces, a belief in individual will power and faith to overcome all evil adversity. It is Jesus modeling resistance against the temptations of Satan, and not the vulnerability of Adam and Eve to deception. More recently, examples abound that challenge this person-power misattribution.

….The power of social situations to induce “ego alien” behavior over even the best and brightest of people has been demonstrated in a variety of controlled experiments, among them, Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority studies, Albert Bandura’s research on dehumanization, my Stanford Prison Experiment and others on deinviduation.

Understanding the dynamics and pervasiveness of situational power is essential to learning how to resist it and to weaken the dominance of the many agents of mind control who ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts.

I think for those of us who work the “freedom side of the street,” Zimbardo captures the polarization very well, and it’s amusing that he chose to do it in religious terms. Are humans “Jesus”—able and required to resist temptation? Or are we “Adam and Eve”—rulers of our kingdom yet still vulnerable to deception? Some people believe the choices people make are always born of free will and others believe it is possible to be deceived into identity change. Zimbardo appears to be in the latter camp and so am I.

Some psychologists who accept the notion of destructive cults believe that while such cults lack the ability to isolate and torture, as in the Korean War, they have developed techniques that are far more powerful. In the article Thought Reform Exists: Organized, Programmatic Influence, published on FactNet (coincidentally, a source accepted by Molyneux as a credible authority on destructive cults), Dr. Margaret Singer writes:

Thought reform is accomplished through the use of psychological and environmental control processes that do not depend on physical coercion. Today’s thought reform programs are sophisticated, subtle, and insidious, creating a psychological bond that in many ways is far more powerful than gun-at-the-head methods of influence. The effects generally lose their potency when the control processes are lifted or neutralized in some way. That is why most Korean War POWs gave up the content of their prison camp indoctrination programs when they came home and why many cultists leave their groups if they spend a substantial amount of time away from the group or have an opportunity to discuss their doubts with an intimate.

Contrary to popular misconceptions (some intentional on the part of naysayers), a thought reform program does not require physical confinement and does not produce robots. Nor does it permanently capture the allegiance of all those exposed to it. In fact, some persons do not respond at all to the programs, while others retain the contents for varied periods of time. In sum, thought reform should be regarded as “situationally adaptive belief change that is not subtle and is environment-dependent.”

Today, groups identified as potentially destructive cults can be based on virtually any belief—religious or not. All they require is an environment that fosters a religious-like zeal for whatever core belief the cult is based upon, to the detriment of the members themselves.

The up- and downside of lists

In the end, the problem always comes back to identification—how does one determine whether or not a cult is destructive?

The upside to the various “identification” criteria lists is that they can be very informative and directional. The downside (at least in what I have seen in on-line arguments) is that they can be—and are often—used in a very fragmented and subjective way to “prove” the case of both cult attackers and defenders.

Molyneux himself has attempted to defend FDR in this way on several occasions, one of which I linked to in Part One of this series.

(Not surprisingly, after that article appeared on-line, nearly all of Molyneux’s cult-defense articles and videos have disappeared from FDR and elsewhere [in the same way that all traces of his wife Christina's involvement suddenly disappeared several months ago]. Although the Molyneux video I linked to in Part One [True News 17: Media Accusations, Part 2] is no longer available, the audio portion can still be downloaded as FDR Podcast 1256. [For now, at least!])

Instead of relying solely on such lists to determine if a group is a destructive cult, I find it easier to start with a “big picture” analysis first, like my flowchart or the Lewin model. Then it becomes a matter of answering the questions—How is the group unfreezing; How and what are they changing; and How are they Freezing?

At that point, the various lists available on the Web do become useful—not as definitive criteria, but as suggestions to help you answer those questions.

Noted destructive cult expert Steven Hassan offers a useful go-by, adapting the Lewin model specifically for analyzing potential destructive cults. His adaptation, which he calls The Three Stages of Gaining Control of the Mind is as follows:

The Three Stages of Gaining Control of the Mind
[Adapted from Kurt Lewin's three-stage model as described in Coercive Persuasion (Norton, 1961) by Edgar Schein]

1. Unfreezing

1. Disorientation / confusion
2. Sensory deprivation and/or sensory overload
3. Physiological manipulation
1. Sleep deprivation
2. Privacy deprivation
3. Change of diet
4. Hypnosis
1. Age regression
2. Visualizations
3. Story-telling and metaphors
4. Linguistic double binds, use of suggestion
5. Meditation, chanting, praying, singing
5. Get person to question self identity
6. Redefine individual’s past (implant false memories, forget positive memories of the past)

2. Changing

1. Creation and imposition of new “identity” done step by step
1. Formally within indoctrination sessions
2. Informally by members, tapes, books, etc.
2. Use of Behavior Modification techniques
1. Rewards and punishments
2. Use of thought-stopping techniques
3. Control of environment
3. Mystical manipulation
4. Use of hypnosis and other mind-altering techniques
1. Repetition, monotony, rhythm
2. Excessive chanting, praying, decreeing, visualizations
5. Use of confession and testimonials

3. Refreezing

1. New identity reinforced, old identity surrendered
1. Separate from the past; decrease contact or cut off friends and family
2. Give up meaningful possessions and donate assets
3. Start doing cult activities: recruit, fundraise, move in with members
2. New name, new clothing, new hairstyle, new language, new “family”
3. Pairing up with new role models, buddy system
4. Indoctrination continues: Workshops, retreats, seminars, individual studies, group activities

Remember, cult mind control does not erase the person’s old identity, but rather creates a new one to suppress the old identity (John-John and John-cult).

(You may notice in Hassan’s adaption, he mistakenly refers to the third step of the Lewin model as “Refreezing” instead of “Freezing.” It’s a common error.)

Hassan’s version of the Lewin model (like the adaption of Lifton’s criteria I presented earlier) is very informative and useful, as long as you understand that Hassan is offering examples of some common techniques. Because destructive cults continually find new angles, he cannot provide an exhaustive list. Just as important, it is also not a list of necessary requirements for destructive cult identification.

(Obviously, you can be in a pretty destructive group even if they don’t chant! I may be susceptible to a destructive cult, but I’d never be susceptible to any group that chants. I’m just not a chanter. That’s not how I roll.)

In the end, that’s why I resorted to my little flowchart model. My theory is there are so many different types of destructive cults operating at this point, let me first determine to my own satisfaction that a particular group can be classified as such and then I’ll try to figure out how they’re accomplishing it.

Yeah, but has anyone ever seen one up close?

So, I hear you say, “all the history and theoretical stuff is good and Q.E’s cult identification flowchart is nothing less than brilliant!” (Wait–maybe that was just me who said that.)

“But,” you add, “has anyone ever come up with a methodology for examining identity change within cults that’s a little more scientific than empirical observation and subjective determination?”

That story is waiting for you in Part 3.

Click below to e-mail or DIGG, etc., this article! As always, I welcome your comments!

Sooner or later the question inevitably comes up—is FreeDomain Radio a cult?

When I got my first glimpse of FDR’s dark side, it’s the first question I asked.

I’ve participated in lots of conversations and have had changing viewpoints over time. Over a year ago, I was arguing that no, FDR is not a cult and Stefan Molyneux is not an evil cult leader. For most of the writing I’ve done so far on FDR Liberated, I’ve left the question up in the air.

Then I kicked back a bit, read some books, watched how FDR people behaved, and listened to others discuss the cult question. At one time, I thought I would be able to absorb everything and come back here with another mega-series that definitively answered the question. But since then, the editorial goal and focus of this little blog has sharpened. I’d rather just put stuff I’ve learned in front of you and you can decide for yourself.

One thing I should say up front, there’s a lot more speculation and conjecture in this article than is typical for this blog. Take it all as you will.

The word in search of a definition

The first thing I noticed is this: any argument about whether FreeDomain Radio is a cult almost immediately detours and founders on the question what is a cult?

Most often, someone will try to answer the What is a cult? question with a list of criteria from FactNet.org or some similar place and then begin checking each criterion against their impression of FDR. Stefan Molyneux himself has done that on several occasions to argue his innocence. Here’s one example found on YouTube:

I think such lists were often developed for those who are uneducated about cults as signs to watch out for. But I also think that because there are so many different types of cults, the lists allow for a great deal of subjectivity.

As a result, I noticed that most on-line discussions soon devolve into the “therefore, anything could be called a cult” position vs. 27 other interpretations.

One person will eventually try to convince everyone that all families are cults (Actually, that is another Molyneux belief!). Another will try to make the pithy observation that what starts as a cult often becomes our culture. And then the conversation will peter out altogether.

All of that is a wonderful waste of time, but rarely gets us to anything we can take away.

So, what better way to clarify matters than by lending yet another definition to the chatter? Mine isn’t a checklist though; it’s a flowchart. The first three decisions you have to make are about identity and the last one about behavior.

The big difference between my little flowchart and a typical checklist is there’s no cheating allowed and (I think) very little subjectivity. You must go through each step top to bottom and the answer to each question must be yes.

The Q.E. cult-identification flowchart

Right out of the gate, my flowchart (and I) make the assumption that there are these things called cults but the vast majority of them are benign. However, there’s a tiny subset of groups among them that are destructive to those who join. My flowchart is designed to help identify those.

The decison steps in working through the flowchart follow.





Here are the decision steps:

1. Is it a group that becomes part of your identity? This covers a pretty broad territory. Any group you join that defines your identity to any degree can probably be called a cult. By that definition, is FreeDomain Radio a cult? Emphatically, yes. Then again, so are the Chicago Bears, the marines, people who have every book Stephen King has ever written, Methodists, and devoted Jonas Brothers fans.

But usually, when people start throwing around the C word, they’re really talking about destructive cults. None of those other groups mentioned above are necessarily destructive (although the jury’s out on being a Jonas Brothers fan) and in fact can be fun, if not fulfilling. (People who know me can’t imagine I would define either the marines or Methodists as fulfilling, but I’m not making value judgments right now!)

So, if we buy that argument, what’s the next step that will bring the destructive cults into focus? Let’s drill further down on belief and identity. The next question I would ask is this:

2. Does participation in that group actually change your identity? Even this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some people join certain cults because they specifically intend to change something about their identity and they are seeking the cult’s assistance in doing so. For example, this is often the goal of someone joining the Methodist denomination to lead a “God-centered” life or someone leaving the church in which they were raised to join, say, American Atheists and lead a science- and reason-centered life. When people who can’t stop drinking want to make a change, they often join Alcoholics Anonymous (even though the effectiveness of that group is unclear).

And there are various businesses who conduct what is known as Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT). (I believe the Landmark Forum is one of the better-known examples.) You pay to spend a weekend or so trapped in a big room with a bunch of other students/customers and the leaders use techniques that may be very close to brainwashing to give you a new sense of self-awareness and your own potential. For all I know, LGATs might be very effective and, if so, would be another benign example of a cult that changes your identity yet does so in a way that participants anticipate and desire from the outset.

We could debate the military endlessly, I suppose. I don’t know if the typical 18-year-old knows exactly what he’s getting into when he joins America’s Fighting Forces in the hope that “it will make a man out of him.” However (setting any battle-related trauma aside), I don’t know if one can determine what kind of role, if any, military training actually plays in changing one’s identity.

My general, empirical observation is that people come out pretty much the same as they go in, a little more fit and with a few more life experiences to draw upon. For many of them, military service was simply a stepping stone to a career they actually desired in the civilian world. Of course, there are disastrous exceptions, but I haven’t seen enough of them to change my point of view that modern military service generally doesn’t change one’s identity and therefore fails at the second decision step. However, we’ll touch on the military again later.

So, we have the set of all groups that become part of one’s identity and within that the subset of groups that change one’s identity. Is there an even smaller subset inside those two that can sharpen our focus further? I think there is.

3. Does the group change your identity without your knowledge or consent? Now we’re getting to the good stuff. As I think about this subset, there are some pretty murky elements in there, but again they’re not necessarily bad. For example, assume you’ve decided as an unmarried student to become an atheist and join an atheist group run by other college students. It is possible that a few years later you will be married with children and find yourself embroiled in a years-long fight to keep your children from being institutionally indoctrinated toward religion in one way or another. It’s a fight that you probably didn’t think about when you started this journey (prior knowledge) or one that you would have preferred to avoid altogether (or consent), but it is part and parcel of your new identity.

Considering that scenario and other similar examples, I think it can be reasonably argued that some groups who meet all three of the above criteria are not necessarily destructive cults. Although one may not have entirely anticipated that the path that began with their “I don’t believe in a Higher Power“-identity would one day lead to “I must fight the institutions that intend to indoctrinate my child“-identity, the progression of beliefs and behaviors seems reasonable. Would these “surprise” identify changes—had one known about them beforehand—have been enough to stop an individual from joining a group in the first place? In instances such as these, I don’t think so.

But I think there is another subset, this time defined by behavior change, that is empirically unreasonable. And it is at this point (and only at this point) that I would ask my final question:

4. Does the group radically change your behavior in a way that would have been wholly unacceptable beforehand?.

It’s not how, when, or why—it’s “would you?”

This last decision in my flowchart helps me understand if a group fits into that tiny subset of destructive cults. It’s why I can avoid (for now) the specifics of how, when, or why cults work or how one particular cult works. If (AND ONLY IF) you’ve answered the first three criteria positively, the one remaining question is this: “is there any possible way you would have chosen beforehand the activities you’re engaged in right now?”

Yes, people may join a mainstream religion and begin volunteering every other week to work in a soup kitchen or atheists unexpectedly find themselves staring down a well-meaning schoolteacher over the school’s Christmas pageant. While they may have found themselves in those positions without their prior knowledge or consent, I believe they still would have accepted the identity change even if they had known about these possible consequences.

But, if you were to ask any sane person the following question, how would they respond? “If someone asks you to forsake your family and friends, lived crammed into a lousy apartment with people you might think are a little scary today, spend your days on the street in dirty clothes handing out leaflets and begging for money, and your evenings in hours-long prayer and chant sessions, would you do it?”

Most sane people would say “Oh, hell no!” Yet that is the behavior change that someone in a destructive religious cult, such as the “Moonies,” might experience. The slippery problem is that if you ask a Moonie that question after their identity conversion within the destructive cult is complete, they wouldn’t be able to respond truthfully. Remember, part of the identity change means that the radical new behavior—no matter how destructive—somehow makes sense to group member.

So it is up to the rest of us to ask ourselves this question:

“Is there any conceivable way this person’s previous identity would have freely chosen the one they have now?”

It’s very important that you don’t jump to that question about radical behavior change until you’ve satisfied the previous steps in the flowchart. Radical behavior changes can and do happen for a variety of reasons. But if all the previous answers on the flowchart are “yes,” then there’s probably only one reason for the behavior you’re witnessing now.

You are most assuredly dealing with a destructive cult.

Extreme conversions

Does this flowchart cover all aspects of destructive cults? No. However, I do have a few thoughts on some extreme examples.

The flowchart is unrevealing when applied to someone with the extreme misfortune of being born into a destructive cult. But that’s where logic can save the day. To the extent that the cult in question recruits new members, we can apply the flowchart to them. Once a cult is identified as a destructive cult, it is equally destructive (perhaps more so) for those born into it.

Okay, but what about someone who joins a so-called “mainstream” religion and within a year or so finds him/herself working in a mission in Africa? Why is that an acceptable behavior change, while begging for donations in an airport is not?

I think the answer lies at the “prior knowledge” and “consent” decision. If one has joined a legitimate religion, then at no time will any effort be made to hide either that some members participate in missions or any task/event that occurs at those missions. In a destructive cult, people are conditioned to accept radical behavior change step-by-step, in the hope they will undergo behaviors or projects on behalf of or under the coercion of the group later on. In a legitimate religion, new members might hear on their first day about the mission work some members do. There are no secret behaviors or projects in a legitimate religion.

Far more important, in a legitimate religion, it won’t change your standing in the church or the perception of your religiosity whether you participate in the mission or not. In a destructive cult, participation in many tasks is mandatory. Failing to comply means at minimum being identified as “still corrupt” and at worst being ejected from the group. That pressure to comply—at the risk of falling in your standing within the group—impairs your ability to consent.

Okay, so what about the loss of friends during a religious conversion/de-conversion? Why is it OK to lose friends when you join (or leave) a church, but not OK to discard your friends because you’re involved in so-called “destructive cult”? Neither mainstream religions or mainstream atheists insist that you reject friends (or family), but once an identify conversion occurs, it sometimes happens that friends with formerly shared interests drift way. That’s not nearly the same as a destructive cult that claims family and friends are those who “Satan works through” (as the Moonies often preach) or are “suppressive persons” (as Scientologists often claim)—and insists you discard them altogether.

So, the flowchart doesn’t cover everything, but for me it covers a lot.

What starts as cult…

Before we jump to the next part of this article, I want to address a couple of points that always come up in “cult” conversations. The first one tends to suggest an overall benign nature of cults by saying “what starts as a cult ends as culture.” The underlying argument is that we tend to brand as a cult anything that is outside of the mainstream norm. In other words, so the argument goes, there isn’t much difference between Scientologists and Methodists. We just don’t use the “cult” terminology on Methodists because it is an accepted mainstream religion. And should Scientology one day gain enough traction to reach the tipping point in membership (whatever that may be), it would become mainstream.

I would say that argument is half-right. What starts as cult does often end as culture. That is partly because the majority of cults—including all the ones that become mainstream—are non-destructive.

Yes, according to my flow chart, both Methodists and Scientologists are cult members. But I would also argue that because of the destructive nature of Scientology, it will never become mainstream as it stands today. In my view, it falls through the flowchart all the way to the bottom. We can bring up a few historical examples that appear to be both mainstream and destructive—Nazism, for example—but I don’t think most of these suggestions withstand a lot of scrutiny. My general flowchart still seems to work pretty well for me.

Families as cults

This argument is both a little harder and more important to discuss, since Molyneux himself tends to claim that there is such a thing as a “cult of family.” There are two reasons why I find the argument not worth pursuing.

The first is the intrinsic evolutionary relationship between the family and the biological development of the brain. My view is that there is some kind of evolutionary reciprocity between the two. The human species appears to be born with less instinct than any other species and therefore takes far longer to learn the behaviors it needs to survive. The trade-off is that humans do not become prisoners to instinct and are able to apply nearly limitless inventiveness in developing our skills. For our brains to evolve in this way, we needed a caretaking structure to get us through our helpless years while learning those skills.

That structure is the family.

That’s also why I think of it as reciprocal—the brain and the family structure as we commonly recognize it developed in tandem, and developed each other.

For Molyneux, who appears fond of tinkering with self-detonating arguments, I would say that the family structure whose validity he questions created the brain that made it possible for him to question the validity of family structure. Resolve that one, Mr. Molyneux and win the million-dollar prize!

That’s the first reason I don’t find it worthwhile to pursue the argument at all. Because of the intrinsic relationship between family and the evolutionary development of the brain, it’s no more illuminating to put “family” on the list “cults” any more than it is to put “oxygen” on a list of “addictive substances.”

My second reason for discounting the family-as-cult argument has to do with adolescent psychology. Underneath the “families are cults” argument is a view that parents create little automaton versions of themselves that they ultimately unleash upon the world to replicate the parent’s lives. Molyneux’s writings and podcasts suggest he shares this view.

The problem is, if there is one human behavioral instinct I believe in more than any other (after self-preservation and reproduction) it is in the rebellion that manifests during the years of individuation. There’s a lot more of The Wild One (“What are you rebelling against?” “Whaddya got?”) than R2-D2 in adolescents.

According to wikipedia’s entry on Adolescent Psychology, this period of time that roughly stretches between ages 10 and 20 is far different than most “family-as-cult” thinkers would have you believe:

The social behavior of mammals changes as they enter adolescence. In humans, adolescents typically increase the amount of time spent with their peers. Nearly eight hours are usually spent communicating with others, but only eight percent of this time is spent talking to adults. Adolescents report that they are far happier spending time with similarly aged peers as compared to adults. Consequently, conflict between adolescents and their parents increase at this time as adolescents strive to create a separation and sense of independence. These interactions are not always positive; peer pressure is very prevalent during adolescence, leading to increases in cheating and misdemeanor crime. Young adolescents are particularly susceptible to conforming to the behavior of their peers.

-References found within Wikipedia article

Watch almost any movie, TV Show, Facebook page, etc., and you will see almost instinctive rebellion occur during those in the adolescent years. Go back in history as far as you like and you’ll find writers like the Greek poet Hesiod in 700 BC:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

Families seem to me to be designed to eject young adults and the young adults themselves are all-too-willing to reject their parents. I think this is all as it should be and absolutely nothing like a cult.

As an aside, this is one of the reasons why I say that Molyneux didn’t invent parental rebellion as he sometimes appears to think—he simply capitalizes on it. I’m surprised more people don’t find it concerning that Molyneux takes the personal approach he does with younger adults. He catches them at the point of individuation, making pronouncements about their families without talking to anyone except his intended target. He not only agrees with any negative, rebellious sentiments they have, he inflames them.

What makes him unique is that he is the only adult I can think of off-hand, outside of Pinocchio’s Honest John, to befriend a young person at the point of individuation with an “every negative thing you feel about your parents is absolutely right!” message.

So, no, I don’t view families as cults for that second reason, either. If they were—and adolescents truly were little automaton versions of their parents—then actual destructive cults would be almost non-existent!








This seems like a good place to take a break for now. If you buy the argument so far, I think I’ve got a fairly productive way to identify destructive cults and among all other possible groups. In Part Two, I focus on the mechanics of identity and behavior change—and maybe then we’ll be ready to make an observation or two about FDR.

Click below to e-mail or DIGG, etc., this article! As always, I welcome your comments!

I’m gonna trick ya.

But play along, won’t you? Maybe you’ll find it interesting.

Here we go!

For months, I’ve been very interested in the tools Molyneux uses to guide his followers down a path that starts with the typical ambivalence young people feel about their families and ends with total rejection of both families and friends. Molyneux’s own writings, podcasts, and personal encouragement are part of it, to be sure. And there is, of course, Christina’s authority as a “trained psychologist.”

Alice Miller and the abused children of FDR

But if you spend any time on the FDR site, it won’t be long before you hear about the writings of psychologist Alice Miller. Miller began writing books about childhood abuse in 1979. Her central teaching is that childhood abuse is far more pervasive than we admit, the number of behaviors that fall into the “abuse” category are far greater than we know, and our current treatment paradigm for abuse victims can be far more damaging than the original abuse itself.

Heady stuff.

I’m not quite sure what to make of her as a psychologist. I certainly don’t think she’s in the same crackpot camp as some of Molyneux’s other psychology influences, but I get the impression her work has been used to do as much harm as good.

For example, there is a psychology triangulation of sorts going on at FDR. If the subtleties of Molyneux’s absolutist “first principles”-based discarding of your parents are lost on you, or you don’t quite grasp the deep “insight” of Christina’s “it all starts with the family” theories, then perhaps a world-renowned psychologist can be used to convince you that yes, oh yes, you were very badly abused.

The two things that concern me about Miller are her zealotry and her attempt to popularize her ideas. Perhaps the latter is the result of the former–you see, despite the fact that her work has been around for decades, her theories still haven’t made a significant impact on mainstream psychology. In fact, from my limited perspective, she hasn’t seemed to warrant enough attention from psychologists even to refute her theories–she seems to be mostly disregarded.

Perhaps Miller was so overzealous in stating her case–even when she didn’t have true clinical research to back it up–that mainstream psychology became leery of her. So she began writing books for the public. Who knows? I’m just speculating.

Despite all that, it really is too bad Miller hasn’t been given more credit for the awareness she has raised. I’ve come to believe that a great thing happened in the 80s when society began coming to terms with formerly hidden abuse–childhood, spousal, etc. I think Alice Miller’s dogged determination to enlighten everyone is part of the reason why. One cannot question her courage.

But seriously…everybody has been abused?!

Daphne Merkin of the New York Times wrote an informative and compelling review regarding the good-idea-taken-to-extremes tendencies of Miller. The review is entitled If Only Hitler’s Father Had Been Nicer and is an examination of The Truth Will Set You Free, one of Miller’s books.

All of Miller’s popular works fit nicely into the post-Freudian/pop psychology zeitgeist of the 80s when “all families were deemed dysfunctional until proved otherwise,” as Merkin puts it.

Merkin describes some of Miller’s dabbling in psychohistory (incidentally, another concept favored by Molyneux which, as a result of theorists like Lloyd deMause, also frequently veers into crackpot-ism) and Miller’s sometimes overreaching claims, which tend to suggest that nearly everyone is an abuse victim.

Merkin sums up the good and bad of Miller’s work this way:

The pity of it is that we end up dismissing the message along with the messenger. Miller’s excesses–the bombast and imperiousness, the fanatic refusal to make distinctions along a continuum of harmful child-rearing–have served to diminish her perspective to one of easily parodied alarmism.

The problem I have with Miller popularizing her work instead of working within the scientific community is that (in addition to sidestepping true research) she uses marketing to make it sound almost enviable to be an abuse victim. Consider. Her seminal book Drama of the Gifted Child was originally published with the title Prisoners of Childhood.

["Prisoners of Childhood" interactive game: Quickly download a copy of Molyneux's "On Truth" and count the number of times he uses the word "prison" to describe childhood. Stop either when you get to 100 or begin to wonder how many of Molyneux's "original" psychology ideas were lifted from Miller. Then come back here.]

Why did Miller change the title? Simple. Because it sucks to be a prisoner and it’s awesome to be gifted. As one reviewer put it, anyone looking in a bookstore for help with their troubled life would see that new title and say “That’s me! I’m gifted. I have drama!”

Merkin captures that impulse this way:

What self-respecting narcissist of a reader wouldn’t want to be a member of a club predicated on a rarefied sort of victim status, in which underlying depression was warded off by ”increased displays of brilliance”?

The perfect victimhood soufflé

So now the average visitor to FDR–typically, a very bright young person going through the nearly always difficult process of individuating from his/her family–is served a perfect soufflé of Stefan’s theories, his wife’s theories, and the theories of a justifiably famous psychologist. Discovering that you’re the gifted victim and hating your parents for it never felt so…right.

New members are so busy focusing on their own giftedness and the revelation of the true, miserable drama of their own families, they barely have time to notice that all FDR members are being served exactly the same soufflé and every family has committed more or less exactly the same crimes against children.

So, if you are a recently defooed parent and you’re trying to understand out how Alice Miller figures into all this, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

In fact, here’s what one parent posted–as she was searching the forum for answers–about the negative impact of this soufflé on her family.

Can anyone tell me about Alice Miller? Her books are being used to make the cult members realize what parents do is always wrong. Early on is when Molyneux gets them to start blaming the parents for their own problems.

That is how he initially gets them away from family and friends. Alice Miller’s books makes you hate your parents…. it is so generally written that it can be applied to anyone that reads it. Someone with problems will find fault in their parents by reading her books. Stop blaming yourself, but blame the parents….. That is the message I get…..

Even when I read her book I started to question my mother, grandmother, just about anybody that raised me….. I am not denying that some have an abusive upbringing and go through a lot during growing up. But us “normal” parents, or those with “normal” parents that try to do the best we/they can, in the best interest of the child, get put down and accused of emotionally abusing our kids….

Yeah…..looking back, I know that my parents tried their best, I felt unloved at times (who doesn’t?) was mad because she ignored me and went to work instead of playing with me (!)….….my mom is not a psychiatrist; she did the best she can. I will not blame her for my problems. I think love for others is helping in that matter. I love my parents, grandparents, with that love I have in me, I can forgive and understand.”

Sound familiar?

Well, if it did, then I succeeded in my attempt to trick you!

You see, the parent who wrote that particular troubled post wasn’t talking about Molyneux at all!

This person was actually talking about a suspected cult leader named Wayne Allen Geis. Where the original poster wrote the name “Geis,” I simply replaced it with “Molyneux.” You’ll find the verbatim quote in this thread on a forum completely unrelated to libertarianism or Molyneux.

Why did I try to trick you? To demonstrate just how easy it is for gurus who may have an ulterier motive to (mis)use Miller’s theories for their own ends. You can see the danger more clearly when you consider how two widely differing “friendly advisors” such as Molyneux and Geis can both use the work of Miller in amazingly similar ways to achieve their desired result (which is always, of course, to convince you that you must separate from your family).

Geis’s and Molyneux’s “communities” have many differences. Geis claims to run an acting school and he uses a method called “The Process” to help his followers “grow” as actors. Since his community has nothing to do with logic, philosophy, and ethics, etc., the thinking is spiritual and a lot fuzzier than you’ll find on FDR.

On the other hand, Geis ends up sleeping with a lot of his victims, which means he’s probably having a lot more fun than Molyneux.

So there’s that.

Cult expert Joe Szimhart looked into Geis’s operation and detailed his findings here. Geis’s essential ploy is this:

Bait: Each one of the students approached Geis for personal instruction in acting, singing, and theater arts.

Switch: Geis quickly maneuvered each one into a therapeutic relationship that included his diagnoses based on the diagnostic manual used by psychiatry. Each one came to believe that it was necessary for Geis to help purge them of all the negative influences in their lives from family, other schools and society. Each one felt compelled to confess or otherwise reveal their innermost feelings, memories, and secrets to him and the group if he so directed. Each one came to believe that Geis had their best interests in mind even if it required total submission and giving more money than they first imagined. A few believed that having sex with Geis would, as he promised, somehow improve their enlightened status as performers.

Different dog. Same fleas.

In the thread I linked to above, you’ll also find a Joe Szimhart comment on how Geis exploits Miller’s work:

As for why Geis or anyone else who lives through malignant narcissim finds Miller’s book useful, it is a way to legitimize selfish needs to feel important. Of course, only the naive and manipulated would think that Gies truly understands Miller’s intent. Geis and JZ* live in a world apart, insulated from peer review and reality testing by grandiosity. Miller earned her reputation among peers in the field of mental health professionals…Miller’s powerfully written book can easily mislead the self-diagnosing reader.

* JZ Knight is a leader of yet another suspected cult.


Do Szimhart’s words have a similar application to Molyneux?

As you’ve seen in this article, I do struggle with my own ambivalence about Alice Miller. Her work is of inestimable value in revealing the tremendous impact a child’s perception of their upbringing can have in their later lives. Still, as one reviewer put it:

‘The Drama of the Gifted Child’ is a powerful book and it is worth reading even after 20 years. It is not a scientific book in the sense that it contains testable findings, it presents a practitioner’s conclusions gained from personal experience. You may call it an informed speculation, or an interim report from ‘the search for the true self’ as it is subtitled.

When Miller’s work is treated as true science by someone trying to self-diagnose, the outcome is unpredictable at best.

When it is rapaciously plundered by self-styled gurus with no clinical training, it can destroy lives.

Want to know what Miller thinks about gurus?

You can and it’s pretty interesting. She wrote a section called “Gurus and Cult Leaders, How They Function” in her book Paths of Life.

I offered the opinion in an earlier post that if FDR is indeed a cult, it is probably not by Molyneux’s design or wishes. Moreover, I suspected that Molyneux (and leaders like him) gain control not by intentional manipulation but as an indirect result of their fervent, unshakeable reverence for their own beliefs. (Surely you must see that the world operates exactly as Molyneux says. How could you not, unless there were something…wrong with you?)

I was unaware that Miller had figured all of this out a decade ago.

In the following passage, Miller describes the internal processes of gurus. It makes me a little uncomfortable, as she starts by referring to the “unconscious manipulation” of parents, an assertion that often takes her over-the-top in her theories. There is an element of truth, however, in that we all unconsciously try to influence each other at one time or another.

But the passage is fruitful because it points out how gurus fall into the same pattern. Does it apply to Molyneux? I’ll leave that to you but, if so, I’m struck by the strange reciprocity at work here here–Miller’s theories on gurus may actually apply to those gurus who use her other theories to control their groups!

The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulation that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care without anyone involved actually realizing it. At first glance, it may seem as if what goes on in cult and cultlike therapy groups takes place on a diffferent level from the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents. We assume that in the former instance we are in the presence of an intentional, carefully planned, and organized form of manipulation aimed at exploiting the specific predicament of individuals.

In my view, however, this allegedly conscious exploitation can also be traced back to unconscious motives, Terrible as the consequences were, I do not believe, for example, that the two initiates of “feeling therapy” discussed earlier actually set out to establish a totalitarian regime. It was the power they gained over their adherents that made them into gurus. And this is what I have in mind when I refer to the unconscious aspects of manipulation. In the end they themselves became the victims of a process with an inexorable logic of its own, a process they were unaware of because they had never given it any thought.

Thus they sparked off a conflagration they were unable to control, much less extinguish. First, they learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of a helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the child-rearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhood.

Regardless of how you classify FDR, Miller is suggesting (and I believe her) that Molyneux may have been swept up into FreeDomain Radio as much as any of his True Believers. The most ardent first member of the “community” is probably Molyneux himself.

And Alice Miller remains one of his most powerful tools.

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