Thought Reform; Then and Now (Part 1)

posted on 11/26/2018 by the Salt City Sinner

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be an ongoing series; the Sinner’s $.25 Psychic Self Defense and Literature Review! Now: what on Lucifer’s black earth does that pretentious appellation portend?

For reasons that will be revealed over the course of these segments – like my hairy, enticing body parts appearing from behind fans during a fan dance – I have developed an interest in political psychology. More specifically, I’ve been mulling over applied political psychology, or what I’ve been whimsically calling practical psychic self-defense.

Now, a good jumping-off point for such ruminations is Dr. Robert Lifton’s 1961 psychology classic, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism; A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China. Lifton interviewed American, European, and Chinese men and women who had been imprisoned in the People’s Republic of China and subjected to totalitarian communist “thought reform.”

Lifton established eight criteria for what he considered thought reform, all of which are extremely unsettling to consider in relation to goings-on in the good old US of A these days, but there are two I consider most relevant; “milieu control” and the language of control -- in particular the ever-popular thought-terminating cliché.

When you’re discussing thought reform, milieu control is (I would argue) the most important of the eight criteria, and the one without which thought reform can’t take root. Milieu control is something that any person who has seen the inside of a psych ward, a rehab facility, a prison, or a “gay conversion therapy” camp will recognize immediately. 

It consists of strict control of an environment, up to and including all communication that takes place within the group. Books, pictures, information, all are tightly controlled in the interest of promoting cognitive change in group members. Milieu control creates a powerful in-group out-group dynamic, and can lead to feelings of intense in-group bonding. It can also lead to Jonestown -- or to Warren Jeffs.

 

the house that Warren Jeffs built

Lifton’s book is also well-known for its dissection of the language of control, in particular the concept of the ‘thought-terminating cliché. Now, this is something that we’ve all encountered (some of us – the multi-level marketers in particular – more than others), and it’s quite satisfying to have a nice, solid label. A thought-terminating cliché is a brief, usually folksy piece of “wisdom” that papers over cognitive dissonance – it is a phrase intended to stop thought and argument from proceeding further. Quoth Lifton:

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the 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.

Now, I’ve playfully used the word “cult” before, but when we get into the weeds with this stuff, it becomes difficult and problematic to differentiate between religious beliefs that don’t comport with those of the majority community and harmful “cults,” so I’m going to stick with the terminology “new religious movement” (NRM) here. Lifton’s book is a popular one with people who study NRMs, and (unfortunately) with so-called “deprogrammers,” sometimes-volunteers, sometimes-mercenaries who claim to “free people from cults.” I plan to devote an entire post to deprogrammers at some point – suffice it to say that, while I am hardly an apologist for NRMs, “deprogrammers” have quite a bit to answer for.

Lifton’s book – including his criteria – are commonly used by anti-NRM activists to suggest that (some) new religious movements are engaged in thought reform. I think that’s a hard assertion to argue with, although the degree to which someone can be reformed against their will is clearly limited as described in the case studies. I also think that NRMs are, while interesting, not the most interesting practitioners of thought reform in the USA right now.

a multi-level marketing (MLM) sales conference

A guru who tells you to give them your money and leave your family behind to find spiritual fulfillment is actually a relatively straightforward proposition compared to some of the more fashionable modern hustles.