11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto

Cultic Studies Journal , 1991,

Lar Volume 8,
… Número
Eventos 1, páginas
Como podemos1-6 te
Informações sobre o culto desde

Formação de Culto
Robert J. Lifton, MD

Faculdade John Jay

Abstrato

Os cultos representam um aspecto de uma epidemia mundial de totalismo ideológico,

ou fundamentalismo. Eles tendem a ser associados a um líder carismático, à reforma do
pensamento e à exploração dos membros. Entre os métodos de reforma do
pensamento comumente usados ​pelos cultos estão o controle do meio, a manipulação
mística, a exigência de pureza, o culto à confissão, a ciência sagrada, o carregamento da
linguagem, a doutrina sobre a pessoa e a dispensação da existência. O atual contexto
histórico de deslocamento da organização de estruturas simbólicas, de sistemas de
crenças decadentes em relação à religião, autoridade, casamento, família e morte, e um
"estilo multiforme" de experimentação psicológica contínua consigo mesmo é propício
ao crescimento de cultos. O uso da coerção, como em certas formas de
“desprogramação”, para lidar com as restrições da liberdade individual associadas aos
cultos é inconsistente com a tradição dos direitos civis. No entanto, a intervenção legal
pode ser indicada quando leis específicas são violadas.

Duas preocupações principais deveriam informar a nossa perspectiva moral e psicológica

sobre os cultos: os perigos do totalismo ideológico, ou o que eu também chamaria de
fundamentalismo; e a necessidade de proteger as liberdades civis. Existe agora uma
epidemia mundial de totalismo e fundamentalismo em formas políticas, religiosas ou
ambas. O fundamentalismo é um perigo particular nesta era de armas nucleares, porque
muitas vezes inclui uma teologia do Armagedom – uma batalha final entre o bem e o mal.
Estudei a reforma do pensamento chinês na década de 1950, bem como práticas
relacionadas na política macarthista americana e em certos programas de formação e
educação. Também examinei estas questões no trabalho com veteranos do Vietname, que
muitas vezes rejeitaram de forma comovente o totalismo relacionado com a guerra; e mais
recentemente num estudo sobre a psicologia dos médicos nazistas.

Certos temas psicológicos recorrentes nesses vários contextos históricos também surgem
no estudo dos cultos. Os cultos podem ser identificados por três características: 1) um líder
carismático que se torna cada vez mais um objeto de adoração à medida que os princípios
gerais que podem ter sustentado originalmente o grupo perdem o seu poder; 2) um
processo que chamo de persuasão coercitiva ou reforma de pensamento; 3) exploração
económica, sexual e outras dos membros do grupo pelo líder e pelo círculo governante.

Controle Médio
https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 2/10
11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto
Controle Médio
Informações sobre o culto Lar desde …
Eventos Como podemos te
The first method characteristically used by ideological totalism is milieu control: the control
of all communication within a given environment. In such an environment individual
autonomy becomes a threat to the group. There is an attempt to manage an individual's
inner communication. Milieu control is maintained and expressed by intense group
process, continuous psychological pressure, and isolation by geographical distance,
unavailability of transportation, or even physical restraint. Often the group creates an
increasingly intense sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures and encounters, which
makes leaving extremely difficult, both physically and psychologically. Intense milieu control
can contribute to a dramatic change of identity which I call "doubling": the formation of a
second self which lives side by side with the former one, often for a considerable time.
When the milieu control is lifted, elements of the earlier self may be reasserted.

Creating a Pawn

A second characteristic of totalistic environments is mystical manipulation or planned

spontaneity. This is a systematic process through which the leadership can create in cult
members what I call the psychology of the pawn. The process is managed so that it appears
to arise spontaneously; to its objects it rarely feels like manipulation. Religious techniques
such as fasting, chanting, and limited sleep are used. Manipulation may take on a special
intense quality in a cult for which a particular "chosen" human being is the only source of
salvation. The person of the leader may attract members to the cult, but can also be a
source of disillusionment. If members of the Unification Church, for example, come to
believe that Sun Myung Moon, its founder, is associated with the Korean Central Intelligence
Agency, they may lose their faith.

Mystical manipulation may also legitimate deception of outsiders, as in the "heavenly

deception" of the Unification Church and analogous practices in other cult environments.
Anyone who has not seen the light and therefore lives in the realm of evil can be justifiably
deceived for a higher purpose. For instance, collectors of funds may be advised to deny
their affiliation with a cult that has a dubious public reputation.

Purity and Confession

Two other features of totalism are a demand for purity and a cult of confession. The
demand for purity is a call for radical separation of good and evil within the environment
and within oneself. Purification is a continuing process, often institutionalized in the cult of
confession, which enforces conformity through guilt and shame evoked by mutual criticism
and self-criticism in small groups.

Confessions contain varying mixtures of revelation and concealment. As Albert Camus

observed, "Authors of confessions write especially to avoid confession, to tell nothing of
what they know." Young cult members confessing the sins of their pre-cultic lives may leave
out ideas and feelings that they are not aware of or reluctant to discuss, including a
https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 3/10
11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto

continuing identification with their prior existence. Repetitious confession, especially in

Informações sobreinothe Lar Eventos
culto … Como podemos te
required meetings, often expresses arrogance name desde
of humility. As Camus wrote: "I
practice the profession of penitence, to be able to end up as a judge," and, "The more I
accuse

myself, the more I have a right to judge you."

Three further aspects of ideological totalism are "sacred science," "loading of the language,"
and the principle of "doctrine over person." Sacred science is important because a claim of
being scientific is often needed to gain plausibility and influence in the modern age. The
Unification Church is one example of a contemporary tendency to combine dogmatic
religious principles with a claim to special scientific knowledge of human behavior and
psychology. The term "loading the language" refers to literalism and a tendency to deify
words or images. A simplified, cliche-ridden language can exert enormous psychological
force, reducing every issue in a complicated life to a single set of slogans that are said to
embody the truth as a totality. The principle of "doctrine over person" is invoked when cult
members sense a conflict between what they are experiencing and what dogma says they
should experience. The internalized message of the totalistic environment is that one must
negate that personal experience on behalf of the truth of the dogma. Contradictions
become associated with guilt; doubt indicates one's own deficiency or evil.

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of totalistic movements is what I call "dispensing
of existence." Those who have not seen the light and embraced the truth are wedded to
evil, tainted, and therefore in some

sense, usually metaphorical, lack the right to exist. That is one reason why a cult member
threatened with being cast into outer darkness may experience a fear of extinction or
collapse. Under particularly malignant conditions, the dispensing of existence is taken
literally; in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere, people were put to death for
alleged doctrinal shortcomings. In the People's Temple mass suicide-murder in Guyana, a
cult leader presided over the literal dispensing of existence by means of a suicidal mystique
he himself had made a central theme in the group's ideology. The totalistic impulse to draw
a sharp line between those who have the right to live and those who do not is especially
dangerous in the nuclear age.

Historical Context

Totalism should always be considered within a specific historical context. A significant

feature of contemporary life is the historical (or psychohistorical) dislocation resulting from
a loss of the symbolic structures that organize ritual transitions in the life cycle, and a decay
of belief systems concerning religion, authority, marriage, family, and death. One function
of cults is to provide a group initiation rite for the transition to early adult life, and the
formation of an adult identity outside the family. Cult members have good reasons for
seeing attempts by the larger culture to make such provisions as hypocritical or confused.
https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 4/10
11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto

In providing substituteInformações
symbols for young people,ocults
sobre culto are desde
Lar both radical
… andComo
Eventos reactionary.
podemos te
They are radical because they suggest rude questions about middle-class family life and
American political and religious values in general. They are reactionary because they revive
pre-modern structures of authority and sometimes establish fascist patterns of internal
organization. Furthermore, in their assault on autonomy and self-definition, some cults
reject a liberating historical process that has evolved with great struggle and pain in the
West since the Renaissance. (Cults must be considered individually in making such
judgments.) Historical dislocation is one source of what I call the "protean style." This
involves a continuous psychological experimentation with the self, a capacity for endorsing
contradictory ideas at the same time, and a tendency to change one's ideas, companions,
and way of life with relative ease. Cults embody a contrary "restricted style," a flight from
experimentation and the confusion of a protean world. These contraries are related;
groups and individuals can embrace a protean and a restricted style in turn. For instance,
the so-called hippie ethos of the 1960s and 1970s has been replaced by the present so-
called Yuppie preoccupation with safe jobs and comfortable incomes. For some people,
experimentation with a cult is part of the protean search.

The imagery of extinction derived from the contemporary threat of nuclear war influences
patterns of totalism and fundamentalism throughout the world. Nuclear war threatens
human continuity itself and impairs the symbols of immortality. Cults seize upon this threat
to provide immortalizing principles of their own. The cult environment supplies a
continuous opportunity for the experience of transcendence -- a mode of symbolic
immortality generally suppressed in advanced industrial society.

Role of Psychology

Cults raise serious psychological concerns, and there is a place for psychologists and
psychiatrists in understanding and treating cult members. But our powers as mental health
professionals are limited, so we should exercise restraint. When helping a young person
confused about a cult situation, it is important to maintain a personal therapeutic contract
so that one is not working for the cult or for the parents. Totalism begets totalism. What is
called deprogramming includes a continuum from intense dialogue on the one hand to
physical coercion and kidnaping, with thought-reform-like techniques, on the other. My own
position, which I have repeatedly conveyed to parents and others who consult me, is to
oppose coercion at either end of the cult process. Cults are primarily a social and cultural
rather than a psychiatric or legal problem. But psychological professionals can make
important contributions to the public education crucial for dealing with the problem. With
greater knowledge about them, people are less susceptible to deception, and for that
reason some cults have been finding it more difficult to recruit members.

Yet painful moral dilemmas remain. When laws are violated through fraud or specific harm
to recruits, legal intervention is clearly indicated. But what about situations in which
behavior is virtually automatized, language reduced to rote and cliche, yet the cult member
https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 5/10
11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto

expresses a certain satisfaction or even happiness? We must continue to seek ways to

Informações sobre o culto Lar desde …
Eventos Como podemos te
encourage a social commitment to individual autonomy and avoid coercion and violence.

******************************

Acknowledgement

Except for the abstract, which was written by this journal's editor, this article first appeared
in the February 1991 issue of The Harvard Mental Health Letter. It is reprinted with
permission from The Harvard Mental Health Letter, 74 Fenwood Road, Boston, MA 02115.

******************************

Robert J. Lifton, M.D. is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at John Jay
College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His most recent book,
written with Erik

Markuson, is The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (New York: Basic
Books, 1990)

https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 6/10

11/11/2023, 21:09 Informações sobre o culto desde 1979 - Formação do culto

International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) provides information on cults, cultic groups, psychological manipulation,
Lar desde
Informações sobre o culto …
Eventos Como podemos te
psychological abuse, spiritual abuse, brainwashing, mind control, thought reform, abusive churches, high-demand groups, new
religious movements, exit counseling, and practical suggestions for those needing assistance.

Views expressed on ICSA Websites or in ICSA's publications or events or other venues are those of the document's author(s) or
speaker(s) and are not necessarily shared, endorsed, or recommended by ICSA or any of its directors, staff, or advisers.

Uma listagem no site da ICSA não significa que a ICSA considere qualquer grupo como uma seita, pratique táticas coercitivas
ou destrutivas ou que esteja violando qualquer lei. Significa simplesmente que a ICSA tem informações sobre o grupo e/ou
recebeu consultas de membros atuais e antigos, das suas famílias, de profissionais, de investigadores, dos meios de
comunicação ou do público em geral. Os grupos listados, descritos ou mencionados nos sites da ICSA podem ser
convencionais ou não, controversos ou não controversos, religiosos ou não religiosos, cultos ou não, prejudiciais ou benignos.
Encorajamos os inquiridores a considerar uma variedade de opiniões, negativas e positivas, para que possam fazer
julgamentos independentes e informados pertinentes às suas preocupações específicas.

Salvo indicação em contrário, os artigos publicados em periódicos da ICSA e o conteúdo original em páginas da web são
protegidos por direitos autorais da ICSA.

A ICSA não contrata advogados profissionais. FL nº SC-07158; Isenção de imposto federal nº: 04-2667-828. Uma cópia do
registro oficial e das informações financeiras desta organização pode ser obtida na Divisão de Atendimento ao Consumidor,
ligando gratuitamente dentro do estado. 1-800-HELP-FLA (435-7352). www.floridaconsumerhelp.com.

https://w w w .icsahome.com/elibrary/topics/articles/cult-formation-lifton-csj-8-1-1991 10/10