Out of Polygamy

METHODS OF DESTRUCTIVE MIND CONTROL

            A destructive mind control cult or group will seek to control your behavior, your thoughts, and your emotions. Each one of these will be affected by the other two. Any person or group that seeks to manipulate individuals through mind control will seek to manipulate these three areas in order to gain control of a person’s identity. Steven Hassan former member of the Moon cult and author of Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves and Combating Cult Mind Control is a cult counselor and nationally known mental health counselor. He also identifies a fourth component of destructive mind control and that is control of information. These four things can be remembered as BITE.

B-Behavior

I-Information

T-Thoughts

E-Emotions

Fear is another factor that is used to bring dependence and obedience and keeping a person psychologically frozen.

Any group or person that uses all eight of these methods is utilizing destructive mind control.

Control of environment and communication within that environment. This includes not only what people communicate with each other, but how the group gets inside a person’s head and controls his internal dialogue.

Engineering of experiences to stage seemingly spontaneous and “supernatural” events. Everyone manipulates everyone else for the higher purpose.

Demand for Purity. Establishing impossible standards for performance, thereby creating an environment of guilt and shame. No matter how hard a person tries, he always falls short, feels badly, and works even harder.

Forced Confessions. The destruction of personal boundaries, and the expectation that every thought, feeling, or action—past or present—that does not conform to the group’s rules be shared or confessed. This information is not forgotten or forgiven but, rather, used to control.

No room for questioning or seeking different view points. The group or person’s dogma is considered absolute moral truth.

Use of language to manipulate. Use of hidden phrases and insider’s vocabulary.

The doctrine is valued more than the person. People are dispensable, but the beliefs and doctrines are not.

People in the group have the right to exist and all ex-members and critics or dissidents do not. They are chosen, others are not.

How Warren Jeffs and the FLDS meet the above criteria:

1. Control of Environment and communication (Fear Tactics)

•           The FLDS controlled Colorado City/Hildale in city government, school system, and law enforcement.

            No outside media, television, Internet, radio are allowed.

            Control of reading materials

•           Members told not to speak with Gentiles (outsiders).

•           Very closed society

•           New walled compound in Eldorado, TX will make it even more difficult to have interaction with outside world.

•           Members are told that everything the world teaches is evil and a lie

•           Children no longer allowed to attend public school.

            Children not allowed to participate in non-FLDS activities.

            Members told to sever contact with apostate family members

2. Engineering of experiences, mystical manipulation, proposed supernatural events. Everyone manipulates everyone else for the higher purpose.

•           Planned gatherings for the “Lifting Up”

•           Members told they were not lifted up because of sin

•           Uncle Rulon’s prophecy that he would never die, that he would live to be 350      years old and be lifted up, thus no need for more leadership

            Members stating things such as Uncle Rulon appears to be growing hair, or looking younger even though he was frail and old and dying.

 

3. The Demand for Purity

•           Girls required to dress like prairie women

•           Warren Jeffs would not allow bra straps to show through material

•           Children must wear long sleeves, long underwear or jeans under dresses

            Alta Academy: Girls and boys not allowed to mingle or socialize

            Brides assigned

            Keep Sweet

            Members pushed toward unattainable perfection

4. Forced Confessions. The destruction of personal boundaries, and the expectation that every thought, feeling, or action—past or present—that does not conform to the group’s rules be shared or confessed. This information is not forgotten or forgiven but, rather, used to control.

Excommunicated members forced to list their sins and turn them in to the prophet

Warren Jeffs secretly tapes confessions of members

Public purgings of prominent men

House visits by Jeffs’ delegates

Warren Jeffs has accumulated thousands of audio and video tapes that detail church members' transgressions, confessions and goals in life.

Jeffs uses the information as the basis to excommunicate men from the church and reassign their wives and children to other men.

Jeffs uses the recordings to manipulate believers into making even more confessions that will only be used against them in the future.

5. Sacred Dogma. The belief that the group’s dogma is absolutely and morally true, with no room for questions or alternative viewpoints.

Members are taught unquestioning obedience

Perfect obedience leads to perfect faith

Members are taught never to question the prophet, his message is absolute truth

6. Loading the Language. The use of vocabulary to limit members’ thinking. “Thought-terminating clichés” understood only by insiders.

Keep Sweet

Live the Principle

Outsiders called “Gentiles”

Insiders called “Chosen Ones”

Multiple terms such as “The Placement”, “Reassigned”, “Testimony”     

7. Doctrine Over Person. The imposition of group beliefs over individual experience, conscience, and integrity.

Members are not allowed to think for themselves

Doubting is of the devil

Thoughts contrary to the prophet are sinful

8. Dispensing of Existence. The belief that people in the group have the right to exist and all ex-members and critics or dissidents do not.

Jeffs teaches the doctrine of blood atonement. Some sins are so grievous one must pay for them by the shedding of his own blood.

Members taught they are the chosen ones

Insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed.

More information about combating destructive mind control can be found at www.freedomofmind.com

Resources that  explain mind control and destructive cults from the author of Combating the Cultic Mindset,  Steven Hassan.