Encyclopedia of Sociology VOLUME 1 Edgar F. Borgatta Editor-in-Chief University of Washington, Seattle Marie L. Borgatta Managing Editor University, of Washington, Seattle MACMILLAN PUBLISHING COMPANY New York MAXWELL MACMILLAN CANADA Toronto MAXWELL MACMILLAN INTERNATIONAL New York . Oxford Singapore Sydney
Contemporary programs speed up the reform process through the use of more psychologically sophisticated and dangerous procedures to accomplish destabilization. In contemporary programs the process is sometimes carried forward on a large group basis, which reduces the ability of managers to detect symptoms of impending psychiatric emergencies. In addition, in some of the "therapeutic" ideologies espoused by thought reforming organizations, extreme emotional distress is valued positively, as a sign of progress. Studies of contemporary programs have reported on a variety of psychological injuries related to the reform process. Injuries include psychosis, major depressions, manic episodes, and debilitating anxiety (Glass, Kirsch, and Parris 1977, Haaken and Adams 1983, Heide and Borkovec 1983; Higget and Murray 1983; Kirsch and Glass 1977; Yalom and Lieberman 1971; Lieberman 1987; Singer and Ofshe 1990).
Contemporary thought-reform programs are generally far more sophisticated in their selection of both destabilization and influence techniques than were the programs studied during the 1950s (see Ofshe and Singer 1986 for a review). For example, hypnosis was entirely absent from the first programs studied but is often observed in modern programs. In most modern examples in which hypnosis is present, it functions as a remarkably powerful technique for manipulating subjective experience and for intensifying emotional response. It provides a method for influencing people to imagine impossible events such as those that supposedly occurred in their "past lives," the future, or during visits to other planets. If persons so manipulated misidentify the hypnotically induced fantasies, and classify them as previously unavailable memories, their confidence in the content of a particular ideology can be increased (Bainbridge and Stark 1980).
Hypnosis can also be used to lead people to allow themselves to relive actual traumatic life events (e.g., rape, childhood sexual abuse, near-death experiences, etc.) or to fantasize the existence of such events and, thereby, stimulate the experience of extreme emotional distress. When imbedded in a reform program, repeatedly leading the person to experience such events can function simply as punishment, useful for coercing compliance.
Accounts of contemporary programs also describe the use of sophisticated techniques intended to strip away psychological defenses, to induce regression to primitive levels of coping, and to flood targets with powerful emotion (Ayalla 1985; Haaken and Adams 1983; Hockman 1984; Temerlin and Temerlin 1982). In some instances stress and fatigue have been used to promote hallucinatory experiences that are defined as therapeutic (Gerstel 1982). Drugs have been used to facilitate disinhibition and heightened suggestibility (Watkins 1980). Thought-reform subjects have been punished for disobedience by being ordered to self-inflict severe pain, justified by the claim that the result will be therapeutic (Bellack et al. v. Murietta Foundation et al.).
Programs of coercive persuasion appear in various forms in contemporary society. They depend on the voluntary initial participation of targets. This is usually accomplished because the target assumes that there is a common goal that unites him or her with the organization or that involvement will confer some benefit (e.g., relief of symptoms, personal growth, spiritual development, etc.). Apparently some programs were developed based on the assumption that they could be used to facilitate desirable changes (e.g., certain rehabilitation or psychotherapy programs). Some religious organizations and social movements utilize them for recruitment purposes. Some commercial organizations utilize them as methods for promoting sales. Under unusual circumstances, modern police-interrogation methods can exhibit some of the properties of a thought-reform program. In some instances, reform programs appear to have been operated for the sole purpose of gaining a high degree of control over individuals to facilitate their exploitation (Ofshe 1986; McGuire and Norton 1988; Watkins 1980).
Virtually any acknowledged expertise or authority can serve as a power base to develop the social structure necessary to carry out thought reform. In the course of developing a new form of rehabilitation, psychotherapy, religious organization, utopian community, school, or sales organization it is not difficult to justify the introduction of thought-reform procedures.
Perhaps the most famous example of a thoughtreforming program developed for the ostensible purpose of rehabilitation was Syrianon, a drug treatment program (Sarbin and Adler 1970, Yabionsky 1965; Ofshe et al. 1974). The Synanon environment possessed all of Lifton's eight themes. It used as its principle coercive procedure a highly aggressive encounter/therapy group interaction. In form it resembled "struggle groups" observed in China (Whyte 1976), but it differed in content. Individuals were viiifled and humiliated not for past political behavior but for current conduct as well as far more psychologically intimate subjects, such as early childhood experiences, sexual experiences, degrading experiences as adults, etc. The coercive power of the group experience to affect behavior was substantial as was its ability to induce psychological injury (Lieberman, Yalom, and Miles 1973; Ofshe et al. 1974).
Allegedly started as a drug-rehabilitation program, Synanon failed to accomplish significant long-term rehabilitation. Eventually, Synanon's leader, Charles Diederich, promoted the idea that any degree of drug abuse was incurable and that persons so afflicted needed to spend their lives in the Syrianon community. Synanon's influence program was successful in convincing many that this was so. Under Diederich's direction, Synanon evolved from an organization that espoused non violence into one that was violent. Its soldiers were dispatched to assault and attempt to murder persons identified by Diederich as Synanon's enemies (Mitchell, Mitchell, and Ofshe 1981).
The manipulative techniques of self-styled messiahs, such as People's Temple leader Jim Jones (Reiterman 1982), and influence programs operated by religious organizations, such as the Unification Church (Taylor 1978) arid Scientology (Wallis 1977; Bainbridge and Stark 1980), can be analyzed as thought-reform programs. The most controversial recruitment system operated by a religious organization in recent American history was that of the Northern California branch of the Unification Church (Reverend Mr. Moon's organization). The influence program was built directly from procedures of psychological manipulation that were commonplace in the human-potential movement (Bromley and Shupe 1981). The procedures involved various group-based exercises as well as events designed to elicit from participants information about their emotional needs and vulnerabilities. Blended into this program was content intended slowly to introduce the newcomer to the group's ideology. Typically, the program's connection with the Unification Church or any religious mission was denied during the early stages of the reform process. The target was monitored around the clock and prevented from communicating with peers who might reinforce doubt and support a desire to leave. The physical setting was an isolated rural facility far from public transportation.
Initial focus on personal failures, guilt-laden memories, and unfulfilled aspirations shifted to the opportunity to realize infantile desires and idealistic goals, by affiliating with the group and its mission to save the world. The person was encouraged to develop strong affective bonds with current members. They showed unfailing interest, affection, and concern, sometimes to the point of spoon-feeding the person's meals and accompanying the individual everywhere, including to the toilet. If the unfreezing and change phases of the program succeeded, the individual was told of the group's affiliation with the Unification Church and assigned to another unit of the organization within which re- freezing procedures could be cartied forward.
Influence procedures now commonly used during modern police interrogation can sometimes inadvertently manipulate innocent persons' beliefs about their own innocence and, thereby, cause them falsely to confess. Confessions resulting from accomplishing the unfreezing and change phases of thought reform are classified as coerced-internalized false confessions (Kassin and Wrights- man 1985; Gudjonsson and MacKeith 1988). Although they rarely come together simultaneously, the ingredients necessary to elicit a temporarily believed false confession are: erroneous police suspicion, the use of certain commonly employed interrogation procedures, and some degree of psychological vulnerability in the suspect. Philip Zimbardo (1971) has reviewed the coercive factors generally present in modern interrogation settings. Richard Ofshe (1989) has identified those influence procedures that if present in a suspect's interrogation contribute to causing unfreezing and change.
Techniques that contribute to unfreezing include falsely telling a suspect that the police have evidence proving the person's guilt (e.g., fingerprints, eyewitness testimony, etc.). Suspects may be given a polygraph examination and then falsely told (due either to error or design) that they failed and the test reveals their unconscious knowledge of guilt. Suspects may be told that their lack of memory of the crime was caused.by an alcohol- or drug- induced blackout, was repressed, or is explained because the individual is a multiple personality.
The techniques listed above regularly appear in modern American police interrogations. They are used to lead persons who know that they have committed the crime at issue to decide that the police have sufficient evidence to convict them or to counter typical objections to admitting guilt (e.g., "I can't remember having done that."). In conjunction with the other disorienting and distressing elements of a modern accusatory interrogation, these tactics can sometimes lead innocent suspects to doubt themselves and question their lack of knowledge of the crime. If innocent persons subjected to these sorts of influence techniques do not reject the false evidence and realize that the interrogators are lying to them, they have no choice but to doubt themselves.
Tactics used to change the suspect's position and elicit a confession include maneuvers designed to intensify feelings of guilt and emotional distress following from the suspect's assumption of guilt. Suspects may be offered an escape from the emotional distress through confession. It may also be suggested that confession will provide evidence of remorse that will benefit the suspect in court.
Thought reform is not an easy process to study for several reasons. The extraordinary totalistic qualities and hyperorganization of thought-reforming environments, together with the exceptional nature of the influence tactics that appear within them, put the researcher in a position roughly analogous to that of an anthropologist entering into or interviewing someone about a culture that is utterly foreign. The researcher cannot assume that he or she understands or even knows the norms of the new environment. This means that until the researcher is familiar with the constructed environment within which the reform process takes place, it is dangerous to make the routine assumptions about context that underlie research within one's own culture. This problem extends to vocabulary as well as to norms and social structure.
The history of research on the problem has been one in which most of the basic descriptive work has been conducted through post-hoc inteviewing of persons exposed to the procedures. The second-most frequently employed method has been that of participant observation. Recently, in connection with work being done on police interrogation methods, it has been possible to analyze contemporaneous recordings of interrogation sessions in which targets' beliefs are actually made to undergo radical change. All this work has contributed to the development of an understanding of the thought-reform phenomenon in several ways.
Studying the reform process demonstrates that it is no more or less difficult to understand than any other complex social process and produces no results to suggest that something new has been discovered. The only aspect of the reform process that one might suggest is new, is the order in which the influence procedures are assembled and the degree to which the target's environment is manipulated in the service of social control. This is at most an unusual arrangement of commonplace bits and pieces.
Work to date has helped establish a dividing line between the lurid fantasies about mysterious methods for stripping one's capacity to resist control and the reality of the power of appropriately designed social environments to influence the behavior and decisions of those engaged by them. Beyond debunking myths, information gathered to date has been used in two ways to further the affirmative understanding of thought reform: It has been possible to develop descriptions of the social structure of thought-reforming environments, of their operations, and to identify the range of influence mechanisms they tend to incorporate; the second use of these data has been to relate the mechanisms of influence present in the reform environment to respondents' accounts of their reactions to these experiences, to increase understanding of both general response tendencies to types of influence mechanisms and the reactions of particular persons to the reform experience.
As it is with all complex, real-world social phenomena that cannot be studied experimentally, understanding information about the thought-reform process proceeds through the application of theories that have been independently developed. Explaining data that describe the type and organization of the influence procedures that constitute a thought-reform process depends on applying established social-psychological theories about the manipulation of behavior and attitude change. Assessing reports about the impact on the experiences of the personalities subjected to intense influence procedures depends on the application of current theories of personality formation and change. Understanding instances in which the reform experience appears related to psychiatric injury requires proceeding as one would ordinarily in evaluating any case history of a stress-related or other type of psychological injury.
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