Deprogrammer
Deprogramming is the highly controversial practice in which a person's relatives and/or others use coercive means to get him or her to leave a religious or similar group which they regard as spurious (i.e. a "cult"). Advocates of deprogramming describe it as a last resort for families who feel that their loved ones had been taken away from them, although it is fraught with controversy because of some of its methods, which have been defined as kidnapping by some courts of law.
Deprogramming has been attacked, by members of controversial new religious movements, and others, among others by professor Eileen Barker, on the basis that it is dangerous and illegal to kidnap someone from any organization in which they voluntarily participate.
Moreover, Barker argues that if the deprogramming fails then it will only widen the rift between the member of the NRM and his family.
Controversy and Related Issues
Deprogrammers generally operate on the assumption that the persons they are paid to extract from religious organizations are victims of mind control (or "brainwashing"). Books written by deprogrammers and exit counselors assert that the most essential part of "freeing the mind" of the person is to convince him that he had been under "control".
In practice, the vast majority of the time spent during deprogramming sessions is the marshalling of evidence aimed at proving that the "cult" deceived and manipulated the recruit into joining. Once the person accepts this premise, the remainder of the process is relatively easy.
One of main objections raised to deprogramming (as well as to exit counseling) is the contention that they begin with a false premise. Lawyers for some groups who have lost members due to deprogramming, as well as some civil libertarians, sociologists and psychologists, argue that it is not the religious groups but rather the deprogrammers who are the ones who deceive and manipulate people.
Public support for deprogramming hinges on the degree to which people agree or disagree with the mind control model. In the United States, from the mid-1970s and throughout the 1980s mind control was widely accepted, and the vast majority of newspaper and magazine accounts of deprogrammings assumed that recruits' relatives were well justified to hire seek conservatorships and to hire deprogrammers. It took nearly 20 years for public opinion to shift.
One aspect that gradually became disturbing from a civil rights point of view, was that relatives would use deception, or legal dealings or even kidnapping to get the recruit into deprogrammers' hands, without allowing the person any recourse to a lawyer or psychiatrist of their own choosing. In the old days, there would be a sanity hearing first, and only then a commitment to an asylum or involuntary therapy. But with deprogramming, judges routinely granted parents legal authority over their adult children without a hearing.
After 10 or 15 years of this, some adult children began suing their parents or deprogrammers. Also, in the mid-1980s, psychologist Margaret Singer lost her status as an expert witness when the APA declined to endorse the DIMPAC report. From this point on, deprogramming's legal basis almost immediately vanished, and some deprogrammers re-styled themselves as "exit counselors".
Since that time, deprogramming has been virtually unknown in the United States.
Deprogrammers claim that the voluntary participation is due to "mind control," a controversial theory that a person's thought processes can be changed by outside forces. They justify this intervention or "therapy" as necessary to bring the person out from under the influence of the group's "mind control." The existence of mind control is widely disputed, and sometimes dismissed as pseudoscience by the psychiatric establishment. Modern behavorist psychology, however, can do much to explain the ability of external forces to control actions even if it has studied little regarding the internal thought processes associated with them (although relational framing and other theoretical constructs hedge into such territory). Present-day psychological principles suggest that traditional deprogramming approaches would almost certainly be inferior to other forms of intervention. Even supposing mind control is possible, it would be extremely difficult to prove to a legal standard that any individual person's mind has been controlled. In light of the legal and psychological issues, less intrusive and more patient-oriented interventions will likely replace this practice completely.
People and Places
During the 1990s, Rick Ross, a noted cult intervention advocate who allegedly took part in a number of deprogramming sessions, was sued by a former member of a group called the Life Tabernacle Church after an attempt at intervention was unsuccessful. He was ordered to pay damages of about $5 million, though this amount was later rescinded. This legal case was expanded to include a prominent anti-cult group called the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). The judgement was used to force CAN into bankruptcy, and its name and assets were purchased by a representative of Scientology shortly afterwards. This case was seen as effectively closing the door on the practice of deprogramming.
Deprogramming has fallen into disfavor because of its controversial aspects. As a result of the CAN judgement, a number of prominent anti-cult groups and persons have distanced themselves from the practice, noting that a less intrusive form of intervention called exit counseling has been shown to be more effective, less harmful, and less likely to lead to legal action. Organizations often referred to as cults, such as the Church of Scientology, insist that the practice is still commonplace, and they often make statements that their critics and opponents are "deprogrammers."
Steve Hassan, author of the book Combatting Cult Mind Control, states that he took part in a number of deprogrammings in the late 1970s, but he no longer approves of the practice and has not participated in any deprogrammings since then. He is one of the major proponents of exit counseling as a form of intervention therapy, and he refers to his method as "strategic intervention therapy.")
See also
