Cult Indoctrination Techniques – Part Two

This is the second in a series of posts that began here.  I have decided not to necessarily go in numerical order when writing about each of the 22 points listed in the video about cult indoctrination techniques.  Today I’ll be discussing numbers 1, 16, and 15.

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I should preface this post by explaining what was happening in my life around the time I first spoke with Jane.  I was 26 when I went through what was possibly the worst depression of my life.  I’ve dealt with clinical depression since I was a young teenager, but in 1990, at age 26, I went into a financial tailspin as a result of poor planning and overspending (and then-undiagnosed Adult ADD, which I can now clearly see was behind a lot of what led to my financial woes).  My financial downward spiral was compounded by losing my job, and I wound up moving back in with my parents in August of that year.  My self esteem took a beating, as I felt everything from failure at “being an adult” to worthlessness for not being able to “get it right”.  I was as vulnerable as I would ever be in my life, before or since.  I was not only suicidal; my suicide was planned.  I have learned, in the years since, that that level of despair and vulnerability can create fertile ground for manipulation.

And then I met Jane, and she offered me what was the only alternative I could see, in my depression-induced state of altered logic: a relationship that felt predestined by Fate, brought together by forces larger than ourselves for some grand-scale purpose.  Or I could follow through with my original plan and die.

As it turned out, either option would have brought enormous pain to my family.  Fortunately, it is possible to recover from false memories and misplaced accusations, though obviously I had no idea at the time that that was where the relationship would lead.

As I mentioned in Part One, Jane was fascinated with cults and brainwashing techniques, and although she wasn’t trying to start a cult, she used the techniques that she had learned over the years to her best advantage.  Her objective?  I don’t know for sure, other than probably control, adoration, and complete loyalty.

A friend of mine, who I hadn’t known for very long at the time, introduced me to Jane, a friend of hers who, she explained, was working out of state, by passing my telephone number along to her as someone she might enjoy talking with because we seemed to have a lot in common.  Jane called, we began to talk frequently, and we began a five month “long-distance” relationship which led to my moving in with her the next spring, after the long-awaited phone call announcing she was home.

I never called her.  She always called me, because, she said, the company she worked for provided a telephone expense account that allowed her to remain in contact with her family and friends at home, which helped to ease the difficulty of being away for long stretches of time.  She said she moved from place to place and hotel to hotel, providing training to sales and marketing staff working for subsidiary companies owned by her employers’ company, and it would be much easier for her to call me rather than for me to call her.

This was before cell phones were commonly used.  Caller ID was available in our area, but my parents and I didn’t have the service.  I had a separate phone line with its own phone number installed into my bedroom, so that we didn’t tie up my parents’ telephone with our long conversations, but I didn’t add Caller ID.  I remember dialing *69 once or twice, out of curiosity, but the number she was calling from was always marked “Private”.

During our long phone conversations, I’d mentioned to Jane that I’d suspected some sexual molestation in my childhood, based on “sensory memories” I’d been experiencing since I was about 8 years old, as well as some otherwise unexplained fears and feelings, though I had no idea who would have done such a thing.  At one point, after discussing a short story I’d read about a woman who confronts her father for sexually abusing her as a child, Jane commented on how moved I was by the story and said, “Don’t you see?  It was your father.”

Time passed, and I began to have memories that backed up her theory.  Looking back now, from the “other side” of the experience, having seen those memories dissipate like vapor after a period of years (while my original “sensory memories” remained as vividly powerful as ever), I don’t doubt that Jane was able to cause those memories to form, using, among her repertoire of manipulation tools,  a combination of the techniques she had learned in her study of cult indoctrination.

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And the points I’ll be covering in this entry:

1. Structure your cult like an onion, with the most benign and helpful features on the outside and the most controlling, kooky and evil parts at the secret, inner core.  Use deception.   Don’t tell them who you really are.  Lie.   Leave out important information or distort information.

Jane was a master at deception and lies, including but not limited to the fact that she wasn’t actually out of state during those five months.  She was in her home, across town, where she was largely bedridden due to a variety of health conditions, speaking to me from an unlisted telephone number and knowing it wouldn’t show up on Caller ID.  She used the “working out of state” story for two purposes: to buy time and make sure I was emotionally attached to her before admitting her disabilities to me, and to impress me with the importance of her job and the excitement of her travels.  It was a year later that she finally admitted she hadn’t really been away, though by then I had long since figured it out.

There were many things she’d said that a part of me questioned, but my need to believe her was as strong as her desire to have me believe.  A part of me knew that if I dissected things too much, everything our relationship was based on would unravel, and in my weakened state, I saw that leading to no other outcome than taking me right back to my suicide plan.

Jane often said, “If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth,” a paraphrase of a quote which (according to a google search) appears to be attributed to Vladimir Lenin and also misattributed to Joseph Goebbels.  She was fascinated by this concept, and it is interesting.  It’s also disturbingly true.  We see it all the time in politics, but we see it in other areas of life as well.  How many times have you heard someone say, “Well, everyone knows that (such-and-such) is true”?   How did “everyone” come to know this fact, whatever it is?  Because they have heard it repeated so many times it must be true.  

I believe this is one way that false memories can be created as well, which brings us to . . .

16. Induce trance states and self-hypnosis by practicing thought-stopping rituals and repetitive acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, and chanting. Practice prolonged hours of meditation. In these trance states, they are more receptive and suggestible. Revert them back to childhood dependence and mindless obedience.

Jane didn’t use acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, or chanting, but she certainly used repetition.

Repetition is a powerful tool in how we learn new things.  (I’m 44 years old and can still remember my math teacher when I was a kid, pounding the chalk board rhythmically and saying, “Of means multiply” over and over when he was teaching us how to determine a percentage “of” something.)  How often do you find that you can recite lyrics from songs you haven’t heard in years, because you heard (and maybe sang) them so many times that they now remain easily accessible in  your memory?  (This applies to physical learning as well.  The importance of practice in sports is a good example.)  Repetition is the key in desensitization techniques for conquering fears.  Repetition is the reason Positive Affirmations work, and likewise, is the reason our negative thoughts about ourselves can become our accepted reality.

If my understanding of “thought stopping” is correct, it is based on repetition as well (telling oneself, “Stop” when recognizing unwanted thoughts).  I found that every time I expressed sadness at the hurt my family was feeling or how badly I missed them, Jane would respond with one (or a few) of a handful of standard responses, which I eventually began to hear in my own “voice” when missing my family.

Jane also went out of her way to make sure I remained sleep-deprived most of the time, which helped to create somewhat of a trance-like state at times.  (There will be more on sleep deprivation in a future post.)

15. Claim authority. It can come from a divine source, bogus scientific research, or special knowledge. Make up stories about yourself to boost your importance . . . Start slowly. A good con man takes a little bit of truth and a lot of lies and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant.

Jane was exceptionally intelligent.  She was also very well-read and able to command authority (until the later years, when her personality began to break down due to mental health problems).  She had an amazing ability to remember details from news articles and books she’d read many years before, and to link current information and news trends with those older stories.  What she hadn’t read or heard before, she could make up, almost seamlessly, and it seemed to fit.  She had written an article for a fringe lesbian-feminist publication some years before, when she was just a teenager, and often showed it proudly to others.  It was well written and well thought-out.  She’d also been mentioned in a very favorable light in a book one of her exes had written.  All these things did add to the impression of importance and authority she was able to convey.

The line about “a good con man” could have been written for her.  She often said things very much like this statement.  She used to give me pointers in how to lie.  (Such as, “Include lots of details”.)  The only thing she was unable to teach me when it came to lying was how to turn off my conscience.

Planned point to be covered in Part Three: # 7.

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