Brainwashing…

Margaret Singer.

[Updated April 6] In a comment to my former posting on “Emotional abuse…” I was tipped about a Margaret Singer and her 6 criterias for thought reform (my amateur translation from Swedish) I guess it was from the site "hjärntvätt" (brainwashing):

1. Keeping a person unknowing of what is going on and what is happening.
2. Controlling a person’s time and if possible its physical environment (milieu).
3. Creating a sense of powerlessness, secret fear and dependency.
4. Repressing a lot of the person’s old behaviours and attitude.
5. Infusing new behaviours and attitude.
6. Pushing a closed system of logic forward, not allowing critics.

The commentator wrote:

“Her description of brainwashing was very similar to what I suffered in a ‘normal’ psychotherapy (except milieu and time control)."

And it was like Singer describes it the child had it once and as many children still have it? Being obedient and keeping quiet? Not questioning or seeing through? As many of us had it more or less? So we are so used to it and thus have difficulties seeing this through?

Addition April 6: was tipped by a friend on Robert Jay Lifton’s "Theory of thought reform":

• Milieu Control (controlled relations with the outer world)
• Mystical Manipulation (the group has a higher purpose than the rest)
• Demand for Purity (pushing the individual towards a not-attainable perfection)
• Confession (confess past and present sins)
• Sacred Science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
• Loading the Language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-white thinking, thought-stoppers)
• Doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
• Dispensing of existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)

Also see "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton.

And all these things you ought to avoid in therapy. And these are things many children have experienced when they grew up, in their families, to different degrees?

Translated the points above would be something in the style:

• Kontroll av miljön (kontrollerade relationer med den yttre världen)
• Mystisk manipulation (gruppen har ett högre syfte än resten, dvs. resten av världen? Manipulation av upplevelser vilka verkar vara spontana, men är planerade och orkestrerade)
• Krav på renhet (man pushar individen mot en ouppnåelig perfektion, världen ses svart-vit och medlemmarna är konstant förmanade att rätta sig efter gruppens ideologi och strävan efter perfektion)
• Bekännelse (man bekänner forna och nutida synder. Synder, som de definieras av gruppen, ska bekännas antingen inför en personlig ordningsman eller offentligt till gruppen)
• Helig vetenskap (övertygelser om gruppen är okränkbara, heliga och perfekta. Gruppens doktrin och ideologi ses om den ultimata sanningen, bortom allt ifrågasättande eller varje dispyt)
• Laddande av språket (nya meningar på ord, uppmuntrande av ett svart-vitt tänkande, tankestoppare. Gruppen tolkar och använder ord och fraser på ett nytt sätt så att den yttre världen ofta inte förstår)
• Doktrin över person (gruppen är viktigare än individen. Medlemmens personliga erfarenheter är underordnade den heliga vetenskapen och varje motsatt erfarenhet måste förnekas eller tolkas på nytt för att passa gruppens ideologi)
• Fördelande av existens (insiders räddas, outsiders är dömda. Gruppen har privilegiet, förmånsrätten att bestämma vem som har rätten att existera och vilken som inte har det)

Detta låter som något som skulle kunna existera i familjen för ett både litet och betydligt större barn i större eller mindre grad? Och dylika saker borde undvikas i terapi, både i individuell som gruppterapi.

Emotional abuse...

I got this tip from a friend “You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart” (my italics):

“Emotional abuse of children can lead, in adulthood, to addiction, rage, a severely damaged sense of self and an inability to truly bond with others. But—if it happened to you—there is a way out./…/

Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event.

It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection.
Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot:

'You're fat. You're stupid. You're ugly.'

Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too often become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his teens, absently rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists.

'It was the only way to make them all happy,'

he said. His mother and father were locked in a bitter divorce battle, and each was demanding total loyalty and commitment from the child.

Emotional abuse can be active. Vicious belittling: '

You'll never be the success your brother was.'

Deliberate humiliation:

'You're so stupid. I'm ashamed you're my son.'

It also can be passive, the emotional equivalent of child neglect—a sin of omission, true, but one no less destructive.

And it may be a combination of the two, which increases the negative effects geometrically.

Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive, frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as physical assault. And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much longer. A parent's love is so important to a child that withholding it can cause a 'failure to thrive condition similar to that of children who have been denied adequate nutrition.

Even the natural solace of siblings is denied to those victims of emotional abuse who have been designated as the family's 'target child. [scapegoat in the family] The other children are quick to imitate their parents. Instead of learning the qualities every child will need as an adult—empathy, nurturing and protectiveness—they learn the viciousness of a pecking order. And so the cycle continues.

But whether as a deliberate target or an innocent bystander, the emotionally abused child inevitably struggles to 'explain' the conduct of his abusers—and ends up struggling for survival in a quicksand of self-blame.

Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh disclosures of unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain and torment of those who experience 'only' emotional abuse is often trivialized. We understand and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. But when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the victims will 'just get over it' when they become adults.

That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated.

When it comes to damage, there is no real difference between physical, sexual and emotional abuse. All that distinguishes one from the other is the abuser's choice of weapons. I remember a woman, a grandmother whose abusers had long since died, telling me that time had not conquered her pain.

'It wasn't just the incest,'

she said quietly.

'It was that he didn't love me. If he loved me, he couldn't have done that to me.'

But emotional abuse is unique because it is designed to make the victim feel guilty.

Emotional abuse is repetitive and eventually cumulative behavior—very easy to imitate—and some victims later perpetuate the cycle with their own children.

Although most victims courageously reject that response, their lives often are marked by a deep, pervasive sadness, a severely damaged self-concept and an inability to truly engage and bond with others."

See this posting (in Swedish) "Våld mot kvinnor är våld mot kvinnor är våld mot kvinnor."

Also read about the psychiatrist and psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton and his research on cults.