Hello All,

I 've just started reading the book, Soul Snatchers: The Mechanics of Cults by Jean-Marie Abgrall. I'm not far into the book yet, but the author makes some observations that I didn't think of before. He's a psychiatrist and a professional criminologist. I used to say here that being in a cult was not the same as addiction but he disagrees with my thinking about it, and what he says makes a lot of sense.

I like to take all points of view into account as I learn more about all of this cult business in order to better understand my own involvement and how mental manipulation or mind control takes place.

Here's what Abgrall says about coercive cults:

Drug addiction and cult membership are strikingly in their similarities. As a drug addict is dependent on legal or illegal drugs, the follower is dependent upon a system of thought propagated by the sect. Drug addition is defined by WHO [World Health Organization] as having three components: habitual use, dependence, and ever-increasing doses.

Addiction is defined as the habitual consumption of a product. In the case of the [cult] initiate, there is a progressive use of rituals and a way of using language that gradually become habit-forming. As with drugs, the teachings of the sect are administered bit-by-bit so that the initiate does not become overwhelmed and reject if (cf. "overdosing" which, in the context, would refer to a sudden awareness of the risks being taken). Each state in assimilating the doctrines corresponds to a step towards dependence, when the natural defenses will be submerged under the parasitic thought processes.

Dependence, the second state in the process of submission, consists in the progressive deconstruction of the subject�s usual frame of reference. This allows for a substitute set of norms to be suggested that will set the subject apart from his former environment. The loss of his frame of reference creates a painful existential void that begs to be filled � that is, it impels the initiate to come up with a new model for behavior. Coincidentally, sporadic interruptions from the teaching or temporarily being apart from the new social group made up by these initiates is depressing, due to the lack of something that has become valuable; this feeling transforms itself into a real psychological need in the rebel disciple.

The dependence is twofold: First there is ideological dependence, subjection to the cult�s thought then there is sociological dependence, stemming from the membership in new groups, which becomes a protective refuge, a substitute family where complicity takes over, unifying the disciples while cutting them off from society even more. Here you can see a very real similarity to groups of drug-users.

The third phase is the progressive increase in the constraints applied and the submission that results, with no chance of exit. At this stage the initiate is dependent on the cult, cut off from society at large, and psychologically and physically bound by obligations that deprive him of his free will and of all social and economic freedom. This process is in every respect parallel to that of addiction and drug dependency; in the same way, it leads to the complete subjection of the individual. However, while selling narcotics is illegal, as of today no law prohibits propagating such ideologies (except for Nazism, anti-Semitism and racism).

Copyright 2000 Algora Publishing, Jean-Marie Abgrall