METHODOLOGICAL FALLACIES IN ANTHONY’S

CRITIQUE OF EXIT COST ANALYSIS

Benjamin Zablocki

Rutgers University

Preface: The reader should be warned that this long paper was boring to write and is probably even more boring to read. The bulk of it consists of a point-by-point refutation of Dick Anthony’s long rambling critique of my theoretical work. Many of my colleagues have advised me that Anthony’s critique does not deserve serious scholarly consideration. I tend to agree with them. But, since Anthony’s chapter in Misunderstanding Cults appears immediately following mine, and since I am one of the editors of Misunderstanding Cults, I felt that issues he raises needed to be dealt with. This was easy enough to do because Anthony, although an accomplished scholar on his own turf, is completely out of his element trying to critique the work of a social psychologist. I do not expect many scholars to be interested in reading this defense in full. I have published it on the web so that any who doubt that Anthony’s criticisms of my theory are specious may have public access to my rebuttal to see for themselves. Feel free to download this document and to use it freely if you find it useful.

Brainwashing has been by far the most controversial topic among scholars studying new religious movements. It is not my purpose here today to convince you that brainwashing happens in New Religious Movements but merely that there exists a theory that we can use to determine empirically whether or not it does.

In a recent book, called Misunderstanding Cults, I attempted to lay out such a clearly stated, well-formed, empirically testable, and epistemologically falsifiable sociological theory that would locate the concept within the field of social psychology as an ordinary (albeit extremely powerful) process of social influence. Dick Anthony replied, in the same book, with a massive 103 page critique of this effort arguing that I had failed miserably in this attempt. He argued that what I thought of as my little theory was not merely empirically false but bogus science as well. That is, it was not really a theory at all, but a bunch of double-talk masquerading as a theory.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the validity of Anthony’s critique. My method of evaluation has been to identify all of the propositional statements in Anthony’s chapter and to determine which if any of them constitute valid scholarly criticisms of my theory as I stated it. After isolating only those propositions that meet the test of credibility, it should then be possible to determine whether these propositions constitute a complete refutation of my theory, a partial refutation, or no refutation at all.

Before beginning, I need to set out three ground rules. First, I am limiting the discussion to the social process that I have (wisely or unwisely) labeled brainwashing. Even if you hate the word or if it conjures up images for you that are far different from those that I delineate in my theory, the norms of scholarly discourse require that you allow me to distinguish the term from the substance and to concentrate here on defending the substance of my theory. Of course, you will still then be free to reject my theory if you choose, even if am able to successfully defend the substance of its argument, on the grounds that the word that I chose to label the central concept is bad, misleading, or stupid. And, if you do so, that contention may form the basis of an entirely separate debate.

Second, a clear distinction must be made between descriptive theories that identify a social process that occurs on the one hand and explanatory theories that explain why the process has the consequences associated with it, on the other. Both sorts of theories are valuable in scientific enterprise. For example, in physics, the theory of gravity is purely a descriptive theory. The theory of electricity started out as a descriptive theory but eventually evolved, becoming an explanatory theory as well. The only claims that I make for my theory of brainwashing are that it describes a real social process (whose existence has been disputed) and the behavioral consequences of that process to the individuals who are targeted by it. While I do speculate in several of my publications about the reasons that what I call brainwashing might have the effects that it does, I make no theoretical claims for these speculations, calling them instead ‘conjectures,’ which is all that they are at this point. This is an important distinction to make because Anthony is not clear about it and, therefore, sometimes goes astray by muddling together my descriptive arguments with my explanatory speculations. Sometimes it even seems as if the heart and soul of Anthony’s argument with me lies in a mistaken assumption that I am trying to explain why brainwashing has the effects it does rather than simply providing an empirically practical observational schema that can be used to determine, in any particular setting, if such a social influence mechanism exists.

Third, a clear and sharp distinction needs to be made between the validity of a theory and the amount of evidence that supports the theory. Some perfectly good theories describe phenomena that occur rarely in nature. I believe that others as well as myself have gathered evidence that brainwashing occurs in the social world often enough to make the phenomenon worthwhile to study. But it only breeds methodological confusion to confound discussions of a theory arguing the possible existence of a phenomenon with empirical discussions of the prevalence of that phenomenon in the real world. My concern here is exclusively with the former. The latter (which is also dealt with in a later portion of my chapter in Misunderstanding Cults) could be a topic for another debate.

Let us turn now to Anthony’s arguments. Although his prose tends to be rambling and repetitive, I was able to isolate 98 discrete propositions that Anthony makes concerning my theory. Although I ransacked his chapter carefully searching for statements in propositional form, it is always possible that I missed a few. If Anthony or anyone else is able to point out additional overlooked propositions, I will, of course, be obliged to deal with them. But, for now, I ask you to provisionally accept my statement that these 98 propositions constitute an exhaustive list of Anthony’s arguments.

Ninety-Eight is an awful lot of propositions to deal with. When I first saw the length of Anthony’s chapter, I have to admit I was taken aback. With so many points, it would seem that at least a few of them were bound to have struck their target. But then I was reminded of the famous story of the little boy who asked his parents for a pony for Christmas. Christmas day arrived, the presents were all unwrapped, but no pony. A while later, mom and dad noticed that the boy was not in the house. They went to look for him and found him in the barn, thrashing wildly around in a big pile of manure. They quickly pulled him out and asked him, “What in the world were you doing?” He replied, “Well, gosh, with all that manure I figured there was sure to be a pony in there somewhere.” Unlike the little boy, I decided to examine each proposition individually before concluding that there must be a pony among them.

TABLE 1 DISTRIBUTION OF ANTHONY’S PROPOSITIONS ON EACH LOGICALLY

POSSIBLE COMBINATION OF TESTS

DISPUTATIONAL FORM

RELEVANT TO THE STATED THEORY

FACTUALLY OR LOGICALLY CORRECT

FREQUENCY COUNT

Yes

TOTAL

An examination of table 1 shows that some of Anthony’s disputational propositions are indeed relevant and that some are indeed correct. But, unfortunately for Anthony, none of those that are relevant are correct and none of those that are correct are relevant. This refutation of all of Anthony’s 98 propositions, if it holds up to scrutiny, constitutes a definitive refutation of his entire argument. I grant him that, as gestalt and holistic philosophers have taught us, the whole may sometimes be greater than the sum of its parts. But when the parts add up to zero, it has to be acknowledged that any gestalt multiplier times zero still equals zero.

What I have demonstrated here is not that my theory is necessarily correct but only that Anthony has not succeeded in debunking it or even making a dent in it. Before discussing each of Anthony’s propositions in turn, let me mention a few of the more representative fallacies among Anthony’s propositions.

I’ll focus on three methodological errors that appear as persistent themes across numerous of Anthony’s propositions:

1. Inexact Translation Across Paradigms:

2. Incorrect Mapping to a Philosophical Indeterminacy (Free Will)

3. Inappropriate Application of Legal Standards to a Scientific Argument

Translation Across Paradigms

We social scientist work in a multi-pardigmatic discipline. Critical analysis across paradigmatic boundaries is possible only to the extent that the critic is well-versed not only in his own paradigm but in the paradigm utilized by the work he is criticizing.

I work within a traditional social psychological paradigm and use concepts in the standard way in which they are used in social psychology. Anthony works within a humanistic-psychoanalytic paradigm which uses some of the same concepts in different way and also uses many concepts that are not found in social psychology. Anthony is welcome to his paradigm in his own work. But when he chooses to criticize the work of a social psychologist, he will only make his attack appear ridiculous if he doesn’t first acquaint himself with the vocabulary and assumptions prevalent in that discipline. Unless, of course, his goal is to attack the entire field of social psychology and its paradigm.

I’ll give just one example here of how Anthony veers off track in his criticism by not understanding how social psychologists construct theories of influence. It’s standard practice in social psychology to describe mechanisms of how influence is hypothesized to flow from a target to a source. The elaboration likelihood model and the encoder-decoder model are just two examples of these sorts of theories. Such theories do not discuss individual differences in attitude or motivation that targets bring to the influence situation. This is not because we are not interested in individual variation but rather because we wish to use our theories, once established, to study such individual variation. For example, the well-known Asch effect in social psychology is a mechanism describing how individuals are pressured to conform to group norms. It says nothing about individual differences. But the Asch effect has been used in many studies to identify the characteristics of individuals who are immune to pressures to conform. A number of Anthony’s criticisms of my model are complaints that I do not consider individual differences in pre-motivations to belong to cults. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I develop a model of charismatic influence within cults that does not account for individual influences precisely in order to enable studies to be constructed that may allow us to discover how the pre-motivations of individuals cause them to react differently to the same influence process. Anthony does not seem to understand this but instead draws erroneous conclusions from the assumption that I am working within the same person-centered (rather than mechanism centered) paradigm that his is working within.

Mapping to a Philosophical Indeterminacy

There is one error that Anthony makes so persistently that it runs through fully one third of all his 98 propositions. This is the error of assuming that my theory asserts that the influence mechanism I am describing involves the destruction of the target’s free-will. He calls this “the involuntarism hypothesis” and it is the cornerstone of much of his criticism of what he considers the bogus nature of my attempts to theorize about social influence. In practice, since the words voluntary, involuntary, voluntarism, or involuntarism appear nowhere in my writing on this subject, Anthony argues instead that I somehow sneak this hypothesis in the back door through a process that he calls “tactical ambiguity.”

It is true that various anticult writers, drawn mostly from the ranks of mental health professionals rather than social sciences, have alleged that cults take away the free will of their members, not realizing– or not caring– that the overthrow of free will is an unfalsifiable (and therefore unscientific) phenomenon. It is also true that Anthony has been successful in the past in exposing the non-scientific nature of these cultic-loss-of-free-will arguments. He senses correctly that if he could only map an isomorphism between my theory and theirs, his work would be mostly done and he could tar me with the same brush he has used successfully in the past on these hapless clinicians (of which Margaret Singer is the most notorious example).

The interested reader will have to examine the 32 Anthony propositions falling into this free will category one-by-one to satisfy herself that none have succeeded in building this isomorphism. Here, I will briefly mention one rather silly argument that Anthony relies on heavily– his misconstrual of my use of the word “free.” I use the term in the economic sense to refer to the absence of structural costs imposed on an individual by society. Virtually all of sociology accepts as axiomatic that social systems impose costs on individual action and thereby constrain this action. Anthony does not seem to grasp that one can discuss socially imposed constraints without declaring the overthrow of free will.

Legal Standards and Scientific Standards

The last of Anthony’s errors that I wish to discuss briefly is his imposition of courtroom standards on scientific discourse. In legal matters, one frequently cites one’s “authorities” meaning the research experts that one is relying on for one’s testimony. Anthony keeps on trying to identify my “authorities,” never realizing that I rely on only three: my eyes, my ears, and my nose. I do my own research and my theories, for better or worse, are arrived at inductively from my own observations. But Anthony will have none of this and instead scours my citations and references under the erroneous (and sometimes ludicrous) assumption that he is justified in treating any non-negative citations in my writing as my “authorities” and, therefore, any criticism of the work of these supposed “authorities” as a successful attack on my own work. For example, Anthony finds that I include in my long list of references, one or two in which Margaret Singer (the writer whom he most loves to hate) listed among them, acknowledging her prior work on some topic or other quite peripheral to my argument. But, to Anthony, her very presence among the S’s in my list of references constitutes a fatal ‘gotchya,’ proving that Margaret Singer must be one of my authorities and any discredit to her work successfully undermines my own. This, of course, is absurd and quite contrary to the norms of scholarly bibliography that encourage scholars to be as inclusive as possible in their reference citations.

Conclusion

I have indicated only the three most common of the errors committed by Dick Anthony in attempting to debunk my work. If my reasoning is correct, it follows that my contention that the theory I have developed (which I include in the appendix to this paper for your consideration) has successfully survived Anthony’s attempt to debunk it. At the very minimum, any attempt to revive Anthony’s critique will require that at least one of his 98 propositions be successfully defended.

A DISCUSSION OF ALL 98 PROPOSITIONS VERSUS ZABLOCKI CONTAINED IN: CHAPTER SIX: TACTICAL AMBIGUITY AND BRAINWASHING FORMULATIONS:

SCIENCE OR PSEUDO‑SCIENCE? By DICK ANTHONY

INTRODUCTION: ZABLOCKI’S BRAINWASHING FORMULATION

Proposition 1. (Page 215 ) Zablocki’s recent brainwashing articles do not report concrete research but rather attempt to clarify the conceptual outline of the brainwashing idea and to defend its authentically scientific character.

____disputational ____relevant ____correct

In fact, many of my books and papers report results of concrete research. In the chapter in Misunderstanding Cults in which I outline my theory, I report on the research that supports the theory on pages 194-204. However, whether or not I can point to research supporting my theory is irrelevant to the scientific validity of the theory itself.

Proposition 2. (Page 215) I will also focus upon older publications by Zablocki (Zablocki, 1971, 1980), as well as publications by Margaret Singer and Richard Ofshe (Ofshe, 1992; Ofshe and Singer, 1986; Singer, 1995; Mitchell, Mitchell, and Ofshe, 1980) and by Steven Kent (1997), all of which Zablocki claim to be cultic brainwashing publications which provide the empirical foundation for his more recent articles.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

The reasoning here is that, if Anthony can link my theory to theories presented by any of the scholars whose works I cite in my bibliography, he will have an easier time debunking me. All he will need to do is debunk the work of any of the people I cite in my bibliography and I will be tarnished through guilt by association. The rhetorical device he uses is to speak of my cites as AUTHORITIES, a term used in legal briefs and articles. He doesn’t seem to understand that, in academia, scholars have many reasons for citing prior works and that citation does not imply that these works are the “FOUNDATIONS” for my own, another legal term that Anthony is fond of using inappropriately in trying to establish guilt by association. In particular, the fact that I cite Margaret Singer doesn’t make Margaret Singer’s theory the foundation of my own. Therefore, it’s not justifiable to trot out his earlier successful arguments debunking Singer and claiming that they must apply to all those who cite Singer as well.

Proposition 3. (Page 215) In addition, Zablocki claims that his recent brainwashing articles are based upon the empirical foundation provided by research on Communist thought reform published in books by Edgar Schein (1961) and Robert Lifton (1961).

__X__disputational __X__relevant ____correct

Proposition 4. (Page 215) Zablocki claims that brainwashing is a valid scientific concept that has been supported by considerable research both upon Communist coercive persuasion and upon coercive influence tactics in new religions or cults. (1997, 104‑107).

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

I point to homologies between my findings in cults and the findings of Lifton and Schein in prison situations. My theory would stand alone, even if Lifton and Schein had never done their research. But it’s my duty to cite their work both because of its brilliant pioneering nature and also because homologies in influence mechanisms that can be observed between settings that are as different as religious movements and prison re-education centers are interesting and intriguing.

Proposition 5. (Page 216) According to Zablocki the primary ideologically motivated misinterpretation of the scientific brainwashing concept is that it has to do with illicit recruitment mechanisms when it is really a concept concerning influence processes which bring about addictive commitments to world views to which the targets of brainwashing have already been converted prior to their being brainwashed.

____disputational ____relevant __X__correct

Here we come to the first correct proposition in Anthony’s chapter. However, it is merely a correct description of something I have observed. It is not in disputational form and it is not relevant to the question of whether my theory is a valid one.

Proposition 6. (Page 217) a primary burden of his approach would seem to be that he make good on his claim that his interpretation of this foundational literature of the brainwashing concept, i.e. Lifton’s and Schein’s 1961 books, is different in kind from the epistemologically spurious version used in legal trials.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

This proposition is relevant only in the sense that it would certainly be relevant to his debunking attempt if he could show that my theory is no different from an epistemologically spurious theory. However, what we have here is an example of burden shifting. He is trying to establish that the burden of proof is on me to show that my theory is different from Margaret Singer’s theory. In fact, the burden is properly on him to show that these theories are identical. If and only if he can show this in one of his other propositions, would this non-disputational proposition have a bite.

EVALUATION OF ZABLOCKI’S FORMULATION

** Proposition 7. (Page 218) All brainwashing formulations claim to provide criteria for identifying social influence that results in involuntary conduct from social influence that does not result in involuntary conduct.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

Here we come to the first statement of the heart of Anthony’s debunking argument. He puts almost all of his chips on the hope that he can saddle my theory with what he calls the “involuntarism assumption.” The implied argument has the structure of a well-formed syllogism: All brainwashing formulations posit involuntarism. Involuntarism posits the overthrow of free-will. Statements positing the overthrow of free-will are bogus. Zablocki’s theory is a brainwashing formulation. Therefore Zablocki’s theory must posit the overthrow of free-will. Therefore Zablocki’s theory is bogus. Unfortunately for Anthony, even well-formed syllogisms are correct only if their presumptions are correct and Anthony’s initial presumption is wrong.

Proposition 8. (Page 218) In addition authors of brainwashing formulations claim that research upon Chinese and North Korean Communist coercive indoctrination practices around the time of the Korean War provides the primary theoretical foundation for their theories of involuntary cultic commitment.

____disputational ____relevant ____correct

Maybe yes or maybe no. But I have never made such a claim.

CIA RESEARCH ON BRAINWASHING

Proposition 9. (Page 219) the core idea of brainwashing formulations is that world views can be transformed to their polar opposites through techniques that create disorientation and hyper suggestibility followed by intensive indoctrination.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

It may be that world views can be so transformed but it’s not an argument made by my theory. An examination of my theory will show that it talks of the inculcation of obedience and attachment by some (but not all) of the techniques mentioned in Proposition 9.

Proposition 10. (Page 220) The basic model that was being explored [by the CIA] consisted of two stages: 1) a “deconditioning stage” intended to wipe out previous ideological loyalties through the imposition of a disoriented, hyper suggestible, state of consciousness; 2) a “conditioning stage” intended to implant new loyalties and a new self through specialized conditioning procedures based upon behaviorist psychology

____disputational __X__relevant __X__correct

This is a brief but correct summary of the CIA program. It is relevant to my theory only in that the theory I present also involves a deconditioning stage and a reconditioning stage. Anthony is trying to establish grounds for his later assertion that my theory and the CIA theory are identical. He fails to do so because all influence models that posit a deconditioning stage and a reconditioning stage are not identical. An examination of the particulars in his description of CIA deconditioning and reconditioning shows that they do not match up with the particulars of these stages in my theory (see Appendix). In any case, since this particular proposition is not disputational but merely descriptive of the CIA model, it does not invalidate my theory.

Proposition 11. (Page 220) in terms of their original goals of improving interrogation and coercive indoctrination tactics beyond that obtainable with physical coercion or other traditional methods, [the government programs] were complete failures. Neither the German nor the American program ever learned how to change people's minds about their political orientations much less turn them into so‑called “deployable agents.”

__X__disputational ____relevant __X__correct

Here Anthony correctly disputes the validity of the CIA model. However, that model is not relevant to my model. This can be seen by the failure of Anthony to establish equivalence between the two with any of his other propositions. It can also be seen by direct comparison between the two models. The CIA model attempts to take ordinary people and, using operant conditioning techniques, change their ideologies and make them deployable. The model I have outlined concerns attempts to take already committed members of a religious movement and, using techniques of charismatic persuasion and group pressures to conform, change them from agents to deployable agents. Nothing about the failure of the CIA model is necessarily applicable to the cult brainwashing model.

CULTIC‑BRAINWASHING FORMULATIONS: HISTORY

Proposition 12 (Page 221) . . . .cultic brainwashing formulations are . . . actually based upon the discredited CIA brainwashing model while they claim to be based upon generally accepted research [by Lifton and Schein] upon Korean War era Communist indoctrination practices,

__X__disputational __X__relevant ____correct

The model I have developed depends neither on the CIA failures nor upon the successful explanations of Lifton and Schein. It stands or falls on its own merits and is a useful theory only to the extent that it helps us understand charismatic persuasion in cults. I say this because Anthony’s repeated attempts to locate what he calls my “authorities” in twentieth century research is on the wrong track and confusing. This does not diminish the considerable intellectual debt to Robert Jay Lifton that I acknowledge in my writings. But there are no ‘authorities’ lurking in my model waiting to be discovered. There are only intellectual influences of varying degrees of importance.

Proposition 13. (Page 222) the core proposition of cultic brainwashing theory is that brainwashing consists of the use of techniques which place its victims into a disoriented state of consciousness in which their normal capacity to rationally evaluate social influence has been suspended, and consequently in which they have become hyper suggestible and therefore unable to resist propaganda advocating alternative totalitarian world views.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

This non-disputational statement simply tries to describe the core proposition of my theory in a way that can later be used to invalidate it. It’s a mixture of correct and incorrect statements that require some care to be disentangled. Although the theory does discuss attempts to disorient the influence target, this is only an intermediate step of the process. The key term in Anthony’s description of what he believes is the core proposition is the phrase “unable to resist.” If he can establish this, he can later charge the theory with proposing the overthrow of free will and therefore demonstrate that the theory is unscientific. But even a cursory examination of the theory as written shows that it nowhere argues that the target ever becomes unable to resist propaganda. Furthermore, the theory says nothing about totalitarian world views but is concerned instead with susceptibility to charismatic influence.

Proposition 14. (Page 222) In addition, brainwashing formulations contend:

14a) that such influence occurs without pre‑existing motives or character traits which predispose those who are influenced to respond positively to the new world views;

14b) that once converted to the new world view, a brainwashed convert has difficulty repudiating it, so that in effect the new world view has become a sort of addiction;

14c) that such brainwashed conversion and commitment to new world views overwhelms the free will of its victims without the use of physical coercion.

____disputational __X__relevant __part b only__correct

In this proposition, Anthony describes three hypotheses that he believes to be a parts of my theory. This proposition is not disputational but, if Anthony can establish its validity, he believes that he can use it in other disputational propositions. Let us consider these three hypotheses one by one:

14a. My theory makes no prejudgement one way or another about pre-existing motives or character traits. It is concerned with an influence mechanism used on target persons who are already members of voluntary charismatic movements. Presumably most, if not all, of these individuals will have joined and stayed because of some pre-existing motives or character traits. The absence of discussion of these motives or traits in my theory indicates only that their relevance is something to be discovered by empirical research. It may turn out that the strength of pre-existing motives or traits is correlated with the likelihood that the brainwashing process will be successful. Or it may turn out that there is no such correlation. Either finding is compatible with the theory as written.

14b. This is the one element of this proposition that is semi-correct as well as being relevant. I say semi-correct because it the charismatic obedience and attachment to the group that have become addictive, not what Anthony calls “the new world view.” But the charge that I say brainwashing as producing a kind of addictive dependency is correct. Addictive dependencies are hard but not impossible to resist. My understanding of addiction apparently differs from Anthony’s. Where he sees an addict as one whose free will has been overthrown, I see addictions as only a strong form of the obsessive-compulsive habits that we all experience in our lives to some degree and which sometimes require a good deal of conscious effort to resist.

14c. This is more of Anthony’s fabrication of a free will hypothesis. At the risk of being just a tad repetitive, I must again reiterate that nowhere in my theory is anything said or implied about free will. I don’t consider free will to be a scientific concept. It’s not something that I’ve ever thought about in connection with brainwashing.

TACTICAL AMBIGUITY.

Proposition 15. (Page 223) Cultic brainwashing formulations are stated in a fashion that is essentially ambiguous and which thus tends to render them immune to empirical evaluation. . . . Among the forms such ambiguity takes in cultic brainwashing formulations are the following:

15a) internal contradictions;

15b) unfalsifiable identifying characteristics for key variables and predictions;

15c) connotative rather than denotative use of language, i.e. the use of emotionally charged buzz words rather than precisely defined terminology which is capable of being operationalized.

__X__disputational __X__relevant ____correct

None of these charges is correct.

15a. To establish this, he would have to show at least one example of one of the twelve hypotheses in my theory contradicting another. This he has not done.

15b. This statement is meaningless as written. Neither variables nor predictions are, by definition, falsifiable. Falsifiability is a characteristic of theories and hypotheses. In fact, one of the criteria of a falsifiable theory is precisely its ability to make verifiable predictions. But let us give Anthony maximum benefit of the doubt and assume that he was trying to say in 15b: variables that are not operationally defined and hypotheses that do not lead to verifiable predictions. But each of the eight variables in my theory has been given an operational definition. So the problem, if there is one, must lie with the hypotheses. For Anthony to establish his charge, he must show at least one example of a hypothesis in my theory that does not lead to verifiable predictions. This he has failed to do. Each of the twelve hypotheses in the theory makes predictions that are in principle verifiable.

15c. Even a brief examination of the definitional part of the theory will show this assertion to be incorrect. Each of the concepts used in the theory has an operational definition.

Proposition 16. (Page 224) their artful ambiguity may tend to conceal their pseudo‑scientific character to non‑specialists who review them in a variety of contexts.

__X__disputational ____relevant ____correct

This proposition, of course, is pure opinion.

Proposition 17. (Page 224) The most glaring source of ambiguity in cultic brainwashing formulations develops from their attempt to simultaneously affirm the [CIA] brainwashing argument and also to affirm the [Lifton, Schein] research on Communist coercive persuasion which flatly contradicts it with respect to a number of core issues, e.g. the presence or absence of predisposing motives, involuntary vs. voluntary influence, defective cognition vs. full cognitive capacity, and so on. As I have documented elsewhere, (Anthony, 1990; Anthony and Robbins, 1995a; Anthony, 1996), Margaret Singer and Richard Ofshe, who were until recently the most influential exponents of cultic brainwashing theory, switch back and forth between the two traditions as the tactical requirements of particular contexts demand.

__X__disputational ____relevant ____correct

This proposition is not relevant because there is nothing in my theory that attempts to affirm either the CIA argument or the Lifton-Schein argument. It rests on its own merits although I do find interesting homologies between my findings in cults and Lifton’s findings about Chinese Communist thought reform. These homologies strengthen my own confidence in the value of the theory but they are irrelevant to the question of whether the theory is well formulated. Of the three examples that Anthony gives, the first two are arguments that I have shown above to be incorrect. Regarding the third, Anthony seems unwilling to accept that the brainwashing process, as I have outlined it, produces cognitive confusion while the process is going on but leads to the restoration of full cognitive capacity as an end result. This is identical to Schein’s finding and is outlined more fully on pages 177-179 of Misunderstanding Cults.

THIRD STAGE BRAINWASHING FORMULATIONS

Proposition 18. (Page 225) Such supplementary scientific foundations . . . include putative research on hypnosis, addiction, the psychoanalytic transference concept, charisma, the attitude‑change literature, disorientation, male chauvinism/ gender bias, and so on. As the reader of Zablocki’s articles may recognize, his approach includes several of such supplementary foundations for allegations of involuntary world view transformation, i.e. addiction, transference, hypnosis, disorientation.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

There is absolutely no allegation of transference or hypnosis in my theory. I have no idea where Anthony gets these ideas. Disorientation is discussed as a relatively minor result of the traumatization of the target individual that takes place during the intermediate stages of brainwashing. Of the “supplementary foundations” that Anthony mentions, only one, addiction, is a part of my theory. As I discuss in my comments on Proposition 14, above, I do not consider addiction to be a foundation for allegations of involuntary world view transformation and neither does anybody else working in the addiction field. There are no addiction scientists that I know of who believe that addiction robs one of free will (nor do they believe that this is even a meaningful scientific statement). Although addictions can be overcome, many of them require a tremendous effort to resist. The literature on non-chemical addictions (such as addictions to gambling or sexual promiscuity) is still controversial at this point but there is no doubt that such topics

ZABLOCKI’S THIRD STAGE BRAINWASHING FORMULATION: DISORIENTATION, DEFECTIVE THOUGHT, SUGGESTIBILITY AND THE FALSE SELF

Proposition 19. (Page 226f ) The following are the individual elements or hypotheses within Zablocki’s definition

19a) Absence of Pre‑motives: People who join new religions cults are not seeking alternatives to mainstream world views prior to their membership in the new group.

19b) Disorientation: New religions or cults induce irrational altered states of consciousness as the core technique in seducing people into giving up their existing world view. (Zablocki refers to this primitive state of consciousness as disorientation; other brainwashing theorists have referred to it as hypnosis, dissociation, trance, etc. but there is no meaningful distinction between these various terms for primitive consciousness as they are used by brainwashing theorists, i.e. they are functional synonyms within the brainwashing world view.)

19c) Defective Cognition: In the disoriented state essential to brainwashing the person has a significantly reduced cognitive capacity to evaluate the truth or falsity of world views with which he or she is confronted.

19d) Suggestibility: As a result of externally induced disorientation and defective cognitive capacity, the victim of brainwashing is highly “suggestible,” i.e. prone to accept as her/his own ideas and world views which are recommended to him or her by the person or organization that has induced the defective cognitive state.

19e) Coercive or involuntary imposition of a defective or false world view. The above sequence of criteria of brainwashing results in the involuntary imposition of a defective or false world view which anyone in a rational state of mind would have rejected.

19f) Coercive imposition of a false self. As a result of the brainwashing process, the person manifests a pseudo‑identity or shadow self which has been involuntarily imposed upon him/her by brainwashing.

19g) Deployable agency. The involuntarily imposed false self and defective world view persist after the brainwashing process has been completed and as a result the brainwashed person retains his commitment to the new self and world view even when he or she is not in direct contact with the group doing the brainwashing.

19h) Exit Costs: It is extremely difficult for the person to later repudiate his new world view and false self‑conception because he no longer has the capacity to rationally evaluate these choices.

____disputational __X__relevant ____correct

There is nothing new in this proposition, nor does Anthony intend there to be. This is simply a summary of what Anthony believes are the hypotheses he has discovered within my theory. It is a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. For example, (19f) is completely incorrect. There is no coercion involved and the notion of a “false self” is meaningless within the paradigm of mainstream social psychology within which I work. After G.H. Mead, most social psychologists regard self as a process (in continuous interaction with the social and non-social environment) rather than a structure that can be imposed– coercively or not. The self at the end of the brainwashing process is just what it is. It is neither truer nor “falser” than the self at the beginning of the persuasion process, nor are these even meaningful adjectives in this context. Most of the other hypotheses as stated by Anthony are either completely or partly false. Even a cursory comparison of this list with the twelve hypotheses on page 185-193 of Misunderstanding Cults will confirm this. However, (19g) would be correct if the terms “involuntary,” “false,” and “defective” were removed from the sentence.

Proposition 20. (Page 227) All of these hypotheses were aspects of the original, generally discredited CIA brainwashing model which Zablocki claims to be replacing with his “new approach.”

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This is an instance of the false equivalency fallacy that runs through many of Anthony’s propositions. Anthony is correct in perceiving that, if only he can establish an equivalence between my theory and a theory that has already been discredited, his debunking job will be much easier. By invoking a simple train of logical reasoning that says: If A = B, and B is false, then A must be false, he will have accomplished his goal. Anthony has demonstrated in other writing that B (the CIA model) is false. But, as we have already seen, his attempt to establish that my theory is equivalent to the CIA model has failed.

Proposition 21 (Page 227) . . . . he asserts that disorientation and a suspension of critical rationality are essential to the brainwashing process. He states:

The core hypothesis is that, under certain circumstances, an individual can be subject to persuasive influences so overwhelming that they actually restructure one’s core beliefs and world view and profoundly modify one’s self‑conception. The sort of persuasion posited by the brainwashing conjecture is aimed at somewhat different goals than the sort of persuasion practiced by bullies or by salesman and teachers. . . . The more radical sort of persuasion posited by the brainwashing conjecture utilizes extreme stress and disorientation along with ideological enticement to create a conversion experience that persists for some time after the stress and pressure have been removed. . . .To be considered brainwashing this process must result in (a) effects that persist for a significant amount of time after the orchestrated manipulative stimuli are removed and (b) an accompanying dread of disaffiliation which makes it extremely difficult for the subject to even contemplate life apart from the group.

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This non-disputational proposition is composed mainly of a segment that Anthony correctly quotes from an earlier (1997) article. Although correct, the citation out of context is misleading. I make it clear in that earlier article that I was exploring various unproven conjectures for explaining why brainwashing works. Although I stand by this earlier conjectural quotation, it is not part of my scientific argument. Anthony’s quotations from my writings range over thirty years but he presents them– misleadingly– as though all are part of a single current scientific attempt to formulate a falsifiable theory.

Proposition 22. (Page 228) The “profoundly modified self” referred to by Zablocki in the above quote as characteristic of brainwashing is essentially the same as the false self or “pseudo‑identity” which Singer, (1995, 60, 61, 77‑79), West and Martin (1994) and other brainwashing theorists regard as an essential aspect of brainwashing.

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Sez who? We have another instance of the false equivalency fallacy cropping up here. Only now B = the theories of Singer, West, and Martin, none of whom are social psychologists. Anthony has not done any of the difficult work of establishing an equivalency between my theory and those of these three scholars. Without doing this work, he has no right to simply assert that my theory is equivalent to theirs. [Additionally, the “profoundly modified self” that Anthony quotes me as discussing has no place in my theory but only in earlier conjectural work in which I speculate about the question of “why” brainwashing may work the way it does.

Proposition 23. (Page 228) The new identity is viewed as false because it is allegedly imposed wholly by extrinsic influence and thus is seen as discontinuous with the pre‑existing values and self‑conception of the person, that is, as being “ego‑dystonic” to use Zablocki’s appropriation of psychoanalytic terminology. (Within psychoanalysis the term “ego‑dystonic” refers to distortions of rational thought processes, such as delusions, hallucinations, obsessive thoughts, or compulsive behaviours, produced by eruptions of primitive unconscious materials into consciousness.)

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There are two separate problems with this proposition. The first is that gets the definition of “ego dystonic” wrong. According to the American Psychiatric Glossary (seventh edition) 1994, American Psychiatric Press, the term “ego dystonic” refers to “aspects of a person’s behavior, thoughts, or attitudes that are viewed by the self as repugnant or inconsistent with the total personality.” There is no assumption that these involve delusions, hallucinations, or any of the other disorders Anthony suggests. Secondly, the first sentence in the proposition is wrong because it is based on the erroneous assumption that the brainwashed person’s new identity is viewed as false either by the subject or by the observer. No such value judgements are made or implied.

Proposition 24. (Page 228) Zablocki states: The result of this [brainwashing] process, when successful, is to make the individual a deployable agent of the charismatic authority.

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Yes, this is correct and important but it is merely a descriptive statement which does not dispute the validity of the theory.

Proposition 25. (Page 229) As Zablocki has stated the cult is able to overwhelm‑‑and replace with a shadow self‑‑the pre‑existing authentic self of the person only by inducing an altered, primitive, state of consciousness in which the person is unable to resist indoctrination. Zablocki refers to this alleged state of primitive consciousness as “disorientation”.

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Total nonsense. Disorientation is defined as “loss of awareness of the position of the self in relation to space, time, or other persons.” It’s a run-of-the-mill state of consciousness that all of us experience at one time or another and that people often experience as a reaction to prolonged stressful treatment.

Proposition 26. (Page 229) Zablocki doesn’t provide a definition for his use of the disorientation term. . . . Elsewhere, Zablocki elaborates upon the disoriented state which he considers to be the core of the brainwashing process. He states that those in the throes of the brainwashing process:

are, at times, so disoriented that they do appear to resemble zombies or robots: glassy eyes, inability to complete sentences, and fixed eerie smiles are characteristics of disoriented people under randomly varying levels of psychological stress. . . . He elaborates in a later section of the same article upon the “loose cognition” and suspension of critical rationality referred to in this passage, which he regards as essential to the brainwashing process.

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(See my reply to Proposition 25, above for the standard definition of disorientation) The following is conjecture on my part, but I can’t help suspecting that what Anthony is trying to accomplish by making so much fuss over the role of disorientation in my theory is to construct an isomorphism between my theory and some rather silly caricatures of “mind control” that appear in Fu Manchu movies for example. But I don’t argue that brainwashing turns people into robots. I simply state that, for a brief transitional period during which the subjects are enduring sleep deprivation and random inquisitions, the subjects present themselves as so worn-down and traumatized that they resemble zombies or robots to the observer.

Proposition 27. (Page 230) [Zablocki] states:

My argument is that his transition to the biological [essential to brainwashing] involves both a suspension of incredulity and an addictive orientation to the alternation of arousal and comfort comparable to the mother‑infant attachment. At the cognitive level this relationship [between the charismatic cult and its brainwashed victim] involves the suspension of left‑brain criticism of right‑brain beliefs such that the beliefs are uncritically and enthusiastically adopted. . . .By preventing even low‑level testing of the consequences of our convictions, the [brainwashed] individual is able rapidly to be convinced of a changing flow of beliefs, accepted uncritically. (1998, 241‑242, emphasis mine)

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Anthony is here quoting an earlier article of mine in which I offer