Who Joins Cults and Why? Contrary to a popular misconception that cult members are "crazy," research and clinical evidence strongly suggest that most cult members are relatively normal individuals, although about one-third appear to have had mild psychiatric disorders before joining. (It should be noted, however, that a recent study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that approximately 20% of the general population has at least one psychiatric disorder.) Cult members include the young, the old, the wealthy, the poor, the educated, and the uneducated. There is no easily identifiable "type" of person who joins cults. Nevertheless, clinical experience and informal surveys indicate that a very large majority of cult joiners were experiencing significant stress (frequently related to normal crises of adolescence and young adulthood, such as romantic breakup, school failure, vocational confusion) prior to their cult conversion. Because their normal ways of coping were not working well for them, these stressed individuals were more open than usual to recruiters selling "roads to happiness." Other factors that may render some persons susceptible to cultic influence include:
When persons made vulnerable by one or more of these factors encounter a group which practices mind control, conversion may very well occur, depending upon how well the group’s doctrine, social environment, and mind control practices match the specific vulnerabilities of the recruits. Unassertive individuals, for instance, may be especially susceptible to the enticements of an authoritarian, hierarchical group because they are afraid to challenge the group’s dogmatic orientation. Conversion to cults is not truly a matter of choice. Vulnerabilities do not merely "lead" individuals to a particular group. The group manipulates these vulnerabilities and deceives prospects in order to persuade them to join and, ultimately, renounce their old lives. How Do People Who Join Cults Change?After converts commit themselves to a cult, the cult’s way of thinking, feeling, and acting becomes second nature, while important aspects of their pre-cult personalities are suppressed or, in a sense, decay through disuse. New converts at first frequently appear to be shell-shocked by the bombardment of the cult’s mind controlling techniques. They may appear "spaced out," rigid and stereotyped in their responses, limited in their use of language, impaired in their ability to think critically, and oddly distant in their relationships with others. Parents have been known to say, "That’s not my kid!" Such observations account for the common contention that cult members are "zombies" or glassy-eyed "robots." Although this description is an overstatement, it does reflect the fact that intense cultic manipulations can trigger altered states of consciousness in some persons. In time, converts seem to lose the tension and "spaced-out," distant quality. They learn techniques, such as chanting, to stifle doubts and to make it easier to lie to others and themselves. They often lose contact with people from their pre-cult lives as a result of the cult’s isolating opposition to parents and society. And they receive rewards for conforming to the demands of the group on which they have become so dependent. If allowed to break into consciousness, suppressed memories or nagging doubts may generate anxiety which, in turn, may trigger a defensive trance-induction, such as speaking in tongues, to protect the cult-imposed system of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Such persons may function adequately—at least on a superficial level. Nevertheless, their continued adjustment depends on their keeping their old thinking styles, goals, values, and personal attachments "in storage." A normal level of psychological development and personality integration is very difficult to achieve. How Can Cults Harm People?Because they often recognize the harmful changes that are not apparent to seduced converts, families are usually the first to be hurt. In their attempts to help cult-involved relatives, families experience intense frustration, helplessness, guilt, and, because so few people understand their plight, loneliness. Members may be harmed in that they lose their psychological autonomy and frequently their assets. Furthermore, the group’s partial-to-total disconnection from society deprives members of the opportunity to learn from the varied experiences that a normal life provides. Members may lose irretrievable years in a state of "maturational arrest." In some cases, they undergo psychiatric breakdowns and/or suffer from physical disease and injury. Children in cults appear to be at high risk for abuse and neglect. Those who leave cults frequently experience anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, distrust, fear, thought disturbances, and "floating," the shifting from cult to non-cult ways of viewing the world or the sense of being stalled in a foggy, "in-between" state of consciousness. This emotional turmoil impairs decision-making and interferes with the management of life tasks. Indeed, many ex-members require one to two years to return to their former level of adaptation, while some may have psychological breakdowns or remain psychologically scarred for years. Not all who join are psychologically damaged. Some may find the cult to be a safe haven from unmanageable difficulties in the non-cult world. Others who have histories of maintaining emotional distance may follow the cult without ever truly becoming part of it or being deeply affected by it. And some may have personal strengths, such as an unusual capacity to resist group pressure, that enable them to maintain a measure of autonomy, even in a powerful, compliance-gaining environment.
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