Thomas Robbins

Religious totalism, violence and exemplary dualism: Beyond the extrinsic model

This study presents an alternative psychological model to the ‘extrinsic model’. The latter emphasizes the external imposition through brainwashing of a pattern of depersonalization facilitating the enslavement of participants in totalist sects. An alternative approach can be extrapolated from the writings of Robert Lifton and more particularly, Erik Eriksons original conception of totalism. We suggest that contemporary cultural fragmentation exacerbates patterns of identity confusion and narcissistic ‘split self dynamics. Some young persons voluntarily attempt to resolve identity confusion through identification with messianic leaders and their apocalyptic absolutist mystiques. The ‘Exemplary Dualist’ worldviews of such groups facilitate ‘contrast identities’ which project disvalued elements of self onto ‘enemies’ including unbelievers. Emergent projective systems are unstable and may require reinforcement through appropriate interactions with outsiders, for example, converting them. Other vicissitudes ...

Cult and Anticult Totalism: Reciprocal Escalation and Violence

Millenarian movements have been involved in a number of recent episodes of collective homicidal, or suicidal violence. One result has been an intensification of the stigma which had already been attached to ‘cults’ and to the menace of cultic ‘mind control’ or ‘brainwashing’, which is viewed in some quarters as a linchpin of such groups’ violent proclivities. The stigma seems presently to be particularly powerful in Western Europe and in China, where the prosecutorial cult/brainwashing discourse, imported (like many ‘cults’) from the United States, has become influential. This discourse has been taken up by official public commissions of inquiry and has influenced legislation in France. A variety of heterogeneous and non-violent groups have been assumed in Europe to be similar to the sensationally violent Order of the Solar Temple, which is viewed as the ‘quintessential cult’. Several social scientists have recently argued that while sensational claims about ‘brainwashing’ in ‘cults’ are misleading and (to use legal jargon) more prejudicial than probative, nevertheless religio–ideological totalism, which is a frequent element in claims about ‘mind control’, certainly exists and can in certain circumstances and in conjunction with other elements have dysfunctional and polarizing consequences and may sometimes be related to violence and other problems. This article builds on recent discussions by the authors of the psychology of apocalyptic totalism and the issue of violence (see note 4) and also extrapolates the statement of Robert Lifton that ‘totalism begets 10

Pseudoscience versus Minority Religions

This chapter evaluates the scientific status of the cultic brainwashing perspective of the French psychiatrist Jean-Marie Abgrall, who appears to be playing a similar role in anti-cult crusading in Europe to that which was earlier played in the United States by American psychologist Margaret Singer (Singer, with Lalich, 1995). Abgrall has emerged as a key “cult expert”1 because he was the first psychiatrist in France willing to embrace brainwashing theories. Abgrall has been involved in dozens of legal cases and has become the foremost expert on sects and cults in France and even Europe.