NCJ Number
124171
Date Published
1989
Length
13 pages
Annotation
One of the most potentially explosive issues in American society today is the controversy over brainwashing and its proposed remedy, deprogramming.
Abstract
The convert is a person who shifts an overall organizing framework of meaning from one pattern to another which is significantly different. Usually people learn the basic features of their reality "map" in the family, and find it reinforced, if expanded, in the later socialization of such institutions as school and church. The convert's new frame of reference relies not only on the direct response of other members of the group joined, but also on certain authorities they share -- sacred writings, leaders of the movement, and the like. To others who do not share their frame of reference, such a change in accepted categories of meaning and sources of authority seems a clear loss of rationality. Brainwashing may be seen as the "evil eye" theory, where parents and others in the "establishment" insist that their children have been bewitched. Solutions like deprogramming reinforce a view of humankind as incapable of decision making or any exercise of the will. Much of the ideology behind the deprogramming movement has involved a critique of the religious groups for substituting a communal will for the autonomy of the individual.