Psychological Manipulation Groups (Cults)

Psychological Manipulation Groups (Cults): A case report,
diagnosis, evaluation and treatment
Vega González1, Laura Merino1, Juanjo Santamaría1, Elena Montero1, Marga Cano1,2 and Teresa
Fernandez1,2
1 Atención e Investigación de Socioadicciones (AIS); 2 Hospital de Sant Jaume i Santa Magdalena de Mataró
Introduction
What is AIS?
Atención e Investigación en Socioadicciones (AIS), is a mental
health organization in Spain that provides information and
advice on cults and behavioral adicctions. AIS has focused its
therapeutic activity on the disturbances provoked by cultism. At
present, is recognized as a public health service at Catalonia.
The number of clinical visits carried out the last year was 845.
Mind control used by Psychological Manipulation Groups (Cults)
implies the control and exploitation of one person over others, in
order to obtain any own benefit. They use mental control
techniques, anxious dependency and coercive persuasion
(Chambers, Langone, Dole y Grice, 1994).
In that poster we describe a case report, meeting the criteria for
a mind control situation treated with Exit Counseling (Hassan,
1990) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Group Dependence Disorder (Diagnostic Criteria) (AIS, 2001), 7 of the next
criteria:
 Excessive time dedicated to group and tends to increase progressively
 Excessive decrease of time dedicated to the family, work or social
relationships
Manifests intense affiliation feelings towards the group and its members
 Changes in attitude towards people in his previous environment:
• Cold and distanced attitude
• Lies
• Hostile attitudes
 Unmeasured self-criticism of his pre-cult past
 Conceding the group an excessive importance, which is in disagreement with
reality
 Tolerates and justifies personal exploitation
 Experiences of maniform euphoria or enthusiasm
 Tendency to a monothematic discourse
 Behavioral changes that stand out that are in accordance to group norms or
habits:
• In dressing or personal care
• In hobbies
• In language
• In sexual behavior
• In eating patterns
Case Report
Treatment
Women, 60 years old, university degree on Chemistry, married, 2
daughters. At 39 years old, she established contact with a yoga practice
group. Trough the years, the teacher used psychological manipulation
techniques on her students. During 21 years, the patient, and the other
adepts, gave the teacher (group leader) great amounts of money,
insulated herself from her family and other social supports, and
increasingly went on more retreats with the group leader.
1.- Family counseling/information and guideline. Objective: understand the
problem and make the patient therapeutic attendance easier (Exit
Counseling) (3 sessions)
Resultados
The initial petition was done by the family. They were worried because the
patient was asking for great amounts of money to family and friends.
In the first visit of the patient, she present with mental confusion, denial
problem, resistance to treatment, changes in sleeping and eating
patterns, economic problems and she meet criteria for Group
Dependence Disorder.
Evaluation
3.- Exit Counseling (advising and support on leaving the group) and Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (Cognitive restructuring, stimulus control, selfregistration, training on social skills, relapse prevention,...) (4 – 5 sessions)
4.- Symptom management in the post cult phase (Exit Counseling+CBT):
Depression, loneliness, negative self-image, anxiety, feelings of guilt,
autonomy, altered states of consciousness, rancor and fear of sect,
justification,... (At present)
Results
Exhaustive Case History, diagnostic criteria: Group Dependence
Disorder (1st Sessions).
Psychometric tests: GPA (Group Psychological Abuse scale)
(Almendros, Carrobles, Rodríguez-Carballeira, Jansà, 2003)
(cut-off point=81), SCL-90R, TCI-R. Functional analysis of
patient behavior.
GPA
2.- Therapeutic alliance, motivational interviewing and legal issues (4 - 5
sessions)
SUBMISSION
MENTAL
CONTROL
EXPLOITATION
TOTAL
32
36
21
89
TCI-R
Conclusions
• More controlled, specific and clinical research is needed to clarify the
psychological characteristics of cult members, in order to improve the
prevention and treatment of cult members. Exit Counseling combined with
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy seems to be effective treating people with
Group Dependence Disorder.
SCL-90-R
200
2,5
160
2
120
1,5
80
1
40
0,5
0
0
After six months of treatment, patient GDD symptomatology is lower.
She have no contact with the group. Now, patient can keep a distance
and elaborate critical opinions regarding the person controlling her,
without justifying her actions. The subject shows capacity to speak
about manipulation and express critical opinions about it.
Soon, retest measures will be applied in order to asses the patient
evolution.
SCL-90 Scr
Normative Scr
• Future research should use valid structured interviews and questionnaires,
with well-established reliabilities and psychometric properties on adequate
pre-post treatment sample groups. Research groups should take into
account, the difficulty obtaining valid data, due the cult members
characteristics.
• Due these characteristics and the difficulty obtaining reliable data, the
results about personality traits and psychopathology in actual or former cult
members are inconsistent. Nowadays, AIS is strengthen the research area in
order to carry out rigorous research about this topic.
Referencias bibliográficas
AIS. (1994) “Totalitarismo y voracidad. Una aproximación interdisciplinaria al “fenómeno sectario” en Cataluña”.
AIS & SCS (Eds.) Cubero, P. (2001). "El sectarismo como trastorno psiquiátrico".. Libro de Ponencias I Jornadas sobre el trastorno de dependencia grupal en los grupos de manipulación psicológica. Barcelona: 17-24.
Almendros, C.; Carrobles, J.A.; Rodríguez-Carballeira, A.; Jansà, J.M. (2003). Psychometric properties of the spanish version of the Group Psychological Abuse Scale. Cultic Studies Review, 2(3), 1-20.
Chambers, W.V.; Langone, M.D.; Dole, A.; Grice, J. (1994). The Group Psychological Abuse Scale: a measure of varieties of cultic abuse. Cultic Studies Journal, 11(1), 88-117.
Hassan, S. (1991). Strategic intervention therapy: A new form of exit-counseling which is better than deprogramming. Unpublished paper.
© AIS. http://www.ais-info.org/ e-mails: Vega González vgonzalez@ais-info.org; ais@ais-info.org