[TOC] [Title] [Author] [Endorse] [Acknow] [Preface] [Intro] [Ch 1] [Ch 2] [Ch 3] [Ch 4] [Epilogue] [Ap A] [Ap B] [Ap C] [Ap D] [Ap E] [Readings] [Bib]
Please remember these questions and answers are simply a learning aid. This is not a test to determine your worth. Become aware of any all-or-nothing reactions you may have to this learning process and adjust such expectations.
``Coming Out of the Cults'' (Singer, 1979)
1. Why did Singer and Miller conduct discussion groups?
2. When did participants report they joined cults?
3. What are the thirteen difficulties Singer describes that can affect people who leave a cult?
4. How does this information pertain to you?
Youth, Brainwashing and the Extremist Cults,
Chapter 8 (Enroth, 1977)
1. More than anything else, what are the young people who pursue cults today involved in?
2. What are the eight elements Enroth outlines that lead to the transformation of personality and thinking?
3. How does this information pertain to you?
``Kids 'n' Cults'' (Swope, 1980)
1. What are the three interwoven concepts of utopian literature in Europe and the American colonies?
2. What was the shocking conclusion Swope came to after meeting with 125 young adults from different cults?
3. What are the six characteristics of the people who join cults?
4. How many characteristics need to be present for recruitment to be effective?
5. What is the key to being recruited?
6. How does this information pertain to you?
Influence (Cialdini, 1984)
1. When are we most likely to accept the actions of others as correct?
2. What are the eight weapons of influence?
3. How does this information pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
Chapter 5 (Lifton, 1961)
1. What does Lifton call the outstanding psychiatric fact of thought reform?
2. What are the eleven psychological steps to death and rebirth Lifton outlines?
3. About what did the released prisoners have profound struggles?
4. How does this information pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
Chapter 12 (Lifton, 1961)
1. What were the four psychological principles faced when the prisoners returned home?
2. What does each principle mean?
3. What is the fear and relief of total annihilation?
4. What were the beneficial effects of the prisoners' experience?
5. How does this information pertain to you?
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,
Chapter 22 (Lifton, 1961)
Answer the following statements TRUE or FALSE. If a question is FALSE, what is the correct answer?
1. Some potential for extremes exists within everyone. (T/F)
2. Loaded Language is the most basic feature of thought reform. (T/F)
3. Milieu Control seeks to establish control over the individual's communication with the outside world and with himself. (T/F)
4. The pressure of milieu control causes the individual to close down as he is deprived of external information and inner reflection. (T/F)
5. The mystique of the group makes manipulating others and oneself, no matter how bizarre or painful, mandatory. (T/F)
6. The Demand for Purity allows plenty of room for every expression and idea. (T/F)
7. Ideological totalists are able to use the universal tendencies toward guilt and shame as emotional levers for their controlling and manipulating influence. (T/F)
8. The Cult of Confession is a vehicle for personal purification, an act of symbolic self-surrender and of exposure which makes it almost impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility. (T/F)
9. To the totalist the Sacred Science is one of several moral visions for the ordering of human existence. (T/F)
10. The clichÈs of totalist language become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. (T/F)
11. The effect of totalist language is the constriction of human thought and emotion. (T/F)
12. Doctrine Over Person honors the uniqueness of individual experience. (T/F)
13. The doctrine subordinates to (accommodates) human character and experience. (T/F)
14. The `will to orthodoxy' allows for modification of the doctrine in accordance with one's special nature or potentialities. (T/F)
15. The Dispensing of Existence draws a sharp line between those who have a right to exist and those who do not. (T/F)
16. Totalists do not feel themselves compelled to destroy all possibilities of false existence as a means of furthering the great plan of true existence to which they are committed. (T/F)
17. The totalist environment, even when it does not resort to physical abuse, stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation. (T/F)
18. An environment need only express two of these eight psychological themes to resemble ideological totalism. (T/F)
19. Every totalist milieu achieves complete totalism. (T/F)
20. The experience of ideological totalism carries a potential rebound effect of retreating into all-or-nothing emotional patterns. (T/F)
21. The capacity for totalism is most fundamentally a product of human childhood, of the prolonged period of helplessness and dependency through which each of us must pass. (T/F)
22. How does this information pertain to you?
The following are essay questions:
1. What is the source of ideological totalism?
2. Under what conditions does man seek to become this guide?
3. How does this information pertain to you?
[TOC] [Title] [Author] [Endorse] [Acknow] [Preface] [Intro] [Ch 1] [Ch 2] [Ch 3] [Ch 4] [Epilogue] [Ap A] [Ap B] [Ap C] [Ap D] [Ap E] [Readings] [Bib]