Here are more interesting excerpts from Soul Snatchers: The Mechanics of Cults by Jean-Marie Abgrall.

Recruitment – (excerpts from Chapter 6)

There are three phases in the recruitment of a new member, reeling him in gradually, creating a certain intellectual and emotional dependence. Step by step, the new member will be attracted, persuaded and finally fascinated.

The seduction phase is the prelude to the process of indoctrination. No recruitment can take place until the subject’s attention is caught by the ideas or illusory spectacles suggested to attract him. Just as "you can’t catch flies with vinegar," it is unlikely that a future cult member would be attracted by a recruiter with the cantankerous attitude of a drill sergeant. To seduce is, above all, to be pleasing, but also means distorting the truth. All the work of cults aims at proposing a brilliant Utopia instead of the drabness of daily existence. The recruiter-seducer sets the scene for the cult illusion; he serves as a conjurer to attract potential followers; he offers simple answers to complex questions; he charms the interlocutor, creating the illusion of an emotional exchange; he constantly exploits the register of emotions, omitting any reference to logic; he opposes the morbidity of reality with the prospect of an idyllic love, that which reigns within his community.

Generally, the cults take the initiative in creating the first contact with a target. It is an active selling process: they go after the prey. Usually, it is done one-on-one, even if – and this is increasingly common – the ground was prepared by an earlier bit of advertising: a brochure, a meeting, a mass mailing, etc. However, to sell a product, you have to establish contact with the potential buyer. This contact must start the process of identification between recruiter and recruited, in order to cause the latter to start comparing his life with the recruiter’s.

Seduction is intended to expand the cult through it representatives. They will be all the more attractive if society is painted as an aggressive milieu, indifferent to the most intimate concerns of the potential recruit. This internal-external opposition crops up at every stage in cult conditioning.

Persuasion

Persuasion requires two actors: the transmitter and the receiver. They established a specific relationship that is defined by the message. The transmitter or convinced cult member is the persuader; the receiver is the target, the potential member; and the message is embedded in the cult speech presented by the transmitter.

For the persuasion to be effective, these three elements must meet specific conditions. The goal of persuasion is for the transmitter to get the receiver to agree to a specific proposition summarized in the message. It is a multi-stage process: attention, comprehension, ability to reformulate the message, integration of the message, acceptance of the message, change of thought or attitude.

The Persuader’s Game

The persuader has a double status. He is the speaker-sophist who convinces through equivocal and ambiguous speech rather than through answers and advice. He also builds myths, using dreams and Utopia as costumes and scenery in the threatre of the collective illusion.

He founds his art not on reason and logic but on affect and feelings. He does not prove: he provokes; he does not give answers: he upsets. He constantly violates the social and tacit pact of true communication: an assumption of sincerity and truth. His entire discourse is intended to mask his intention to indoctrinate. He has to present lies and deceptions as reality. He puts on a continuous show, a fable that drives out reality, gradually invading the space of communication. The goal is to get others to go along. This is the first real stage of handling. At the earliest stages, the persuader overcomes the momentary reserves of his interlocutor without breaking the established relation and, if necessary, will back off, in order to try again later.

One of the subtleties of the maneuver consists in pretending that joining the group is up to the interested party and depends on his free will. It is this perverse claim that causes difficulty for close relatives and therapists when they try to talk with an individual who was "involved" in a cult.

Fascination

Fascination is the driving force in enrollment, fascination is what tips the scales. After a phase of doubt, the candidate is definitely convinced he has made the right choice when he is faced with the masterpiece of cult dynamics. Confrontation with the guru (or his deputies) breaks down his last reserves.

Then a new stage begins in the process of indoctrination. It introduces a magical character into the relationship between the future follower and the cult group. The relationship is detached little by little from reality and becomes established more in the symbolic universe of the sacred and the divine. This fascination will remove any possible inclination to withdraw from the influence of the cult and its members. It is accompanied by a request for complete commitment.

The follower’s fascination is founded on a symbolic projection onto the guru, who is invested with a supernatural power that approaches the divine. At this stage, the recruit’s free will starts to deteriorate in the face of the doctrinal pressure. His final conversion will depend on the balance between the coercive power exerted by the cult and the strength of the recruit’s earlier bonds with society.

The process of fascination is comparable, to some degree, to that of hypnosis. When fascination takes hold, it is a sign that the empathic relationship has taken precedence over rational analysis. Fascination indicates that the disciple has become dependent.

Copyright 2000 Algora Publishing / Jean-Marie Abgrall