Adam,

Think about this statement:

"You can and must think for yourself. We all think for ourselves here.
As long as you also think for yourself then obviously you'll be
thinking what we are thinking. If you don't think the same things as we
do, then you are not thinking for yourself."

There you see that the very command to think for yourself is used to make
you not think for yourself. It's false logic that works to deceive
people on the subconscious level. As long as people do no treach a
certain threshold of awareness, such tricks remain subliminal and very
persuasive. Certain peer pressure and psychological shock techniques are
used to keep the mind in a vulnerable state. That is how any
brainwashing takes place.

I've seen it happen in other groups.
Basically because everyone in the organization agrees with everyone
else, they think that by sheer number of agreement it must be the truth
and any dissent by an individual means he or she is being less objective.

Dissent may come about because of two main reasons: 1) the individual is
more objective than the collectively delusional group, or 2) the
individual is less objective. The number of nodding heads in the group
convinces them all that anyone who disagrees with them must be case #2,
as there's no way they can accept #1 which would mean blaming
themselves.  And yet #1 is a very real possibility...

All I can say is that with any such organizations, the threshold of
independent thinking is lowered through a variety of techniques falsely
labelled "deprogramming" and lots of manipulation creeps in beneath
that threshold to reinforce control while above that threshold all these
wonders and emotional candy are displayed to keep people in place. It is
not the surface benefits that make the case, but the level of
subconscious manipulation pervading the organizational structure.

I think the real test is what kind of response dissent creates. Are the
responses rooted in actual independent thinking, personal experience,
insight, observation, reasoning?  Or are the responses very knee-jerk
and prone to circular reasoning, recycling of a limited set of scripted
phrases, and if all that fails then harassment, intimidation, and
character assassination? The latter you will also find in many
fundamentalist religious groups.

Just remember that if an entire group is "off" somehow, then a lone
individual receiving their wrath for dissenting may still be in the
right...."truth and one" is a majority. There's something inherently
wrong with the reasoning that "You are free to think whatever you want
as long as it matches what we think." Lastly...even if a group starts
out with good intentions and a good ideology, there will be gaps in
structure and ideology through which psychopathic forces eventually
manage to assert their control.

Posted in: A Course in Miracles, James Parkinson Cult Leader ABROAD, Landmark Education, Stockholm Syndrome