Snapping

  research and the spirit of this book. We are grateful to John R. Pierce

  for helping us separate the engineering aspects of communication from

  the new science's human applications; to Fred Crowell, John Lyman,

  G. D. McCann, and David Rumelhart, for their views on the problems and

  promises of the human information-processing perspective; and to Hans

  Bremermann and Karl Pribram, for their willingness to speculate with

  us on their own developing theories and other recent and controversial

  scientific research.

  Special thanks are in order as well to Dr. Alfred G. Smith, Director

  of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Texas,

  for his creative instruction and his thoughtful insight into some of

  the difficult questions we set out to explore in this book.

  We thank a number of close friends, relatives, and new acquaintances

  around the country who sustained us in our travels and who, in many

  instances, made difficult times easier, and even fun: Bob Baker, Don

  Cameron, Holly Conway, Kacey Conway, Mike Conway, Robert and Virginia

  Conway, Lois and Larry Davis, Mary and Dick Deich, Debbi Dudziak, Judy

  and Michael Einbund, Grace Gianforte, Patrick Green, Paula Harrington,

  Bob and Birchie Henderson, Evie Juster, Marilyn, Judy, and Bill Kanoskie,

  Joe Marcella, B. Lynn Micale, Doris Peck, Davis Perkins, Eric Rayman,

  Roger Repohl, Don and Rene Ross, and Aaron Smith. We want to make

  grateful mention also of some of the many individuals with whom we made

  only brief personal or telephone contact: the Crudups, the DeBlassies,

  Milton Erickson, Bill Farr, Sam Farry, Thelma Moss, the Randalls, Steven

  Smale, and Irving Yalom.

  The enthusiasm of Sallie T. Gouverneur gave our project the momentum it

  needed to get off the ground. The aid and counsel of Donald C. Farber,

  and his continuing belief in us both, have been not only a catalyst but

  quite possibly the decisive factor in this endeavor.

  Our appreciation goes to the many people who encouraged, helped,

  and arranged for us to write "Snapping" for J. B. Lippincott Company:

  editor-in-chief Ed Burlingame, Beatrice Rosenfeld, Kathryn Frank,

  Katharine Kirkland, and Elaine Terranova; and, above all, we thank our

  editor, Peg Cameron.

  Finally, we thank our parents, Bob and Helen Conway and Leonard and

  Arline Siegelman, for more material help, moral support, and love than

  we could ever fully acknowledge or repay.

  FLO CONWAY and JIM SIEGELMAN

  New York, N.Y.

  New Year's Day, 1978

  FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

  CITIZEN'S FREEDOM FOUNDATION, P.O. Box 7000-89, 1719 Via el Prado,

  Redondo Beach, CA 90277.

  TED PATRICK AND SONDRA SACKS, P.O. Box 755, National City, CA 92050.

  HUMAN FREEDOM CENTER, 3028 Regent St., Berkeley, CA 94705.

  Notes

  Bracketed numbers refer to works listed in the accompanying Bibliography.

  Page

  Chapter 1: SNAPPING

  11 ... nearly eight thousand techniques for expanding human awareness:

  This figure appears in a Newsweek cover story, "Getting Your

  Head Together," September 6, 1976, p. 56.

  ... six million alone had taken up some form of meditation: A Los

  Angeles Times article, "Meditation: Millions in U.S. in

  Pursuit of Inner Peace" (Sunday, February 13, 1977, Part II,

  p. 1), reports 6 million American meditators; according to recent

  Gallup poll findings, 4 percent of Americans are involved in

  Transcendental Meditation.

  12 ... three million young Americans had joined the one thousand religious

  cults active in the United States: These are the upper estimates,

  according to an article in U.S. News & World Report,

  "Religious Cults: Newest Magnet for Youth," June 14, 1976, p. 52.

  15 "perfect knowledge": This phrase is used frequently by followers

  of the Guru Maharaj Ji, founder of the Divine Light Mission.

  The Children of God... the Attorney General of New York: See "Final

  Report on the Activities of the Children of God," submitted by the

  New York State Charitable Frauds Bureau to Hon. Louis J. Lefkowitz,

  State Attorney General, September 30, 1974.

  16 ... expanding into regional markets and spawning local imitators:

  Many of these local spin-offs are nearly exact copies of est and

  other mass therapies and bear vaguely similar names, such as the

  Training of New Mexico, for example, which operates a mass-group

  therapy enterprise in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe area.

  Chapter 2: THE SEARCH

  22 "sixty hours that transform your life": See Adelaide Bry's

  est [26].

  25 Est is, without a doubt, the most controversial: All this

  information on est, along with many more details and personal

  accounts, can be found in Bry [26], Fenwick [28], Kornbluth [33],

  Litwak [35], and Marin [38].

  26 ... an article in the March, 1977, issue of American Journal of

  Psychiatry: by Leonard L. Glass, M.D., Michael A. Kirsch,

  M.D., and Frederick N. Parris, M.D. When their work was done,

  Dr. Glass was Director of the Emergency Service, Langley

  Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California,

  San Francisco, where Dr. Kirsch was Resident in Psychiatry and

  Dr. Parris was Clinical Instructor, Department of Psychiatry.

  At the time of publication, Dr. Glass was Assistant Psychiatrist

  at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts.

  Chapter 3: THE FALL

  29 "deprogrammers": The subject of deprogramming will be dealt with

  in depth in chapter 6.

  35 The Unification Church holds a special place among the cults:

  Our insight into the Unification Church, its doctrines, and its

  activities comes from personal interviews with a number of former

  members in addition to Lawrence and Cathy Gordon. Many talks

  with one-time Moonies, both rank-and-file members and higher-ups,

  supported and expanded on facts and views of the church presented

  in Patrick [40], Yamamoto [47], and the newspaper references

  that follow.

  ... the old New Yorker Hotel: In the New York Times, May

  13, 1976.

  "The Washington Post . . . South Korean Central Intelligence

  Agency: On August 5, 1977, the ,i>Washington Post disclosed

  the findings of a report issued by the House of Representatives

  Subcommittee on International Organizations, which stated, "We have

  received reliable information that [Mr. Moon] and organizations

  connected with him maintained operational ties with the govemment

  of South Korea and specifically the Korean Central Intelligence

  Agency." An Associated Press article in early December, 1977,

  reported that Moon's chief aide and translator, Col. Bo Hi Pak,

  was once the Korean military attaché in Washington, and an

  earlier article in the Washington Post (reprinted in the

  New York Post November 8, 1976) reported that "according

  to U.S. Intelligence information Pak met in the 'Blue House'

  presidential mansion in Seoul with South Korean President Park

  Chung Hee, Washington-based South Korean businessman Tongsun Park,

  and KCIA officials in late 1970 to discuss plans for th
e Capitol

  Hill influence buying." The article also reports that according

  to "informed sources in the justice and state departments," the

  South Korean Central Intelligence Agency requested the massive

  demonstrations that followers of Moon staged on Capitol Hill in

  1974 opposing the impeachment of then President Nixon. Pak and

  other Unification Church spokesmen have denied all connections to

  the KCIA."

  Chapter 4: THE ROOTS OF SNAPPING

  40 A recent Gallup poll reported that half of all adult Protestants

  . . . say they have been Born Again: This poll and other signs of

  America's mushrooming Evangelical movement were reported in a cover

  story in Newsweek, "Born Again!" October 25, 1976, pp. 68-78.

  42 Christian Charismatic movement has spread . . . to an estimated

  fifteen million communities: This figure, attributed only to the

  Charismatic or Pentecostal branch of Evangelical Christianity,

  can be found in O'Connor [39].

  45 The creation of a Harvard Business School graduate and former

  adman for Coca-Cola: These figures concerning the I Found It

  crusade were reported by CBS News correspondent Bill Moyers on CBS

  Reports' "Born Again," broadcast July 14, 1977, 10:00-11:00 EDT

  (used with permission).

  One of its board members posted the bail money for Eldridge

  Cleaver: Ibid.

  "Jesus and the Intellectual": Bright [25].

  46 " . . . from all your filthiness": This quotation from Ezekiel

  36:25-27 in the Old Testament, appears in the American Messianic

  Fellowship booklet [22], p. 22.

  Born January 14, 1944: The biographical material in this section

  on Marjoe came from our interview and the extensive background

  provided in Gaines [29].

  Chapter 5: SNAPPING AS SOMETHING NEW

  53 The first steps in that direction: A thoughtful and comprehensive

  perspective on the early days of the human potential movement

  was presented by Tomkins in his New Yorker profile on Michael

  Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute [20]. Two slightly

  different perspectives on the movement's beginnings, written

  during its heyday, can be found in the "History of Encounter"

  chapter of Schutz's Elements of Encounter [14], and in the new

  preface to Maslow's Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences [8].

  55 ... the theory and practice of encounter edged closer to its revivalist

  forerunners: Although Jacob Moreno has been credited with using

  the term "encounter" in regard to group therapy and employing

  basic encounter methods in Vienna as far back as 1910, most

  early American groups bore closer resemblance to traditional

  Freudian group psychotherapy. Ruitenbeek reports in The New

  Group Therapies [13], p. 14, that around 1930 the American

  psychiatrist and former minister L. Cody Marsh began employing

  religious revival techniques in his group work with psychotics,

  a method he discussed in an article in Mental Hygiene (1931),

  "Group Treatment by the Psychological Equivalent of the Revival."

  56 The Hare Krishna hired its own admen; . . . est gave a top position

  to a former Coca-Cola executive: Our personal conversation

  with an ex-Krishna higher-up revealed that cult's move to hire

  professionals and other laymen to market the cult's highly

  commercial incense products. With regard to est, Korubluth [33]

  reports that the organization's president, Don Cox, had been

  Director of Planning for Coca-Cola, U.S.A., as well as a former

  instructor at Harvard Business School.

  58 In the remote bush country of Australia . . . The Crack in the

  Cosmic Egg: Pearce's discussion can be found in [110] pp. 125-32.

  59 Anthropologists point to . . . the longest unbroken line of

  cultural development: Pearce rallies an impressive array of

  supporting views for an argument with which few Americans

  today would disagree: that our Western mode of consciousness

  is not necessarily the ultimate in human capability. He cites

  Claude Lévi-Strauss as a champion of the aborigine world-view,

  which, Pearoe says, the French anthropologist considers to be

  "an intellectual refinement as well knit and coherent as any

  culture's in history" [ 110], p. 127.

  ... organization men: See Whyte's The Organization Man [114].

  60 Journalist Sally Kempton, writing in New York magazine: Kempton's

  life-changing encounter with Muktananda is fully described in

  "Hanging Out with the Guru" [32], from which the excerpt has

  been drawn.

  Chapter 6: BLACK LIGHTNING

  67 In truth . . . exaggerations . . . about deprogramming . . . are

  part of a heavily financed and well-coordinated campaign:

  Sometime after we interviewed Patrick in Orange County, we received

  copies of two anti-deprogramming tracts that were reportedly being

  produced and distributed on an international scale by several large

  worldwide cult organizations. One booklet, titled Deprogramming:

  The Constructive Destruction of Belief, appeared to us to be a

  parody of a manual of deprogramming techniques. Prepared in Great

  Britain "based upon techniques as they are practiced in the USA,"

  the manual distorted every aspect of the deprogramming process

  as we had come to understand it, advocating the use of "food

  termination," "shame-inducement through nudity," and "physical

  correction" ("It goes without saying that in keeping with the

  above approach any physical correction should be administered with

  as little bruising as possible"). The subtlety of the attack can

  best be seen in the section on "Sex and the Deprog Tech": "There

  have been stories of subjects being hetero- or homo-sexually

  raped by Technicians. These would be laughable if they did not

  occur with such regularity. . . . Far from rape, what the subject

  has experienced is almost certainly the application of aggressive

  sex by the Technician (the beneficial aspects of which are dealt

  with above)."

  70 Logic . . . the son of Steve Allen from television: Not long after

  Patrick attempted to recover several members of the Love Family,

  Steve Allen issued a statement to the press in which he said,

  "It's fine with me that my son and grandchildren are living in

  a religious commune. I decided that if it was reasonable and

  productive for him, it was fine by me." From Patrick [40], p. 131.

  Chapter 7: WANTED: PROFESSIONAL HELP

  80 CFF: Readers interested in contacting the CFF may write directly to:

  Citizen's Freedom Foundation, P.O. Box 7000-89, 1719 Via El Prado,

  Redondo Beach, CA 90277.

  84 "the cult syndrome": This term was introduced in "Destructive Cultism"

  (American Family Physician, February, 1977, pp. 80-83) by Eli

  Shapiro, M.D.: "I have concluded that a distinct syndrome of

  'destructive cultism' can be defined. . . . Change in personality

  is the most prominent characteristic of this syndrome."

  Chapter 8: THE CRISIS IN MENTAL HEALTH

  89 ... the "robot model" of man: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the brilliant

  biologist and theorist, was an outspoken critic of the robot model,

  which he saw as "theoret
ically inadequate in view of empirical

  fact and . . . practically dangerous in its application to

  'behavioral engineering.' " In his far-reaching book General

  System Theory [50], he discussed at length how the dominant

  schools of modern psychology come together in the image of man

  as robot: "One leading concept is the 'stimulus-response scheme,'

  or S-R scheme for short. Behavior, animal and human, is considered

  to be response to stimuli coming from outside. . . . This may be

  classical conditioning by way of repetition of the sequence of

  conditional and unconditional stimuli according to Pavlov. It may

  be operant conditioning by reinforcement of successful responses

  according to Skinner. it may be early childhood experience

  according to Freud, beginning with toilet training" (pp. 188-89).

  This so-called Third Force in psychology: See the Preface to Maslow's

  Toward a Psychology of Being [9].

  92 At the end of the seventies: For a partial view of the current

  dilemmas confronting psychiatry and the mental health field in

  general, see "Psychiatry in Crisis," by James S. Eaton, Jr.,

  M.D., and Leonard S. Goldstein, M.D., in the American Journal

  of Psychiatry, June, 1977.

  Chapter 9: BEYOND BRAINWASHING

  98 "At Panmunjon . . . a third world war": This quotation appears in

  Schein [44], p. 288. It was attributed to a "Commander Ding" of

  the North Korean Army by S. J. Davis in In Spite of Dungeons

  (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1954).

  Their tiny, loose-knit, fledgling organization: The work of Return