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In Reply to: Re: Cult brainwashing vs mental conditioning posted by Raymond Shaw on September 04, 2004 at 20:02:49:
There is a broad theory called symbolic interactionism that explains how people create their social reality. One of the big ideas in symbolic interactionism is that people develop behavioral scripts and social roles (e.g., savior, scapegoat, clown) through processes of social interaction (group communication).
A major Symbolic Interactionist hypotheses is that the individual human mind is a fluid, plastic entity that is shaped and modeled through patterns of family communication. If a group of people tells you something often enough under the right set of reinforcing conditions, your mind naturally tends to adapt to the group's construction of reality. There are a number of reasons for this, with the chief one being the basic security need to belong.
This might be where the classic cult brainwashing notion of "snapping" has some relevance. If the internal organization of reality (the mind) is indeed shaped through processes of group communication, then an individual's mind may actually stretch and snap into altered states of perception in an effort to maintain connection & belonging with others in the group.
What I am talking about is probably what is meant by "mental conditioning." The mind is not a blank slate on which beliefs are passively written, nor are we are not behavioral islands unto ourselves. The individual mind creates and organizes social reality by interacting with other minds doing exactly the same thing. When we join together and create a group identity, we create a larger, more powerful reality than our individual interior state of mind. We become part of something bigger than ourselves alone, and this gives us a great sense of security & purpose. At the same time, we may also become trapped in the group reality we have co-created with others and find ourselves unable to act contrary to social pressures that now contain us.
