Scientology Control Techniques include:
Guilt
Reinforcing the need for 'salvation' by exaggerating the sins of the former lifestyles.
Peer Group Pressure
Suppressing doubt and resistance to new ideas by exploiting the need to belong.
Love Bombing
Creating a sense of family and belonging through hugging, kissing, touching and flattery.
Hypnosis
Inducing a state of high suggestibility by hypnosis, often thinly disguised as relaxation or meditation.
Rejection of Old Values
Accelerating acceptance of new life style by constantly denouncing former values and beliefs.
Confusing Doctrine
Encouraging blind acceptance and rejection of logic through complex lectures on an incomprehensible doctrine.
Metacommunication
Implanting subliminal messages by stressing certain key words or phrases in long, confusing lectures.
Removal of Privacy
Achieving loss of ability to evaluate logically by preventing private contemplation. An example: Six bunk beds per room at Flag
Time Sense Deprivation
Destroying ability to evaluate information, personal reactions, and body functions in relation to passage of time by removing all clocks and watches.
Disinhibition
Encouraging child-like obedience by orchestrating child-like behaviour.
Uncompromising Rules
Inducing regression and disorientation by soliciting agreement to seemingly simple rules which regulate mealtimes, bathroom breaks and use of medications.
Replacement of Relationships
Destroying pre-cult families by arranging cult marriages and 'families'.
Sleep Deprivation & Fatigue
Creating disorientation and vulnerability by prolonging mental an physical activity and withholding adequate rest and sleep.
Dress Codes
Removing individuality by demanding conformity to the group dress code.
Chanting and Singing
Eliminanting non-cult ideas through group repetition of mind-narrowing chants or phrases.
Group Confession [b cove]
Encouraging the destruction of individual ego through confession of personal weaknesses and innermost feelings of doubt.
Confession [auditing]
Encouraging the destruction of individual ego through confession of personal weaknesses and innermost feelings of doubt.
Financial Commitment
Achieving increased dependence on the group by 'burning bridges' to the past, through the donation of assets.
Finger Pointing
Creating a false sense of righteousness by pointing to the shortcomings of the outside world and other cults.
Flaunting Hierarchy
Promoting acceptance of cult authority by promising advancement, power and salvation.
Isolation
Inducing loss of reality by physical separation from family, friends, society and rational references.
Controlled Approval
Maintaining vulnerability and confusion by alternately rewarding and punishing similar actions.
Change of Diet
Creating disorientation and increased susceptibility to emotional arousal by depriving the nervous system of necessary nutrients through the use of special diets and/or fasting.
Games
Inducing dependence on the group by introducing games with obscure rules.
No Questions
Accomplishing automatic acceptance of beliefs by discouraging questions.
Some of the above techniques used in isolation are not necessarily harmful in and of themselves. However, in a psychologically coercive cult environment, they are usually used en masse, in extreme ways and for prolonged periods of time.
