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'Totalism' Ideology of Cults Helps Explain Violent Acts

Psychiatry has an important role to play in understanding cult and cultlike behavior, according to expert Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. "In our apocalyptically inclined world," he warned, "we are likely to see more acts of violence committed by cults."

He referred to the collective suicide by 39 Heaven's Gate members last March in San Diego and the fanatical Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which killed 12 people and injured about 5,000 two years ago when it released lethal sarin gas into Tokyo subways.

"The greatest contribution psychiatry can make is in the area of psychological inquiry and research. This must be a broad-based approach that considers large social and historical factors," said Lifton, a distinguished professor of psychiatry and psychology and director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. "These forces cannot be reduced to individual psychopathology, although that may be present.

"Psychiatrists should be wary of cult or ideological totalism anywhere including among ourselves, in our groups, and in our training or teaching procedures."

He described totalism as an "all-or-nothing embrace of a belief system coupled with extreme forms of behavior."

Based on his work on Chinese thought reform in the late 1950's, Lifton described patterns of totalism that are also common to cults. Among the common characteristics he has identified:

Control of the external and internal environment, as if the group's reality is the only one.

Mystical manipulation that seems spontaneous but is manipulated from above by the leaders.

Continuous confession and quests for purity that involve self-criticisms and self-examination.

Claims to sacred truths that are both scientific and religious.

Using jargon that reduces complex events or ideas to simple, repetitious words.

A principle of doctrine over person, which holds that people who question "absolute truth" must be bad themselves.

A principle of dispensing of existence so that only people who know the ultimate truth have the right to exist while others don't.

The suicide of Heaven's Gate members and the external violence of Aum Shinrikyo represent "death in the nuclear age, distorted passions for survival, and the ever-more desperate quest for immortality," said Lifton, who is now writing a book on the Japanese cult.

"In collective suicide, immortality is attained by killing one's self or one's own group."

In harming or killing others outside the cult, one is helping them enhance their own immortality, "a sort of altruistic murder," he explained.

There is also a strong connection between external violence and suicide. "Freud described life as a journey toward death and attributed both suicide and violence to the death instinct."

Both Heaven's Gate and Aum Shinrikyo shared an end-of-the-world theology, said Lifton. A disciple from Aum described a vision in which only Aum disciples survived Armageddon. "It was something that combined a nuclear holocaust and a biblical Armageddon," said Lifton.

Heaven's Gate members embraced the biblical Revelation. "They translated it into ecological Christian or Christian-like symbolism in their own strange theology," he said.

In terms of differences, Aum Shinrikyo's plan was murderously violent because its members believed that the world was impure and had to be destroyed to ensure their rebirth and create ultimate salvation.

In contrast, Heaven's Gate guru Marshall Applewhite renounced violence publicly but instructed members to participate in violent acts of self-mutilation through castration and then collective suicide, said Lifton.

"As psychiatrists, we. . .have to look critically at the loss of ordering and traditional symbols that creates cultic behavior. We have to be critics of our society and not mere defenders."

(Psychiatric News, July 4, 1997)