Dr. Robert J. Lifton's Eight Criteria
for Thought Reform

Taken from
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
Chapter 22 (Second Edition, Chapel Hill, 1989)
Chapter 15 (First Edition, New York, 1987)
The Future of Immortality


Contents


Introduction

Any ideology -- that is, any set of emotionally-charged convictions about man and his relationship to the natural or supernatural world -- may be carried by its adherents in a totalistic direction. But this is most likely to occur with those ideologies which are most sweeping in their content and most ambitious or messianic in their claim, whether a religious or political organization. And where totalism exists, a religion, or a political movement. becomes little more than an exclusive cult.

Here you will find a set of criteria, eight psychological themes against which any environment may be judged. In combination, they create an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but which at the same time pose the gravest of human threats.

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Milieu Control

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Mystical Manipulation (Planned Spontaneity)

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The Demand For Purity

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Confession

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Sacred Science

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Loading the Language

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Doctrine Over Person

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Dispensing of Existence

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©1961, 1987, 1989 by Robert Jay Lifton. All rights reserved.

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