History
During the 1970s and 1980s a series of techniques called deprogramming were developed to persuade or force a person to abandon allegiance to a religious or political group. Deprogramming was mainly involuntary, the targets were not required to agree to the procedure, they were often taken by force and then held against their will. Advocates of this procedure viewed it as an antidote to illegitimate or deceptive religious conversion practices by those groups. Opponents of this procedure argued against it chiefly of the following grounds:
- that the target of the procedure was held against his will and forced to listen
- that the target is not allowed to make any decision — before or during the procedure — about whether to undergo it
- that the information given about the group was almost entirely negative, and often slanted unfairly or even false
The practice itself is controversial and heavily criticized by new religious movements themselves and some sociologists in that field, both because of its basic assumptions and because of its methods, whose degree of force, stealth and/or deception used is disputed.
When deprogramming fell into disfavor in the late 1980s and early 1990s, exit counseling was born.
Read more about this topic: Exit Counseling
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)