Cults Manipulate People

The key to all recruitment by any cult lies in how they manipulate people. Take a look at these definitions of manipulators:

• Manipulators exploit and/or control themselves as things in self-defeating ways.
• Manipulators "attempt to get someone else to provide for [them] what [they] refuse to provide for [themselves]."
• Manipulators "cannot and will not be happy, ever, even if you sacrifice your mind, heart, and body for them because they will always be left with an empty lonely person inside themselves."
• The hallmark of the manipulator is to be demanding rather than being aware: the aggressive manipulator demands; the loving manipulator cajoles; the weakling manipulator needs; the strong manipulator overpowers.
• Manipulators are "numb automatons, wasting hours trying to recapture the past or ensure the future. They talk about their feelings but are rarely in vital contact with them."
• Manipulators habitually conceal and "camouflage real feeling behind a repertoire of behaviours that run the scale from servile flattery to arrogant hostility to withdrawn snobbishness in the continuous campaign to serve his or her own wishes or unconscious needs."
• Manipulators don't allow you to confront them with your true ideas or emotions. Manipulators cannot let you get mad at them, nor can they let you "get inside" them, close to any of their true, though hidden, emotions.
• Manipulators "fear vulnerability, fear being exposed or judged. They are afraid that sustained contact with another will reveal a dimension of themselves that they have so far denied or refused to see...the manipulator chooses to avoid risk by attempting to control those around him or her."
• Manipulators tend to want to control everything, including the conversations of other people. "They evaluate rather than appreciate [...they] try to convince others, rather than exchange ideas with others. They limit themselves to safe 'small talk.'"
• Past events -- real or imagined -- give manipulators excuses for failure. Many manipulators base their promises on the future. Present-oriented manipulators "talk a lot about what they are doing and may seem to be busy, but in fact they seldom accomplish much of anything."

In order to be manipulated one must surrender control to a degree. How does this happen? First, manipulators appeal to one's needs, wants, desires, and weaknesses. They offer something that seems to satisfy.

Second, manipulators base their appeal more on emotion than logic. People today seem to be more persuaded by the dynamics of delivery rather than the content of a message. Harold Bussell noted that students at Gordon College were more enamoured by a powerful delivery than by the content of a chapel speaker's message. Students almost invariably requested certain chapel speakers be invited back if they were dynamic speakers. Content or substance had little to do with their requests. Unless we become more interested in logic than in emotion, we will be manipulated endlessly by the "package" of the message.

Third, manipulators have learned how to operate as successfully in destructive cults as in consumer fraud scams. Cultists operate like the slick used-car salesman. Snake oil potions of old have been repackaged into the new elixirs of spiritual vitality and physical well-being. Throughout history humankind has fallen prey to easy answers, quick fixes, and great bargains.

(from Cult Proofing Your Kids by Dr. Paul R. Martin)