Cults 2

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psychologist and professor of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a practicing clinician, cult researcher, and teacher for nearly fifty years. According to Dr. Singer’s investigations, members of cults are often subjected to unhealthy persuasion techniques.
Excessive physical exertion is often used and leaves the person completely exhausted so that they haven’t the time or the energy to think for themselves. Repetitive motion such as swaying and spinning is also used to manipulate the person. This continuous motion has the ability to alter a person’s state of awareness making them easily disoriented. Other persuasion techniques involve painful bodily manipulation. Former members of one particular cult have reported that the cult leader would pass among the followers pressing on their eyes until the optic nerve caused them to see flashes of light. This was called "bestowing divine light" by the leader. In ...

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and that his power would be weakened, he ordered the mass suicide of more than 900 people. This mass suicide allowed Jim Jones, at least in his eyes, to keep the power he had acquired.
Cults often are able to subvert the normal rules of law because they claim to be a religion. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”(Cornell)
This amendment is what allows cults to exist quite easily ...

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