From Deprogramming to Thought Reform Consultation - Patrick Ryan, Carol Giambalvo, Joseph Kelly, Hana Whitfield
" ... In the 1980s many attempts were made by individuals doing interventions to get together to find ways to improve our profession and ourselves. But a difficulty arose in the definition of exit counseling and deprogramming. Some helping organizations at the time contributed to that confusion by maintaining a position that there were voluntary and involuntary exit counseling and voluntary and involuntary deprogramming. As a result, without the ability to establish a clear-cut definition, at those meetings people who called themselves exit counselors but were doing involuntary deprogramming could not be excluded and our work to establish ethical guidelines and a more professional approach spun its wheels, so to speak. A group of individuals who had committed themselves to voluntary interventions only began to meet regularly to share ideas and information and to develop Ethical Standards. We formed an organization of Thought Reform Consultants and eventually published our Ethical Standards. Those Ethical Standards were patterned
Thought reform consultation involves much, much more family preparation. It is necessary for a 2-3 day, sometimes more, formal family preparation involving all members of the family team and all thought reform consultant team members. This formal preparation accomplishes the following:
The family team experiences how they work together under pressure and how the thought reform consultants work together,
Enables the thought reform consulting team to observe how the family works together under pressure and who may or may not be appropriate for major roles in the intervention,
Improves family communication with the group member,
Enables the family to understand the culture of the group, its teachings and how thought reform techniques impact the group member,
Prepares the family for how to communicate in the intervention and what practical arrangements should be made,
Emphasizes the recovery process and their responsibility in it,
Emphasizes the seriousness of an intervention and all its repercussions,
Facilitates the family in making a fully informed decision about doing an intervention.
Thought reform consultation involves even more assessment, as you see — and places much more responsibility on the family. They realize that a team is not just going to come in and perform some magical process and things will forever be okay.
In both exit counseling and thought reform consulting, the purpose of the intervention is not to get someone out of a cult. While that may be a desired outcome, the purpose is to give the group member the information that enables them to make a fully informed choice."
