Letter to all members of the French Senate: law proposal against “cultic aberrations”
Raffaella Di Marzio
Rome, 30 november 2023
Raffaella Di Marzio
Director
raffaelladimarzio@gmail.com
To all members of the French Senate
Dear Senators,
My name is Raffaella di Marzio and I’m a researcher in Psychology of Religion in Italy and the Director of The Center for Studies on Freedom of Religion Belief and Conscience (LIREC).
It was brought to my attention that a law proposal against “cultic aberrations” is about to be voted upon in the French Senate.
This law proposal is presented as a wish to protect individuals from harmful treatments allegedly taking place inside “cults”, but, according to my experience and my studies in this field, such a law proposal is posing a real threat to the free exercise of the fundamental rights of individuals and families belonging to religious minorities.
In particular, I wanted to draw your attention on an idea which is repeated many times in the law proposal the idea that “cults” perpetrate psychological abuses, the so called “mind manipulation” or “psychological subjection” crime.
Unfortunately, badly influenced by media and the propaganda of “anti-cult” groups, some European governments set up courts of inquiry, parliamentary commissions, anti-cult squads and approved even laws against “cults”, or, in other words, against the alleged “mind manipulation crime” that “dangerous cults” would perpetrate against their followers, especially against children.”
I have carried out extensive research about this matter for about 25 years and summarized results of my studies in my book "Nuove religioni e sette. La psicologia di fronte alle nuove forme di culto”, (New religions and cults. Psychology facing the new cults) published in 2010. In June 2023 I published another book about this subject: "Scelta e abbandono di una comunità spirituale. Percorsi di cambiamento e sviluppo personale", (Choosing and Leaving a Spiritual Community. Paths of Change and Personal Development).
I discovered that the theory of “mind manipulation” or “brainwashing”, or “persuasive coercion” as applied to “sects” has no scientific basis. I would like to cite the most important professional Association of psychologists, who published official statements about this matter.
The official position of APA (American Psychological Association)
1987 - On February 10th, 1987, the APA joined other parties in submitting a brief in the Molko case, pending before the California Supreme Court, involving issues of brainwashing and coercive persuasion with respect to the Unification Church. The brief stated that, as applied to new religious movements, the theory of coercive persuasion “is not accepted in the scientific community” and that the relevant methodology “has been repudiated by the scientific community”. To state such a position with greater clarity would be very difficult indeed, and the brief also implied that, when applied to new religious movements, very often called “sects” or “cults”, theories of mind control were uniformly regarded as “not accepted in the scientific community”, be they referred to as “brainwashing”, “mind control”, or coercive persuasion”.
1987 - On May 11th, 1987 another very important step in this matter was APA’s refusal to approve the DIMPAC (Report of the Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control), submitted by the psychologist Margaret Singer and other five scholars. The APA rejected the report in a Memorandum of May 11, 1987 because it “lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur”. The APA stated in 1987 that brainwashing or coercive persuasion theories, when applied to new religious movements, are not scientific.
There have been further, similar affirmations of these statements in later years as well.
This law proposal calls for the introduction of a provision in the Criminal Code for a criminal offence making “psychological subjection” a criminal offence. The fact is that this kind of “crime” has no scientific basis and it is a danger for freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.
In Italy we had such a law. It happened in 1930, under Mussolini’s Fascist regime: the “plagio” law (article 603), that was the criminal offence of putting someone in a “complete state of subjugation”. The meaning of the Italian expression “plagio” [plagium in Latin] is the English word “brainwashing”. These days, anti-cult and media propaganda use some synonymous like “mind manipulation”, mind control”, and so on … but the meaning is the same: they affirm that a person can be subjected to “plagio” by “dangerous cults” or “sects”. The idea of Mussolini, when he inserted the law in the penal code, was that anti-fascists were anti-fascists only because they were under undue influence, and this law allowed him to put in jail some anti-fascists accused of exerting such influence on others who eventually became anti-fascists too. It was an easy way to put in jail the best of his opponents. Then, after WWII, the law was still in use but then it was used against the homosexuals. Homosexuality was considered to be a way to manipulate people and put them in a state of psychological subjection. The last scandal of this law was in the 70s, when a Catholic priest had been accused of estranging his young disciples from their families.
Following this scandal, the case was referred to the Italian Constitutional Court, which repealed the Plagio law in 1981. The article was repealed for many reasons amongst which:
- the first body of criticism was empirical: the phenomenon of plagio does not exist nor can it be verified, if we presume that such a condition of subjugation cannot be achieved merely with psychological tools. Most psychiatrists agreed on this point. The problem was that such a rule was too vague and undetermined, therefore contrary to the constitutional principle of legality.
- the second body of criticism was political: the critics argued that the rule masked an attempt at ideological discrimination. Following this line of reasoning the judges ran the risk of judging lifestyles and any ideas that were contrary to prevailing social opinion or even to the court's majority opinion under the pretext of judging methods of indoctrination
I personally collected a large bibliography on this specific subject, including a total of 500 books, articles or studies, from 1970 to 2014 [[1]].
After a very careful survey of the literature and using my twenty years of experience on the field, I can assert the following: while the common anti-cult brainwashing or mind control theories have been largely rejected by the scholarly community (with few exceptions), forms of persuasion or influence based on false or otherwise unethical representations continue to exist in everyday life and also within some of the New Religious Movements. As a matter of fact, this kind of abuse can cause serious problems to people. However, misrepresentations are rather different from brainwashing, or “mind control” or “mind manipulation”, or “psychological subjection”.
This law proposal asserts that “the definition of a new offence appears necessary to punish situations of psychological or physical subjection which cause serious impairment of the physical or mental health of victims, whose physical injury can now be recognized.”
Being quite an expert on psychological and educational matters, as well as the subject of Freedom of Religion or Belief and religious minorities, I can tell you, supported by the scientific community, that this idea is not based on scientific data or empirical research. It is only the expression of an intolerant ideology of specific anti-cult groups that has already created tremendous harm to children and parents belonging to religious minorities in many countries.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is my belief that to approve repressive laws to combat the crime of “psychological subjection”, as suggested by this law proposal, is not only useless, but also very dangerous for freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and democracy in general.
Would you have any question feel free to contact me.
Best regards,
Raffaella di Marzio
[1] (cfr. for example: Galanter, 1993, 1996; Anthony and Robbins, 1992, 1994, 1995b; 2004; Barker, 1984; 1988, 1989, 1995, 1998; Bromley, 1988, 1998abc, 2002; Bromley et al., 1992; Richardson, 1978ab, 1985ab, 1993; Introvigne, 1992, 1996, 1998, 1999ab, 2002; Fizzotti, 1994; Fizzotti et al., 2000; Aletti, 1994; Aletti et al., 1999; Anthony, 1990, 1999, 2001; Barber, 1961; Conn, 1982; Fromm and Shor, 1979; Orne, 1961-1962; Spanos, 1996; Paloutzian, Richardson and Rambo, 1999; Wuthnow, 1976, 1978; Zimbardo and Hartley, 1985; Bird and Reimer, 1982; Lewis and Bromley, 1987; Wright, 1988; Wright and Ebaugh, 1993; Stark and Iannaccone, 1997; Bromley, 1998; Saliba, 2004; Wulff, 2001; Luckoff et al., 1996; Buxant et al. 2007, Buxant and Saroglou, 2008; Namini and Murken, 2009; Healy, 2011; Rambo, 1993; Rambo and Farris, 2012; Rambo and Bauman, 2012; Cowan, 2014).