Pavlovitz is writing about political brainwashing, but this resonates with me as also describing what happened in my family of origin.
I’ll include the idea of projection, which is yet another form of blame-shifting and one that is “commonly found in personalities functioning at a primitive level as in narcissistic personality disorder .”
Over the years, our mother often accused our father of “brainwashing” us younger kids, to “get us on his side”, so as to win The Divorce settlement. It was a convenient explanation for how she could have lost custody of “her” children, without having to take any responsibility for that outcome whatsoever.
All Dad’s fault! She’s the victim!
“…Cult leaders prey upon emotionally vulnerable people, leveraging their loneliness, their disenfranchisement, their disconnection. They bombard their targets with a steady stream of misinformation, incendiary rhetoric, and chaotic prophecy—and into the swirling confusion created inside their heads, they come promising safety and security, while having no concern for them at all. They start a fire—and rush in with a bucket of water.
“…a group of now emotionally-dependent human beings, whose internal story and well-being depends on him winning. That’s the only way their world makes sense anymore, it is the only outcome they can conceive of.
“People who’ve tried to rescue their loved ones from such inculcation will tell you how incredibly difficult it is to deprogram them after such repeated deception, such prolonged lying, such protracted fear. They will detail the excruciating efforts to reach parents and best friends and adult children, through the haze of their addiction to the connection they have come to feel with someone who is predatory toward them. And many will describe the long and bloody battles they’ve fought for the people they love—battles they sometimes ultimately lost to the cult.”
