The Profile of Likely Recruits
... there are also plenty of cult members who show no sign of these characteristics. The latter will be held up as public examples by the cult, which uses them as cover.
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The Profile of Likely Recruits
The cult’s ideal target population is young people who are depressive or who have broken off from their family and society, who feel they cannot handle day-to-day life and who are searching for substitute solutions.
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The Profile of Likely Recruits
Family or social conflicts often contribute to a person’s decision to join a cult. The group is a shelter from the aggression that has been felt and it provides a model of conflict resolution that intellectually satisfies the follower. He refuses any self-analysis and transfers all responsibility onto the external world, and more particularly onto the social or family unit. Entry into a cult is often a way of responding to the social pressures to establish one’s autonomy from the family, especially during adolescence. Sometimes this move is taken in response to crisis situations — divorce, job loss, mourning — or to a disturbance of what used to be “normal,” either personally, or within the family. Going into a cult, in such cases, serves a pseudo-therapeutic function. This element of “asking for help” makes CCs take a strong aggressive stance with regard to recognized psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who are the only ones likely to bring the subject to a real analysis of his actions and his responsibility in family and social conflicts.
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The Profile of Likely Recruits
Cult members are generally recruited between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Older followers usually belonged to a cult earlier in life as well. At the young end of the scale are students finishing their secondary education or beginning their higher education. Full disciplehood usually means curtailing formal studies, and the true cultural and education level of the members is slightly lower than it appears to be. The discrepancy between the biographical cultural level and the real cultural level is an indicator of socio-cultural maladjustment.
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