INTRODUCTION

I am a Hypnotherapist and throughout the years I have used everything from Neuro Linguistic Programming, Guided Imagery and Cognitive Therapy to Persuasion Tactics in order to assist my clients in ridding themselves of deep seeded phobias and limiting beliefs. I’ve seen the positive effects that these tools for change have had on people’s lives. Like any powerful tool in the right hands it can repair, but in the wrong hands it can destroy, it all depends on the intention and moral judgments of the user. My purpose for writing this book is to shine a light on those who choose to use these transformative tools for their own personal gain. Cults, are just some of the organizations which use countless techniques to get its members to commit themselves and take part in what may be harmful activities. The sum of these techniques constitutes what many professionals have come to call “Repatterning." It's also known as "thought reform," "hypnotic programming", "mental conditioning," and “mind control”. These techniques involve the systematic breakdown of a person's sense of self. Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, became famous in the 1970s after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which has come to be known as a "political cult”. Hearst was locked in a dark closet for several days after her kidnapping and was kept hungry, tired, brutalized and afraid for her life while Cult members bombarded her with their anti-capitalist political ideology. Within two months of her kidnapping, Patty had changed her name, issued a statement in which she referred to her family as the "pig-Hearsts" and appeared on a security tape robbing a bank with her kidnappers.
Emotional Repatterning is an umbrella term for any number of techniques used to get people to behave in ways which would normally contradict their values, beliefs and personal preferences. The concept of “Repatterning” itself is a controversial one, most psychologists today believe that cult brainwashing techniques, which are similar to techniques used in prisoner interrogation, do change a person's thought processes. There is no particular 'personality' that is susceptible to cult mind control techniques. However there are certain characteristics that make people more vulnerable. For example, people who are dependent, unassertive or have a low tolerance for ambiguity. People who are idealistic or have a strong desire for spiritual meaning are also somewhat susceptible. Most people will find, on reflection, that there have been times in their lives when they have experienced several or all of these things themselves. This means that everyone is susceptible to being recruited into a cult, if they happen to meet a cult member at a time when they are vulnerable and the cult member is offering exactly what they want, a relief to their heartache, a new perspective or a way to numb their sorrows. A very important point that makes people incredibly susceptible is an ignorance of how mind control works and the fact that cults use persuasive techniques to recruit. Large cults even have training manuals which teach the members what kind of people to recruit. For example, a cult may want 'pay-as-you-go' members, people who are earning money and can afford to pay for courses, which always seem to get, more and more expensive. The cult’s manual’s often assist in training new members on how and where to find recruits, how to assess the recruits, and based on the assessment what story to tell them to attract them to a course. Once an individual joins the cause, the cult then uses techniques such as manipulation, blackmail, verbal and physical abuse, forced drug addiction and hypnotic programming to keep their members from leaving or rebelling. Cults are not the only ones which have used these techniques for destructive purposes. In the early 1960’s at Allan Memorial Institute in Royal Victoria Hospital, Dr. Ewen Cameron, a Scottish-born psychiatrist who had served as President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, secretly conducted experiments that destroyed lives and changed the course of psychological torture forever. Cameron’s experiments, known as Subproject 68, were partially funded by the CIA and the Canadian government, and are widely known for their use of LSD, barbiturates, and amphetamines on patients. In the media, they were known as the “mind control” studies done at McGill and were reported as a brainwashing conspiracy led by the CIA and the Canadian government.. Only decades later, in the 1980s, did past victims speak about their experiences, and by the 1990’s the lawsuits began to pile up. In response, the Canadian government launched “The Allan Memorial Institute Depatterned Persons Assistance Plan,” which provided $100,000 to each of the former patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron. The compensation came from a recommendation by lawyer George Cooper, in which he clarified that the Canadian government did not have a legal responsibility for what happened, but a moral responsibility. But these experiments were only a fraction of Emotional Patterning experiments being conducted by The United States and Canada. With the freedom of information act, a myriad of files describing mind control programs with names like Project: Bluebird, Operation Artichoke and Project: MK-ULTRA came to public awareness in the late 1970’s, exposing everyone to the reality and potency of this techniques. Another way in which the mass populace is exposed to Emotional Repatterning techniques is by what is called “Neuro-Marketing”. Neuro-Marketing uses a variety of tools and techniques to direct consumer responses and behavior. These include everything from relatively simple and inexpensive approaches, such as eye tracking which measures eye gaze patterns, analyzing facial expressions, and behavioral experiments to more complex techniques such as subliminal advertising, persuasion tactics and hypnotic indoctrination. Nearly every single advertising company today uses some version of Emotional Repatterning to get customers to purchase their products or sign up for their services.

Like I mentioned before, my sole purpose for writing this book is to shine a light on those who are using these techniques for personal gain. I have dedicated my life to educate and empower people who have lost their way, so that they may take charge of their own lives and destinies. My hope is to give you a detailed outline of how, why and where these destructive manipulation tools are being used, for the purpose of preventing you from becoming a victim of mental, physical and spiritual abuse.

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