Harmful Relationships and Groups

H armful Relationships can be found all around us; we may even be in one of them, or one of our children may have been drawn into one. These types of relationships rely on deception, manipulation, and ultimately, control. Harmful relationships are endemic, and it appears that the occurrence of these negative and potentially dangerous relationships is on the rise. I have become aware of harmful, controlling relationships increasing at an alarming rate among our school-age children and youth, and these relationships are beginning at younger and younger ages. I am aware of children as young as nine and ten years old who are already involved in harmful or controlling relationships with someone they consider to be a a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Extreme Manipulation: The Statistics

Foundations of Extreme Manipulation

FAQ about Manipulation

Questionnaires to Answer
Are You In a Cult?
Is This Relationship Abusive?

However, harmful relationships do not just occur between two people. The same interpersonal forces can and are used within groups as well. People became much more aware of harmful, controlling and manipulative groups in the 1960's, under the names of destructive cults and totalitarianism. The truth is, however, that extremely manipulative group leaders, and the followers they have seduced and coerced, have been around for a very long time. For instance, the Greek mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras, built up a destructive cult in 529 BCE.

Extreme manipulation has existed for millennium. Throughout history there have been certain charismatic people who have been able to lead others into doing things, saying things, believing things, that those followers had not and would not have normally done. This was sometimes put down as divine inspiration, sometimes as a force of will. Many times, those involved and those outside the situation didn't have any word to describe what they were seeing or experiencing.

In the last century, the confusion began to be recognized. The highly destructive manipulations of Hitler during World War II (and prior to it) brought the need to understand this form of sly coercion into focus. Although many tried to deny it, the fact remained that what had been done to the German and Central European population could also happen elsewhere. And in fact, it did. Stalin was another highly destructive manipulator, as was Mao. They, too, made their populations into 'true believers'.

In the mid-portion of the last century, it seemed as if there was a sudden flourishing of this phenomena. It came as a shock to people to hear American POWs in North Korea repudiate their country, and then the public began to find out what had been done to those soldiers in the North Korean prisons. A journalist coined the word 'brainwashing', and suddenly it seemed as if it were everywhere. Cults seemed to spring up out of the grass overnight as we heard about the Tate-LaBianca murders, the abduction and apparent conversion of Patty Hearst, the slaughterhouse of Jonestown, and more.

At the same time, we had grown mature enough as a culture to recognize that the assault, battery and rape of a marriage partner was reprehensible and wrong. That a marriage license is not a license to abuse. But that also left us with a new question which had not been asked before. Why, since it is now understood to be "okay" to leave an abuser, do battered spouses stay? What keeps a battering relationship together?

People began to seek words to express what they were seeing. 'Brainwashing' didn't make sense...it didn't explain anything. New terms came into being: totalism, mind control, coercive persuasion, and the cycle of abuse. Even so, the dynamics of what has been occurring to unsuspecting people since the beginnings of history have often been seen only through a fog of confusion. The dynamics which, even now, continue to occur and shape our world and our personal lives.

The truth of the matter is that extreme manipulation is built up from the same interpersonal forces that enable us to learn from each other, to influence one another, and that allow us to form normal social groups — including families, worship communities, businesses, and civic groups.