MIVILUDES 2007 Report — Michel de Courtelle's Analysis

MIVILUDES 2007 Report

The analysis of Michel de Courtelle (sympathising member of CICNS)

Something new in the MIVILUDES 2007 report.

Even if MIVILUDES remains a body largely incompetent to study the cult mechanisms defined in its field of application, it is evolving somewhat in the expression of its 2007 annual report.

The developments in the report as a whole

A report already less voluminous [233 pages, that is –23% compared with 2006; (115 pages in 2004, 172 pages in 2005, 304 pages in 2006)]

A report in which the introduction and the conclusion of the President of the Miviludes resemble a long complaint directed at his ever more numerous and better-argued detractors, rather than a text advocating the establishment of coherent, concrete, planned and coordinated lines of progress.

Is this the sign of a weariness, of a future departure of the incumbent, or of a change of tone in the manner of approaching cult mechanisms?

We hope that this third version will prevail, and we analyse this report in a positive and constructive way in order to prepare France for another future — being at once more conscious of the realities to be framed, and more open to the new spiritual and therapeutic creativities, fruit of human diversity.

Admittedly, as last year, the report makes plain that MIVILUDES and the teams attached to it themselves employ the whole of the existing cult mechanisms (cf. Annex 1).

Can one arrogate to oneself the right to judge someone in a field when one is oneself on the index? Certainly not. So MIVILUDES will still have to show courage in cleaning up its own cult impulses and sweeping before its own door.

Admittedly, as last year, the report is just as poor, using a number of conflations, value judgements, abusive generalisations and mental manipulations.

But these are sharply down (–42% in conflations, value judgements and abusive generalisations, –54% in mental manipulations).

Moreover the abuses of dominant position have virtually disappeared in favour of a manifest paranoid societal vision (cf. Annex 2).

MIVILUDES, which is supposed to issue only factual documents, documents verified at source, must continue on this path of rigour and objectivity. This analysis will contribute to it.

Admittedly, as last year, the report contains a number of statements prompting questions about the competence of MIVILUDES’s study teams (cf. Annex 3).

Once again there is the absence of scientific research in the fields identified as subject to dérives sectaires. Research should in general be the responsibility of a state and a government, and not that of a few isolated individuals. Moreover, collaboration with recognised French academics dealing with this theme on an experimental level still does not appear to be on the agenda (ethnologists, anthropologists, historians and sociologists of religion, lawyers specialising in spiritual freedom, etc.). For what reasons are competent academics deliberately set aside?

Admittedly, as last year, the report also proves devoid of tangible proofs and of established results on the phenomena stigmatised.

The disproportion between the suspicious relentlessness about the myth of the crime-generating cult and the reality of the phenomenon observed remains very glaring. In proceeding thus — in blocking or preventing all serious study and research on the subject — MIVILUDES in reality plays into the hands of genuinely deviant movements and favours their development.

Admittedly, as last year, MIVILUDES and the whole adjacent State apparatus reinforce intelligence and intervention actions almost exclusively in the direction of alternative therapies and of the vocational training courses dispensed around this theme (three quarters of the cases cited, cf. Annex 4).

Admittedly, a parliamentary commission of inquiry has investigated “the influence of movements of a cult character and the consequences of their practices on the physical and mental health of minors”. However, it was able to bring to light only three cases — and non-criminal ones at that — of children in danger on the educational plane (cf. the analysis of the MIVILUDES 2006 report). That did not prevent MIVILUDES from coordinating with the parliamentarians of the study group on cults a set of 50 new measures aimed at the education of children, without even having taken the time to carry out a real quantified study backed by statistics. Where is their usefulness and their effectiveness in application?

Admittedly, as last year, MIVILUDES attacks with prejudice the only two independent associations concerned with freedom of conscience or spiritual minorities (CICNS and CAPLC, cf. Annex 4), which do an immense job of informing the public and of collaborating with French academics in the field (cf. the extract from the colloquium of September 2007 on the CICNS site) — even though MIVILUDES recalls in this 2007 report (p. 184) that “It is not specific movements that are under surveillance, but types of behaviour disrespectful of laws and regulations or disturbing public order”. This attack testifies to the ambient malaise which will end by isolating MIVILUDES and the French administration totally from society, probably in less than two or three years now.

It would be imperative for MIVILUDES to take account of the other side in any judgement on cult mechanisms, as is required in judicial matters, and thus to open itself to the arguments of those who, with far weaker means than MIVILUDES, work serenely for the safeguarding of freedom of conscience, of belief, and of religious, spiritual or therapeutic practice. Only on that condition would MIVILUDES see a network of competent people converge towards it.

Admittedly, as last year, the 2007 report contains once again the same types of inadmissible arguments, particularly from the Renseignements Généraux services. A vigilant reading makes it possible to raise 6 to 7 times more observations in the part of the report concerning the Ministry of the Interior than in the rest of the document (cf. Annex 2).

One is forced to note a manifest bad faith and incompetence.

Admittedly, as last year, the report’s conclusion indicates no line of progress for the following years, and confines itself to a simple political conclusion — which is easily understandable for a report empty of significant results.

None of this is either compatible or acceptable with the mission citizens expect of such a body financed out of taxpayers’ money.

For every French person is entitled to ask how far the intentional disinformation of our fellow citizens will go, and the amplification of the phenomenon of fear the better to manipulate them.

They may also ask how far the blindness of our fellow citizens will go, who endorse this type of body, this type of working method, this type of individual ultimately so little respectful of the fundamental rights of human beings and of the living.

They are entitled to ask, finally, how long our politicians will go on pretending to take a position on this subject, so crucial for the expression of the vitality of peoples.

Will civil society itself have to organise a citizens’ debate alone — such as a Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry — or set up an Observatory on spirituality bringing together the real competences in the matter?

More and more citizens are open and conscious of other realities, and know full well that MIVILUDES’s vision is obsolete.

So let us see, with the help of this report, how to help this body carry out its mutation.

The reader may quickly perceive, with discernment, that the 2007 report is very heterogeneous in its content, despite certain developments.

The developments in the content of the report

The 2007 report begins to present dossiers studied in a more precise, more factual and documented way (the subjects on satanism, hallucinogenic plants, systemic constellations and multi-level marketing networks have the advantage of setting out the problem a little better than in the past).

Nonetheless, MIVILUDES must make the effort to look for the cause of the phenomena it studies, to identify the real motivation of those involved, rather than plastering its own on top, as it has too often been in the habit of doing until now.

For example, the subject of satanism is well studied by numerous sociologists. They show that there exists a need for esoteric initiations in order to move towards a greater well-being — something MIVILUDES has not perceived. The reality of satanism consists most of the time in employing exoteric rituals, deviant by nature because non-esoteric.

Why not properly distinguish between what is esoteric and what is exoteric?

For that, MIVILUDES’s teams would need a competence in esoteric initiatory processes, which is not currently the case.

For example, on the subject of shamanism with the taking of hallucinogens, history shows that the human being feels the need to travel in other realities of consciousness. This is moreover well objectified today by the medical, cognitive and psychological sciences (the example of the international congress on the near-death experience at Martigues in June 2006). Taking chemical products derived from plants carries a real danger at the neuronal level, while at the same time often permitting only an artificial flight from a reality that has become hard to bear.

Why not differentiate journeys in expanded consciousness carried out quite simply in a state of relaxation — sometimes with the use of music and sounds — from these journeys involving the taking of products toxic to the organism?

For that, MIVILUDES’s teams would need a competence in techniques of expansion of consciousness, which is not the case today.

For example, on systemic and family constellations, many beings feel the need to do a work of transpersonal and trans-familial development in order to move towards a lasting well-being without negative consequences for those around them. Yet it turns out that certain therapies are focused solely on a personal or family development which permits only a temporary improvement.

MIVILUDES’s teams would need a competence in transpersonal development, which is not the case, as we shall see in addressing in detail the part of the report on “false memories”.

For example, on multi-level marketing networks, one notes a natural need to create new ways of generating a solidary abundance in our society, at a moment when the world economic system is threatening to collapse. Yet a number of multi-level marketing systems are built so as to be profitable in the short term for the sole benefit of those who promote them, and are therefore in the end to the disadvantage of future generations.

MIVILUDES’s teams would need a competence in new ways of creating economic abundance, on the model of Africa’s ancestral tontine system, created out of a fraternal approach to exchange and established on the basis of a work of transpersonal development by each bearer of new creativity.

MIVILUDES’s 2007 report analyses in an erroneous and incomplete manner a therapeutic mode known as that of “false memories”.

This field brings together the whole of the 4 missing competences I have just cited: esoteric initiation, expansion of consciousness, transpersonal psychology, and the new economic tontine of exchange.

We shall develop a counter-analysis of the part of the report on false memories, so clearly does it bring MIVILUDES’s shortcomings to light.

Given the fields of ignorance of MIVILUDES and the associated teams, it appears inescapable that one day these bodies will have to turn to the real competences, at the risk of becoming ever more sclerotic in what Raphaël Liogier, president of the Observatoire du religieux, calls “a French-style totalitarianism with a laïcité founded on the arbitrary”.

Now, these competences have for some years converged around the Centre d’Information et de Conseil sur les Nouvelles Spiritualités (CICNS), where one finds a well-argued point of view on the observation of the phenomena at play, particularly in matters of cultism.

One day MIVILUDES will indeed have to attach itself to experts in the social sciences — sociologists, historians of religion, ethnologists — to legal experts specialising in religious discrimination, such as certain lawyers, to specialists in the field of the new psychotherapies, to the leaders of minority spiritual movements, to figures recognised for their reflection and their understanding of our society and of consciousness (philosophers, writers), and to independent bodies observing the phenomena at play (CICNS for example).

THE PARTICULAR CASE OF FALSE MEMORIES

What is said accurately in the part of the report dealing with false memories:

When the memory does not arise from a personal expansion of the person’s consciousness, but is rather the fruit of the therapist’s analysis, of an induction or of an occult narrative brought back by that same therapist, we are indeed facing a cult mechanism.

When the memory brought back by the person is interpreted or codified in one way or another by the therapist, we are indeed within a cult mechanism.

When it is suggested that the memory may be “the fruit of the imagination resulting from a fantasy of the person who has unconsciously replaced a fact in memory”, that is erroneous, because practice shows that each person brings back experiences of their own, coherent with their mode of thought, even if the memorial information arises from a particular cultural schema imprinted in earliest childhood. What is brought back by consciousness has a meaning, even if it may temporarily be hidden from both the therapist and the patient.

When it is said that the memory is an experience deformed by the subject’s memory, that is accurate, since no one sees the same scene in the same way. But to attribute to that deformation the deviant meaning MIVILUDES gives it — no. That is a disrespectful value judgement about the patient’s memorial perceptions.

When the notion of “false memories of ill-treatment, of rapes, of incest” is invoked (p. 40) without it being mentioned in the report how, and by whom, that memory is brought up, there is an abuse of language and a risk of mental manipulation by MIVILUDES, encouraging the belief that all these memories are false, when there are true ones. It is important to respect patients’ real sufferings.

When there is induction by a therapist of facts of sexual abuse (p. 47), that is a case of dérive sectaire.

When the description of a scene through images is not accompanied by significant bodily sensations (p. 48), the therapist must be vigilant. Indeed, given the level of energy involved, any strong trauma of the type invoked in the report (incest, rape, satanic experiences for example) passes through a bodily memorisation — the storage place of a colossal energy at that point. It is even this bodily localisation of pain which is very often the entry point of the therapeutic process. In any case, this trapped energy needs to be “extracted” for the individual to have access to real well-being. So to stop at a visual description is wholly unsatisfactory for concluding as to the validity of the victim’s lived experience, and for permitting the total liberation of the trauma.

When the notion of false memories of past lives is invoked (p. 40), each person may ask where therapists’ competence lies for knowing whether that memory is true or false. Sceptics would thus have us believe that all memories of past lives are false. Even if Christianity removed this notion — which existed before the Council of Constantinople II in 553 — by a vote decided by one voice, it seems cult-like to imply or to claim that such memories have no value whatever. Knowing all that still remains unknown today in the field of consciousness and memory, despite the undeniable progress made in the neurosciences in recent years, a humble and respectful attitude seems indispensable before passing a peremptory judgement on buried memories rising to the surface. This does not exclude an obvious discernment in distinguishing what may, in certain cases, be of the order of pathological fabulation.

When the notion of false memories of abductions by extraterrestrials (p. 40) is invoked, the same observation applies as previously. Where is the therapists’ competence for determining the validity of that memory?

That is why the definition adopted for false memories (p. 40) cannot be retained if one wishes to have an objective scientific attitude, for conflation is omnipresent in it, bringing suspicion upon this type of approach.

Taking up the current work of neuropsychologists and cognitive psychologists on false memories and episodic memory (Tulving), we can make several observations. For these researchers, “false memories” not induced by an outside person — or even not suggested by the formulation of the questions asked by the accompanying therapist — can be classed in three categories: memory distortions, false recognitions or false recollections, and imaginative illusions.

Distortions or errors of memory are an inherent part of human nature, which tends to reconstruct its past, and all the more so where the subject’s personality is fragmented and borrowed from their external family model, instead of it being their true unified personality that expresses itself (Barlett, Estes, Moscovitch, Schachter). Memory distortions are anchored in a real lived experience, and are deformed or modified by oneself or by the suggestion of “trusted third parties”. The more the lived experience consisted in a new experience, or the more the part of the experience was encoded in the body by a physical sensation or a strong emotion, the fewer distortive inferences the fact will carry — while external visual circumstances, details, and familiar aspects around that fact may be deformed or reconstructed.

False recognitions will be linked to the nature of the encoding of the information (see the experiment with “critical lures” and “distractors” by Roediger and Dermott). If the encoding is specific, precise, demanding, focused, the recognition will be correct — contrary to information encoded in a neutral, light, lax and vague manner (Shodgrass and Corwin).

Imaginative illusions, which are memories supposed to be real, are the product of neutral or purely imaginative actions. Their restitution may be equivalent if one keeps solely to the patient’s mental validation (Goff and Roediger).

The common point in helping patients to distinguish false memories from true ones themselves rests on the anchoring of memory in the instinctive reptilian part of the individual, and not only in their limbic or cortical part. It is therefore for the patient and not the therapist to feel this veracity, for it has been shown up to now by these scientists that no expert external to the event can differentiate a true memory from a memory created by suggestion. Vigilance and humility are therefore called for with regard to memories that are solely visual, conceptual or abstract — especially in children and elderly people, who are more suggestible for various reasons (/children: Sam, Bruch and Ceci; /elderly adults: Jacoby, Bishara, Hessels and Toth).

At the same time, a true memory of the trauma of rape or incest has necessarily induced a strong physical and emotional pain. This memory has a real source, often concealed in forgetting, allowing the individual to adapt and survive. So in that case, the patient who recovers them will relive the emergence of their pains and their emotions in order to move towards a real liberation. In addition to visual memory, there is the expression of the trauma, its understanding, access to a true forgiveness, a bodily self-healing, and the expression of an energy of love. Here there can be no question of imaginative illusion (emotional and physical validation in addition to mental validation), of false recognition (the encoding is neither neutral, nor light, nor vague, nor lax), or of memory distortion (the strongest point of the encoding — the rape — cannot be distorted, by its strong and global perceptual aspect, whereas the visual scene around it may be (global aspect only)).

Competent practitioners who accompany patients in a work on memories help the person to bring back a memory which remains to be investigated, a memory partly concealed for reasons of suffering in childhood, in foetal life or perhaps beyond. This accompaniment is even essential in helping the person move towards a lasting individual well-being.

When the phenomenon of “false memories” is analysed in this report without a psycho-sociological study having first been carried out, and when it is approached only through the citation of two or three incompetent authors, MIVILUDES runs a great risk of being itself taxed with cult deviance (p. 41).

When victims end by lodging a complaint at the conclusion of a therapeutic work on memories, it is essential to discern the real underlying problem. In the course of a successful transpersonal development process, victims unfailingly pass through a stage of forgiveness towards their abuser — a true forgiveness arising from the heart and not a mental forgiveness. This liberating process of forgiveness, associated with a deep understanding of what has been lived, allows the person to move towards a healing of their trauma, of their wounds. They then no longer feel the need to lodge a complaint against their abuser, the latter being himself a being in deep suffering.

That is why one of MIVILUDES’s fundamental missions concerning aid to victims is null and void, if that aid bears solely on the legal, media and rational terrain.

In a coherent and complete transpersonal process, a woman may of course lodge a complaint against her abuser in the case of rape or incest if he still constitutes a danger to society and to those around her. However, true love is the successful outcome of any therapy — particularly love of one’s abuser.

By contrast, when certain spiritual groups or certain therapists bring a victim to “address to their parents insulting and calumnious letters denouncing incestuous relations in their early childhood” (p. 42), that attitude may be regarded as a dérive sectaire.

That is why, at present, there will be no possible evaluation and no independent certification on this sensitive subject, nor any code of ethics for these accompaniment professions, so long as the competence is not assembled. Without that, wanting to fix by public authority and by the (current) professional organisations the minimum acquisition of competences and learning is null and void, and even dangerous (p. 50).

It would be fitting to federate, around organisations such as CICNS and the Observatoire des religions, a genuine Independent Observatory of spiritualities and alternative therapies.

It could then bring together, for example, the psychotherapists dealing with memorial liberations, to constitute a council of competent wise persons capable of training, for example, the whole body of psychiatrists and psychologists who have not learned these approaches in their studies. It is also to be noted that confining oneself to listing a panoply of methods as suspicious a priori (p. 48) is an exercise in cult manipulation on MIVILUDES’s part.

Note that when there is confusion between real memory and the interpretation of memories called here “false memories”, it is logical that one should then confuse pell-mell the associated tools (p. 45).

Thus, manual methods of energy treatment have an influence on all memories, whatever they may be. Of course, it is fitting to remain vigilant that the therapist “induces nothing that comes from himself” in this therapy, or “does not reprogram the patient without their knowledge”. It is understood that “intensive and systematic” work may pose a problem, particularly for the person’s free will. But how many therapists or groups are really concerned by that description? Would it be justified to include in this rubric the anti-cult groups with their methods of handling apostates?

For, since 2000, the report as a whole in fact records only 50 families who complained of having been accused of false allegations of the rape or incest type (6 complaints a year on average, p. 160). How many of the 50 really committed suicide, as the psychologist Delphine Guérard asserts on p. 166?

Admittedly, “individuals presenting serious personality disorders, whether under psychiatric care or not, with a manifest delusion around incest” (p. 160) will always remain, for their therapists and whatever the technique used, persons difficult to approach and to lead towards a total healing.

Likewise, individuals who convince themselves alone, while surfing the Internet, of having been the victim of a rape or an incest seem difficult to control, since by definition they are alone. How many are they really? And why include them among the cases of induced false memories, knowing that they are the principal drivers of that induction — contrary to the other cases where the intervention of a third person is decisive?

Therapists correctly using the methods that call on memories will have no major difficulty in helping the immense majority of other individuals to free themselves.

If the report by Delphine Guérard, of the AFSI (association Alerte faux souvenirs induits), whose major conclusions are inserted into the MIVILUDES 2007 report, is right to point out the professionals who induce false memories, it is surprising (indeed inadmissible for a psychologist) to make so many conflations, value judgements and mental manipulations on such a subject (p. 160). Delphine Guérard speaks of “unorthodox” practices by qualified professionals, without disclosing her value judgement as to orthodoxy. Yet the reader does not expect a political discourse from her, but a factual and reasoned account of the subject. The same observation applies when she writes: “the charlatans who allow themselves to practise, … most of them invent their method, and their practice proves abusive”.

Is Delphine Guérard really a competent specialist in memory therapies, to arrogate to herself the right to speak of charlatans or of abuses? Which are the groups she names as cult-like, and which “have a precise technique of creating memories of incest”? Such a judgement is weighty enough in its consequences to make it necessary to argue it and to reference it, which is not the case here.

The same applies when, a few lines further on, she indicates that “a form of heightened militancy often animates these therapists who direct and regiment their patients”. Does she have proofs for advancing such an argument? If not, it is a flagrant example of mental manipulation on her part.

By contrast, the reader entirely follows her argument when she indicates that “the therapeutic relentlessness which consists in recovering memories at all costs by means of suggestive questions, in seeking intrusively a word that does not come, and in regarding denunciation as a means of finally recovering peace, is a dangerous practice” that may lead to serious psychological disorders.

It is a pity that the manner in which she describes the theories used in matters of “false memories” should be far too marked by abusive generalisations (p. 161), employing the words “all”, “anti”, “none”, etc.

One can only assent when she states (p. 162) that establishing a typology of the specific symptoms of the sexually abused child is deviant. For very often it is tempting thereafter to hold the reverse reasoning — that is, to start from the typology in order to imagine that such and such a child has or has not been abused.

But why this need to include manipulative statements by saying that “Parents are harmful and guilty, diabolical, negligent, domineering, critical, contemptuous, manipulative, paedophile…”? Where then is the empathy that every professional psychologist must have for their patients?

Moreover, this psychologist genuinely displays ignorance when she speaks of bodily techniques put to misuse, relying on the famous slogan “the body does not lie” (p. 163). She would discredit all bodily techniques by saying: “Thus, ‘to unblock resistances’, the major objective of therapies focused on memories, all sorts of psycho-corporeal techniques are used, such as massages, relaxation, the laying on of hands, energy care, breathing exercises. For it is a matter of provoking a deep relaxation in order to favour the emergence of the body’s memories. Becoming conscious of the blockages then makes it possible to go beyond them and to purify the trauma”. In reality, she describes well a reality of the positive techniques to be employed in therapies on memory.

By contrast, she is right to remain vigilant when it comes to group techniques with sessions of collective confrontation — on condition of not stigmatising everything and not provoking conflations between different techniques. Likewise it is good to remain vigilant when “the therapist holds the key to the meaning of the person’s words” (p. 164) or when the therapist asserts that “all illnesses come from those around one” (p. 163).

That is how MIVILUDES, relying on the very incomplete analysis of this AFSI psychologist, abusively transforms in its report a sound way of proceeding into a deviant practice.

The postulates and principles invoked on pages 45, 46 and 47 are relatively well described if one looks at them in the direction of a sound transpersonal practice. The only reservations to be corrected:

“questioning the body-memory by pressures revealing the points of blockage” is a deviant practice (the body’s shells and physical shields, materialising the points of blockage, are to be released with infinite gentleness and at their periphery);
the fact that “the therapist decodes the level of preoccupation of the patient’s subconscious” or “the key to the meaning of the person’s words (p. 164)” is a deviant practice (only the patient is able to decode and to gain access to their own understandings, while being guided in the modified state of consciousness by the therapist).

It is also good to recall that the tool is not everything, and that it is highly dependent on the one who uses it. It is true that in the case of transpersonal memorial therapies, a deep and inescapable personal work is indispensable on the part of the accompanying therapist.

For this reason, psychiatrists and psychologists are very often excluded from the possible field of use of these therapies, since very few of them have done a real work of transpersonal development.

Obviously, if the therapist has this memorial therapy — which is of the order of individual liberation — experienced by a closed group, he exposes himself to higher risks of dérives sectaires (p. 48).

Evidently, if the costliness of the sessions is indeed established (p. 48), there is a dérive sectaire — especially if it is accompanied by a financial punishment of the dissident member. This notion is to be differentiated from the normal traditional matter of deposits paid for any group work.

Finally, if pressure and threats are exerted on the dissident contemplating their departure from the group (p. 48), there too there is a dérive sectaire.

Wanting to stigmatise the methods (p. 164) of “waking dream”, “cellular memory”, “energy treatment” methods, and “cult psychotherapies”, without separating out the human influence of the psychotherapist, is a form of mental manipulation tending to make people believe that all therapists using these methods are to be excluded and discredited.

It is understood that limiting oneself to “detecting the negative experiences inscribed in a person’s ‘memories’, freeing them and replacing them with a ‘positive programme’ (p. 165)” — even with an extrasensory faculty, a capacity of the therapist to search in others’ auras as is mentioned on p. 164 — is in the end deviant, because here the person does not themselves achieve a personal understanding after the liberation of the salutary emotions. It is the other who does it, or who suggests understandings in their place. As a result, the memory is not totally freed. The person may be temporarily soothed and feel better, without the forgiveness of the heart arising from the initial trauma being expressed.

We can understand that Delphine Guérard, not knowing the processes of memorial therapy, comes to make so many conflations by mixing inescapable and positive real facts of a liberating practice of deep and lasting well-being with deviant techniques or attitudes.

Let us recall here that meditation is not to be called into question (p. 164), nor even esoteric practice, nor any given breathing practice.

A therapist, in order to be in a real discernment and vigilance, must pass each of their practices or attitudes through the sieve of the 9 cult mechanisms (cf. Annex 1).

Such is the price of exigency in that activity, for the patient’s well-being.

No need to persuade, to convince, to advise, to suggest solutions or interpretations, to deploy the omnipotence of a master-therapist.

No need to claim to heal, transform or change an individual’s life. Only the individual can be the subject of that transformation.

No necessity to follow The Theory as Delphine Guérard suggests (p. 165).

The vigilances she cites there are quite real, so as not to be regimented or under mental hold. That said, experience often shows that the one under mental hold is precisely the one who has to learn to get out of it. And it is not the world of spirituality and well-being that is its most glaring reflection, but indeed the world of business, the social or school environment, and the family, where the hold is stronger still.

Moreover, in a true relationship of accompanying another, Delphine Guérard ought to have learned that the true compassionate act presupposes a degree of intimacy and fusion with the other, in an intimate respect for the other, and not in the attitude she speaks of, of entering “by forced entry into another’s unconscious” (p. 165).

Delphine Guérard rightly points out, by contrast, all the attempts at control, formatting and mastery of the patient — without realising, in doing so, that she thereby also condemns a good number of the techniques currently taught in psychology, or of the techniques practised by the anti-cult associations subsidised by the taxpayer.

The reader may apply the same extension of thought when she raises the toxicity of therapists’ psyches (p. 165), without citing which.

Is she speaking of that of psychiatrists who, most of the time, do no work on themselves and who often themselves border on madness; or of that of a portion of French psychologists formatted to Freudian, Lacanian or Jungian dogmas alone; or of that of psychotherapists who use the deviant practices we have already abundantly cited here? Yes, this subject is very delicate, and makes the profession of psychiatrist, psychologist or psychotherapist a profession very exposed to deviances of every kind.

Nonetheless, the experimental sociological finding of a competent European reference body such as the INFORM movement in England shows that cult deviances are much less the doing of spiritual movements than of the rest of society (fewer suicides, better health, …).

Building training courses and codes of ethics for accompaniment professionals will be fully useful and realistic only when MIVILUDES, the government and all the structures around them have agreed to study and to see fully within the psychological landscape the alternative therapies, instead of pointing at them indiscriminately, in complete incompetence. Their lack of discernment makes them appear in citizens’ eyes as “fascists” curbing all freedom, thus making MIVILUDES the principal promoter of the greatest charlatanisms.

Let us hope that a concern for professionalism will now guide the politicians who commissioned this hunt, as useless as it is costly, in order to correct in this field the image of a totalitarian France in the eyes of our foreign neighbours.

Annex 1

To take up the same 9 cult mechanisms as those employed in the account of the Miviludes’s 2006 report posted on the CICNS site, one observes that MIVILUDES continues to employ itself the whole of the most cult-like procedures that exist, namely:

First, the fact of cutting itself off from a large part of society, and from realities

The Miviludes continues to isolate itself from the reality of the lived experience of the majority of our fellow citizens in matters of spirituality and religion, of alternative health, of education and awakening, and of training and self-transformation.

It therefore takes on the responsibility of developing an increasingly schizoid social body.

Second, the fact of systematically criticising every field that may disturb it

The Miviludes continues its enterprise of extremist judgement of any initiative situated outside what already exists. This non-evolving and unconstructive attitude is even harmful. It can only lead the State social body to a characterised state of psychosis.

Third, the fact of prophesying chaos in the field of “cults”

MIVILUDES expresses all its difficulty in turning the notion of cult hold into an offence, in defining what a cult is on the legal plane.

So it asserts, demagogically and authoritatively, that it will combat the existence of genuine networks (p. 121) which for example infiltrate the medical professions (p. 187), which are responsible for cult deviances and which have an out-of-the-ordinary capacity for mutation (p. 7: “the cult sphere is quick to adapt by circumventing the texts, by inventing new methods of approach or by establishing itself in new sectors”). It does everything to sustain fear on their account (“The worst is to be feared”, p. 93; “the highly lucrative market (of alternative therapies of a holistic approach) …can…lead to the death of certain patients”, p. 186). This attitude then imprints an acute paranoid state on the whole State social body.

Fourth, the fact of claiming a Mission, of promoting a social, political and psychological doctrine with a well-defined ideology of cult eradication so as to pass itself off as the Saviour organisation, all while employing untouchable dogmas.

MIVILUDES still relies on the maintenance of the liberal consumerist single thought focused on growth at all costs, whose early signs of decadence and of an ending are already present at the international political level. It does so without asking itself questions about the rise of social signs in favour of other alternatives — which is a wonderful sign of life in a society, to have the courage to invent a better one, to test the beginnings of another.

Fifth, the “MIVILUDES system” still plays a double game

A maternal dependence of religious, social, educational or training organisations on the State, or a dependence of official therapies on the prevailing dominant medical thought. This dependence is apt to generate an unhealthy feeling of impunity when each person can feel protected by the diplomas or approvals granted. It also generates its corollary: a loss of autonomy of existence and of thought.

A guilt for those who would defy the law of the Father State, from the moment MIVILUDES never stops, in its report, blowing hot and cold at the same time, the better to throw anyone off and to encourage them to keep quietly in the shadow of the Father’s single thought. This second method then creates an enslavement and a conditioning of our fellow citizens, who are consequently little inclined to react.

Playing the two hands at once makes MIVILUDES a cult organisation of the Father-and-Mother type.

Sixth, an apparatus — legislative, administrative, executive, judicial — employing coercive methods almost unique in the world. This apparatus makes MIVILUDES an organ of the coercive State (physical, emotional and mental coercion), contrary to what it claims to be. As proof: the continued increase in the monitoring and intelligence activities of gendarmes and officers of the judicial police; the will to monitor the Internet in this field (even though they acknowledge that the Internet hunt is minimal: “there are few cult sites in breach of the legislation in force, and proselytising activity in this field is weak”, p. 193); and the sharp increase in monitoring and intelligence activities in the fields of therapies and health by the Ministry of Health, Youth and Sports, which led to the establishment of a DGS action plan signed on 18 March 2007 and capable of leading to legal actions (the search for all PNCAVT, Non-Conventional Practices with a Therapeutic Aim, where the search for well-being is suspect from the outset, p. 204 + see the list in Annex 4).
Seventh, MIVILUDES’s egocentrism — passing itself off as the central organ, sole repository of competence on dérives sectaires, the inescapable leader — leads it to impose a single thought without giving other currents of opinion the possibility of confronting it. This acute navel-gazing brings MIVILUDES to preach immobility and invariance in the sectors it regards as its own preserve (education, training, religion, the social sector), and to defend the medical, vaccine and pharmaceutical lobbies currently in place, at the risk of no longer having any other mode of thought or action.

This seventh cult mechanism, which makes it out to be the sole healing “Guru” of the evil that cults are, is very much present in the State social body.

Eighth, the methods of persuasion and of media focusing of attention employed to make people believe in strong dérives remain omnipresent. The training apparatus extends more and more to the whole administration, on the basis of police and administrative criteria. There is admittedly this year a first study apparatus dealing with the content of certain alternative therapies, but unfortunately those who carry out the study have no competence in the matter (see the example of false memories). This point is extremely grave in its consequences should it prove to persist, for MIVILUDES would readily see its arguments reduced to nothing one after another. It is for MIVILUDES to make the effort to surround itself with the useful competences in matters of PNCAVT among recognised holistic therapists. It is for MIVILUDES to surround itself with the real competences acquired by CICNS in matters of new spiritualities, on the model of what is done in England by the INFORM centre or in Switzerland by CLIMS.
Ninth, a normalisation carried out by MIVILUDES of the initiatory or esoteric processes which spiritual movements or alternative therapies may experience, for purposes of manipulation or use in the world, is frequently employed. This normalisation shows MIVILUDES’s high degree of incompetence. MIVILUDES permits itself once again to declare itself competent where it visibly is not (since its members do not, until proof to the contrary, do any spiritual or alternative therapeutic work, and since there is no link between the administration and university research in the fields concerned). In reality, the real need would on the contrary be to launch calls for tender to carry out ethnological studies on spiritual movements, and therapeutic studies on the new therapies existing in France.

That would make it possible to know certain practices better and to validate them if necessary.

Instead of which, MIVILUDES, in this ninth cult tendency, leaves the field open to every dérive, and does not even deign to make the first contacts.

Better still, it stigmatises the new therapies by declaring — without realising the stupidity of its own remarks — that these therapies are not validated (implicitly by the French State, which refuses to validate even a single one). MIVILUDES could not have done better to make them spread still faster and more widely…

Annex 2

30 Conflations, value judgements, abusive generalisations (–42% / 2006):

Pages: 16 (2), 17, 26, 28, 53, 86 (2), 97, 108, 113, 159, 160 (2), 161 (2), 162 (2), 164 (2), 165, 185 (3), 186 (3), 196 (3)

The use of the a priori value judgement, of easy conflation, and of abusive generalisations is a reflection of the second cult mechanism.

3 gratuitous defamations without foundation:

Pages: 189 (2), 200

8 cases of paranoia:

Pages: 7, 17, 93, 121, 186, 187 (2), 204

28 Mental manipulations (–54% / 2006):

Pages: 16, 18 (2), 19, 53, 109, 111, 114, 133, 160, 161, 163 (2), 165, 184, 185, 186 (4), 187 (2), 188 (2), 190, 196 (3)

The cases of mental manipulation are a reflection of the eighth cult mechanism.

Annex 3

The cases of incompetence recorded are again numerous in the 2007 report. The complete observation of the reports of these last four years reflects an incompetence, greater still, on the same major thematic axes as in other years.

Themes of incompetence:

Ignorance of the laws of pain, of the memories of the past engrammed within oneself.

Ignorance of transpersonal psychology, of the processes of awakening towards lasting well-being (a discourse made solely of Freudian psychology).

Ignorance of initiatory and esoteric processes, of spiritual processes.

Ignorance of alternative therapies.

Ignorance of the passage from life to death.

Ignorance of human accompaniment during pregnancy.

Sociological, theological and legal ignorance in the field of the new spiritualities.

Annex 4

The therapies or spiritual movements cited by MIVILUDES

The 50 cases cited in the 2007 report (with 9 flagship subjects)

Scientology p. 18, pp. 31-32, pp. 116-129, p. 132, p. 135, pp. 142-149, p. 155, p. 157, p. 184, p. 203, p. 212 — cited 79 times.

Moon or the Association of the holy spirit for the unification of the world church pp. 114-125, p. 132, p. 135, pp. 142-143, pp. 151-156, p. 184 — cited 53 times

The Jehovah’s Witnesses p. 23, p. 25, p. 114, pp. 116-127, p. 132, p. 135, pp. 142-143, pp. 149-151, pp. 155-157, p. 184, p. 203 — cited 50 times

False memories or induced memories pp. 39-50, pp. 159-169, pp. 187-188, p. 221, p. 231 — cited 45 times

Constellations (family, systemic, organisational or corporate) p. 8, pp. 83-93, 200 — cited 45 times

Shamanic practices (cited 10 times) with hallucinogenic plants (Ayahuasca cited 15 times, Iboga cited 34 times, Datura cited 37 times) p. 8, p. 48, p. 62, pp. 96-105, pp. 181-182, p. 189, pp. 230-231

Satanic phenomenon p. 8, p. 40, pp. 107-109, pp. 189-190, p. 197 — cited 17 times

Multi-level marketing methods, pp. 3, 8, pp. 71-81, 199 — cited 12 times

The biological decoding of living beings, or total biology p. 48, p. 83, p. 86, pp. 91-92, p. 200 — cited 11 times

Martial arts, tai chi, qi gong p. 191, p. 192, p. 195, p. 210 — cited 8 times

Coaching p. 3, p. 5, p. 83, p. 84, p. 198, p. 211 — cited 8 times

CAPLC and CAP France, p. 116, p. 117, p. 120, p. 121, p. 125, p. 129 — cited 7 times

Facilitated Communication p. 48, 209 — cited 6 times

Geerd Hamer’s method pp. 91-92, p. 187 — cited 6 times

Meditation p. 48, p. 99, p. 164, p. 191, p. 192 — cited 6 times

The evangelical church of grace, or Institut théologique de Nîmes ITN p. 123 — cited 6 times

Traditional Chinese Medicine or acupuncture p. 191, pp. 208-209, p. 231, 232 — cited 6 times

Hypnosis p. 48, p. 163, p. 168 — cited 5 times

Psycho-genealogy pp. 47-48, p. 163 — cited 4 times

CICNS, p. 116, p. 120, p. 121 — cited 4 times

The Mormons p. 135, p. 139, p. 146 — cited 3 times

Naturopathy, p. 164, p. 208

Tabitha’s Place p. 196, p. 201

Sophrology p. 48

Waking dream p. 164

Energy massages p. 48

Gestalt therapy p. 48

Yoga p. 48, p. 192

Kundalini Yoga p. 200

Channelling p. 200

Psycho-theatre p. 48

Music therapy p. 48

Fasciatherapy p. 200

EMF Balancing p. 200

Reiki p. 191, p. 200

NLP p. 200

The Silva method p. 200

Rebirthing p. 200

The regression method p. 35

Kinesiology p. 18, 200

Transactional analysis p. 88

Foot reflexology p. 231

Auriculotherapy p. 231

Phytotherapy p. 231

The anti-vaccination current p. 187

The Organisation of the sisters of Agape p. 87

Nouvelle Acropole p. 87

The Plymouth Brethren p. 114, p. 123

Raël p. 16, p. 29

Le Patriarche p. 32, p. 180

The 39 cases cited either in the 2006 report or in the December 2006 commission on children.

These cases come in addition to, or complete, the 51 cases of 2005 (20 to 21 cases in common), since MIVILUDES declares that it produces a 2006 report which completes the others and brings something new.

Coaching, team-building, pp. 60, 260

Bare-handed healers, biomagnetisers, p. 61

Chinese massage touch, p. 287

Brain Gym (Edu-Kinesiology) p. 63, Kinesiology p. 260

Hamer, p. 63

Biological decoding p. 63, Cellular analysis and re-information p. 65

Regressions, expansions of consciousness, false memories, pp. 63-64

Rebirthing, pp. 65, 144

Doulas and birth accompaniment, p. 67

Haptonomy, hyponatal, massages (non-physiotherapy), p. 68

EMF Balancing Technique, p. 69

Nettle manure, p. 79

Transactional Analysis, pp. 136-159

Shamanic initiation with hallucinogenic plants Ayahuesca, Iboga, pp. 160-168

Psychophany, indigo children p. 257, Kryeon p. 69

Herbalife (suspected p. 261)

Shaolin movement (suspected p. 261)

Groups against compulsory vaccination, p. 281

Chromokinesis Energy

EthnoMédecins sans frontières

Mormons, pp. 173, 262

Buddhists, p. 262

Moon or the Unification Christian church (cited 26 times)

Scientology (cited 124 times)

Jehovah’s Witnesses (cited 58 times)

Thabita’s Place

The children of Ilythie

The Universal White Brotherhood, p. 110

The Lubavitch

The Plymouth Brethren

The 51 alternative therapies cited in 2005:

AMORC’s foetal preparation, kinesiology, EMF Balancing/Kryeon, shamanism, traditional Chinese medicine, macrobiotics, the Hamer method, Reiki, “false” memory therapies, Mahikari, hygienism, energy medicines, holistic medicine, psycho-genealogy, bio-psycho-genealogy, Psychophany and facilitated communication, the Simonton method, Beljanski’s methods, naturopathy, naturo-reflexology, healing practices borrowed from the druidic tradition, the SILVA method / energised water, diamond water, biotherapy, cellular memory, biological decoding, symbolic decoding of the teeth, osteopathy, family constellations, rebirthing, waking-dream therapies, the laying on of hands, the Be Happy method, mycrozymas medicines, instinctotherapy, fasting and hiking, massages in general when practised by non-physiotherapists, metamorphic massage, prenatotherapy, Ayahuesca, Iboga, vibrational therapies, Native American sweat lodges, therapeutic prayer, Transactional Analysis therapy, sophrology, somato-relaxology, orthokinesiology, shiatsu, acupressure, naturo-reflexo-iridology-bioenergetics

The 6 spiritual currents cited in 2005:

Zen Buddhism, Antroposophy, meditation, quantum physics and phenomena linked to the traditions of humanity, indigo children/Kryeon, Scientology, Moon and the Unification Christian church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses

The other suspect movements cited in 2005:

The anti-Bush political party Solidarité et Progrès

Sources