AIS has at least 90 well-established “coercive groups” under observation, according to Miguel Perlado, a clinical psychologist with the organisation. He said the groups that generate the most demand for help are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Gnostic Movement, Nueva Acropolis and Scientology.
Also known as a ‘sect’, a cult can be defined as a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to a person, idea or thing, employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control. These include isolation from former friends and family in addition to the use of specific methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience.
Cults also typically exploit powerful group pressure, which results in the suspension of individuality and critical judgment. They make use of strategies that eventually lead to nearly total dependency on the group and fear of leaving it. These techniques are designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families or the wider community.
The Church of Scientology has about 10,000 members in Spain, according to a spokesman at the church’s Madrid headquarters, who declined to provide his name, and who said that figures for individual cities were not available. A recent decision by the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid to allow Scientolgy to be registered as a religion was long overdue, he said.
Jordi, a spokesperson from the Scientology centre in Sant Just Desvern, who declined to give his last name, commended the decision. “Of course we are happy about it. It was a good idea and the right thing to do.”
That is definitely not Miguel Perlado’s opinion. He said the decision was surprising and illogical. “There is a large amount of critical documentation around the coercive practices of Scientology.”
Nueva Acropolis defines itself as “a school of philosophy in the classical tradition”, offering courses and conferences, while its critics claim that it enriches itself by capturing its enrollees with techniques of mass psychology. A spokesperson at Nueva Acropolis’s Barcelona headquarters estimated that the city is home to some 100 members.
The Gnostic Movement, which began in Australia and now has followers around the world, did not reply to numerous e-mail requests for information, but their website provides some details of the courses they offer on, for example, self-discovery and learning about “the astral”, which seems to be loosely defined as dreams and out-of-body experiences.
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