ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how totalist groups control the range of attachment relationships: family, romantic and friendship bonds. Leaders must remove trusting, close relationships leaving the follower dependent on the group. I touch on the particular experiences of those born and raised in totalist environments. While ideology is an important aspect of how totalist organizations control their followers, I argue that the ideology is in service of the more critical element of controlling follower’s relationships in order to maintain their isolation and cognitive and emotional dissociation. The failure to control attachments risks the follower resolving their dissociation and reintegrating cognitive and emotional processing, thus breaking the disorganized bond at the heart of the brainwashing phenomenon.
