ABSTRACT
The brainwashing process takes place within a totalistic organization, and so, to understand it, the organization as an entity, an organism itself—its structure, the processes that keep it going, its birth and its death—must be understood. When the process of brainwashing or totalist indoctrination by the group is successful there is a threefold outcome. Creating a feeling of intense stress is one of the many functions of the sleep deprivation that is seen in nearly all totalist groups. What happens in totalist groups is the inculcating of fear where the follower cannot resolve the threat. The structure of totalist isolation prevents alternate attachments, thus setting in place a feedback loop of unresolvable anxiety and need for proximity. Of course, members of totalist groups are not infants, and may not have had a history of disorganized attachment. Totalist leaders are experts at moving people through their attempts at resistance—if they were not they would have no followers.
