The article introduces and comments contemporary American discussion on brainwashing in cults, as resulted from recently renewed claims about scientific status of the hypothesis, made by sociologists Benjamin Zablocki and Stephen Kent. It is recognized that responsible and expert affirmation of brainwashing argument is still very difficult or maybe even impossible. Such argumentation in therefore considered as dead end in thirty years long attempts to explain supposedly unique cultic form of social influence and control. From broader perspective it seems that sociology of new religious movements benefited from the whole controversy in a way of becoming better and more rigorous science.
|
