Love bombing
Love bombing is the deliberate use of an intense, concerted show of affection by a group of people, toward an individual they seek to recruit or otherwise influence.
As of 2005, the phrase can be used in three slightly different ways.
- Certain organizations, notably the Children of God and the Unification Church, use or have used the phrase themselves. In this context, the implication is that the show of "love" is sincere.
- Critics of "cults," notably psychiatrist Margaret Singer, use the phrase with the implication that the "love" is feigned and the practice is manipulative. "Love bombing" is often cited by critics as one of the defining characteristics of a "cult."
- "Love bombing" is sometimes used by critics of organizations which neither use the term themselves and nor are usually considered to be cults; two examples would be the Mormons (LDS Church) and Alcoholics Anonymous. In this context, a reader could infer that the critic's intention is to suggest that the organization has some "cult"-like characteristics.
The phrase and practice apparently originated within the Children of God. Deborah Davis, daughter of the founder, and Kristina Jones, daughter of an early member, both use the term in memoirs of that organization's early days.
Unlike the "Flirty Fishing" practiced or once practiced by the Children of God, "love bombing" is usually nonsexual.
The term was later used within, and is often associated with, the Unification Church. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, used the term "love bomb" in a 1978 speech (translated):
- Unification Church members are smiling all of the time, even at four in the morning. The man who is full of love must live that way. When you go out witnessing you can caress the wall and say that it can expect you to witness well and be smiling when you return. What face could better represent love than a smiling face? This is why we talk about love bomb; Moonies have that kind of happy problem. We Who Have Been Called To Do God's Work
The Unification Church reportedly has used this tactic to persuade recruits to prolong a visit to their centers or camps. Church opponents criticize the practice; more severe critics condemn it as manipulation, an essential and insidious element of mind control.
Critics of cults often cite love bombing as one of the features that identifies an organization as a cult. When used by critics, the phrase is defined to mean affection that is feigned or at least not entirely sincere.
The term was popularized by the controversial psychiatrist Margaret Singer. She used the term in 1981 when testifying in a lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Mail. (The Unification Church had sued the newspaper for libel, in regard to stories the newspaper had published about David Adler's experiences with the church). In her testimony Singer said that she had interviewed over five hundred members of various sects, about half of them members of the Unification Church. She said that the church's use of a showering of intense affection was more effective than the brainwashing techniques used by the North Koreans on prisoners of war. In a 1996 book entitled Cults in Our Midst, she described the technique thus:
- As soon as any interest is shown by the recruits, they may be love bombed by the recruiter or other cult members. This process of feigning friendship and interest in the recruit was originally associated with one of the early youth cults, but soon it was taken up by a number of groups as part of their program for luring people in. Love bombing is a coordinated effort, usually under the direction of leadership, that involves long-term members' flooding recruits and newer members with flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually nonsexual touching, and lots of attention to their every remark. Love bombing—or the offer of instant companionship— is a deceptive ploy accounting for many successful recruitment drives.
A few years before Margaret Singer died she discussed love bombing and capture-bonding in long phone conversations with Keith Henson who at that time was applying Evolutionary psychology to understanding the relation between cults and drugs. Henson proposed a mechanism rooted in the evolution of Stone Age human ancestors to account for the effects of love bombing. In brief, he proposed that intense social attention has similar effects to addictive drugs because the attention causes the release of brain chemicals that activate the brain's reward circuits.
The postulated evolutionary origin of this mechanism is that tribe members who took actions such as hunting received attention. If the attention rewarded them they were more likely to repeat the action, and in the long-term people with such motivational traits were more likely become ancestors. In this view drug addiction is a side effect of Stone Age evolution.
If attention-reward theory[1] is accepted as an important human psychological trait, then intense cult love bombing is just the extreme end of what all groups (religious and otherwise) do to obtain members.
However, there is no litmus test which defines love bombing, any more than there is any way of objectively determining the sincerity of any human emotion. There is no bright line separating "love bombing" from practices which, in an organization not described as a cult, might be referred to simply as "welcoming", "unconditional love", or "good public relations". Missionaries of various religions may engage in practices that some regard as love-bombing. It has been alleged that Mormon missionaries, as well as all other Christian missionary groups, engage in some form of Love Bombing as they seek to convert others.
See also
References
- The Children of God: The Inside Story Term used in memoir about the 1970s Texas Soul Clinic, predecessor of the Children of God
- Eyewitness: Why people join cults Term used by Kristina Jones in recollections of her mother, an early Children of God member.
- We Who Have Been Called To Do God's Work, July 23, 1978 speech by Reverend Sun Myung Moon in which he uses the term "love bomb"
- 1999 Testimony of Ronald N. Loomis "The term "love bombing" originated with the Unification Church, the Moonies. It’s their term." Loomis is Director of Education for an the American Family Foundation, which opposes "cults"
- "Moon's Sect Loses Libel Suit in London," The New York Times, April 1, 1981 p. A1: Singer using the term in testimony
- Singer, Margaret (1996; 2003) Cults in Our Midst." Revised edition, 2003. Wiley. ISBN 0787967416
