As soon as deprogramming became widely publicized, social and behavioral scientists began criticizing its scientific premises as well as its ethical propriety. Bromley and Shupe (1981: 211) observe, "The centerpiece of the anticultists' allegations is that cults brainwash their members through some combination of drugging, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, chanting or lecturing, and deprivation of food, sleep, and freedom of thought. If this argument were true, the new religions would not have such a sorry recruitment record, the defection rate among those who do join would not be so high as it is, individual members could not be counted upon to work with the zeal they do, and ex-members would not be able to recall in such exquisite detail how they were brainwashed. Social scientists have largely repudiated the concept of brainwashing as the anticultists have used it. Certainly it is possible to break people down physically and psychologically through coercive techniques. But there is no evidence that people so abused will show the kind of positive motivation and commitment that converts to the new religions manifest."

There are at least seven major flaws with the programming or brainwashing perspective.

• First, it is not clear that effective non-biological techniques for controlling a person's mind exist at all, and the chief classic case of alleged brainwashing of American prisoners in the Korean War resulted in few if any successes (Schein et al. 1961).

• Second, a very high proportion of people who attend some activities at new religious movements fail to join (Barker 1984).

• Third, substantial numbers of long-term members of new religious movements leave of their own volition (Bainbridge 1982, 1984a; Wright 1983).

• Fourth, many researchers have carried out long-term observational research inside a variety of new religious movements, including all those frequently accused of brainwashing, and their reports do not fit the brainwashing model (Bainbridge 1978; Taylor 1983).

• Fifth, sociologists have developed some highly plausible theoretical models of how people join new religious movements, and they all combine several factors, notably the motivations of the individual and the structure of social relations around the individual, so there seems no need for the brainwashing hypothesis.

• Sixth, the concept of brainwashing seems designed as a rhetoric to discredit new religious movements and to excuse the individual of any responsibility for joining them. Thus it has the effect of legitimating action against the group or individual that in any other context would be considered a violation of civil rights (Bromley 1983; Kelley 1983).

• Seventh, the brainwashing rhetoric is "anticollectivistic and antitotalistic." (Richardson and Kilbourne 1983), assuming that a mentally healthy person must be autonomous and failing to recognize the importance of religion and community in human society (Hargrove, 1983).