Love Bombing - Criticism and Response

Criticism and Response

Critics of cults often cite love bombing as one of the features that may identify an organization as a cult. Critics hold that love bombing is insincere or with an ulterior motive and that it is used to reduce the subject's resistance to recruitment.

Psychology professor Margaret Singer popularized the concept, becoming closely identified with the love-bombing-as-brainwashing point of view. In her 1996 book, Cults in Our Midst, she described the technique:

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.

The Unification Church rejects this view of its practice. Church leader Damian Anderson has written:

One man's love-bombing is another man's being showered with attention. Everyone likes such care and attention, so it is unfortunate that when we love as Jesus taught us to love, that we are then accused of having ulterior motives.

Steven Hassan and Keith Henson are among the other cult critics to write about love bombing, postulating that it is similar, in terms of effects on neutrotransmitters within the brain, emotional state, and conduct, to the administration of drugs of abuse, temporarily producing intense euphoria when under its influence, and encouraging the actions from which the stimulus was derived. Pursuit of the stimulus often becomes an obsessive focus that is detrimental to financial status and human relationships.

Dr. Geri-Ann Galanti (in a sympathetic article) writes: "A basic human need is for self-esteem.... Basically consists of giving someone a lot of positive attention."