Mighty Invisible Manipulators: How Hidden Influences Can Explain Everything

From the free subjective act to manipulation

In his 1888 novel entitled L’Évangéliste, Alphonse Daudet describes the reaction of the mother of a young adult woman who suddenly decides to break with all the ties joining her to her family and to go and join a Protestant sect. In a short letter, the young woman informs her mother of her decision, leaving the latter totally bewildered:

At first she did not understand what was written, and slowly read the letter aloud, sentence by sentence, until she reached the signature … Éline … It was Éline who had written that, her own little Éline … How could that be? … And yet the hand-writing, although a little shaky, certainly looked like her daughter's writing … It must be that those madwomen out there had held her hand and dictated those monstrous phrases that she surely didn’t mean one word of …. (Daudet, 1888: 201).

The mother cannot believe that her daughter had made a free decision of her own accord. She thinks that there must have been people who directed what Lina should do, who had manipulated her or even kidnapped her (Daudet, 1888: 201). She decides to go off to the ‘chateau’ where the supposed manipulators lived and where perhaps her daughter is being held against her will. But alas, when she gets there she is told that her daughter had already gone abroad to bring the Gospel from France. Faced with the impossibility of knowing where her daughter was, her anxiety leads her to look for help from the town council, the parish priest, the gendarmes and the law … It seems absurd to her that her daughter could have consented to the situation, and behind that consent she imagines that there must have been people manipulating her (Daudet, 1888: 208).

How could the mother comprehend that her beloved daughter, with whom she had got on extremely well up until then, could have taken such a decision? If she could not accept that Lina had made it herself, she could on the other hand easily attribute it to a potential manipulator. By seeing manipulation as the explanation, everything fell into place: her beloved and loving daughter had not freely chosen this horrible separation, so it must be the work of a wicked manipulator.

Malign influence or manipulation is taken here to explain the outward appearance of a subjective act. The action is not that of the subject but is one activated by another.¹ The consent is not that of the subject himself, but is the result of an influence exercised over him. Since the person who is under such an influence cannot know that his act has been so influenced, he can very well believe that he has made the decision himself when in fact he has been manipulated. Hence it is logically vain to ask the influenced person whether he has been influenced. But one may ask another person (a family member, a friend, a judge …) if there has been influence or not, if the act carried out is really his own. In this context, in cases of apparent influence or manipulation, the law finds itself ‘having to address the issue of consent of victims who are adult and of apparently sound body and mind’ (Picard, 2000: 43). As a consequence, attempts have been made to counter the perpetrators of such manipulation and the potentially deleterious effects of such influence, such as by establishing an offence of mind manipulation or, as happened in the nineteenth century, by seeking to ban the practice of hypnosis (Laurens, 2005).

With influence or manipulation, the locus of decision-making shifts from the subject towards the person who is exercising a hold over that subject. In Daudet's novel, the process of Éline's decision-making is not located within herself, nor within someone close who is known and loved. It is located in a manipulating woman at a distance from her, who is little known by the mother, and to whom it is easy to lend malevolent intentions. Far away and unknown, she easily takes on the character attributed to her. There is no barrier to this inference but the fertile human imagination, and we know that, over the centuries, powerful influences have been imputed to gods or devils in order to explain the nature of the world. In the Iliad, for example, human history is presented as the theatre for conflicts between the gods: all human actions are the results of divine interventions. Everything can be attributed to supposedly omnipotent and invisible gods who guide the destinies of human beings and things.

The numerous conspiracy theories (Campion-Vincent, 2007; Damblon and Nicolas, 2010) take up this construction.² They describe how the underground manipulations of an all-powerful and far-off origin (sometimes even an invisible one) explain the occurrence of various events. For example, the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York was thought to be the desired outcome of such a group who wished that Iraq should be invaded so they could get their hands on its oil. One can see again the heuristic worth of such explanations: the world follows orderly rules and independent events can be placed within an overall coherence.

In his analysis of the primitive mind, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl made a distinction between primary, or real, causes and secondary, or apparent, causes. Secondary causes are ‘only instruments or, at most, immediate causes in the service of the true cause which lies elsewhere’ (Lévy-Bruhl, 1949: 144, 3 February 1939). Following this logic, it is futile to spend time over the secondary causes which, although they might be visible, are contingent and ever-changing in form: it is only the primary cause that counts. But this primary cause, the one which explains all and gives order to all, remains as invisible as its influence.

To return to the example of the incidents of 9/11, what does it matter that certain individuals hijacked aircraft to fly them into buildings? This secondary cause with its all too visible effects is of interest only when seen through the prism of the ultimate objective: it could just as easily have been replaced by the assassination of the President of the United States, for example. On the other hand, the primary cause remains constant under this scenario: there are some people who want to get their hands on Iraqi oil and act in consequence of this desire to attain their goal. Of course, the ‘true’ initiator of this act (and perhaps of many others) remains invisible; he does not act directly, but appears nevertheless as the grand orchestrator tirelessly pursuing his objectives.

Such occult influence thus seems able to serve as a convenient explanation for events which, otherwise, would be much more difficult to understand. As we have seen, these convenient explanations lead on to supposing that the act carried out by one or a number of individuals may well have been influenced by someone else, where this other person determined the carrying out of the act. But the visible manipulator and his influence constitute only a secondary cause as well: behind that manipulator there exists an occult primary cause, a genuinely invisible manipulator. This idea also is quite widespread. Daudet's example is of this sort. Éline is manipulated so as to transform her into an evangelist so that she can convert others in her turn … Such cases are easily observable in our own societies: we can meet scientologists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses about whom we can think that they are trying to manipulate us and that they in their turn have been and still are being manipulated.

In such cases we can observe a second shift. The first shift is that from the point of realization of the act to that of the decision to undertake it. But where the manipulator is himself manipulated, an intermediate stage is inserted which increases the distance between the decision and the realization of the act and opens up more possibilities for interpreting the act performed.

We shall illustrate these shifts by referring to a television documentary called Secrets in the news (‘Secrets d’actualité’) screened in January 2006 by the French channel M6. The programme was entitled: ‘Tom Cruise's other face: shop-window for the dangerous Scientology sect’. It allowed viewers to observe how a well-known and highly visible manipulator, Tom Cruise, was finally himself subject to manipulation. He is manipulated by another manipulator who remains in the shadow and whose objective is to control the world.

By supposing the existence of another manipulator behind the visible one, one increases the distance between the performance of the act and the decision for its undertaking. The far-off and invisible source appears as being all-powerful: hence all sorts of intentions can be attributed to him and all sorts of events may be explained by his ongoing influence and his manipulations.

The visible manipulator and the influence of an invisible manipulator

Tom Cruise as manipulator

The documentary begins with a presentation of Tom Cruise himself: ‘[Tom Cruise] once more puts his talent to serving an extremely controversial movement, that of scientology.’ He ‘has a mission, that of converting the world to the scientology way of thinking’ and ‘down the years he has become the best tool of communication for scientology across the planet’.

In this way, Tom Cruise's qualities are first of all emphasized – he is a charming man, a famous actor, he has an immense network of relationships … In all this each viewer will see him as a prestigious and attractive source of influence, able to exercise a considerable influence around him, and no doubt having the capacity to convert a few fans or teenage-girl admirers to scientology. Nevertheless, this influence can well appear much less effective than thought. In effect, if Tom Cruise attempted to convince me of his views, I would no doubt find good arguments to resist him: and after all, why shouldn’t it be me who converts Tom Cruise? Indeed, although he enjoys a certain prestige, has numerous qualities, and exercises a powerful fascination over the next person, there are few chances that he would manage to convert me to scientology. Despite his charm and his enthusiasm, I have the capability of replying to him, of contesting his arguments, of convincing him of the quality of my objections … In such an imaginary exchange, we would find ourselves in a relationship of reciprocity: either one of us could influence the other.

Tom Cruise as manipulated

But naturally, the documentary does not restrict itself to this display of Tom Cruise's qualities, because in that case there would be no sect-associated danger to point to. But where does such a peril derive from? The programme goes much further than that simple presentation of Cruise as a prestigious and influential source of persuasion, shown in the company of various movie stars, politicians, and journalists. It places him under the microscope of his belonging to scientology: the important aspect is not that he is a good actor or that he is charming, but simply that he is an agent of scientology, even a creation of scientology. A puppet motivated and directed to make of him more than just a shop-window but an attractive bait to draw in other stars.

After showing his qualities, the documentary then explores the actor's past and presents him in a different light: it highlights his frailties (absent father, dyslexia, failures at school …) and explains that he was an easy prey for recruitment into scientology when he was thus vulnerable. Scientology took charge of him, ‘comforted’ him, and reassured him. He gave himself up totally to them. Instructed and manipulated, he fell completely under the power of the sect. His whole life, even his personal and family life, was totally controlled by it.

The ‘real source of influence’

Seen in this light, this actor and his supposed influence are thus simply means employed by scientology. Behind this famous star there is another much more powerful influence, a manipulation that is orchestrated and concealed. It is enough to suppose that he is an agent of this hidden influence, and not a self-determined person, for the influence that he exercises over us not to be reciprocal.

This person can therefore neither change nor be influenced from the outside, for he is an agent under control. What rejoinders we might be able to make to him in any eventual dialogue would be without effect, our influence null. On the other hand, he retains the possibility of influencing us: as we are free, we can thus be influenced. We retain a margin of liberty which allows us to change, whereas he does not have any such margin. So if we were to follow this logic, the world could be progressively changed into a mass of subject individuals.

For influence to be reciprocal, we would have to interact with the true source, which is not Tom Cruise but the one who manipulates him. Cruise is only a charming conduit: but the true source is the one who manipulates him and activates him. Unfortunately, as long as that source remains distant from us, invisible or hidden, the influence relationship will not be reciprocal. The programme seemed to designate David Miscavige, L. Ron Hubbard's successor as the head of scientology and his organization, for this role. Miscavige is presented on occasions in the programme as Tom Cruise's friend, and on others as the one who manipulates him. But, we are informed in it, no contact is possible with this head nor with his ‘administration’ which works in buildings situated at the heart of a ‘secret base’.

It is there that the true source of influence is to be found. In the terms used in the documentary, this is the ‘heart of the organization’, ‘the den of power’, ‘the place from which scientology is controlled’, the ‘centre of the high command’. But above all it is a ‘secret base where the cult works out its global strategy’, a base isolated in the heart of the desert. Even, the programme continued, ‘the majority of scientologists are ignorant of the existence of this place’. This ‘fortress of scientology is placed under high surveillance. No one can hear or see what goes on behind these walls.’ The documentary goes on to describe the way the secret site is protected: surveillance cameras, guards, barbed wire, rifles …. and shows a few images taken from a great distance of massive grey buildings. One is led to observe that one would struggle to establish a relationship of reciprocity with such a hidden source.

Tom Cruise, the ‘shop-window’ the ‘spokesperson’, ‘the ambassador’, ‘the ultimate tool of communication for scientology world-wide’ thus represents a channel by which scientology exercises an influence on us. But there cannot be any reciprocal influence as he himself is under influence, he is only a ‘pawn’ which the cult took hold of when he was vulnerable. He was – according to the documentary – a recruit whose tests have been doctored, who has been isolated from those who are opposed to the cult, for whom a marriage was arranged with a docile young woman who accepted to be converted and whose children were brought up in the sect.

This pattern of influence relationships (Table 1) is similar to that which, according to Lévy-Bruhl, characterizes the pre-logical or primitive mentality. A logical and objective mind keeps generally to observable causalities, to relations of cause and effect that are reproducible. In the case of Tom Cruise and scientology, the logical mind would have to rely on the visible and present source in the person of Tom Cruise, and find objective and reproducible signs of his influence (meaning: how does he exercise his influence in practice?). The pre-logical way of thinking, which by analogy is that adopted by the documentary, does not stop at these outwardly final causalities, at the type of influence that Tom Cruise could have over others. Knowing how he acts is effectively of little interest, for it is just a small element that fits into a much broader plan (here, the control of the world) and explains much more than the petty details of Tom Cruise's influence. This latter is just a means to a broader end. The true cause of the events is located in the entity which makes use of him, which uses him to act upon us, just as in the domain of the primitive mentality the witch doctor uses such and such a snake, such and such a ravine, or such and such an enemy to bring about the death of a targeted individual. But the snake, ravine, or enemy themselves are just the means used by the witch doctor to achieve his intentions. For the documentary, the analogy is an important one: the why behind the manipulations is located in the intent of an invisible source (hidden away in a desert and protected from outside gaze) to take control of the world. This mystery force, as powerful as it is invisible, acts by way of intermediary means (Tom Cruise, money, lobbying, close ties to people in power) to realize its goals.

Table 1. Structure of the influences described in the documentary.

As mentioned in the preamble to this documentary by Jean-Michel Roulet, at the time chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Vigilance and Control Mission against Sectarian Deviance (MIVILUDES in its French acronym) put in place by the French Government in 2002, this ‘ultra-secret organization’ which is characterized by its ‘exorbitant financial demands’ and which exercises ‘mental pressures’ on its members and even on its former converts, has the ‘intention to infiltrate the media, the higher levels of administrations and industry, [the] ambition to exert mastery over the individual and over the world.’

An order is thus established between distinct, disparate, and isolated events which the documentary aligned together. Everything is caught up in a grand design: Tom Cruise shakes hands with Sarkozy, a scientology space is opened in Madrid (‘close to the centres of power’!), movie stars become scientologists … All of which (and no doubt very many other things that we do not see) does not happen independently by pure chance: in behind it all is an invisible organizing power.

This simple reasoning is unfalsifiable. It also has the advantage of being able to explain and give order to many other events which otherwise have nothing in common. Just as for the pre-logical mentality, this domain of the imagination is freed from questions of time, place, and method.

The visible confederate manipulated by the invisible experimenter

The M6 documentary provides a good illustration, but it would have been of only minimal interest if it had been simply an isolated case. However, it is striking to note that there are various experiments undertaken in social psychology where, as in this programme, a naïve subject is exposed to a confederate who is under direction, a direction that remains invisible to the naïve subject and where the controller dictates to the confederate how he should behave and the attitudes he should adopt, and legitimizes his acts.

Thus, what in an M6 documentary might appear as a deranged situation showing a paranoid logic, or at the very least a strange and abnormal situation for a functioning democracy, is in fact artificially enacted and studied in a wide range of social psychology experiments dealing notably with manipulation and influence. In such contexts, the researcher recruits a confederate and gives him or her a set of directions while all along remaining invisible and concealed from the naïve subject on whom the experiment is conducted. Only the confederate, whose role is prescribed in advance, faces the naïve subject and can be seen by that person. The experimenter, who is the grand orchestrator, remains hidden, but he is the one who has an objective and who elaborates the situation in which the naïve subject is immersed. Furthermore, the directions given to the confederate which, as the experimenter in general makes clear, must be scrupulously followed, make this confederate (who knows or believes that he is being observed by the experimenter) impervious to the influence of the naïve subject. In this way, such experimental situations do closely correspond to the imaginary dimension of manipulation: in both, the influence is not reciprocal and there is a source which pursues an objective which it keeps secret (from the naïve subject and sometimes even from the confederate) and which remains hidden and invisible to the naïve subjects while observing and controlling their opinions and behaviours (cf. Riecken, 1969).

A participant in such an experiment, even if it is not one to do with the relationships of influence, is thus most commonly placed in a situation of manipulation. It is generally only after the experiment has concluded, in a debriefing, that its objectives are made clear.

Here the overall structure and the places are much more precise than in the documentary (Table 2). The framework of scientific research confers a legitimacy to the scenario: the distributed roles are freely accepted and, in the case of the confederate, even learned.

Table 2. Structure of the influences in an experiment using a confederate.

This is no doubt why, instead of invalidating the fantastical imaginary domain of influence, experimental research has confirmed it, by constructing an artificial situation which falls short of accounting entirely for the complex reality of the influence mechanisms of daily life, but which constantly reprojects the same dramatic and simplified facet of influence that is asymmetrical.

In the well-known Milgram experiment, for example, not only does the ultimate authority follow a role prescribed in advance, hermetically sealing itself off from the naïve subject, but it does so all the more easily in that it knows that no electric shocks are being delivered in reality and that it knows itself also under control (being observed and filmed). The situation thus constructed is not a normal interaction, since one of the members (the authority) behaves like an automaton by simply repeating orders for which it knows there will be no consequence.

Discussion

One might well think that influence is omnipresent and permanent and that it is a normal social phenomenon (Laurens, 2007). Viewed this way, all individuals are at one and the same time both sources and targets of influence, which both constitute their relationships to others and supply their norms and opinions. To go back to Daudet's example, Éline was influenced by her mother and those about her, just as, playing her part as an individual, she exercised an influence over them in her turn. By changing her environment, other ‘significant others’ appear in her life: she then becomes influenced by other persons and other symbols. She interiorizes other norms, other opinions, and adopts another mode of living. Seen from this angle, there is nothing particularly fascinating here, whether from the ‘personal incident’ point of view or from the scientific one (it is well known that marginal sources can have an influence on a person, as was demonstrated for example by the first conversions to Christianity).

For Éline's story to become interesting, it needs to be considered quite differently.

We must start from the consideration that Éline was an autonomous and independent individual. Given that basis – a moral definition of the individual – we are obliged to suppose the existence of powerful influences and of manipulators in order to comprehend her conversion. It is from this point that the story becomes interesting: how did they manage to alienate this innocent girl? What highly contrived strategy was put in place to efface the individual's liberty and break her autonomy and independence?

Here the influence appears as a rare and abnormal phenomenon, a mechanism which is out of the ordinary and capable of breaking the natural independence of the individual to transform her or him into a simple subject of another's authority, to change a man into an alienated creature.

This second reading rests upon two important constraints: one must both project the initial autonomy of the individual and suppose the existence of a force (in the form of an influence or manipulation) that is capable of damaging that autonomy. This is the structure adopted in numerous experiments in social psychology which, through a scenario in two acts, begin by highlighting the independence of the subject, and then in contrast his or her submission to the influence of others.

The quality of the study depends on the way this scenario is set up. Thus, it is important first of all to insist on the subject's freedom (for example by telling him or her ‘you are free to do this or not’), then to insist on his or her submission (by making the observation that ‘x% of people accepted what they would not have done without manipulation’). Once more, the Milgram experiment perfectly illustrates these tragic scenarios.³ At the start of the experiment, the naïve subject is presented as an individual, an independent entity, one who is autonomous, responsible, reflective, possessing their own determination: the subject reads the advertisement for the study, shows interest in it, makes an appointment with the experimenter, presents himself of his own accord at the laboratory, accepts to take part after having found out about the study. We can all recognize ourselves in him. Yet, suddenly, he is transformed into an agent, an obedient executor of another's wishes, and since the majority of the subjects submit to this role, we are led to wonder whether we ourselves would not have delivered those electric shocks.⁴ The contrast in the passage from independence to submission is stunning!

This analysis of the role of influence echoes the criticism made by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950) of the theory of gift-giving of Marcel Mauss. In his analysis of exchange and reciprocity, Mauss (1950) isolated three obligations (giving, receiving, and returning) and looked for the force which obliged the individual who received to return something in exchange (it was vital that exchanges persist and so it was necessary that those who gave could believe that gifts would be given them in return). For the Maori, Mauss located this force in one of their beliefs in the spirit of the object (the hau). This latter had the capacity to visit misfortune (for example, death) on the person who had not returned in kind and it was this force of Maori belief that led them to respect obligations, thus to reciprocate when they had received.

For Lévi-Strauss, the hau is used by Mauss as a supreme force in order to link together three obligations that Mauss had (in Lévi-Strauss's view) inappropriately separated from each other ab initio. In effect, Lévi-Strauss thought, there are not three separate obligations, but only that of exchange. For him, there was therefore no need of the hau to link these three obligations together, which were simply different facets of reciprocity. The hau was not the cause, but simply an epiphenomenon, an interpretation:

The hau is not the reason behind the exchange: it is the conscious form under which the people of a determined society, where the problem was of particular importance, perceived an unconscious necessity whose reason was elsewhere. (Lévi-Strauss, 1950: XXXVIII–XXXIX)

In the same way, if one conceives of individuals as atoms, independent and isolated from one another, it is necessary to discover the force that binds them in order to explain how an ‘other’ outside of an independent individual could suddenly cause the latter to fall under their subjection: the phenomena of obedience, of herd mentality, or of conformism stand in direct contrast to this separateness and independence by which the individual is defined. It thus requires the intervention of some kind of extraordinary process to account for the sudden transformation of the individual into someone under another's subjection, where the formerly independent person becomes a complete conformist, simply the agent of the other. This extraordinary process (the equivalent of the hau of Mauss) thus takes the form of an outside other who is omnipotent (e.g. through their power or charisma) or of an extremely powerful technique (such as those of manipulation and influence).

If, on the other hand, one projects that individuals are caught up in a shared system of meanings which shapes their thinking and their environment and binds them together (through language, common knowledge, forms of representation, basic law etc.: see for example Lévy-Bruhl, 1910; Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Bruner, 1990), then no extraordinary force is necessary to bind two independent atoms since no atoms exist independently (Laurens and Markova, 2011). The other is not a separate atom outside of oneself, he is essentially an alter ego made of the same substance and immersed in the same medium. His influence over me is not a particular gift he enjoys, nor a technical prowess that he has mastered, but proceeds simply from the mobilization of what is shared in common: to obey, I must understand the order. I must speak the same language, grasp the same meanings as the one who gives me the order for me to carry it out.

Thus the carrying out of an order or a suggestion depends on the similarity of those who interact in what is finally a dual realization. The dualities of the form: source/target, manipulator/manipulated, authority/submission, mask the co-realized act by presenting to view only one of its facets. The act is cut into pieces and distributed between several atoms (between source from one perspective and target from another, between the decision on one side and its implementation on another, between the dominant driver on the one hand and the subjected individual on the other), which, for the act to be implemented, would have to momentarily adjust their relationship through the hold that the one has over the other. But as Lévi-Strauss suggests (1950: XLIV–XLVII), these elements are just facets of the same item (the co-realized act). Hence it is not necessary to add any affective or mystical binding force, whether to hold together the two facets of this act, in the same way as it is not necessary to add the idea of influence or manipulation to link those who dually carry out an act: the unity lies in the act itself, an act in which those who realize it are joined and fused (Janet, 1994). Hence, influence and manipulation are less explanations than interpretations (or naïve explanations) which have become necessary where the different facets of acts come to be perceived as distinct in those societies where the fact of ‘differing from others in one way or another’ has become ‘a personal ideal of young people and adults’ (Elias, 1991: 140).

Translated from the French by Colin Anderson