Study Discounts Hare Krishna ‘Mind Control’ : Sect: Devotees tend to be compulsive, but mental health is otherwise comparable to other groups, psychologists find.

A new study of Hare Krishna devotees in the United States indicates that they tend to be compulsive personalities--meticulous people at ease with demanding rituals--but their mental health is otherwise comparable to people in traditional American religions.

Contrary to some anti-cult literature, “no evidence of deleterious psychological effects was generally found” in longtime members of the Hindu sect, two Southern California psychologists concluded.

Clinical psychologist Arnold S. Weiss of Culver City and Richard H. Mendoza, associate professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, reported their findings in the summer issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The psychologists gave two personality tests in the mid-1980s to 226 volunteers who had averaged eight years in the Hare Krishna movement.

Weiss said the findings have favorable implications for unconventional religious movements accused of using “mind control” techniques to keep their followers.

The robed, chanting Hare Krishnas were a common sight in the 1970s soliciting donations for religious books at airports and street corners. But as internal strife, legal troubles and violent episodes escalated during the 1980s, U.S. membership has steadily declined. Devotees living in U.S. ashrams number 600, said one official.

The movement faces financial disaster, its leaders say, because five temples may have to be sold to satisfy a $5-million court judgment in Orange County, including interest. In that case, ex-devotee Robin George said she was “brainwashed” and held by “coercive persuasion” by the sect when she was an adolescent.

A 1983 jury agreed with George’s charges and rendered a $32-million judgment, but a state appeals court in 1989 rejected the brainwashing arguments and reduced the award to an amount reflecting the emotional distress experienced by Robin George’s parents. The California Supreme Court last December let the appeals court decision stand, but the Krishna movement filed an appeal this year with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weiss said he contributed to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s brief submitted to the California Supreme Court as part of the George case. The brief disputed testimony which backed claims of brainwashing in the Hare Krishna movement.

Expert opinions on sectarian religious movements have been sharply divided. Members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, an academic association of sociologists and psychologists interested in religious behavior, have typically found that new religious movements are not as abnormal and devious as depicted by anti-cult organizations.

The findings of Weiss and Mendoza were questioned by Tarzana psychiatrist John Hochman, who is also assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA.

The Hare Krishnas, who have had several leaders in trouble with the law, are “a very authoritarian group,” Hochman said. He suggested that volunteers could have been told to give the right answers to one of the tests.

“There are some people who may not be functioning very well, but deny it,” he said.

However, a Hare Krishna spokesman praised the findings. “If compulsive behavior means having the ability to get things done and adhere to goals, I would agree,” said sect spokesman Mukunda, who lives in San Diego.

Likewise, ex-devotee Lori Muster, a former associate editor in Southern California for the movement’s international newspaper, said the study accurately described devotees. Although she said she quit the sect after becoming disenchanted with infighting among sect leaders, she said, “I got a lot out of my experience as a member.”

Weiss and Mendoza wrote in the journal that they attempted to discover whether Hare Krishnas’ mental health and personalities “are adversely affected by greater degrees of involvement, or acculturation,” in the movement.

They were surprised, they wrote, that the hallmark trait of the Hare Krishna devotees was compulsive behavior. They said this trait was probably one that devotees had when they joined and may have enabled them to adjust to the faith’s rigorous lifestyle.

As with other compulsive personalities, Weiss said when interviewed, “Devotees tend to be highly organized, neat, ritualistic, driven to complete tasks, feel compelled to correct errors and often fall prey to obsessive behavior. Many have learned early in life that love and approval are contingent upon exhibiting appropriate conforming behavior.”

The goal of the Hindu sect’s religion is to please the deity Krishna, Weiss said. “The more you perform required rituals and organized activities, such as early-morning chanting, the closer you will get to Krishna,” he said.

The study also said that personalities of Hare Krishna women tended to resemble those of American women who chose to be homemakers and mothers during the start of the feminist movement in the 1960s. Because the sect’s tenets require them to be homemakers, the psychologists said that women who rebelled against that role probably dropped out early.