Understanding thought reform is a matter of seeing behavior not as black or white, all or nothing. You have to be able to critically think about to what degree, how extreme, are the criteria present in a group, because many benign groups can have some aspects of the criteria.

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Lifton wrote that any group has some aspects of these points. However, if an environment has all eight of these points and implements them in the extreme, then there is unhealthy thought reform taking place.
quote, http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/responsibility/lifton.htm