The mass induction of ego decompensation (a.k.a. "mental breakdown") combined with emotional blackmail has been a staple of cult manipulation for at least 500 years in the radical Hindu world TIKO. (See Emotional Blackmail & the FOG of Fear, Obligation & Guilt.)
I can't trace mass ego decompensation back any further than John Wesley's early "Methodism" in the late 1700s in the Xtian universe. But "Puritan" John Calvin was clearly using FOG two and a half centuries earlier. (See Sargant, Wesley & the Evangelical Method and The Increasingly Cultic Developmental Path of Pseudo-Xtian Sin, Shame and Guilt.)
The Red Chinese used both widely during the massive thought reform campaign of the early 1950s. (See many of R. J. Lifton's books including and since Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism.)
I was conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized to both as a child in the Pentecostal Church, as well as a young adult member of The Center for Feeling Therapy and Erhard Seminars Training (est) cults.
The The Human Potential Movement Gone Awry version of ED is described in Five Days IN The Forum: The Brainwashing in Detail.
Susan Forward's Emotional Blackmail has proven to be highly useful in the process of post-cult recovery for me and others I have worked with.
Other Resources
Psychiatric Casualties of Mass Marathon (LGAT) Trainings
After-Effects of Being Groomed into Learned Helplessness
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