This essay uses SYDA (Siddha
Yoga) as an example of an abusive cult
May, 1996
The original document is on Daniel Shaw's website
at http://hometown.aol.com/shawdan/essay.htm
Table of
Contents
- Introduction
- What Is a Cult, and Why Do People Get Involved in
Them?
- Seduction
- Thought Reform, or Mind Control
- Social Work Values vs. Cult Values
- Inner Emptiness and the Culture of Narcissism
- The Question of Pre-Existing and Induced Pathology:
Blaming the Victim
- The Dominating Leader and the Submissive
Follower
- Traumas Suffered by Cult Members
- Rape
- Battering
- Incest
- Working With Cult Survivors
- Conclusions
- Table I: Resource Organizations
- References
Introduction
When I began social work school, it had been just two
years since I moved out of the spiritual community, the
ashram, I had lived and worked in for more than 10 years. In
those two post-ashram years, I did a good deal of soul
searching, and concluded that my life experience had been
good preparation for a career in social work. Nevertheless,
I was taken aback when I began my field placement at a
community mental health center. Many of the clients I was
assigned described terrible histories of physical, sexual
and emotional abuse in childhood, and in some cases were
involved in ongoing abuse, either as perpetrators or
victims. Many of these clients were struggling to recover
from devastating addictions. Although my own life has been
something of a bed of roses in comparison with the suffering
these clients have known, I soon discovered I had a deeper
connection to their experiences than I at first
realized.
I had always portrayed my participation in Siddha Yoga
(also known as SYDA), to myself and others, as an idealistic
commitment to a noble spiritual path, dedicated to spiritual
awakening and upliftment in the world. Just after school
began, this identification was shattered when I learned of
an incident concerning a friend of mine, a young woman just
turned 21, who was sexually harassed in the ashram by one of
its most powerful leaders. When she sought help from
Gurumayi, the now 40 year old female Indian guru who is the
head of the ashram, Gurumayi told the young woman that she
had brought the harassment upon herself. She was treated
with contempt and made to feel ashamed. Through her chief
assistant, Gurumayi told the young woman, "don't ever tell
anyone about this, especially not your mother." (The woman's
mother was a longtime devotee of SYDA, who had made
substantial donations to the ashram over the years.) After
two years of intense inner conflict, the young woman finally
did tell her story. As a result, many others began to speak
out, eventually contributing to an extensive expose of SYDA
in The New Yorker magazine (Harris, 1994). Published just
two months after I started school, the article revealed a
Pandora's box of well documented abuses by the leaders of
SYDA that had been going on for more than 20 years.
In the two years prior to the publication of the article,
I had slowly and painfully begun to acknowledge to myself
and others that there were aspects of SYDA and its leaders
that I found unethical and disturbing. In particular, I had
witnessed and personally experienced Gurumayi verbally and
emotionally abusing devotees, using spies and hidden
microphones to gather information, and publicly shaming and
humiliating those with whom she was displeased.
My doubts about SYDA crystallized when I heard the story
of the young woman I knew. In the phrase, "Don't ever tell
anyone about this, especially not your mother," I heard a
chilling echo of the voice of the incestuous father, the
battering husband, the sexual harasser, the rapist. As
Judith Herman says, in her seminal work entitled Trauma and
Recovery (1992), "secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's
first line of defense" (p. 8). It was hearing these words,
"Don't ever tell," that broke for me what Ernst Becker
(1973) has called "the spell cast by persons -- the nexus of
unfreedom." As I began to explore my experiences and those
of others in connection with SYDA, I realized that because I
had accepted the leader's claims to perfection and
enlightenment, I had been unable to recognize abuses in the
ashram for what they were. My emerging insights, fostered by
counseling and study, have been strongly linked to my work
with clients. Their experiences helped to clarify my own,
and understanding my experiences helped me to form deeper
therapeutic bonds with them.
The purpose of this essay is to use
1. my personal experience, both as a devotee of
SYDA and now a former devotee,
2. the social work and other social sciences
literature on cults, and
3. my field work experience of providing
psychotherapeutic treatment to clients with backgrounds
of trauma and abuse, to:
1. further social work knowledge and
understanding of the traumatic impact of religious
cults;
2. explore the commonalities between victims of
cult abuse and other forms of abuse, such as rape,
incest, and battering;
3. attempt to understand aspects of our culture
that have fostered a climate in which so many find
themselves exposed to exploitative and abusive
behaviors in cultic groups; and
4. highlight the themes of my social work education
that have been most relevant for me, in connection
with my work with clients and my personal experience
of abusive behaviors in cults.
What Is a Cult, and
Why Do People Get Involved in Them?
Cult experts estimate that there are about 5,000 cultic
groups in the United States today and that about 10 to 20
million people have at some point in recent years been in
one or more of such groups (Langone, 1993). The Cult
Awareness Network reports that it receives about 18,000
inquiries a year (Tobias and Lalich, 1994). Michael Langone
(1993), a psychologist who has worked with approximately
3,000 families of cult members, defines a cult as: a group
or movement that, to a significant degree,
1. exhibits great or excessive devotion or
dedication to some person, idea, or thing,
2. uses a thought-reform program to persuade, control,
and socialize members (i.e., to integrate them into the
group's unique pattern of relationships, beliefs, values,
and practices),
3. systematically induces states of psychological
dependency in members,
4. exploits members to advance the leadership's goals,
and
5. causes psychological harm to members, their
families, and the community (p. 5).
I would add to this definition that a religious cult is
led by a person who claims to have reached human perfection
or unity with the divine, and who claims therefore to be
exempt from social or moral limitations or restrictions.
Within this autocracy, the leader is not held to normative
societal standards of conduct and is not subject to any
system of checks and balances. Behavior that would in any
other context be considered amoral, if not psychopathic, is
idealized by devotees as indicative of the leader's
transcendent perfection and enlightenment.
Seduction
The questions most often asked of former cult members,
usually with incredulity, are "How did you get into
something like this? And why did you stay so long?" The
unspoken subtext seems to be, "How could someone like you
end up in something like this? There must have been
something wrong with you." Certainly most former cult
members were not seeking to be controlled, made dependent,
exploited, or psychologically harmed when they first
committed themselves to membership. One reason cults are so
successful is that they have mastered the art of seduction,
using techniques of undue influence (Cialdini, 1984). As
Hochman (1990) notes, cults, by employing miracle, mystery,
and authority, "promise salvation. Instead of boredom --
noble and sweeping goals. Instead of existential anxiety --
structure and certainty. Instead of alienation -- community.
Instead of impotence -- solidarity directed by all-knowing
leaders" (p. 179). Cults prey upon idealistic seekers,
offering answers to social problems and promising to promote
bona fide social change.
Recruiting addresses the anxieties and loneliness of
people experiencing personal problems, transition or crisis,
by holding out the promise of transformative healing within
the framework of a caring and understanding community
(Tobias et al.). Cult recruiting often takes place in
sophisticated settings, in the form of seminars featuring
persuasive, well-credentialed speakers, such as successful
professionals, respected academics or popular artists,
writers and entertainers. Cults target members from
middle-class backgrounds, often directly from college
campuses, and the majority of members are of above average
intelligence (Hassan, 1990; Kliger, 1994; Tobias et al.,
1994).
In recruiting programs, speakers and members present
various kinds of disinformation about cult leaders,
including concealing their existence altogether. Otherwise,
the leader may be represented as a humble, wise and loving
teacher, when in reality he or she is a despot in possession
of a substantial fortune, generated from member donations
and (often illegal) business activities. The apparent leader
may be only a figurehead, while the identity of the actual
leader is concealed. False claims of ancient lineages may be
made, or the leader is falsely said to be revered and
renowned in his or her own country. Cult leaders rewrite and
falsify their own biographies.
Recruiting programs do not, for instance, inform
participants about leaders of the group having criminal
records, or a group's history of sexual abuse of members, or
the group's involvement with illegal activities. Seduction
in cult recruitment always involves strict control and
falsification of information.
Thought Reform, or
Mind Control
Thought reform, or mind control, is another important
component in understanding why cults are so prevalent in our
society. The psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (1987) studied
the methods used by the Chinese Communists during the Korean
War to turn war prisoners into willing accomplices, and
called these methods thought reform (see also Hinkle and
Wolff, 1976; Schein, 1956; Singer, 1979).
Thought reform (also known as mind control) is the
foundation on which cults are built. Lifton identified 8
phenomena that were present in the systems of "ideological
totalism" that he studied, all of which can be found in
cults:
1. Milieu control - control of communication
within an environment. Maintained primarily by
increasingly isolating members from non-members, this
sets up what Lifton calls "personal closure." One is
constantly receiving reinforcement to suppress personal
doubts and struggles about what is true or real;
2. Mystical manipulation, or planned spontaneity - a
systematic process, covertly planned and managed by the
group leader, whereby others come to invest him with
omniscience, omnipotence, or divine authority. This gives
rise to the embrace of an "ends justify the means"
philosophy, since the behavior and directives of the
leader are always and only interpreted as having a divine
origin and purpose;
3. Demand for purity - the call for a radical
separation of pure and impure, of good and evil, within
an environment and within oneself. This creates a world
of guilt and shame in which devotees become obsessively
preoccupied with hope of reward and fear of
punishment;
4. Cult of confession - linked to the demand for
purity. Required confession sessions, ostensibly for the
purpose of purification and spiritual evolution,
manipulate the guilt and shame mechanisms of followers,
expose them totally to the group, and deepen their sense
of being owned by the group;
5. Sacred science - a set of dogmatic principles which
claim to be a science embodying the truth about human
behavior and human psychology. These principles must
never be questioned, and all experience must be filtered
through them;
6. Loading the language - reduction and distortion of
complex concepts, thoughts, and feelings to simplistic
cliches and slogans, which are used to still and limit
mental processes of judgment and critical thinking;
7. Doctrine over person - one is made to feel that
doubts of the doctrine are a reflection of one's own
inadequacies, defects, or sins. The dogma is truth, and
one's subjective experience must be aligned with the
dogma. To do otherwise is to risk exclusion from the
group. Since the doctrine is created to serve the
purposes of the sociopathic leader, followers must split
off or dissociate parts of themselves, and jettison their
own values, to justify actions or tenets of the leader
which would otherwise be intolerable to them.
8. Dispensing of existence - in the totalist vision of
truth, one who disobeys, or deviates from the dogma, is
false, deluded, or evil, and therefore instantly
dispensable. The leaders are the judge of who is deviant,
and can change their criteria at whim. Cults use the fear
of banishment and shunning to control and contain
members. To fear rejection by one's absolute ideal is
tantamount to the profound dread of annihilation. (See
also Singer and Ofshe, 1990; Tobias et al. For other
theories of social control relevant to cults, see
Festinger, 1964; Gramsci, 1973; Zimbardo, 1988.)
While thought reform techniques were originally aimed at
peripheral aspects of the self, such as political and social
views, cults today aim at the core self, at a person's
central self-image (Singer et al.). The guru is perceived as
a deity who is always divinely right, and the devotee lives
to please and avoid displeasing the guru/god. In a
totalitarian ideological system, the cult leader's
displeasure comes to mean for the member that his core self
is unworthy, monstrously defective, and dispensable. The
member has been conditioned to believe that loss of the
leader's "grace" is equivalent to loss of the self. As the
member becomes more deeply involved, his anxiety about
remaining a member in good standing increases. This anxiety
is akin to the intense fear, helplessness, loss of control
and threat of annihilation that Herman, in her discussion of
psychological domination, describes as induced in victims of
both terrorists and battering husbands:
"The ultimate effect of these techniques is to convince
the victim that the perpetrator is omnipotent, that
resistance is futile, and that her life depends upon winning
his indulgence through absolute compliance. The goal of the
perpetrator is to instill in his victim not only fear of
death but also gratitude for being allowed to live" (p. 77).
Thus the victim comes to identify with the aggressor,
accepting the aggression as purification, the absence of
aggression as beneficence. More than just being between a
rock and a hard place, this is a desperate and degraded
position to find oneself in.
Herman's motivation for writing Trauma and Recovery was
to show the commonalities "between rape survivors and combat
veterans, between battered women and political prisoners,
between the survivors of vast concentration camps created by
tyrants who rule nations, and the survivors of small, hidden
concentration camps created by tyrants who rule their homes"
(p. 3). Tyrants who rule religious cults subject members to
similar violations.
Social Work Values vs.
Cult Values
In my first year of social work school, just a few months
after breaking entirely with SYDA, I was asked to write a
paper comparing a value system I had previously experienced
to the social work value system I was currently exposed to.
Social workers are taught early in their education the
values of their profession: the clients' right to
self-determination, respect and dignity for all, the innate
worth of a human being, respect for uniqueness, and the
facilitation of the realization of potential (Woods and
Hollis, 1990).
Religious cults are skillful in advertising the promotion
of these values as the core of their philosophy. For
example, SYDA's chief slogans, repeated frequently in public
talks and SYDA Foundation literature, are: "Honor, love,
respect, worship your Self. God dwells within you, as you.
See God in each other." SYDA claims that its guru is "a
self-realized master," and that following the teachings of
the master lead to one's own self-realization. The bait of
these messages is used to attract members.
Once membership is established, the messages are switched
to ever-increasing demands for obedience, submission and
dependence. The actual value system of a cult is often the
antithesis of the system it advertises.
The following is excerpted from the paper I wrote in
which I attempt to describe the value system of SYDA,
especially in terms of values linked to the concept of
strength versus weakness, and compare it to social work
values:
In the culture of Gurumayi's ashram, nothing was
more important than the worship of and complete surrender
to the guru. This is the essence of Siddha Yoga. The SYDA
Foundation literature describes ad infinitum the proper
ways to absorb oneself completely in the Siddha, the
perfected master, and also describes the enlightenment,
constant bliss and unity with the Absolute that are
supposed to result (Muktananda, 1978). I became involved
with SYDA at a point of transition in my life. I had
several ecstatic meditation experiences early in my
exposure to Siddha Yoga. Longing to belong and to be of
service, I gradually increased my commitment, finally
giving up everything I had and joining the ashram staff.
After a few years, I began to have more contact with
Gurumayi. I began to move toward the "inner circle,"
where everything started to be different from what it had
been when I was still in the outer circles. Only in
retrospect, since my break with Siddha Yoga, am I able to
describe what this culture was like. At the time, I
idealized everything about Gurumayi. We all found
ingenious ways of making her perfect no matter what, and
making her bizarre and cruel behavior "for our own
good."
In this culture, if you had a problem, you were
"weak," i.e., not devoted and pure enough. You could be
kicked out if you had a problem. You could be dismissed,
thrown out of meetings, or ridiculed and humiliated
publicly, sometimes in front of small groups and at other
times in front of thousands of people at large public
programs. Worst of all, if you earned the guru's
displeasure, she might ignore you completely. That was
worse than all the cruel and cutting remarks, which could
at least be rationalized as pearls of wisdom meant to
purify you. Being ignored meant that you were unworthy in
the sight of God. If you had a problem, you could be
spied on by roommates who would tell Gurumayi what you
said and did. Or your room could be bugged with a hidden
microphone. Or you could be left behind, not taken on
Gurumayi's lecture tours all over the world - not worthy
of being included. You could even be told to go back out
to the world and work.
You were "strong," i.e., devoted and worthy, if you
worked around the clock and never took a vacation or a
day off. You were strong if you never needed anything.
You were strong if you lived on a pittance and never
needed more money. But you were really strong if you had
lots of money and gave large amounts of it to the guru.
You were strong if you were willing to insult and harass
other people on behalf of the guru while protecting her
from being detected as the instigator.
You were weak if you were tired, or had any feelings
other than enthusiasm, happiness, and ardent devotion to
the guru, asking nothing from her. Being depressed or
exhausted was not just weak, it was considered selfish
and an insult to Gurumayi. If you asked for help, you
were weak. Not just weak, but worthy of contempt.
Entering the field of social work is for me a
rejection of the values of the culture of Siddha Yoga. It
is a return to life, to compassion for humanity and for
myself. I know now that asking for help can be a sign of
strength and courage; that problems should be handled
with sensitivity and care; and that part of being strong
is having real feelings without trying to deny them.
Recently, as I attempted to describe the cruelty I had
experienced in the cult to another social worker, he
replied, "was it cruelty, or just tough love?" Cults are
totalitarian communities, and as the saying goes, "power
tends to corrupt -- and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
(Acton, 1887). Tough love is hardly an appropriate
description of the abuse of power that is pervasive in
cults. The impetus to write on this subject now stems from
several sources: the social work literature contains scant
contributions on cults (Addis, Schulman-Miller and Lightman,
1984; Goldberg & Goldberg, 1982), and my social work
education has not included any discussion of this social
problem. In addition, many social work and other mental
health workers are themselves members of cultic groups.
There is a need for consciousness raising on this issue.
Some questions that need exploration in terms of working
with cult members are:
1. what are the traumas this population most
commonly suffers,
2. how do we understand the role of pre-existing
pathology versus imposed pathology in working with cult
victims, and
3. what are the struggles in recovery this population
and their families face as they leave the cult and
re-enter the community?
Social workers may also benefit from examining cults from
a sociocultural perspective. What are the forces in our
culture and society that allow such cults to flourish? While
the memory of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, the
mass suicides of the Solar Temple of the Sun cult, and the
plan of Shoko Asahara, of Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo, to create
his own Armageddon, is still fresh in our minds, let us
address this latter group of questions first.
Inner Emptiness and
the Culture of Narcissism
Christopher Lasch (1979), in describing the "culture of
narcissism," used the example of the writer Paul Zweig, a
SYDA devotee, to illustrate his ideas about "the void
within" that individuals in Western society have been
struggling with in the post-WWII era. Prior to his
involvement in SYDA, Zweig spoke of his growing "conviction,
amounting to a faith, that my life was organized around a
core of blandness which shed anonymity upon everything I
touched"; of "the emotional hibernation which lasted until I
was almost thirty"; of persisting "suspicion of personal
emptiness which all my talking and my anxious attempts at
charm surround and decorate, but don't penetrate or even
come close to." When "the experience of inner emptiness, the
frightening feeling that at some level of existence I'm
nobody, that my identity has collapsed and no one's there"
becomes overwhelming, Zweig encounters Swami Muktananda, or
Baba (Father), the original founder of Siddha Yoga. From
Baba, he learns to anesthetize his "mental busyness, . . .,
obsessive thinking and . . . anxiety."
Cushman (1990) notes that inner emptiness is expressed in
many ways in our culture, such as low self-esteem (the
absence of a sense of personal worth), values confusion (the
absence of a sense of personal convictions), eating
disorders (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with food,
or to embody the emptiness by refusing food), drug abuse
(the compulsion to fill the emptiness with chemically
induced emotional experience of "receiving" something from
the world). It may also take the form of an absence of
personal meaning. This can manifest as a hunger for
spiritual guidance, which sometimes takes the form of a wish
to be filled up by the spirit of God, by religious "truth,"
or by the power and personality of a leader guru (p.
604).
The hunger for spiritual guidance and religious truth is
often what impels people to explore religious groups.
Problems arise when the leaders of these groups proclaim
themselves to be living embodiments of this truth. The
danger of cults lies in the leap one must make, from
embracing religious truth, to worshipping a person claiming
to be this truth. The danger increases when this person
promises salvation, redemption, or perfection, in exchange
for money, goods and services. While religious teachers are
as entitled as anyone else to earn a living by selling their
teachings, the claim that a leader is a perfected master is
a common denominator of destructive cults.
Whether or not a particular person is perfect is
something that can only be defended on a subjective basis --
"I experience you as perfect, therefore, you are perfect."
For some, a perfect human being is a possibility; for
others, a perfect human being can only be an oxymoron.
Yet the myth of the perfect master can be so alluring,
and the need so compelling. Cushman speaks of the "lifestyle
solution" promoted by advertising, in which
larger-than-life, glamorous "selfobjects" (Kohut, 1984) in
the form of products to be acquired or incorporated, promise
to magically transform the empty self. Perhaps this solution
to the problem of the inner void -- acquisition of objects,
worldly treasure -- is the inverse of the guru solution,
which promises to fill the empty self with the spiritual
treasure of a perfect, glamorous, larger-than-life guru. As
Kohut has said, the pressure of inner emptiness can leave
one especially vulnerable to "the seduction of an external
force posing as an ego ideal" (Kohut, 1990, p. 122).
Today, gurus use the technology and psychology of
advertising to provide ever more effective methods of
seducing recruits. One of the most seductive ideas
advertised in meditation-based cults is that "it is not
necessary to be logical, rational, or even reasonable. The
ultimately dominant criterion of what is good is a totally
subjective feeling state. The goal of life becomes a good
feeling, a never-ending high" (Garvey, 1993). This is not
necessarily as selfish as it sounds. Loyal members of a cult
believe that their leader has magically transformed their
lives and relieved their suffering. On that basis, they will
staunchly defend their leader even when his or her crimes
are exposed. The "good feeling" of their initial conversion
experience might consist of feeling "redeemed," "coming home
at last," having been "lost, but now found," or being
"saved." These intensely emotional experiences are
attributed directly to the power and will of the leader.
Groups such as SYDA skillfully control devotees' thought
processes by suggesting repeatedly that they "trust their
own experience." In this way, objectivity -- e.g., any
negative information about the leader -- is devalued. The
guru, along with one's own subjective feeling state, is
idealized. The bunker mentality response to any critical
information about the group and its leaders then becomes:
"that isn't my experience."
There are strong reasons for this need to banish
objectivity. If one believes that the guru's power has
healed one's pain, then keeping the pain from returning
means preserving the guru, at any cost. Indeed, the pain of
life that has been magically erased by the guru will return
if one rejects the guru. The pain will return, along with
many other warded off emotions, and these will need to be
experienced, felt, understood, worked through, and made
meaningful, if real transformation, not magic, is to occur.
This is part of the difficult process of self-development
that the guru solution simply sweeps under the rug.
The history of SYDA provides a good example of how far
devotees will go to defend the person they perceive as their
savior. In the early 80s, the Siddha Yoga community was
shocked to learn that Muktananda, a monk in his late 60s and
supposedly a lifelong celibate, had been secretly having
sexual relations with western female devotees for at least
ten years. While many women thought of themselves as willing
participants, others felt coerced and traumatized by the
experience. Often his victims were female children in their
early teens. Many who were SYDA devotees at the time heard
these allegations and ignored them, in spite of wide
acknowledgment among those closest to Muktananda that they
were true. When several devotees spoke out publicly about
Muktananda's sexual abuses, two loyal devotees were
dispatched by Muktananda to threaten these whistle-blowers
with disfigurement and castration (Rodarmor, 1983).
Nevertheless, to this day, Muktananda is worshipped by SYDA
devotees as a deity.
How can this kind of loyalty be understood? Under the
influence of cult mind control, devotees must make the Guru,
who has magically filled the inner void, exempt from all
scrutiny and judgment. Devotees come to depend completely on
the absolute perfection of the guru. Keeping the terror of
emptiness and meaninglessness at bay, no matter how
artificially, becomes so crucial to the devotee's survival,
that he must deny truth, and sacrifice his pre-cult values
and integrity, in order not to lose the all-providing,
omnipotent, idealized guru. Long after the glow of the
conversion experience fades, regardless of the exposes, the
abuse and exploitation, many devotees maintain their
unreasoning loyalty, because for them, it has become a
matter of life or death.
The Question of
Pre-Existing and Induced Pathology: Blaming the Victim
If cults recruit members by baiting the traps of the
culture of narcissism with promises of redemption and
fulfillment, how do we understand the people who take the
bait? What assumptions, if any, can we make about this
population? In addressing these questions, it is necessary
to confront two major themes:
1. pre-existing pathology and induced pathology,
and
2. the question of blaming the victim.
Theorists such as Fromm (1965), Becker (1973) and Berger
(1967) have sought to understand the dynamics of dominance
and submission, sadism and masochism, that are built into
the human character and which are triggered in individuals
and societies exposed to certain influences. Fromm, and
later Becker, were moved to explore these human traits by
the horror of Nazi Germany; Berger's interest was oriented
to the history of religion. These ideas about man's
vulnerability to certain "pathological" behaviors can be
used to suggest that those who become cult victims are
predisposed to submissive, sadomasochistic behavior.
More recent theorists have been concerned with the
phenomenon of blaming the victims of rape and battering for
asking for, or failing to put a stop to, the abuse they have
suffered (Herman; Kliger). McNew and Abell (1995) and Silver
and Iacano (1986) use the term "sanctuary trauma" to
describe how one who has already experienced severe trauma,
such as rape, often experiences a secondary trauma in what
was expected to be a supportive and protective environment,
such as in a police station, a courtroom, or a therapist's
office. Herman notes that "those who attempt to describe the
atrocities that they have witnessed also risk their own
credibility. To speak publicly about one's knowledge of
atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims"
(p. 2).
It is easy, but erroneous, to assume that only certain
kinds of people are predisposed to join cults. When noted
cult-expert Joe Szimhart speaks to audiences about cults and
is asked what kind of people join them, he points to the
audience and says, "People like you" (Szimhart, personal
conversation). In studies conducted by Langone (1993), in
which cult members are given a battery of standard
psychological tests, he found that the percentage of cult
members who were diagnosable was only slightly higher than
the 20% of the general population commonly considered
diagnosable, suggesting that the cult population is not
necessarily markedly different from the norm. Langone
asserts, along with Martin and Hassan, that mind control
techniques are effective with all kinds of people,
regardless of the previous existence or non-existence of any
kind of psychopathology.
The literature on working with former cult members
stresses, for the most part, that the pathology induced by
the cult itself must be acknowledged, and the former member
must be helped with the array of problems resulting from
this induced pathology, before any pre-existing, underlying
pathology is assumed or explored (Addis et al.; Clifford,
1994; Giambalvo, 1993; Goldberg, 1993; Goldberg et al.,
1982; Goldberg, 1993; Halperin, 1990; Hassan, 1990; Kliger,
1994; Langone, 1993; Langone and Chambers, 1991; Martin,
1993; Martin and Langone, 1992; Morse and Morse, 1987;
Tobias, 1993). To do otherwise, for these authors,
invalidates the reality of the client, constituting a
stigmatizing message from the worker that the victims'
traumatic experience has more to do with their
psychopathology than with the violations perpetrated by the
group.
I strongly agree that cult victims can be unfairly
stigmatized or pathologized. However, I suggest that workers
risk creating a false dichotomy when we polarize the issues
of pre-existing pathology and induced pathology in cult
victims; and further, that framing the issue in terms of
pathology is, from the outset, counter-productive. All human
beings struggle with dependency, with separation and
individuation, and with conflicts over active and passive
wishes and fears. These are universal developmental issues.
As Herman points out, referring to Erikson's (1980) life
cycle stages, "trauma forces the survivor to relive all her
earlier struggles over autonomy, initiative, competence,
identity, and intimacy." Once a person is exposed to a
thought reform program and the traumatic violations that
ensue, developmental crises will be restimulated, whether
they were adequately resolved previously or not. The concept
of "blaming the victim" is misused, and unfair to the
client, if it encourages workers to overlook pre-existing
factors which may have contributed to the client's
victimization.
Victims can and should be helped with both the induced
and pre-existing aspects of their problem, at the
appropriate points in treatment (Addis et al.; Clifford;
Giambalvo; Goldberg, L.; Goldberg et al.; Goldberg, W.;
Hassan; Morse and Morse; Tobias et al.).
The Dominating Leader
and the Submissive Follower
In the interest, then, of better understanding the
dynamics that may lead some people to stay in cults, I wish
to present certain ideas about the human propensity to
exploit and be exploited. As the world watched the rise of
the Nazi Party in the 1930's and 40's, a literature
developed during and after the Holocaust which attempted to
come to grips with, among other things, how virtually an
entire nation of people, the Germans, could be persuaded to
give up their morals, values, autonomy and integrity, by one
man, a charismatic megalomaniac named Adolf Hitler. Many
authors have attempted to find explanations for this
inexplicable horror. The ideas of Erich Fromm on this
subject, as presented in his book Escape From Freedom, are
particularly relevant here. (Also see Becker (1973),
especially the chapter entitled "The Spell Cast by Persons
-The Nexus of Unfreedom"; and Berger (1967), particularly
the chapter entitled "The Problem of Theodicy.")
Fromm examines the relationship of human development
processes to social, religious, economic and political
forces in the environment. He notes that the process of
individuation frees a child to "develop and express its own
individual self unhampered by those ties which were limiting
to it. But the child also becomes more free from a world
which gave it security and reassurance" (p. 46). Fromm
continues:
If the economic, social and political conditions
on which the whole process of human individuation
depends, do not offer a basis for the realization of
individuality.. ., while at the same time people have
lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes
freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical
with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and
direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this
kind of freedom into submission or some kind of
relationship to man and the world which promises relief
from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of
his freedom (p. 52) (italics mine).
Fromm is describing, writing in 1941, the predicament of
a life which lacks meaning and direction, in a society which
offers too many dead-end destinations. This is where Paul
Zweig found himself - adrift in the culture of narcissism
that Lasch described twenty-five years later.
While Fromm speaks of the securing ties that are lost in
the process of becoming separate, there are those who would
argue that many children in the early stages of development
possess little more than false security, at best. Alice
Miller, in The Drama of the Gifted Child (1981), suggests
that the development of the true self, the goal of
separation and individuation, is thwarted when parents need
and use their children to fulfill their own egoistic wishes.
Parents can train children to experience their natural
needs, feelings, and attempts at self-expression, as
destructive and shameful. Such children learn to hide or
suppress these unaccepted parts of themselves, and to
develop a false self which accommodates the needs of the
parents -- in essence, an act of self-annihilation
(Winnicott, 1960). While the developmental conflict between
attachment and separation invariably elicits feelings of
isolation and powerlessness, these feelings may be
especially exacerbated when the child's drive to separate is
threatening to a needy and narcissistically vulnerable
parent, or thwarted by neglectful or sadistic parents.
Miller sees the problem of the child who becomes a prisoner
of the narcissistic parent as a pervasive cultural
phenomenon of our time.
Fromm attributes fear of separation to alienating and
isolating forces in society which have arisen gradually over
centuries. Miller sees this fear arising in the nursery,
from the ways we misunderstand and misuse our children.
Whether we prefer the macrocosmic or the microcosmic view,
in attempting to understand the problem of fear of
separation and freedom, I believe these perspectives are
complementary, and both are useful and necessary.
For the person who is tormented with anxiety about
separation, Fromm considers masochism to be one of the
primary mechanisms of escape from this torment. When the
parental and/or social environment cannot provide the
security required for the separation effort, then adopting
the masochistic stance of feeling small and helpless, or
overwhelmed by pain and agony, can be a way of avoiding and
protecting oneself from having to fight what would only be a
losing battle. Between self-annihilation, which provides a
kind of control, and unsupported separation and
independence, which feels out of control, self-annihilation
may seem like the less terrifying of two evils.
However, annihilation of self is only one side of the
attempt to overcome unbearable feelings of powerlessness.
Fromm points out an alternative which bears more directly on
the subject of cults:
The other side is the attempt to become a part
of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself,
to submerge and participate in. This power can be a
person, an institution, God, the nation, conscience, or a
psychic compulsion. By becoming part of a power which is
felt as unshakably strong, eternal, and glamorous, one
participates in its strength and glory. One surrenders
one's own self and renounces all strength and pride
connected with it, one loses one's integrity as an
individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new
security and a new pride in the participation in the
power in which one submerges. One gains also security
against the torture of doubt (p. 177) (italics mine).
Fromm calls the power one submerges oneself in the "magic
helper." When one feels helpless and hopeless to express and
realize one's individual potential, dependence on a magic
helper provides a solution which shifts the emphasis off the
self, which is experienced as empty and worthless, to the
magic helper. The magic helper, in our fantasy, has all the
answers, can take care of everything, and loves and accepts
us perfectly, thereby confirming and validating our
existence. Merging with the magic helper banishes emptiness,
loneliness and anxiety -- and magic security is established.
Then separation, individuation, and its accompanying terrors
can be averted altogether. One can join a cult and effect a
kind of separation from one's family and background -- but
the actual task of individuation is not undertaken. The
pseudo-separation attempt degenerates into a regression to
deeper levels of dependence and enmeshment.
In the relationship to the magic helper, "the question is
then no longer how to live oneself, but how to manipulate
'him' in order not to lose him and how to make him do what
one wants, even to make him responsible for what one is
responsible oneself" (Fromm, p. 199). Paradoxically,
obedience and goodness are among the most common methods
used to attempt to manipulate and control the magic helper.
Yet the enslavement to the magic helper that is then
experienced is resented and creates conflict. This conflict
must be repressed in order not to lose the magic helper.
Additionally, people who pose as magic helpers eventually
and inevitably demonstrate their imperfection, if not their
complete fraudulence. Thus, the underlying anxiety about the
authenticity of the magic helper, or about losing him
through not being worthy, constantly threatens the security
sought for in the relationship. This is a real double bind.
As Berger notes, "the masochistic attitude is inherently
predestined to failure, because the self cannot be
annihilated this side of death and because the other can
only be absolutized in illusion" (p. 56). (See footnote
*)
(* Kliger, in her study of devotees of a leader named
"Guru", demonstrates that it is precisely this conflict in
the devotees that results in the high degree of somatization
she found among them. Unhappiness and dissatisfaction
amongst members was considered by Guru to be hostile, a
threat to the community. Guru demanded that devotees show a
happy face at all times, claiming that their unhappy faces
made him physically and psychically ill. (This is also what
Gurumayi teaches her SYDA staff.) Because the devotees were
stigmatized by Guru for any expression of dissatisfaction,
devotees suppressed these feelings, which then emerged
through somatization. Physical illness was more acceptable
to Guru, because he saw himself as a healer and could use a
devotee's illness to demonstrate his power. If his healing
efforts failed, however, the devotee's illness was deemed a
manifestation of their resistance, proving that they were
hostile to Guru's mission. Punishment by shunning followed,
which led either to the devotee's further submission, or to
their excommunication (Kliger, pp. 232-233).)
When the magic helper is a drug such as heroin, the
annihilation of the self may culminate in the death of the
body. If it is food, the self is concealed in obesity, or
enslaved to anorexia and bulimia. When the magic helper is
an idealized but traumatizing parent who is ambivalently
both hated and totally depended on, annihilation of the self
manifests as the inability to separate and individuate.
When the magic helper is a guru, the annihilation of the
self is the loss of one's own voice, personal values, and
integrity. Again, SYDA provides useful material in support
of this point. In SYDA philosophy, the "ego" is devalued as
something small and selfish that must be surrendered to the
guru, to be magically transformed into pure awareness of the
transcendent "inner Self," which is one with the guru and
with God. The sense of "doership", taking credit for or
enjoying the fruits of one's own actions, is in particular a
sure sign of "wrong understanding." The right understanding
is that whatever the guru says or does is a direct
expression of God's will, and that everything good flows
from the magic grace of the guru. By surrendering the ego
and the sense of doership to the guru, the sins of pride and
selfishness are supposedly expiated. Practically, this means
that experiencing oneself as a center of agency and
initiative, as a creative person capable of taking pleasure
in the use of one's own talents and skills, should be a
source of shame -- because nothing belongs to oneself, it
all belongs to and comes from the guru. On the other hand,
one must always be ready to confess and take credit for
one's sins and transgressions -- which in this system, are
the sole property of the small, impure, selfish ego.
When the mists of these tortuous obfuscations are
cleared, one has really only discovered a pseudo-moralistic
rationale for self-annihilation. The person posing as the
magic guru is revealed as an opportunistic entrepreneur, one
who has learned how to profit well from the variety of
influences, in our inner and outer worlds, which have caused
us to feel afraid of freedom.
Traumas Suffered by
Cult Members
When cult members finally leave the cult and seek help,
they have been exhausted by their long struggle to maintain
the illusion of a perfect master, and the concomitant
deterioration of their self-esteem. Many clinical workers
are unfamiliar with the particular issues likely to be
present in this population. Knowledge of the impact of more
familiar abuses such as rape, incest and battering can be
extremely helpful in working with cult members. Cult trauma
entails violation, by the idolized and deified leader, of
the cult member's core sense of self. Rape, incest and
battering, often perpetrated by a trusted adult or
significant other, are also extreme violations and
disruptions of the self (Bell, J., 1995; Blake-White and
Kline, 1985; Chairamonte, J. (1992); Ellenson, G., 1989;
Graziano, R., 1992; Langley, M., 1982; Marton, F., 1988;
McNew et al.; Patten, Gatz, Jones, and Thomas, 1989). The
following clinical material compares aspects of some of
these generally more familiar violations with examples of
cult violations.
Rape. A
client I have been seeing for the last two years, Ms. R.,
was the victim of severe emotional abuse from her mother.
Although this example does not involve an actual rape, the
principles involved are similar and useful for the purposes
of this discussion.
Ms. R. is an intelligent 40 year old woman from a middle
class background who is extremely phobic, obsessive and
subject to panic anxiety. Although she successfully
maintains a menial job, she feels she is earning far below
her potential and is profoundly isolated and dissatisfied,
without fulfilling work or intimate relationships. She
traces many of her difficulties to her traumatic upbringing.
Ms. R.'s mother was a disturbed woman who was dependent on a
variety of tranquilizers and barbiturates. Nevertheless, as
a child, Ms. R. saw her mother as an idealized figure,
vested with magical omnipotence. Ms. R. lived in terror of
her mother's demands for perfection, and her unpredictable
outbursts of rage. Nothing she did was considered good
enough, and she was made to feel that any form of
self-expression was destructive. She learned that only her
mother's needs mattered, and she experienced her own needs
and feelings as shameful.
Ms. R. describes her experience of the cruel,
contemptuous words and looks of her mother, spit out at her
with rage and penetrating her to the core, leaving her
feeling ever more alone and ashamed, by using the metaphor
of rape. Her mother's rape-like verbal abuse has frozen Ms.
R. in terror and helplessness, and rendered her unable to
separate or form a stable sense of identity. She has cut off
all contact with her mother, saying that to reconcile with
her would be like "getting in bed with my own rapist." Yet
she has internalized this punitive mother and lives in
constant fear of the people in her world. In her
transference to them, they are all potential "psychic
rapists."
The pattern of cruelty of Ms. R.'s mother is remarkably
similar to the behavior of cult leaders. Herman states that
"violation is, in fact, a synonym for rape. The purpose of
the rapist is to terrorize, dominate, and humiliate his
victim, to render her utterly helpless" (p. 58). In cults,
victims are made helpless, like rape victims, when they are
repeatedly confronted and forced to confess sins and
transgressions. This phenomenon is sometimes called "being
on the hot seat." The hot seat confrontation, in which
accusatory words are hurled by group leaders like knives,
with the purpose of penetrating and wounding the core of the
devotee's self, is a violent, painful invasion of
self-boundaries disguised as "purification," for the good of
the member. The member is usually accused of behaving in
some way which demonstrates a lack of faith in or loyalty to
the leader. This alleged lack in the member is portrayed as
a monstrous and contemptible defect or transgression. In the
midst of this assault, which is often ongoing over an
extended period, the cult member on the hot seat must
attempt to feel and express remorse as well as appreciation
of the leader's efforts to purify him. Often, leaders who
employ hot seat confrontations press the victims' peers into
service, inviting them to join in the assault. This creates
a situation not unlike a gang rape. These confrontations may
end with the ultimate humiliation -- excommunication, the
equivalent for the member of psychic annihilation; or else
with the member's complete submission and confession,
leading to his rehabilitation as a member in good standing.
In either case, former cultists in therapeutic treatment
invariably describe their experience of abuse in the cult as
"spiritual rape" (Tobias et al.) Like a violent rapist
threatening his victim with death if she does not submit, in
confrontation/confession episodes, the guru has the devotee
in his or her power.
Battering.
Battering comprises a cycle of violent assaults by one
domestic partner against the other, followed by a period of
reconciliation, which is then followed by an escalation
phase and a return to the violence. Herman notes that
battering may also include being taken by surprise, trapped,
or exposed to the point of exhaustion. The victim of
battering comes to live in a state of helplessness and
terror.
Ms. R., described above, experienced her mother's
unpredictable outbursts of rage and cruelty, sometimes
accompanied with slaps, but often just comprising words and
looks, as battering. She stated in session that she began
feeling crazy at a very early age, when her mother would
direct prolonged fits of rage toward her, then suddenly
disappear into her room. She would emerge hours later as
though nothing had happened, offering to read Ms. R. a
bedtime story. Ms. R. described another group of memories,
in which she was expected to do all the house cleaning on
Saturdays before she would be allowed to go outside and
play. But because her mother slept until early afternoon,
and she was not allowed to make noise that would wake her,
the cleaning would not be done until dinner, by which time
the other children had gone home and it would be too late to
go outside. Ms. R. hated her mother for trapping and
isolating her in this way.
Yet when Ms. R.'s mother played the piano and asked her
daughter to sing,, when Ms. R. took great pride in her
ability to elicit her mother's approval and pleasure -- rare
and precious gifts that she treasured. But the approval
meant so much to Ms. R., that each time she lost it, she
would be overwhelmed with grief, rage, and self-blame. The
unpredictable shifts Ms. R. experienced between being the
object of her mother's rage and derision at one moment, and
of her engulfing and overstimulating affection at another,
were desperately confusing. At age 8, Ms. R. began engaging
in compulsive hand washing rituals. Although these rituals
ceased long ago, Ms. R. remains imprisoned and paralyzed by
her doubts and fears about herself.
Similar conditions exist for cult members. They are
frequently expected to work 12 to 18 hour days, 7 days a
week, with little or no time off. This keeps them constantly
isolated within the system, vulnerable and exhausted. During
a period where SYDA members were being allowed a weekly day
off, Gurumayi learned that a staff member had spent an
afternoon at a movie. She promptly informed all staff that
they would no longer be allowed any days off or holidays.
Gurumayi's own fondness for rented videos and satellite
television is one of her many well-guarded secrets. But even
if it were common knowledge, the devotee's mission is to
hold their guru exempt from human standards of fairness,
logic or ethical conduct. They must maintain and defend
their belief in her perfection, or face the catastrophic
collapse of the belief structure that upholds them.
Similarly, the battered child must blame herself for her
parents' irrational behavior, or risk losing the parents she
depends on.
On the other hand, Gurumayi makes lavish displays of
generosity to certain members, usually timed before or after
the member would be put on the hot seat. Which of her inner
circle is "in" and which is "out" is a constant source of
gossip among her staff, who are anxious to be properly
aligned for or against those who are in or out of favor.
One's status fluctuates constantly and unpredictably. When
cult members are repeatedly insulted and humiliated by the
guru for no understandable reason; and the guru then makes a
show of forgiving them, heaping praise and attention on
them; and when this cycle is repeated continuously, without
warning or reason, then the victim experiences fear,
desperation to comply, and helplessness -- just as Ms. R
did, and as the battered wife does. The guru does not
necessarily need to use physical violence, as the batterer
does, to keep devotees in line -- although many gurus, like
those in SYDA, do employ corporeal punishments. Because
one's core sense of self is placed completely in the power
of the guru, emotional and psychic wounds from the guru's
cruel and contemptuous remarks and behavior are experienced
as devastatingly painful blows. When these alternate with
praise and ostentatious displays of kindness, one is both
made to feel crazy and made to feel more dependent.
Incest.
Another client, Ms. B., was molested by older male relatives
on two occasions in her childhood. Then from the age of
13-16, she was subjected to sexualizing behavior from her
father. When she was sixteen, her father raped her and had
sexual intercourse with her regularly for the next 3 years.
Ms. B. went on to become a crack addict and a prostitute,
and is now in rehabilitation.
Ms. B. is attractive and intelligent. She is childlike in
many ways, including her thumb-sucking in bed before she
falls asleep. She is also flirtatious, in the manner of a
child seeking approval and attention. But of course she is
in an adult body. Her original childhood needs for mirroring
affirmation were met with sexualization. Now, all of Ms.
B.'s needs are counterphobically translated into the need
for sexual gratification.
When I first saw Ms. B., she was going home from her
rehabilitation facility on weekends, and reported enjoying
being with her family. When I asked if she had any
discomfort about being with her father, she would report she
had none. I was struck at these times and many others at how
devoid Ms. B. was of affective responses to her intact
memories of years of incest. Although feelings about her
father were dissociated, I discovered that she was
reenacting the incest at her facility. Ms. B. revealed that
she was involved in several secret sexual liaisons which
violated the house rules. She was in constant torment over
her fear of being discovered and dismissed from the program.
At the same time she conspired relentlessly to maintain the
secret affairs and protect the men involved from exposure.
Her lovers made it clear to her that if they were exposed,
she would be to blame for their downfall. She was
experiencing desperate confusion and anxiety in the
reenactments, while feeling nothing about her father, the
original perpetrator. It has not been easy to help Ms. B.
see how these relationships reenact her history of incest.
Ms. B.'s father had succeeded in manipulating her so that
she felt responsible for arousing him. She was afraid to
expose him for fear of being despised by her mother, who
never noticed that anything was wrong. She also didn't want
to hurt her mother and see her fall apart, or destroy her
parents' marriage and lose the only home she knew. Crack
proved to be an effective relief from the desperate
confusion Ms. B. experienced -- until it brought her to
prostitution, degradation and near death.
When Ms. B. finally confronted her parents and told the
truth some months ago, her father did not deny what had
happened, as she had feared. Rather, he took the opportunity
when her mother was out of earshot to tell Ms. B. "if only
you had said no." Her mother also calls her now, crying,
complaining of the destruction of her marriage. It appears
that neither parent was or is as concerned about the
destruction of their daughter as about maintaining their
status quo.
Cults are also incestuous and resemble incestuous
families. Like the incest victim, cult victims have been
deceived and exploited, persuaded to obey and maintain
secrecy, by a trusted and idealized parental/authority
figure. Members may be keeping secrets about the sexual
abuse of others, or about their own molestation. In SYDA,
the previous guru was called "Baba," which means father, and
his successor is known as "Gurumayi," which means Guru
Mother. Muktananda had sexual intercourse with many of the
young women who adored him as a divine father. Gurumayi, who
succeeded Muktananda as the head of SYDA, was fully aware
that many young women were seduced or raped in her ashram by
other male authority figures there. Her response has been to
protect the perpetrators and blame the girls and young
women, commanding them to keep the secret. Blake-White
states that because the incest perpetrator is a trusted
parent, the victim can be ambivalent and confused about her
own feelings to the point that she may doubt her own
reality.
Because cult members are being violated by their idolized
guru (or the guru is protecting their violators), they may
suffer a similar confusion of reality. This is demonstrated
in SYDA, for example, where many parents accepted the sexual
abuse of their daughters by Muktananda as a gift of divine
grace, and devotees who knew of his sexual activities
ignored or rationalized them as having a divine purpose.
In addition to issues of sexual abuse, other kinds of
secrets that cult members may be asked to keep include
illegal practices such as money laundering, violence toward
group enemies, use of illegal weapons, smuggling, and so on.
Members who attempt to speak out against abuses in the cult
may be discredited, intimidated, or shamed into believing
that their own inner corruption is being projected.
Similarly, the incest victim is told that she provoked her
own mistreatment. Loyal members make every effort to
manipulate the guilt mechanisms of those who criticize the
group, with logic-twisting comments such as, "these
destructive things you say are hurting people's spiritual
progress." Similarly, the incest victim is told that
revealing the secret will destroy the family.
When cult members emerge from confusion, and become aware
of having been deceived and betrayed, their rage and despair
may be enormous. Yet cult members also struggle with issues
of loyalty to the perpetrator, and many remain emotionally
crippled by confusion and self-doubt. Like Ms. B. repeatedly
reenacting her trauma, many cultists become disillusioned in
one cult only to join another. Many feel an irresistible
pull to return to the original cult in which they were
abused.
Working With Cult
Survivors
It should not be surprising that cult survivors, having
suffered traumatic violations such as those described above,
often present with a very broad range of problems. While it
is not within the scope of this paper to review in detail
current theories of work with this population, I will
briefly present some of the major points on the subject.
Both Giambalvo and Tobias provide detailed information on
their own work with cult members (also see Hassan; Langone,
1993). They break down the problem areas for cult survivors
that workers should be aware of as follows:
1. the disarming of internalized mind-control
mechanisms, and education about deception and abuse in
the cult (this step is often accomplished in exit
counseling, a specialized, non-coercive, short-term
educational intervention specifically geared to cult
issues);
2. becoming free of fears of being harmed by the cult
leaders or members. Specific fears could include:
physical or verbal assault; release of confidential and
potentially embarrassing information; or "divine
retribution" in the form of accidents or misfortunes.
Because of indoctrination, these fears are often intense
at first, and can reach the point of panic anxiety;
3. management of post-traumatic stress symptoms,
particularly "floating," a dissociative state experienced
in connection with damage from excessive meditation,
chanting, mantra repetition, etc.;
4. grief work in relation to loss and betrayal;
5. issues related to sexual abuse which may have taken
place in the cult;
6. health issues and medical care, including diet,
which has often been protein-deficient;
7. aid in restoring financial stability and planning
for the future, including vocational or educational
planning;
8. issues related to sexuality;
9. restoring trust in relationships and managing
intimacy, in the context of friends and family;
10. restoring self-esteem;
11. finding meaning in the experience; addressing
spirituality, values and beliefs.
While the above list is fairly comprehensive, there are
crucial aspects of recovery from trauma that Herman (p. 213)
emphasizes that should not be overlooked when working with
cult victims. These include helping the client to:
1. create a coherent narrative, linked with
feeling, from the memory of the trauma and
2. reestablish important relationships.
The latter point is particularly relevant for cult
members who may be faced with extreme isolation because they
became estranged from all but other cult members. Restoring
pre-cult significant relationships, especially family
relationships, can help provide desperately needed support
for the survivor. Steve Hassan, a leading exit counselor of
cult members and their families, considers family therapy to
be an essential element in recovery from cults. Before
intervening with a cult member, Hassan works with the
member's family to address the systemic problems of
communication and relating that may have contributed to the
alienation of the member. He then assists the family and the
cult member with the complex process of reconnecting. In
addition, families of cult members often suffer terrible
anguish and confusion over the plight of the member.
They, too, often seek counseling to attempt to cope with
the disruption the cult has caused in their lives. The Cult
Clinics in New York and Los Angeles, maintained by Jewish
family service agencies, use individual, couples and group
modalities to help families with members who have become
involved in cults.
Cult survivors may benefit enormously from group work.
Lorna and William Goldberg (Goldberg et al.) are social
workers who have run an ongoing support group for cult
survivors for more than 15 years, in which former members
offer mutual aid to each other as they readjust to society.
The Goldbergs see three stages in recovery that they help
group members to identify and work through:
1. the stage of self-doubt, confusion, and
depression,
2. the reemergence of the pre-cult personality, often
accompanied by actions aimed at exposure of the group,
and
3. the stage of integration, which includes the
ability to accept positive aspects of the cult experience
along with the negative, and which is marked by a
resumption of goal-oriented activities geared toward
productivity and self-fulfillment.
The Goldbergs find that members who work through these
three stages in the support group are often interested in
continuing in individual psychotherapy, as a means of better
understanding the dynamics that led them to be vulnerable to
cult participation.
Individual, group and family therapy may all be helpful
modes of intervention with cult survivors. Ultimately, the
most helpful aspect of treatment for the survivor is an
empathic worker who has knowledge and understanding of
issues pertaining to cults. Aside from information available
in the literature on the subject (see the References
section), various organizations exist which serve as
information, treatment and resource centers about cults. A
list of some of these organizations is included at the end
of this paper (see Table 1).
Conclusions
The general public has had a good deal of media exposure
in recent years to child abuse, domestic violence, rape and
incest issues. Cult issues, on the other hand, are generally
only reported when the cult stockpiles arms or nerve gas, or
involves members in mass homicides or suicides. These
extreme cults provide the media with sensational stories,
and the public perception of cults tends to be limited to
this type of group. Yet these groups are the exception, not
the rule. Far more prevalent are the cults that do not have
arsenals, or take suicide pacts, or attempt to take over the
world. These less overtly dangerous groups may appear
benign, or eccentric but harmless. Unfortunately, they are
rarely if ever harmless. Cults form around paranoid,
sociopathic leaders who gain power, and often great wealth,
through control and exploitation of members, whether it be
one follower or hundreds of thousands (Hochman; Tobias).
These leaders call themselves gurus, priests, teachers,
trainers, or therapists. Murder and suicide may or may not
take place, but violations similar in essence to battering,
rape and incest do. These traumatic violations are murders
of the soul, secret, invisible murders that never make the
headlines.
I recently assisted in an exit counseling, an
intervention requested by a man in his early 40s who wished
to extricate his wife from the cult they had become involved
in, which was also the cult I had been in. The intervention
was educational and entirely voluntary, with the exit
counselor speaking from his extensive knowledge of cults in
general, while I offered specific information about my own
experience of SYDA. While the husband had been persuaded of
the cult's fraudulence prior to the intervention, the wife
struggled painfully to integrate the information she was
hearing with the ecstatic epiphanies she had experienced in
the group. Toward the end of the intervention, as she began
to accept the facts about the group, she said, with great
emotion, "I have longed so all my life for a personal,
intimate, experience of a loving God; where am I going to
find that now?" In this poignant moment, it was apparent
that the woman's family of origin, and her marriage, had not
been contexts in which she had been able to experience
loving intimacy in ways that were fulfilling enough. Unmoved
by and dissatisfied with the more traditional faith she had
been brought up in, she had placed her hopes of finding this
elusive love in the magic helpers of the New Age. If it is
painfully difficult to feel that one is truly loved for who
one truly is, one may long for a magical, flawless love -- a
love that can instill the conviction, once and for all, that
one is indeed worthy of being loved.
Many clients I have seen have also experienced terrible
disappointments and impediments in their attempts to love
and feel loved, to trust, and to feel fulfilled. They have
experienced betrayal and exploitation at the hands of
parents they idealized. They had to sacrifice themselves to
meet the narcissistic requirements of those whom they
depended on. Some never received the necessary mirroring for
a sense of self even to develop; or they came to define
themselves as unlovable and unwanted. Their search for
acceptance and love has been, above all else, lonely.
For Kohut (1984), the hallmark of therapeutic cure is the
client's sense of security derived from his newfound ability
to elicit empathic resonance from his human surroundings; or
in other words, the ability to feel sustained and nurtured
by different forms of human connectedness. For some, the
inability to even imagine this connectedness leads to
addiction, compulsiveness, isolation and despair. For
others, the search for connectedness leads to enslavement to
a guru figure, a magic helper.
As a social worker, my use of self has been deeply
affected by my experience and understanding of cult abuse.
Many of the clients I have seen in the last two years who
come for treatment have reached the end of their rope. They
have depended on magic helpers -- drugs, sex, food, and many
others -- to the point where they feel themselves on the
brink of self-annihilation. They want to find a way out of
their enslavement, but the alternative freedom is
unfathomable. They want assurance to know that if they
relinquish the magic, and find themselves faced with the
terror of meaninglessness and aloneness, their pain will not
be endless and unendurable.
Among the many tasks I might have in helping these
clients, an essential task I perceive is to be with them --
to help them to feel less alone, as they find the courage to
live through the pain of what they have not dared to face.
If I can help them feel less alone, then, gradually, I can
try to help them make sense of their suffering. This is the
step in recovery from trauma that Herman refers to when she
says, "finally, the person has reconstructed a coherent
system of meaning and belief that encompasses the story of
the trauma" (p. 213).
As I have struggled to construct a coherent system of
meaning and belief about my own traumatic experience in a
religious cult, my social work education and field work have
provided me with a sustaining connection to the knowledge
and values of a profession which I embrace and feel embraced
by. It is my hope that what I have learned may be of help to
others.
To read "The Dark Side of Enlightenment: Sadomasochistic
Aspects of the Quest for Perfection," also by Daniel Shaw
CSW, press here.
Table 1: Resource
Organizations
Organizations
American Family Foundation (AFF) Director: Michael D.
Langone P.O. Box 2265 Bonita Springs, FL 33959 (212)
249-7693
The Cult Clinic, c/o The Jewish Board of Children and
Family Services, 120 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019,
(212) 632-4640
Counseling Services Cult Clinic and Hotline Jewish Board
of Family and Children's Services Director: Arnold
Marcowitz, MSW 120 W. 57th St. New York, NY 10019 (212)
632-4640
Cult Clinic Jewish Family Service 6505 Wilshire Blvd.,
6th Floor Los Angeles, CA 90048 (213) 852-1234
Wellspring Retreat & Resource Center Director: Paul
R. Martin P.O. Box 67 Albany, OH 45710 (614) 698-6277
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