cult abuse -- see any similarities?

[Phoenixxx]

http://www.factnet.org/rancho5.htm


Common Properties of Potentially Destructive and Dangerous Cults

The cult is authoritarian in its power structure. The leader is regarded as the supreme authority. He or she may delegate certain power to a few subordinates for the purpose of seeing that members adhere to the leader's wishes and roles. There is no appeal outside of his or her system to greater systems of justice. For example, if a school teacher
feels unjustly treated by a principal, appeals can be made. In a cult, the leader claims to have the only and final ruling on all matters.

The cult's leaders tend to be charismatic, determined, and
domineering. They persuade followers to drop their families, jobs, careers, and friends to follow them. They (not the individual) then take over control of their followers' possessions, money, lives.

The cult's leaders are self-appointed, messianic persons who claim to have a special mission in life. For example, the flying saucer cult leaders claim that people from outer space have commissioned them to lead people to special places to await a space ship.

The cult's leaders center the veneration of members upon themselves. Priests, rabbis, ministers, democratic leaders, and leaders of genuinely altruistic movements keep the veneration of adherents focused on God, abstract principles, and group purposes. Cult leaders, in contrast, keep the focus of love, devotion, and allegiance on themselves.

The cult tends to be totalitarian in its control of the behavior of its members. Cults are likely to dictate in great detail what members wear, eat, when and where they work, sleep, and bathe-as well as what to believe, think, and say.

The cult tends to have a double set of ethics. Members are urged to be open and honest within the group, and confess all to the leaders. On the other hand, they are encouraged to deceive and manipulate outsiders or nonmembers. Established religions teach members to be honest and truthful to all, and to abide by one set of ethics.

The cult has basically only two purposes, recruiting new members and fund-raising. Established religions and altruistic movements may also recruit and raise funds. However, their sole purpose is not to grow larger; such groups have the goals to better the lives of their members
and mankind in general. The cults may claim to make social
contributions, but in actuality these remain mere claims, or gestures. Their focus is always dominated by recruiting new members and fund-raising.

The cult appears to be innovative and exclusive. The leader claims to be breaking with tradition, offering something novel, and instituting the only viable system for change that will solve life's problems or the world's ills. While claiming this, the cult then surreptitiously uses systems of psychological coercion on its members to inhibit their
ability to examine the actual validity of the claims of the leader and the cult.

[LDW]

Phoenixxx, I saw a documentary on the critical journalist Paulette Cooper who claims to have been stalked and harrassed by the Scientology church for over a dozen of years... It's unbelievable what they do. Ron Hubbard definately is a Narc.

Looking over my shoulder,
The Inside Account of the
Story That Almost Killed Me

http://www.lermanet.com/paulette-cooper/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulette_Cooper

On Hubbard's narcissism:

Professor Erich Fromm would have diagnosed Scientology's founder, L Ron Hubbard, as suffering from an extreme form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Not only did he found a religious organization to honor him and his thought, but also a military unit to protect him and his 'works' and execute his orders. In an all too brief moment of clarity in the early 1950s, he asked for psychiatric help, but left before he could be adequately assessed and treated.

http://www.orato.com/world-affairs/profile-of-l-ron-hubbard

[CZBZ]

One of my favorite bloggers has written so marvelously about GroupThink. I went to her website and typed 'cults' into her search engine which pulled up numerous posts. This is direct link the the search results: http://galewarnings.blogspot.com/search?q=cults

Stormchild has a lot to say about the importance of 'disagreement' and 'critical thinking'. If anyone is interested in how groupthink can lead to abuse and 'control' (akin to brainwashing), take some time to read Stormchild's blog: Gale Warnings. She doesn't have much time to post anymore, so use the search engine on her blog to retrieve articles from her archives. You'll love her style of writing---she's clear, direct and concise.

Hugs,
CZ

Here's an example of her insight:

23 AUGUST 2008

Antidotes to Groupthink: Individuation

I've spent the better part of a week searching for the best one-word term for this next antidote, and it's fitting, I think, that it turns out to be a term created by C. G. Jung.

I was searching for a term that would capture, in a positive light, qualities that are all too often dismissed as negative: a certain type of self-reliance, a degree of faith in one's own judgement and perspective, and a combination of strength and resilience that enables its possessor to reject toxic / unhealthy / severely negative-normed groups, even when the price of such rejection is isolation or other forms of group retaliation.

I was searching for a term that would include these things, yet also leave room for compassion, a desire for healthy connection with others, an ability to see one's own flaws and negative / toxic aspects, an ability to see reality without despair.

Jung's term encompasses all of this, and more. I'm going to bypass his terminology and simplify the concept as follows: individuation is self-awareness without denial or excuse; awareness of all that we do that is false, to 'get by'; all that we desire that is socially repudiated [revenge, etc.]; those qualities we possess that we would normally assign to a person of opposite sex from ourselves [strength and aggression in women, tenderness and emotiveness in men]; the qualities that we possess most strongly that we typically assign to our own sex; our desire to save, nurture, and lead, and the damage this can do to us if allowed to run unchecked. It is also an awareness of our place in the universe, an understanding that we do, indeed, have such a place, an acceptance that we, as living beings, are part of a living universe.

Full individuation in this sense is the work of a lifetime. But simply to 'set one's face' towards this goal is to turn away from the values that allow groupthink to flourish unrecognized and unchallenged.

I am not holding up a form of self-worship, here, as an antidote to group-worship. I do, definitely, regard groupthink - especially when it is deliberately instigated by a 'groupthink guru' - as a form of idolatry, an inappropriate centering of the mind / heart / soul on the group, or the guru, or both. Survivors of abusive, cultic churches will know exactly what I mean by this; it applies equally well to workplace 'gangs', criminal gangs, and middle school 'mean cliques'.

To worship a group, or its human leadership, is to imperil one's soul. But to turn from group-worship or leader-worship to self-veneration is merely to substitute one peril for another. Jung's concept of self-knowledge leads, instead, to a calm humility, with considerable humor in it. You know who you are, warts and all. You know what you value, and you know why. You also know that there are many, many things in life that are worse than being alone, either short-term or long-term. Assimilation by a toxic group will be near the top of that list; willingly doing harm to others at the behest of such a group or its guru will be anathema to you.

And, paradoxically, you will know - from the tips of your fingers to the depth of your soul - that, in fact, you are never less alone, spiritually, than when you make the choice to be alone, corporeally, rather than to buy into groupthink as the price of membership in a group.

This antidote to groupthink, in other words, is: to know your own heart, respect your own mind, and value your soul.

[LDW]

A caveat arises immediately. Inner-directedness, while necessary, is by no means sufficient. If you think about it for a moment, and if you go back and look at my groupthink case history [links above] and the posts by Meg and CZBZ on the subject, you will quickly realize that abusers themselves - those who manipulate individuals and groups - are VERY strongly inner-directed! However, the strong personal values of an abuser are predatory. They are the personal values of a narcissist or, in the extreme, a sociopath: the Self is the only thing of value in the universe, and the Wants of the Self are the only Good.

I saw a great documentary called "The century of the Self" (link provided by you; topdocumentaryfilms.com). In the end it's about how psychologists and politicians were able to influence the inner-directed people using 'individuation' in their campaign; it's about the conservatives/republicans luring the progressives in to vote for them and left-elite parties doing the same vice versa. It works at all times. So in what way and to what extend are you inner-directed, really? That's the question... So you have a good sense of self, right? Let's see what I can do to manipulate that to get you to take my stance... I'll use YOUR values and morals to question yourself. It's just another way of control.

The difference is; I WOULD question myself but those who use this tactic would NEVER question themselves.

[CZBZ]

Dear LDW,

This is a direct link to your excerpted quote and mine below.

The question of 'free will' comes to mind when thinking about Inner-Directedness (and the documentary you mentioned). How 'free' or 'inner-directed' are we really???? Perhaps being 'aware' that our morals, values, etc. are and will be targeted is enough to give us long enough pause to question our behavior? I have noticed an increase in persuasive advertising about making our OWN choice as individuals which also appeals to 'creeping narcissism' in our culture. Thinking of the individual and not the 'whole'.

Becoming psychologically wise about how we are being manipulated might be our best recourse. Ignorance is not bliss. It's expensive.

"...those who manipulate individuals and groups - are VERY strongly inner-directed! However, the strong personal values of an abuser are predatory." ~Stormchild

And they are banking on our psychological naivete to grant them power and control. One of the problems with cults is that the 'members' assume the leader has the same motivations as themselves. They aren't looking for a predator because they are not predators themselves. Predatory personalities know very well how to 'twist' people's emotions  and use their values against them. It's spiritually devastating when the 'essence of self' is reduced to a financial target (or power or control or whatever the Leader wants).


Hugs,
CZ

[LDW]

Hi CZ,

thanks for linking the quote from gale warnings, should have done that!

As for the last paragraph of your comment; replace 'cult leader' by 'narcissist' and you have the relationship dynamics with the ex-N.. like phoenixxx suggested.

I would have preferred not having to know all this but then again, it's made me wiser and better prepared for the rest of my future.

Thanks for all the information on this website, it's a great and helpful source.

Liselotte

[CZBZ]

Thank you for offering commentary! One of the books that might appeal to people because it makes connections between abusive relationships and cults is no longer in print. You can still purchased used copies from amazon.com or find it in a library:

Captive hearts, captive minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships
by Tobias, Lalich and Landgone.

An excerpt from a book review:

"In "Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships" ($19.50 in paperback from Bay Tree Publishing), Lalich and co-author Madeleine Tobias, a Vermont psychotherapist, make clear that modern day cults have not disappeared. "If there is less street recruiting today, it is because many cults now use professional associations, campus organizations, self-help seminars, and the Internet as recruitment tools" to entice the unwary.

Who gets sucked into a cult? "Although the public tends to think, wrongly, that only those who are stupid, weird, crazy and aimless get involved in cults, this is simply untrue. ... We know that many cult members went to the best schools in the country, have advanced academic or professional degrees and had successful careers and lives prior to their involvement in a cult or cultic abusive relationship. But at a vulnerable moment, and we all have plenty of those in our lives (a lost love, a lost job, rejection, a death in the family and so on), a person can fall under the influence of someone who appears to offer answers or a sense of direction."

For the authors, "a group or relationship earns the label 'cult' on the basis of its methods and behaviors -- not on the basis of its beliefs. Often those of us who criticize cults are accused of wanting to deny people their freedoms, religious or otherwise. But what we critique and oppose is precisely the repression and stripping away of individual freedoms that tends to occur in cults. It is not beliefs that we oppose, but the exploitative manipulation of people's faith, commitment, and trust."

Written for those coming out of cults, as well as for family members and professionals, "Take Back Your Life" deals with common characteristics of myriad cult types: Eastern, religious and New Age cults; political, racist and terrorist cults; psychotherapy, human potential, mass transformational cults; commercial, multi-marking cults; occult, satanic or black-magic cults; one-on-one family cults; and cults of personality. Chapters deal with the cult experience, the process of healing, stories of families and children in cults and therapeutic issues.

The book features riveting personal accounts from ex-cult members and offers a wide range of resources for the person who is trying to retrieve his or her "pre-cult" personality. Education looms large, for that can begin to break down the narrow black-and-white thinking cult members often display. Many cults redefine common terms or introduce special vocabulary making it difficult for members to make sense of the world outside of even their own inner aspirations.

The authors are also concerned about those in the education and helping professions who don't see the dangers posed by cults both to the individual and the larger community. Part of the purpose of the book is to make a credible case that any course of therapy needs to take into account a patient's cult associations.

"Take Back Your Life" is a book of hope, an excellent starting point for those thinking of exiting a cult and for those who are taking back their lives, one day at a time."





Hugs,
CZ