-Caveat Lector-
Below please find information on traumatic abuse in cults.
Sincerely, Neil Brick
PS Here's a quote from below: 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).
I have also heard it said that silence is perpetrator's best friend. IMO, it
takes courage to speak up intelligently, but it is worth it.
Excerpts from: http://www.cyberpass.net/truth/essay.htm
Traumatic Abuse in Cults: An Exploration of an Unfamiliar Social Problem
by Daniel Shaw, C.S.W.
...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 ....I realized that because I had
accepted the leader's claims to perfection and enlightenment, I had been
unable to recognize abuses ...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 :
...further social work knowledge and understanding of the traumatic impact of
religious cults; explore the commonalities between victims of cult abuse and
other forms of abuse, such as rape, incest, and battering; 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 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).... 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,
exhibits great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or
thing,
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), systematically induces states of
psychological dependency in members,
exploits members to advance the leadership's goals, and 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.
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.
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:
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); 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; management of post-traumatic stress
symptoms, particularly "floating," a dissociative state experienced in
connection with damage from excessive meditation, chanting, mantra
repetition, etc.; grief work in relation to loss and betrayal; issues
related to sexual abuse which may have taken place in the cult; health
issues and medical care, including diet, which has often been
protein-deficient; aid in restoring financial stability and planning for the
future, including vocational or educational planning; issues related to
sexuality;
restoring trust in relationships and managing intimacy, in the context of
friends and family; restoring self-esteem; 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:
create a coherent narrative, linked with feeling, from the memory of the
trauma;and
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.
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