http://www.anti-fascism.org/cult1-2.html
Repairing the Soul After a Cult Experience
By Janja Lalich
I was recruited into a cult in 1975 when I was 30 years old. The previous
year I returned to the United States after having spent almost four years in
exile abroad, where I lived the most serene life on an island in the
Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. If someone had told me that within a
year I would be deeply involved and committed to a cult, I would have
laughed derisively. Not me! I was too independent, too headstrong, a lover
of fun and freedom.
I was told that we would be unlike all other groups on the Left because we
were led by women and because our leader was brilliant and from the working
class. I was told that we would not follow the political line of any other
country, but that we would create our own brand of Marxism, our own
proletarian feminist revolution; we would not be rigid, dogmatic, sexist,
racist. We were new and different - an elite force. We were going to make
the world a better place for all people.
The reality, of course, was that our practical work had little if anything
to do with working-class ideals or goals. Our leader was an incorrigible,
uncontrollable megalomaniac; she was alcoholic, arbitrary, and almost always
angry. Our organization, with the word democratic prominent in its name, was
ultra-authoritarian, completely top down, with no real input or criticism
sought or listened to. Our lives were made up of 18-hour days of busywork
and denunciation sessions. Our world was harsh, barren, and unrewarding. We
were committed and idealistic dreamers who were tricked into believing that
such demanding conditions were necessary to transform ourselves into cadre
fighters.
We were instructed that we were the "uninstructed" and that we
must take all guidance from our leader who knew all. We were never to
question any orders or in any way contradict or confront our leader. We were
taught to dread and fear the outside world which, we were told, would shun
and punish us. In fact, the shunning and punishment was rampant within; but,
blinded by our own belief, commitment, and fatigue, in conjunction with the
group's behavior-control techniques, I and the others succumbed to the
pressures and quickly learned to rationalize away any doubts or apprehensions.
I remained in that group for more than 10 years.
When I got out of the cult in early 1986, I had to begin life anew. I was a
decade behind in everything. Both my parents had died, and I had lost touch
with former friends. I had to play catch up, so to speak, culturally,
socially, economically, emotionally, and intellectually. But most important
of all, I had to repair my soul. Who am I? How could I have committed the
many unkind acts while in the group? Where do I belong now? What do I
believe in now? Will I ever restore my faith in myself and in others? These
are the kinds of questions and dilemmas that troubled me. Over time, and
most recently through my contact and work with former members of many types
of cults, I've come to see that the single most uniform aspect of all cult
experiences is that it touches, and usually damages, the soul, the psyche.
I define a cult as a particular kind of relationship; it can be a group
situation or between two people. Within that relationship there is an
enormous power imbalance, but more than that, there is a hidden agenda.
There is deception, manipulation, exploitation, and almost certainly abuse,
carried out and/or reinforced by the use of social and psychological
influence techniques meant to control behavior and shape attitudes and
thinking patterns. A cult is led by a person (or sometimes two or three) who
demands all veneration, who makes all decisions, and who ultimately controls
most aspects of the personal lives of those who are cleverly persuaded that
they must follow, obey, and stay in the good graces (i.e., the grips) of the
leader.
Cult leaders and cult recruiters capture the hearts, minds, and souls of the
best and brightest in our society. Cults are looking for active, productive,
intelligent, energetic individuals who will perform for the cult by
fund-raising, by recruiting more followers, by operating cult businesses and
leading cult seminars. In the 1960s and 1970s it was perhaps more typical
for cults to recruit primarily young people; this is no longer so. Today,
cults recruit the young and old alike and everyone in between. With anywhere
from three to five thousand cults active in the United States today, it is
quite likely that a cult recruiter has been knocking on your door or that
you have unwittingly answered a cult's advertisement for a course, a
workshop, a lecture, a book or tape, or some other product.
Today's cults are so sophisticated in their recruitment and indoctrination
techniques that their methods go far beyond what anybody imagined in the
1950s when certain scholars and researchers were studying and writing about
thought-reform programs and systematic behavior-control processes. Cults
today have perfected their approaches and refined their manipulations. They
had to - after all, recruiting and retaining bright people isn't easy. And
this is again where the soul comes in.
Cults appeal to that part of ourselves that wants something better; a better
world for others or a better self. These are the genuine, heartfelt desires
of decent, honest human beings. Cult recruiters are trained in how to play
on those desires, how to make it look as though what the cult has to offer
is exactly what you're interested in. Cults can be formed around almost any
topic, but there are nine broad categories: religious, Eastern-based, New
Age, business, political, psychotherapy/ human potential, occult,
one-on-one, and miscellaneous (such as lifestyle or personality cults).
All cults, no matter their stripe, are a variation on a theme, for their
common denominator is the use of coercive persuasion and behavior control
without the knowledge of the person who is being manipulated. They manage
this by targeting (and eventually attacking, dissembling, and reformulating
according to the cult's desired image) a person's innermost self. They take
away you and give you back a cult personality, a pseudo personality. They
punish you when the old you turns up, and they reward the new you. Before
you know it, you don't know who you are or how you got there; you only know
(or you are trained to believe) that you have to stay there. In a cult there
is only one way - cults are totalitarian, a yellow brick road to serve the
leader's whims and desires, be they power, sex, or money.
When I was in my cult, I so desperately wanted to believe that I had finally
found the answer. Life in our society today can be difficult, confusing,
daunting, disheartening, alarming, and frightening. Someone with a glib
tongue and good line can sometimes appear to offer you a solution. In my
case, I was drawn in by the proposed political solution - to bring about
social change. For someone else, the focus may be on health, diet,
psychological awareness, the environment, the stars, a spirit being, or even
becoming a more successful business person.
The crux is that cult leaders are adept at convincing us that what they have
to offer is special, real, unique, and forever - and that we wouldn't be
able to survive apart from the cult. A person's sense of belief is so dear,
so deep, and so powerful; ultimately it is that belief that helps bind the
person to the cult. It is the glue used by the cult to make the mind
manipulations stick. It is our very core, our very belief in our self and
our commitment, it is our very faith in humankind and the world that is
exploited and abused and
turned against us by the cults.
When a person finally breaks from a cultic relationship, it is the soul,
then, that is most in need of repair. When you discover one day that your
guru is a fraud, that the "miracles" are no more than magic tricks, that the
group's victories and accomplishments are fabrications of an internal
public-relations system, that your holy teacher is breaking his avowed
celibacy with every young disciple, that the group's connections to people
of import are nonexistent - when awarenesses such as these come upon you,
you are faced with what many have called a "spiritual rape." Whether your
cultic experience was religious or secular, the realization of such enormous
loss and betrayal tends to cause considerable pain. As a result, afterwards,
many people are prone to reject all forms of belief. In some cases, it may
take years to overcome the disillusionment, and learn not only to have trust
in your inner self but also to believe in something again.
There is also a related difficulty: that persistent nagging feeling that you
have made a mistake in leaving the group - perhaps the teachings are true
and the leader is right; perhaps it is you who failed. Because cults are so
clever at manipulating certain emotions and events - in particular, wonder,
awe, transcendence, and mystery (this is sometimes called "mystical
manipulation") - and because of the human desire to believe, a former cult
member may grasp at some way to go on believing even after leaving the
group. For this reason, many people today go from one cult to another, or go
in and out of the same cultic group or relationship (known as "cult
hopping"). Since every person needs something to believe in - a philosophy
of life, a way of being, an organized religion, a political commitment, or a
combination thereof - sorting out these matters of belief tends to be a
major area of adjustment after a cultic experience.
Since a cult involvement is often an ill-fated attempt to live out some form
of personal belief, the process of figuring out what to believe in once
you've left the cult may be facilitated by dissecting the cult's ideological
system. Do an evaluation of the groupÕs philosophy, attitudes, and
worldview; define it for yourself in your own language, not the language of
the cult. Then see how this holds up against the cult's actual daily
practice or what you now know about the group.
For some, it might be useful to go back and research the spiritual or
philosophical system that you were raised in or believed in prior to the
cult involvement. Through this process you will be better able to assess
what is real and what is not, what is useful and what is not, what is
distortion and what is not. By having a basis for comparison, you will be
able to question and explore areas of knowledge or belief that were no doubt
systematically closed to you while in
the cult.
Most people who come out of a cultic experience shy away from organized
religion or any kind of organized group for some time. I generally encourage
people to take their time before choosing another religious affiliation or
group involvement. As with any intimate relationship, trust is reciprocal
and must be earned.
After a cult experience, when you wake up to face the deepest emptiness, the
darkest hole, the sharpest scream of inner terror at the deception and
betrayal you feel, I can only offer hope by saying that in confronting the
loss, you will find the real you. And when your soul is healed, refreshed,
and free of the nightmare bondage of cult lies and manipulations, the real
you will find a new path, a valid path-a path to freedom and wholeness.
- - - - - - - - - -
Janja Lalich is a cult information specialist and consultant in Alameda,
Calif. She is co-author with Margaret Singer of Cults in Our Midst: The
Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives (Jossey-Bass, 1995). She is coordinator
and co-facilitator of a San Francisco Bay Area support group for former cult
members. Janja may be reached by e-mail by writing to janja@crl.com, or by
phone at (510) 522-1556. More information on cults is available on the
Worldwide Web in the ex-cult archives.
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Checklist of Cult Characteristics
The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display
excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
The group is preoccupied with making money.
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues,
denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress
doubts about the group and its leader(s).
The leadership dictates -- sometimes in great detail -- how members should
think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders
to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of
clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its
leader(s) and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or
an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).
The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict
with the wider society.
The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for
example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of
mainstream denominations).
The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means
that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for
example: collecting money for bogus charities).
The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.
Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family,
friends, and personal group goals and activities that were of interest
before joining the group.
Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.
Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other
group members.
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From Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and
Abusive Relationships by Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich, 1994.
Reprinted with permission of Hunter House Inc., Publishers.
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