Cults, groups, indoctrination, exiting
Post by Kaytrin
During life we go through periods of being a part of some grouping, in a family, at work, in the neighbourhood. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not! But we gain knowledge about ourselves and others, and have a tendency to seek situations which offer us something meaningful. Perhaps that is a role we can play, or a general feeling of being accepted.
Without that, we can feel alone in the world, and some groups take advantage of that. They may home in on people, offering what they want to hear, that they will be liked or taken care of, that the group provides answers of a philosophical or religious nature. We won’t be just zizzing around without a clue or a base, because there’ll be someone to act as friend or family.
This can work to mutual advantage. I recently ordered a book written by someone who spent 20 years living in different communal settings, and await that with interest. However, books and advisory centres range in their attitude about particular groups, or on the phenomenon of cults as a general principle and how harmful they are likely to be.
I think it’s good to have an enquiring approach, but recently I came across a book in an Oxfam shop where the author had joined some groups or cults that he found strange, amusing, stupid, awful. He seemingly implied that neither he nor anyone else actually got hurt in the process. How can he know that? That is an interesting phenomenon in itself. It would be interesting to undertake research into how groups such as juries come to a consensus opinion - or not.
If we are on our own in the world, to some extent we can make up our own minds and not get swayed into something different by another person, or in a group setting of a natural or contrived kind. Once we are involved with other people, there has to be some give-and-take or negotiation, and there are likely to be subtle changes that can be built on or further altered, becoming quite profound. Some businesses work on this in terms of team-work, company ethos and so on. It always used to be like that up to a point, but I can’t help thinking it has become more deliberate and invasive. One may find oneself not fitting in – and not being able to do much about it!
Bullying in the workplace (and elsewhere besides) has become an issue to the extent that both the Samaritans and Joseph Rowntree Foundation have prepared information on it. Without harping on about ‘the old days’, perhaps we had more respect for each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and the boundaries surrounding another person’s job, and personal or working space. Perhaps the decrease in physical area around someone’s workstation plays a part in how things have changed. In many places there isn’t even a personal desk with a little drawer one can lock or that no-one would think of going through!
A couple of other observations and I will aim to wrap this up. Firstly, if you’re in a supermarket and there are say 20 other shoppers and trolleys, maybe you don’t cross paths too closely too often. Increase the number to 40 and maybe it’s a bit harder. Increase it to 60 and the shopping process doesn’t work so well. Walk around a small town during a weekday and you might not meet many people. You may recognise some faces and even greet a few. Walk around a large town or city when people are heading to work or leaving, or racing around in their lunch break, and people are much less likely to stand back and smile. It becomes a survival situation – they need their job or to catch a train, and pit their survival against anyone else’s.
So we tend to think we’d rather be in a group than on our own, in this maelstrom of humanity, because there’s safety in numbers plus we’d like some personal recognition. Personal recognition can indeed still come with a job situation, but perhaps less than years ago, and less when job security is so decreased. Perhaps this is why workplace bullying increases, but it seems to have spread wider through society and neighbourhoods. It’s not as cosy and supportive as ‘Coronation Street’, although there’s plenty of that around.
I caught a comment by a psychiatrist on a radio show some years ago. He was of the opinion that his work would be reduced by 80 per cent, if people had another person they could confide in. The fact that Samaritans and other organisations have helped so many people through difficult times in their lives seems to bear this out. Sometimes people ‘go it alone’ either because they need to or have to, but at other times they need contact. They may seek it in a close personal relationship or in more of a group setting.
One of the things about groups is that we like to identify with certain things about them, or some of the people in them, at the same time as needing to retain some of our individuality. Unless that can be negotiated there can be difficulties.
In a cult-type setting, people may find their days mapped out and may be told what to believe, how to behave with their partner – even if that is allowed, children may be cared for by others, and contact with the outside world is restricted. If someone tries to buck the system and do their own thing, pressures are brought to bear on them to conform. If they want to leave, some cults will allow this and some don’t. However one of the main problems is that, living in a situation which is isolating in some way, members may not see the invisible walls around them, and that they even could still access the outside world.
This is why it is important, if you can, to maintain some form of contact with someone you know who has joined a group or cult, so that a part of their reality is that there is someone who knows them and will talk to them. And if the person manages to leave, depending on how they have been affected, it can take several years for their thinking to gradually get back onto other tracks. That process may never completely ‘undo’ all the changes, so one does need to be realistic and do what one can.
Sometimes people have attempted to 'rescue' someone from a cult and forcibly change their attitude and beliefs back. This was called deprogramming and it fell into disrepute, sometimes involving legal battles for kidnap. The term now used is exiting a cult with perhaps the facility of some exit counselling. As is often the way of things though, this has also been called into disrepute by those who say it's just a euphemism for the deprogramming of the past that could be quite a violent process.
Find out what form the exit counselling will take and see what options there may be. It is tempting sometimes to want to extract someone from a group which seems harmful, but it may not be possible or advisable.
Something you could perhaps explore is the concept of what is termed intervention, and this approach sometimes gets used with an addiction or other problem. Family or friends arrange to meet in a neutral setting like a hotel room, and invite the individual to join them, along with a professional who takes control of the interaction. The dynamic seems to be that the individual with the problem is faced with an irrevocable choice: to give up their problematic behaviour, or never to see their family and friends again.
It can be highly emotional, but the tug of family and friends and their promise of continuing support can just swing the balance.
Intervention can also be taken more generally to describe anything which breaks, or might break, into a cycle, pattern, or mode of thought or behaviour. It may be a matter of waiting until the person starts to question for themselves.
Certainly battering your own reality up against theirs is unlikely to be productive, and they have rights about leading their lives as they feel they want. The problems are more that we have known the person when they were very different, or we believe what has happened to them is wrong. 'Someone else' has entered the scene and had a devastating effect so the individual does not seem in control - and may in fact not be in control because 'someone else' or some other 'reality of belief' is.
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Dissociation/ DID; Memes; Garden analogy
Post by Kaytrin
I wanted to add a few ideas in here because they seem relevant. Norman mentioned a book by Adam Crabtree entitled 'Multiple Man' which I won't go into in detail here but the full title is 'Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality'. It was published in paperback in 1988 by Grafton Books but you may be able to pick up a copy.
Whether one feels there is any validity to the concept of possession, or of multiple personality (which now gets called DID indicating dissociation) the author makes an interesting point about his experiences taking groups through a technique called Psychodrama where people act out different roles in a scene. He found that, not only did people with little acting ability or inclination often do well at it, but they managed with little information on the personality and role they were asked to play.
He says (p.337) 'There seems to be within people a natural ability to take on a personality other than their own and to act from within that assumed personality. They appear to actually become that personality and to some extent, leave their own personality behind. The English word which most closely expresses this phenomenon is 'personation'. My experience with psychodrama shows me that human beings may be said to have the innate capacity to 'personate', to take on full-blown personalities and act from within them.'
He goes on to describe personality as a tool (p.339) concluding 'I think there is reason to believe that the whole of man's emotional life is centred around the invention and utilization of those tools that we call 'personalities'.'
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Psychosynthesis and various broadly similar approaches use working with parts of the personality, or subpersonalities, perhaps giving each one a name and looking at how useful or otherwise they are for our overall functioning.
Another theme which could have relevance is the concept of the 'shadow', or darker side of ourselves which we may be disinclined to acknowledge - but which others can sometimes see perhaps because of their own acknowledged or unacknowledged parts. It's a strange old world and that includes humans!
I think it's fair to say though that most of us, much of the time, have some idea what happened in our lives this week, last week, this year, last year, going further back with some chain of connection. For people who tend to dissociate to a significant degree as part of their psychological make-up, it doesn't happen that way, and they may literally be unaware of things which happened while they were in quite a different state of mind.
I've known people who are naturally like that anyway, but it can happen too if they have been through bad experiences that they need to keep mostly shut away, or if someone encouraged or forced them to be like that. It can make it hard to plan things properly if they can't remember a bad outcome to something and take steps to avoid it again. And it can be hard for those around them if they don't know enough of the circumstances to understand.
It would be inappropriate of me not to say that I have doubts about some of the therapeutic approaches used with people who have been severely traumatised. No-one can know all the answers for each situation, and care needs to be taken so that a process which is aimed at helping someone does not cause unnecessary problems - for them, for you, for others close to the situation. If we take on board Adam Crabtree's work mentioned above on Psychodrama, and work undertaken on 'confabulation' we need to be careful that expectations or some other factors don't come into play as being factual, which doesn't mean people are deliberate liars either!
Often we can only get nearer to the truth without having a bias, and it does damage to vulnerable people to impose a bias on them in any direction, and whether it is subconsciously passing from us to them, or is somehow more tangible.
On a similar theme is 'A garden analogy of personality' (now pasted in at the end of this piece) which could have relevance for the way ordinary people we know can change, or appear to change. Certainly I have known people who became quite different over the years, as if some parts or modes fell away for a time and others came to the fore. Perhaps that is due to specific events or circumstances, perhaps due to chemical changes in the brain, or perhaps we do indeed use personality modes as vital 'tools' to get us through.
I won't list any other particular books but you can search on Amazon, Google etc. and find something which suits the kind of questions you may have.
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Included below with permission -
'A garden analogy of personality'
It seems to me that higher cult members regard the cult as their territory, and each cult member as a small garden for them to manipulate or harvest in some way according to some overall plan. Picture a garden with some indigenous plants, personae, of one person. Decide which ones you want to nurture, cut back, dig up, and which ones you actually want to implant. You have an overall garden plan, which needs to be adaptable to how plants develop, and outside circumstances such as the weather, the neighbouring gardens and their influence. In any garden, some plants tend to grow and obscure or kill other plants. You work with what you have according to what you want to achieve. It becomes ‘yours’.
One could also use an analogy of a house. It was built in a certain way, different inhabitants altering it, with the concept that they own it and it is an extension of themselves with some character of its own. The colours and shapes and utilities in the rooms are set to complement the owner and purpose of the room, and how the owner wants to present to themselves, and to others who may visit.
Another useful concept is that of the family or tribe or nation. Fred West said that he owned his children so he could do what he wanted with them. Many cultures have a strong sense of extended family and behave in an adaptive and congenial way towards each other’s needs. I believe in Ireland the culture exists that one not only belongs to a family but is owned by it. Nations have certain national identities and traits which may come into conflict with other nations for any real or inferred reason. The English system of manors and farm-workers meant that during the First World War, the lord of the manor could feel he had the right to enlist the men ‘under him’ to war because they were his to command. The concept of the feudal system is also relevant here.
According to theories of Jung, psychosynthesis, parts therapy and others, we all have several personae or alters, partly influenced by the social or other circumstances at the time, how we feel, or which someone else can evoke in us. Cults build on all these to suit their own purposes, also using psycho-analytic theory, not to help people, but to control them, and behavioural techniques such as positive and negative reinforcement.
To return to the garden concept, imagine it has a wall around it with a gate, although probably places where someone can enter the garden and have their way with it. This is how most of us are, with a general concept of personal boundaries and free will where possible. Cults have a very different notion, that the person belongs more to them than to themselves as individuals, and that members must follow the cult’s will both overall, and of the specific moment. One could also use the analogy of communist culture where the individual is said to exist for the purpose of the state, rather than the state being there to assist them.
Being in contact with a cult member can be like any other interaction up to a point. One forms a relationship with a particular part or parts of the personality, and regards them as being the main ‘owners’ there. When other parts surface with different ways and needs, we do what we can with those too, but obviously there can be conflicts where it is hard to know what is appropriate overall. Cults induce and encourage conflicts to suit their purposes.
So the garden gets modified, certain personae come and go or remain dormant, some are cut back perhaps to allow others to grow or spread, or because there is too much of them to suit the purpose. Some plants will seed themselves naturally, and some will be deliberately planted. Some get weeded out although may re-seed themselves somewhere. Some personae may be grafted onto others. Some get totally extinguished. If the cult decide to extinguish the main persona or personae, eventually there is nothing substantial left of the original person, i.e. it is totally theirs, the cult’s.
I think the cult get into difficulties when links are forged with people who are not cult-oriented, such as in therapy or a friendship or partnership. The cult does all it can to break that link, and it may be that they cannot use the ‘garden’ as their own and actually harvest it, or whatever it is that they do.
Other, better theories about DID, MPD?
by Harlan
Reading your site, and with some interest in all this, I wonder whether there are other factors or explanations not necessarily exclusive to some of the views or theories, but could they complement them somehow if we let them?
In some quarters, Freudian theories have been completely thrown out or drastically questioned. Some detractors claim that nothing from anyone with a psychoanalytic approach has validity. The inference can get drawn by writers - or readers - that what people feel happened to them regarding abuse is simply the mind telling them what to think.
It does seem likely that some approaches to therapy can encourage this tendency without perhaps intending to, but I will not get into those aspects just now.
Richard Webster makes some interesting points on his website. I also read around the subject of 'anti-therapy' and so on, and admit to a sneaky feeling that some therapy spiel plays into a need that people feel for something to 'make sense' in their hour of need. I do believe we can work on a societal approach that marginalises less people, a type of society that does not make people think themselves inadequate because of what is put forward that suggests they are.
Moving on ...
Looking for something specific about MPD or DID, I came across mention of a book by Ralph Allison and his model for dissociation of different parts of the personality occurring more in some people or circumstances than the rest of the population. An expensive book but there's always background information on Google etc. so one doesn't have to purchase everything!
That led to the subject of memes and schemas, which I do not know a great deal about, only what I've read previously and now. One can search around the concepts and the term 'SocioPsychology' would clue the search engine in also. I wish I had the time to look into this more.
It all seems to take in concepts relating to social environment and even genes, along with ideas/memes having a life of their own, with a basic need to survive and propagate themselves independently of their human hosts - us or our brains.
There is a concept of 'selfplexes', a hypothetical grid of the various ways people can behave. Theoretically one could place a person's behaviour or tendencies into an area or areas, a bit like repertory grid theory for plotting attitudes or behaviour.
Although that may seem in direct contrast to some ideas about MPD or DID, and some people might take it that way, it could tie in. Someone on here mentioned Psychodrama with people showing a natural capacity to draw more things out of a scene or situation than they actually know of. There was a mention on here about people using personality or subpersonalities as tools in different situations. That would tie in with some ideas and research in Social Psychology.
I can't help feeling it could/ would/ should tie in somehow with ideas about mythology, fairy tales or nursery rhymes having an unseen but significant influence on people's lives, like the heading for your Blog maybe?
Thanks for the opportunity. I hope someone makes sense out of this and can take it further. All I'd like to add is I don't think 'truth' or the search for it, should be a money-making venture or an attempt to put-one-over on anyone else.
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