Feb
05
2013
Cults…I talk a lot about the Yearning for Zion Ranch (YFZ Ranch) and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), but what are some of the characteristics of a cult?
Keeping it simple, it’s an organization of narcissistically driven (usually) men who use a variety of methods to manipulate and exploit vulnerable people.
Here are the essential characteristics of a cult:
- mind control…use of bizarre religious or secular ideas to enforce the obedience of followers
- emotional disclosure…participants are encouraged to disclose private, emotionally important information…while the leaders do not share emotional information with the larger group
- recruitment…participants are encouraged/expected to go out and recruit others to join the cult organization using deceptive and manipulative tactics
- restriction from all outside ideas and influences ( no radio, television, computer/internet, newspapers)
- claims that the outside world is evil and will lead to the death or damnation of anyone who betrays the cult
- participants are manipulated to believe that they can not survive without all the cult offers them
- participants may also be physically and sexually abused, in addition to the pervasive emotional abuse
- intimidation by threatening to harm others or animals, especially pets, like a pet white rat, a rabbit, puppy or kitten
- leaders are a few men who directly benefit from the cult by abuse, manipulation, threat of harm, sexual control of women and intricate financial arrangements
- methods during the activities include various rituals, guided imagery, psychodrama, native american spirituality, sweat lodges, and over-simplified and out of context psychological ideas
- key to all these experiences is the claim they can “change your life”
- marketing literature will often claim the programs are based on science, but they don’t mean research. These claims are often followed by non researched based psychological ideas, such as those of Carl Jung (the shadow and persona in personality archetypes)
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Nov
28
2011
One only needs to examine the work of Freud to see the origins of the recovered memory debate.
In 1896, Freud wrote of a pattern of sexual abuse of women in eighteen consecutive cases.
Robert Dewey quotes Freud in his “Introduction to Psychology”:
“The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious memory is a precocious [unusually early] experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals,
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Nov
20
2011
How do you spell relief? D-I-S-C-L-O-S-U-R-E
Therapists and clients alike understand the relief provided by the disclosure of sad, angry, fearful memories. Therapy is a place where people should feel safe enough to disclose anything they choose, significant or insignificant.
In dysfunctional families or organizations, people are often exposed to behavior which shocks
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Nov
19
2011
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for triggering the “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction in human beings.
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Nov
14
2011
People in power routinely stay in power through intimidation, bribery, threats, and other malignant methods.
In one of the most alarming pieces of evidence in the allegations of sexual abuse against Jerry Sandusky, we are learning a boy stepped forward, Victim 6, and accused Sandusky of taking a shower with him nude with another boy.
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Nov
13
2011
Examining the religious right wing activism defending catholic clergy sex abusers and the response of the church, it’s pretty easy to understand why Joe Paterno didn’t do anything to protect the children being raped by Jerry Sandusky.
He’s Joe Paterno and probably feels entitled to do whatever he wants, just like Bill Donohue, Bishop Finn of Kansas City, the catholic pope, and the entire catholic church hierarchy.
Bill Donohue, Executive Director of Catholic League Center for Religious and Civil Rights,
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Apr
20
2011
A key question in the recovered memory debate is whether it’s possible for someone to forget traumatic abuse and then remember it later, sometimes decades later.
If you want to move ahead and study some of the research validating this forgetting and remembering process, go to the following websites:
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Apr
16
2011
If you were raised a Catholic in the 50’s and 60’s as I was, you will also be shocked to find out the Catholic clergy have been sexually abusing children, adolescents and adults since the early days of the church.
The notion that sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is a modern phenomenon is the public relations and legal strategy used today to explain and defend against responsibility for this betrayal of children and families.
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Jan
20
2011
The numbers of children abused in America each year are staggering.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services estimates 879,000 children were victims of child maltreatment in 2000. Of this total, 63% of the children were neglected, 19% were physically abused, 10% were sexually abused and 8% were psychologically abused.
I think we all have to agree it’s easier to ignore or deny the estimate that 87,900 children may be sexually abused in our country each year.
How do we wrap our minds around these very high numbers of children abused and neglected?
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Jan
20
2011
One only needs to examine the work of Freud to see the origins of the recovered memory debate.In 1896, Freud wrote of a pattern of sexual abuse of women in eighteen consecutive cases.
Robert Dewey quotes Freud in his “Introduction to Psychology”:
“The event of which the subject has retained an unconscious memory is a precocious [unusually early] experience of sexual relations with actual excitement of the genitals,
Continue Reading »