Cults Inside Out: How People Get in and Can Get Out

by Rick Alan Ross

  Tamm describes the mind-set many cult members have when considering another life in the outside world. “It’s hard to leave and finally admit that what you put your whole life into is something that isn’t really true,” she said.1202 Groenveld says that shame may follow such a realization about “what you were” and a terrible feeling that “you are all alone.” This is coupled with a painful realization that the “love and acceptance” once experienced within the group “was conditional” and dependent on “remaining a member of good standing.” Groenveld even wondered if she might be “better off” back in the group. She also experienced a longing “for the security…in the organization” despite the knowledge that she could never “go back.”

  Conway and Siegelman found that deprogramming was beneficial to cult members. About 73 percent of the former cult members they surveyed had been deprogrammed, half on a voluntary basis and the other half on an involuntary basis through an intervention. “As a group, they reported a third less, and in many cases only half as many, post-cult effects than those who weren’t deprogrammed,” the authors said.1203 There was also a significant difference in recovery time for those who had been deprogrammed. “Average rehabilitation time was one-third longer—more than a year and half—for those who weren’t deprogrammed compared to just over a year for those who were. Overall, deprogrammees reported a third fewer months of depression, forty percent less disorientation [and] half as many sleepless nights.”1204

  When commenting about former cult members who hadn’t gone through a formal intervention, Singer said, “It has become apparent that participation in an exit-counseling session is far better than ordinary psychiatric or psychological treatment…for helping those who have already left but are having trouble understanding and handling what went on during their cult days and the types of problems they are experiencing in the aftermath of their cult involvement.”1205

  Singer cites two reasons why the educational process of a cult intervention is preferable to psychiatric or psychological treatment. “First, former cult members need information and explanations about what produced changes in them while they were in the cult,” she said. Singer’s second reason cited is that “ordinary psychiatric and psychological counseling focuses almost exclusively on early life experiences and childhood history and the impact of these early years.” Singer calls this “a blind spot.” Instead the psychologist states that the focus must be “on adult experiences of intense social influence and group situations.”1206

  The cult “deprogramming,” process has often helped cult members sort through their experience and formed the foundation for their recovery. Singer notes, “I have noticed that those who have deprogrammed or counseled out make the easiest, best, and quickest returns to normal life.”1207

  Mann also sees the second necessary step for former cult members after addressing possible health concerns is “an educational process in critical thinking.” She explains, “Critical thinking is not mere recitation of criticism of the group, but is a process by which former members learn the basis of rational thought, skepticism, deductive and inductive reasoning, and recognizing logical fallacies to premises of indoctrination practices.” Mann clarifies, “This needs to be education, not therapy,” and it “is an important preliminary step that should occur before any counseling is considered.”1208

  Wellspring Retreat is a licensed mental health facility in Ohio. Founded in 1986, the short-term residential retreat features a program focused on the recovery of former cult members. Founder and psychologist Dr. Paul Martin explains, “The program is intensive, but also specialized. Much of the early segment of the treatment program is geared to increasing ex-members’ understanding about the dynamics of thought reform and helping them explore how their group practiced thought reform and how the thought reform program affected their personality and their relationship to the world outside the cult.”1209 Martin adds, “Wellspring’s approach to treating the dissociation begins therapy by reconstructing the client’s experiences in terms of a systems model of thought reform. Typically, clients’ awareness of what happened to them is restricted because they lack a conceptual framework that can adequately attach meaning to their experiences.”1210

  Some cult members leave one group only to join another similar group. Many former cult members never effectively sort through what went wrong, what caused them to leave, and why. Many blame themselves or others outside the group rather than analyze the destructive internal dynamics of their former group or criticize a leader. Singer says some cult members can “debrief themselves of the cult experience through reading, contact with other ex-members, and in some cases therapy dealing with cult-related issues before they come to understand the impact that the cult experience has and on their emotional and daily life.”1211

  Mann notes, “Many former cult members recover by themselves over time.” She adds, “We do know that counseling is not an answer for everything.” It also must be noted that the effectiveness and scientific basis for some forms of counseling has been called into question by the critical analysis provided in books like Science and Psuedoscience in Clinical Psychology.1212 Mann says that there are “varying degrees of harm from any one cult to any one individual.” She warns that failing to recognize such variations and distinctions is a “common mistake.”1213

  Singer categorizes the difficulties that emerge for many former cultists during their postcult adjustment period. Much like Groenveld, Singer focuses on what hurts most when cult members decide to move on. There is guilt, shame, self-blaming, unreasonable fear, and excessive doubt. In some very extreme situations, there is even the possibility of panic attacks. There can be a sense of loneliness after leaving such a tightly knit social environment.1214 Singer says, “Each former member wrestles with a number of the problems…Some need more time than others to resolve all the issues they face, and a few never get their lives going again.”1215

  Groenveld once described her temporary deficiencies and said she found it “difficult to make decisions” and at times thought she had “lost touch with reality.”1216 To move on effectively, Singer says that former cult members must build “a new social network.” In some situations “former cult members often feel like immigrants or refugees entering a foreign culture,” the psychologist says. But Singer adds, “In most cases, however, they are actually reentering their own former culture…Unlike the immigrant confronting novel situations, the person coming out of a cult is confronting the society she or he once rejected.”1217

  Singer warned about what she called “the ‘fishbowl’ effect,”1218 which is the feeling that family and friends are closely watching a former cult member and fearing that almost anything might cause him or her to go back. To avoid that effect, family and friends can be sympathetic and supportive but not hovering and controlling.

  Other issues former cult members may be challenged by include “aversions and hypercritical attitudes” the cult inculcated and nurtured. Also, as a direct result of the pain and sense of betrayal felt over their past commitment, former cult member may develop a “fear of commitment.”1219 But Singer says they must overcome such disillusionment and learn how to trust again.1220 This can be done based on their new knowledge, increased awareness, and ongoing interaction with the world around them.

  According to the AFF/ICSA study, “As ex-cultists come to understand the mechanisms operating in the cultic environment, they become more capable of effectively grieving the loss of friends, time, career pursuits, idealism, and other aspirations that were lost as a result of spending time in and leaving the cult.”1221

  Despite the difficulties and pain Jan Groenveld went through, she said, “Yes it hurts, but the hurts will heal with time, patience and understanding. There is life after the cult.”1222 After twenty-five years of cult life, Jayanti Tamm moved on and made a life of her own. She married, had a daughter, and eventually became an English professor.1223

  Singer concludes, “A free mind is a wonderful thing. Fre
e minds have discovered the advances of medicine, science, and technology; have created great works of art, literature, and music; and have our rules of ethics and the laws of civilized lands.”

  The end of a cult experience can be the beginning of an educational process of discovery about how cultic, coercive persuasion and undue influence take place. This can potentially be both a life-affirming and personally enriching journey. Many former cult members develop deep insights and a keen appreciation of what it means to critically think and function independently. Perhaps more than most people, they have come to fully understand the value of a free mind.

  A sure sign that a former cult member has resolved to move on in his or her recovery process is criticism of his or her former group and a willingness to understand the deceptive and manipulative techniques that led to his or her recruitment and continued cult involvement. Finding critical balance and integration regarding the cultic experience, based on an individual’s personal situation and needs, is the ideal goal for a successful recovery.

  POSTSCRIPT

  It has been decades since the cult phenomenon first impacted public consciousness through the fund-raising and recruitment tactics of the Unification Church (“Moonies”) and International Society of Krishna Consciousness (“Hare Krishnas”). In 1978 Jonestown, the utopian dream turned nightmare, claimed the lives of more than nine hundred people, including hundreds of children. Much has changed since then, and much has remained the same. Incredible changes in technology have provided previously unimaginable access to information about cults, quite literally at the fingertips of people around the world. But the problems destructive cults pose have remained the same.

  The primary issue that continues to concern the public is the harm destructive cults do. Leaders may preach and teach people whatever they wish, but concerns arise when harm is done in the name of those beliefs and teachings. This harm has included such serious consequences as deaths due to medical neglect, orchestrated suicides, murders, subway gassing, suicide bombers and self-immolation.

  In recent years the ubiquitous nature of cults has become evident and more commonplace. The larger organized groups called “cults,” such as Scientology, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church, have continued and become more established, while small groups called “cults” have proliferated across the modern landscape. These smaller groups, often with fewer than one hundred members, operate largely unnoticed until a tragedy occurs and attracts media attention.

  Small cults may operate from a house in a residential neighborhood or from a retreat in a rural area. There are evidently thousands of such groups in the United States alone, and the proliferation of such small cults continues to be a growing global phenomenon. Some governments have taken steps to reign in the excesses of such groups through law enforcement, while others have, to some extent, ignored them. In the United States some religious cults have historically used the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, as a shield to protect them from legal consequences regarding their bad behavior.

  The new interconnectivity and ubiquitous access to information, which the Internet has wrought and the relatively new social media has furthered and allowed us to watch such behavior in virtual real time. This same technology has also allowed law enforcement, child welfare, and health and protection services the ability to monitor the harm cults do much more closely than ever before.

  Destructive cults have also effectively used the World Wide Web and expanding social media and have employed new technologies to their advantage. This has included the use of websites and online videos as promotional, fund-raising, and recruitment tools. This new technology has also facilitated networking between disparate groups—for example, the networking of hate groups in certain countries and increasingly on a global scale.

  Despite the advantages new information technologies provide, the advent of the so-called Information Age has proven to be more of a bane than a blessing for destructive cults. Today people can do a simple search using the Internet and quickly access information about a controversial group, movement, or leader from their home, office, or almost anywhere using a handheld device. This easy access to information afforded through ever-improving technology has made it more difficult for destructive cults to deceive the public or obscure their history. Almost instantly anyone can find historical information about cults through online archived news reports, public records, or complaints about a group or leader by former members or other concerned parties.

  One of the most pivotal features of any destructive cult’s process of coercive persuasion and its ability to maintain undue influences is the control of information. But it has become increasingly difficult for cults to block access to such critical information due to the Internet. As a direct result many organizations called “cults,” such as Scientology, have found it virtually impossible to contain their secrets or deny their recorded history.

  In an effort at damage control, some groups have prohibited members from using the Internet, while others have encouraged the use of limiting software or modified devices. Inevitably information released or made available through the Internet spreads across the World Wide Web and cannot ever be reliably contained again. New information technology has forever changed the ability of cults to effectively conceal or withhold information, and many people have ultimately left cults as a direct result of this reality.

  Nevertheless an unsettling aspect of our modern information age and the advent of social media is the potential for cultlike cocooning, which can take place whenever groups or individuals either intentionally or unintentionally filter their world.

  This cocooning can effectively occur when we choose to access news only through preferred sources that represent a certain point of view. Such cocooning can also be accomplished by selectively communicating with our chosen friends on Facebook and following our favorites on Twitter, who likewise reflect a similar point of view. This effect can be augmented by repeatedly watching narrowly focused YouTube channels, listening to a chosen list of talk radio personalities, and relying on the opinions of bloggers who express the same world view. This can create a kind of bubble or what has been called an “echo chamber” or “alternate universe.”

  This virtual bubble of relative isolation, which only “true believers” inhabit while reinforcing groups and people, can become relatively resistant and rather watertight to any outside frame of reference, alternate ideas, or perspectives, regardless of the facts. This cocooning can promote what can be seen as a kind of cultlike mind-set, which includes an inherent “we vs. them” mentality. This cocooning phenomenon may explain the growing societal polarization that now appears to be intensifying in the United States.

  But cultlike bubbles of isolation using the tools modern information technology and communication has provided is not just an American phenomenon; it can potentially occur anywhere in the world as people increasingly go online and become connected.

  Virtual communities or subcultures can gather and easily flock together through the Internet. In this sense our easy access to information can be used either positively for education and increased awareness or negatively as a means to isolate people and cut them off from reality.

  In an effort to use the Internet for the purpose of education about destructive cults and coercive persuasion, I launched a website archive in 1996. The site was first known as simply RickRoss.com, but as it grew exponentially, it eventually became the Ross I Institute of New Jersey, which was granted tax-exempt, educational nonprofit status. The Ross Institute website continues to evolve as an online database research resource and is now known as the Cult Education Institute, an institutional member of both the American and New Jersey library associations

  It is my hope that more online libraries devoted to the research and study of destructive cults will be made available free to the general public. By having information about cults immediately accessible to anyone throug
h the Internet, deceptive cult-recruitment tactics are directly impacted. People who are able to access this information before cult groups approach them are better informed and prepared to resist their recruitment tactics. Online historical information about specific groups can also provide balance when someone is considering association with a certain group.

  In this sense Internet archives provide the basis for an inoculation against the harm destructive cults do by serving as a public educational resource. This includes both information about cultic coercive persuasion techniques and what might otherwise be the hidden histories of particular groups. Such online educational resources can also serve former cult members by helping them to more easily sort through and understand what happened to them as a result of involvement with a destructive cult.

  Law enforcement and other regulatory authorities around the world have increasingly taken a firmer stance regarding the criminal activities of destructive cults and fanatical fringe groups. Once there seemed to be a certain level of expediency that existed concerning the activities of such groups. But more commonly today, cults that hurt people are being held accountable—for example, the many arrests and prosecutions of parents in faith healing groups in the United States. Previously when children died in such groups due to medical neglect, the authorities often failed to take any meaningful action. The trend today in America is that parents who neglect their children to death will be arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to prison time. Adults within some faith healing groups may believe the rejection of modern medicine is a religious right, but the US courts have ruled that they have no right to impose that belief on children and prevent proper medical care.

  The well-being and proper care of minor children in cults have become a growing focal point of interest and public concern. In the United States adults have the right to be affiliated with any group, including hate groups, extremists, and destructive cults. But that right of association doesn’t include subjecting minor children to abuse. One of the most disturbing realities about destructive cults is that minor children in them are never allowed an alternative choice. Law enforcement, child welfare agencies, and public health and labor authorities must respond quickly to any allegations of abuse to protect the most vulnerable members of destructive cults, the children.