Now this is a big one - and my ideas are still very embryonic. What do we mean by 'self' - than alone is a huge discussion point. Leaving that aside for the moment - how do children raised in cultic groups gain a sense of self. Do they depend on their group for that stable sense of self. I am reading a research paper by Coates (2013) - he is looking at people who convert into cultic groups and then leave. There is very little research on those who are born into these groups and leave later. Coates writes:
"Participants [whom he categorised as social selves] describe high dependancy on others precipitated by childhood environments that were controlling or authoritarian. They describe membership as motivated by a a dependency on 'others' for the construction of a stable sense of self. Other participants who are labeled protected selves, describe histories of struggling with social anxiety and difficulties in forming social connexions and depict childhood environments that were neglectful or even abusive. These participants describe membership as motivated by a desire to 'get fixed' and resolve pre-involvement vulnerabilities pertaining to difficulties forming social relationships and emotionally connecting to others"
Remember his participants were not born into the cultic group but chose to join it later in adulthood. But I wondered if brethren children depend on the cultic environment to their stable sense of self and this makes leaving difficult - because they would lose that. Symbolic interactionists (don't worry about that label!) argue that for us to be fully functioning, the self needs both a sense of personal uniqueness as well as a sense of belonging and social connectedness. The degree to which the self is anchored in either the 'self' or 'others may vary between individuals. There needs to be a balance but maybe in cultic groups that balance is heavily biased towards a sense of self being anchored in others thus becoming dependent on them.
In order to leave the groups, doubts and disillusionment seem important. But they are not enough because leaving means leaving so much - the community of friends, the loss of connectedness that may be giving the person that sense of self. So how do people negotiate that leaving process - given the levels of dissonance they may be experiencing staying is not an option but leaving is also for some not an option. By staying they can avoid an identity crisis. Leaving might be avoided until an alternative solution is found in which the person can anchor their self.
I need to think about all this but your input would be wonderful! When did you start to doubt, start to feel something is not right. What processes did you go through to resolve these doubts did they work for a while and then more doubts came along. How did you manage all of this. Did you rationalise it - deny it, avoid it all, reinterpret what was happening and then perhaps all of that failed too and you felt you and to leave. Did you manage the leaving process by finding some connection to non group people, and become connected to them.
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Sunday, 12 April 2015
Cost Benefit Analysis
I have decided to resurrect this blog - I stopped using it partly because I had become aware that the brethren were watching it. But that's ok - I am happy for them to read it now. But anyone commenting do please note that this blog is public.
I think I have said elsewhere that I am doing a lot of reading at the moment. As I read thoughts come into my head and I long for a discussion but who to talk to. I try on Facebook but those threads are hard to find later as they scroll down the page. Also they are often highjacked which is fine - that is what FB is for.
So I am going to try raising questions here and then alerting people on FB to them.
Costs and benefits. Research seems to show a consensus that religion and good mental health go together. That of course is a loaded question - what is religion and what is good mental health. Both are multidimensional concepts. I am currently reading a paper that asks the question does membership of a cult or high demand group mean that we cannot weigh up the costs and benefits of belonging. They talk about findings that suggest Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses ignore the costs or (mis) perceive the benefits. By ignoring the costs or by misperceiving the benefits they choose to stay - they no longer can weigh the costs and benefits of belonging up. The authors of the paper then talked to both Moonies and JWs and found that actually they did know what the costs were e.g. the Moonie said that if Rev Moon is right then great I am on the floor of the greatest event in history but if he is wrong - so what, i was probably going to spend the rest of my life on the factory floor anyway. This to me is a kind of insurance policy and one that I once used. If God exists then i am on the right road, if he doesn't then what have I lost.
What the Moonies and the JWs did say though was that the benefits offset the costs - warmth, family feeling, busy often exciting life. They were fully aware of the costs but the big benefit of eternal life or whatever was so large that these were offset. In other words, the writer concludes, there was no evidence that the members were ignorant of the costs, or under compulsion and were not bearing them because they were brainwashed
So what is your experience - when you were a member, were you aware of the costs of the high time commitment, the financial commitment, the rules, the loss of family etc and if so did you offset them with the benefits and what were those benefits?
I think I have said elsewhere that I am doing a lot of reading at the moment. As I read thoughts come into my head and I long for a discussion but who to talk to. I try on Facebook but those threads are hard to find later as they scroll down the page. Also they are often highjacked which is fine - that is what FB is for.
So I am going to try raising questions here and then alerting people on FB to them.
Costs and benefits. Research seems to show a consensus that religion and good mental health go together. That of course is a loaded question - what is religion and what is good mental health. Both are multidimensional concepts. I am currently reading a paper that asks the question does membership of a cult or high demand group mean that we cannot weigh up the costs and benefits of belonging. They talk about findings that suggest Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses ignore the costs or (mis) perceive the benefits. By ignoring the costs or by misperceiving the benefits they choose to stay - they no longer can weigh the costs and benefits of belonging up. The authors of the paper then talked to both Moonies and JWs and found that actually they did know what the costs were e.g. the Moonie said that if Rev Moon is right then great I am on the floor of the greatest event in history but if he is wrong - so what, i was probably going to spend the rest of my life on the factory floor anyway. This to me is a kind of insurance policy and one that I once used. If God exists then i am on the right road, if he doesn't then what have I lost.
What the Moonies and the JWs did say though was that the benefits offset the costs - warmth, family feeling, busy often exciting life. They were fully aware of the costs but the big benefit of eternal life or whatever was so large that these were offset. In other words, the writer concludes, there was no evidence that the members were ignorant of the costs, or under compulsion and were not bearing them because they were brainwashed
So what is your experience - when you were a member, were you aware of the costs of the high time commitment, the financial commitment, the rules, the loss of family etc and if so did you offset them with the benefits and what were those benefits?
Monday, 16 June 2014
Ethics
Where do I start with ethics! Sure my research has of course gone through an ethical procedure with Metanoia ethics committee and passed. But this does not really address the whole question of ethics - not for me anyway.
I am asking my participants to tell me their very personal stories, of their experience growing up in the Exclusive Brethren. Then I am taking those stories, transcribing them into written form (thus losing a lot of information) and then analysing them and interpreting the meanings. But it doesn't stop there for I then turn my interpretation of their stories into written (the thesis and published papers) and spoken form (conference presentations). At the end of all this, will they even recognise the stories as theirs. How will they feel when they read my interpretation of what I have heard? Will they feel betrayed, let down by me. Will they feel a sense of intrusion into their private lives. Will the consent they gave me to use their stories, really be informed consent? How could they know what I would do with their tales.
I feel a huge sense of responsibility - what will the repercussions be for my participants on a personal psychological level but also in terms of their relationships with the people they talked about and in terms of any legal activity by the brethren themselves. Which leads me to wonder yet again - why are the brethren so terribly afraid of those of us who write about them. Why should they fear us. They seem to fear us for why else would they spend thousands of pounds on sending lawyer's letters to some of us.
But I was talking about ethics and thinking about the possible consequences of this research on my participants. And who exactly do their stories belong to!
I am asking my participants to tell me their very personal stories, of their experience growing up in the Exclusive Brethren. Then I am taking those stories, transcribing them into written form (thus losing a lot of information) and then analysing them and interpreting the meanings. But it doesn't stop there for I then turn my interpretation of their stories into written (the thesis and published papers) and spoken form (conference presentations). At the end of all this, will they even recognise the stories as theirs. How will they feel when they read my interpretation of what I have heard? Will they feel betrayed, let down by me. Will they feel a sense of intrusion into their private lives. Will the consent they gave me to use their stories, really be informed consent? How could they know what I would do with their tales.
I feel a huge sense of responsibility - what will the repercussions be for my participants on a personal psychological level but also in terms of their relationships with the people they talked about and in terms of any legal activity by the brethren themselves. Which leads me to wonder yet again - why are the brethren so terribly afraid of those of us who write about them. Why should they fear us. They seem to fear us for why else would they spend thousands of pounds on sending lawyer's letters to some of us.
But I was talking about ethics and thinking about the possible consequences of this research on my participants. And who exactly do their stories belong to!
Thursday, 12 June 2014
The dreaded -ologies
I find it strange that I struggle so much to grasp the concepts of ontology and epistemology. Part of this is due to a lack of usage - we learn what words mean by using them. But even when people explain these two words to me I just cannot grasp their meaning. Or can I. With a little help I have put this together for inclusion in the thesis. I hope it works, makes sense and uses those two words correctly. Please note this a draft - it may well change through a number of iterations!
And
we’re the corner-stone of Christianity. We demonstrate it through separation
from the world, and there’s nothing more wonderful, there’s nothing more
beautiful or wonderful or attractive than the truth of separation.
Fellowship Meeting
in Sydney, Bruce Hales. 17 November 2012)
The Hales Exclusive Brethren, like most high
demand groups whether religious or secular, believe that they have The Truth.
This truth is absolute. Doubting or questioning this, considering other
perspectives is frowned on and leads to damnation. There can be no questioning.
A doubt will lead to darkness. If
I have some doubt about where the Lord is in the testimony, some doubt about
the truth of separation, some doubt about the glory of the Lord's Supper and
our assemblings, and our stand by the truth, that doubt could lead to a
darkness, then the darkness overtakes you.
Fellowship Meeting at Barbados. Bruce Hales.
Friday, July 27, 2012
The ontological position of the brethren is
that God exists and God demands separation from evil (as interpreted by them).
This position is based on a fundamental belief in the absolute inerrancy of the
Bible. These ontological and epistemological positions were inculcated into me
during my formative years. It took me many decades to break free from them. My stance
now is that there is no absolute truth, God does not necessarily exist and from
my learning via many sources, modes of thinking and experiencing, ‘He’ certainly does not demand separation from
all non-Brethren - a far cry from what I was taught as a child. I now take a
constructionist-interpretive stance. I am interested in how meaning comes into
existence and believe that experiences are shaped by cultural, historical and
social influences. Retrospective accounts are not absolute facts therefore,
though the individual doing the story telling may see them as real and absolute.
This epistemological stance leads naturally to a qualitative methodology and
combined with the natural tendency for former members to tell stories, also led
me to the narrative approach.
So readers - comments welcome.
Friday, 6 June 2014
The Melbourne experience
I am in Melbourne visiting my daughter. At least twice a week I go in to the office with her and use one of the desks to work. The idea being that doing this will help structure my time and allow me to work on the thesis. It is not so easy to get distracted here by things that 'need to be done'.
However, it is proving difficult.
I have been musing lately on one issue that troubles me. A lot of former members seem to believe that before 1960 everything in the garden was pretty rosy. But this is actually not true and to say such things is to dismiss the experience of those whose childhood was in the 40s and 50s like mine was. Ok so we did not have all the directives - that lost list of rules but actually is it harder or easier to live in a group that has clear explicit rules like that? I suggest it is easier because at least you know what the rules are. When the rules are implicit and often unspoken how does a child know what it is allowed to do or not do - how can it learn to set its own boundaries?
The brethren have been dividing families almost since the groups inception as evidenced by some of the 19th Century writers. So that is not new though it is more frequent and possibly much harsher than back then. Separation has always been a key doctrine and whether or not a child is affected by it during the crucial years of its development depends not just on the brethren era but also on its parents - were they strictly religious or spiritual? If strictly religious this may mean that the child is heavily constrained as to what it can and can't do, think or not think, feel or not feel. I heard only today of another former member of the brethren, who is older than I am, so brought up in the 30s and he told me his mother was strictly religious and he seems to have had similar experiences to me.
I am wondering if I interview someone from that era whether similar themes will emerge in his or her life story. I have already interviewed a man born the same year as I was and his experiences were different in that he was encouraged to think about things as a child. But other things he talked about resonate.
See I said I was musing.... but that is what this space is for. What it is not for is for anyone to take what I write and use it against me. Thoughts are embryonic often and they go through many iterations. What I write today may be different to what I write tomorrow.
However, it is proving difficult.
I have been musing lately on one issue that troubles me. A lot of former members seem to believe that before 1960 everything in the garden was pretty rosy. But this is actually not true and to say such things is to dismiss the experience of those whose childhood was in the 40s and 50s like mine was. Ok so we did not have all the directives - that lost list of rules but actually is it harder or easier to live in a group that has clear explicit rules like that? I suggest it is easier because at least you know what the rules are. When the rules are implicit and often unspoken how does a child know what it is allowed to do or not do - how can it learn to set its own boundaries?
The brethren have been dividing families almost since the groups inception as evidenced by some of the 19th Century writers. So that is not new though it is more frequent and possibly much harsher than back then. Separation has always been a key doctrine and whether or not a child is affected by it during the crucial years of its development depends not just on the brethren era but also on its parents - were they strictly religious or spiritual? If strictly religious this may mean that the child is heavily constrained as to what it can and can't do, think or not think, feel or not feel. I heard only today of another former member of the brethren, who is older than I am, so brought up in the 30s and he told me his mother was strictly religious and he seems to have had similar experiences to me.
I am wondering if I interview someone from that era whether similar themes will emerge in his or her life story. I have already interviewed a man born the same year as I was and his experiences were different in that he was encouraged to think about things as a child. But other things he talked about resonate.
See I said I was musing.... but that is what this space is for. What it is not for is for anyone to take what I write and use it against me. Thoughts are embryonic often and they go through many iterations. What I write today may be different to what I write tomorrow.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
Career Ex-member
I was at the INFORM conference last weekend. One of the more interesting papers was from two researchers who were considering different categories of members of New Religious Movements and former members of same.
One of these categories was 'Career ex-member'. They used a disparaging tone when they talked about this category which made me feel bothered so I spent some time thinking about this.
At the end therefore I spoke. I said:
"I think you would put me in the category of Career Ex-member though it is not so much my choice but feels like something that has been foisted on me. Be that as it may I was wondering if this category, which you seemed to talk about in negative terms as if it was something bad. needs more clarification and that maybe anyway it is all on a continuum and is not categorical at all. If I reflect on why, at the moment, I seem to fall into this category I had these thoughts:
Am I doing this because I want revenge? Answer: No, not my style
Am I doing this because I want to bring the Exclusive brethren down? Answer: No definitely not
Am I doing this for money? Answer: Fat chance.
Having exhausted all the reasons that people usually throw at me who do not understand why I am doing what I am doing, I asked myself 'so why do you do it' ,
My answer is very simple - it is because I have a strong sense of social justice and there have been so many injustices perpetrated by this particular NRM. Just maybe my research can help put things right.
I then suggested that they might like to reconsider their classifications.
They did not really reply but I could see that they took what I said on board. And afterwards several people came up to me thanking me for my comments.
I am not after revenge - I am not that kind of person. I do not want the brethren to implode because that would be 45000 people who would suffer too much with the change. But I do want social justice and the brethren have conceded that they have made mistakes and will make amends.
It is simply not right, not just, not christian for families to be kept apart, for former members to be prevented from knowing when their relatives die and from attending the funerals, or for children to be denied access to higher education to follow the careers they wish to pursue. That is my opinion.
One of these categories was 'Career ex-member'. They used a disparaging tone when they talked about this category which made me feel bothered so I spent some time thinking about this.
At the end therefore I spoke. I said:
"I think you would put me in the category of Career Ex-member though it is not so much my choice but feels like something that has been foisted on me. Be that as it may I was wondering if this category, which you seemed to talk about in negative terms as if it was something bad. needs more clarification and that maybe anyway it is all on a continuum and is not categorical at all. If I reflect on why, at the moment, I seem to fall into this category I had these thoughts:
Am I doing this because I want revenge? Answer: No, not my style
Am I doing this because I want to bring the Exclusive brethren down? Answer: No definitely not
Am I doing this for money? Answer: Fat chance.
Having exhausted all the reasons that people usually throw at me who do not understand why I am doing what I am doing, I asked myself 'so why do you do it' ,
My answer is very simple - it is because I have a strong sense of social justice and there have been so many injustices perpetrated by this particular NRM. Just maybe my research can help put things right.
I then suggested that they might like to reconsider their classifications.
They did not really reply but I could see that they took what I said on board. And afterwards several people came up to me thanking me for my comments.
I am not after revenge - I am not that kind of person. I do not want the brethren to implode because that would be 45000 people who would suffer too much with the change. But I do want social justice and the brethren have conceded that they have made mistakes and will make amends.
It is simply not right, not just, not christian for families to be kept apart, for former members to be prevented from knowing when their relatives die and from attending the funerals, or for children to be denied access to higher education to follow the careers they wish to pursue. That is my opinion.
Sunday, 20 October 2013
A Hugger Mugger of thoughts
I am currently in Switzerland - looking out across at those majestic trio of mountains, the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau.
It is a good place to gather thoughts.
I read a poignant story today - you can read it here http://laurencemoffitt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-very-recent-encounter.html
One brave woman. Her story motivates me because it is for her and others like her that I keep on going at this research. It is also of course, for me - part of my healing journey.
I am struggling a bit at the moment having decided to write the methodology section of my thesis. I find reading about phenomenology, epistemology, ontology and anything really to do with philosophy hard. But I am getting there slowly. I have read almost all the books and papers I wanted to read before writing and today I have come up with a structure for this section. Although this thesis is only 35000 words (largely because I have been given credit for previous work) it is still a lot of work.
The brethren continue to confuse my professional with my private life - they are to some extent intertwined but what I do in my private life has nothing to do with my professional one. This blog is a personal blog, it is intended to chart my journey, record my reflections, keep track of my state of mind, talk about emerging insights etc. It is not a professional one and has little if anything to do with my work as a therapist.
A number of former brethren are engaging in activities of remembrance - I took part when they came to Beckenham where I live. We tied yellow ribbons on the gates of the local meeting 'room' with the names of family members we have lost on them. Yellow ribbons are appearing in various places - for current pictures go to http://peebsnet.com More are waiting to be added. I like the idea - it is peaceful and non confrontational and yet makes the point that people like the woman in the story above, still cannot have normal relationships with their families.
I wonder if other groups go to such lengths to present a wonderful public face whilst behind the scenes treat people as the mother and sister did in the story above. It feels very confusing to me - very split. How can a group of people behave simultaneously in such diametrically opposing ways?
It is a good place to gather thoughts.
I read a poignant story today - you can read it here http://laurencemoffitt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-very-recent-encounter.html
One brave woman. Her story motivates me because it is for her and others like her that I keep on going at this research. It is also of course, for me - part of my healing journey.
I am struggling a bit at the moment having decided to write the methodology section of my thesis. I find reading about phenomenology, epistemology, ontology and anything really to do with philosophy hard. But I am getting there slowly. I have read almost all the books and papers I wanted to read before writing and today I have come up with a structure for this section. Although this thesis is only 35000 words (largely because I have been given credit for previous work) it is still a lot of work.
The brethren continue to confuse my professional with my private life - they are to some extent intertwined but what I do in my private life has nothing to do with my professional one. This blog is a personal blog, it is intended to chart my journey, record my reflections, keep track of my state of mind, talk about emerging insights etc. It is not a professional one and has little if anything to do with my work as a therapist.
A number of former brethren are engaging in activities of remembrance - I took part when they came to Beckenham where I live. We tied yellow ribbons on the gates of the local meeting 'room' with the names of family members we have lost on them. Yellow ribbons are appearing in various places - for current pictures go to http://peebsnet.com More are waiting to be added. I like the idea - it is peaceful and non confrontational and yet makes the point that people like the woman in the story above, still cannot have normal relationships with their families.
I wonder if other groups go to such lengths to present a wonderful public face whilst behind the scenes treat people as the mother and sister did in the story above. It feels very confusing to me - very split. How can a group of people behave simultaneously in such diametrically opposing ways?
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