The new PB website

For those of you who have not yet spotted it, there has been some rebranding of the Exclusive Brethren it would seem, They have a new website which gives  a very different message as well as a different name for themselves.
Take a look at the new and the old

The old has much more information on it but maybe the new will be added to in time. In my opinion what they are doing is obfuscating the issue of labels for their group even more. I don't know how many brethren groups there are but many call themselves the Exclusive Brethren and many call themselves the Plymouth Brethren. So I am not sure how this name change is going to help. They remain the people who kept my mother from her son for well over 30 years and the people who keep fathers from their children, and children from their parents. They remain the group who excommunicated people for having a computer but now many of them have one etc etc. If you haven't read Animal Farm you should.

It leaves me with a dilemma too - this blog is called "Research on the Exclusive Brethren" and the title of my dissertation also has Exclusive Brethren in it. Do I now change this to "Plymouth Brethren Christian Church formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren" or what? We need an acronym - prizes for the first person to come up with one.

All of these changes - the 'pie hours' , the donations of park benches, and now the website are all making it hard for me to focus on my doctoral research - which by the way for the confused, is separate from the questionnaire research which many of you have taken part in - along with the charities commission stuff and other things going on it is all a bit too much right now.

And I still haven't sort those ologies out yet.

And I need to interview 4 more people - any volunteers?

The ologies

I am trying to read a book called 'The Foundations of Social Research' but I am getting lost in the ologies and isms. So we have epistemology, ontology, constructionism, positivism, realism, etc etc. Groan.
I wonder sometimes if my parents, instead of being constrained by the brethren, were free to encourage me to think critically about things, about different perspectives whether I would have such a big problem now with all these philosophical things.

It really is getting me down!! how crazy is that. I feel I ought to find grasping these concepts easily and the book is supposed to be for beginners, something I seem to be - permanently.

If only the examples in the book were about things I could relate to but they aren't - apart from the bit about a tree.

See people keep telling me that epistemology is about how we know what we know. I read books, that is how I know what I know - but i think that is not what they mean.........

I am trying to focus on my doctoral research but other events are still getting in the way, like phone calls and emails from people wanting help or to tell me their story. At the same time though I have been deeply moved by the support of so many people.

I am not alone! There is a team of us - Team Warpath because maybe that is what we are on. Push someone too hard and they will eventually react.

So that's it for today

Sunshine, diversions and obstacles

The sun is finally shining - yesterday and today were lovely sunny days. My face got a bit burnt yesterday annoyingly!
I must get back to my research - I am very good at being diverted from it by obstacles thrown in my way. Nothing else should matter - I know I am doing the right thing here whatever anyone else says!

Focus, focus on one thing at a time, get the history section written, interview 4 more people, and so on until it is done!! Then go back to the quantitative and pick up where I have left off.

Don't let anything or anyone get in my way

Updates

I am currently in Melbourne visiting my daughter and her family. While she is at work, I work too on my research. I underestimated the impact that this work would have on me. Since June this year I have become gradually more and more focussed on it - and it drains my energies. So much is happening in the brethren world too that it is hard to keep up - Pie Days, park benches, charity commission matters etc etc.
I am not entirely clear why the only way I find that I can survive this work is to shut myself off - normally i am in contact with a lot of former brethren, hearing their stories, trying to help ease their pain but now I want more to be like a hermit! I guess it is  a form of burn out. So I must listen to myself.

In any event when reading through the transcripts of interviews I need to shut out my past and also other people's stories in order to focus just on what my interviewees have said. Which is why I want to change my supervisor as she is also a former member of the brethren - it feels all a bit incestuous.

I was going to go through Lifton's 8 criteria but haven't done so. I will but I am not sure anyone is listening. So perhaps there is no point because the point of doing that was to get comments from others.

Sexual abuse

One thing that has already emerged from the quantitative study is the level of child sexual abuse - around 26% at the moment. That is serious. Very few of these cases come to court because the victims are too scared - for most people it is an ordeal to report sexual abuse but for former members of the Exclusive Brethren is it even harder because they are up against the money and power that they can wield.
Of course is the EB know about it they tend to push it under the carpet - 'he (or she0 has repented and put things right before the Lord'. Oh ... that's ok then is it.

Question; How many court cases would it take to get the government to sit up and notice
Answer:   Anyone know?

Question: How can we help people come forward
Answer: You tell me?

It is things like this that trouble me and make this research so draining. And right now I am burnt out. I spend a lot of my life emailing former members, meeting them, gathering questionnaires, interviewing them etc etc.

sometimes it is too much

The numbers for the quantitative study are gradually creeping up - bit slow so if anyone is reading this who once used to be in the exclusive brethren (or another brethren group like the Rentons) then contact me.

I was talking to a  friend the other day about why it might that two people born in the same group (i.e. the exclusive brethren) and therefore one would think had similar experiences, actually experienced being raised in the brethren in very different ways. We talked about the parents being the gatekeepers - that is some parents not only 'let' the brethren into their family life but embraced their doctrines of separation fully. The boundary between the family and the EB was therefore very blurred. Other parents however, by closing the gates a bit mitigated the brethren messages of extreme separation. These families not only allowed independent thought but encouraged  it in their children by having open discussions, allowing the child to question and then provided the answers etc.

My parents especially my mother were in the former group. Even though I was born at the end of WWII before the extremes of JTJnr - the doctrines of separation were already deeply entrenced and mother, the gatekeeper did not close the gate to this rigid way of living that denied children a normal healthy upbringing and she did not open the gate to the outside world. She controlled these gates through lectures at me when she felt i had transgressed. She loved me i know and i know she did all this out of love but how misguided she was. Other families, even those currently in the exclusive brethren, seem to manage the gatekeeping roles much better. They have a degree of autonomy from the exclusive brethren and healthy discussion is facilitated.

I have found preparing the paper for the Montreal conference very stressful so i appreciated this discussion with  my friend. He has never been in a cult but as a counselling psychologist too he has a sound knowledge of how families work.

I don't know if people are listening to this blog - it would be nice to get some feedback and for you to share your stories too.

When I first came across Lifton's book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China  I did not at first believe that it could be applied to the Exclusive Brethren. 


In his book, Lifton outlines eight  criteria for thought reform so I thought I would look at each one by one. I will do this here and on peebs.net


Let's start with Milieu Control - this is the control of information and communication both within the environment so within the EB. and between the group - and therefore the individual in the group -  and the outside world. It also applies to control of communication within the individual. This to my mind results in two things - isolation from society at large but also isolation from one's true self. 


By completely controlling the individual's inner environment  - their thoughts, feelings, behaviour etc - the EB I believe are denying the child the normal stimulation needed for healthy growth. They 'trample on the natural', love is conditional, the true self is repressed and a kind of proxy or pseudo personality develops to satisfy the demands of the group and of the parents.


By depriving the child of alternative perspectives and the kind of environment needed for healthy development of the naturally enquiring mind, groups like the EB are abusing their children. 


When people leave the EB, the lack the necessary information and experience needed to make the transition to the outside world - even the EB themselves have said that when people leave they lack the skills they need. one of the three stooges on the BBC Everyman programme said this. 


Control the environment, control the information coming in and going out and you can control the members. It worked in China and it works for all the cults in this world. It works for the EB too. 


just some thoughts which I hope will develop as I muse on this.

This weekend I shall focus on the quantitative study I am running exploring the mental health of former Exclusive Brethren - looking at what factors might have an impact on this such as how the person left, what level of loss did they experience, is time a great healer as many think etc. Anyone reading this who has not taken part please go to peebs.net and click on the green banner at the top. I am also going to work on the qualitative research - I find this much harder to do maybe because it asks more of me. Playing with numbers is so much easier!! It doesn't touch me in the same way that the qualitative research does - reading through the transcripts of the interviews and trying to understand the participants worlds is hard work emotionally for me, so much of it is close to my own experience. I am going to start posting some of Lifton's factors of thought reform hoping that someone will comment! So watch this space

I am beginning to go through some of the books and tracts we found in my mother's flat after she died. I have just been reading through "The Bridegroom Cometh" and observing with some amusement how my mind finds the familiar words almost hypnotic and I feel my mind going back to those times when such words floated over my head like a wave. Words that once held me in their power. I can almost sense my neurones firing happily away reading something so familiar - the familiar phrases and exhortations. Fortunately for me my cortex is overriding this almost primitive response. It reminds of me Lifton and his 8 factors of thought reform. For those who don't know about these, one of them is called Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating clichés, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking. (from wikipedia) Such a strange sensation after all these years - somewhere deep inside of me, I remember. Anyone else recognise this phenomena and how do you deal with it. There was a time when this "magic" would have continued to bewitch me - but no longer

Well it is a very long time since I was here and they have changed things so I am a little lost. I am now running two studies - one is a quantitative one and for that I need around 400 participants. It involves responding to a package of questionnaires that look at general psychological health, interpersonal problems, trauma, attitudes to the exclusive brethren, and of course one about you! It takes a while to complete but if you would like to take part and you are someone who has left the EB please go to www.peebs.net and click on the green banner near the top!! The other one is the qualitative one I have been trying to complete for years! My mother's long period of ill health definitely hindered this and even now i am still exhausted so progress is slow. I am finding this hard. I intend coming here more frequently now and use this space to reflect on my progress and on my thoughts and feelings about doing all of this. Right now this is just a start and it feels very strange to be here because I don't know who is listening!! see you again soon!