Confusion

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  If you google him, you find this same Ronald was also the translator of a book she co-authored many years earlier with her first husband—who was also named Ronald.” I am confused and jokingly think, Maybe she only liked people named Ronald. My reaction is a result of the fact that I have trouble following the details, which makes me anxious. I don’t yet fully understand Noah’s interest in these facts about the dead. “Both of her husbands were called Ronald—is that possible?” Noah wonders. He counts the Ronalds again, as if he needs to make it clear that there is something behind those names. He holds in his mind those who have died, and he refuses to let them go. He embraces their stories as if they belong to him, and in that sense those people are neither alive nor dead but rather exist as ghosts between two worlds, never fully seen but present in his life, and now in mine as well. As I join Noah on his search, I become aware that ghosts—the ghosts of the dead, the ghosts of his history—haunt us both. We always know less than we want to. “How old was your mother when you were born?” I ask him one day, trying to imagine his family. Noah answers: “Forty-four, I think. Old, right?” He is almost forty-four and doesn’t have children of his own. “Are you old?” I ask. “I guess so,” he says. “Growing up as an only child to parents in their mid-forties wasn’t easy, and for some reason, I always imagined I had a twin brother who died at birth. My mother used to get annoyed when I joked about it. She thought it was another of my crazy ideas about death. I secretly imagined we were both Noah. Noah One and Noah Two—like Thing One and Thing Two from the Dr. Seuss story.” “And you, are you Noah One or Noah Two?” I ask. “Of course I am Noah Two; do I look like a Noah One?” he replies playfully and adds, “It reminds me of Ronald One and Ronald Two from Marie’s life. Do you think she loved them equally? Don’t you think she married Ronald Two only because she missed her first Ronald and wished he were alive?” I listen to Noah and think about the lonely little boy that he once was, preoccupied with the idea of the death of his parents and what he calls his “bizarre fantasies” about a lost brother.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  In this sudden self-consuming experience, comparable in its tension and ardour to those ridiculous passions which schoolgirls have so often for their mistresses — yet touched in by the fierce mature lines of nature (the demonic line-drawings of an expert love which Justine could always oppose as a response to those who faced her) — she felt really the growing-pains of old age: her flesh and spirit quailing before demands which it knows it cannot meet, which will tear it to rags. Inside herself she had the first stirrings of a sensation new to her: the sensation of a yolk inside her separating from the egg. These are the strange ways in which people grow up. Poor dear, she was to go through the same ridiculous contortions as the rest of us — feeling her body like a bed of quick-lime clumsily slaked to burn away the corpse of the criminal it covered. The world of secret meetings, of impulses that brand one like an iron, of doubts — this suddenly descended upon her. So great was her confusion of mind that she would sit and stare at the metamorphosed Justine and try to remember what she really looked like on the other side of the transforming membrane, the cataract with which Aphrodite seals up the sick eyes of lovers, the thick, opaque form of a sacred sightlessness. She would be in a fever all day until the appointed moment when her model met her. At four she stood before the closed door of the studio, seeing clearly through it to the corner where Justine already sat, turning over the pages of a Vogue and smoking as she waited, legs crossed. The idea crossed her mind. ‘I pray to God she has not come, is ill, has gone away. How eagerly I would welcome indifference!’ Surprised too, for these disgusts came from precisely the same quarters as the desire to hear once more that hoarse noble voice — they too arose only from the expectation of seeing her beloved once more. These polarities of feeling bewildered and frightened her by their suddenness.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In the midst of these false explanations of the nature of my future service, we were rung for down again, and I was reintroduced into the same parlour, where there was a table laid with three covers; and my mistress had now got with her one of her favourite girls, a notable manager of her house, and whose business it was to prepare and break such young fillies as I was to the mounting block; and she was accordingly, in that view, alloted me for a bed-fellow, and, to give her the more authority, she had the title of cousin conferred on her by the venerable president of this college. Here I underwent a second survey, which ended in the full approbation of Mrs. Phœbe Ayres, the name of my tutoress elect, to whose care and instruction I was affectionately recommended. Dinner was now set on table, and in pursuance of treating me as a companion, Mrs. Brown, with a tone to cut off all dispute, soon over-ruled my most humble and most confused protestations against sitting down with her Ladyship, which my very short breeding just suggested to me could not be right, or in the order of things. At table, the conversation was chiefly kept up by the two madams and carried on in double meaning expressions, interrupted every now and then by kind assurances to me, all tending to confirm and fix my satisfaction with my present condition: augment it they could not, so very a novice was I then. It was here agreed that I should keep myself up and out of sight for a few days, till such clothes could be procured for me as were fit for the character I was to appear in, of my mistress’s companion, observing withal, that on the first impressions of my figure much might depend; and, as they rightly judged, the prospect of exchanging my country clothes for London finery, made the clause of confinement digest perfectly well with me. But the truth was, Mrs. Brown did not care that I should be seen or talked to by any, either of her customers, or her Does (as they called the girls provided for them), till she secured a good market for my maidenhead, which I had at least all the appearances of having brought into her Ladyship’s service.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  (See Chapters 12 and 20 for further discussion.) The renowned psychiatrist Robert Lifton referred to dissociation as "psychic numbing," or a sequestering of a portion of the self. Lifton noted that this adaptive mental phenomenon helps explain, for example, how Nazi doctors were able to suppress their feelings about their participation in unethical experiments, murders, and genocide.14 Dissociation, then, is a kind of fragmentation of the self, sometimes referred to as "splitting," and is considered an altered state of consciousness. Such altered states may come about through purposeful trance induction such as hypnosis, or may be a response to trauma. Dissociation can also be brought about through such practices as chanting or meditating, through a combination of long hours of lecture or criticism sessions, and through fatigue or fear. The word dissociation frequently appears in this book because induced dissociation is common among people in cult situations. Involuntary dissociation is also a frequently experienced postcult aftereffect. Through induced dissociation, cults are able to influence and control their members' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. After leaving a cult, many people may find that they involuntarily slip into or are "triggered" into a dissociated state because of cult-related memories or habits. (See Chapters 7 and 8 for further discussion.) In some cults, dissociation is the stated goal; for example, it maybe likened to approaching the godhead. In others, dissociating becomes a means of survival for devotees; otherwise the cult world in which they live would be impossible to bear. Though dissociation is a useful survival response, a person in a dissociated state is not functioning at full capacity and is highly suggestible and compliant, thereby furthering the cult's influence and control. Why It's So Difficult to LeaveA cult experience is almost always a conflicted experience.15 In leaving you are likely to be facing the thrill and fears of constructing a new life for yourself and, in many cases, a new identity. But now you have the opportunity to engage in this "construction of the self" free of the constraints of a close-minded belief system. You may find that this process is not always easy. Leaving the group or relationship may have been an agonizing, even frightening ordeal. Your leaving may have taken months or even years. When you left, you may not have fully understood why you did; in fact, you still may not be aware of all your unconscious motives and desires. Or you may have left the group and, for a time, wished you hadn't; you may still be conflicted. You may also be wondering why you stayed as long as you did. "What took me so long? Why didn't I leave sooner?" are some of the questions that may plague you. "How could I have believed all that nonsense? How could I have been so stupid? Why did I believe the leader was God?" Both of us certainly entertained such questions for quite a while after extricating ourselves from our cult involvements.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  You plod along and plod along. You are incredibly confused but don't know any way to deal with your confusion. You may have asked questions early on, but once the pace is set, you don't even have time to remember those questions or think about questions you might have now. All you want to do is get through the day and maybe get some sleep. And, you hope, survive. Separation from the PastIn almost every group, over the course of time, members become separated from their pasts. They no longer see family or friends who did not join the group. Maybe members tried to recruit those people, but they weren't interested. In many cases, after a period of involvement and increasing commitment, members no longer have much contact with people in the outside world. Some people work internally in the group for the entire duration of their membership. They don't have an outside job. They have little or no human contact other than with fellow cult members. If they go to a recruitment drive, an organizing assignment, or a public event, they are out in the world for a purpose. Contact with others is completely superficial and controlled by the group, with briefings beforehand, debriefings afterward, and meticulous reporting mechanisms to monitor members' behavior when they are away from the cult. In this way, your entire universe becomes the people you are with, your daily activities, the meetings you go to, and the house you live in (usually with other members). You are completely surrounded, and eventually you lose contact with your past and your life prior to joining the group. If you were born or raised in the group, then naturally you have few if any meaningful experiences outside the group that could provide you with another perspective. You may even forget who you were before you joined. In some groups, people take on new names and often don't know the real names of fellow members. Even those who share living arrangements aren't allowed to tell housemates their real names. Everything is to be kept secret: members are instructed to get postal boxes for their mail, to use pseudonyms when possible, and to maintain a low profile. Another name, a completely new identity, and minimal connection to your past or the outside world-these are strong influences that may have kept you bound to your group. After living in an environment where everyone thinks and acts alike, even if you are not as sequestered as those in more restrictive cults, your outlook shrinks and your ability to communicate atrophies. If you do happen to see your family, for example, it's such an alienating experience that all you want to do is rush back to your group. Even though cult life may be miserable and deprived, in some bizarre ways, the group is comfortable because it's not "bourgeois society," or "of Satan," or whatever negative connotation your cult directs at the noncult world.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  It was at this time that I was becoming aware of how much Melissa was suffering. But not a word of reproach ever escaped her lips, nor did she ever speak of Justine. But she had taken on a lacklustre, unloved colour — her very flesh; and paradoxically enough though I could hardly make love to her without an effort, yet I felt myself at this time to be more deeply in love with her than ever. I was gnawed by a confusion of feelings and a sense of frustration which I had never experienced before; it made me sometimes angry with her. It was so different from Justine, who was experiencing much the same confusion as myself between her ideas and her intentions, when she said: ‘Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.’ * * * * * Of the Cabal itself, what is there to be said? Alexandria is a town of sects and gospels. And for every ascetic she has always thrown up one religious libertine — Carpocrates, Anthony — who was prepared to founder in the senses as deeply and truly as any desert father in the mind. ‘You speak slightingly of syncretism’ said Balthazar once, ‘but you must understand that to work here at all — and I am speaking now as a religious maniac not a philosopher — one must try to reconcile two extremes of habit and behaviour which are not due to the intellectual disposition of the inhabitants, but to their soil, air, landscape. I mean extreme sensuality and intellectual asceticism. Historians always present syncretism as something which grew out of a mixture of warring intellectual principles; that hardly states the problem. It is not even a question of mixed races and tongues. It is the national peculiarity of the Alexandrians to seek a reconciliation between the two deepest psychological traits of which they are conscious. That is why we are hysterics and extremists. That is why we are the incomparable lovers we are.’ This is not the place to try and write what I know of the Cabbala, even if I were disposed to try and define ‘The unpredicated ground of that Gnosis’; no aspiring hermetic could — for these fragments of revelation have their roots in the Mysteries. It is not that they are not to be revealed. They are raw experiences which only initiates can share.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  This impaired recall, known as "source amnesia," is quite common among people who have experienced dissociative or derealized states in cults. Giving a meditator specific or veiled instructions on exactly what to look for while in a trance state is the equivalent of posthypnotic suggestion. In recognition of this "demand expectation," there is a saying among therapists that Freudian patients dream in Freudian symbolism, while Jungian patients dream in Jungian symbolism. In cult-led meditation, the appearance of certain desired images or phenomena is interpreted as a sign of progress by the leadership, and thus by the members. Constant dissociation caused by meditation or other practices can increase a person's vulnerability to suggestion and direction. Indoctrination by direct or indirect suggestion can occur at susceptible times immediately before and after these mind-altering practices. Direct or indirect suggestion and dissociative states prevent followers from questioning or judging cult tactics. Sweeping statements such as "Master always has a good reason" or "Master teaches on many levels" can then be accepted as universal explanations for all behavior. Trance-inducing practices associated with meditation are found in most Eastern and New Age groups. Chanting, speaking in tongues, guided visualization, prayer, decreeing, and repetitive physical movements, such as spinning, may lead to trance states (or altered states of consciousness). Most political cults and self-improvement, New Age, religious, and psychotherapy cults conduct lengthy and intensive criticism sessions that can produce dissociation and floating effects. Also, dissociative symptoms are a frequent aftereffect of witnessing or participating in traumatic events such as violent acts or physical or sexual abuse. Usually the dissociative episodes caused by cult practices and experiences are temporary (heartening news if you are suffering from them), but may last as long as several months. Eventually they should diminish in frequency and duration. The Distress of Memory LossMany factors are responsible for memory difficulties during cult membership and after departure. Short-term memory, also known as working memory, is the retention and recall of limited amounts of material before it is forgotten or placed in long-term storage. Long-term memory refers to what most of us think of as memory, which is recalling significant events and information gathered during a lifetime of experiences. While in the group, the use of drugs and/or alcohol, the effect of emotional or physical trauma, the long-term practice of dissociative techniques, and intense levels of stress may interfere with both short- and long-term memory. Elements of reality may be selectively tuned out or simply may not be stored by the brain in long-term memory. In conjunction with memory loss, former members frequently complain of concentration difficulties, short attention spans, obsessive thinking, and dissociative episodes for some period of time after their cult departure. The following example shows how one former member dealt with the confusion caused by temporary memory loss: Marsha J. had such difficulty with even small tasks that she thought she was losing her mind.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Jed looked at Hanna and they were both silent for a long minute. “About a year ago, my mother came to visit and told Lara that Ethan had sexually abused her.” Hanna sighed. “She told Lara that all those years she had been trying to help her, ‘to scream her scream’ she called it. But that no one listened to her. She told her that she should never be alone with Ethan.” Jed nodded. “From then on, Lara didn’t want to go to school anymore. We thought she had become afraid of people and that’s why we decided to bring her to therapy.” The first session ended and my head was spinning. I felt nauseous and realized that those were exactly the symptoms Lara’s parents described Lara as having. I was curious to meet her. The next day Lara arrived at her first session accompanied by Jed. She held her father’s hand, her long black hair tied in a ponytail, and didn’t look at me. “I like your office,” she said quietly, looking around, a shy smile on her face. I liked Lara from the first moment. In that initial session, Lara told me about her family and described nonchalantly how Ethan was accused of touching her inappropriately. “My grandmother doesn’t like my brother,” she said. “Maybe she even hates him and she wants him to go to jail.” Lara talked about these facts without emotion, as if none of this was about her. She turned to look at the dolls in the corner of the room and asked if she could play with them . For a year, during every session we played while we talked. I observed the play and tried to listen to what she was teaching me about her world, her emotional experience, and her vulnerabilities. Since it was not clear whether Lara had in fact been sexually abused, I decided not to include her in my research. It was surprising then when she suggested that we play Little Red Riding Hood. “It’s my favorite fairy tale.” She smiled. “Except there are no wolves in our story, remember?” Years before it was adapted by the Grimm Brothers, “Little Red Riding Hood” made its debut in a version written by Charles Perrault in 1697. Perrault’s story was adapted from the folktale, and in it he described the moment the child met the wolf, referred to as “Mister Wolf,” implying that the wolf stood for a human being. In Perrault’s version, when Little Red Riding Hood arrives at her grandmother’s house, the wolf is lying in bed and asks her to undress and join him. Little Red Riding Hood is alarmed to see his disrobed body and says, “Grandmother, what long arms you have,” to which the wolf replies, “The better to hug you with.”

• From Less (2017)

  He awakens in a bus, headed somewhere. But where? Why is he holding so many bags? Why is there the tickle of champagne in his throat? Less tries to listen, among the straphangers, for Italian; he must find the flight to Turin. Around him seem to be only American businessmen, talking about sports. Less recognizes the words but not the names. He feels un-American. He feels homosexual. Less notes there are at least five men on the bus taller than he, which seems like a life record. His mind, a sloth making its slow way across the forest floor of necessity, is taking in the fact that he is still in Germany. Less is due to be back in Germany in just a week’s time, to teach a five-week course at the Liberated University. And it is while he is in Germany that the wedding will take place. Freddy will marry Tom somewhere in Sonoma. The shuttle crosses the tarmac and deposits them at an identical terminal. Nightmarishly: passport control. Yes, he still has his in his front left pocket. “Geschäftlich,” he answers the muscular agent (red hair cut so close, it seems painted on), secretly thinking: What I do is hardly business. Or pleasure. Security, again. Shoes, belt, off, again. What is the logic here? Passport, customs, security, again? Why do today’s young men insist on marrying? Was this why we all threw stones at the police, for weddings? Submitting to his bladder at last, Less enters a white tiled bathroom and sees, in the mirror: an old balding Onkel in wrinkled, oversized clothes. It turns out there is no mirror: it is the businessman across the sink. A Marx Brothers joke. Less washes his own face, not the businessman’s, finds his gate, and boards the plane. Passport, wallet, phone. He sinks into his window seat with a sigh and never gets his second breakfast: he has fallen instantly to sleep.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing traumatic experiences that we know. The intergenerational aspect of sexual abuse is unique in the way that each generation overwhelms the next and inflicts on it the drama of their sexual trauma. The next generation’s world is often sexualized in the same way that the victim was sexualized as a child. They feel flooded by the parent’s unintegrated sexuality and perplexing boundaries. As Lara describes, innocent, trivial things, such as the underwear she wore when she went to sleep, were filled with sexual meanings. The adult—in this case Lara’s grandmother—who tries to make sense of her own feelings often communicates to the child the confusion about what is safe and what isn’t. The original confusion between innocence and perversion is played out through the next generation, with seduction, promiscuity, and prohibition all intermingled. The next generation usually describes growing up with a constant, vague feeling of violation that only later in therapy is understood to be related to the original break of boundaries in their family’s history of sexual abuse. In her article “Enduring Mothers, Enduring Knowledge: On Rape and History,” Dr. Judith Alpert describes how sexual abuse can present itself in the mind of the next generation. Using her own childhood experience, she discusses the way traumatic thoughts and “memories” can be transmitted from parents and grandparents and present themselves in the child’s mind as their own. That phenomenon leaves everyone, the child and her caretakers, with the confusion that is at the core of sexual abuse. As in Lara’s case, our challenge is to hold all generations in mind—grandmother, mother, and child—as victims of either sexual abuse or the intergenerational inheritance of sexual abuse. Masha, who was reliving her own unprocessed trauma, devastated her family with the idea that Lara’s brother sexually abused her. Lara became more and more overwhelmed. It was as if she were reliving her grandmother’s repressed feelings. Through the family’s ongoing rumination and the premature introduction of sex, Lara felt the intrusion into her body and thus the scene of sexual abuse was reenacted. “When I was sitting with my grandmother last week and she told me about her childhood, I cried. She didn’t,” Lara says, and tears drop down her cheeks. “I tried to listen to her the way you listen to me, and to help her understand that she could tell me anything and I wouldn’t judge her, that I really wanted to know her. “At some point she stopped and said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. But she kept talking and I didn’t say a word. She started blaming herself, saying it was she who went into his bed first. Then she started to question her memory and said that it all sounded much worse than it actually was, that things were different then.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  For many months afterward, Carmen was obsessed with questions about whether her guru was good or evil, whether she was now in some kind of spiritual danger, and so on. It wasn't until she consulted with an exit counselor knowledgeable about Eastern cults and mysticism that she got information that enabled her to evaluate her experience. Debunking the miracles and seeing them as magic tricks commonly used by stage magicians was enormously sobering and helped to free her mind of the guru's grip. Obsessive thinking can be quite debilitating. Often people who experience it are too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, so they suffer in silence and sometimes think they're going insane. The Poverty of Black-and-White ThinkingAfter a long time spent viewing the world in the rigid, dogmatic, black-andwhite, good-and-evil, right-and-wrong light of the cult's training, it takes time to sort through precult, cult, and postcult values and worldviews. As an independent person out in the world once again, the former cult member must choose his own morals and values. It is not enough to just leave the group; a new life must begin. Seeing the world in black and white is one outcome of exposure to cult ideologies. Cults create a world in which all the answers are known (to the cult alone, of course). This type of thinking protects members from the anxiety of thinking for themselves. It keeps them cooperative and controlled. When people first leave a cult, some may temporarily reverse their values so that everything that was bad is now good, and vice versa. This is still a limiting construct that is simply a different version of the black-and-white formula. In fact, truth and life are made up of many shades of gray. This realization can be frightening because it forces people to accept that there are no easy answers. One former member described her approach to this dilemma: To help dismantle this all-or-nothing thinking, I began to ask myself, "Where is this on the gray scale?" This question became a favorite of mine and was very helpful as I struggled to undo seven years in a black-and-white world and seventeen years in a dysfunctional family. I found that life is full of shades of gray. To reinforce this point to myself, I wandered into a redecorating store one day and looked at the number of paint samples from white to gray to black. There were dozens of shades. I saw so clearly that, indeed, there is more to life than black or white.2 The Role of Cognitive DistortionProponents of cognitive therapy, based on the work of Aaron Beck and others, believe that changing the way we think can profoundly influence how we feel.' Mistakes in thinking are called "cognitive distortions,"4 yet they are reversible. Ten common distortions are explained below in the context of postcult recovery. An Exercise to Defuse Cognitive Distortions This exercise may help you sort through the cognitive distortions you still carry.

• From Less (2017)

  But apparently the suit is not enough. Now, with a schedule crammed with lunches and dinners, he will have to find…what? A Star Trek uniform? He wanders down from the bookstore to his old neighborhood, where he lived after college, and it gives him a chance to reminisce about the old West Village. All gone now: the soul food restaurant that used to hold Less’s extra key underneath the coconut cake, the string of fetish stores whose window displays of rubberized equipment gave young Less terrors, the lesbian bars Less used to frequent on the theory he would have a better chance with the men there, the seedy bar where a friend once bought what he thought was cocaine and emerged from the bathroom announcing he had just snorted Smarties, the piano bars stalked, one summer, by what the New York Post inaccurately called “the Karaoke Killer.” Gone, replaced by prettier things. Beautiful shops of things made of gold, and lovely little chandelier restaurants that served only hamburgers, and shoes on display as if at a museum. Sometimes it seems only Arthur Less remembers how downright filthy this place used to be. From behind him: “Arthur! Arthur Less?” He turns around. “Arthur Less! I can’t believe it! Here I was, just talking about you! ” He has embraced the man before he can fully take in whom he is embracing, instead finding himself immersed in flannel, and over his shoulder a sad big-eyed young man with dreadlocks looks on. The man releases him and starts to talk about what an amazing coincidence this is, and all the while Less is thinking: Who the hell is this? A jolly round bald man with a neat gray beard, in plaid flannel and an orange scarf, standing grinning outside a grocery-store-used-to-be-a-bank on Eighth Avenue. In a panic, Less’s mind races to put this man before a series of backgrounds—blue sky and beach, tall tree and river, lobster and wineglass, disco ball and drugs, bedsheets and sunrise—but nothing is coming to mind. “I can’t believe it!” the man says, not releasing his grip on Less’s shoulder. “Arlo was just telling me about his breakup, and I was saying, you know, give it time. It seems impossible now, but give it time. Sometimes it takes years and years. And then I saw you, Arthur! And I pointed down the street, I said, Look! There’s the man who broke my heart; I thought I’d never recover, I’d never want to see his face again, or hear his name, and look! There he is, out of nowhere, and I have no rancor. How long has it been, six years, Arthur? No rancor at all.” Less stands and studies him: the lines on his face like origami that has been unfolded and smoothed down with your hand, the little freckles on the forehead, the white fuzz from his ears to his crown, the coppery eyes flashing with anything but rancor. Who the hell is this old man?

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  More than five decades of research highlight the implications of the early baby-parent interaction for future development, attachment, and mental health. Those studies predicted some of the difficulties that infants would experience later in life as children and as adults, based on the very early attachment to their caretakers. For example, a large body of research focuses on parental responsiveness, which is one of the key qualities for secure attachment. Research indicates that low maternal responsiveness at three and nine months predicts insecure attachment at twelve months, negative feelings and aggressive behavior at three years, and other behavioral problems from age ten on. I try to picture Jon as a baby, recognizing his withdrawal as an adult. I try to imagine what he saw in his mother’s eyes: her pain, her anger, her guilt, and her lack of responsiveness toward him. I wonder what he sensed even when it wasn’t directly communicated to him. I am aware that there is much I don’t know and may never know. Some of those early experiences are forever sealed. JON WALKS INTO the room and sits on the armchair. “Last night I had a conversation with Jake, my oldest brother,” he says. “I told him about my therapy. I told him that a lot of things from my childhood are coming up now, especially from the time I was a baby. It was surprising, I have to tell you. I never thought I would be able to talk to him about these things, and I was shocked when he told me that he has been in therapy for years now. ‘We had a lot to deal with, as kids,’ Jake said, ‘especially you.’ “‘Why me?’ I was kind of confused. ‘You guys knew Jane, I didn’t.’” Jon pauses and looks at me. “My brother Jake said that in his therapy he realized that there are two kinds of people: those who have lost and those who never had anything to begin with. ‘I struggle with that idea,’ he said, ‘and I always tell my therapist that you, Jon, unlike the rest of us, who had lost, you never had. I tell her, “This is why he is the most wounded one of us all.”’ “You can imagine how confused that made me,” Jon says. “I told him, ‘Jake, I’m not sure what you are saying.’ And then he basically told me that he was eight years old when my parents found out Mom was pregnant with me, and that she was very upset and angry. She didn’t want another baby, and she blamed my dad for that pregnancy and wanted to get an abortion. There were a lot of fights and they didn’t talk for a while. “‘Then you were born and a few months later Jane died,’ Jake said, and I felt a kick in my stomach. Everything you and I talked about suddenly made sense. They didn’t want me to begin with.”

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  To varying degrees, you were told daily what to do, and so you regressed. You may have found independent action totally confusing and unbearably overwhelming. How can someone in such a state of mind get up and walk out after being led to believe that she could not function without the grace of the leader and the support of the group? The effects of one or more of these factors or conditions can be quite powerful. Most people will experience some combination of (1) an inability to think clearly or make decisions, (2) a loss of self-esteem, (3) a loss of self-confidence, (4) a regression to a childlike, dependent state of mind, after having given up varying degrees of self-determination, (5) a lack of trust in oneself and/or the outside world, and (6) an inability to act, feeling frozen with fear. Is it any wonder, then, why you didn't leave sooner? At this point, there's no need to continue punishing yourself about your cult involvement. In many ways, self-punishment is just another manifestation of the self-blaming behaviors you were taught in the group. It's better to move on. [image file=img/img0005.jpg] The indoctrination and conversion processes found in many cults are identified in a variety of ways. We will refer to these myriad indoctrination processes as "thought reform" or a "thought-reform program." In part we do so in deference to Robert Lifton whose work has informed our understanding of the influence and control processes integral to cults.' There are crucial differences between a cult's thought-reform program and the kind of social conditioning used by most parents and most mainstream social institutions. As a rule, parents, schools, churches, and other reputable organizations do not use extreme coercion, deception, or unethically manipulative practices in their teaching or training methods. In most cases, the purpose of social conditioning is to encourage a child to become an autonomous adult or to train and educate a person to function fully as a responsible member of a particular organization or society. Cults, by contrast, engage in concerted and directed processes to indoctrinate their members, often with the aim of creating a "deployable agent," a "true believer," or a devoted adherent who will wholeheartedly and single-mindedly do the cult's bidding. Many cults employ manipulation, deception, and exploitative persuasion to induce dependency, compliance, rigid obedience, stunted thinking, and childlike behavior in their members. Psychological and social influence and manipulation are part and parcel of a cult experience. Over the years, various labels have been used to describe these processes. Like many others in our field, we tend not to use the term brainwashing because it is misunderstood and often associated with Communism or torture. A prison cell or a torture chamber is a far cry from the subtlety and sophistication of the systems of influence and control found in today's cults.

• From Less (2017)

  Back in his room, he is surprised to find, in the Lilliputian bathroom, a Brobdingnagian tub. So, even though it is ten o’clock, he runs a bath. As it fills, he looks out at the city: the Empire State Building, twenty blocks down, is echoed, below, by an Empire Diner with a card stock sign: PASTRAMI. From the other window, near Central Park, he sees the sign for the Hotel New Yorker. They are not kidding, no sir. No more than the New England inns called the Minuteman and the Tricorner are kidding, with their colonial cupolas topped with wrought iron weather vanes, their cannonball pyramids out front, or the Maine lobster pounds called the Nor’easter, hung with traps and glass buoys, are kidding, or the moss-festooned restaurants in Savannah, or the Western Grizzly Dry Goods, or the Florida Gator This and Gator That, or even the Californian Surfboard Sandwiches and Cable Car Cafés and Fog City Inn, are kidding. Nobody is kidding. They are dead serious. People think of Americans as easygoing, but in fact they are all dead serious, especially about their local culture; they name their bars “saloons” and their shops “Ye Olde”; they wear the colors of the local high school team; they are Famous for Their Pies. Even in New York City. Perhaps Less, alone, is kidding. Here, looking at his clothes—black jeans for New York, khaki for Mexico, blue suit for Italy, down for Germany, linen for India—costume after costume. Each one is a joke, and the joke is on him: Less the gentleman, Less the author, Less the tourist, Less the hipster, Less the colonialist. Where is the real Less? Less the young man terrified of love? The dead-serious Less of twenty-five years ago? Well, he has not packed him at all. After all these years, Less doesn’t even know where he’s stored. He turns off the water and gets into the tub. Hot hot hot hot hot! He steps out, red to his waist, and lets the cold run a little longer. Mist haunts the surface and the reflection of the white tiles, with their single stripe of black. He slips back in, the water only slightly too hot now. His body ripples beneath the reflection.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  When you first leave a cult situation, you may not recognize yourself. You may feel confused and lost; you may feel both sad and exhilarated. You may not know how to identify or tackle the problems you are facing. You may not have the slightest idea about who you want to be or what you want to believe. The question we often ask children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" takes on new meaning for adult ex-cult members. Understanding what happened to you and getting your life back on track is a process that may or may not include professional therapy or pastoral counseling. The healing or recovery process varies for each of us, with ebbs and flows of progress, great insight, and profound confusion. Also, certain individual factors will affect your recovery process. One is the length and intensity of your cult experience. Another is the nature of the group or person you were involved with-or where your experience falls on a scale of benign to mildly harmful to extremely damaging. Recovering from a cult experience will not end the moment you leave the situation (whether you left on your own or with the help of others). Nor will it end after the first few weeks or months away from your group. On the contrary, depending on your circumstances, aspects of your cult involvement may require some attention for the rest of your life. Given that, it is important to find a comfortable pace for your healing process. In the beginning, particularly, your mind and body may simply need a rest. Now that you are no longer on a mission to save the world or your soul, relaxation and rest are no longer sinful. In fact, they are absolutely necessary for a healthy, balanced, and productive life. Reentering the noncult world (or entering it for the first time if you were born or raised in a cult) can be painful and confusing. To some extent, time will help. Yet the passage of time and being physically out of the group are not enough. You must actively and of your own initiative face the issues of your involvement. Let time be your ally, but don't expect time alone to heal you. We both know former cult members who have been out of their groups for many years but who have never had any counseling or education about cults or the power of social-psychological influence and control. These individuals live in considerable emotional pain and have significant difficulties due to unresolved conflicts about their group, their leader, or their own participation. Some are still under the subtle (or not so subtle) effects of the group's systems of influence and control. A cult experience is different for each person, even for members of the same group, family, or situation. Some former members may have primarily positive impressions and memories, while others may feel hurt, used, or angry.

• From Less (2017)

  “Van Dervander. Dutch German. We had a very esteemed list. We had Fairborn and Gessup and McManahan. We had O’Byrne and Tyson and Plum.” Less swallows this piece of information. “But Harold Plum is dead.” “There were changes to the list,” the Head admits. “But the original list was a thing of beauty. We had Hemingway. We had Faulkner and Woolf.” “So you didn’t get Plum,” Less contributes. “Or Woolf, I assume.” “We didn’t get anyone,” says the Head, lifting his massive chin. “But I had them print out the original list; you should have found it in your packet.” “Wonderful,” Less says, blinking in perplexity. “Your packet also includes a donation envelope to the Haines Scholarship. I know you have just arrived, but after a weekend in this country he loved, you may be so moved.” “I don’t—” says Arthur. “And there,” the Head says, pointing to the west, “are the peaks of Ajusco, which you will remember from his poem ‘Drowning Woman.’” Less sees nothing in the smoggy air. He has never heard of this poem, or of Haines. The Head begins to quote from memory: ‘Say you fell down the coal-chute one Sunday afternoon…’ Remember?” “I can’t—” says Arthur. “And have you seen the farmacias? ” “I haven’t—” “Oh, you must go, there’s one just around the corner. Farmicias Similares. Generic drugs. It’s the whole reason I throw this festival in Mexico. Did you bring your prescriptions? You can get them so much cheaper here.” The Head points, and Less can now make out a pharmacy sign; he watches a small round woman in a white lab coat dragging the shop gate open. “Klonopin, Lexapro, Ativan,” he coos. “But really I come down here for the Viagra.” “I won’t—” The Head gives a cat grin. “At our age, you’ve got to stock up! I’ll try a pack this afternoon and tell you if it’s legit.” He puts his fist down at his crotch level, then springs his erectile thumb upward. The mynah birds above mock them in ragtime. “Señor Less, Señor Banderbander.” It is Arturo; he seems not to have changed clothes or demeanor from the night before. “Are you ready to go?” Less, still bewildered, turns to the Head. “You’re coming with us? Don’t you have to see the panels?” “I really have put together some wonderful panels! But I never go,” he explains, spreading his hands on his chest. “I don’t speak Spanish.” Is it his first time in Mexico? No.

• From Wild (2012)

  I guessed and guessed again, measuring, reading, pausing, calculating, and counting before ultimately putting my faith in whatever I believed to be true. Fortunately, this stretch of the trail held plenty of clues, riddled with peaks and cliffs, lakes and ponds that were often visible from the trail. I still had the same feeling as I had from the start, when I’d begun walking the Sierra Nevada from its southern beginning—as if I were perched above the whole world, looking down on so much. I pushed from ridge to ridge, feeling relieved when I spotted bare ground in the patches where the sun had melted the snow clean away; quivering with joy when I identified a body of water or a particular rock formation that matched what the map reflected or the guidebook described. In those moments, I felt strong and calm, and then a moment later, when I paused yet again to take stock, I became certain that I’d done a very, very stupid thing in opting to continue on. I passed trees that seemed disconcertingly familiar, as if I’d surely passed them an hour before. I gazed across vast stretches of mountains that struck me as not so different from the vast stretch I’d seen earlier. I scanned the ground for footprints, hoping to be reassured by even the slightest sign of another human being, but saw none. I saw only animal tracks—the soft zigzags of rabbits or the scampering triangles of what I supposed were porcupines or raccoons. The air came alive with the sound of the wind whipping the trees at times and at other times it was profoundly hushed by the endless silencing snow. Everything but me seemed utterly certain of itself. The sky didn’t wonder where it was. “HELLO!” I bellowed periodically, knowing each time that no one would answer, but needing to hear a voice anyway, even if it was only my own. My voice would guard me against it, I believed, it being the possibility that I could be lost in this snowy wilderness forever.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Peer Pressure and Lack of InformationPeer pressure is a critical factor that keeps people in cults. In both of our cults, we had doctors, lawyers, social workers, professionals with all kinds of advanced degrees, and highly intelligent people. Their presence made it even more difficult to object because they seemed to be doing just fine with it all, right? As humans, our peers influence us perhaps more than anything or anyone else. Former cult members have recounted some variation of this scenario countless times: "When I dared think about leaving the group, well, I'd look around and think, well, Joe's still here, Jackie's still here, and Mary's still here. It must be me; it must be me. I just don't get it. There's simply something wrong with me; I just have to try harder." Cult members feel that way because nobody else is speaking out-because nobody can speak out. The one who does feels alone, isolated, contaminated, and wrong. Directly or indirectly, members actively encourage each other to behave in certain cult-approved ways, and given that we are social animals, it becomes difficult to resist such pressures. In addition, the cult's dishonesty about many things keeps members from knowing what is truly going on. Not only are members kept from sources of outside information, they're also told lies and misrepresentations about the cult, the leader, and the group's activities. The importance or influence of the cult's actions is made larger than it actually is, and the leader's reputation is embel lished, if not fabricated. The number of members or followers is often exaggerated to make the group appear larger and more popular, and world events are distorted, as are the outside world's attitudes toward the cult. These myths about the cult and society are perpetuated not only by the leader but by his inner circle as well. The resultant lack of knowledge among most members keeps them from making an accurate assessment of their situation. Exhaustion and ConfusionExhaustion and confusion reduce cult members' ability to act. In most groups, members are made to work morning, noon, and night, and it's no wonder they become exhausted and unable to think clearly. After several weeks of fourteento-twenty-hour workdays, seven days a week, with no vacations, no time off, no fun, no hobbies, and no real intimate relationship with your partner or spouse (if you have one), you're living in a fog. Some former members describe feeling as though there was a veil over their eyes, as if they were not in touch with the physical world. They functioned by rote. Some people laugh and say, "Oh, such-and-such cult members have glazed-over eyes." Well, many do, and that glazed effect is caused in part by sheer exhaustion. When you can't think, feeling as though you can barely survive each day, all you want to do is make it through without incurring whatever punishment your group doles out. This may be grueling work, criticism, exorbitant fund-raising quotas, sexual abuse, or violence.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  When she put something down, she would immediately forget where she had left it; when shopping, she would often forget why she had come to the store in the first place. Her forgetfulness increased when she was stressed, overtired, or hungry. Marsha once prided herself on her memory, but now she had difficulty remembering facts and figures, phone numbers and the like, and she even had trouble following conversations. To deal with this problem, Marsha made a list each night of what she wanted to accomplish the next day. She kept the list simple and broke down all the tasks into their smallest components so that she could feel a sense of accomplishment at both remembering and doing what she set out to do. Also, she would review what she had done at the end of the day. Keeping a journal became a way to connect her thoughts and watch her daily progress. If she read or heard important concepts she wanted to remember, she wrote them down and then personalized them with her own experiences. All this reassured Marsha that she wasn't crazy at all, and with time and practice, her memory became stronger. Other useful techniques for memory recovery include reminiscing with former friends and relatives about shared experiences, reviewing photo albums and journals, watching movies or reading books from precult days, writing a chronology of events before and during the cult, and visiting people and places from precult life. The Disruption of Obsessional ThoughtsAn obsession is defined in Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary as "an idea, emotion, or impulse that repetitively and insistently forces itself into consciousness even though it is unwelcome. An obsession may be regarded as essentially normal when it does not interfere substantially with thinking or other mental functions; such an obsession is short-lived and can usually be minimized or nullified by diverting attention onto other topics.... Most commonly, obsessions appear as ideas, or sensory images, which are strongly charged with emotions.... Less commonly, obsessions appear as feelings unaccompanied by clear-cut ideas, such as anxiety or panic, feelings of unreality or depersonalization." Already prone to much self-doubt, former cult members easily fall prey to obsessional thoughts about the nature of reality, the truth about the leader or group, and more specifically, about whether or not they did the right thing by leaving, as this case example illustrates: Carmen T. was a devotee of an Eastern guru for five years. She observed him perform "miracles," produce items out of thin air, heal the sick, and go without sleep for days on end. As she assumed leadership duties at his ashram, she had a rude awakening when she noticed a procession of women come and go to the chamber of her supposedly celibate guru. She could no longer deny her inner doubts or the rumors when she herself was invited to engage in sexual activities with her Master in the name of Tantra (achieving spiritual growth through sexual techniques). Depressed and disappointed, she left the group.