“Intelligent people don't join cults”

Steven Hassan's informative and thought-provoking book Combating Cult Mind Control, his best-selling 'Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults', has inspired a series of posts. The final article,  A few points about helping cult leavers, mentions his books Releasing the Bonds and Freedom of Mind as additional resources for people seeking information about cults and how to get members out of them. 

These books, which were published after Combating Cult Mind Control, appeared from their online descriptions to be more of the same, with much repetition of key points, advice and useful information and more case histories; I assumed that I wouldn't find anything that I would want to comment on in them. 

I have since read through Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs, which is a revised and updated version of Releasing the Bonds, and I came across a small amount of material that I want to highlight.

This article features more of Steve Hassan's wise words on the subject of people who join cults. 

A misconception about intelligence
Freedom of Mind lists some common cult-related misconceptions and errant beliefs held by many people, including the idea that intelligent people do not join cults. 

While this conviction may have come from personal experience - it may be the result of having encountered people from the lower levels of certain religious cults for example – it definitely does not apply in all cases. As Steve Hassan tells us, intelligent people do join cults:

“Many people have a hard time believing that bright, talented people— often educated, and from good homes-—could fall under the control of a cult. They fail to realize that cults intentionally recruit smart people who will work tirelessly for the cause. Many of the former cult members I have met are exceptionally bright and well educated. They have active imaginations and creative minds. They have a capacity to focus their attention and concentrate. Most are idealistic and socially conscious. They want to make a positive contribution to the world.”

All this makes sense. Such people may also be recruited because they are a good advertisement for the cause and may attract others of their kind into the cult.

Oscar Wilde's interesting words about the colour green

The many occurrences of the colour green in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's essay collection Through the Magic Door  inspired an investigation into green references and connections in Conan Doyle's life and works.

I came across an interesting statement about the colour green by the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde along the way. His words have inspired yet another article about this colour. 

Oscar Wilde on the colour green 
As mentioned in the article about Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the colour green, Oscar Wilde, who incidentally often wore a green carnation, wrote an essay called Pen, Pencil, And Poison - A Study In Green about an art critic who was a secret poisoner. 

The artist, author and suspected serial killer in question was Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, who was mentioned by Conan Doyle in a Sherlock Holmes story and was a friend of Charles Lamb.

Wilde's descriptions of the man, his life and his crimes are mostly irrelevant here, but as a matter of interest Wainewright spent his boyhood at Turnham Green, he was educated at the Greenwich Academy, and he later had a pomona-green chair in his library.

Wilde's essay contains these thought-provoking words about Wainewright and the colour green:

“He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.“

Green has always been my favourite colour. Why is this curious? I like the idea of the artistic temperament though! 

Two green-loving peoples
When it comes to the love of green in nations, Wilde is probably referring to various Islamic countries and what is now the Irish Republic. Both Muslims and Irish Catholics favour the colour green, and Conan Doyle, who like Wilde was an Irishman, was well aware of this.

In Conan Doyle's Green Flag, Arab tribesmen capture the Irish regimental flag. One of their sheikhs says that by its colour it might well belong to the people of the true faith - i.e. Islam.

Two more victims of 'psychological black magic'

The article about two very convenient 'accidents' describes how a work colleague escaped from some difficult situations at someone else's expense. 

I have remembered another example of someone I worked with causing suffering to others by using illegitimate methods to deal with a work-related problem. 

The victim of the first colleague was a little girl; on the second occasion two young men were involved. These men became ill rather than having accidents and they were deliberately targeted rather than indirectly affected, but once again the case involved a perpetrator who failed to negotiate with people in the normal manner and the phenomenon that I think of as psychological black magic.

The background to the story
The events described here happened some years after the first case, and they took place in a different company. 

They involved a colleague I shall call Ms X. I was very wary of her right from the start, and the trouble that she subsequently caused, of which this story is just a small example, showed that my instincts were correct.

Ms X was a senior accountant. In addition to her main job, she did the accounts for another organisation or two on a voluntary basis in her spare time – I think it was for the Brownies and/or her local church. 

The voluntary work started to feel like an imposition. Rather than just tell the people concerned that it was getting too much for her, Ms X very typically tried to manipulate some fellow employees into taking her place.

The first victim
Ms X got one of the more junior accountants to take on some of her voluntary work; he then became very ill and took extended medical leave. By the time he returned, she had left the company.

The second victim
The second man was a colleague of the first. He resisted the pressure to take over some of the voluntary accounts work; he then became very depressed. He left the company. His new job didn't work out, and he eventually returned to his old position.  By this time, Ms X had left the company.

A little New Year poem from Ogden Nash

 Alfred, Lord Tennyson's inspiring poem about the bells that ring in the New Year has been featured on here, as has Charles Lamb's sad poem The Old Familiar Faces.  

The American humourist Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971) wrote a little verse about the New Year in a rather different spirit:

Good Riddance, But Now What?

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year. 

The poem's title is spot on. It expresses very well what some people feel at the end of yet another horrible year: they can't wait to see the back of it. Good riddance indeed! 

The title also suggests that the coming year might be even worse. We have no idea what is in store for us; we shall just have to wait and see what comes.

A tale of two very convenient 'accidents'

The article about workplace memories was inspired by a few comments made to me by fellow workers many years ago. 

Two incidents involving another colleague surfaced in my mind recently while I was thinking about the past. Again, they seem much more significant now that they did at the time. They provide supporting evidence for some of my ideas about psychological black magic, one of the unseen influences that inspired the creation of this blog.

The first 'accident'
It all started when a colleague, a computer programmer I shall call Mrs M., realised that she had made a mistake after making some requested changes and putting the updated software onto a spool of magnetic tape for the computer operators to release into the live system. She suddenly thought of a possible problem; rather than confess and follow the proper procedures, she fixed the error and when she thought that no one was looking went to replace the original tape with the new one that she had made.

Mrs M. got caught by the operators in the act of substituting the new tape for the old one. She was not too popular with them and they had a big argument. She became very upset and said, “Why can't they trust me?” 

The atmosphere was becoming increasingly charged, then her phone rang. It was a neighbour: Mrs M.'s little girl had just fallen from her bike and the neighbour had carried her inside. She was slightly hurt, and the neighbour wanted Mrs M. to go and collect her.

So Mrs M. was off the hook – for a while at least. She had a perfect pretext for escaping from the office and the trouble that she had created.

A few points about helping cult leavers

This is the fourth and final article inspired by exit-counsellor Steven Hassan's thought-provoking book Combating Cult Mind Control, his illuminating 'Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults'. 

The first article covers some of the interesting things that Steve Hassan has to say about how cults recruit people. 

The second article contains disturbing information about life inside cults.

The third article features a few of the useful points that he makes in connection with getting people out of cults.

I now want to highlight a few of his ideas about helping people who have left a cult. I have already produced an article about life after leaving a cult, but Steve Hassan's book has inspired some more commentary. 

Would-be helpers need to understand what they are up against and dealing with; Steve Hassan has some distressing and depressing information about this. 

Helpers also need to learn what to do about it; the book has some useful and encouraging suggestions about what works best when helping cult leavers rediscover and live from their real selves, recover from the abuse they have endured and make new, productive lives for themselves.

The worst comes first
Steve Hassan has a lot to say about the many and severe problems faced by cult leavers, the biggest of which is loss of identity. They may also be suffering from arrested development, they may behave in an inappropriately dependent way, their self-esteem may have been destroyed, their critical faculties may be atrophied, they may have memory loss and find it difficult to concentrate, they may have trouble making decisions and they may have serious adjustment problems.

They may also be living in fear of some kind of retaliation by the cult.

Rudyard Kipling and some green connections

Posts about Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle are very popular, so I am always looking for inspiration for more articles. 

After writing about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the colour green, I decided to investigate occurrences of this colour in the life and works of Rudyard Kipling. 

I didn't find anything amazing, but some connections are worth mentioning. The people and places that Kipling has in common with Conan Doyle are particularly interesting.

Roger Lancelyn Green
Writer Roger Lancelyn Green (1918 – 1987) was the father of Richard Lancelyn Green, the previously mentioned authority on Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. He was editor of the Kipling Journal and wrote and edited books about Kipling: 

The school in Green Road
When Rudyard Kipling was staying in the House of Desolation in Southsea, he attended what he called 'a terrible little day-school'. 

Roger Lancelyn Green identified the school as Hope House in  Green Road, the same road that Conan Doyle's house stood opposite. Conan Doyle's younger brother Innes later came to live at this house and became a pupil at Hope House school. 

The Green, Rottingdean
Conan Doyle lived in Bush Villas, Elm Grove, Southsea; Rudyard Kipling stayed with his family at The Elms, The Green, Rottingdean near Brighton for a few years. The large garden and grounds of this house have been preserved, and as Kipling Gardens are now open to the public:

Greenhow Hill

Greenhow Hill is a village in North Yorkshire.

Rudyard Kipling's short story On Greenhow Hill was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1890. It also appeared in Life's Handicap, a collection of Kipling's stories. 

What makes the story of additional interest is that Conan Doyle's editor at the Strand Magazine was Herbert Greenhough Smith; by coincidence the name Greenhough is derived from Greenhow Hill.