Few adults can admit they were duped and used to dupe others

Shyam

In recent years, it has become a matter of public record that, as a result of unprotected exposure to one of an ever-growing and evolving catalogue of apparently diverse and innocent groups, almost anyone can begin to exhibit remarkably uniform symptoms. In everyday terms, it is as though they’ve fallen head over heels in love. Although this initial euphoria is often short-lived, a significant minority will subsequently undergo a nightmarish transformation and recklessly dissipate all their mental, and/ or physical, and/ or financial, resources to the benefit of some hitherto unknown person(s), whom they continue to trust and follow no matter what suffering this entails. Only when enough victims of one of these latter-day ‘Pied-Pipers’ have wound up in psychiatric hospitals or on mortuary slabs has the word, ‘cult,’ been liberally applied by the popular press. It has then always been revealed that there had been some timely attempt(s) to warn the authorities, but they couldn’t intervene, because, legalistically, cultism does not exist.

If only more cult victims would complain: then perhaps governments would have to make the problem a priority. Unfortunately, few adults can admit that they were duped and used to dupe others; for it is human nature for us to try to justify our previous behaviour. History proves that the leaders of pernicious cults have profited-massively whilst most of their victims have continued to deny reality in defence of their self-esteem. Cult leaders have sought to maintain an absolute monopoly of information whilst perpetrating, and/or directing, evermore heinous crimes. Indeed, various megalomaniacal psychopaths (i.e. persons suffering from a chronic mental disorder, especially when resulting in paranoid delusions of grandeur and self-righteousness, and the compulsion to pursue grandiose objectives) have been allowed to sustain their abusive activities by the imposition of arbitrary codes (secrecy, denunciation, confession, justice, punishment, etc.) within their groups and by the use of humiliation, and/or intimidation, and/or malicious prosecution (where they pose asvictims), and/or sophism, and/or infiltration of traditional culture, and/or corrruption, and/or intelligence gathering and blackmail, and/or extortion, and/or physical isolation, and/or violence, and/or assassination, etc., to repress any internal or external dissent.

Although the subject of numerous isolated criminal investigations and successful prosecutions, two of the largest latter-day crimonogenic cults, 'Scientology' and'Amway,' have survived, because relatively few of their minority of core-victims have managed to complain. However, the long-term core-adherents of pernicious cults are psychotic (i.e. suffering from psychosis, a severe mental derangement, especially when resulting in delusions and loss of contact with external reality). Core-adherents who manage to break with their group and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For many years afterwards, recovering former core-adherents can suffer from one, or more, of the following psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse): depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness (asthma, skin disorders, headaches, fatigue, etc.); sexual problems/ fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc.

David Brear (copyright 2010)