Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 24
In the third part of this article, then, I will look at the role that writing played in helping me
to reconcile myself, post-cult, to my decision to leave the Unification Church. Indeed,
initially it was not writing itself, but merely the goal of becoming a writer, that helped me
resist on that one occasion when I nearly returned to the Unification Church. And,
subsequently, it was writing in all its forms—not just autobiography, but also short stories,
poems, and a novella—that helped me to be able to see that I had, indeed, made the right
decision by leaving the Unification Church.
Part One: Repression As a Way of Life, 1976 to 1980
Ironically, the reason I was traveling through California in August of 1976 when I
encountered the Unification Church was that I was investigating primal therapy, a therapy
first described by its inventor, Arthur Janov, in his famous book, The Primal Scream. I had
gone to California to look at Janov‘s original Primal Institute and also some other
organizations that offered imitations of Janov‘s techniques. The situation was ironic because
the whole idea behind Janov‘s therapy is to break through emotional repression, yet, after I
became caught up in the Unification Church, I was required to engage in near-total
repression of my feelings.
Repression, therefore, became a way of life throughout the first four years of my
involvement with Moon‘s organization. And although I was not aware of this at the time, the
thought-reform techniques that the Unification Church used on me at the indoctrination
camp in Boonville, California conformed in every respect to the eight criteria for a thought-
reform program identified by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1961 study, Thought Reform and the
Psychology of Totalism. The use of these techniques quickly changed me from a
nonreligious person into a dedicated believer in Moon and his teachings, the Divine
Principle. I came to believe that my feelings were liable to be ―invaded by Satan‖ and should
be treated with utmost suspicion. I was urged to work frenetically from early in the
morning to late at night, to pray and chant constantly during my waking hours, and to fixate
all my thoughts on Reverend Moon and his wife, whom we called the True Parents. We were
to think only of how to please Father, and it was presumed that God could not be happy
unless we expended every effort to serve Father. Members would often counsel each other
to ―just cut‖ from their feelings, and when they said this they would use a karate-chopping
gesture to demonstrate the idea, similar to the hand-chopping gesture that Moon often uses
in his public speeches.
Under the pressure of my newly frantic schedule, I stopped writing almost completely
except for occasional letters to my family in Calgary. During my first four years as a
member of the Unification Church, I was sent all over the United States, first to Los Angeles
for the International One World Crusade, then to New York to do recruiting, and then to
Baltimore and Washington, D.C. to do full-time fundraising (which in the Unification Church
is called M.F.T., meaning ―mobile fundraising teams‖). Such teams would travel all around
in vans to sell flowers, candy, and costume jewelry at greatly inflated prices in parking lots,
residential neighborhoods, and commercial districts.
It was during my time on M.F.T. that I experienced emotional repression in its most
complete form. Such repression was essential just to survive the M.F.T. This is how I
describe my own M.F.T. experiences in my new book, Heartbreak and Rage: Ten Years
Under Sun Myung Moon:
I had finally achieved what Father demanded above all else from his
followers—I had become total action without reflection—pure doing.
This, in fact, was what Father had in mind when he insisted that Seminarians
should first go to the M.F.T. He wanted them to have the experience of totally
emptying their minds, and of thinking of nothing except obedience to him.

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 25
Then, later, when they would find themselves in an intellectual environment
like the Seminary, they would never let mere ideas get in the way of
unthinking loyalty and obedience. (Neufeld, 89)
Only, finally, when I was sent to the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, New
York, in the fall of 1978, did I experience a let-up in the demands imposed by the
Unification Church for complete emotional repression. At the Seminary, Moon expected his
followers to study a variety of religious ideas and systems and to become able to counter
believers in those systems with Unificationist theories that would win them over to Moon‘s
views. In such an environment, there was less insistence on constant frantic activity, and so
there was time for students to reflect and to form deeper friendships. At the Seminary—to
again refer to Lifton‘s model for thought reform—I experienced a relaxation of ―milieu
control.‖ And although the effect was not instantaneous, by the end of two years in that
environment, I had become more favorable to emotional expression and had concluded that
repressing feelings is not always appropriate, despite what the larger church continued to
urge. Many of the other Seminary students likewise experienced a gradual loosening up of
their mental processes, and for this very reason the Seminary was regarded with suspicion
or disfavor in other parts of the church, where seminarians were sometimes nicknamed
―cemetarians.‖ Nevertheless, the Seminary continued to enjoy the whole-hearted support of
Moon himself during that era. In my own case, the change that brought me to this new way
of thinking occurred suddenly, due to the friendship and kindness of another Seminary
student.
Part Two: Vacillating Between Repression and Expression, 1980 to 1986
Late one night in November 1979, after I had been a Seminary student for more than a
year, a well-meaning young woman, also a Unification Church member and a Seminary
student, approached me with words of friendship. I had slept briefly that night, and then I
woke up to study from midnight to 4:00 A.M. because I could find no other way to keep up
with the many demands placed on my time. Because I was a loyal follower of Sun Myung
Moon, I felt it would be shameful to even think any complaining thoughts about these
extreme demands. Whenever I felt a hint of complaint, I was expected to repress it at once
and substitute a feeling of gratitude at how ―Father had saved me.‖ Like most long-term
members, I had become so good at doing this that I had completely lost touch with my own
real feelings. I wasn‘t even aware that I was having a hard time until this well-meaning
young woman pointed it out to me. (For the purposes of this article and my book, I have
called her Fran).
It is important to understand that Fran‘s act of kindness did not, in one swift stroke, ―snap‖
the effects of mind control. Mind control should not be regarded as something that is either
completely present or totally absent. Rather, mind control persists in a faded form even in
the minds of those who have long since left a totalist environment, and, as such, it often
causes emotional difficulties for years until it has been identified and resolved. In my own
case, Fran unknowingly stumbled across the key to unlocking my real feelings again. She
pointed out to me that I was ―having a hard time,‖ and she offered to be a special friend to
help me through this ―hard time.‖ This was not intended as a romantic proposal it was
simply an offer of deep friendship. But I was profoundly touched by Fran‘s offer it was so
different from the usual advice I received from church leaders, who would generally say
something like this: ―Having a hard time? Well, buck up! Think of Father‘s much greater
suffering in the early days of the church!‖ Instead of being told to repress my feelings, Fran
was asking me to go ahead and feel them, and to talk about them to her. This had the
effect of plunging me into a profound turmoil as I tried to decide whether God actually
wanted me to feel these feelings, or to lock them away again.