Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 20
Almost all the female former cult members I have seen in my practice reported that they
had originally regarded their cult as a way to gain power and influence while maintaining
deeply held values of caring for others. All of them had options to go into traditional male
jobs or professions, but they wanted to make an impact in a noncompetitive community.
Mattina Horner (1972) used Thematic Aptitude Tests (TAT) to investigate women‟s attitudes
concerning success and competition. She found that “women appeared to have a problem
with competitive achievement, and that problem seemed to emanate from a perceived
conflict between femininity and success” (pp.157-175).
Cultic groups do not admit to internal competition at the same time, they clearly announce
that their group is the one and only, most powerful, most realized, only one to be saved, to
change the world, and so on. For contemporary women, this idealized view looks like a
wonderful environment in which they can feel powerful while avoiding day-to-day
experiences of competition.
Mentorship
For countless generations, human cultures either have been static in form and practice or
have changed very slowly over time. Families and family groups valued elders as wise
leaders who had wisdom to pass on. A child, an adolescent, or an adult could always turn to
a text of laws and rules or to an older relative for answers to or insight about a particular
problem. During the last few hundred years, however, cultural and industrial changes have
been rapidly accelerating, and adults no longer feel that there are people in their community
to whom they can turn to help them cope with problems unique to their generation. Women
in particular have been faced with dramatic changes in their roles. But today, most people
tend to think of elders and their knowledge as obsolete, silly, useless.
That humans evolved in clans allows us to postulate that there is a ubiquitous need for
mentorship as one matures. Even if this is not so, it does appear that many people today
are craving mentorship in various forms. The popularity of self-improvement programs,
psychotherapy, self-help books, all varieties of cults, and New Age magical practices is a
testament to this apparent overarching human need and concomitant search for guidance
from people and texts.
“Leila” began working as a masseuse in a New Age health organization run by a
physician. The doctor portrayed the business as a communal effort to live well, to teach
others to live well, for everyone involved to reach their highest personal goals. Under
the leader‟s tutelage, Leila became vegetarian, and exercised and meditated daily. Leila
later reflected that these new habits would have been wonderful to learn if then she
had been able to lead a free life. However, Leila was pressed to do hours of cooking,
cleaning, and recruiting for the group, so that instead of leaving the group to lead a full
life with better habits, she became a full-time slave, embroiled in permanent inequity
with the leader.
Leila had dreams of becoming a physical therapist. The leader consistently proclaimed
that if the members followed the tenets of the group, then “all good things would come
to them.” Leila was unsure about how to reach her career goals, but believed in her
guru. She chanted and meditated and followed his instructions with the hope that “it
would come to her.” Although the leader had proclaimed that under his guidance each
member would reach his or her full potential, the “guidance” was disabling. Instead of
being taught practical skills and wisdom, group members were involved in a process of
submission that kept them in a position of permanent inequity with the leader. Years
later in psychotherapy, Leila came to understand that she was in need of some concrete
guidance about the steps she needed to take to apply to a graduate program in physical
therapy.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 21
In Jean Baker Miller‟s (1976) short, seminal work on gender inequities, Toward a New
Psychology of Women, she discusses the differences between temporary inequity and
permanent inequity:
The “superior” party presumably has more of some ability or valuable quality,
which she\he is supposed to impart to the “lesser” person. While these abilities
vary with the particular relationship, they include emotional maturity, experience in
the world, physical skills, a body of knowledge, or the techniques for acquiring
certain kinds of knowledge. The superior person is supposed to engage with the
lesser in such a way as to bring the lesser member up to full parity that is, the
child is to be helped to become the adult. Such is the overall task of this
relationship. The lesser, the child, is to be given to, by the person who presumably
has more to give. Although the lesser party often also gives much to the superior,
the relationships are based in service to the lesser party. That is their raison d‟être.
(p. 4)
Former cult members often report that they were attracted to their group because they saw
the group and its leader(s) as teacher(s) who could help them transform their lives. At the
time they joined, they were not cognizant of the possibility of the inequity being permanent.
What Women Unconsciously Desire and What Cults Emanate
In the preceding section I elucidated what women might be consciously thinking about when
they are being seduced by a cultic group, and how groups deceptively advertise that they
can fulfill those wants. I also believe that women have unconscious, that is, unarticulated,
desires that cultic groups appear to be able to fulfill. Whereas women are often quite
conscious and adept at describing their wish for power, altruism, and mentorship, they are
less clear about equally compelling wishes for safety from gender inequality and for
recognition.
Return to the Safety of Latency
Recent books (Gilligan, 1982 Pipher, 1994) reveal that girls are confident, outgoing, and
perform well in school until they reach adolescence. During the latency period, roughly ages
7 to 11, girls are relatively happy, are un-self-conscious, and enjoy hobbies and sports.
Reports show that girls‟ math and science scores plummet in the junior high school years.
Self-esteem ratings on psychological tests fall as well. When girls reach puberty and become
more involved with coed groups, confusion, acting out, and chaos begin. Research during
the past 15 years indicates that in mixed-gender groups, boys are attended to more by
teachers, and girls acquiesce to talking about topics important to boys rather than to
themselves.
Given that these social inequities begin early on, elementary education harbors some
protection for girls. First, girls tend to socialize less with boys during the latency years than
they do in adolescence, so there is simply less opportunity to experience the inequity.
Second, the structure of early education is more concrete and less subjective than in later
school years. There is only one answer to the questions, for example, of how a particular
word is spelled, only one fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice answer to other questions.
There is a greater focus on acquired, concrete knowledge and “getting it right,” and winning
is not yet influenced by the nuances of social discourse or bravado, which can, for example,
have an impact on the grade a student might receive on a debate or an essay. There is a
certain kind of orderliness characteristic of both elementary education and latency-age
behavior that affords girls a significant measure of emotional safety from gender inequities.
Everyone is in a classroom, they have their own desk, they all go to lunch at the same time,
and so on. There is certainly greater adult supervision than in later years when adolescents