Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 46
outside world, even if we happened to have jobs there. Since most media was sensational
and concentrated on the glorification of negativity, we believed that avoiding these heavy,
dark influences would further our work on ourselves, again unwittingly isolating ourselves
from forces that might help us regain the powers of independent thought and judgment we
needed to recognize our situation. The grain of truth in these limitations (e.g., the media is
a wasteland) helped us to continue to believe in their legitimacy.
Total Surrender, or Breaking the Personality
Discovering how they were finally “broken” may be the most difficult piece of the puzzle for
former members of closed groups who are attempting to reconstruct their lives. According
to Herman‟s studies, in the final stages of establishing covert control, the perpetrator has
the victims violate the codes of conduct by which they formerly defined themselves. In so
doing, he removes the last vestiges of individual conscience. This dissolves the victims‟
sense of themselves and disrupts their identity, thus offering the perpetrator a malleable
soul. In a spiritual community, undergoing this process may appear as a positive step. We
have the Christian and Buddhist contemplative tradition that supports breaking up the old
identity so that direct contact with the Divine, the Truth, or Being can be established
without the intervening static of ego, vanity, or personality. When the leader takes on the
role of the divine, however, he uses his followers for his own purposes, binding them to
him, and does not work as a helper in releasing them to their higher purposes. This
breaking of the personality, which may be regarded as the seed of individual identity, is the
ultimate betrayal, the spiritual rape. We gave up our own will through exercises and tasks,
which we thought would help us advance spiritually and which left us open and vulnerable.
The fox captures the newborn rabbits in their nest, just as the leader lassoed our newborn
selves for his own purposes. Instead of allowing Divine guidance to enter these tender
openings, he became the final arbiter of right and wrong, believing himself to be the Divine
guide.
To accomplish this personality break and final binding, he had us do things we would never
do. The circumstances of these breaks varied depending on the person. For one, it was
being told to refrain from sex for another, to have sex, perhaps with someone married,
perhaps with someone not too attractive. For yet another, it might be putting on a business
suit and going to an office for another, working at a menial job in one of the group-owned
businesses, giving up all the trappings of materialistic life. One woman would be advised to
have an abortion another to have children. The gay man was prevented from having
relations with men the lesbian woman might be encouraged to marry a man. The bohemian
should become a business person the professional, a ditch digger. Again, all these
inversions of natural tendencies--the subjective discomfort and sense of wrongness about
these changes --could be understood as “work on oneself.” However, how were they
actually used? Instead of liberating an individual, these givings over of our hard-won
identities (many of us were in our twenties in the early days) bound us, and kept us
dependent on the person who directed us to take these actions against ourselves.
Herman suggests that commonly one is encouraged to betray primary relationships, to
sacrifice others, as part of the breaking process. On a more communal scale, rejection of
one‟s former family and friends was the first stage of this process. Later, in the most
conspicuous examples of this form of control, we were expected to inform on our friends if
any should violate an exercise or, especially, a task. He might then have you, the informer,
be the one to tell your friend that she must leave the group. These were cruel calls to make
because of the shared belief about the dire consequences of losing the community (the fate
worse than death).
We became inured to the pain we caused each other as empathic capacity shriveled.
Individual movements of conscience that survived this breaking apart of personal identity

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 47
were regarded as remnants of a contemptible quality to conquer in oneself, leftover from
our upbringing. Thus we learned to ignore our best wisdom, our inner guidance. Conscience
was to be replaced by a sort of moral relativism, that is, good and evil were relative and
the more developed a being (read the leader), the fewer constraints or “laws” bound him.
Again we are downplaying incidents that might appear sensational to try to underline how
subtle even this final stage of captivity can be. Years can go by, even for those of us who
lived outside the community retreat or communal house, before we realize we are living
someone else‟s life. A quiet despair often sets in. (More than one advanced follower was
taking anti-depressants prescribed by one of the many faithful group member psychiatrists.)
Interestingly, the leader accounted for despair, which began to be prevalent in his long-
term members, by describing it as a necessary stage for the advanced aspirant to endure, a
sign of the final stages of awakening. Because there is no physical violence, no blatant
tortures, even the most broken personality can carry on as though nothing has happened.
Some even become more self-confident through a deepened dependency on the leader,
mistaking the power we have given him for our own.
This can be a critical time for the leader. If the despair and apathy of identity diffusion set in
too deeply, the captive will no longer be as useful to the perpetrator. He must tread lightly
through the dismantling, leaving enough self-sense for the person to carry on as treasurer,
center director, business manager, or chef. Yet, too much self-sense means independent
thought survives, and the person may leave. Ah, the trials and tribulations of guruship.
From our experience, the leader mercilessly took advantage of these periods of personality
breaks to exploit us to his advantage until we each, in our own way, burned out. For,
eventually such a broken personality finds it difficult to maintain the heavy load of
responsibility expected of longer term members. You drift away from leadership even
though you stay in the group. Hence, the group always needs new recruits to continue the
work, even if the long-time members don‟t actually leave.
The combination of fear induction, extensive control, and the dismantling of personality
created an imperceptible, crazy-making atmosphere. We were locked into a “battered
follower” syndrome, psychologically beaten down, yet unable to leave. The more he would
charmingly hurt, humiliate, and threaten us with abandonment in the name of helping us,
the more we would salve the wounds with increased loyalty, justification of his behavior,
and finding fault with ourselves. In such a situation, we drift further and further from the
voice of our own hearts. For women, this voice has a unique sound we‟ve tried to explore to
better recognize it when it speaks to us.
How Sexism Serves High-Demand Groups
We know that women, trained in passivity and silence, are accustomed to being ignored and
discounted, starting in elementary school when the teacher routinely, inadvertently calls on
John and Harry and overlooks Sally‟s hand (Sadker &Sadker, 1994). The now well-
documented, quiet socialization of women to second-class citizenship makes us especially
vulnerable to the dynamics of dominance and submission at the base of covert control.
Trained to be selfless and caring for others, women were perfect recruits for “second” and
“third” lines of work --work for others and for the school, the work that needed to be done
to keep the organization going. Women were more willing to work for little or nothing,
rewarded by the leader‟s attention, or some well-timed gift of jewelry, a book, or an airline
ticket. Is there a doubt that our education and socialization as women in this culture made
us more susceptible to the courtship (“This must be Prince Charming”), loss of autonomy
(surrender to a male god), and self-sacrifice associated with the group? On top of this, our
community was inherently sexist. Through his actions and teaching, it was clear that the
leader believed in the superiority of the men. He said men were a higher order than women,
that women were to men as children are to women. He explained away the strong women