24 ICSA TODAY 2523 VOLUME 10 |ISSUE 3 |2019 10 20
back. There was never a thought of medical evaluation. Within a
few weeks, young Westover’s back stopped hurting, and she could
again walk normally. Only when an older brother suffered a serious
motorcycle accident did the family seek medical care. Even her
father’s extensive third-degree burns were treated at home his
recovery from near death was interpreted as a divine event.
As her older brother became increasingly abusive, Westover
routinely barricaded her bedroom door in self-protection because
no one would listen to her concerns. Another brother’s collection
of CDs and books piqued her curiosity. After that brother moved
away to attend university, he encouraged her to subvert their
father’s wishes with visits to the library. At the library, Westover
taught herself basic mathematics, history, grammar, and enough
geography and government to pass the American College Testing
exam, earning admission to Brigham Young University (BYU).
Even though BYU is a Mormon university, Westover had to
overcome intense culture shock to assimilate. Roommates taught
her basic hygiene, such as hand washing after using the toilet.
A professor reprimanded her in class for being disrespectful
when she openly asked the meaning of Holocaust, which in turn
prompted her to scurry to the library to research the unknown
word. Alone in the library, she learned the Nazi history of WWII,
marveling simultaneously at man’s capacity for evil and at the
severe limitations of her upbringing.
Most people who were raised in cults would identify with
Westover’s anxiety-laden attempts to integrate into the outside
world, which included clothing faux pas, hygiene disasters,
complete ignorance of study skills, and inability to read social
cues. Westover skillfully describes her emotional volatility as a
young woman trying to breach the growing divide between her
expanding inner and outer worlds and her family. She struggled
without funds to cope with a painful dental infection, along with
her profound fear of mainstream medicine. She tried to follow the
university curriculum while compensating for foundational gaps in
her education, eventually succumbing to apparent depression and
months spent binge-watching television instead of studying.
As she pulled out of her depression, one professor, recognizing
Tara’s unusual intelligence, recommended her for a special
program at Oxford University. After overcoming challenges
to obtain a passport because her parents had not filed for a
birth certificate when she was born, at Oxford she realized the
enormous expanse of world history. Later, in graduate school
at Harvard, she began an academic study of Mormonism in
comparison to other contemporary social movements of America’s
westward expansion, rather than simply studying Mormon
philosophy as the Word of God. Despite her parents’ efforts to lure
her back to the fold, Westover was unable to return to their limited
worldview. She was heartbroken when her immediate family
eventually rejected her. Other distant relatives embraced her, and
a few siblings remained in contact.
Despite many obviously traumatic events and losses, Westover
writes without angst or reproach. She does not sit in judgment
upon her family. From reading psychology texts, she considers
that her father may suffer from untreated bipolar disorder. Her
commitment to truth includes footnotes, which credit other
relatives’ differing recollections of key events.
Educated illustrates the painful solitude inherent when a person
from cult-based origins becomes a critically thinking individual
because that critical thinking almost inevitably forces one to
reevaluate and reject the beliefs of one’s family and friends. As
a reader, I sense Westover’s profound loss of the family that she
never intended to lose, a feeling common to many who were
raised in cultic groups. This memoir does not analyze religion,
abuse, or sexism. It does, however, illustrate how one child
believed in her parents’ good intentions and it depicts the
confusion of one who lived beneath a cloud of traumatizing
narcissism or mental illness. Tara Westover successfully portrays
some of the most difficult-to-express aspects of growing up in a
separate world from ordinary people, and then trying to become
part of the confusing ordinary world. Her book is both moving
and informative, and extremely courageous. I highly recommend
this vivid account of the effect an extreme environment has on
psychological development it is an important contribution to the
cultic-studies field. n
I Am Revealed: Behind the
Ashram Door
By Robin Barbosa
Full Court Press (Englewood Cliffs, NJ). 2016, ISBN-10: 1938812700
ISBN-13: 978-1938812705 (paperback). $18.41 (Amazon.com). 298
pages.
Reviewed by Gina Catena
Robin Barbosa shares memories of 3 years she spent with a cultic
group during the 1970s, as told decades later during a family
Thanksgiving conversation. This ambitious story-within-a-story
attempts both to tell a cult story and provide simultaneous
education about cults.
The author’s cult experience began in 1975 after she completed
college when, like millions of her generation, she began an
adventurous drive across the USA in a Volkswagen van. After
several weeks of uncomfortable van life, she found herself 3,000
miles from home enjoying a free meal at a WORKS center. By 1976,
Barbosa had become a WORKS missionary and fundraiser, and
would eventually become one of many mistresses to the group’s
local leader.
WORKS is the pseudonym that Barbosa chose, rather than naming
her actual group, World Organization for Righteous King Services,
to avoid litigation from the group. Whether the group was, in
reality, the Unification Church, International Society of Krishna
Consciousness, or another group, the dynamics would be similar
for any such cultic group with satellite centers.
When she was a devotee, Barbosa believed that subservience
would bring spiritual advancement. With other women, she slept
on hard floors. Money was not important for a devotee who
arose daily at 4 a.m. for prayer, chores, and public solicitation of
donations and recruits. Dressed in modest robes and scarves,
underfed devotees caravanned to college campuses, airports, or
crowded stadiums to solicit money and dodge law enforcement.
Ultimate directives originated from an overseas spiritual leader
called “Sir Supreme” or “King” and were interpreted by her local
leader. The author details many layers of competition, such as
that between satellite centers, in-group competition between
leaders, and that between several women who believed they
were simultaneously married to their local leader. She tells
her daughters how, when she was a True Believer, she justified
illegalities and her own single arrest, to which one daughter
interjects from Ecclesiastes 5:10, “Whoever loves money, never has
money enough.”
By 1979, the author’s parents hired a professional deprogrammer.
The King Center had previously warned followers to be on
guard from deprogrammers. During the first 4 days locked in a
hotel room with her parents and the deprogrammer, the author
dutifully distracted herself from the planned reeducation with
quiet recitation to herself of King phrases. By the fourth and fifth
days, she describes that doubts seeped through and her resolve
diminished. After 5 days, the deprogramming succeeded. The
author then spent 3 months living in a rehabilitation center for cult
recovery, where she shared common experiences with others who
had left a variety of groups. She eventually returned to her family
and integrated into mainstream life.
Years later, as this narrative unfolds in her kitchen, Barbosa
claims to have purged lingering effects from her long-ago cult
involvement. She expresses gratitude for her parents’ investment
of time and about $20,000 for the deprogramming, which she
remembers as heart-wrenching for all. Perhaps this explains the
narrative’s staging as a Thanksgiving conversation.
At times, this reader found it difficult to follow a narrative that
jumps from long-ago ashram conversation to biblical commentary,
confusing the former cult’s spiritual dogma with the author’s
current religious exclamations. Once I grasped the author’s current
spiritual perspective, I better understood the sometimes-awkward
transitions between simultaneous narratives.
From her experience, the author reflects that cult members are
spiritually hungry, seeking to fill a void and find a life purpose.
However, she does not address other voids such as social isolation
or identity confusion, which can increase one’s susceptibility to
coercion.
The author concludes by sharing her current spiritual passions
through a dream interpretation in which she rejoices in the Holy
Spirit to free her from cult shackles, summarizing her own faith in
God as personified in Jesus’s unconditional spiritual sustenance. A
closing epilogue quotes from Psalms and Proverbs, praising loved
ones and “God as Yehovah, El Shaddai, Sar Shalom, and Jesus.” Her
final line: “It would be remiss of me not to ask you to ask God for
His living water and see if he does not put His Spirit into you as the
GREAT I AM revealed! His abundant love I cannot deny” (p. 281).
Writing such a memoir is both honorable and difficult. Ms. Barbosa
deserves heartfelt recognition for the effort to share her past, so
that others may better understand cult dynamics and recovery.
While expressing gratitude for her parents’ investment in a costly
deprogramming and recovery, the author does not provide
resources for others to obtain such help. She does not offer
suggestions for those who lack the good fortune of an expensive
intervention, other than to invite God’s grace.
Readers who seek Christian interpretations of cult involvement
and recovery may find reassurance in Robin Barbosa’s I Am
Revealed, Behind the Ashram Door. Others might be turned off by
the author’s strong Judeo-Christian proselytizing in the absence of
concrete support for cult recovery. n
About the Reviewer
Gina Catena, MS, was raised in the
Transcendental Meditation (TM) group as an early
“child of the Age of Enlightenment.” She married
and was a parent in the group until the age of 30.
After 22 years of childhood and young adulthood
enmeshed in the TM culture, Ms. Catena left the
group with three children and obtained an education and career
while integrating into mainstream culture. She lives with ongoing
cult influence through three generations of her immediate family.
She contributed to Child of the Cult by Nori Muster and Combating
Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan and has written articles, given
talks, and facilitated workshops for those raised in cultic groups.
Ms. Catena is also working on several projects about family
influence in cults. She obtained a Master of Science (MS) degree
from the University of California at San Francisco, a Bachelor of Arts
(BA) in Art History, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Nursing, with
a minor in psychology. She is now a certified nurse-midwife (CNM)
and nurse practitioner (NP) in the San Francisco Bay Area. n
This ambitious story-
within-a-story attempts both
to tell a cult story and provide
simultaneous education
about cults.
Tara Westover successfully
portrays some of the most
difficult-to-express aspects of
growing up in a separate world
from ordinary people…
back. There was never a thought of medical evaluation. Within a
few weeks, young Westover’s back stopped hurting, and she could
again walk normally. Only when an older brother suffered a serious
motorcycle accident did the family seek medical care. Even her
father’s extensive third-degree burns were treated at home his
recovery from near death was interpreted as a divine event.
As her older brother became increasingly abusive, Westover
routinely barricaded her bedroom door in self-protection because
no one would listen to her concerns. Another brother’s collection
of CDs and books piqued her curiosity. After that brother moved
away to attend university, he encouraged her to subvert their
father’s wishes with visits to the library. At the library, Westover
taught herself basic mathematics, history, grammar, and enough
geography and government to pass the American College Testing
exam, earning admission to Brigham Young University (BYU).
Even though BYU is a Mormon university, Westover had to
overcome intense culture shock to assimilate. Roommates taught
her basic hygiene, such as hand washing after using the toilet.
A professor reprimanded her in class for being disrespectful
when she openly asked the meaning of Holocaust, which in turn
prompted her to scurry to the library to research the unknown
word. Alone in the library, she learned the Nazi history of WWII,
marveling simultaneously at man’s capacity for evil and at the
severe limitations of her upbringing.
Most people who were raised in cults would identify with
Westover’s anxiety-laden attempts to integrate into the outside
world, which included clothing faux pas, hygiene disasters,
complete ignorance of study skills, and inability to read social
cues. Westover skillfully describes her emotional volatility as a
young woman trying to breach the growing divide between her
expanding inner and outer worlds and her family. She struggled
without funds to cope with a painful dental infection, along with
her profound fear of mainstream medicine. She tried to follow the
university curriculum while compensating for foundational gaps in
her education, eventually succumbing to apparent depression and
months spent binge-watching television instead of studying.
As she pulled out of her depression, one professor, recognizing
Tara’s unusual intelligence, recommended her for a special
program at Oxford University. After overcoming challenges
to obtain a passport because her parents had not filed for a
birth certificate when she was born, at Oxford she realized the
enormous expanse of world history. Later, in graduate school
at Harvard, she began an academic study of Mormonism in
comparison to other contemporary social movements of America’s
westward expansion, rather than simply studying Mormon
philosophy as the Word of God. Despite her parents’ efforts to lure
her back to the fold, Westover was unable to return to their limited
worldview. She was heartbroken when her immediate family
eventually rejected her. Other distant relatives embraced her, and
a few siblings remained in contact.
Despite many obviously traumatic events and losses, Westover
writes without angst or reproach. She does not sit in judgment
upon her family. From reading psychology texts, she considers
that her father may suffer from untreated bipolar disorder. Her
commitment to truth includes footnotes, which credit other
relatives’ differing recollections of key events.
Educated illustrates the painful solitude inherent when a person
from cult-based origins becomes a critically thinking individual
because that critical thinking almost inevitably forces one to
reevaluate and reject the beliefs of one’s family and friends. As
a reader, I sense Westover’s profound loss of the family that she
never intended to lose, a feeling common to many who were
raised in cultic groups. This memoir does not analyze religion,
abuse, or sexism. It does, however, illustrate how one child
believed in her parents’ good intentions and it depicts the
confusion of one who lived beneath a cloud of traumatizing
narcissism or mental illness. Tara Westover successfully portrays
some of the most difficult-to-express aspects of growing up in a
separate world from ordinary people, and then trying to become
part of the confusing ordinary world. Her book is both moving
and informative, and extremely courageous. I highly recommend
this vivid account of the effect an extreme environment has on
psychological development it is an important contribution to the
cultic-studies field. n
I Am Revealed: Behind the
Ashram Door
By Robin Barbosa
Full Court Press (Englewood Cliffs, NJ). 2016, ISBN-10: 1938812700
ISBN-13: 978-1938812705 (paperback). $18.41 (Amazon.com). 298
pages.
Reviewed by Gina Catena
Robin Barbosa shares memories of 3 years she spent with a cultic
group during the 1970s, as told decades later during a family
Thanksgiving conversation. This ambitious story-within-a-story
attempts both to tell a cult story and provide simultaneous
education about cults.
The author’s cult experience began in 1975 after she completed
college when, like millions of her generation, she began an
adventurous drive across the USA in a Volkswagen van. After
several weeks of uncomfortable van life, she found herself 3,000
miles from home enjoying a free meal at a WORKS center. By 1976,
Barbosa had become a WORKS missionary and fundraiser, and
would eventually become one of many mistresses to the group’s
local leader.
WORKS is the pseudonym that Barbosa chose, rather than naming
her actual group, World Organization for Righteous King Services,
to avoid litigation from the group. Whether the group was, in
reality, the Unification Church, International Society of Krishna
Consciousness, or another group, the dynamics would be similar
for any such cultic group with satellite centers.
When she was a devotee, Barbosa believed that subservience
would bring spiritual advancement. With other women, she slept
on hard floors. Money was not important for a devotee who
arose daily at 4 a.m. for prayer, chores, and public solicitation of
donations and recruits. Dressed in modest robes and scarves,
underfed devotees caravanned to college campuses, airports, or
crowded stadiums to solicit money and dodge law enforcement.
Ultimate directives originated from an overseas spiritual leader
called “Sir Supreme” or “King” and were interpreted by her local
leader. The author details many layers of competition, such as
that between satellite centers, in-group competition between
leaders, and that between several women who believed they
were simultaneously married to their local leader. She tells
her daughters how, when she was a True Believer, she justified
illegalities and her own single arrest, to which one daughter
interjects from Ecclesiastes 5:10, “Whoever loves money, never has
money enough.”
By 1979, the author’s parents hired a professional deprogrammer.
The King Center had previously warned followers to be on
guard from deprogrammers. During the first 4 days locked in a
hotel room with her parents and the deprogrammer, the author
dutifully distracted herself from the planned reeducation with
quiet recitation to herself of King phrases. By the fourth and fifth
days, she describes that doubts seeped through and her resolve
diminished. After 5 days, the deprogramming succeeded. The
author then spent 3 months living in a rehabilitation center for cult
recovery, where she shared common experiences with others who
had left a variety of groups. She eventually returned to her family
and integrated into mainstream life.
Years later, as this narrative unfolds in her kitchen, Barbosa
claims to have purged lingering effects from her long-ago cult
involvement. She expresses gratitude for her parents’ investment
of time and about $20,000 for the deprogramming, which she
remembers as heart-wrenching for all. Perhaps this explains the
narrative’s staging as a Thanksgiving conversation.
At times, this reader found it difficult to follow a narrative that
jumps from long-ago ashram conversation to biblical commentary,
confusing the former cult’s spiritual dogma with the author’s
current religious exclamations. Once I grasped the author’s current
spiritual perspective, I better understood the sometimes-awkward
transitions between simultaneous narratives.
From her experience, the author reflects that cult members are
spiritually hungry, seeking to fill a void and find a life purpose.
However, she does not address other voids such as social isolation
or identity confusion, which can increase one’s susceptibility to
coercion.
The author concludes by sharing her current spiritual passions
through a dream interpretation in which she rejoices in the Holy
Spirit to free her from cult shackles, summarizing her own faith in
God as personified in Jesus’s unconditional spiritual sustenance. A
closing epilogue quotes from Psalms and Proverbs, praising loved
ones and “God as Yehovah, El Shaddai, Sar Shalom, and Jesus.” Her
final line: “It would be remiss of me not to ask you to ask God for
His living water and see if he does not put His Spirit into you as the
GREAT I AM revealed! His abundant love I cannot deny” (p. 281).
Writing such a memoir is both honorable and difficult. Ms. Barbosa
deserves heartfelt recognition for the effort to share her past, so
that others may better understand cult dynamics and recovery.
While expressing gratitude for her parents’ investment in a costly
deprogramming and recovery, the author does not provide
resources for others to obtain such help. She does not offer
suggestions for those who lack the good fortune of an expensive
intervention, other than to invite God’s grace.
Readers who seek Christian interpretations of cult involvement
and recovery may find reassurance in Robin Barbosa’s I Am
Revealed, Behind the Ashram Door. Others might be turned off by
the author’s strong Judeo-Christian proselytizing in the absence of
concrete support for cult recovery. n
About the Reviewer
Gina Catena, MS, was raised in the
Transcendental Meditation (TM) group as an early
“child of the Age of Enlightenment.” She married
and was a parent in the group until the age of 30.
After 22 years of childhood and young adulthood
enmeshed in the TM culture, Ms. Catena left the
group with three children and obtained an education and career
while integrating into mainstream culture. She lives with ongoing
cult influence through three generations of her immediate family.
She contributed to Child of the Cult by Nori Muster and Combating
Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan and has written articles, given
talks, and facilitated workshops for those raised in cultic groups.
Ms. Catena is also working on several projects about family
influence in cults. She obtained a Master of Science (MS) degree
from the University of California at San Francisco, a Bachelor of Arts
(BA) in Art History, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Nursing, with
a minor in psychology. She is now a certified nurse-midwife (CNM)
and nurse practitioner (NP) in the San Francisco Bay Area. n
This ambitious story-
within-a-story attempts both
to tell a cult story and provide
simultaneous education
about cults.
Tara Westover successfully
portrays some of the most
difficult-to-express aspects of
growing up in a separate world
from ordinary people…
