7 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018
Boundaries between the cult and the outer world. Isolation
is also a fundamental dynamic of cults. Without it, a cult leader
fears the outside world may give information to individuals he
wants to control that causes them to question his control, or it
may provide the lure of relationships that are more appealing
than those within the controlled environment. The outside
world may offer a beckoning freedom to members that opens
up possibilities of personal growth not permitted within the
controlled environment. It is no wonder, then, that former
cult members often describe their groups as us-versus-them
environments.
Rules
Previously, I stated that both dysfunctional families and cults
lack healthy boundaries between their members, and yet they
have strict ones between members and the external world. I have
observed that, similar to the damage inconsistent and arbitrary
boundaries can cause, rigid rules that dysfunctional families and
cults establish can leave individual members disconnected within
themselves from their own inner world.
Rules in families. Every organization has rules, and a family is no
exception. Rules determine what may be said and what may not
what may be felt and what may not what behavior is allowed and
what is not. In families, rules are often implicit, but that doesn’t
mean they do not exist and are not carefully observed. Families
encourage their members to conform to both stated and implied
rules from birth. Family rules may be beneficial, providing a moral
compass and security to family members. Important criteria of
effective rules are whether or not they encourage one’s growth
and health. However, in dysfunctional families, the rules may
also be enforced for the sake of control and without regard for a
person’s individuality.
As an example of the potential impact of such a rule on family
members, I have been working with a 35-year-old married
woman who, since the sudden death of her dad 10 years ago, has
been suffering chronic anxiety and regular outbursts of crying
that have overwhelmed her wherever she might be. That there
was a trauma was clear from the beginning, but the nature of
the trauma has become clearer to both of us as we have worked
through it.
This woman’s mother has always been psychologically frail, so
when her father died, my client was the one who had to give the
news to her grandparents of their son’s death. From the moment
she saw her father dead to the moment she informed her
grandparents, she couldn’t experience the grief of the event. She
didn’t allow herself to do so. She was complying with a family rule
that said “Emotions are dangerous. You cannot express them. You
cannot experience them.” She firmly believed that if she appeared
too distressed in giving the news to her grandparents, they
would not be able to stand the experience—they might even die.
So she complied with her family rule. She accomplished the task
of showing no emotions so well that she didn’t even experience
the feelings herself. She used the word petrified to describe how
she felt.
The rule my client was obeying had not encouraged her to be
healthy. She was facing her dead father, and yet she couldn’t
express any emotion because that is what she believed her family
required of her. She paid the cost of carrying out this rule for 10
years without therapy, she would have had to pay even longer.
In therapy she has been able to experience the emotional impact
of losing her father. By working to overcome her family rule, she
has enabled herself to experience the grief of the event for the
first time.
Unhealthy families often have rules related to talking about
feelings, especially uncomfortable feelings. For instance, a child
may grow up feeling that it is shameful to display weakness or
show confusion. These unspoken restrictions prevent family
members from talking about problems, or even recognizing their
existence, let alone taking steps to improve the situation. Robin
Norwood (1986) described this situation in her book The Women
Who Loved Too Much:
It is important to understand … that what all unhealthy
families have in common is their inability to discuss
their problems. It is the degree of secrecy—the inability
to talk about the problems—rather than their severity,
that defines both how dysfunctional a family becomes
and how severely its members are damaged. (pp. 6–7)
Rules in cults. In cults there are tight rules too—sometimes
explicit, but often conveyed through rewards and punishments—
about what you can express or not, about what you can feel
or not. And as in many dysfunctional families, these rules are
enforced as a way of controlling followers.
As Fleur Brown (2018) puts it in her blog Medium,
Another characteristic of cult life is the absence of
authentic self-expression. Cults have a powerful
unifying mono ‘cult-ure.’ In ours, the members were
magnetically friendly.” Ms. Brown refers to what might
be understood as a rule in the group she was in as
“Niceness is next to godliness.
In both dysfunctional families and cults, the definition of who
you are depends on whether you behave or feel according to
the rules. Because the definition of who you are comes from
the group and not from within you, you have to conform to the
group not only to be accepted by them, but also to be accepted
by yourself. Your identity is always at stake. The price you pay
may be to disconnect from your inner being, where the feelings
that are deemed bad by the group occur. To be accepted by
the group, you must alienate from yourself. Both members of a
dysfunctional family and members of a cult dissociate themselves
in order to cope with the contradiction between the information
that arrives from outside and from within. As a result, both family
members and members of cults develop a basic insecurity that
causes them to become very vulnerable.
Roles
Roles in families. We all have roles in our families, which are
often assigned according to our gender, age, and position. For
example, girls are often expected to be caregivers, and boys

Edited by Ana Rodriguez and Patrick Ryan
8 ICSA TODAY
are often expected to provide protection. The father’s role is to
provide, and the mother’s is to raise the children.
In Catalonia, the part of Spain I come from, this is still true,
especially in rural areas. The first male offspring is the heir and
will rule the family’s land. He will become a farmer. The second
offspring will go to the city, where he will become a merchant
and, if things go well, will open a shop. The third offspring will
go to college. The education that is given to each child takes into
account his future role.
The more fixed these roles are, the less freedom there will be for
the persons who adopt them. These roles may prevent family
members from developing their own personalities and natural
strengths. An intelligent, creative woman may be forced to
suppress those strengths and stay home with her children while
her husband, who may be more of a caregiver, is forced against
his nature to run a business. Both will be recognized by other
family members only when they play their roles. Accordingly,
they may lose their skills to function in other roles.
Roles in cults. As in dysfunctional families, members’ behavior
and even thinking in cults is highly likely to become stereotyped,
developed not in accordance with the person’s natural skills and
character, but in service to an outside source of control. We who
work with former members of cultic groups often hear about
careers aborted because they did not serve the purpose of the
group. Artists either are compelled to give up their art, or use it
exclusively to promote the leaders’ purposes. Mothers abandon
their children to minders who abuse or neglect them. Patty
Hearst was changed from a socially conscious young woman into
a terrorist. These are extreme examples of the kind of change
that takes place in people whose names we never hear, in more
mundane but no less tragic ways.
Tension Among Forces: Healthy and Unhealthy Responses
In a functional family or organization, the group is influencing
an individual’s behavior, but an individual’s behavior is also
influencing the group, which means that individuality also plays
a role in shaping the group. This tension of forces drives both
the group and the individuals in it to grow. The tension arises
from individual differences trying to unfold as much as from
the dynamics of a group or controlling leaders trying to force
members to conform.
Thus, in a healthy family, a child with musical talent may be
permitted to pursue that passion, even if the parents’ preference
was that the child become a doctor, engineer, or farmer. Parents
respect their child’s identity as it really is, not as they wish it were.
They do not force their child into a role that is unnatural for the
child. Nevertheless, in the process of the child and the parents
trying to assert their initially different views, some degree of
tension will arise. Dysfunctional families are that way to a great
extent because they are not able to tolerate this tension, so they
suppress it.
In a healthy family, as in a healthy group, the identity of the
individual is honored, even when it may conflict with the needs
or desires of the group. Sometimes individuals may compromise
because they care for the collective. Such compromises, however,
emerge from within the individuals involved and are not imposed
from without.
In a dysfunctional family or group, the force of the group
annihilates the separateness of the individuals in it. The people
who hold the power in the family or the group decide what is
good for the individuals in the group, ignoring that it might be
bad for the individuals who make it up.
Dysfunctional Outcomes
To summarize, the potential dysfunctional outcomes presented in
this paper, when left unresolved, include
• Fusion or disconnection. Persons who cannot find
freedom within a family may feel that the only way
to be free is to cut all ties, that the only alternative to
being enmeshed is disconnection. Often, they carry this
behavior into other life relationships these individuals
will relate to people in other parts of their lives either by
fusing with or by completely disconnecting themselves
from others.
• Controlling or being controlled. Those who leave an
enmeshed family or a cult may relate to others in ways
that reflect the control dynamic to which they are
accustomed:
o “I will try to control you. I want to know what
you are doing at any given moment, what
you are thinking about, what your problems
are. I need for you to be dependent upon
me.” Interestingly, in this type of relationship,
the person exerting control is actually more
needy than the person being controlled.
This is the dynamic of the cultic leader, who
depends upon controlling his followers to
support his grandiose sense of himself.
o “I will [paradoxically] require you to control
me” (this is the complementary position of
the previous example): “I will allow you to
know everything about me. I will let you know
constantly about my actions. I will share with
you all my problems and worries and will let
you solve them.” People who were taught by
their family that being controlled was the
condition for being accepted and loved may
repeat that behavior as adults in social life
and in romantic relationships. Likewise in
cults, members are made to believe that the
leader’s control over every aspect of their lives
demonstrates his love for them.
• Rebellion. Similarly, those who leave an enmeshed
family or a cult through rebellion may relate to others in
ways that reflect this need to rebel:
o “I will reject you through constant criticism and
disdain. I will defensively attack you because I
expect you to try to control me.”