VOLUME 5 |NUMBER 2 |2014 9
and old, may not do so. This inconsistency
requires the leave-taker to choose with
care the audiences he speaks his story to. It
means he needs to use his critical
thinking to discriminate whom he talks to
about what so that whatever injuries
remain after his cult experience don’t
capsize his efforts to discover a postcult
identity.
Once a person recognizes that his identity
is not static, the next step is to realize that
discovering identity is quite different from
adopting identity. It is usually the case that
the cognitive dissonance a person has
experienced while inside a cult has been
habitually reduced by his adopting the
identity that supports the cult’s objectives
and ideology. Once outside the cult,
however, the risk associated with
discovering identity is usually
quite intimidating because it
requires the person to “hang in
there” in the face of new
dissonance—what is life about
now? Instead of trying to
dissipate that dissonance by
immediately adopting someone
else’s perspective, the storyteller
must be encouraged to hold his
discomfort at bay for a time to
allow for opportunities to explore
alternative stories. He has to trust
that if he is listened to well
enough, he can find stories
whose meanings match his lived
experience. Doing so enables him
to recapture his capacity for
discovering identity, and for
reauthoring his life.
If this process seems too tall a
task for someone who has just
left an environment where beliefs
and meaning are tightly
controlled and monitored, it’s
important to remember that every person
engages in the process of discovering
identity early in his life: even people born
into cults. As very young children we are
all faced with the challenge of separating
from our parents and claiming our identity.
Even if that process was a clumsy,
incomplete, or traumatic one for a cult
survivor, it was nonetheless a process that
he has engaged in before. A skilled listener
will, through questions that deconstruct a
person’s problem-saturated narratives and
resurface invisible story lines, support that
person to find stories where he may have
noticed what his natural gifts are, or when
he felt passionate conviction about
something, or when he contradicted
scripts others had for him and followed his
own heart. We all have these sorts of
stories. If the leave-taker’s parents/
caregivers were skilled in keeping a
respectful contact with him during his first
efforts at identity formation,11 he will be
more likely to take the risks necessary to
reauthor his life narratives once he leaves a
cult.
Once the leave-taker embraces the task of
reauthoring, his quest to reclaim invisible
life narratives will eventually take him to
questions about what his life means now,
and where he belongs now. He needs to
put himself in the position of reauthoring
his stories in a way that is more aligned
with his hopes, aspirations, and dreams.
That alignment is made easier if he
recognizes that he should NOT engage in
an effort to replace the dominant stories
he believed in during his years in the cult.
He should instead simply give those
dominant stories less space, focusing
instead on bringing forward neglected
story lines. He should seek ways to allow
the “plot to thicken” in these discovered
new stories, a task made much easier
when the stories are told to supportive
audiences capable of exploring those
landscapes with him.
Giving less space to dominant story lines
from one’s cult history, however, is not
simply a matter of ignoring it and jumping
elsewhere. The task is more challenging
than that: It is a task that requires a person
to first deconstruct his problem-saturated
narratives. This is where a therapist is
particularly helpful. A therapist capable of
listening to the stories of a former cult
member in a nonmanipulative way
provides “scaffolding” between the critical
but neglected events in a person’s life via
the questions he asks: questions that bit
by bit allow a person to comprehend the
decisions he made that led to his cult
involvement, how he managed his life
while there, and his decision to leave.
Facing these matters with assistance is
what allows him to deconstruct those
events, which in turn creates the necessary
space to then focus on alternative stories if
he wishes to do so. Aligning with
alternative stories that can be understood
outside of the perspective of dominant
narratives that have lodged themselves in
a person’s psyche requires ongoing effort,
and those dominant narratives may
continue to convince him for some time
that there’s only one way to see what has
happened.
Skillful deconstruction of cult
experience brings a person back to
his possibilities. How does it do
that? It reveals, eventually,
whatever it was that a person was
seeking when he joined a cult in
the first place. His initial
involvement probably had some
connection to a curious side of his
nature: an awareness about the
sort of life he wanted to live, and
the initiative he was taking to
pursue that life. If his postcult
conversations can lead a former
cult member to recognizing that
initiative, he is likely to recall more
and more stories of times when he
operated outside of problem-
saturated narratives. This can be a
powerful impetus to him in
reclaiming meaning and becoming
the primary author of the chapters
of his life yet to come.
That awareness will sometimes include a
recognition that the dominant cultural
narratives he was involved in during his
precult life (family, school, community) did
not provide the opportunities he was seeking
to fully claim his identity and pursue the life
he wanted. If a person cannot find ways to
pursue what’s most important to him in
the circumstances in which he finds
himself, it makes sense he will consider the
idea of joining a spiritual or religious
organization, cultic or mainstream. Maybe
he’ll find his answers there. The media, a
former cult member’s family, and his
friendship circle can sometimes dismiss a
person’s motivations for joining that
organization in the first place. In doing so,
they ignore the fact that doing so usually
involves a healthy impulse toward self-
Skillful
deconstruction
of cult
experience
brings a person
back to his
possibilities.
and old, may not do so. This inconsistency
requires the leave-taker to choose with
care the audiences he speaks his story to. It
means he needs to use his critical
thinking to discriminate whom he talks to
about what so that whatever injuries
remain after his cult experience don’t
capsize his efforts to discover a postcult
identity.
Once a person recognizes that his identity
is not static, the next step is to realize that
discovering identity is quite different from
adopting identity. It is usually the case that
the cognitive dissonance a person has
experienced while inside a cult has been
habitually reduced by his adopting the
identity that supports the cult’s objectives
and ideology. Once outside the cult,
however, the risk associated with
discovering identity is usually
quite intimidating because it
requires the person to “hang in
there” in the face of new
dissonance—what is life about
now? Instead of trying to
dissipate that dissonance by
immediately adopting someone
else’s perspective, the storyteller
must be encouraged to hold his
discomfort at bay for a time to
allow for opportunities to explore
alternative stories. He has to trust
that if he is listened to well
enough, he can find stories
whose meanings match his lived
experience. Doing so enables him
to recapture his capacity for
discovering identity, and for
reauthoring his life.
If this process seems too tall a
task for someone who has just
left an environment where beliefs
and meaning are tightly
controlled and monitored, it’s
important to remember that every person
engages in the process of discovering
identity early in his life: even people born
into cults. As very young children we are
all faced with the challenge of separating
from our parents and claiming our identity.
Even if that process was a clumsy,
incomplete, or traumatic one for a cult
survivor, it was nonetheless a process that
he has engaged in before. A skilled listener
will, through questions that deconstruct a
person’s problem-saturated narratives and
resurface invisible story lines, support that
person to find stories where he may have
noticed what his natural gifts are, or when
he felt passionate conviction about
something, or when he contradicted
scripts others had for him and followed his
own heart. We all have these sorts of
stories. If the leave-taker’s parents/
caregivers were skilled in keeping a
respectful contact with him during his first
efforts at identity formation,11 he will be
more likely to take the risks necessary to
reauthor his life narratives once he leaves a
cult.
Once the leave-taker embraces the task of
reauthoring, his quest to reclaim invisible
life narratives will eventually take him to
questions about what his life means now,
and where he belongs now. He needs to
put himself in the position of reauthoring
his stories in a way that is more aligned
with his hopes, aspirations, and dreams.
That alignment is made easier if he
recognizes that he should NOT engage in
an effort to replace the dominant stories
he believed in during his years in the cult.
He should instead simply give those
dominant stories less space, focusing
instead on bringing forward neglected
story lines. He should seek ways to allow
the “plot to thicken” in these discovered
new stories, a task made much easier
when the stories are told to supportive
audiences capable of exploring those
landscapes with him.
Giving less space to dominant story lines
from one’s cult history, however, is not
simply a matter of ignoring it and jumping
elsewhere. The task is more challenging
than that: It is a task that requires a person
to first deconstruct his problem-saturated
narratives. This is where a therapist is
particularly helpful. A therapist capable of
listening to the stories of a former cult
member in a nonmanipulative way
provides “scaffolding” between the critical
but neglected events in a person’s life via
the questions he asks: questions that bit
by bit allow a person to comprehend the
decisions he made that led to his cult
involvement, how he managed his life
while there, and his decision to leave.
Facing these matters with assistance is
what allows him to deconstruct those
events, which in turn creates the necessary
space to then focus on alternative stories if
he wishes to do so. Aligning with
alternative stories that can be understood
outside of the perspective of dominant
narratives that have lodged themselves in
a person’s psyche requires ongoing effort,
and those dominant narratives may
continue to convince him for some time
that there’s only one way to see what has
happened.
Skillful deconstruction of cult
experience brings a person back to
his possibilities. How does it do
that? It reveals, eventually,
whatever it was that a person was
seeking when he joined a cult in
the first place. His initial
involvement probably had some
connection to a curious side of his
nature: an awareness about the
sort of life he wanted to live, and
the initiative he was taking to
pursue that life. If his postcult
conversations can lead a former
cult member to recognizing that
initiative, he is likely to recall more
and more stories of times when he
operated outside of problem-
saturated narratives. This can be a
powerful impetus to him in
reclaiming meaning and becoming
the primary author of the chapters
of his life yet to come.
That awareness will sometimes include a
recognition that the dominant cultural
narratives he was involved in during his
precult life (family, school, community) did
not provide the opportunities he was seeking
to fully claim his identity and pursue the life
he wanted. If a person cannot find ways to
pursue what’s most important to him in
the circumstances in which he finds
himself, it makes sense he will consider the
idea of joining a spiritual or religious
organization, cultic or mainstream. Maybe
he’ll find his answers there. The media, a
former cult member’s family, and his
friendship circle can sometimes dismiss a
person’s motivations for joining that
organization in the first place. In doing so,
they ignore the fact that doing so usually
involves a healthy impulse toward self-
Skillful
deconstruction
of cult
experience
brings a person
back to his
possibilities.
