ICSA TODAY
My Professional Journey
At this point I decided that I wanted to
help others who had left an abusive cult
and I began pastoral counselling
diploma training. I was not able to
attend a secular training, as I was still
too afraid of the consequences of
moving out of the Church/Christian field
of training. The diploma was a vital part
of healing my thought processes
because I met Christians who were not
immersed in cultic thinking, who were
allowed to think for themselves and
therefore gave me the space and
kindness to think for myself without any
agenda other than gaining my diploma.
I initially decided to leave any thoughts
of working with ex cult members on one
side as I undertook this core training
and healed myself. I did voluntary work
with Cruse, Mind and Sheffield Rape and
Sexual Abuse Counselling Service. By
the end of the third year of my diploma
in 1998, however, I was starting to think
about working with ex cult members
and tentatively informed my training
group that I was considering attending
an International Cultic Studies
Association (ICSA) conference in
Chicago. I went to the conference, and
ended up doing my dissertation on the
theme of “What does a pastoral
counsellor need to know about cults
and ex cult members to be an effective
helper?”
As a result of attending the conference I
met Dr Paul Martin of Wellspring Retreat
and Resource Center in Ohio
(www.wellspringretreat.org) and he
agreed that I could attend Wellspring as
an Intern, which I did in the summer of
1999. That internship was where I
learned the basic theory of working with
ex cult members as I shadowed him in
the counselling sessions and learned
how the Center’s psychoeducational
“Thought Reform Model” worked. Dr
Martin became my mentor until he
tragically died in 2009 of leukaemia.
I had been attending therapy for some
years since starting my diploma.
Although my first therapist had been
unable to engage with the cult issues,
my second, a Gestalt therapist, has
always been open to my cult experience
and to learning from me. I loved her
approach and in 2001 I began an MA in
Gestalt Psychotherapy.
I felt it essential that I fully understood
my cult experience before entering
psychotherapy and completed my own
healing before working with others, so I
specifically chose a group-based
training in order to attend to any
residual group-based issues. The training
proved to be enriching and healing in
many ways.
In order to move my work and
experience away from myself I decided
to do research. For my final MA
dissertation I asked eight self-confessed
ex cult members what had helped them
recover from their abusive cult
experience. The aim of the research was
to give former cult members a voice and
to investigate the most effective
therapeutic approach for them.
Given my own experience of not being
able to find a psychotherapist who was
trained in working with the cult
problem, I hypothesised that many
former cult members were probably
similarly floundering around, trying to
find the right sort of therapy. Paul
Martin,11 perhaps controversially, stated
that it is only half true that former cult
members should seek help from mental
health professionals (therapists). He
qualified this by saying that therapy is
“only helpful if the therapist has some
expertise regarding cultic phenomena.
Unfortunately, therapists have been
known to fail miserably if they are not
sensitive to the issues of cult
involvement.”This statement intrigued
me and verified my own experience and
that of others to whom I had spoken.
My Research
My data has highlighted a number of
areas that help former cult members
recover and I have spent the intervening
years since 2005 developing my thinking
through further reading, client work,
returning to Wellspring, and writing.
The heart of the recovery process is
helping clients to shed the cult
pseudopersonality, described earlier,
enabling them to return to the precult
personality and move forward into a
post-cult personality.
I have investigated through reading and
clinical work how this cult
pseudopersonality forms. Cult
pseudopersonality is part of the
conversion to a new belief system and
compliance mechanism. A number of
writers refer to it as a dissociated part of
the personality. I suggest, however, that
cult pseudopersonality mimics
dissociation.12 The essential feature of
dissociation is a “disruption in the
usually integrated functions of
consciousness, memory, identity, or
perception. The disturbance may be
sudden or gradual, transient or chronic”
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders IV). I do think
dissociation is present for many, if not
most, former cult members, but as a
separate (coping) mechanism.
My research and experience with clients
leads me to suggest that cult
pseudopersonality is in fact an
introjected part of the personality that
needs chewing over and digesting,
allowing what is nourishing to remain,
andeliminating the rest. Introjection
may be thought of as a “material way of
acting, feeling, evaluating—which you
have taken into your system of behav-
iour but which you have not assimilated
in such a fashion as to make it a genuine
part of your organism, yourself.”13
The cult experience needs chewing over
but if, as a therapist, you do not
understand the process of how this
introjected cult pseudopersonality has
formed, how can you effectively help a
client? Singer states:
The array of necessary adjustments
[post cult] can be summed up as
coming out of the
pseudopersonality. I present them
in a sequence... a kind of peeling
off of the outer layer of identity
that was taken on while in the cult.
The process is a matter of
recovering one’s self and one’s
value system, and of keeping
whatever good was learned during
cult days while discarding all the
not-so-good.14
I now work predominantly with former
cult members, and the therapeutic
approach that I have found to be most
effective in assisting recovery for these
clients is a relational psychoeducational
model. I envisage the cult
4
The heart of the
recovery process is
helping clients to
shed the cult
pseudopersonality…
My Professional Journey
At this point I decided that I wanted to
help others who had left an abusive cult
and I began pastoral counselling
diploma training. I was not able to
attend a secular training, as I was still
too afraid of the consequences of
moving out of the Church/Christian field
of training. The diploma was a vital part
of healing my thought processes
because I met Christians who were not
immersed in cultic thinking, who were
allowed to think for themselves and
therefore gave me the space and
kindness to think for myself without any
agenda other than gaining my diploma.
I initially decided to leave any thoughts
of working with ex cult members on one
side as I undertook this core training
and healed myself. I did voluntary work
with Cruse, Mind and Sheffield Rape and
Sexual Abuse Counselling Service. By
the end of the third year of my diploma
in 1998, however, I was starting to think
about working with ex cult members
and tentatively informed my training
group that I was considering attending
an International Cultic Studies
Association (ICSA) conference in
Chicago. I went to the conference, and
ended up doing my dissertation on the
theme of “What does a pastoral
counsellor need to know about cults
and ex cult members to be an effective
helper?”
As a result of attending the conference I
met Dr Paul Martin of Wellspring Retreat
and Resource Center in Ohio
(www.wellspringretreat.org) and he
agreed that I could attend Wellspring as
an Intern, which I did in the summer of
1999. That internship was where I
learned the basic theory of working with
ex cult members as I shadowed him in
the counselling sessions and learned
how the Center’s psychoeducational
“Thought Reform Model” worked. Dr
Martin became my mentor until he
tragically died in 2009 of leukaemia.
I had been attending therapy for some
years since starting my diploma.
Although my first therapist had been
unable to engage with the cult issues,
my second, a Gestalt therapist, has
always been open to my cult experience
and to learning from me. I loved her
approach and in 2001 I began an MA in
Gestalt Psychotherapy.
I felt it essential that I fully understood
my cult experience before entering
psychotherapy and completed my own
healing before working with others, so I
specifically chose a group-based
training in order to attend to any
residual group-based issues. The training
proved to be enriching and healing in
many ways.
In order to move my work and
experience away from myself I decided
to do research. For my final MA
dissertation I asked eight self-confessed
ex cult members what had helped them
recover from their abusive cult
experience. The aim of the research was
to give former cult members a voice and
to investigate the most effective
therapeutic approach for them.
Given my own experience of not being
able to find a psychotherapist who was
trained in working with the cult
problem, I hypothesised that many
former cult members were probably
similarly floundering around, trying to
find the right sort of therapy. Paul
Martin,11 perhaps controversially, stated
that it is only half true that former cult
members should seek help from mental
health professionals (therapists). He
qualified this by saying that therapy is
“only helpful if the therapist has some
expertise regarding cultic phenomena.
Unfortunately, therapists have been
known to fail miserably if they are not
sensitive to the issues of cult
involvement.”This statement intrigued
me and verified my own experience and
that of others to whom I had spoken.
My Research
My data has highlighted a number of
areas that help former cult members
recover and I have spent the intervening
years since 2005 developing my thinking
through further reading, client work,
returning to Wellspring, and writing.
The heart of the recovery process is
helping clients to shed the cult
pseudopersonality, described earlier,
enabling them to return to the precult
personality and move forward into a
post-cult personality.
I have investigated through reading and
clinical work how this cult
pseudopersonality forms. Cult
pseudopersonality is part of the
conversion to a new belief system and
compliance mechanism. A number of
writers refer to it as a dissociated part of
the personality. I suggest, however, that
cult pseudopersonality mimics
dissociation.12 The essential feature of
dissociation is a “disruption in the
usually integrated functions of
consciousness, memory, identity, or
perception. The disturbance may be
sudden or gradual, transient or chronic”
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders IV). I do think
dissociation is present for many, if not
most, former cult members, but as a
separate (coping) mechanism.
My research and experience with clients
leads me to suggest that cult
pseudopersonality is in fact an
introjected part of the personality that
needs chewing over and digesting,
allowing what is nourishing to remain,
andeliminating the rest. Introjection
may be thought of as a “material way of
acting, feeling, evaluating—which you
have taken into your system of behav-
iour but which you have not assimilated
in such a fashion as to make it a genuine
part of your organism, yourself.”13
The cult experience needs chewing over
but if, as a therapist, you do not
understand the process of how this
introjected cult pseudopersonality has
formed, how can you effectively help a
client? Singer states:
The array of necessary adjustments
[post cult] can be summed up as
coming out of the
pseudopersonality. I present them
in a sequence... a kind of peeling
off of the outer layer of identity
that was taken on while in the cult.
The process is a matter of
recovering one’s self and one’s
value system, and of keeping
whatever good was learned during
cult days while discarding all the
not-so-good.14
I now work predominantly with former
cult members, and the therapeutic
approach that I have found to be most
effective in assisting recovery for these
clients is a relational psychoeducational
model. I envisage the cult
4
The heart of the
recovery process is
helping clients to
shed the cult
pseudopersonality…
