VOLUME 5 |NUMBER 2 |2014 7
A wiser person than I once said that “the
shortest distance between any two people
is a story.” As a narrative therapist,1 I
recognize the truth in this statement.
Stories do two very important things: They
help a person create meaning in his life,
and they give that person a sense of
belonging to a group. Erik Erickson was the
first of many social scientists to highlight
the foundational importance of these two
factors to a person’s sense of identity.
I also recognize the power of story from
another platform: that of being a former
cult member.2 Former cult members know
better than most people the power of
story. Why? Because anyone who has been
in a cult has experienced the extraordinary
pressure to unquestioningly
adopt the values, myths, and
behaviors embedded in the
stories cult leaders tell their
followers: heroic stories about
cult figures, past and present
creation stories, prophecy
stories, and stories that explain
the secrets to the universe
according to the organization’s
ideology. The meaning
associated with these
stories becomes the meaning
provided to, not discovered by,
cult members. Alternative
interpretations of such stories—
or exposure to contradictory
stories—are never explored
inside cults, except in carefully
controlled ways designed to
reinforce the organization’s
overall ideological perspective,3
to further imbed a cult
member’s sense of belonging to
his new “family,” or both.
Another way of saying this is
that a cult’s unidirectional
imposition and content control of stories
short-circuits the possibility of the
cocreation of stories: a process that
happens when stories are told and listened
to freely and creatively, with no hidden
desire by either party to advance an
ideology or exercise power.
Thirty-eight years on, I still recall the
singularity of focus that accompanied
stories told during my cult experience: a
singularity that, when combined with the
cult’s utopian aspirations, community-
service efforts, and the positive impact I
experienced using its spiritual tools
(meditation, moral codes, dietary control,
yoga), meant that these tales did in fact
give me both the meaning and belonging I
craved. The stories “slotted in” perfectly with
the culture building constantly being done
by cult leaders. I joined other members in
magnifying what I saw as the prophetic
quality of these stories by infusing them
with emotion: inspiration, hope, and anger
at what was seen as wrong with the world
outside the cult. By doing so, I was
succumbing to what social psychologist
Peter Watson named as confirmation bias: a
person’s propensity to seek out and interpret
evidence in ways that confirm what he
already thinks. Confirmation bias allows a
person to weaken his cognitive dissonance4
and thus hasten his efforts to embrace a
new belief system. The weaker my cognitive
dissonance became, the easier it was for me
to be motivated5 to do the work of the cult.
Ongoing cognitive dissonance is an
emotional challenge anyone in a cult faces.
When, for example, the explanation of his
life’s purpose as defined by the cult stories
a person is hearing differs widely from the
purpose he imagined pursuing when he is
consolidating all the precult stories he
grew up with—the ones provided by
parents, friends, institutions, and others—
he must find a way to discard the latter and
embrace the former. After all, each set of
stories lays claim to the same life. Should a
person later leave his cult, he faces the
same dilemma in reverse. How can he
reclaim his life stories when he has just
invested so much time and energy in
altering or denying them in order to
deepen his involvement with the cult?
The combination of my cult experience and
my training as a narrative therapist means I
approach this question guided by narrative
principles:
a) Every human being is multistoried.
b) The meaning a person attributes to
his life is organized through his
narratives, or stories. Language is the
primary tool every person uses to
construct those narratives.
c) When a person’s narratives don’t
match his lived experience, he runs
into problems.
d) Because there are no absolute truths
to any story, a person can reauthor his
narratives. This is best done in an
environment when narratives are
listened to reflexively—i.e., where the
impact of the storyteller’s
personality, the surrounding culture,
and his audience are all taken into
account as the story is articulated,
listened to, and deconstructed.
e) Being listened to in this way
assists a person to identify
stories that may be contradicting
his lived experience, paving the
way for reauthoring the stories
usually told about an event.
We can view a story about an event
as a map that extends through time.
But a person’s internal maps always
miss bits of territory. Reauthoring
allows invisible story lines to surface
and be considered by the storyteller
so he can pay attention to them if
he chooses to do so.
No one can live without story, even
if he wanted to do so. Even in the
rational, empirical pursuit that
characterizes science, stories are
critical.6 We’re not ostriches or caterpillars,
living our lives without reflection.
We agonize over why we’re here, where we
belong, what we’re meant to do. Such
questions are never very far from the
surface with a little help we can access
them. That access is more difficult for a
person leaving a cult because the
leave-taker has just exited an environment
of distorted power relations and structural
inequality—an environment where even a
question such as “Who has the storytelling
rights for an individual, the storyteller or
the powers-that-be?”7 becomes an issue.
Additionally, the experience of being
deceived and betrayed—combined with
the exhaustion and confusion that results
from sometimes spending years in
demeaning, abusive circumstances—
makes the expectation of functioning
normally in the world again immensely
No one can live
without story…
We agonize over
why we’re here,
where we belong,
what we’re
meant to do.
A wiser person than I once said that “the
shortest distance between any two people
is a story.” As a narrative therapist,1 I
recognize the truth in this statement.
Stories do two very important things: They
help a person create meaning in his life,
and they give that person a sense of
belonging to a group. Erik Erickson was the
first of many social scientists to highlight
the foundational importance of these two
factors to a person’s sense of identity.
I also recognize the power of story from
another platform: that of being a former
cult member.2 Former cult members know
better than most people the power of
story. Why? Because anyone who has been
in a cult has experienced the extraordinary
pressure to unquestioningly
adopt the values, myths, and
behaviors embedded in the
stories cult leaders tell their
followers: heroic stories about
cult figures, past and present
creation stories, prophecy
stories, and stories that explain
the secrets to the universe
according to the organization’s
ideology. The meaning
associated with these
stories becomes the meaning
provided to, not discovered by,
cult members. Alternative
interpretations of such stories—
or exposure to contradictory
stories—are never explored
inside cults, except in carefully
controlled ways designed to
reinforce the organization’s
overall ideological perspective,3
to further imbed a cult
member’s sense of belonging to
his new “family,” or both.
Another way of saying this is
that a cult’s unidirectional
imposition and content control of stories
short-circuits the possibility of the
cocreation of stories: a process that
happens when stories are told and listened
to freely and creatively, with no hidden
desire by either party to advance an
ideology or exercise power.
Thirty-eight years on, I still recall the
singularity of focus that accompanied
stories told during my cult experience: a
singularity that, when combined with the
cult’s utopian aspirations, community-
service efforts, and the positive impact I
experienced using its spiritual tools
(meditation, moral codes, dietary control,
yoga), meant that these tales did in fact
give me both the meaning and belonging I
craved. The stories “slotted in” perfectly with
the culture building constantly being done
by cult leaders. I joined other members in
magnifying what I saw as the prophetic
quality of these stories by infusing them
with emotion: inspiration, hope, and anger
at what was seen as wrong with the world
outside the cult. By doing so, I was
succumbing to what social psychologist
Peter Watson named as confirmation bias: a
person’s propensity to seek out and interpret
evidence in ways that confirm what he
already thinks. Confirmation bias allows a
person to weaken his cognitive dissonance4
and thus hasten his efforts to embrace a
new belief system. The weaker my cognitive
dissonance became, the easier it was for me
to be motivated5 to do the work of the cult.
Ongoing cognitive dissonance is an
emotional challenge anyone in a cult faces.
When, for example, the explanation of his
life’s purpose as defined by the cult stories
a person is hearing differs widely from the
purpose he imagined pursuing when he is
consolidating all the precult stories he
grew up with—the ones provided by
parents, friends, institutions, and others—
he must find a way to discard the latter and
embrace the former. After all, each set of
stories lays claim to the same life. Should a
person later leave his cult, he faces the
same dilemma in reverse. How can he
reclaim his life stories when he has just
invested so much time and energy in
altering or denying them in order to
deepen his involvement with the cult?
The combination of my cult experience and
my training as a narrative therapist means I
approach this question guided by narrative
principles:
a) Every human being is multistoried.
b) The meaning a person attributes to
his life is organized through his
narratives, or stories. Language is the
primary tool every person uses to
construct those narratives.
c) When a person’s narratives don’t
match his lived experience, he runs
into problems.
d) Because there are no absolute truths
to any story, a person can reauthor his
narratives. This is best done in an
environment when narratives are
listened to reflexively—i.e., where the
impact of the storyteller’s
personality, the surrounding culture,
and his audience are all taken into
account as the story is articulated,
listened to, and deconstructed.
e) Being listened to in this way
assists a person to identify
stories that may be contradicting
his lived experience, paving the
way for reauthoring the stories
usually told about an event.
We can view a story about an event
as a map that extends through time.
But a person’s internal maps always
miss bits of territory. Reauthoring
allows invisible story lines to surface
and be considered by the storyteller
so he can pay attention to them if
he chooses to do so.
No one can live without story, even
if he wanted to do so. Even in the
rational, empirical pursuit that
characterizes science, stories are
critical.6 We’re not ostriches or caterpillars,
living our lives without reflection.
We agonize over why we’re here, where we
belong, what we’re meant to do. Such
questions are never very far from the
surface with a little help we can access
them. That access is more difficult for a
person leaving a cult because the
leave-taker has just exited an environment
of distorted power relations and structural
inequality—an environment where even a
question such as “Who has the storytelling
rights for an individual, the storyteller or
the powers-that-be?”7 becomes an issue.
Additionally, the experience of being
deceived and betrayed—combined with
the exhaustion and confusion that results
from sometimes spending years in
demeaning, abusive circumstances—
makes the expectation of functioning
normally in the world again immensely
No one can live
without story…
We agonize over
why we’re here,
where we belong,
what we’re
meant to do.
