The damaging psychological effects that are suffered by ex-members of cults like ‘The Children of God’, ‘The Moonies’, ‘Hare Krishna’, ‘Divine Light Mission’, and ‘Scientology’ are described by the psychologist, Margaret Singer, who has treated ex-members from these groups. 93 Her conclusions usually fit in with the effects that are suffered by people who have left circles like the Faith movement. Viewed from a psychiatric point of view, the effects are similar.
According to Singer’s study, many people who leave a cult experience depressions. When someone leaves the cultic circle, he is often left feeling that everything is meaningless. He is also faced with the personal and family problems that he may have left behind unsolved when he first joined the cult. Ex-members often express regrets over the years they have lost.
When you join a cult, sooner or later, you will lose contact with former friends. By and by, all close friends are found within the movement. Therefore, if you leave the movement, you become alone.
Leaving a cultic group means leaving many friends with common interests, and the bond of fellowship that is a result of sharing very radical experiences.
When you leave, you discover that you have been programmed to behave a certain way — even in your private life and in your relationship with the opposite sex. During the process of liberation from the shackles of mind control, some may be afraid to enter anything wholeheartedly, regardless of whether it is a question of relating to people or organisations. Others may overreact, trying to compensate for lost time by throwing themselves headlong into affairs, drunkenness, and sexual excesses, while there are those who, in their panic, will try to avoid the opposite sex.
If you are in a mind controlling group or cult, you lose any confidence in your ability to make decisions because you are being taught that your own decisions might have dire consequences. You will feel more secure letting the leaders decide how you ought to handle different situations — maybe you let them be the deciding factor by listening to their cassettes. Therefore, it is very difficult to make any decisions for yourself when you leave the movement. Some people, according to Singer, will be unable to plan their lives at all, regardless of whether it concerns a problem about work, education, or social life.
At the same time, a somewhat reduced intellectual ability can persist for a prolonged period after an experience of being in a cult. This might concern quite simple matters of thinking, reading, or talking.
There is a great feeling of uncertainty which you may experience on leaving or beginning to doubt a totalitarian ideology. This causes a condition called ‘floating’. The condition may vary from a general feeling of being removed from reality; to a state where you are totally perplexed, swaying backwards and forwards between two positions. In some cases, it may be very difficult to think clearly, and you may believe that you are actually about to go crazy. In addition, you may get sudden ‘flashbacks’ from previous experiences.
Floating can be triggered by any kind of event that reminds you of the ideology you have left. When this happens, a person may suddenly begin to reason from the viewpoint of the previously held ideology — even though he has just concluded that it is wrong! Such sudden changes of reasoning may appear completely irrational to the outsider.
People who have previously been members of cults realise that a lot of different factors can trigger a relapse into the trance-like condition they experienced during their time in the cult. Singer writes that many people who experience this reaction become afraid that they are going mad, and that they will never be able to control this condition of ‘floating’. They may be reassured when they hear that others have experienced the same condition, and that it will lessen gradually.
Some people have completely lost the ability to examine and evaluate what they hear, and many will accept almost anything they hear as though their normal critical faculties were switched off. Others will over-react in the opposite direction, by doubting and questioning practically everything they hear, regardless of what it may be. It may take quite some time to regain balance in these matters.
In addition to all this, many people retain a certain amount of belief in the things they heard in the cult. Even though, consciously, you may have broken with the teachings, some of it may remain on an emotional level for quite a long time. The aim of the indoctrination is to make the individual member believe that he is acting in opposition to God if he leaves the group. Many ex-members have quoted threats of divine curses on defectors.
When some ex-members retain certain remnants of the cult’s teaching, this, in itself, may be a terrifying burden. They may also worry about meeting former friends from the movement, and then they will expect that these will try to make them feel guilty about leaving, and condemn them for the life that they are living now.
It is also common to feel severe guilt about one’s former behaviour as a cult member, and to want to do something to atone for the wrongs done while under that influence. There may be much regret over members you may have recruited, who are still tied up in the movement, or about your hard attitude towards people who questioned it, or left.
It is worth noticing that people who joined a cult have often done so out of a misguided idealism and a desire to do something good for the world and for mankind. Many such people will still look for an outlet for their energy and idealism, but it may be hard to find this, particularly because of the fear of being deceived again.
It may be very difficult to return to the humdrum of everyday life, especially if you have believed that you were standing in the front-line of a world-wide revival. One of the hardest steps in life, after having left the cult, is feeling that you have had to climb down from being a specially chosen person of destiny and a member of an elite, and then to take your place as being just an ordinary person again.
Singer believes that it takes former cult members between six and eighteen months to recover sufficiently for their lives to function as normally as they did before joining. Many former members of the Faith movement have experienced that it may take considerably longer to come to terms with certain aspects of life.
Footnotes
93. M. Singer, Coming Out of the Cults, Psychology Today, 12:72-82. 1979.
