This site could help you, save you wasting a lot of time in a benign or destructive High Intensity-High Demand group; it has a fresh take on cults and isms and provides a questionnaire on its home page for those who think they could never get involved in a cult. Please think and reflect before making that assumption; such an assumption lessens your empathy for those of us who were in a cult. We did not think or know we were in one at the time; maybe it dawned on us slowly; maybe we only realized it after we left!
The image is Livia Bardin's book available at International Cultic Studies Association; it is a how to book for parents and friends of those involved.
I left RC many months ago. It is only in the last couple weeks I have found myself using the words "cult" and "cultish" quite a lot. Much to my surprise, I find myself using the word "cultish" to describe some of my own tendencies while in RC. I would never have believed I could fall into a cult.
ReplyDeleteIf I can see residual tendencies in myself after so many months out, I am discouraged for my old friends who are still in. They'll never come to their senses on their own.
Lord help us all.
Dear Anon
ReplyDeletethanks for taking the time, for writing, for "coming out" re your involvement; as you read the lit re "cults" etc you will discover quite a controversy about the us of the term, as it is derogatory to some degree. Any way, I do believe that to use the term related to the RC is a big step. I think it is sadly paradoxical that we can only name it as we get some distance from it. Once a person starts to see himself in the mirror the cult loses its hold; the mirror unmasks us.