Hakkında
Tam adı:
Margaret Thaler Singer
Unvan:
Klinik Psikolog, Yazar
Doğum:
Denver, Colorado, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, 29 Temmuz 1921
Ölüm:
Berkeley, Kaliforniya, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, 23 Kasım 2003
Okurlar
1 okur beğendi.
2 okur okuyacak.
1 okur yarım bıraktı.
Kitaplar
Sözler ve Alıntılar
Who Joins Cults? - The "Not Me" Myth
People like to think their opinions, values, and ideas are inviolate and totally self-regulated. They may grudgingly admit that they're influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to preserve the myth that other people are weak-minded and easily influenced while they are strong-minded. Even though we all know human minds are open to influence —whether or not that is a comfortable thought—most of us defensively and haughtily proclaim, "Only crazy, stupid, needy people join cults. No one could ever get me to commit suicide or beat my kids or give my wife over to a cult leader. No one could ever talk me into anything like that."
As I hear people say that, I silently ask, " You want to bet?"
Sayfa 15
Defining Cults - Who Joins Cults?
When we hear of cults, scams, and individuals' being controlled and influenced by others, we instinctively try to separate ourselves from those persons. It seems a point of valor and self-esteem to insist that "no one could get me to do such things" when hearing about situations of intense influence. Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, most people tend to believe that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. "Other people can be manipulated, but not me," they declare.
Sayfa 15
Who Joins Cults? - Yes, You
Nevertheless, the fact remains that even apart from unsettling socioeconomic conditions and certain relevant family factors, any person who is in a vulnerable state, seeking companionship and a sense of meaning or in a period of transition or time of loss, is a good prospect for cult recruitment. Although most contemporary cults primarily recruit young adults, preferably single, some—especially the neo-Christian cults—seek entire families, and even the elderly are targets for some groups.
What do the cults offer to lonely, depressed or uncertain persons? In one form of another, each cult purports to offer an improved state of mind, an expanded state of being, and a moral, spiritual, or political state of righteous certainty. That supposedly beneficial state can be reached only by following the narrowly prescribed pathways of a particular group master, guru, or trainer. To grasp that approach to life, the new recruit—the babe, the preemie, the trial member, the spiritual god-child, the lower consiousness one, as certain groups label the beginner—must surrender his or her critical mind, must yield to the flow of force, must have childlike trust and faith.
Sayfa 20
Defining Cults - Origin of the Group and Role of the Leader
In most cases, there is one person, typically the founder, at the top of the cult's structure, and decision making centers in him.
These leaders typically have the following characteristics.
Cult leaders are self-appointed, persuasive persons who claim to have a special mission in life or to have special knowledge. For example, leaders of flying-saucer cults often claim that beings from outer space have commissioned them to lead people to special places to await a spaceship. Other leaders claim to have rediscovered ancient ways to produce enlightenment or cure disease, while yet others claim to have developed inventive scientific, humanistic, or social plans that will lead followers to "new levels" of awareness, success, or personal and political power.
Cult leaders tend to be determined and domineering and are often described as charismatic. These leaders need to have enough personal drive, charm, or other pulling power to attract, control, and manage their flocks. They persuade devotees to drop their families, jobs, careers, and friends to follow them. Overtly or covertly, in most cases they eventually take over control of their followers' possessions, money, and lives.
Cult leaders center veneration on themselves. Priests, rabbis, ministers, democratic leaders, and leaders of genuinely altruistic movements keep the veneration of adherents focused on God, abstract principles, or the group's purpose. Cult leaders, in contrast, keep the focus of love, devotion, and allegiance on themselves. In many cults, for example, spouses are forced to separate or parents forced to give up their children as a test of their devotion to their leader.
Sayfa 8
Defining Cults - Cults Are Not All Alike
Cults are not uniform nor are they static. Cults exist on a continuum of degrees of influence, from more to less extreme. There are live-in and live-out cults. Groups vary in levels of membership and degrees of involvement: for example, members on the preiphery of a group usually are not privy to the costs, contents, and obligations of the later stages of membership and ahve little knowledge of the real purposes of the group or the amount of power wielded by the leader. Even within the same cult, rules, restrictions and requirements may change from year to year, or from location to location, depending on outside pressures, local leadership, and the fancies of the leader.
The manner in which controls are put into place, the extent of control over details of members' behaviour, and the blatancy of these controls also vary from cult to cult. In most live-in cults, every detail of life comes under group scrutiny. For example, there are dress codes, food restrictions, and enforced marriages or relationships. In such cults, the members generally live together at the headquarters or at specified locations around the country or overseas and work for cult-owned enerprises. However, there are also cults whose devotees appear to remain active in quite a few major aspects of the outside world, earning a living outside the cult. But for all practical purposes these individuals also live under rules governing such crucial features of their personal life as the people with whom they associate, what happens to their moeny, whether they raise their own children, and where they live.
Sayfa 10
İletiler
'Kendi bedenine sahip olmayan ve bedenini kontrol edemeyen bir kadın özgür değildir. Ve hiçbir kadın bilinçli olarak anne olup olmamayı seçene kadar kendine özgürüm dememelidir
Margaret Singer
Kendi bedenine sahip olmayan ve bedenini kontrol edemeyen bir kadın özgür değildir. Ve hiçbir kadın bilinçli olarak anne olup olmamayı seçene kadar kendine özgürüm dememelidir.... Margaret Singer 🗽
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