Rescue from Cult : Untenable Positions of Ex-Moonies

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Other Title
  • カルト信者の救出 : 統一教会脱会者の「安住しえない境地」
  • カルト シンジャ ノ キュウシュツ トウイツ キョウカイ ダッカイシャ ノ アンジュウシエナイ キョウチ

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Description

Religious cult has been in a high state tension with their surrounding societal environment. Families of cult members opposed cult organizations with a vengeance. Some psychologists and psychiatrists accuse cult of recruiting young people in terms of either brainwashing or mind control. Families of cult members assume that their children need to be rescued from cult. Deprogramming and exit counseling are employed to rescue cultist from cult. Ex-cultists who have been rescued by family often suffer from various psychological pains and troubles regarding communication after their disengagement from cult. Anguished states of ex-cultists are derived from the loss of primary ontological security of his/her own self. In this paper, we try to explain the relation of post-cult problems and the sort of communication patterns of exit counseling, instantiating the case study of rescue activities against Unification Church. The sort of communication patterns reiterated through the whole process of exit counseling may confuse others and put them in untenable positions that R.D.Laing suggested. As a result of being exposed to such a communication pattern, ex-cultists could not have a firm sense of his/her own autonomous identity. The method to rescue individuals from cult has shifted in its orientation from coercive way in the initial stage to current moderate way that emphasizes the love of family. But the close-knit of family tends to carry on the sort of communication that put others in untenable positions. That makes post-cult problems knotted.

Journal

  • 年報人間科学

    年報人間科学 21 225-241, 2000

    大阪大学人間科学部社会学・人間学・人類学研究室

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