This next article deals with something a little different from the others so far. Its focus is more on the effects on a person after leaving a group, specifically this article deals with leaving fundamentalist religious groups, but I'm going to apply certain things to my experience.
Hartz, Gary W. & Everett, Henry C. (1989). Fundamentalist religion and its effect on mental health. Journal of Religion and Health, 28(3), p. 207-217.
I want to start off by saying that I don't think the mission I worked with exactly fits the authors' definition of a fundamentalist religion, but there are still some things in this article that clicked for me in my experience.
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"Concerning depression, ex-fundamentalists often become depressed because they have lost friends, a religious community, and a comprehensive philosophy of life. If they believe that they have been rejected by God or can no longer have 'a personal relationship with God,' existential despair may compound their depression. When these attachments are severed, they also become confused about what they believe and anxious about whether they can find a new world view, community, friends, and relatedness to God. This general anxiety is exacerbated if their former church threatens them with divine punishment, public banishment, or rejection from fundamentalist family members." (p. 210)
For this to have meaning for me we have to replace the parts about being rejected by God and losing a relationship with God with losing a career. I don't know if increasing disillusionment with churches fits in here or not, but I know that my experience in Vienna, considering there were so many missions involved and some really major ones included that even many secular people would recognize. So I was disillusioned in a major way. I must say though, that to this day my faith has stayed strong, but I live in a dilemma where my faith (the Bible) tells me that I should have fellowship with other believers (go to church, etc.), but I often hold back because of my experiences. I do go to church though and can usually find one that is a reasonably good fit and doesn't contradict my convictions (like separation of church and state and the like).
After I left Vienna, as the above citation indicates, I think I probably had some depression, but it wasn't like I sat around and moped or anything. I found work and tried to figure out what to do next, and within a year I had entered a master's degree program to help me reach my revised career goals. But the journal entries for that time and the memories these entries revive make me think that despite outward appearances I probably did have some depression and certainly a lot of confusion and sort of conflicting thoughts about the recent past, the future and things going on around me at the time. It was really awful and I did also feel a certain amount of isolation because I didn't think others could really understand and I felt like I'd let my supporters down too.
The time in Vienna wasn't the only time my convictions were tested so dramatically, and through all this one thing that has helped me keep centered, besides my faith, is my standing by my convictions. To this day I don't regret the stands I took in these situations, but in hindsight I think there may have been other ways to handle them. Some of them were unusual enough though that it would have been pretty difficult to prepare oneself for them and when you're in the thick of things sometimes it's hard to really sort things out and know what you're dealing with.
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"... [M]embers of other fundamentalist religions are likely to receive emotional benefits from their strong group cohesiveness, religious rituals, and comprehensive philosophy as long as they maintain a strong commitment to the group. The importance of such commitment was underscored by Galanter and his colleagues' finding that the greater the Moonies' commitment to their religion, the greater was their emotional improvement." (p. 214)
I think these statements pretty well fit what I witnessed in Vienna. I think that people there were generally very happy and centered, and it was only when novices were first confronted with the group system that there might be some dissatisfaction or unhappiness. I'm thinking of one other secretary who arrived a few months before me. She worked for someone in a completely different department at practically the farthest corner of the building from where I started out, so I wasn't involved really in her day-in day-out orientation. But at some point things seemed to click for her and her demeanor became much more self-confident and satisfied/happy. I never reached that point there; I guess you could say I was incorrigible.
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"Regardless of how many ex-fundamentalists experience severe distress after their departure, leaving fundamentalism appears similar to other major life transitions like divorce. Both ex-fundamentalists and the divorced experience similar losses, including loss of strong social bonds, loss of a main facet of personal identity, and loss of financial investment. During the divorce, when the impact of these losses is most intense, people experience high levels of anxiety, depression, and hostility. Once six to 12 months have elapsed after the divorce, however, these high levels of distress subside significantly. This pattern of loss, separation, distress, and readjustment seems to fit that of many ex-fundamentalists." (p. 214-215)
This reminds me of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle, which I know has been applied to other situations, like chronic health conditions. In looking at the grief cycle (shock stage, denial stage, anger stage, bargaining stage, depression stage, testing stage, acceptance stage), I probably started the shock stage about 5 months into my time in Vienna. There were some things that happened then, that I don't want to go into right now, but it was a major crisis point to say the least. So using this cycle, I could have started the grieving not long after I arrived there, and by the time I had left for good I was probably already in the depression stage. The testing stage for me would have been testing out other missions as I got involved with two other groups that first year as part of my attempt to try to figure out where to go from there.
Returning to the text at hand, however, the loss of intimacy was traumatic for me, but it began well before I left as I began to be ostracized. Earlier on I had enjoyed some good closeness, especially with some of the singles, but also, for example, one of the young daughters of my boss whom I sort of took under my wings as a kind of big sister.
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This next article is a research paper, and I just want to take one quote from it. In this study 50 people currently or recently involved with cults were interviewed and administered the MMPI test.
Ungerleider, J. Thomas, & Wellisch, David K. (1979). Coercive persuasion (brainwashing), religious cults, and deprogramming. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136(3), p. 279-282.
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"Data from the MMPI delineate substantial intrapsychic and interpersonal differences between current cult members and those who have left. Subjects who were still cult members indicated difficult with impulses in several areas and attendant superego deficits, such that the cults appear to serve as externalized superego substitutes." (p. 281)
According to the WordnetWeb, which is maintained by Princeton University, superego is:
"superego ((psychoanalysis) that part of the unconscious mind that acts as a conscience)"
I don't know if anyone at the mission in Vienna would agree with this statement as applied to them, but considering the ethical issues I found there I can't help but wonder (I think I said something like this in an earlier post too) what kind of mental gymnastics they used to justify these things. We're talking about theologians here, not just your average person in the pew. One possibility of how they do - manage to accept things that to me seems so ethically and even biblically wrong - this is suggested in this text. Am I the only one to have ever disagreed with these things? How can that be possible? Even today as I write this it seems pretty incredible that that could happen, that they could accept these things.
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That's all for now... Tootle-oo
~ Meg
