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In Reply to: Re: No differing here posted by Yvonne on May 19, 2005 at 01:24:02:
Hi, Yvonne.
Hello, all.
The strings here definitely are about painful and deeply ingrained subjects.
I've had some therapy over the years, both Christian and secular. I recommend both.
I also went back to university to pick up where I left off when I joined the COG back in November of '71, in Denton, Texas.
I began again, and I finally finished my Bachelor's. Every chance I had, I took a Psychology elective. It didn't explain everything I had experienced, but it helped a lot.
A couple of the best behavioral explanatory paradigms I came across were those of the Milgram shock experiment and of the Stanford Prison experiment.
Berg was supposed to have "almost become Communist" at one time when he went to college. Knowledge of thought reform techniques already existed at that time, and he admitted to gleaning from many religions those things which were advantageous to him, in his elaborate construct protecting his psychosexual choices and behaviors.
Mormon "wife" slave-ism, Jehovah Witness limitations to the equivalent of a High School education or less ("dummy-down" in order to control thought patterns), Father Devine's sex slave manipulations and subjugation of male and female members to ensure the practice, the Nation of Islam's choice of a name very similar to a previous religious leader, or actually two (Elijah-Muhammed = Moses David, etc.), and so on, and so on, were some of the more obvious copy-cat characteristics.
The Milgram and Stanford experiments were readily available to Berg on many American campuses prior to Huntington Beach, CA, in 1968.
I've also learned that true and deep repentance can work wonders, along with restitution whenever possible and appropriate to the needs of the offended one.
Forgiving one's self can be the most difficult. Failure to do so perpetuates self-destructive behavior, as does failure to actually ask the offended to forgive the perpetrator, and make every possible ammend.
Anyway, here's some information about the subject:
The Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/ - a little long, but well worth the read.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm
The Milgram experiment was a famous scientific experiment first described by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist trained at Yale University in an article titled Behavioral Study of Obedience, published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963.
It was intended to measure the willingness of a participant to obey an authority to do something that may conflict with the participant's personal conscience.
More in depth - a book – “The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram”, by Thomas Blast. This book’s synopsis: see http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738203998/ref=pd_sim_b_dp_1/026-3692042-0717254#product-details
I saw amazing parallels to TF. Please draw your own conclusions.
Regards,
OT2 (OldtimerToo)
