Re: Westernized Sufi and Theosophical Groups

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Having wound up in a cult can feel like a personal failing. But it’s not. It’s more like having been infected by a virus.

According to Stein’s model of cult-as-disorganized-attachment-machine, part of the infected member’s condition is to believe that the source of the sickness is also the cure.

For information about Steins model, go here

[matthewremski.com]

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So let’s bring this back to the subject’s question: “Do you think that the family had planned all along to bring me in?”

That first, pragmatic answer still holds true: there’s no way of knowing.

But can we say anything else — something that sounds a little less like a shrug — to relieve the burden of having to ponder a terrible betrayal?

If we use the virus metaphor, perhaps we say that the subject got hired into a contagious environment. Perhaps the family didn’t even know they were infected. They were part of the group, after all, because they too, at some point, had been deceived.

The main difference between the subject and the family that hired her may have been that the family had incubated the group virus for long enough that they themselves were contagious in their daily actions.