first rule of working in psychiatry: Never enter the patient's delusions.
Marital Due and the KS
by yknot 96 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Mary
djeggnog said: There is no "JW tribunal," no "kangaroo court," no Islamic (sharia) law practiced among Jehovah's Witnesses.
Surely you jest. The 3 elders assigned to whatever your sin is, gets to act as judge, jury and executioner in every, single case. And despite the horrific repercussions that can be doled out for your perceived "sin" (such as not being able to talk to family members that are not living under your roof), you are not allowed any legal representation, you are not allowed to record the proceedings and chances are, you won't even know who it was that brought the accusations against you in the first place.
There have been posters on here who have managed to secretly tape record their Judicial Committees with some very revealing phrases from the elders. Comments that reveal that if they have to choose between what the bible says and what the Borganization says, they'll go with the latter. Or, they may have no viable answers to doctinal questions, but they don't give a damn: loyalty to the Organization takes precidence over truth.
The definition of a Kangaroo Court is in part:
"...The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or by allowing no defense at all.
A kangaroo court's proceedings deny due process rights in the name of expediency. Such rights include the right to summon witnesses, the right of cross-examination, the right not to incriminate oneself, the right not to be tried on secret evidence, the right to control one's own defense, the right to exclude evidence that is improperly obtained, irrelevant or inherently inadmissible, e.g., hearsay, the right to exclude judges or jurors on the grounds of partiality or conflict of interest, and the right of appeal."
Sounds like a Judicial Committee to me. Not enough? Let's see what the Islamic Sharia Law is defined in part as:
"...by definition, Muslim states are theocracies, religious texts are law, the latter distinguished by Islam and Muslims in their application, as Sharia or Sharia law. The sacred law of Islam; Islamic law and also referred to as Muslim law. So thorough is the integration of the justice system and Church under Sharia law that Sharia courts are essentially religious courts; judges are usually local church (Mosque) officials."
Wow! Imagine that! Islamic law is run on a 'theocracy"!! Now where have we heard that term before???? Replace "Islam" with "WTS", "Muslims" with "Elder Body", "Mosque" with "Kingdom Hall" and "Sharia" with "Shepherd the Flock Manual" and I think you'll get the picture.
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mrsjones5
first rule of working in psychiatry: Never enter the patient's delusions.
Wise words indeed. I'm tired of dealing with crazy anyway.
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Lady Lee
djeggnogg
Here's what I'm trying to understand this first portion: Who is the "JW man who has unhealthy ideas about sex..."? Were you referring to me or to your ex-husband? That was the question I asked. This is the question I'm asking you to answer
Not you. I don't know you or what your personal habits arer. I was referring to my ex-husband. I do know what kinds of things he liked and what hisideas were.
If possible and convenient for you, please PM me a link so that I can see the entire video or download it. Thanks in advance.
I do not own the video. I only have a VHS copy of the entire thing.
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djeggnog
The reason I wanted to see the entire video is because the "sample" provided on the website to which your link pointed was about seven minutes in length, and doesn't discuss these eight criteria that you mention in the video, although you mention two of them and Robert J. Lifton. I am familiar with the article posted on February 8, 2009, on Freeminds.org, entitled "Eight Marks of a Mind-Control Cult," by Randall Watters, where he refers to the book, "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China," written back in 1961 by Lifton, but this book has nothing at all to do with cults. Not a thing. And, I might add here that contrary to what you and others have been persuaded to believe about Jehovah's Witnesses, our organization is not a cult nor are those associated with Jehovah's Witnesses, whether baptized or not, members of a cult.
The following are the eight (8) criteria that Lifton uses: (1) Milieu Control, (2) Mystical Manipulation, (3) Demand for Purity, (4) Confession, (5) Sacred Science, (6) Loading the Language (7) Doctrine Over Person, and (8) Dispensing of Existence. However, Watters changes (4) "Confession" to (4) "The Cult of Confession," and (5) "Sacred Science" becomes (5) "The 'Sacred Science'"; he also inserts the word "cult" in his definition of six of these eight items. Maybe Watters thought that no one would know that he had plagiarized Lifton's eight concepts to use in his own work. If you choose to ignore the fact that the man has piggybacked Lifton's work, and that Watters' ideas are no more valid than Lifton's, then you will have yourself become IMO a victim of mind control by Watters.
But Watters uses these eight criteria you mention in your video in his Freeminds.org article as if Lifton had endorsed Watters' remarks about the use of religion to cults, when the focus of Lifton's work was on totalism and the brainwashing of POWs in war. This is called "piggybacking" to make it appear that someone else has vouched for your work. Anyway, @Lady Lee, the following is a transcript of what you stated in your video, which I'd like to discuss with you at length if you don't mind:
[TRANSCRIPT BEGINS]
There were eight major techniques or criteria that were used to control people's minds and get them to change, and it's really interesting to see how these eight criteria can be used to take a look at how cults control and manipulate their own members. What I'll do is I'll go through each one so that you get a better idea of what it is, as Lifton defined it, and I'll see what I can do about applying it to how cults use it, and specifically how the cult I was in -- the Jehovah's Witnesses -- use it.
Now a lot of groups will use one or two of these on occasion, of the eight criteria. Unfortunately groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses use all eight, and they use them all the time so that people do not have free will. Two of the things that are required for consent: The first is that person must know, have full information of what is involved in the cult, and second is that they have to have the real freedom to say "yes" and "no," and the reality is most cults do not fully disclose all of the rules to prospective members. They wouldn't say to somebody, 'Well, if you join as Jehovah's Witnesses, you'll never be able to celebrate holidays again, and if a family member leaves the group, you'll never be able to talk to them again.' The fact that there isn't that full disclosure, a lot of people are basically manipulated into thinking they're joining something different than what they actually get. And the other thing is, with all of the guilt and the rules, and the idea that all of this information comes from God, then the person's not really free to say "yes" or "no."
The Witnesses will say they're not a cult, but any cult will say they're not a cult, and one of the things that a lot of groups say, 'Well, we're not a cult, because we don't follow people around, you know, people are free to come and go as they please. They've got jobs, they've got lives, they live in their own homes. But the very nature of mind control is that they don't need somebody following you around to monitor whether you're following the rules or not. They teach you to monitor your own behavior and your own thoughts, so you become afraid of doing things because somebody else might see you, but also afraid of your conscience. Then the only way to relieve that guilt is to tell somebody, and the people that you often tell are the elders and the leaders of the cult, or the elders in case of Jehovah's Witnesses, so your membership is no longer about love of God or a love of doing what it right. It becomes about fear of breaking rules. They lose their individuality.
They also lose their ability to think. You don't say, 'Well, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense.' You just accept that that's the way of things. I'd say about 80-90% of my friends had been abused before they became Witnesses, and so, and this sets up a particular dynamic with the love bonding (?). People who have been abused and, you know, suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, well, people who come out of cults experience what has been defined as post cult trauma syndrome, basically the same thing with a spirituality element that -- and this is why women stay in abusive relationships.
It's also why people stay in abusive cults, because there's this constant kind of dangling the carrot, that if you're good enough you will get everything that you've promised. And there's nobody to talk to, and even if you go for therapy, very few people are going to understand it. I went to a therapist; I was able to talk to her. But I knew it was way over her head. She didn't have a clue what I was talking about, really heavy-duty fears planted in there. I know as an adult I didn't allow myself to think about those issues, but, you know, here I am, reading it to my children.
Despite the denials of the organization that abuse doesn't exist within the organization, I'd say it's probably rampant because, you know, who do you go to, if you're, you know, it's all old boys' gang, even, you know, within the congregations. They're only going to report what doesn't reflect badly on the organization. Let's face it: If an elder is or any brother in the congregation is abusing his family, it's not going to appear too great if it hits the media. My one time mistake, which turned out to be a rape, wound up being, you know, reason for disfellowshipping, and his 15 years like doesn't, there's not even a note in his files about it.
And this whole issue of bloodguilt that they instill in people, that if a wife does not fulfill her sexual obligation to her husband, if he commits adultery, then she's responsible, and people would say, 'Oh, you have such a wonderful family. When I get married, I want a family just like yours.' And I want to be sick, but I'm just like know, 'Oh, well. Thank you very much.' And, again, you know, that pretense in not showing people what was really inside of me, 'cause that would have been totally inappropriate and not allowed to show that I was having problems, severe problems.
I think it's really important for people to get counseling, and sadly it's really hard to find. Very, very few people understand the dynamics of abuse, never mind the dynamics of spiritual abuse. There needs to be crossover there, where the two, you can being to see the psychological impact of something that comes from religion. Spiritual abuse can be emotional, physical, psychological, sexual -- it can be any of those -- but there's an added element of using a higher power, higher authority, god, however that is defined by a group. Whether it's the individual saying, 'I am god,' or, you know, like the Witnesses, the governing body is the mediator between people and god. So there's this added element of spirituality or higher power that is used to control and manipulate people, and in doing so, it robs people ultimately of their spirituality because if somebody's controlling it, then you don't have your spirituality any more; someone else has it.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Watters explains in his article on Freeminds.org that Lifton's book was a treatise on "the effects of mind control on American prisoners of war under the Communist Chinese." Watters uses Lifton's work in this book in making a connection of it to Jehovah's Witnesses, by asserting how Lifton had outlined eight major factors that can be used to identify whether a group is a destructive cult or not, but Lifton work focused on effect of war on prisoners, like those Iraqi prisoners held in Abu Gharib prison, and not on whether or not "a group is a destructive cult or not." Lifton also wrote the books, "Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima" (1967), "Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans-Neither Victims nor Executioners" (1973), and "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide" (1986), and notice the theme in each of Lifton's books are about psychological behavior or brainwashing used in wartime environments.
I wanted to point out to you that the fact that Lifton was used by the Hearst family, along with Dr. Martin Theodore Orne as defense witnesses back in 1976 to help explain Patty Hearst's psychological behavior -- the mind control used on her during her association with the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) -- serves to illustrate that Lifton's eight points weren't the focus of Lifton's work on the methodology of brainwashing. The fact that Watters uses these eight points in his Freemind's article to push an anti-Jehovah's Witness agenda is telling, since, were you to actually read Lifton's book, you would see for yourself that Lifton wasn't talking about how religion might be used to brainwash anyone (unless Watters would be willing to make the argument that Lifton had argued in court on the witness stand that religion was used by the SLA to brainwash Hearst). You have to be able to see Watters' agenda at work here; it's nonsense.
Despite the above, Watters goes on to write in his article that "[a]ny authoritarian religion should be held up to the light in order to determine just how destructive their influence is on their members," as he then goes on to plug his book, "Understanding Mind Control Among Jehovah's Witnesses." Quite frankly, there is no connection between Watters' book and Lifton's many books, and it was disingenuous on his part to piggyback his own ideas about cults to Lifton's work, including the use of Lifton's own phrase, "thought-terminating cliches," in applying this phrase to Jehovah's Witnesses.
Watters' plagiarization of Lifton's "thought-reform procedure," which Watters calls "Lifton's Eight Criteria of Mind Control Cults," and he urges you to read his Understanding Mind Control book instead of Lifton's "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China." There is no connection whatsoever between the two books, but you would find this out for yourself by comparing the contents of Watters' book with the contents of Lifton's book.
BTW, I am posting this here, not to hijack @yknot's thread, but just to explain my reason I had asked you for a link to your video, and to let you know that I read the three articles you posted (which answers some questions and raises more of them). I have not asked you any specific questions in this post, because I suspect you would think it more prudent to start a new thread.
To be honest, @Lady Lee, I thought I should tell you that I think it rather lame that you are telling me here that the only copy you have of your entire video is on a video tape, when I would think (and do think!) that what with folks blatantly ignoring the WTS copyright on the new textbook that "you guys" could care less about the rights of the copyrightholder of your video, so that it wouldn't be impossible for you to PM me a copy of the video. You may not like it, but this is how I see things. You don't want me to see a copy of your video and I don't want to pay for a copy, and so it seems we have an impasse.
@djeggnog
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Curtains
djeggnog
how do you expect your arguments to stand when you contradict yourself from one paragraph to the next. How can you accuse Watters of plagiarization when you admit that he does say where he got his information.
Do you really expect us to accept your very incorrect definition of plagiarization?
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djeggnog
@Curtains:
how do you expect your arguments to stand when you contradict yourself from one paragraph to the next. How can you accuse Watters of plagiarization when you admit that he does say where he got his information[?]
It's so very easy to do since this is what the man does. He takes Lifton's words, adds to them and makes them his own words. Watters doesn't quote Lifton and associate himself with Lifton's statements, but he plagiarizes Lifton by taking his words, his ideas, as if they were his own words and ideas.
Do you really expect us to accept your very incorrect definition of plagiarization?
"Incorrect?" I speak the English language, and I use the US English lexicon, so when I used the word "plagiarize" or "plagiarizing" in what I wrote, what I had in mind were the following definitions:
1. To take without referencing from someone else's writing or speech; of intellectual property; 2. The act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own.
By way of example, I'm now going to demonstrate what it means to plagiarize someone's words, and I'll do this by using a few of @Mary's words:
There are three elders that get to act as judge and jury and executioner in every case, and despite the repercussions that can be horrific if the same were doled out for one's perceived "sin" (like, for example, one not being permitted to speak with their own family members unless those family members and the disfellowshipped person were to be all living under the same roof), you don't get to bring an attorney with you to the Judicial Committee, nor will you be allowed the record anything that takes place during those proceedings, although some have reportedly been able to secretly record the proceedings. It's possible, too, that you may not even get to find out who it was that even brought against you the accusations you're facing. It's all so hush-hush.
What I've done here in the previous paragraph with @Mary's words is exactly what Watters has done in connection with Lifton's words, I've plagiarized them, since the thought is the same, the idea is the same, only the words are re-arranged. Notice, too, that my telling you that they were @Mary's words doesn't change the fact that the words I was plagiarizing in my post were @Mary's, not my own words. By my using @Mary's words, someone that should late come upon @Mary's words could reasonably conclude that @Mary and I are on the same page when we are not on the same page at all.
Note that I do not quote @Mary like this:
As @Mary indicated in her post, "[t]he 3 elders assigned to whatever your sin is, gets to act as judge, jury and executioner in every, single case. And despite the horrific repercussions that can be doled out for your perceived 'sin' (such as not being able to talk to family members that are not living under your roof), you are not allowed any legal representation ... [and] you are not allowed to record the proceedings and chances are." As a matter of fact, she points out that "you won't even know who it was that brought the accusations against you in the first place." Some of the posters here, @Mary also mentions in her post, "have managed to secretly tape record their Judicial Committees...."
Maybe this will help you to understand the difference between giving an attribution to someone you're quoting and taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own. Or, maybe you won't get it and will insist that you're right when you're not right.
@djeggnog
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Lady Lee
djrggnog
To be honest, @Lady Lee, I thought I should tell you that I think it rather lame that you are telling me here that the only copy you have of your entire video is on a video tape, when I would think (and do think!) that what with folks blatantly ignoring the WTS copyright on the new textbook that "you guys" could care less about the rights of the copyrightholder of your video, so that it wouldn't be impossible for you to PM me a copy of the video. You may not like it, but this is how I see things. You don't want me to see a copy of your video and I don't want to pay for a copy, and so it seems we have an impasse.
Well whether you believe it or not all I have is a VHS tape that was given to me shortly after the tape was done. Other than the person who owns the interview and the VHS tape (and who has made them into digital copies only available recently on the internet) I don't know anyone who has the digital copy. I was never sent one to replace the VHS tape. And I have never figured out how to copy VHS tapes to a CD.
If you don't mind I will take the comments about the interview to a new thread
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Curtains
djeggnog
I've looked at Randy Watters article on freeminds. He makes it clear that Lifton wrote a book on Brainwashing and that the points from that book can be used to identify whether a goup is a destructive cult or not. THis is not plagiarism. Plagiarism is when the source material is not referenced. Randy Watters clearly tells us where he got his material and he tells us how he is going to use the material. Adapting the paragraph headings to suit his purposes is not plagiarism because he has already told us he is going to do this. Here is how Randy opens his essay
" Brainwashing has become almost a household word in the last two decades or so. In 1961, Robert J. Lifton wrote the definitive book on the subject, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, after studying the effects of mind control on American prisoners of war under the Communist Chinese. Lifton outlines eight major factors that can be used to identify whether a group is a destructive cult or not . Any authoritarian religion should be held up to the light in order to determine just how destructive their influence is on their members. Judge for yourselves. Try reading Understanding Mind Control Among Jehovah's Witnesses."