by paranoia agent 29 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Great post paranoia agent.
I notice the books mentioned can be obtained from www.bookdepository.co.uk at a reasonable cost with free postage.
(TA today, Games people play and I'm OK, You're OK)
Also a book by Eric Berne mentioned by cliff above: Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy by Eric Berne
Thanks, you will be disappointed getting all three books because they have more or less the same material, Games people play is mainly focused in games explained through TA, I'm OK you're OK is a good well worded easy to read book which I recommend to all, TA today has slightly more information than I’m OK you're OK. There are other books that I have not read like Scripts (Transactional Analysis in Bite Sized Chunk).
There are also academic books which are more exhaustive and technical
Your title reminds me of how law review articles changed during my career. When I was in law school, they accurately described the content of the article. In other words they were descriptive and lacked "oomph" and sex appeal. Perhaps there was a conference that I missed but suddenly the titles became sexy and provocative. When I do research, I become so excited to read an article. Reading the actual article is another matter. It is the same less than thrilling content as before. Sexing up a title does not sex up the content. On the other hand, I did read the articles. It might be more accurate to add the words TA. TA is popular so many people know it. "Child" indoctrination might be a better usage, too.
I am interested in hearing why TA appeals to you on a personal level. Do you perceive it is better than other therapy models?
People thought you were going to address the WT's policies towards children. They are not convenient for the WT. First, they take up time better spent in field service. Second, the WT has never provided youth programs. I recall when my three year old sister lightly brushed her little feet against a chair in front of her at a convention and a Bethelite took off his belt and handed it to my mom so she could be beaten. Third, normal social activities are forbidden to WT children. We were loners and alienated from society. Fourth, the WT does now allow us any creativity. There is a medieval formulation of childhood. Children are viewed as little adults, capable of long bladder holds. Elders pressure them to witness at school. Instruction is not provided to the children.
I grew up with the orange Paradise Lost book. This book terrified me as a child. I still vividly recall an infant being sacrificed to some cow/bull god/goddess. Armageddon is depicted in over the top illustrations. A recent copy purchased at Amazon confirmed that the content was purposely written to terrorize children into submission.
Overall, we are taught that play is wrong. Meetings and field service are all important. Friends and other social ties, such as mentors, including teachers, are evil. The WT limits the development of children. I knew all the rules yet I had no clue why. Some limited adult exposure to youth ministries at mainstream churches showed me the stark contrast. Children are highly valued in these churches. Much care is taken to teach them the fundamentals of faith in an inclusive and age appropriate manner. These Sunday classes are fun. Teenagers go on pilgrimages, ofen to foreign countries. They have fun with some supervision. It was humorous to go to church one Sunday and see all the teens suddenly sitting together in their own designated teen row. The older people smiled, recalling their youth. Unlike most Witness children, these children know Bible fundamentals and some doctrine. All I could ever do was parrot some WT phrases.
I can cite a powerful example. Jesus' identity confused me as a child. The Witness formulation of Jesus as a weak Michael mixed with media coverage of Jjesus. Since my neighborhood was Roman Catholic, Jesus was discussed in the playground. Of course, I knew Jesus was not the Trinity. I had no idea why, however.
Children should be raised with values. Respect and love toward children rather than blind obedience go far to winning hearts and minds of children.
Band on the Run : I think that the title for this thread is most appropriate, I am explaining cult indoctrination from a TA perspective, however the title will change meaning, you see a child denotes that it has physical parents but as well the child could acquire an invisible parent as substitute.
TA is all about understanding ego states, transactions, games, scripts and strokes but I am focused on cults so in that regard I need to explain what TA is before we delve into cults, but not everything about TA because some parts are irrelevant to the topic being discussed.
TA isn't the only thing that appeals to me, anything that can help me understand myself and others helps, I am currently doing CBT and halfway through reading Working With Emotional Intelligence. But in the context of this thread, the topic, TA is my most favourite, you will find many aspects of TA in harmony with other psychological perspectives (psychoanalysis, cognitive, humanistic, behavioural, positive, etc.) and it was the easiest for me to understand and apply in real life. Now this is just my opinion, what works best for me and not for someone else.
Let’s take for example Hassan on mind control in which he wrote that our approach to those in the cult are important, we do not want to turn on their cult mentality so our approach to them is important, he then goes on explaining the importance of rapport and timing, which I totally agree with. This is completely sound with TA, cult mentality is the Parent ego state, but the only difference is that we can understand why by imagining the transactions between person A and person B ego states, not only that but in real time, I have to make sure that our transactions are maintained between Adult to Adult, but as well cognitive dissonance can be applied to the ego states. Furthermore, knowing that we can relate to them and since we understand their past and present TA becomes a very powerful tool that can almost be used to predict what will occur during transactions.
And just so we are clear, I am not implying that TA is everything just as Combatting Cult Mind Control is all I need to read and understand. No, not the way I see it, just as psychology does not have a paradigm like biology, chemistry and physics, but rather perspectives, so to me it is beneficial to understand many aspects of psychology and apply what I think is best for a situation.
The purpose to understand indoctrination is that it is a component to TA such that we can understand them better, their personality and beliefs/values later in their adult life. It is not really on what we went through (we all have at least a basic understand of hardships of child indoctrination) but how it transcends into our adult life. People flying planes into buildings, avoiding blood transfucions, shunning family members, paying a cult 10% of their salary, it all starts when we are cognitivily dependent of someone, so just like psychoanalysis we need to start from the root.
Part 4
As explained in part 3 the child absorbs parental information and that becomes their Parent ego state, howeve emotions like being scared of mum's anger after asking many questions, crying after being punished for trying to touch the stove, or doing the thing dad does not like, and the good emotions that makes them happy, these bad and good emotions are part of the development of the Child ego state. (Figure 2)
In adulthood when we do something we consider wrong or our fault, most of us feel guilty, stressed, concerned, we are in our Child ego state. The lesser the negative emotions during childhood (Nurturing Parent) the more positive/balanced mentality we have when confronted in these situations. Those who have a childhood with a lot of persistent don’ts, no's and punishments, constantly feeling 'I am not OK' (Controlling Parent), in adulthood this person tends to be more neurotic.
JW's being that they want to do what they consider to be correct to their children usually are in the category of controlling parent. This is why fear, phobias and depression are predominating in adult jw's.
There is a little more terminology that will not be covered, for the purposes to understand Controlling and Nurturing Parent ego states I include fig. 3, for any future references I will be using the more basic P-A-C (Fig. 2)
As i explain more this will start to make more and more sense, I just don't have time to cover everything in one go.
this youtube account has excellent videos about TA
Thanks nonjwspouse, I like his videos a lot.
Bookmarked
thanks for sharing
I believe everyone who took Psych 101 is familiar with TA. Any casual reader of Psychology Today is also familiar. TA is a theory, a way of viewing psychological processes, not proven fact.
I fail to see the great import of TA. Child indoctrination is catchy. Every generation indoctrinates their children in the fatih of the culture. We learn the rules of social life. Growing up JW presents difficulty beyond TA terms. We are taught a counter to what we learn in school. The only legitimate authority is the WT and our JW parents.
Many here post about their experience as a born-in or their regret at raising their children in the faith. My experience was that education and age approriate activities were forbidden. The loss of birthdays, Christmas, and a host of other holidays left me feeling that I was an unwanted orphan. I expect all minority religions face the same issues. We were told what to think. Childish activites such as play or brushing feet against a chair aimlessly were viewed as evil in my day. Children are not valued as children. I also believe that for those shunned b/c of marriage with other JWs, rather than full time pioneering, children were a visible sign of lust and lack of love for Jehovah.
Jesus said suffer the children to come to me, not children should suffer.
Part 5
I wrote that Child and Parent ego states are developed during ages 0 to 5~7, when they start to socialise with the rest of the world, during pre-school, it is now the Adult ego (which emerged during the first 10 months after birth) state that starts to develop and it is from this ego state that alters the Parent and Child ego states during the course of their lives, as it starts to slowly understand the world. It does not necessarily mean that all that occurred prior to the 7 year mark can change, some can be switch off, but others no
The Adult ego state gets data from Parent and Child and alters the Parent and Child by understanding discrepancies in reality. For example the Child ego state of the emotion fear due to not wanting to touch the stove because there will be punishment from mum, but once the real motive is understood that the hot stove will cause 3rd degree burns, from mum or someone else explaining it (Adult to Adult transaction) and mum is just trying to protect, will override the old Child ego state (Fig. 4)
Ok then what about cults? That will be discussed in part 6 along with discrepancies.
Now that you understand how all 3 ego states are developed and watched the video on transactions (part 2) you have the tools on how to understand others, we can now start to address cults specifically. The video below may offend theists but it relates to jw's, think of the interactions that occur during witnessing/interacting with other jw's, and how they apply to this video. How we should deal with them will be explained in future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eam-z1bwrk
