Yasmin suggested

Corboy,
I think your assessment of this is very interesting,and some of it I definitely agree with. Your point about small boundary violations potentially leading to large violations is particularly important.
But.
Not all people who join religious groups that tend to power abuse come from broken homes. In fact many people who join cults come from very good homes. Anyone can be conned.
The ability to be conned is not necessarily a result of a personality flaw formed in childhood.
Personally I think there is a certain tendency to consider that for example children who grow up in cults or have other negative experiences must be flawed, unable to form good relationships etc.
And indeed your comments seem to suggest this is true.
Yet while some people certainly will face lifelong challenges from such a background, the human psyche is often much more resilient than one might think.
There are many people who have experienced challenges in their life who use this to become stronger, more compassionate.
Victor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps and helped develop existential therapy, would be one example.
And plenty of people from troubled backgrounds have very good skills at reading people ; in fact some have developed extremely good skills in this area, possibly as a result of needing to identify whether the sitautions around them were safe or not.
Most of the people I know from such backgrounds are in fact much warier about joining in group religious dynamics, and more likely to observe the first subtle signs of power abuse than others without such life experience..
Just thought another point of view might be helpful here.

Corboy

The title of Simon's 1989 article is "Sexual Exploitation of Patients: How It Begins Before It Happens"


Though Simon is perhaps not a Buddhist practitioner, his observations validate a central tenet of Buddhist logic---something cannot come from nothing.

No behavior occurs without a chain of cause and effect.

If we can ask "How did trouble at a Vajrayana center begin, before it became extreme enough to be considered as 'happening'"?

In a later study, RI Simon learned that many instances of early boundary violation begin not during sessions, but in the grey zone "between the chair and the doorway"

One example of this was a Dharma teacher who later got into sexual scandals with students.

This man reportedly tested prospective victims. He would do so by walking alonside a woman he fancied--and bump his hip into her hip.

If she failed to protest--and if she failed to activate boundaries on her side by taking means to avoid further contact with this guy--it signalled that either she liked him or at least she felt unable to defend herself. This woman would be selected for further pressures.

I was also told this same teacher, the one who later got into very public trouble committed boundary violations in other ways.

By tradition this dharma center operated on a tight ceremonial schedule, a precedent set by its founder. Lectures were supposed to take place on the minute.

That meant that the teacher, who gave the talk and was head of the monastery, had to follow a tight schedule, precise to the minute.

The boundary violator abused his authority by consistently running late. A former attendant told me that X would not be ready on time for lectures, and she would have to knock on his door to roust him out. It got so bad that many other people refused to serve as attendant to this man.

When he did deign to show up for lecture (and he was late), my informant reported he would talk on and on, and go over the specified time limit for the lecture.

A therapist who was an expert at boundary violations heard my descriptions of this and narvelled, "So, at least 10 to 15 years before this man landed in the news because of sexual acting out, he was already having trouble honoring boundaries."

It doesnt matter how charming or brilliant someone is. Running late and inflicting inconvenience on people, whether attendants or one's audience, sends the message that the latecomer feels entitled, and or that other people dont exist or matter as human beings.

No teaching worthwhile if that nonverbal message is underneath it all.

At the very least, chronic violation of timetables and good manners indicates that someone is disorganized--too disorganized to follow instructions from attendants and too disorganized to function as a leader of a dharma center.

If someone has that kind of concentration trouble and cannot be kept on time, even by guidance from an attendant, THAT PERSON IS NOT SUITABLE FOR A LEADERSHIP ROLE.

Some will show up late and be so dazzling and charming that the audience is conned into forgiving them. Dont fall for that.

In many Asian countries, keeping people waiting is a signal that they are low status and that the person keeping them late is the king of the heap.

If you are a freeborn citizen it is a tragedy to let yourself be abused this way.

That can lead to allowing yourself to be abused in very much worse ways.

And...am not playing for laughs.

Anyone ditzy or arrogant enough to keep a roomful of people waiting and who gives his or her attendant anxiety, will, if allowed to continue this violation of boundaries, be at risk of allowing or perpetrating other boundary violations.

Corboy

The next step would be to do a couple of surveys--a good project for a graduate student who has had prior course work in research methodology and questionnaire design.

(Even minor changes in wording a question can give quite different responses)

The survey should be designed to obtain information for these areas:

Level of stress in a persons family background. If respondants report troubled family backgrounds and their response is statistically greater than 50% (the rate to be expected based on random chance), that suggests a high proportion of people at that center who come from backgrounds that would train them to ignore when boundaries are compromised.

Other areas of scrutiny for designing a questionnaire:

Level of stress immediately preceding interest in Vajrayana and other forms of Buddhism

Level of stress immediately preceding entry into residential practice at the dharma center.

(One could structure a questionnaire to ask whether a respondant, prior to entry into residential practice had to change relationships, jobs, give up a place of residence or even give up a beloved dog or cat. The more a respondant has give up, the greater the risk of cognitive dissonance if something goes wrong at the practice center for which the respondant sacrificed so much to join.)

Additional questions could be asked about stressors--drinking or drugs use in family of origin age the person was when parents died or divorced, whether person has any children, illnesses or death among children.

Outside social support and quality that social support of before entry into residential practice--friends, health care providers, family.

Social support from outside of the dharma center after one year residence, three year residence, ten year residence. It would be important to know if people continue to maintain relationships with non practitioner friends and family and health care providers, or tend to let go of outside sources of validation the longer they remain at the center.


And...one could also ask persons at different levels of residence (one year, two years, three years, five years) at the center how much social support they have outside of that dharma center--list the number of supportive friends, family members and health care providers who are NOT in any way affiliated with the center or with Buddhism (or whateever the belief system) and whom the respondant can turn to if things go bad at the dharma center.

An additional study could be done to see if student perceptions of an objectively measurable behavior by an authority figure match well with observations of outside observers.

A good area to examine is perceptions if a teacher arrives late for scheduled events--would be whether the highest ranking teacher arrives on schedule for lectures and other teachings. All one has to do is look at the schedule and then note the the teacher's arrival (on time, 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late, 34 minutes late)

Then, at these same lectures, hand out a questionnaire with an item asking, "Today did the Teacher or Guru arrive on time for the talk or event?"

If the observer notes (using their wristwatches) that the teacher arrived late, but a high proportion of the questionnaire respondants reply that the teacher arrived on time, (or say the person arrived late but this is irrelevant in relation to the merit of receiving blessing, this would suggest that respondants are perceiving teacher behavior differently from an outside observer

---a subtle risk factor that could contribute to ignoring later and more severe boundary violations by that teacher or other authority figures.

Suggestion from Yasmin
Hi Corboy; such a study would be interesting.
Of course if your hypothesis is that people who join abusive religious groups are more likely to be stressed , or to have troubled backgrounds, then you would have to also look at two variables
Are people under stress more likely to join social groups of any kind ?
Are people under stress more likely to join religious groups of any kind?
Perhaps looking at stress levels/family backgrounds in people who join the Sierra Club, the local gym, etc would help with the first
And looking at stress levels/family backgrounds for people joining mainstream religions or NRMs that are seen as positive would help with the second to give some useful comparisons.


Of course even a study in a scientific journal will often still be effected by the bias of the observer, particularly in how they design the study and categorize the results.
For example, while looking around to see what had been studied in this area, I came across this gem

Clinical and Personality Assessments of Participants in New Religions, Richardson J.T. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion,Vol 5, Issue 3, 1995
From the abstract;

The present review covers considerable research...The conclusion in the earlier review that most experiences in the group were generally positive are strengthened by including this later reseach.

The three groups being studied were the Hare Krishna movement, Rajneesh, and The Jesus Movement.

I havent read his study design or seen more than the abstract, though I would guess that one possible major flaw would be that asking people in a group where criticism of the group might be considered a religious failing, whether or not they are happy in the group, is likely to get a positive response, regardless of the persons actual feelings.

It has been pretty well documented that many children raised in particular in the Hare Knrishna group certainly found the experience so much less than positive that I believe ( anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong here) that there was an out of court settlement to the tune of millions for compensation?

Yet from the point of view of this scientific study, the experience was "mainly positive".
My own hypothesis is that caught at the right time, any one can be vulnerable to a con or to a religion that becomes abusive . But that at least a percentage of the people who have been conned, particularly if they studied how such things occur, are more likely than others without such experience to be able to identify the warning signs when they see boundary violations happening again.
I personally don't believe that a personality flaw is responsible for people being vulnerable to being conned. Perhaps just innocence and lack of experience.

Hi Corboy, thanks for starting the thread.
I do think it is useful for people to realize that scientific studies are very vulnerable to manipulation.
As a general rule, if someone is going to use studies as a way to make decisions, it is useful to know how to identify less than stellar studies.

Unfortunately a high IQ does not necessarily correlate with ethics; scientists are as prone as everybody else to make decisions based on their own good.
A scientist needs funds to do research. And those who fund scientists often prefer certain results. They are certainly not going to re hire a scientist who produces results that are different from what the financier desired.

It is possible to manipulate the data to"legitimately" get the results you desire.
For example
lets say you have a situation where
people who have just started meditating twice a day, for say 6 months or less experience very positive results in their lives from stress reduction.
Then lets say people who meditate four or more hours a day for a year or more start to have mental health issues. Lets also say that those who can afford to meditate this much daily are more likely to have some kind of financial security, perhaps inherited or sponsored. From this group lets say one in 50 starts having relationship problems, one in 60 has problems with spacing out and remembering words. One in 300 has a psychotic break and needs to be institutionalized.
Doesn't look good for meditation, does it?
But no worries.
We can use these numbers to make meditation look very good indeed.
First look at the 0-6 month people.
Great ; no need to do anything with the data here.
"Meditation relieves stress!"
But we can make the long term people look great too.
There are lots of ways to do it.
We can make a study that shows that people who meditate for four or more hours a day are financially better off than the general population. ( Meditation increases your financial stability!)
We can just study 25 well functioning people from the group. ( Maybe get the meditation group leader to 'suggest' people who want to volunteer for the study.)
Wonderful! Meditation helps in any category you care to name, when compared to the general public.
But we can even make larger numbers of people look good.
We look at 100 people who are long term meditators, likely still small enough sample size that we miss the psychotic break down person. Wow! 100% of meditators show mental health ( as defined by not requiring institutionalization) we can even theorize that maybe meditation has a preventative effect in reducing mental breakdowns but suggest that more study with larger groups is needed ( that makes us look suitably modest, and if anyone does catch on to the small numbers, well, we pointed that out , didn't we..) and we know the headlines aren't going to be about the sample size.
Of course we may want to look at other measures of mental health in our long term meditators.
Do people say they are happy? Great ! (We are not going to ask about relationships or memory lapses.) Do they say they are happier and calmer now than before they began meditating ( Its unlikely anyone who has devoted that much time to meditation is going to say anything different) Terrific! Long term meditation results in increased happiness and calmness as measured on (insert random happiness scale here).
All our studies will be scientifically accurate. No fraud here. But we still made the numbers say what we wanted them to.

I've been reading some really bad studies recently, and am feeling a little cynical about it all. Best idea; if the study deals with an area that is important to you, look at who they included in the study, who was left out, how the data was collected, and what conclusions were drawn from it.
You will probably be shocked at some of the stuff that makes it through the peer review system..
Like most things, it is a case of look at what the evidence actually says, and see whether the study really would be able to identify issues.
Designing a study so that it can't catch the people who are injured is a great way to make something look really good.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2012 02:00AM by yasmin.