Years ago, in an article that has since been taken down, I read one man's advice, after he had left a high demand group: in evaluating a group led by a dominent male leader, take care to see if the leader allows other men his age and of comparable social and intellectual stature to be colleagues, or if he insists on being sole dominent male and monopolizing sexuality and access to women, while reducing the other men to submissive status and driving away men who refuse to be demeaned in this manner.
Am sorry to report that in some cases, women leaders have reportedly replicated this sort of domination paradigm. Get and read
The Buddha From Brooklyn by Martha Sherrill.
In some cases a such group is linked with entrepreneur type projects
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Or it is rationalized as therapy. For a brilliant description of a wilderness therapy group that masked such activity, get and read
People Farm by Steve Susoyev. Go to www.peoplefarm.com for further information. (If the link does not work, just paste it into your browser.) This one is most interesting for the group Susoyev was in was a 1970s version of a ranch wilderness program that was part of the troubled teen industry
yet also included a group for adults that had extensive ties to the legitimate therapeutic community. It was only the leaders deterioration into alcoholic paranoia and cruelty that led to the groups eventual downfall. Susoyev by his own admission, did stuff that could have landed him in in prison for the better part of his life.
In other cases, there have been reports that a leader did not act out sexually himself, remained married, but would order followers into relationships or to be celibate at whim, as though using them as surrogates act out urges he dared not do on his own.
Find and read
American Guru by William Yenner. For supplementation, read
Enlightement Blues by Andre van der Braak, who on this same guru's orders broke up with three different girlfriends until finally he became fed up.
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This stuff goes back into the 19th century and earlier. Read Madame Blavatsky's Baboon by Washington for instances.
And Google Jan of Leyden and Munster for information about an apocalyptic take over of an entire city--Munster Germany in the 1530s, led by a charismatic prophet who reportedly instituted polygamy and broke up marriages.
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