rrmoderator:

Let me see if I understand correctly.

When The Anticult says I deserve to get cussed out, that's not a personal attack? But when I explain that his comment is a poker tell concealing fear, that is a personal attack?

I'll be sure to take that under advisement.

The Anticult:

In the documentary Tyson, he talks about how when he was at his most hostile, he was really a scared, trembling kid inside. Like you, I found it surprising that one of the world's most dominant fighters was secretly terrified, even when he was in top physical form.

But apparently it's not a contradiction. Since then, I've heard several psychologists say that hostility conceals fear. "Great anger is great fear," says one cognitive behavioral therapist.

In nature, when an animal is backed into a corner or feels threatened, it lashes out. I do get the sense that you're frightened, but if that's not the case, then I apologize.

I'll try to get this back on topic in my next post.

Dr. Logic:

This is your last warning.

Cease the personal attacks or you will immediately be banned from the message board.

No further warnings will be given.

Doctor Logic is also making a quite pointed personal attack on the Anticult, albeit through assumptions as to TAC's spiritual affiliations and current feelings, things that are TAC's business alone.
Using Dr Logic's own logic, that would indicate to me that Dr Logic is showing his own fear of TAC.

The poker tell analogy is spurious; in the flesh it is guesswork, using pixels on a screen it is wishful thinking.

This is the Cult Education Forum, not a venue for analysing each other with psychobabble.

It's Goodbye from me, Dr Logic.

To whom it may concern:

"Dr. Logic" has been banned from this message board.

A parting communication to "Dr. Logic"....

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Dr. Logic
When The Anticult says I deserve to get cussed out, that's not a personal attack? But when I explain that his comment is a poker tell concealing fear, that is a personal attack?

Life isn't always fair, so-called doc. I imagine you've existed long enough to have learned that one.

I do think you've made a valid point about a thing or two that was said to or re you. However, can you not understand that it was rather obnoxious and invasive to tell people you don't know -- other than via an extremely small portion of their lives in disembodied cyberspace -- that you have some sort of "secret" insight into human nature to bestow upon them, and moreover that you know just what they are feeling at any given time?

Stoic said to you of his entry into this forum:

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Stoic
I experienced some grilling from people suspicious of a sudden new voice. I had read the thread with its periodic troll attacks and did not expect an open-armed welcome.....why?.....having also experienced being so severely manipulated [by a cult] I have the same suspicions and can empathise with the wariness it becomes necessary to practice.

Stoic was quite patient with the mixed reception he/she received here initially and did not, to my memory, complain much, if at all. As Stoic explained, he/she felt empathy and was understanding. One would think that you, with your seeming in-depth knowledge of psychology, would be just as, if not more, patient and understanding re a group of people who've undergone some sort of difficulty with cults and/or abusive individuals/groups.

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Dr. Logic
I'll share a little secret with you. Hostility doesn't convey strength. It conveys fear. When you say that type of thing, you might as well get a bullhorn and announce to the world that you're a terrified human being.

Mike Tyson taught me that. No joke.

Quid pro quo, doc. Since you seem okay with psychoanalyzing, I'll take a stab at it too and surmise.... when someone grandly announces they possess "secret" knowledge that others don't and then famous name-drops.... that person might as well get a bullhorn and announce to the world that they are deeply insecure and/or impotent; the braggadocio is but a mask. In psychology, it's known as reaction formation.

But I could be wrong.

Okay, end of armchair analysis. For entertainment purposes only.

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Dr. Logic
I've been lurking in this forum for a long time, and I have a few questions for The Anticult.

1) Do you think there's such a thing as spiritual truth?
2) Do you think there's such a thing as an authentic spiritual teacher?

The reason I ask is because whenever someone starts a new thread about whether a particular teacher is legitimate or not, you always seem to conclude that the teacher is a charlatan. Not once have I seen you say, "So-and-so looks okay to me." This makes me wonder -- do you think ALL spiritual teachings and teachers are frauds? If not, can you please give me one example of what you deem to be a true teaching and/or teacher?

See, right from the start Dr. Logic is talking in absolutes and certainly isn't following the YOU/I rules of communication that most are familiar with. I know TAC doesn't need me to speak on his behalf but I appreciated the information TAC has posted on RR for a long time. There are hundreds of threads regarding hundreds of groups and individuals and for the most part, The Anticult has NOT commented on them. What he has done, at least for me, is throw a spot light on the modus operandi of individuals who claim to be spiritual or therapeutic gurus, and therapeutic groups and organizations, and how they twist small kernels of valid methods and teaching to get the most out of their customers financially, without any accountability and without disregard for the well being of other people. TAC has always pointed out what to look for in an individual or group and has not condemned any and all teachers as charlatans.

Doesn't it make you wonder about the claims of some of these people when they can't even use their real name, or give any credentials as to where they were educated? Or when they're caught explaining elsewhere on the web how to take advantage of people and then come on here and claim to be ant-cult? Why would someone have a bone to pick with the person who provides information in order to protect people from quacks? Is it better for people who have been used and abused to then go to a spiritual or psychologic counselor who is going to use the same shit on them? And when those people are harmed, it's their fault because they didn't do their homework, right? They were just not being responsible. Love that word responsible.

People who play mind games, knowing exactly what they're doing, do deserve at the very least to be "cussed out for" doing so. Again, Dr. Logic feels like it was a personal attack when TAC said he should be cussed out for playing mind games. But this whole thread was started with the intent of a personal attack on TAC. In the end, the instigator, like so many others that so many here are familiar with, instead of maybe taking a look at their own behavior, asks what we are so afraid of, why are we hostile. That's straight out of the narcissist's training manual.

The next step are several sets of internet Sock-Puppets...


Its too bad that internet trolls and sock-puppets refuse to realize that many people are hurt by these groups, Gurus, and sects. They are bankrupted, scammed, abused, injured, and even killed, and not just the deaths that make the media, the suicides that no one ever hears about after the LGAT seminars.
But that is par for the course, there are a lot of cult apologists out there, and other disturbed people who only care about making money off vulnerable people who aren't aware of what is being done to them until its too late.

There is so much I have wanted to say, about this debacle. But, once again, a number of posters have beat me to it. Thank-you all for saving me from spending what little energy I have left for these clowns like Not-Dr. Illogic. (see, you guys have gotten me hooked on the Salty Droid)

Thanks also to Mr Ross for getting right up in this goof's face and hurrying the process of getting him out of ours. He was here for an argument, so let him go now to some un-moderated place for one. Or, more likely, let him go out on the web and post how all of us 'witch-burners' here at the forum misunderstood his very righteous intentions and persecuted him. He wouldn't be the first to handle it that way.

Just reading the Not-Logic crap that these spin-doctors weave actually has the effect of sucking the energy out of me. Does anyone else have this reaction? Thankfully, it's only temporary.

Anyway, that's the reason I thank you all for getting in his face; I just don't have the energy sometimes.

qd

Something really interesting has surfaced in connection with this thread. I'll explain below.

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Hope
See, right from the start Dr. Logic is talking in absolutes

Yes. The "Dr." also insisted that hostility was really fear. How about hostility is hostility and fear is fear? How about distinguishing them? How about having them co-exist, rather than one canceling the other out?

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Dr. Logic
Since then, I've heard several psychologists say that hostility conceals fear. "Great anger is great fear," says one cognitive behavioral therapist.

A Google search reveals that a therapist named A.B. Curtiss said this. ("Great anger is great fear"? Seems like a grand oversimplification to me.) A.B. Curtiss is the controversial author of "Depression Is A Choice".

Amazon.com provides the following mini-review of "Depression Is A Choice" by Publishers Weekly:

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In overwritten, overlong text, Curtiss (Time of the Wild), a cognitive behavioral therapist, author of children's books and contributing writer to the New York Times, etc., explains how to overcome depression without drugs. The suggestions herein stem chiefly from her personal experience: her periods of deep depression, followed by manic incidents that led her, for example, to launch poorly conceived business ventures that lost money. She also, somewhat capriciously, left her husband and children for a year to live in an ashram. She explains how she freed herself from years of ups and downs by following her own program of "directed thinking." According to Curtiss, as soon as one becomes aware of depressed or manic feelings, one must "as an act of will, replace the accidental, unchosen thoughts that have caused the problem with new, positive, neutral or commonsense thoughts or actions." Even in cases resulting from chemical imbalances in the brain, contends Curtiss, it's simply a question of learning how to employ the mind. She feels strongly that prescription drugs coupled with "psychologized thinking" (i.e. the Freudian premise that "the mind and the self... are one and the same") will only mask, not help with depression. Curtiss also emphasizes the importance of traditional family values versus the current pursuit of individual happiness. However one feels about Curtiss's ideas, "directed thought" comes off as a murky offshoot of standard therapy; wading through the author's convoluted thought processes may cause rather than cure depression.

Another review of A.B. Curtiss's book is from Christian Perring, Ph.D. of MentalHelp.Net. He kicks off his review by saying, "I can't remember the last time I read such an exasperating book." For Dr. Perring's full review, see:

[[url=http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?id=779&type=book&cn=4]www.mentalhelp.net[/url]]

I took a look inside the book (see books.google.com and Chapter 1 on the author's website) and found some interesting info:

"I went home, called the airline for tickets, and just up and left my family completely for a year to seek enlightenment at the ashram of an Indian guru."

Suddenly leaving one's family for a whole year? So guess who her guru was? The notorious Osho, aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Wow.

"Let me illustrate the idea of moral imperative by my first firewalk, that mainstay of traveling hypnotists and motivational gurus."

Firewalk? Her first one? How many did she do? With whom did she do firewalking? Was it "motivational guru" Tony Robbins?

"But I beat them to the punch and got a lawyer at the ashram (from the staff of thirty lawyers who were also followers of this particular guru)...."

She needed a lawyer? What for? (I have ideas as to why Osho/Rajneesh needed thirty lawyers!)

"My own brain chemistry is such that still I wake up almost every morning in deep despair, although it usually lasts only three or four minutes once I employ simple mind tricks. I am seldom troubled this way by depression in the late afternoon or evening, unless I take a nap. Anytime I take a nap, I am likely to wake up in the black hole. But I no longer panic and fear drowning."

If someone wakes up nearly every morning in deep despair and is "usually" able to use "mind tricks" to snap out of it.... as long as they don't take a nap.... I just wonder how well the author's proposed cure really works? And what if she is inaccurate about how often she feels despair?

I think this warrants further investigation. I've just ordered a used copy of A.B. Curtiss's book from Amazon and hope to be reading it before long. To be continued....



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2010 03:05AM by helpme2times.

Hi QD,

Yep, I've experienced the same thing. My energy gets a bit sapped during a prolonged bout with a troll. Fortunately I've been balancing things out with some down time; that does help. (Listening to music is particularly good for me.)

If it ever gets to be too much, I do what it seems you do: remove myself a while.

I imagine that people have varying levels of troll tolerance. :-P

Good to "see" you!

HM2X