Chapter Three: Janja Lalich and the bounded choice of the true believer
3.2 Janja Lalich: professional profile
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Chapter Three: Janja Lalich and the bounded choice of the true
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Lalich is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Pacific Sociological Association. She is the founder and director of the Centre for Research on Influence and Control, and serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the International Cultic Studies Association, as well as on the editorial board of its journal, the Cultic Studies Review. Lalich has appeared on numerous American television and radio news programs, such as Meet the Press, NPR’s Morning Edition and To the Best of Our Knowledge, as well as BBC radio’s Thinking Allowed.180 Her numerous published works and articles are further indicators of her authority in the area of cultic groups.181 Lalich’s interest in the cultic groups and their dynamics was inspired by her 11 year membership of the San Francisco Democratic Worker’s Party (DWP), a radical left- wing political group of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
The Democratic Worker’s Party began in 1974 in California through the charismatic leadership of former sociology professor Marlene Dixon. She wished to create a politically radical group, founded on Marxist-Leninist principles but also with strong feminist, anti-racist and gay liberation foci. Dixon’s paper entitled Principles of Dialectical Leadership provided the ideological framework for the group. Recruitment of gay and straight people was encouraged and after recruitment, new members were given new names and were melded into a collectivist group culture requiring the pooling of income and resources, long hours of assigned tasks and extreme self- criticism. The group went through several name changes – originally being known as
180 Janja Lalich, “About Dr Lalich”. http://cultresearch.org/about/ (accessed 28/01/2012)
181 Lalich’s books include: Take Back Your Life: Recovering From Cults and Abusive Relationships, 2006; Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults, 2004; Misunderstanding Cults: Searching For Objectivity in a Controversial Field, 2001; "Crazy" Therapies: What Are They? Do They
Work? 1996; Cults in Our Midst, 1995, with Margaret Singer; Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships, 1994. Her articles include: "Repairing the Soul after a Cult Experience", CSNetwork Magazine, Spring 1996, pp. 30–33; "Using the Bounded Choice Model as an Analytical Tool: A Case Study of Heaven's Gate", Cultic Studies Review, 2004, Vol. 3, No.3; "The Cadre Ideal: Origins and Development of a Political Cult", Cultic Studies Journal, 1992, Vol. 9, No.1;
Introduction: "We Own Her Now", Cultic Studies Journal, 1997, Vol. 14, No.1; "Dominance and Submission: The Psychosexual Exploitation of Women in Cults", 1997, Cultic Studies Journal, Vol.14, No.1; "Women Under the Influence: A Study of Women's Lives in Totalist Groups", Guest Editor, Special issue, Cultic Studies Journal, 1997, Vol.14, No.1.
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the Workers Party for Proletarian Socialism, then the Workers Party until eventually becoming the Democratic Workers Party in 1984. The DWP initially operated in a paramilitary and clandestine manner with members participating in activities among Leftist groups while keeping their membership and party secret. On 6 November 1979, the Party's existence was formally acknowledged through a public document issued by the Party, and from this point it grew from 125 to 175 full-time militants.
Dixon became seen as a great figure within the Communist movement as a personality cult developed around her.
By the end of the 1970s Dixon had become more qualified in her revolutionary thinking and compromises she advocated alienated some members who saw this as an about- face. In time, Dixon distanced herself from Marxism-Leninism as she felt it had failed in the United States. By late 1985 Dixon began supporting the idea of leaving the party and setting up a think tank in Washington, D.C. This, together with her unstable behaviour, paranoia and alcoholism inspired her lieutenants in the Party to assess her leadership and the party’s work, while Dixon was on a trip to Eastern Europe. On the night before Dixon was scheduled to return, party members convened and unanimously voted to expel the General Secretary (Dixon) from the party, and then to dissolve it.
This resolution was upheld through a mail vote held in April 1986 and by August 1987 the Party had been dissolved and its assets distributed among members.
Lalich joined the DWP in 1975 and became a high ranking member of the group. After its dissolution, and while recuperating from the demands the group had made on her, a friend urged Lalich to read a book on Jonestown. She was surprised to discover that
“the differences between the Party and Jonestown (and there were many) were not so great as the similarities.” 182 As she later declared, “I wanted to figure out what the heck happened to me"183 and thus began her research of cultic groups. Lalich published her Ph.D. dissertation entitled Bounded Choice: The Fusion of Personal Freedom and
182 Lalich, Bounded Choice, p. xviii.
183 17 April 2003. “Cult Expert Janja Lalich Offers New Theory on Brainwashing”, Inside Chico State, Volume 33, Number 14. http://cultresearch.org/about/dr-lalichs-theory-on-brainwashing/ (Accessed 28/1/2012)
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Self-Renunciation in Two Transcendent Groups in 2000.184 It was later developed into the 2004 book Bounded Choice. True Believers and Charismatic Cults.185 In Bounded Choice she compared and contrasted two very different kinds of cults in order to identify their similarities and differences: the DWP and the UFO cult Heaven’s Gate.
Heaven’s Gate was founded in the early 1970’s by Marshall Applewhite (1952 – 1997) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (1911 – 1985) who believed themselves to be extraterrestrial beings from “The Evolutionary Level Above Heaven”. Their philosophy was a blend of Christianity, theosophy and science fiction. They began to hold meetings, often on university campuses in California to offer information about UFOs to interested parties.
At this point they were known as HIM (Human Individual Metamorphosis). Although they claimed that they were not proselytising, they began to attract followers with the promise of attaining “the next level”, and by 1976 had around 200 members. This number was whittled down to 70 who were deemed worthy of progress to the next level.
Applewhite and Nettles adopted the names Do and Ti respectively and demanded that their members make a complete break with their pasts, give up all material possessions, donate their money to the group, abstain from sex and adopt new names. The daily routine of Heaven’s Gate was highly regimented with down to the minute scheduling and members were required to assume a common, androgynous look. These demands and disciplines were prescribed for those who wished to prepare for life on the next level and for the voyage on the space-craft that would transport them to this life. In the 1980’s little was heard from the group but in 1993 they re-emerged through apocalyptic advertisements in the media. By 1996 they had rented a property in San Diego, California and had changed their name to Heaven’s Gate. Precipitated possibly by his failing health, but also as a result of accepting the claim of an amateur astronomer that a UFO was tailing the Hale-Bopp comet as a portent, Applewhite made arrangements for the group’s “departure” to the next level. Over several days, beginning on around 22
184 Lalich, J. 2000. "Bounded Choice: The Fusion of Personal Freedom and Self-Renunciation in Two Transcendent Groups." Ph.D. dissertation, Santa Barbara, California: Fielding Institute.
185 Janja Lalich, 2004. Bounded Choice. True Believers and Charismatic Cults. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.
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March 1997, groups of Heaven’s Gate’s members committed suicide in their San Diego property. In all, 39 members died.186
Lalich’s research combines personal reflections and in-depth interviews of members of these two groups. In Bounded Choice her four dimensional model offers a new approach for understanding the dynamics of cultic groups.
Lalich used this model to examine and analyse the Heaven’s Gate cult in the article
“Using the Bounded Choice Model as an Analytical Tool: A Case Study of Heaven’s Gate” which was published in the Cultic Studies Review.187 Since then she has not revised her bounded choice model but has produced works that continue to explore the theme of psycho-social manipulation.
In Take Back Your Life: Recovering from cults and abusive relationships188 Lalich and co-author Madeleine Tobias explore how individuals are drawn into abusive relationships, and how distress and even posttraumatic stress disorder may be experienced by people who have experienced such relationships. Take Back Your Life provides both insight and empowerment for victims of abuse.