In Reply to: Cognitive Dissonance, a definition (take 2) posted by Anna on November 17, 2004 at 23:29:35:
Yes I saw that site too. Though I don't get your application. It seems more like circular reasoning to me. You have an opinion, it appears, that people who have other opinions on viewing their "Family" experience than the one you have are in some state of denial it would seem. What we have then are simply different perspectives and who can say which perspective is experiencing the cognitive dissonance?
Here is a simpler example of a type of it and coming to grips with reality: (taken from the Wikepedia Dictionary site on "Cognitive Dissonance"):
"When confronted with two belief cognitions that contradict each other, the dissonance can be resolved by finding and adding a third piece of information relevant to the two beliefs. For example, if Sam believes that Bob is trustworthy, but also believes that Bob has broken his trust, then the cognitive dissonance can be resolved by discovering that no person is trustworthy with everything. This enables Sam to (hopefully) still hold that Bob is still largely trustworthy, but that in Sam's particular experience Bob failed to maintain that trust."
I see the family experience more along the lines of "The Mosquito Coast". I guess every one was in a CD state until nearly dying and someone helped them out of it. The leader- abusive yet creative and imaginative father- takes his family to South America after being angry with American society at large, at the rejection of his invention and it being all about the people being bad. He has bought a village that does not exist, except for ruins and a few natives. The ruined village is hell on earth, but the wife and kids are stuck there. He builds Utopia, For a bit everyone is happy and they worked hard together to build his dream then enjoyed it briefly. it blows up in his face. He gets more bizzare and thinks ice will mean something to a distant tribe. His wife and children are carried along in this frenetic world. The ice melts before they get to the tribe and the consequences could have been dire.. the son becomes disillusioned first. After paradise is destroyed and nearly the whole family too, and the father becomes sick, the child says something about his father, and hating him and wishing him dead. (strikingly enough, River Phoenix plays the role of the older of the kids, I think, but maybe not. But he understood the role for sure. He lived it.)
I can't blame the wife. Can't even blame the husband exactly, sure can't blame the kids. They ARE caught up into the whirlpool of his life. Until it ends.
I think that coming out of the Family there is all kinds of fall out from that. And many different views. Just as there are many different views from different therapists about what is healthy and what is not. I would see the survivors of that experience, the wife and the kids, as needing lots of help and nurturing. For the wife it would be more about becoming responsible for self and choices and waking up out of the nightmare and at times, dream life she had experienced and not being suckered in again by a stronger personality. She could only do this if she built up her own self esteem and came to terms with the damages done to herself and children. She and the kids would need to express anger and the kid would need to realize it was normal and healthy to have a reaction to wish the father dead, and then come to grips that the wish (the child) did not kill the dad. His inability to quit his crazy life, or his avoidance of his problems or to believe he had any killed him and almost killed his family. The grieving process would be different for all, but all were victims and survivors of that insanity. The man was a real control freak and "the boss". She was submissive. The wife did not realize what she was giving up and moving into until AFTER she was there and then GOT AWAY from it. At the time, there was no knowable way out. He did turn it into paradise for awhile but reality caught up with that.
I don't see anyone here staying in the lie of the family. I see people trying to work their way out of it and getting ripped for not taking responsibility for what happened while in ( in the sense of insisting that it was a choice to endanger her kids that way as if she was a mean and horrible woman who had no care for her kids rather than a deluded submissive woman who suffered and so did her kids until it was painful enough and luckily she survived the torment and so did her kids) I see FG cult survivors of the family as similar to those who suffer "battered women's syndrome" - btw, men can be battered too. And the horrors their kids go thru living in that system, more able to see what is going on and victims to it themselves.
You see, I definitely believe that I was conned by the psychopathic Berg and also intensely programmed believing I could die if i left the family, believing my conscience was the devil. I know better now. But to paint myself as the bad guy for the "during" is ludicrous imo. Not to say people don't do things they regret in their lives and come to terms with it by facing it, whether what happened was under coercion or survival if another person is hurt by it all. At the same time, I believe it holds people back from healing to insist they believe their parents that are still in or that stayed in for a long time, never loved them, hated them, did things on purpose to hurt them because in most cases that simply isn't so. To fall into that line of thinking and stay there is harmful not helpful. In the end everyone loses. In some cases, a bridge may never be able to be crossed by parent and child, but that does not mean everyone else needs to have that experience. Neither was everyone "Sara Davidito" and even "Sara Davidito" wasn't the monster she became until she was intensely groomed for that dishonor. Would it surprize anyone here to know that i knew her at "Zion" in Texas and we used to do skits where she and I would illustrate things from the bible that were NO NO's like "Wife swapping" and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED a ways down that road! The descriptions of her I absolutely believe, but I knew her before she became that. I guess I am blessed that I was not as pretty and desirable as she was that she was taken up to top leadership and made into one of Berg's wives or whatever.