A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Bruce Renehan
Daughter of Babylon

 

 

I have just spent considerable time reading the letters to Ed from what he calls "kooks and nuts" who have stumbled into the pit called "Church of God." How truly amazing these people are. Having worked for a psychiatric hospital interviewing patients before their admission, I can truly say that I love working with people who are mentally ill. I have told many schizophrenic patients in front of their families that I consider them very special. Usually they were gripped in fear of what was happening to their concept of reality. I wanted to assure them that reality is only a thin veneer and the sooner they accepted that, the sooner they would recover. It is not easy to gain the trust of someone in the prodromal phase of psychosis. As one schizophrenic told me once, "I don't know whether to believe you or him." He pointed to the door where he claimed a disfigured and prosecutory person stood.

What makes people who ally themselves to groups like the wcg so special is that it gives them a type of anchor to reality. Believe me, reality is not easy for everyone to accept. For them, they have always had difficulty differentiating fantasy from reality and I have to say, that makes them so very special. For here we have people who can skirt the very perimeter of cognitive reality like the ancient shamans who lapsed into psychosis for spiritual revelation. These people can stay at arms length from reality by believing in fantasy stories told to them by their religious leaders (who capitalize on this amazing talent of theirs). This ability to share a delusion is well known by psychiatrists as the folie a deaux. It is one of the most amazing phenomenon in psychological studies. The follie is a contagious delusion shared by those exposed to the one who indoctrinates his followers. (Usually this is a paranoid schizophrenic who manages to convince his entire family that his delusions are real.) I have seen this in the clinical environment but to witness it in such a mass movement is precious. These people actually believe that Herbert Armstrong was a man that could communicate with God and that he was equal to all biblical patriarchs. They are not faking. To them this is as true as Mendellian pundit charts or the periodic table of elements.

Ed, I just have one piece of advise for you. It comes from Sigmund Freud, of all people. Try not to counter-transfer. In other words, I know that you have recovered from this mass psychosis and that you have a special sensitivity now. After all, who wants to return to a psychosis? I see your anger when these people make their delusional statements to you. But we all have to learn to own what belongs to us and what belongs to others.

Thanks for this wonderful opportunity to study mass psychosis!

Bruce Renehan

 

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