Related: unhealthy personality changes -- RSQUBF discussion forum

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Date Posted: 14:39:17 03/22/05 Tue
Author: Joe
Subject: Related: unhealthy personality changes
In reply to: Chris 's message, "UBFers' personality types" on 13:35:35 03/22/05 Tue

Unhealthy personality changes are a common trait of cults. This could be due to an abnormal desire to enforce unnecessary conformity on the part of cult leaders. Janet Lesko, like so many parents of UBF recruits over the decades, noticed unhealthy personality change in her son. The changed speech patterns and adaptation of a Korean accent by many American recruits of UBF is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

The International Church of Christ actually commissioned a study in 1986 in which its members were administered a simple psychological test. They did this to try to "prove" that they weren't a cult. The results of the test were not what they wanted to hear: (from http://www.reveal.org/abouticc/bostonera.html)

Upon the request of Al Baird, who had studied at his college, Abilene Christian College, in 1986, a supporter of the Boston Church of Christ, a mainline Church of Christ minister and church growth researcher (the Director of Church Growth Studies at Abilene), Dr. Flavil Yeakley, Jr. was asked to study the phenomenal growth of the Boston Movement. Al Baird and other movement leaders did not know that Yeakly had studied both mainline denominations and what are considered "cultic" groups, and noted that in cultic groups, a simple psychological test known as the MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) revealed that cult members' personalities would converge on a single type, usually the group norm, or the image of the cult leader. Thus, Yeakley ran this psychological test on a large number of disciples from the Boston Church of Christ, and on a control group of members from mainline Churches of Christ and some other denominations. Dr. Yeakley believed that the increasing accusations that the ICC was a cult were wrong, due largely to jealousy at Boston's phenomenol growth rates, and wanted to defend them.

Dr. Yeakley is also an honest man. When his test results showed an extreme level of "personality shift" in the members of the Boston Church of Christ from their normal orientation toward the orientation of the group norm, he realized that the accusations had a significant level of truth in them, and after seeing no changes in the Boston Movement, which had promised to curb its abuses, reluctantly published his results. (Personality shift is one of the most accurate measures of whether an organization is using mind control.) The Boston Church of Christ reacted by "marking" Dr. Yeakley, proclaiming him an enemy of the church and forbidding its members from speaking to him or reading his work.

In reaction, Dr. Yeakley had shown his work within the Mainline Churches of Christ, which issued warnings to various congregations within the denomination, and the Boston Movement was seen to be a dangerous outgrowth.

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Changes -- Mike K., 01:47:50 03/23/05 Wed