Does The Watchtower Corporation's Teachings Of Black White Thinking Induce Borderling Personality Disorder In Many Cult member?

by Brokeback Watchtower 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  dubstepped

  Wow, this got away from the original question. Yes, I do believe that the treatment of people under the spell of the JW society can absolutely influence one to develop something like a borderline personality disorder, or I believe today it is called something like "emotional dysregulation disorder". Let's face it, the cult both attracts people with various mental illnesses and creates it on the back end. BPD is just one of many.

  I was listening to a podcast the other day and this guy that has struggled mightily in life was describing his horrible childhood and his mother who eventually "broke" and then, you guessed it, it came out that she was a JW. His dad would have the elders over to rip them about what they were putting in his wife's head. She was terrified of Armageddon and that her husband and son wouldn't be with her in paradise. She was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic, and her life ended prematurely at her own hands as she couldn't bear the paranoia and delusions anymore, encouraged by JW teachings. So sad, and sadly not a one time occurrence.
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  jp1692

  Dubstepped, thanks for redirecting.
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  sparrowdown

  I would say the majority of JWs are born-ins these days, I would say several generations down by now from the original converts - in western countries anyway. So this "the borg attracts crazy people" defense doesn't cut it anymore.

  My personal opinion is codependency and narcissism are rife amongst JWs. WT is the ultimate narcisisstic gaslighter and JWs are the codependents. And because what goes around comes around in JW families you have narcisisstic parent usually the father but sometimes both while the mother and kids are codependent. Individual JWs are both codependent and what I call religiously narcisisstic. That's my theory anyway.
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  Village Idiot

  Jp1692,

  Wikipedia is not a reliable source
  

  Wikipedia is as good (or bad) as its primary sources cited in its footnotes.
  
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  jp1692

  VI, it is true that the quality of the sources in a WP article determine the accuracy of the article, ... to a certain extent.

  But you shouldn't forget that the articles are written by anonymous editors, the vast majority of which are amateur researchers and writers. Some are very intelligent and diligently try to get it right; others are incompetent, ignorant fools that have no business contributing to an online encyclopedia. Finally, many articles on WP are edited by highly biased individuals and/or groups of editors with a definite agenda. Some topics on WP are controlled by these cadres of contributors as if the forum is a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD).
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  steve2

  The Biosocial Theory explains Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as resulting from a combination of the individual's emotional disposition or temperament and their early developmental environment. In this case, emotionally vulnerable and sensitive individuals in their early formative years are exposed to harshly invalidating and/or threatening environments. There is often a lot of overlap between BPD and complex PTSD.

  Any of the published articles by Marsha M Lineham (the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy) and colleagues, , will shed light on what leads to BPD.

  On the question of there being more born-ins nowadays so the usual causal explanation doesn't apply (i.e., emotionally disturbed individuals being drawn to JW organization's message), I would add this:

  Mental health vulnerability is also seen as a genetic predisposition, meaning it often has a high degree of heritability across the generations. So presumably even second, third or fourth etc., generation JWs may still have the mental health vulnerability that saw earlier generations of their family convert to JW organization.
  
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  So then a combination of heredity and environment of which Watchtower Corporation's constant indoctrination and threats of abandonment/DF'ng can play a major role in bringing on the disorder.
  
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  Etude

  Brokeback Watchtower:

  I saw the first video you posted. My conclusion is that while interesting and tantalizing, Jung's conclusions are certainly not scientific but not necessarily invalid. I think that because it occurred to me that there are a lot of other disciplines that arrive at the same "actualization" and a joining of the unconscious with the conscious, they do not involve the intricacies of Jung. Buddhist and Hindu Sharmas have for a long time indicated a way to achieve an ultimate cognitive state that leads to deep satisfaction; when the self is actualized and is present with the "inner self". More recently, people like Eckhart Tolle and others, without the complexity of Jung, have alluded to that same type of mental realization.

  To me, whatever the effects of being in the Watchtower Organization involve, each of us has a different way and perhaps a different explanation for why we joined in the first place and how we heal in the aftermath of the deception. It could be for understanding and following the reasons Jung suggests or simply by meditating and achieving a higher state of being. I've done neither, but when I exercise a choice, I would choose the later.

  Etude.
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  sparrowdown

  Whether you came into the cult with a pre-existing personality disorder or you inherited a predisposition from your parents and WT indoctrination provided the perfect storm to create one being brought up JW is not healthy for any mind.
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  jp1692

  Let's not confuse mental illness running in families with with a genetic predisposition. Families also pass on learned behaviors, many of which can be highly dysfunctional.

  Teasing apart the "nature vs nurture" part is very problematic for this reason.

  Their is a definite genetic component to mental illness. But it is only part of the puzzle.

  I'll share more research based evidence later ...