The Psychology of Apocalyptic Cults?
September 9, 2020 12:42 PM   Subscribe

I want to learn more about what it's like to be in an apocalyptic cult, either through narrative accounts (autobiographies, memoirs, etc), or academic texts (psychological research, case studies, etc). What can you recommend?
posted by meese to Society & Culture (9 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
I recently listened to the episode "Apocalypse Now and Then" of the podcast The Constant. One incident they mentioned was the 1950s Chicago-based UFO cult, resulting in the 1956 "classic text in social psychology", When Prophecy Fails (which I haven't read).
posted by ShooBoo at 1:17 PM on September 9, 2020


Memoir: My Childhood in a Cult by Guinevere Turner, about growing up in the Lyman Family in Boston.
posted by beagle at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


The podcast Oh No Ross And Carrie does investigative reporting on cults (among other things), and have joined several undercover for multi-episode series.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:50 PM on September 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


Educated by Tara Westover is an autobiographical account of growing up in a survivalist/prepper Mormon family. Might not be apocalyptic enough? But it's pretty fascinating.
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:26 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Mormon Stories Podcast is full of interviews with all sorts of people that got out of Mormonism.
posted by mrmarley at 2:43 PM on September 9, 2020


I think anybody who reads When Prophecy Fails – and it is well worth reading – should also read Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie, because not only is Lurie's novel an extremely engaging story, it's an example of that rare kind of satire which feels more real and true to life than the non-fiction account on which it's based.

And it's also a very necessary corrective to WPF, because it exhibits without tendentiously rubbing the reader's nose in it the stark betrayal by Festinger and his crew of the trust of the sincere members of the cult, and the quite destructive effects that betrayal has on those members. Milgrom and Festinger make a very nicely matched set, in my opinion.
posted by jamjam at 3:55 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


You might like the "Heaven's Gate" podcast. It's very well done and not sensational or prurient.
posted by brookeb at 4:04 PM on September 9, 2020 [7 favorites]


I'm really not trying to be snarky here, but "apocalyptic cult" is a really wide net, and you may need to narrow down specifics. I mean, by some measures large swaths of Christianity have the apocalypse at the center of their belief system, and could be considered to be an apocalytpic cult/sect/branch/whatever. Even within individual Christian sects there's a varying degree of emphasis put on it. I was raised in a Nazarene church, and while they are pretty... uh, well...conservative... on baseline, I was taught at the individual church I went to that the UN was imminently bring the antichrist into the world and enslave us all. This viewpoint was heavily influenced by the Christian Identity movement and other white supremacist groups. ADL has a good history on the Christian Identity movement too. This kind of thinking is also influencing some far right catholic thinkers right now as well. Its shocking how pervasive this stuff is inside christian circles, and sometimes only barely below the surface, in even left-appearing sects.

Unfortunately for humanity, but fortunately for research, the overlap between apocalyptic christian theology and white supremacy groups is very well documented and extensive.
posted by furnace.heart at 4:22 PM on September 9, 2020


Heaven's Gate actually recorded themselves on video as well as wrote a lot. You can access quite a bit of that info on their still-active website (and buy their book), but there's also a YouTube channel that is mostly composed of their videos.
posted by vegartanipla at 8:57 PM on September 9, 2020


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