Here's an excerpt from a 3 part article on Synanon that I found very interesting (at
http://morrock.com/synanon.htm.) I think that it shows some of how and why people buy into this insane confrontational-style "therapy" and also makes some sense of why Synanon turned into a full blown cult and eventually self destructed. This is a group of people that wasn't even capable of the slightest bit of introspection, unless it involved intense screaming and humiliation (out of "love"). Talk about not taking responsibility.
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The prime engine of Synanon was "The Game". It as officially forbidden to call it group therapy for, I suspect, legal reasons) but in fact it as, if you can imagine a therapy group that included mostly clones of Atilla the Hun.
Visualize this. A hotel room, bare of furniture except for 20 to 30 directors chairs arranged round the wall. There was a leader of sorts, I have forgotten the title, normally a resident. There were conventions: no threats of violence, supporting the indictment, pulling covers, and no contracts.
Supporting the indictment meant that if someone accused you of anything, including the most highly improbable, everyone else in the group piled on and added the nasty bits, even if they had to make them up.
Pulling covers was unveiling secrets, fears, and destructive behaviors, either toward the self or others.
No contracts meant that there were to be no explicit or secret alliances between players. No "I won't show you mine and you don't have to show me yours."
New members were treated rather gently. My first three games were a hoot. Other members probed and gently questioned and I ad-libbed. "A regular Johnny Carson," one old timer remarked.
During game four a woman looked directly into my eyes and raged, "You're a total shit, you know that"? More than her words, her body language and tone told me that this woman hated me and that I was within a hand's span of being destroyed by her anger. I can only describe the physical effect as having the very real impression that a 50 pound block of ice had replaced my lungs and heart. I was terrified. I left the game that evening swearing that I'd never return. Who needed this?
But during the days that followed, awaiting the next Wednesday game, I realized that for most of my childhood and much of my adult life, I had been afraid, not of pain or real danger, but of others' anger, for I somehow validated it. If anyone was angry with me, the fault was with me. If my father shouted at and demeaned me, it was because I had committed some wrong.. If in military school other cadets hazed and tormented me, I had accepted that it was for a reason.
But this woman, who I later learned was a well known "rage rat" (someone who played the game to vent almost uncontrollable anger in a controlled environment) didn't know me; I had done nothing to her and I somehow saw the internal dynamics of my emotional reactions. Not that that made it any easier. I was still scared shitless. (But being scared shitless doesn't have to mean you're a coward.)
So every week I requested to be put in the same game with my persecutor. If she didn't vent on me spontaneously; I'd insult her then sit in the stream of her hate and invective.
Eventually, one of us broke. She asked to be put in another game. My ability to absorb her hate had exceeded her ability to produce it. We both profited by the painful experience; emotional surgery without anesthetic. I learned that anger wouldn't destroy me; she learned that anger was an unprofitable currency in dealing with the world.