Mothers and Children

I could have titled this Parents and Children except it was the mothers who took the brunt. 

The harm that mothers cause their children is a central theme in Bob's body of work. It was also a central theme in The Environment. 

Women who were deemed to be struggling psychologically were invariably diagnosed as repeating the sins of their mothers. (Which could well be true in general. I'm not taking a stance on the theoretical concepts.)

Members of The E of all ages were strongly discouraged from having contact with their parents. There wasn't a formal rule. The discouragement came in group, after the fact: "You've been a mental case since that day you had lunch with your mother." 

Quite a few babies were born in The E. With just one exception, the babies weren't raised by their parents. In fact, parents (mothers in particular) were strongly discouraged from having any contact with their children. Children in the E were taught a mantra that Bob originated: 

Don't be a dummy -- stay away from your mummy. 

The baby handover didn't happen on day one. It would play out over months. The mother would receive withering attacks in group, led by Bob and the inner circle...

You're smothering your baby!

Why are you spending so much time alone with her?

The way you hold her is weird!

The parents would invariably acquiesce and the baby would be transferred to surrogates. Permanently. I gained the distinct impression that several of the mothers were permanently broken (for want of a better term) by these happenings. 

I mentioned there was an exception. The only babies who weren't separated from their parents were the children of Bob and Tam. 

My point here doesn't have to do with child rearing per se. It has to do with the authoritarian nature of the E, the rigidity of Bob's concepts, and how people were coerced to conform. 

The Design Company

This post might seem like a copy/paste of an earlier post. It more or less is. 

Jane went to Bob for therapy before The Environment, and that continued once the E  came into existence. Jane was an interior designer. She started a company. It was successful. 

In group, Bob confronted Jane about her supposed flakiness concerning business matters. This apparently was a theme early on, in her private therapy sessions. According to Bob, the re-emergence of Jane's flakiness was self-destructive and something needed to be done about it. 

The solution? Bob's wife Tam was installed as President of the company and Jane was demoted. This was despite the fact that Tam had no experience as a designer and no experience in business. In the world according to Bob, the demotion was in Jane's best interest psychologically. It was therapeutic. Jane acquiesced.  

Bob was masterful at using the weaknesses of his patients as a way to manipulate them. 

This pattern would repeat yet again a couple years later. 

The Inner Circle

Bob's inner circle consisted of several women. Each of them had come to Bob for therapy before The Environment existed, and each of them had a sexual relationship with him. (These relationships were common knowledge because they were discussed openly in group.) Perversely, the woman who Bob eventually married, Tam, initially came to Bob for therapy with her then husband for couple counseling. 

These women surrounded Bob around the clock, attending to his every need in the most servile way you could imagine. 

While they enjoyed certain benefits on the top of The Environment power structure, the inner circle also took an extraordinary amount of heat in group. Tam was a frequent recepient of Bob's rage. It was a constant theme that she was "withholding", and that she was unable to accept Bob's love. He frequently accused Tam of harming their children psychologically. 

Joyce was Bob's co-author. She did all the writing, under his direction. When Bob was dissatisfied with Joyce's work, he would rage at her in group. She was a "withholding piece of shit" among other choice words. All under the guise of therapy.  

Susan ran away several times. She sneaked out without a word, like a teenager. She would eventually return a few weeks later and confess her thought crimes in group. The confession invariably consisted of "I acted out because I was unable to accept Bob's love and recognition". (This same confessional was repeated time and again by followers who were deemed to have slipped psychologically.)

The women comprising the inner circle all acted as therapists within the group. With the possible exception of Joyce, none of them possessed credentials. 

Bob's Song

Bob's Song, written by a particularly obsequious follower, provides a glimpse into the Bob mythology. It was invariably performed at parties and other gatherings. Bob (and most everyone) would become highly emotional at these performances. My comments are interspersed in bold: 

The house was filled with emptiness
For that New York City boy
All he wanted was happiness
He thought life could be joyful

But he knew he couldn't hang on
To what he hoped might be
He had to go on searching
Like a sailor on the sea

So he took his heart out in the streets
Looking for a friend   
Faces left in windows
But there's freedom round the bend

Bob's inability to find a friend was a constant theme. That's because in Bob reality, nobody was capable of being his equal. (It's lonely at the top!)

Westward towards Denver
Pacific bound they say
Chasing truth and dreams along the way

With nothing much to guide him
He set out young and strong
Learning from who and where he could
And then just moving on

And with no one to hold on to
The man was free to be
No one came between him
And the things that he could see

He took his heart out in the street
Saw a lot
Along with joy and laughter
Saw some things he'd rather not

Saw the lonely and the crazy
A child lost in pain
Reflections of that child in every man 

With ideas born from listening
And a feeling of his own
A way of life grew up inside
A path was clearly formed  

Leading to the formation of The Environment

A way for man to live his life
Without those chains that bind
Free that frightened child
That we've all locked up inside

So he took his heart out in the streets
Told everyone he saw
Shouted from the rooftops
And he wrote it on the wall

But can you feel his sadness
When the truth was finally told
No one seemed to really want to know

Bob never got the recognition as a theorist that he felt he deserved. In Bob reality, his body of work was too radical for the conventional, narrow-minded thinkers who dominate the field.

Now a cynic's choice when faced with pain
Is to leave his world behind
Lose himself and the things he loves
Find fences to hide behind

But indifference was a feeling
That the man just could not bare
Had to keep on moving
There was just to much to share

So he took his heart out on the street
The only life he knew
Going back inside himself
Was the thing he could not do

People may not want to know
But someday someone might
He'd find the friend he's looked for all his life

Cult Checklist

There are countless resources on the internet that list the attributes of cults. I'm going to use the first one that Google served up, that being Cult Recovery 101, and render my opinions about how closely the checklist aligns with The Environment. My comments are interspersed. 

1. Group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

Beyond any doubt

2. Group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

No

3. Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

Beyond any doubt

4. Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

To an extent. Things that happened in group could be described as denunciation sessions. And there were occasional all-night group sessions intended to break down inhibitions. 

5. The group is preoccupied with making money.

Beyond any doubt

 6. The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel.

Beyond any doubt

7. The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members.

Beyond any doubt

8. The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society

To an extent. Conflict was avoided by being secretive. For instance, the children were home-schooled specifically to avoid one of the them revealing too much to a teacher or counselor. 

9. The group’s leader is not accountable to any authorities.

Yes. However this item reeks of apologetics for organized religion e.g. LDS. (See full text at Cult Recovery 101 for context.)

10. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group.

Beyond any doubt. In particular, the ethics of a therapist having sex with patients, and assuming control over businesses started by patients, were never questioned.

I'm not particularly impressed by this list. A common characteristic that's missing is members being discouraged from having contact with family members. This was very much the case in the E. 

The Bob Mythology

It's hard to grasp how a group of reasonably intelligent people buys into a situation where their therapist has sex with his patients, and assumes control over businesses started by said patients. The key enabling factor is the mythology surrounding Bob. That mythology consists of:

Bob is unique. He is uniquely compassionate. Uniquely enlightened. Uniquely feelingful. Uniquely unburdened by narrow-minded conventions. Uniquely able to recognize and appreciate the real you, unlike your parents with all their limitations. Uniquely able to live life to its fullest, and uniquely able to help you achieve same.

Bob casts himself as the central character in the psychological development of each member of the community. His acknowledgment of the real you is a shock to your defense system, and that causes psychological retreat. 

Bob unabashedly described The Environment as Shangri-la. We were special. We were enlightened. 

But you better not leave. Like those who abandoned the Shangri-la in Lost Horizon, you will wither away. Unable to accept Bob's love, you will regress into a paranoid psychotic. (I'm not being hyperbolic. Bob applied those labels with abandon.)

The Computer Company

As a teen, DJ was Bob's patient. This continued into adulthood when The Environment came into existence. 

DJ was successful in the computer field. He started his own company. It quickly became successful. 

In group, DJ started taking heat from Bob. "Your vanity is self-destructive. Being president of a company is feeding your vanity."

The solution? Bob became CEO and DJ was demoted. This despite that Bob didn't know thing one about computers and he had no business experience whatsoever. Naturally, DJ acquiesced. 

The result? Bob became wealthy. DJ did not. 

This pattern would repeat over the years. Later on, I'll have a couple more posts that will more or less be a copy/paste of this one. 

The Narcissists I Have Known

I'm loathe to get political here, but when I contemplate the nature of cults -- personality cults in particular -- it's hard to avoid the one we all live amongst these days here in Dystopia, USA. And funny(?) enough, as I've observed Trump over these years, and read what experts have said about his narcissism, it's hard to avoid Bob.

Before I get to the similarities, there are glaring differences. Bob is highly intelligent. At his best, he is engaging, funny, and generally charismatic. (Yes, I know lots of people think Trump is charismatic. I'm unable to process that.) He's adventurous. It's mainly because of Bob that we sailed around the world in an 80' schooner.

And then there's the similarities.

The greatest ever. To the depth of his soul, Bob believes that he's the single greatest theorist to have ever existed in the field of psychology. "The ideas", as he would call his body of work.

Skin thinner than a grape. Even the most trivial slight would draw Bob's rage, sometimes in group under the guise of therapy for the perpetrator.

Master exploiter. Bob assumed control over businesses that were started by his patients and became wealthy as a result. More on this later.  

Used non-profit as slush fund. See OPM.

Taking credit when credit wasn't due. All things good flowed through Bob.

Blame shifter. Things that went wrong were never Bob's fault.

Ostentatious display of wealth. The Mazerrati, the extraordinary yachts, the house in Bel Air. Bob was all about money, especially OPM (other people's money). I should mention, he has much finer taste than does Trump.

No repercussions. They both got away with it.  

I'm going to be a bit audacious here and turn the table (or couch if you prefer). Bob is a narcissist on steroids. 

Three Paths In

Bearing in mind that I'm describing how things were in the early years, there were three pathways into The Environment:

1. Birth 

2. Bob's friends and family 

3. Bob's patients. This by far is how most people got involved. 

Unlike many cults, there was no active recruiting.

Make no mistake, once you lived in the E, you were Bob's patient. Every adult paid Bob for therapy. Cash and only cash. There was group therapy and there were private sessions which cost extra.

Intro

I recently watched a fascinating documentary called Love Has Won, about a truly bizarre cult surrounding a woman with a god complex. This group bore very little resemblance to the commune/cult I lived in several decades ago, which came to be known as The Environment. But still, when I see these cult documentaries, I'm surprised and dismayed that The E hasn't been publicly exposed after all these years. I've started this blog to remedy that. 

The E wasn't about supernaturality or religion. It was a cult of personality surrounding Dr. Robert Firestone, an acclaimed psychologist who I presume is retired because he's in his 90s now. I call him Bob because that's how I've known him every since I was a toddler, and that's the name he went by. 

The reality of what went on behind the scenes in the E is in stark contrast to the respectable public face, in the form of websites, books, and documentary films...

Bob's website:
https://www.drrobertwfirestone.com/

Psych Alive, a website operated by Bob's wife (a former patient):
https://www.psychalive.org/

The Glendon Association, a non-profit established to promote Bob's books and films: https://www.glendon.org/

... which should be judged on their own merit, irrespective of the egregious financial and sexual abuses that Bob's patients were subjected to.

I aim to be factual, and to make it clear when I'm crossing into opinion. I'm doing this in bite-size pieces, because otherwise I'll get bogged down by my irresistible urge to endlessly edit. 

I dedicate this effort to Bob's many victims. Names changed to protect the innocent. 

And with that said...