Flo Conway - Snapping: Americas Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, 2nd Ed.

SNAPPING SNAPPING America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change FLO CONWAY AND JIM SIEGELMAN A DELTA BOOKA DELTA BOOKPublished byDell Publishing Co., Inc.1 Dag Hammarskjold PlazaNew York, New York 10017For Hal ConwayIn chapter 4, the quotation from Eldridge Cleaver is from Newsweekmagazine, October 25, 1976. Copyright 1976 by Newsweek, Inc. All rightsreserved. Reprinted by permission.In chapter 5, the excerpt from 73 Poems by E. E. Cummings is 1963 by Marion Morehouse Cummings. Reprinted by permission of HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, Inc. The excerpt from Hanging Out With the Guruby Sally Kempton is copyright 1976 by the NYM Corp. Reprinted withthe permission of New York Magazine.In chapter 10, the excerpt from Cybernetics: or Control and Communicationin the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener is copyright 1948 and1961 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Used with permissionof The M.I.T. Press.In chapter 13, the excerpt from "Choruses from 'The Rock'" is fromCollected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright, 1936,by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright, 1963, 1964, byT. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.In chapter 15, the excerpts from Helter Skelter: The True Story ofthe Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry is Copyright 1974 by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi. Used with permissionof W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The quotation from Patricia Hearstfrom Patty Hearst -- Her Story copyright 1976 by CBS News. Usedwith permission.Copyright 1978, 1979 by Flo Conway and Jim SiegelmanAll rights reserved. For information address J. B. LippincottCompany, New York, New York.Delta &tm; TM 755118, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.ISBN: 0-440-57970-8Reprinted by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott CompanyPrinted in the United States of AmericaFirst Delta printing -- November 1979ContentsPART ONE: A New Phenomenon 1 Snapping 11 2 The Search 19 3 The Fall 28 4 The Roots of Snapping 37 5 Snapping as Something New 53 6 Black Lightning 62 7 Wanted: Professional Help 79 8 The Crisis in Mental Health 88 9 Beyond Brainwashing 98PART Two: A New Perspective10 Information 10911 The Law of Experience 12512 The Snapping Moment and Catastrophe Theory 13413 Varieties of Information Disease 15214 Snapping in Everyday Life 18315 Snapping and Punishment 19316 The Future of Personality 218Postscript: JonestownThe Face of the Eighties 227Acknowledgments 253Notes 255Selected Bibliography 269Index 275With the exception of publicly known figures, the names and identitiesof all the participants in religious groups and cults and mass therapieswho are quoted in this book have been changed. Names used for theseindividuals are fictitious and do not refer to any person living or dead.Scientists and other professionals whose interviews are partially quoteddo not necessarily endorse the authors' views, opinions, or conclusions. PART ONE ---------------- A New Phenomenon ---------------- 1 Snapping
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye... -- 1 Corinthians 15:51 (RSV)
Since the early seventies, America has been gripped by an epidemic ofsudden personality change.
On the surface, it appears that a new age of enlightenment is at hand.People of all ages are discovering new faiths, beliefs, and practicesthat are changing them in ways they never dreamed of. Around the country,college students are finding meaning and purpose in new forms of worshipand religious devotion. Upwardly mobile young couples and working singlesare taking part in new therapies that root out painful episodes fromtheir past. Businessmen and housewives are learning simple self-helptechniques that eliminate stress and tension from their daily lives.
Has mankind crossed the threshold of a great new era of human fulfillment?Many people think so. Vast numbers of individuals who have experiencedthese profound changes in their lives talk of "big breakthroughs,"moments of spiritual "rebirth" and "revelation," and of "getting it,""finding it," or suddenly "becoming clear." Or they describe soaring"peak experiences," "ecstasies," and levels of awareness they call"transcendence," "bliss," and "cosmic consciousness." There are thosewho boast miracle cures for lifelong physical ailments and inconsolablefits of depression, while even more report rich new supplies of "innerenergy" and creativity. Since the sixties, millions of Americans haveset out in search of experiences such as these, exploring new pathwaysto spiritual fulfillment and participating in the nearly eight thousandtechniques for expanding human awareness that have been introduced intoour culture. At last count, six million alone had taken up some form ofmeditation, and over three million young Americans had joined the onethousand religious cults active in the United States.
No doubt in the course of their explorations a great many people havein fact had powerful new experiences that were the cause or catalyst ofsome profound improvement in their lives.
But there is another side to this epidemic of personality change, a sidethat has been largely dismissed, downplayed, or altogether ignored. It isthe dark side of the experience, the side that cannot rightly be describedin any of these glowing terms, one that has not been illuminated untilnow. Yet its signs are personally familiar to a large and growing numberof Americans, and its effects have already been dramatically reflectedin the headlines.
The news of the decade contains appalling tragedies: the Manson familymurders, the Symbionese Liberation Army's kidnapping of Patricia Hearst,and the wave of random killings in New York City allegedly committedby a young postal worker, David Berkowitz, who renamed himself "Sonof Sam." What turned the former high school cheerleaders and homecomingqueens of the Manson Family into obedient mass murderers? Why didn't PattyHearst flee her captors when she had more than ample opportunity? Whatchange could have come over Berkowitz, a young man who was almostcourt-martialed in the army for refusing to carry a weapon, that wouldprompt him to prowl the streets of New York with a .44-caliber handgun?
What, if anything, have these transformations in common with the rebirthin Jesus Christ of two men as dissimilar as former Nixon aide CharlesColson and one-time black revolutionary Eldridge Cleaver, and whatelements do they share with the mysteries of sudden personality changethat abound in modern life? Beyond the headlines, countless paradoxesarise in the many popular group therapies and self-help techniques thathave come out of the "consciousness explosion" of the sixties, in themushroom growth of Evangelical Christianity in the seventies, and inthe mounting controversy over America's rich and powerful religious cults.
The college student leaves school without warning and is discovered byhis parents selling flowers on a street corner. The wealthy executive, taking fullresponsibility for his fate, quits his job at a moment's notice to sit on the beachand play the flute. A young mother abandons her children after having a"personal encounter with the Holy Spirit." A middle-aged housewife runsaway from home to take a month-long course in levitation. A former Yippieleader gives up political activism to follow a fourteen-year-old guru,then embarks on a career as a life insurance salesman. These storiesraise even larger and more perplexing questions. Are these changesgood or bad? Are they permanent? What's really behind them? Who'ssusceptible? Me? My kids? Everyone?
For many Americans, the quest for personal growth or spiritual fulfillmentculminates in an experience that is unmistakably traumatic, an experiencethat has negative, and perhaps disastrous, effects on their personalitiesand their lives. In contrast to the reported pleasures and benefits ofthe "big breakthrough," for many individuals, sudden change comes in amoment of intense experience that is not so much a "peak" as a precipice,an unforeseen break in the continuity of awareness that may leave themdetached, withdrawn, disoriented -- or utterly confused. The experienceitself may produce hallucinations or delusions or render the individualextremely vulnerable to suggestion. It may lead to changes that alterlifelong habits, values, and beliefs, disrupt friendships, marriages, andfamily relationships; and, in extreme instances, excite self-destructive,violent, or criminal behavior.
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