Flowing towards freedom with multimodal creative therapy: The healing power of therapeutic arts for ex cult-members

Highlights

• This study uniquely investigates ex cult-members’ experiences of a creative therapy workshop.

• Flow states were measured in creative therapy activities and explored with participants.

• Multimodal arts within a pluralistic therapeutic framework enabled Flow and goal attainment.

• Therapeutic arts can support individuals surviving, transcending and healing from cultic abuse.

• Research recruitment and novel methods can trigger ex-cult members’ suspicion and resistance.

Abstract

Creative arts can play an important role for cult survivors in surviving, transcending and healing from their past realities. Flow – an empowering state of mind-body integration and skilful, intuitive action while engaged in a challenging yet enjoyable task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) – may be an important mechanism in arts therapies and may be especially impactful as an experience for cult survivors. Research reporting on arts therapies for cult survivors, Flow in cult survivors and Flow in arts therapies is currently severely lacking. This study reports on a multimodal creative psychological therapy, Arts for the Blues, piloted as a workshop with a small group of cult survivors. Results obtained from three participants show that they experienced Flow in their creative activities and increased attainment in a self-selected personal goal. Interviews with two participants reveal important considerations for working with cult survivors, the healing power of the arts, the attainment of Flow states in the process, and the impact of the Arts for the Blues approach. This study is the first of its kind to trial art therapies with ex cult-members, or to document participants’ views on Flow states during an arts therapy approach. Although limited by a small sample size, further research is warranted.

Introduction

The term “cult” is used to signify “a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control…designed to advance the goals of the group's leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community” (West & Langone, 1986, pp. 119–120). However, a large grey area exists between what may be considered cults or non-cults such as religious sects (Cowan & Bromley, 2015). Recently, some organisations employing Multi-Level Marketing have been found to employ the above cultic structure and tactics, to the extreme detriment of their followers (BBC, 2019; Freedom of Mind Resource Centre, 2019). This exemplifies the insidiously disguised and multifarious nature of organisations which fall within the aforementioned grey area, yet do in fact perpetrate cultic abuse in the present day and age. Coupled with the difficulties in identifying or accessing those who identify as cult members or ex-members (Kendall, 2017), the number of individuals worldwide who are affected by cult-like organisations is difficult to estimate and may be many times higher than expected.

The mental health needs of cult survivors include depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and dissociation (Aronoff et al., 2000; Dubrow-Marshall and Dubrow-Marshall, 2015). Hassan and Shah (2019) describe many ways that cult members are recruited and indoctrinated to submit their individual will to the group, including ordered obedience to those in authority, manipulation of memories, intense and constant servitude, and “brainwashing” against leaving, under threat of terrible consequences if they do. These conditions – which some cult members have been born and raised under – result in profound and lasting psychological effects. These include emotional (e.g. anxiety, shame, grief, anger), cognitive (e.g. information processing, cognitive inflexibility, decision-making, paranoia, dissociation) social/relational (e.g. communication, forming relationships, social integration) and other physical and/or behavioural disturbances (e.g. physical and sexual symptoms, sleep and eating disorders, addiction) (Saldana Tops et al., 2018). Many ex-members suffer from complex-PTSD (Rosen, 2017), severe trust issues around authority figures, and continue to feel vulnerable to abuse (Matthews & Salazar, 2014).

Common forms of treatment and recovery for survivors include psychoeducation to enhance understanding of mind control, group support with other ex-members, relational counselling and trauma-focussed psychotherapies (Jenkinson, 2017), whereas Arts Therapies (Art-, Music-, Drama- and Dance/Movement Psychotherapy) are seldom reported in research. Yet, Jenkinson (2010) highlights how creativity can represent an antidote to the coercive control and limiting nature of cults, and details creativity’s strong alignment with Humanistic principles of psychology, therapy and personal development. Jenkinson describes how “Creativity can, in contrast, be an important component of recovery from cults, enriching and life-enhancing… therapists can use creative arts and playful creativity with former-cult-member clients to enhance recovery. This recovery includes healing, reconnection with their pre-cult personality, and moving forward to create a post-cult identity” (p. 152).

Taking a Positive Psychology lens, the playful, immersive and rewarding nature of creativity overlaps with many dimensions of psychological Flow (a sense of being “in the zone”, fully engaged in a challenging yet enjoyable experience, which is linked to optimal experience, concentration, self-determination, creativity and embodied perception; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). The Flow concept consists of nine dimensions, some of which may be experienced more than others, depending on the individual and the activity (Jackson, 1996): Challenge-Skill Balance (between individual and task), Automaticity (feeing one’s actions happening automatically), having Clear Goals, Unambiguous Feedback (sensing how well one is doing in the activity), deep Concentration on the task, a Sense of Control, Loss of Self-Consciousness, Transformation of Time (i.e. seeming faster or slower than usual), and Autotelic Experience (intrinsic enjoyment of the task).

Flow has been explored extensively as a positive mechanism in relation to learning, productivity and performance (e.g. sporting/musical/other arts), and Flow has been theoretically and empirically linked to creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Reynolds and Prior (2006) proposed that creative activities instigate psychological flow because of associated feelings of accomplishment, control and autonomy. However, existing literature around creative and/or body-oriented therapies’ relationship to Flow states is limited. Previous qualitative research reports phenomena that may be akin to Flow-like states as contributing to the therapeutic effect of Dance/Movement Psychotherapy [DMP] (e.g. Parsons & Dubrow-Marshall, 2019), while Taylor (2016) and Warren (2006) provide observational and theoretical accounts of their own Flow-like experiences in art therapy (especially the dimension of Automaticity). Previous research measuring Flow in a Music Therapy song writing session demonstrated that Flow predicted therapeutic outcomes (hope, and readiness to change), in adults receiving acute mental health inpatient care (Silverman, Baker & MacDonald, 2016). Silverman and Baker (2016) propositioned Flow as a potential mechanism in Music Therapy – in passive (e.g. listening) but especially active (e.g. song-writing) music interventions, and bi-directional in nature (i.e. experienced by both music therapist and client). As creative and body-oriented therapies (for example, DMP) involve producing creative material and engaging physically, there is a need to understand perceived Flow as a potential mechanism in creative, embodied, and/or multimodal therapy experiences, from the clients’ perspectives.

One such physically-engaging, multimodal arts approach, Arts for the Blues (AfB), is a newly-developed, psychological evidence-based and pluralistic means of recovery (see Parsons et al., 2019; Haslam et al., 2019). An AfB workshop has been piloted in clinical, non-clinical and mental health professional populations, and is due to be tested in mental health community settings this year. It has not yet been piloted with survivors of cults or coercive control, yet may be well-suited due to certain appropriate features such as nurturing client autonomy, agency and expression, increasing insight and social support. Based on the initial support for using creative arts with survivors, and preliminary results from the AfB pilots that support its use in a range of contexts (see Haslam et al., 2019; Karkou et al., 2020; Parsons et al., 2020), it makes sense for a structured approach such as AfB to be offered as an evidence-based psychological intervention which goes beyond the use of non-structured and purely arts-based projects, as well as beyond other forms of therapy, in supporting ex-cult members.

The present authors are unaware of literature piloting the use of creative, body-oriented and/or multimodal arts therapies (such as AfB) with cult survivors, and there is a great shortage of literature exploring clients’ perceived Flow as a potential mechanism in such therapies. By testing the AfB approach with the cult community, we hope to uncover potential implications for this population and others related to coercive control in terms of how the approach may be adapted. By exploring perceived Flow during the workshop, this may indicate to what extent those who have previously experienced coercive control are able to be self-determined, actively immersed in creative processes and other components of the Flow concept (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

This study aimed to explore how some ex-cult members can use the arts therapeutically, and to examine their responses to a structured and therapeutic multimodal arts group workshop (Arts for the Blues). In particular, to evaluate how and to what extent participants experience psychological Flow during the creative activities, and the perceived utility of Flow in individual therapeutic process and outcome when working towards a personal goal. It is hoped that this will provide us with increased understanding of Flow in creative therapies and the suitability, acceptability and potential impact of creative therapy interventions in the cult-survivor population.