An extract from the aacultwatch forum (with permission) under message heading: Cult Failure Rates
“….... I would like you to take a look at the cult of Synanon, I think it is an important piece of contemporary A.A. history, because the separation from A.A. at its beginning demonstrates Tradition Two and Concept IX (for Concepts click here) in action. The courage of the A.A. group members to stand against a power driving leader Chuck D. and his followers, caused the split in the A.A. group, thus protecting A.A. from wider disunity and subsequent bad press. True to Tradition Two, the prediction that the “arch deacon” would either conform to the group conscience or wind up drunk came eventually, but only after 20 years.
I wonder how A.A. would have responded if Chuck had decided to operate his franchise as an autonomous group of A.A., for example “the Synanon group of A.A.” instead of going it alone. Or if the A.A. group members had left the A.A. group all to Chuck by saying “Each group is autonomous! Live and let live! vote with your feet!” instead of having the balls and backbone to have a row for the sake of Traditional A.A. Would the intergroups and GSO of the 1960s have continued to register his groups and how much damage would the extraordinary abuses that were to occur in his cult have done to A.A. public relations, were his cult to have remained in A.A.?
Any society which is indifferent to the abuse of the vulnerable is destined to corruption and collapse, A.A. will be no exception unless measures are put in place to prevent it. I think for a cult group to last 10 years such as the Joys, is not acceptable. It shows an immoral failure of duty of care, a failure of Traditions, Concepts and warranties of conference; especially Tradition Two, concepts IX, XII (warranties 5 and 6). I think there needs to be responsible intervention at group/intergroup level where abuse is reported if vulnerable people and our public relations are to be protected from those who, as Bill W. put it, are “a trifle sicker than the rest of us.” (Concept IX). For Tradition Two to operate in A.A., it has to coincide with the type of leadership described in concept IX, it cannot function without it.
I think A.A. is dealing with a new phenomenon, for which most are unprepared. It presents a conundrum and it is a toxic cocktail of the following ingredients: Global internet communication; the outside influence of a very narrow minded fundamentalist Christian re-write of A.A’s program and history, by authors such as Wally P, Dick B., and Joe McQ; a generation of “elder statesmen” who have no experience of dealing with a serious problem in A.A; who also lack knowledge of A.A. history and the ability to apply Traditions and Concepts; and the majority of whom appear to see no threat in placing individual liberty above that of our common welfare.
This cocktail has produced not so much cult groups, but a collection of cult groups which together amount to a neo-Oxford Group fundamentalist movement with international connections and figureheads as leaders. Joys of Recovery, (Detroit-London), Primary Purpose Group of AA (Dallas), (Global affiliation), Cliff B. Myers R., Chris R., Back to Basics, Wally P.(Global affiliation), Road to recovery Plymouth(Wayne P) etc.
In 1941 the good news was written in the press and A.A. began to take off: “Because of the absence of figureheads and the fact there is no formal body of belief to promote, they have no fears that Alcoholics Anonymous will degenerate into a cult.” (Jack Alexander article about AA, page 23), I wonder if the co-founders of AA would say the same thing if they were around today.
http://www.aa.org/pdf/products/p-12_theJackAlexArticle.pdf
Today our public image is not so good.
1998: The Independent: "Cult or cure: the AA backlash" ---- "Alcoholics Anonymous is under attack. Those who have been through its mill claim it is `authoritarian' and `fascistic', employs brainwashing techniques and is cult-like in its attitude to members. Ursula Kenny talks to the disaffected who have rejected its road to recovery...."
There can be no doubt that A.A. is getting the reputation of being a cult. To avoid further loss of public confidence in A.A. and if vulnerable people are to be protected from abuse, then I think we need to see a lot more example of the Santa Monica pro A.A. Tradition elder statesmanship of 1958. (Concept IX in action). --In this modern world however, to be of effect to meet the present day needs of the fellowship, I think this needs to be both communicated and operating throughout the A.A. World Service Structure, top to bottom, as soon as possible. The “arch deacon” of Tradition Two, Chuck D., (who incidentally was to some years later appoint himself Pope of the cult Church of Synanon) recalled his 1958 not so spiritual baptism of concept IX, wonderfully executed by A.A. trusted servants. They intuitively knew how handle situations which seem to baffle us today.
“It happened right in the middle of an A.A. meeting. Our whole gang had taken over the Saturday night meeting of the Santa Monica A.A. group at Twenty Sixth and Broadway and built it up from its attendance of ten people to an attendance of about forty five or fifty. There was some objection on some issue by the members of the Board of Directors of the A.A. club. I recall the leader stopping the meeting. They didn’t like us. The alkies didn’t like the addicts, and they didn’t like me in particular…and they didn’t like my gang because they were mostly addicts. They made things difficult for us. I remember getting up in the meeting and saying, ‘All right, lets go home-the hell with this.’ So the whole meeting got up, and we all got into our automobiles and came down to the club, and we never went back to A.A. again.”
(From the Desk of Juan Lesende: How Drug Abuse Treatment Turns into Mistreatment By Juan E. Lesende - September 18th 2009)
Chuck Dederich Still Rules Synanon, but Now He Has 1,300 Subjects and a $22 Million Empire -- By Barbara Wilkins --PEOPLE magazine's archive: October 11, 1976, Vol. 6, No. 15: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20066985,00.html
Wikipedia – Synanon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon
Dederick Charles E: ( The link may show “no text available”, if so click blue link “search for this page title”. Search results may show “No page title matches”, If so click on the blue “Dederick Charles E link, about halfway down the page.): http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Dederick%2C_Charles_E.
Finding Aid for the Mitchell-Synanon Litigation Papers, 1979-1989 University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN: http://dlc.lib.utk.edu/f/fa/fulltext/1711.html”
Comment: Think on that! Our usual thanks to the contributor of the above piece - and for such an excellent analysis!
Cheers
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
