Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, 2nd Ed. PDF
Preview Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, 2nd Ed.
SNAPPING SNAPPING America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change FLO CONWAY AND JIM SIEGELMAN A DELTA BOOK A DELTA BOOK Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, New York 10017 For Hal Conway In chapter 4, the quotation from Eldridge Cleaver is from Newsweek magazine, October 25, 1976. Copyright 1976 by Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. The excerpt from Hanging Out With the Guru by Sally Kempton is copyright © 1976 by the NYM Corp. Reprinted with the permission of New York Magazine. In chapter 10, the excerpt from Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener is copyright 1948 and 1961 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Used with permission of The M.I.T. Press. In chapter 13, the excerpt from "Choruses from 'The Rock'" is from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright, 1936, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright, 1963, 1964, by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. In chapter 15, the excerpts from Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry is Copyright © 1974 by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The quotation from Patricia Hearst from Patty Hearst -- Her Story copyright 1976 by CBS News. Used with permission. Copyright © 1978, 1979 by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman All rights reserved. For information address J. B. Lippincott Company, New York, New York. Delta &tm; TM 755118, Dell Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN: 0-440-57970-8 Reprinted by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company Printed in the United States of America First Delta printing -- November 1979 Contents PART 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 98 PART Two: A New Perspective 10 Information 109 11 The Law of Experience 125 12 The Snapping Moment and Catastrophe Theory 134 13 Varieties of Information Disease 152 14 Snapping in Everyday Life 183 15 Snapping and Punishment 193 16 The Future of Personality 218 Postscript: Jonestown The Face of the Eighties 227 Acknowledgments 253 Notes 255 Selected Bibliography 269 Index 275 With the exception of publicly known figures, the names and identities of all the participants in religious groups and cults and mass therapies who are quoted in this book have been changed. Names used for these individuals are fictitious and do not refer to any person living or dead. Scientists and other professionals whose interviews are partially quoted do 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 of sudden 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 practices that are changing them in ways they never dreamed of. Around the country, college students are finding meaning and purpose in new forms of worship and religious devotion. Upwardly mobile young couples and working singles are taking part in new therapies that root out painful episodes from their past. Businessmen and housewives are learning simple self-help techniques 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 experienced these 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 those who boast miracle cures for lifelong physical ailments and inconsolable fits of depression, while even more report rich new supplies of "inner energy" and creativity. Since the sixties, millions of Americans have set out in search of experiences such as these, exploring new pathways to spiritual fulfillment and participating in the nearly eight thousand techniques for expanding human awareness that have been introduced into our culture. At last count, six million alone had taken up some form of meditation, and over three million young Americans had joined the one thousand religious cults active in the United States. No doubt in the course of their explorations a great many people have in fact had powerful new experiences that were the cause or catalyst of some profound improvement in their lives. But there is another side to this epidemic of personality change, a side that has been largely dismissed, downplayed, or altogether ignored. It is the dark side of the experience, the side that cannot rightly be described in any of these glowing terms, one that has not been illuminated until now. Yet its signs are personally familiar to a large and growing number of Americans, and its effects have already been dramatically reflected in the headlines. The news of the decade contains appalling tragedies: the Manson family murders, the Symbionese Liberation Army's kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, and the wave of random killings in New York City allegedly committed by a young postal worker, David Berkowitz, who renamed himself "Son of Sam." What turned the former high school cheerleaders and homecoming queens of the Manson Family into obedient mass murderers? Why didn't Patty Hearst flee her captors when she had more than ample opportunity? What change could have come over Berkowitz, a young man who was almost court-martialed in the army for refusing to carry a weapon, that would prompt him to prowl the streets of New York with a .44-caliber handgun?
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