Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Andersen, H. Verlan. 1988. The Great and Abominable Church of The Devil. H Verlan Andersen.

Rating:
1

Summary:
I actually read this book while a missionary in Costa Rica. It was influential on my thinking then, but I later realized just how misguided it was. I’m writing this review close to 10 years after I initially read the book, but, like I said, it was influential on my thinking and I remember the arguments it made quite clearly. The review doesn’t follow my usual format because I initially wrote it upon searching for the publication date on Amazon and finding that two people had written reviews, rating the book quite highly. I felt obliged to offer a dissenting opinion.

Review:
This book equates communism with Satanism; anything but pure market capitalism is considered evil by the author. The serious problem with this claim (other than the fact that it is just stupid) is that it doesn’t mesh with the scriptures upon which it is based (these are in The Book of Mormon, not the Bible):
-1 Nephi 13:6 – And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it.
-1 Nephi 14:10 – And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.

Most Mormons, initially upon reading these scriptures, believe they are referring to Catholicism. While some famous LDS leaders have actually claimed as much (McConkie did at one point), they now deny any specific claims. Instead, when pressed, Mormons are forced to admit that the “great and abominable church of the devil” refers to all religions that are not Mormonism. The LDS Church is an exclusive religion. It has nothing to do with capitalism and communism.

This book draws on popular debates in the U.S. of the time it was written to push an anti-socialism/anti-communism agenda on the members of the LDS Church. Thanks to efforts like this book and the wholly political influence of one of the most well-known political and religious leaders of the religion (Ezra Taft Benson), Utah is now the most Republican, pro-capitalist, and conservative states in the nation. If they only realized that the beef outlined in their scriptures was against all other religions rather than against socialism they might stop being the bankruptcy capital of the U.S.

The real irony in this argument is that the ideal socio-economic system under Mormonism is actually a fuedalistic-commune referred to variously as: The United Order, The Law of Consecration, or Communalism. Under this system, Christ is King (yep, that’s right, King) and all property is held in common (which is the exact opposite of capitalism):
-D&C 51:3 – Wherefore, let my servant Edward Partridge, and those whom he has chosen, in whom I am well pleased, appoint unto this people their portions, every man equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs.

Sound familiar? “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” – Karl Marx. While Mormons hoorah the current neo-con President, amazingly they all secretly harbor a desire to usher in a purely socialistic society. What irony!

In his tirades against all things socialistic, the author attacks everything non-capitalist, including: public schools, medicare, medicaid, social security, etc. Unless I’m mistaken, the author would love to see a completely unregulated market where monopolies crush their competition and workers are like slaves. What a dick!

Satir, Virginia. 1988. New Peoplemaking. 1st ed. Science and Behavior Books.

Rating:
6

Review:
Long-winded but decent advice.

I don’t know that giving a summary of the book is feasible, so I’ll just point out a few things that I liked and didn’t like. First, the book is huge, 385 pages. Admittedly what Satir has to say is important and perhaps even very beneficial to some people, but I highly doubt anyone but the seriously interested in psychological self-help will wade their way through every page of this book – even though the type is big and there are gobs of pictures. Perhaps this will sound demeaning to Americans but we (I’m American too) seem to like answers that come in small packages; this is not a small package answer. I guess what I’m saying is that she could have covered all of the information in about half the space – cutting out a lot of unneeded stuff.

Now something positive: I think the content is pretty good. Satir has simplified her message to where the educated layperson can read it and omitted all of the psycho-babble. The advice she gives really reads like common sense, but that is the subtlety of the message – it sounds just like the way that things should be (for the most part) which, to me at least, means she is probably on the right track.

There are a couple of other things about the book that I didn’t particularly like. First, near the end of the book Satir starts giving advice on how to attain world peace and how to solve the world’s problems. Well, she’s a family therapist and not a political scientist or a sociologist – she is out of her league here. What really drives the point home (pun is intended as you will see) is that she compares everything – national governments, international societies, etc. – to families. I guess when you only have a hammer (family therapy experience), everything begins to look like a nail (solving world hunger, ending the use of war to resolve conflicts, etc.) and can be solved the same way. Satir may know quite a bit about families, but I really didn’t buy her advice on solving world problems.

Satir also discusses the notion of spirituality. Now, what makes this so interesting is that she seems to think that spirituality and understanding spirituality are very important for resolving mental health and family relations issues, as a matter of fact, I believe she calls it the most important thing that people can do to get healthy. But she only spends one chapter discussing spirituality. I’m guessing that she realizes that her book will absolutely not appeal to ‘a’-spiritual people if she emphasizes spirituality too much so she cut the chapter short and left it at that. Well, maybe that was a good decision.

There are three more things I’ll mention briefly and then I’m done. First, the concept of a healthy family is a relative one. She makes attempts to rationalize why her conception of a ‘healthy’ family is the right one, but they aren’t particularly convincing. But, keep in mind, her conception is likely the societal norm; the point I am trying to make is that she doesn’t do a good job of arguing her perspective. This leads to her biases. She doesn’t reveal them until the end, but we end up finding out that she is a pacifist and feminist in either the last or second to last chapter. In my opinion, things like that should be revealed up front. Again, keep in mind that I don’t disagree with those perspectives or opinions, I just think she should have revealed her biases at the beginning of the book instead of at the end.

Lastly, she has a tendency to make broad, sweeping statements about the way things are (how families were in the late 1800s for example) and fails to cite any references to back up her claims. Sure, this is a self-help book for the layperson, but this leaves the scholar wanting for evidence for her claims.

Overall, like I said above, I think the book has good advice. Whether or not it will make a difference for people pr families, I don’t know. If you have to read the whole thing to change, then probably not; it’s just too long. The exercises she suggest sound interesting, but I don’t have any kids and most of them are designed around kids. Those that are for couples, well, I guess I could try them, but I think my relationship with my significant other is pretty good, so I’ll pass for now and if there are problems, perhaps I’ll pull it back out in the future. If you really think that you would be willing to use the exercises and you are committed to reading a very long book, perhaps this will help. If you are looking for a quick fix (which is not likely to help anyway), then don’t waste your time or money because it isn’t until you are willing to really work to make things better that something like a self-help book like The New Peoplemaking will make a difference.

Ebaugh, Helen Rose Fuchs. 1988. Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rating:
10

Summary:
The book is a very intriguing theoretical and empirical treatment of a social-psychological process called “role exiting.” The basic idea is there are certain roles (with their concomitant identities) that are particularly salient in social life. Leaving such roles is often a big deal and results in the label of “ex-”, where the hyphenated part is the former role (e.g., ex-alcoholic, ex-Mormon, ex-nun, ex-athlete, etc.). Leaving these salient roles is different from leaving minor roles – e.g., fourth grader to become a fifth grader – in that the new identity and roles are at least in part defined by the old roles. As Ebaugh argues, being identified as an ex- is significantly different (not in the statistical sense) from never having been a member of the organization. For instance, consider the label ex-nun; ex-nuns have an intimate knowledge of life as a nun even though they longer identify with nuns. This is significantly different from never having been a nun, as non-nuns do not have access to the same knowledge and experience. And, as Ebaugh argues, ex-nuns will always carry with them the label of ex-nun because there are certain characteristics that are associated with that role.

Ebaugh argues that there are four major “moments” or “stages” in the role exiting process: (1) first doubts, which refers to the initial period of questioning one’s continued identification with a given role; (2) seeking and weighing of role alternatives, which refers to the period in which the questioning individual examines his/her alternatives; (3) turning points or specific moments in the transition process in which it becomes clear that the individual is leaving his/her current role; and (4) the establishment of an ex- identity, which consists of adopting new identities and negotiating the role residual (or carryover characteristics) from one’s previous role. Ebaugh is quick to point out that while these are discussed as “stages” she is not arguing that everyone will pass through these stages nor that the stages have specific time periods associated with them (p. 24). She does, however, argue that most people will pass through the stages in this order.

To test this understanding of role exiting, Ebaugh gathered close to 200 interviews from people who left salient roles, including a large sample of nuns from the early 1970s and a broad swath of other role exiters in the mid 1980s. She then explores how the interview data illustrate that in every case the stages outlined above take place, but highlights different characteristics of role exiters that vary how the stages play out. For instance, individuals who leave a salient role alone tend to take longer than those who do so with a group (p. 83). And the process of role exiting, especially the fourth stage of developing a new identity, was made significantly easier for individuals who built bridges out of their role while still in their role. For instance, Ebaugh interviewed several former medical doctors who left the profession because they no longer enjoyed it. One of the doctors became a real estate agent; he developed his interest in managing real estate while practicing medicine by using his income to buy properties and then managing them on his own. By beginning the development of his ex- identity while still in his current identity, this individual found the transition out of the salient medical professional role much easier than some of the people who left impromptu and without developing a new identity. This finding can actually be seen as one that has practical application in therapeutic settings or for those who are considering leaving a salient role: to facilitate the transition, it is recommended that those considering role exiting begin the development of their new identity before leaving the old one.

Review:
This is a very good book on many levels. Not only is the theoretical argument compelling and clear, but there is substantial empirical data used to test the model and it seems pretty clear that, with only a few minor exceptions, Ebaugh’s model accurately depicts what happens in the role exiting process.

Two additional points Ebaugh makes in analyzing her data I thought were particularly noteworthy. First, Ebaugh notes that for three-quarters of her interviewees they shared an emotion after having left the salient role. The emotion is kind of hard to describe but it can basically be considered a type of “vacuum” feeling or sense that something is missing (p. 143). It is a period of limbo many role exiters experience once they have exited their previous role but before they are positively sure what is going to happen next. Having experienced this exact sentiment in my own most salient role exits (i.e., coming home from an LDS mission and leaving the LDS Church), I was not surprised by this finding but was a little surprised it was so common among her interviewees.

The other particularly noteworthy point Ebaugh makes involves another emotion that was felt especially by the ex-nuns in her sample. Many of the nuns who left during the 1960s and 1970s felt angry and even hostile about the years they spent in convents and almost felt as though they had wasted that period in their lives (p. 170). Ebaugh doesn’t speculate as to why this was especially common among the nuns in the sample, but it is interesting that a large group of them felt this way. This finding is particularly interesting when contrasted with the finding of Wright (1987) that among the new religious movement exiters in his sample, very few felt that the time they spent in the cult was wasted. There is obviously something missing in the explanation of why some feel hostile toward their previous role while others do not.

There are a couple of points in the book that are not clearly explained or only touched on in passing that either felt out of place or seemed to be premature conclusions. For instance, in describing a characteristic shared by the mothers in her sample who gave up custody (i.e., they are basically ex-mothers and divorcees or ex-marrieds), she noted that they all seemed to have low self-esteem (p. 63). While this characteristic may be shared by mothers who give up custody, it certainly does not seem to be shared by all role-exiters. And, in fact, I think it may be a bit premature on Ebaugh’s part to argue that the mothers who gave up custody exhibited low self-esteem given they had almost all just exited very poor marriages in which the relationships tended to be abusive. While low self-esteem is emblematic of women who remain in such relationships, it is often the case that women who leave have finally found a modicum of self-esteem that allows them to take a stand. Thus, while it may have seemed that these women had low self-esteems, I think that a more accurate understanding is to realize the context of their exit and recognize that, if anything, their actions exhibit an increasing amount of self-esteem.

The second point in the book that is only touched upon in passing is Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959) idea of comparison levels for alternatives, which is really an alternative to rational choice theory in considering why individuals make the decisions they do. While I don’t disagree with Thibaut and Kelley’s argument and do find it slightly more compelling than rational choice theory – I don’t think people make decisions rationally all the time or even most of the time – I thought the inclusion of this idea was sudden and not well integrated with the rest of the book. The comparison level for alternatives idea either needed to be fleshed out in greater detail and integrated more closely with the rest of the theoretical model or left out of the book entirely. As it stands, it isn’t entirely clear how it fits into the model.

Despite the two minor problems I outlined above, I found this book very compelling and believe Ebaugh’s model of role exiting does a fine job of explaining this significant and important process in peoples’ lives. For anyone interested in why and how people leave salient roles, this book is a must read.