Janet Jacobs

The Transformed Self: The Psychology of Religious Conversion

1. Haven of Last Resort: Conversion and the Search for Relief.- 2. The Relationship with Authority: Conversion and the Quest for the Perfect Father.- 3. The Infatuation with the Group: Conversion and Social Influence.- 4. Adolescent Conversion and the Search for Identity.- 5. Merger with the Perfect Object: Conversion and the Narcissistic Condition.- 6. Conversion and the Quest for Meaning.- 7. The Transformed Self: Summary and Implications.- Appendix I. Interview.- Appendix II. Interview Scoring.- Appendix III. Discrete Emotions: Scoring Rules.- References.

The Economy of Love in Religious Commitment: The Deconversion of Women from Nontraditional Religious Movements

This paper examines the characteristics of female religious commitment by focusing on conversion to and disaffection from nontraditional religious movements. The seventeen subjects in the study represent a wide variety of religious orientations, ranging from charismatic Christianity to Eastern mysticism, with their commitment varying over time from six weeks to ten years. Data for the study were collected through in-depth interviews that explored the subjects initial involvement with the group, the process of conversion, and the social-psychological aspects of deconversion. The analysis suggests that in religious commitment an economy of love is operationalized in which the commodities of exchange are affection, approval, and intimacy. As such, the male religious hierarchy plays a significant role in the lives of female converts through control over the emotional rewards of religious commitment. Such control often leads to sexual exploitation, abuse, and discrimination, sources of female subordination that are reinforced by the pervasiveness of romantic ideals, expectations of male protection and love which come to dominate the interaction between the female devotee and the male leadership. Through the trauma of rejection, the romantic ideal is ultimately destroyed, creating the conditions under which the devotee begins to perceive an imbalance in the emotional exchange relationship. Because of the sense of violation that many of the women have experienced, they choose to leave the movement rather than to attempt to redress the imbalance through a continued association with the religious group.

GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND THE TREND TOWARD EARLY MOTHERHOOD: A Feminist Analysis of Teen Mothers in Contemporary Society

This research offers a feminist analysis of teen pregnancy and the trend toward single parenting. Forty-five young women between the ages of 14 and 19 were interviewed at a high school for teen mothers in the Denver metropolitan area. The findings of the study highlight the complex relationship between female adolescence, family structure, and social location as each of these factors informs the trend toward early motherhood. The analysis frames teen pregnancy within the feminist discourse on female development, focusing on issues of attachment and autonomy as these conflicting needs influence the choice to mother.

Deconversion from Religious Movements: An Analysis of Charismatic Bonding and Spiritual Commitment

In this paper deconversion from authoritarian religious movements is studied from the perspective of disaffection as it is expressed through the severing of socio-emotional bonds to the religious leader. Within this framework, a two-stage process of separation is elaborated in which bonds to the group are severed first, followed by the emotional disengagement from the charismatic leader. The bond between the leader and follower is shown to be most significant in determining the strength of continued commitment to the movement. An in-depth analysis of the leader-follower bond is offered, identifying specific sources of disillusionment. Principles of power dependency theory are then elaborated in order to explain the strength of commitment to the charismatic figure. Data for the study were collected through forty in-depth interviews of former religious devotees, representing seventeen different religious movements. Each of the respondents had left the movement voluntarily after an intense commitment to the group. The average length of religious involvement was four and one-half years and data were gathered on the process leading to conversion, the respondents experience once inside the group, and the events which led to deconversion.

Gender and collective memory: Women and representation at Auschwitz

This research examines the representation of women at Auschwitz. Based on fieldwork at the museum/memorial at the death camp site, the study explores the complex ways in which womens experiences are recalled through gendered narratives that reify traditional representations of women as either suffering mothers and/or sexual possessions of the perpetrators. Drawing on the methods of visual sociology in ethnographic study, the imagery in photographs, sculptures and artifact installations is analyzed to reveal patterns of gendered memory that have become characteristic of Holocaust museum culture. The findings of the research raise significant questions for the social construction of gendered memories of atrocity and genocidal histories. In particular, the study suggests that, as nations and groups seek to accurately recall and remember mass violence against women, traumatized societies must be wary of creating visual and public narratives that promote voyeurism and exploit the memory of the dead.

Women, Genocide, and Memory The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research

This article explores the ethical dilemmas of doing a feminist ethnography of gender and Holocaust memory. In response to the conflicts the author experienced as both a participant/Jewish woman and an observer/feminist ethnographer, she engaged in a critical examination of her research methods and goals that led to an exploration into the complex moral issues that inform research on women and genocide specifically and feminist ethnographies of violence more generally. Drawing on her fieldwork at Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe, she identified three sources of methodological tension that developed during the research process: Role conflicts in the research setting, gender selectivity in studies of ethnic and racial violence, and the sexual objectification of women in academic discourse on violence and genocide. Each of these ethical tensions is examined from the standpoint of research on gender and the Holocaust.

Early Motherhood and the Disruption in Significant Attachments: Autonomy and Reconnection as a Response to Separation and Loss Among African American and Latina Teen Mothers

Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to “forced autonomy” that emerges out of the relationship strains in the teen mothers’ lives. Faced with ruptures in significant childhood attachments and strains in the mother–daughter bond, young mothers develop strategies of accommodation to cope with the disruptions to connectivity and the demands of forced autonomy that are the result of early motherhood. These findings are interpreted through the frame of self-in-relation theory as this theoretical perspective has been informed by the scholarship on race and ethnicity. In reengaging the discourse on race, class, and gender, our findings contribute to the field in a number of significant and related ways: first, through an investigation into relationship loss and repair among teen mothers; second, by addressing the conditions under which teen mothers gain acceptance in their families; and third, in applying self-in-relation theory to the experience of adolescent girls of color whose relational lives are disrupted by the stigma and adversity of teen motherhood.

The Cross-Generational Transmission of Trauma: Ritual and Emotion among Survivors of the Holocaust

This article investigates the role of ritual in the cross-generational transmission of trauma among first- and second-generation Holocaust survivors. Based on a qualitative study of thirty-five second-generation survivors, the research examines the extent to which Jewish rituals were maintained in the postwar home and the ways in which the ritual life of the survivors conveyed the traumas of the past through the emotional dynamics of ritual observance. The findings of the research suggest that ritual was an important site of emotional exchange within survivor families and that in adulthood, the children of survivors have engaged in ritual innovation to separate from their traumatized parents. The principles of self-in-relation theory are used to illuminate the social psychological dimensions of ritualized transference across generations.

Hidden Truths and Cultures of Secrecy: Reflections on Gender and Ethnicity in the Study of Religion

My research narrative begins in India in 1972. In the winter of that year I visited an ashram that had recently been established in a high rise apartment building in a wealthy section of Bombay known as Beach Candy. I had gone to the ashram expressly to meet the spiritual teacher, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose Sunnyasin movement had just begun to attract followers from the West. Among the small cadre of devotees who lived in his burgeoning spiritual community was a close cousin who had recently come to India to study with Bhagwan.1 My cousin now called herself by a Hindu name, she wore only orange clothing, and her speech was punctuated with phrases of adoration for the Oxford educated guru. The day I visited the ashram, Bhagwan was giving a talk to a number of academics from the United States, and although I was merely a 70s traveler, making my way from West to East, he agreed to let me join the group of Western intellectuals. I remember clearly how excited my cousin was as she prepared the room for Bhagwans entry. Her own small room in the ashram bore a plaster cast of his feet, but, as she explained, this religious icon paled in comparison with the actual feet of the spiritual master whose body contained the essence of spiritual enlightenment. I had been at the ashram about an hour when Bhagwan, young, thin, and bearded, entered the room, taking his place on a chair that was designated for him alone. The guests were assembled on floor cushions and he smiled down at each of us as he greeted his waiting audience. After a moment of silence, Bhagwan began to speak quietly about his philosophy of life and the meaning of

The Spiritual Self-In-Relation: Empathy and the Construction of Spirituality Among Modern Descendants of theSpanish Crypto-Jews

The research that is presented here explores the role that empathic attachment plays in the development of the religious self. Based on an ethnographic study of modern descendants of the Spanish crypto-Jews, the work applies self-in-relation theory to the study of spirituality and religious belief acquisition among a population of individuals who, in adulthood, have modified their religious world view as a result of their crypto-Jewish heritage. The findings of the research expand the parameters of self-in-relation theory in three important ways: 1) through an examination of the role that empathic attachment plays in adult conversion patterns; 2) through the elaboration of a developmental model that considers the significance of empathic attachment for sons as w ll as daughters; and 3) through an investigation into the relationship between ethnicity and spiritual development.