How many of these have you encountered?

* Lies and distortion: the person deliberately lies about what you said or did. Then they get you to try and defend their distortion of your words/actions.
* Emotional appeal: They appeal to sentimentality or emotion over logic, and try and get you to doubt yourself.
* Denial: the gaslighter denies their own abuses and accuses their victim of doing the very same thing.
* Appeal to authority: pulling rank to claim that someone more powerful than you knows best.

I think I've experienced them all (and I was never LDS).

Ratthink Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How many of these have you encountered?
>
> * Lies and distortion: the person deliberately
> lies about what you said or did. Then they get you
> to try and defend their distortion of your
> words/actions.
> * Emotional appeal: They appeal to sentimentality
> or emotion over logic, and try and get you to
> doubt yourself.
> * Denial: the gaslighter denies their own abuses
> and accuses their victim of doing the very same
> thing.
> * Appeal to authority: pulling rank to claim that
> someone more powerful than you knows best.


All forms of manipulation. As a jr. psychologist, I think that people with character / personality deficiencies are most likely to use these; Quality people seek to nurture, 'build', and encourage real success from others. People with empathy, self actualization (K. Goldstein, A. Maslow) don't bother with these diversions.

at least to me, this partially explains or at least describes Joey & Brigem and many other church leaders.

inside ChurchCo, the desires to 'religionize' people & manipulate them is a very foggy, ambiguous distinction.

Just stop watching FOX News and listening to AM radio.

If there's anything I learned from Star Trek's Mr Spock, it's that humans are intrinsically illogical and irrational.

Whether stupidity is more dangerous than malice is the more important question.

As a member, I regularly experienced all of these. And it mostly came from leaders, which would deny anything that was less than faith promoting.

However my greatest shock was during my mission. Before going home I ran into a former missionary companion who was physically attacked by the zone leader. I was concerned about his well being. He completely denied that there was ever an incident. I thought he was joking but he accused me of being delusional about it. I never expected that he would defend the so called honor of the maniac zone leader. Instead I was attacked for not being a better missionary.