Event, Urantia Book, Aravindan Balakrishnan, Obituary, Trigger Warnings, Maharishi University, Legal
ICSA Annual Conference: My Father Leader: A Parent Cult from Inside Out
Maria Peregolise; Sunday, June 26, 2022; 1:00 PM-1:50 PMCulted Child is a memoir by the daughter of a Spiritual Prophet - a father who used the theology of The URANTIA Book as a framework for his secret conversations with her.
Belfast Telegraph: Cult leader's Belfast 'slave' defended evil rapist to the end
"In 2013, Ms Herivel called a charity to tell them that Balakrishnan's daughter was being held against her will, after which the sect was busted."
The Belfast woman who blew the lid off a Maoist cult that held her captive for 30 years was campaigning for its leader's release from prison until his death last week.
Ex-Methodist College pupil Josephine Herivel was one of several women brainwashed by Aravindan Balakrishnan in his south London commune.
Last week, the 81-year-old died in Dartmoor Prison, where he was serving a 23-year sentence for rape, false imprisonment, child cruelty and assault.
One-time violin prodigy Ms Herivel, the daughter of Bletchley Park code breaker John Herivel, came to regret alerting the authorities and campaigned for his convictions to be quashed.
A small online community still proclaims Balakrishnan's innocence, but Ms Herivel is the only one who has given interviews.
She fell under Balakrishnan's influence in 1978 while studying at the Royal College of Music after attending a communist lecture with her then boyfriend.
She joined Balakrishnan's Workers' Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought, based in a terraced house in Brixton, where followers referred to him as 'Comrade Bala'."
PsyPost: Trigger warnings might prolong the aversive aspects of negative memories
"Trigger warning" is a phrase we hear a lot in daily life now, but how effective is providing a trigger warning in preventing distress? A study published in Memory suggests that trigger warnings could actually be counterproductive and prolong effects of recalling a negative memory.
Trigger warnings are warnings that material may contain sensitive or difficult information that could serve to distress people. Topics can include shootings, sexual violence, racism, classism, and more. These warnings are meant to be considerate, hoping to minimize any negative feelings people may have about what they are about to encounter. Despite the good intentions, there is a possibility that warnings could do the exact opposite and make memories seem more distressing than they are, due to the fact that expecting something negative can cause or worsen distress.
For their study, researchers Victoria M. E. Bridgland and Melanie K. T. Takarangi utilized 209 participants over two sessions. Participants were asked to recall a negative event that took place within the past two weeks. They were separated into two groups: one which were given a warning that this negative memory task would be distressing, and one which were not given a warning. In session two, participants were asked to recall the negative event again. All participants completed measures on positive and negative affect, state-trait anxiety, memory phenomenology coping skills, centrality of the negative event, and emotional impact of events.
Results showed that as predicted, the warning message had a negative anticipatory effect. Despite this, there was no evidence that the warning made the initial recall of the event any more distressing. The distress and negative effects faded over time, which is consistent with previous research, but results did show that participants who were given a warning in session one showed higher impact of the event still during session two. This suggests that the warning did, in fact, "hamper the healing nature of time" and that the warning effects were delayed."
" ... 'In summary, this study is the first to examine the effects of warning messages on the recall of personal memories (rather than novel stimuli) with two important findings: first, we found that warning messages seem capable of prolonging aversive aspects of a negative event," the researchers concluded. "Second, if we turn to what we did not find, warnings do not seem to diminish the distress associated with recalling a negative memory or increase the reported use of coping strategies. These data have important implications for renewed calls to use trigger warnings to improve mental health by adding to the growing body of evidence that trigger warnings at best may have trivial effects or at worst cause harm.'"
Des Moines Register: Donor's wife sues Maharishi University in Fairfield over stock mixup, claiming she lost $500k
"In December 1984, Mary and Phillip Town gave a gift to Maharishi International University: 166,667 shares in their organic farming startup.
But, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court, officials at the Transcendental Meditation school in Fairfield, Iowa, preferred cash. So the Towns gave the school about $21,000 in exchange for the return of the shares, according to the lawsuit.
Mary Town said university officials never properly signed documents turning the shares back over, an issue that came to a head two years ago when an Austrian company bought the business that her husband and a business partner started.
Mary Town's lawyer estimated in a lawsuit filed against the university Thursday that it ultimately received about $500,000 because it was still the registered owner of those shares when the sale went through. She is demanding to be repaid the amount the school received.
"MIU's enrichment was at the expense of Town," her attorney, Jeff Stone of Cedar Rapids, wrote in the lawsuit.
Mark Zaiger, a Cedar Rapids lawyer representing the school, declined to address the details of the allegation.
'MIU does not respond outside of court regarding pending litigation matters," he said in an email to the Des Moines Register. "I can tell you, however, that MIU has a policy to seek resolution of disputes as they arise.'"
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