The wisdom of "Tommy": How The Who's classic rock opera informs about cultic dynamics

ICSA Annual Conference: The wisdom of "Tommy": How The Who's classic rock opera informs about cultic dynamics

Steve Eichel
Friday, June 24th
4:00 PM-4:50 PM

In his introduction to the CD release of the classic rock opera “Tommy,” author and The Who biographer Richard Barnes stated that "the story line was influenced by [Who songwriter/guitarist Peter] Townshend's rejection of psychedelic drugs and simultaneous discovery of mysticism...[he] was working on a metaphorical story device that put across the idea of different states of consciousness. The premise was that we had our five senses but were blind to Reality and the Infinite.” We, however, are also struck with the congruence between Tommy's story line and the processes of traumatic dissociation, reenactment, and misguided healing, that culminated in Tommy becoming (and failing as) a cult leader. Although he never met his guru (Meher Baba), Townsend was a true believer when he began writing and composing “Tommy.” In this presentation, we will explore Townsend’s creation of "Tommy" in both prose and music, and contemplate his theories about the creation of a cult leader, Tommy’s attempt to start a cult, and the rebellion that ultimately brings him down.

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Steve K. D. Eichel, PhD, ABPP, Board member and past president of ICSA, is Past-President of the American Academy of Counseling Psychology and the Greater Philadelphia Society of Clinical Hypnosis. He is a licensed and Board-certified counseling psychologist whose involvement in cultic studies began with a participant-observation study of Unification Church training in their Eastern seminary (in Barrytown, NY) in the spring of 1975. His doctoral dissertation to date remains the only intensive, quantified observation of a deprogramming. He was honored with AFF's 1990 John G. Clark Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Cultic Studies for this study, which was published as a special issue of the Cultic Studies Journal and has been translated into several foreign languages. In 1983, along with Dr. Linda Dubrow-Marshall and clinical social worker Roberta Eisenberg, Dr. Eichel founded the Re-Entry Therapy, Information & Referral Network (RETIRN), one of the field's oldest continuing private providers of psychological services to families and individuals harmed by cultic practices. RETIRN currently has offices in Newark, DE, Lansdowne, PA and Pontypridd, Wales and Buxton, England (U.K.). In addition to his psychology practice and his involvement with ICSA, Dr. Eichel is active in a range of professional associations. He has co-authored several articles and book reviews on cult-related topics for the CSJ/CSR. In 2016 he received ICSA's Herbert L. Rosedale Award at the Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas.

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Bhau Kalchuri - obituary

The Telegraph

January 22, 2014

Bhau Kalchuri, who has died aged 86, was an Indian writer and poet, and the biographer and close disciple of Meher Baba (1894-1969), an Indian guru famous for, among other things, not uttering a word during the last 44 years of his life.

Meher Baba, also known as “The Compassionate One”, claimed to be the Avatar — the most recent incarnation of God, following in the footsteps of such figures as Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed.

Attaching no importance to “creed, dogma, caste systems or religious ceremonies and rites”, he boiled down his teaching into a list of “realities” that included love of God, self-sacrifice, respect for others, self-discipline and calm in adversity. He taught that true self-realisation comes about over millions of reincarnations — a process he called “involution”. For the last silent 44 years of his life, he communicated with an alphabet board and eventually only with hand gestures.

Baba’s teachings caught on in the West, where he became something of a celebrity. In the 1930s he travelled to America and hobnobbed with Hollywood stars such as Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, Tallulah Bankhead, Boris Karloff, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks junior He also travelled to Britain on the same ship as Mahatma Gandhi. The pair were reported to have had several meetings at which (according to his followers) Baba advised Gandhi to abandon politics, provoking a sharp response from an aide to the Mahatma: “You may say emphatically that Gandhi never asked Meher Baba for help or for spiritual or other advice.”