Times on John Gordon Clark, MD: Pioneer Cult Researcher and
Clinician
The following is taken from the New York Times obituary of
October 17, 1999, by Eric Nagourney. Dr. Clark was The Founding
Scholar of AFF, publisher of
The Cult Observer, and a principal force in AFF’s
formation and development.
Dr. John G. Clark, a Harvard psychiatrist whose study of new
religious sects in the 1970s raised public awareness of the
overwhelming influence of some groups over their members, died
on October 7 at a nursing home in
Belmont, Mass. He was 73 and had been suffering from a long
illness, his family said.
Clark
immersed himself in the study of new or generally unfamiliar
sects like the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology and
the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Over time,
he counseled more than 500 former members of the groups and their
families.
Seminal Editorial
Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, an expert on such groups and an
emeritus professor of psychology at the
University of California at Berkeley, said Clark was among the
first professionals to turn attention to the subject, even before
the mass suicide of Peoples Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana,
in 1978. The following year, Clark wrote a widely cited guest
editorial in The Journal of the American Medical Association
warning about the growing power of such religious groups. He was
also called as an expert witness before a congressional committee
investigating religious sects. “People paid attention,” Dr.
Singer said. In his editorial, Clark wrote, “The new youth cults,
though usually self-styled as religious for purposes of First
Amendment privileges, are increasingly dangerous to the health of
their converts and menacing to their critics.”
At first, Clark himself had to be convinced of what was then
not a generally accepted principle: that an ordinary person, not
suffering from any significant psychiatric problem, could within
a matter of days be persuaded through simple group pressures to
walk away from a previous life and devote everything to a
particular group.
A Different Viewpoint
“I think, like most psychiatrists, initially he was rather
skeptical,” said Dr.
Michael Langone, executive director of the American Family
Foundation, a 20-year-old organization that works against such
sects. Clark was active in the organization. But Clark’s views
changed as he met with more patients. “Orthodox psychiatric
opinion has generally viewed conversion to deviant groups as a
function of longstanding conflicts within individuals,” he said
in a 1982 interview. “Our evidence strongly suggests that these
individuals are succumbing to pressures within the cult milieu,
pressures that can induce radical personality changes as easily
in normally developing people as among disturbed ones.”
Harassment
Through the 1980s,
Clark was called upon by the news media, families and
psychiatrists for his expertise on the influence of sects. The
Church of Scientology objected strongly to Clark’s assertions,
and the church and Clark battled in court. Clark said the church
had engaged in a campaign of harassment against him. In 1988, he
settled with the church and received an undisclosed amount of
money, but agreed never to discuss the group publicly again.
(Cult Observer report)
Commitment to Stop Exploitation
The following is from Herbert L. Rosedale, Esq., Late President
of AFF, publisher of The Cult Observer.
Upon hearing of Jack Clark’s death, I was deeply saddened. I
sought in vain for an appropriate expression of condolence,
tribute and, yes, celebration. I was struck by the inadequacy of
the usual images that might describe him. “Helping hands,”
“caring concern,” “courageous counselor.” They all fell short.
Driven by a commitment to unmask evil and stop exploitation by
power-mad manipulators, Jack stood in the line of fire, despite
the fact that when he looked around him there weren’t the
expected colleagues, similarly outraged human rights supporters
or objective professionals.
Pressing on at great personal and family cost, he never wavered
in developing or pioneering a point of view which, despite
attempts at suppression backed by overweening seduction and
corruption, has persisted and gained credibility and recognition.
Jack would have been proud of what
AFF has become. He would have been delighted to participate in
its international forums and to review the thoughtful
professional papers presented there. He would have shrugged his
shoulders when told that it is still difficult to expose
unpopular truth or to have professionals change views that they
have adopted for reasons of advocacy. Jack never expected a
perfect world. His concern was what we do about the harm arising
from its imperfections. He acknowledged that many accepted the
harms he fought as the price of achieving greater goals in a
fallible world. Jack could never adopt such a stance. His own
driving vision and underlying belief that caring and
understanding were more important than tolerance of evil was a
centerpiece of his life, even as he paid the continuous price of
harassment, abuse, and denigration.
To Jack, his wife Eleanor, and his family: I was honored to know
John Clark and to work with him. Truly, in the finest sense of
the work, he was an inspiration. We will all miss him very much
Dr. John Clark, 73
Psychiatrist was authority on danger of cults
By Tom Long, Globe Staff, 10/09/99, The Boston Globe
Dr. John G. Clark of Weston, a psychiatrist who was among the
first to note the damaging effects of cults, died Thursday in
Belmont Manor nursing home. He was 73.
Dr. Clark was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School
and the staff at McLean Hospital in Belmont. He maintained a
private practice in Weston.
After several families consulted him in the early ‘70s about
their children’s membership in fringe religious groups, he became
convinced that the young people were the subjects of what he
termed “an impermissible experiment” of subtle and sophisticated
psychological manipulation.
In 1983, his editorial on the subject in the Journal of the
American Medical Association led to wider discussion of the
problem and frequent appearances on TV shows, including a BBC
documentary about the Unification Church.
His criticism of the Church of Scientology led to two lawsuits
being filed against him by the group. Though the suits were
eventually dismissed, Dr. Clark in 1985 filed suit in US District
Court against L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the church, alleging
a conspiracy to “destroy” him through a series of threats,
harassment, and false and malicious accusations seeking
revocation of his medical license and hospital privileges. That
suit was settled out of court.
That same year, Dr. Clark received the Leo J. Ryan award, named
for the California congressman murdered in Jonestown, Guyana,
and, in 1991 The Psychiatric Times named him psychiatrist of the
year.
In nominating him, UCLA psychiatrist Dr. John Hochman described
Dr. Clark as “a quiet, courageous man of conviction, who was
fighting an all-too-lonely and unappreciated battle against
well-financed, ruthless organizations.”
He wrote that “early on, Dr. Clark concluded that the cult issue
was at heart a question of human rights. He called the cult
phenomenon an ‘impermissible experiment’ since these groups were
gaining a level of exploitive control over their recruits that no
ethical social psychologist would ever attempt to gain over his
experimental subjects.”
According to Hochman, “a student present at a 1978 seminar on
cults recalled Dr. Clark stating that ‘it was only a matter of
time before there would be a bloodbath.’ Some in the audience
laughed this off, but several months later, the mass
suicide-homicides of Jonestown occurred.”
Dr. Clark was born in St. Cloud, Minn. After serving in the Navy,
he graduated from McAlester College in St. Paul, and then
Harvard Medical School.
He leaves his wife, Eleanor (Sherwood); a daughter, Catherine; a
son, Gordon H.; two brothers, Robert S. and W. Bruce; and a
grandson.
Funeral arrangements are private.
This story ran on page B07 of the Boston Globe on 10/09/99.
