You may well have been intrigued or even mystified at the title of this event. What is spiritual or cultic abuse, and what has it to do with autism, or being autistic?
As an autistic survivor of spiritual abuse, I would say: a surprising amount. Both in that autistic people are for many reasons particularly vulnerable to this kind of abuse and in that the “cult pseudo-personality” and “autistic masking or camouflaging” have a great deal in common.
Whether you already have some understanding of the phrases “cult pseudo-personality” and / or “autistic masking or camouflaging” or whether one or both is new to you, then this workshop is for you.
By the end of this session you should have a clearer idea about the nature of spiritual abuse and of autistic masking, and of the link between the two, and so of how to approach clients presenting with one or the other – or both.
Course Content
Presenter
Max Marnau is a person-centred therapist living in the Scottish Borders. As the autistic daughter of refugees from Hitler’s Nazis, she feels a particular affinity with all the exiled, the othered, and the displaced. Among whom she counts both autistic people and survivors of abusive cults.
Her parents quite consciously did not transmit their culture to her for fear of making her an outsider. That’s quite funny, given that she’s autistic! She sees herself as a second-generation exile who never quite fitted anywhere, and that may have made her particularly vulnerable to the attractions of an apparently friendly and supportive cult with clear rules.
With the understanding that she is autistic came the discovery of her tribe, and Max has become an “out, loud and proud” autistic psychotherapist, activist, writer, and trainer.
