As part of my PhD work, I developed Marvelous Monsters, a 1980s coming-of-age manuscript set primarily in New York City. The book explores the strange and often disturbing world of capitalist “self-empowerment” movements and organizations that exhibit many of the characteristics of cults. Some promise transformation through firewalking; others claim that emotional-release techniques can cure serious illness. Meditation gurus ask followers to drink water in which they have soaked their feet, calling it “holy water.” Beneath the absurdity of these practices is something much darker: manipulation, control, coercion, and abuse.
My critical research grew out of questions raised by the manuscript. I drew particularly on the work of American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, whose study of thought reform examined the psychological mechanisms through which ideology and authority can reshape individual perception and identity. His work gave me a framework for thinking about what happens when authority, ideology, fear, and belonging begin to erode a person’s capacity to question what they are being told.
I became especially interested in what happens to people who grow up within coercive systems of belief: the lingering effects of trauma, depression, anxiety, and a profound distrust of one’s own perceptions. At the center of both my creative and critical work is a question that has become increasingly important to me: How do people learn to think freely again?
For me, part of the answer is ACCESS—to books, ideas, art, history, and perspectives that challenge the boundaries of the world we have been given.
That belief became tangible in my recent work as Head of Youth Services at a small public library in the South. As the children’s and young adult librarian, I was responsible not only for programming but also for curating and maintaining a collection meant to serve the full range of young people in our community. At times, that meant quietly standing behind books that others would have preferred not to see on our shelves.
I was fortunate not to experience the level of harassment, threats, and professional jeopardy that some librarians have faced over challenges to books and collections. But I understood that keeping a book available could itself be an act of protecting a young person’s right to encounter information, recognize themselves, question assumptions, and form their own conclusions. My work in libraries has reinforced my belief that access to ideas—and the freedom to read, write, question, and create—is fundamental to developing the critical thinking that makes genuine freedom possible.
Cultic movements often depend upon isolation and the restriction of information, limiting followers’ access to perspectives that might enable them to distinguish between reality and distortion. I know firsthand what it means to live within a closed system in which others control the dominant narrative. That experience has made me particularly attentive to the role that knowledge, language, and competing perspectives can play in recognizing coercion, recovering trust in one’s own perceptions, and reclaiming intellectual autonomy.
Kelley McKenna 