WHY FOLLOW JONES?
The question of why Jim Jones specifically should decide he had
the answers to any of life's questions is one we cannot answer.
Since Jones is dead, we cannot psychoanalyze him, we can only speculate.
Along these same lines, a Freudian interpretation of the Peoples
Temple and Jones is possible. We could make suppositions about the
cult members and their relationships to their parents and their
consequent search for a father figure and their consequent killing
of their father, for example. In fact, one of us (J.K-N.) has written
a paper on the relationship between the Jonestown cult and the guru
model of religion, which is quite similar to a Freudian interpretation.
We have consciously chosen to leave a detailed Freudian examination
out of this page, however, because in our opinion it has limited
value in an examination of the relationship between the Peoples
Temple and the culture out of which it grew.
We believe that Jones was able to articulate a response to mainstream
culture which resounded eloquently in the ears of his followers.
The question to be answered is: "Why did these particular people
feel alienated from their culture, and what was it in Jones's preachings
that drew them to the Peoples Temple?" We hope that this Web
page can help in the answering of that question. |
