Saving Cindy by Peter A. Olsson

Saving Cindy

A Psychiatrist Looks at Cults & Their Victims

by Peter A. Olsson

Cindy (not her real name) was nineteen and a sophomore at college when her parents sought consultation with me. She had decided to stay on her college campus in a distant city, telling her parents that this would allow her to finish a term paper and save the airfare for some new clothes. Her parents were pleased by this decision. During her freshman year Cindy had episodes of intense homesickness, wrote several lengthy, lonely-sounding letters home each week, and called home weekly asking for letters and calls from her older siblings. By the second semester the homesickness attacks were less frequent, she had made a couple of new friends, was making As and Bs, and had gotten a part-time job at the student union. Her older brother had commented, “The little kid is growing up at last.”

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more from the online archives

35.2—Mar/Apr 2022

Say Something

on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery

33.1—January/February 2020

Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor?

The Politicization of Pediatrics in America by Alexander F. C. Webster

31.2—March/April 2018

Reason Takes Up Arms

How Best to Face the Total War of the Anti-Culture by R. J. Snell

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00