Stage-4: Institute a Membership Body

Formalize Adherence

Dissemination has provided a consensus statement on doctrinal basics and its value to society. The next decisive step occurs when adherents decide to formalize their association and institutionalize doctrinal adherence. Instituting adherence via a legally constituted «membership body» means that members and their doctrine get officially/legally recognized within wider society.

Example: International Psychoanalytic Association

Freud coined the term “psychoanalysis” in the 1890’s and about 20 years later Freud published a paper entitled The History of the Psychoanalytical Movement (1914). We can recognize the Spiral as outlined so far:
Stage-1: Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900.
Stage-2: In 1902, Freud starts to meet every week with colleagues to discuss his work. This became the “Psychological Wednesday Society” with 14 regular members.
Stage-3: Soon a psychoanalytic centre formed in Zurich and translations enabled adherents to emerge in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Lecture tours followed. In 1908, interest was such that an international meeting was organised with 42 attendees.
Stage-4: At the next meeting in Nuremberg in 1910, the «International Psychoanalytical Association» was founded with Carl Jung as President and its base in Zurich. The IPA became the accrediting and regulatory body for member organisations that arose in each country—and it is so to this day.

All legally constituted membership institutes are organisations based on self-interest. They create a distinctive differentiation within society and are set up to promote the social value of the roles, interests, and beliefs of the members. As members here are adherents to a doctrine regarded as essential and beneficial for wider society, self-interest is viewed as consistent with and contributing to the greater good of society.

For more on membership associations, see Ch. 11 in Working with Values.

The crucial concern for the founders of the new membership institution is not the mission, which is obviously the development and promulgation of the emerging doctrine, but rather the boundary. Who is in and who is out? How does someone become a member? While many associations may rather simply define members and permit easy entry via payment of an annual membership fee, this membership institute is concerned to ensure that its members adhere to the doctrine.

Example: Family Therapy

The Family Therapy movement spawned numerous small Associations of Family Therapists which were little more than cells, created to promote and disseminate the new ideals and system theory conceptions. Their members were typically staff working within various welfare and mental health institutions. However, as the movement thrived and therapists formed Schools, the visionary urge to transform society became replaced by a partly selfish urge to protect hard-won prestige. As a result, pressure grew to regulate membership by accrediting family therapy training.

Society does sometimes form visionary bodies that foster its transformation and in such cases the principal objects (PH6L4), their essential rationale, refer to the direct application of ultimate values (PH6L7). However, membership associations are more down to earth, and their principal objects refer to the protection and promotion of members’ interests, which include the doctrine which is a value system (PH6L6). Many such bodies do not see themselves as ideological, but they are. The body has a tribe-like identity and asserts the doctrine explicitly. To win political support in wider society, it must explain how social values (PH6L5) will be met via the doctrine. Expecting the doctrine itself to be valued because it is "true" is futile.

NOTE: The School is not The Organization

It is possible to be an adherent of the school and not a member of the school's organization: either because of personality disagreements, or issues with the body's rules and policies, or cost of membership. Also organisations are country-bound, and some countries may not have enough adherents to create an organisation.

Executive Structures

Any effective association generates massive amounts of work, which in most cases must be performed without pay. To get things done, leadership by a Board with an executive team is required with dual responsibilities: (a) ensuring everything is legal and all operations, facilities and finances are properly managed, while (b) maximizing doctrinal impact. A large variety of committees are created to get all the work done. Committee members are also volunteers, but the positions may be viewed as prestigious and accession may involve voting.

Larger complex organisations, like the Roman Catholic Church, have an executive hierarchy of full-time employees who are also member-adherents. This executive supports to a greater or lesser degree an unpaid governing council with committees.

While doctrines have a global reach, membership associations must conform to societal laws. This leads to a multiplicity of bodies around the world, which in turn requires a global membership organisation of these local membership bodies.

Example: Humanism

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the world union of over 100 humanist, rationalist, atheistic, secular and free-thinking organisations in 38 countries. A byelaw states the doctrinal essence: “Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic and does not accept supernatural views of reality."

Possible Outcomes

Continue to Mode-1

Many of the activities of a doctrine-based membership organisation involve re-affirming the fundamental realizations from slightly different perspectives. At regular meetings, in instructional settings, and when involved in dissemination, members provide repeated examples of the application of the ideas with analyses of their success or, sometimes, failure.

In other words, once Stage-4 is established, the school automatically re-enters Mode-1, but further down the ellipse as shown in the diagram. The accounts produced by new adherents no longer have the impact of the original illumination, but rather serve to confirm their shared convictions. This repetitive sharing supports and reassures each and every member intellectually, emotionally and socially.

Stay at Stage-4

A membership organisation that is successfully established may not take school establishment any further. In such cases, the membership may either stabilize with members from the initial enthusiasm or grow substantially as the doctrine becomes more appealing. Such organisations often engage in social projects to demonstrate the doctrine and reveal its value to society.

Example: Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy was created by the work of Rudolph Steiner as a philosophy of freedom and a spiritual science, not as a religion or a substitute for religion. The Anthroposophical Society specifically forbids dogma. It is an association of individuals and independent study groups that seek to grasp the spiritual nature of man through reflecting on their own inner life. With no complicated doctrine to preserve or revise, there is no pressure to move to Cycle-2. However, applications of Steiner’s ideas have led to biodynamic farming, a global network of Waldorf schools and help for those with special needs e.g. Camphill Schools.

Transition to Stage-5

The membership organisation does not embody the doctrine, individual adherents do. The organisation embodies the self-interest of adherents, which includes the doctrine as each distinctively views it. Those adherent-members who take the doctrine seriously, and not all do, become aware that the doctrine requires a social presence that is above and beyond the preferences and prejudices of existing members. In short, the doctrine must somehow be protected from distortion and neglect.

While adherents naturally desire preservation and development of their doctrine, this is not easily assured. The first crisis is often the death of the founder, who is seen both as a source of wisdom and a suppressor of deviance. Death will therefore exacerbate anxiety that the doctrine will get watered down, diffused, or corrupted, as different members push their preferred perspective or even personal ambitions.

To protect the founder's doctrine, the first issue that must be addressed is perpetuation of its societal presence with preservation of its purity.

---

Having created a social body and re-entered Mode-1, the School-Q5 formally exists and its doctrine is shared by a significant number. But will the school endure? Will the doctrine develop further?  That is only possible by moving from the Cycle-1 concern for more adherents and handling the Cycle 2 concern for long-term persistence.

• Embed the school in Cycle-2, starting by ensuring orthodox guardianship.

Originally posted: 7-Sep-2022. Last updated: 20-Mar-2024.