ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses emotional, cognitive, and biographical changes related to processes of deconversion, or leaving a religious organization – with special attention to exiting high-tension groups. We review predictors of deconversion as well as short-term and long-term changes in psychological well-being and growth. Drawing on our own longitudinal research, we discuss impacts on individuals’ consecutive autobiographical narratives and psychometric profiles. Research documents various trajectories for conversion as well as for deconversion. Those can be understood by (1) attending to development across the human life span situated in historical and geographical context and (2) identifying general trends as well as particularities. A cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective on deconversion from high-tension groups is useful because vocabularies are used in different ways in different relevant fields of science and application and, in addition, in different cultural contexts. The chapter closes by proposing an interdisciplinary and global research paradigm and with an outlook on leaving high-tension groups and disaffiliating from high-tension worldviews.
