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NURTURE FAILURE: A

PSYCHOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACH TO THE


CHILDHOOD OF JIM JONES

James L. Kelley 2015

I've long since put out a warrant for [God's] arrest...charging him with murder, abandonment of his
children, abandonment of his people, desertion, torture....
Jim Jones [1]

Over 900 human beings died by the imbibing or injection of red Kool-Aid on 18
November, 1978 [2]. We know where they were: Jonestown, Guyana. We know
who they were: Peoples Temple, the religio-political movement led by Jim Jones.
But do we know what they were? That is to say, do we have an understanding of
what Jim Jones actually taught? This short piece hopes to shed some much-needed
light on what Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple believed through an application of
the psychobiographical theory of nurture failure to the troubled religious leader's
early years.
The Peoples Temple leader believed that he was a unique embodiment of an
impersonal divine force that could equalize all imbalances in the cosmos [3]. Jones
called himself the God ideal, and promised his followers that [as] I am God...so
shall you become God [4]. However, Jones began his career as a Hoosier
clergyman who specialized in emotional and fiduciary manipulation; in California
he sexually abused men and women under his care; he ended his path as a ruthless
South American despot who added mass murder to his already sordid stateside
resume. His psyche was made up of warring poles: On the one hand, Jones
counted himself a deity capable of bringing universal equality to humanity; on the
other, Jones lacked any regard for others' sufferings and could unblinkingly snuff
out those who resisted his high purpose. Indeed, this savior/tormentor

contradiction was the core of Jones' identity: he thought of himself as a humble


servant of men; actually, he was a sociopath who ruthlessly domineered those
around him [5].
The problem resided in Jones' childhood death-wish. There is pain,
suffering, and injustice in the world. Knowing this, Jones felt he had two choices:
commit suicide, or help the downtrodden to achieve equality, which would end all
suffering and pain. Jones thought that if other human beings conformed
themselves perfectly to his divinely-attuned will, then a society of perfect
happiness and fulfillment would result. To help the process along, Jones saw fit to
punish his followers, along with anyone else who got in the way of his plans.
When circumstances conspired against him in 1978 to make his dream
unrealizable, Jones devised a last solution, one that held out something for
everyone: for Jonestown residentscessation of torment; for the capitalist worldsystema view of the carnage they caused from their half-billion television
screens; for Jim Jonesthe coming-to-fruition of a long standing death-wish.
James Warren Jones was born 13 May, 1931 in Crete, Indiana, to James
Thurmond and Lynetta Putnam Jones. The family moved to nearby Lynn, Indiana
when the boy was two or three years old [6]. Jones' father was distant and
ineffectual, a sickly war veteran who, in his son's eyes, contributed little to the
world around him. Lynetta, by contrast, was eccentric, intense, and grandiose;
unlike the other Lynn matriarchs, Jones' mother had attended college and was
observed by townsfolk wearing factory coveralls and smoking cigarettes [7].
Owing to his taciturn father's reluctance to stray from his perch near the family
radio, and to his garrulous mother's absence from the home for extended shifts at
the factory, young Jim seems to have fallen prey to a syndrome I have termed
nurture failure.
A child undergoes nurture failure when parents and/or other adult caregivers
are unable or unwilling to provide the guidance and structure necessary for the
child's assimilation into the wider community. According to my theory, the
neglected child seeks to mask the unspeakable pain of abandonment by reversing
the nurture role scenario: the child, in turning away from the shortcomings of his
own nurturers, appoints himself as nurturer, often reinterpreting and elaborating
the abortive strategies and styles of nurturing observed in the adults closest to him.
In what sense was Jim Jones a victim of nurture failure? Let us begin with a
consideration of Jones' relationship with his mother. On some nights, close to her
son's bedtime, Lynetta hurriedly cooked dinner while Jim sat at the kitchen table
listening to her hold forth. These impassioned discourses ranged across a number
of broad, abstract rubricswhat might be termed the big questions, or the

meaning of lifein a manner that always led to the same conclusion: Though no
one will help you in life, you nonetheless possess the potential within yourself to
overcome all obstacles, if only you persevere in solitary study [8]. However,
conventional religion was never part of the equation for Lynetta, who scoffed at
her in-laws' Quaker piety; instead, Mrs. Jones taught her son that, although they
were disadvantaged, helittle Jimmie Joneshad a special destiny. Jim was to
become an exalted, even godlike being. Though Lynetta often left her son in the
hands of babysitters or simply allowed him to roam the streets alone, she could not
abide outsiders' criticisms of him or of his raising; the young Jim came to see the
slightest dissent from his will as an oppression. This love for the underdog was
further reflected in Lynetta's hatred of social inequality as the worst form of
hypocrisy [9].
Lynetta also passed to her son a love of nature and especially of animals.
For both mother and son, to protect stray animals was to maintain an ineffable
connection to an unseen world of nature spirits [10]. However, the child Jim Jones,
having no strong nurturing bond with his overworked mother, carried on her
nature-love to an extreme. He gathered around him a veritable menagerie of
chickens, cats, dogs, snakes, and other creatures, which he confined in makeshift
pens in the family barn. Sequestered in the barn's loft, Jones lit candles, retrieved
boxfuls of discarded bouquets from trash bins which he placed on a primitive altar,
and preached to the animals [11]. Alongside this collection of orphaned flora and
fauna were human congregants: Jim was amazingly effective at coaxing the
neighborhood children up the ladder and into his rustic cloister, where the
diminutive preacher would convince them that he knew all of the sins they had
committed. On some occasions, the presiding child held funeral services for
animals that had died. One onlooker noticed that a pet cat over whom the priestly
Jimbo was officiating had been killed by Jones earlier in the day [12].
It seems that Jim Jones used the barn-church liturgies to reinvent himself as
a nurturer: if his idealistic mother and sedate father failed as nurturers (thus
causing Jim to fail as a nurturee), Jim would use his mother's high-minded
self-help to transmute himself into a nurturer. He found animals and even plants
that were literal outcasts; these he used as a kind of roadside attraction to bring in
youths. Once the latter were cross-legged on the barn-church floor, Jim Jonesthe
only one seated in a chairwould hold court, sometimes pretending to heal
wounded animals but more than not carrying out inter-species blood transfusions
and limb grafts that he claimed were scientific despite his charges' obvious distress
[13].
However, Jones later claimed to have been severely traumatized the first
time one of his dependents died: Every day I have lived since I was a child, the

first time I felt guilt when a little dog died, I wanted to commit suicide, but I had
still some little dogs and cats in life that had me alone to take care of them [14].
Why does this incident resonate so deeply for the child?
The death of the beloved pet brings Jim Jones full circle. He began as a
nurturee whose nurturers had failed him. His response was to reverse the
giver/receiver dichotomy: Now Jim Jones was the nurturer, and so he instituted a
liturgy that arrayed his outcast nurturees below himself in a plant-animal-human
hierarchy.
But then the unforeseen occurs: a nurtureethe little dogdies. In Jones'
psyche, a dilemma has arisen. Either the nurturer has failed to give, or the nurturee
has failed to receive. If the former, then Jim Jones must internalize the guilt and
pain stemming from his own neglect; as a recapitulator of his parents' nurture
failure, he must commit suicide to end the cycle by killing the offender and
offended in one act. If, on the other hand, the nurturee has failed to receive, then
the fault lies either within the nurturee oras a third optionin a disordered,
imbalanced environment. The nurturer (Jones) can thus mete out violence to the
nurturee that refuses to be redeemed; or, if by some set of circumstances the
redemption event is decisively impeded (Jonestown in 1978), then the suicide
option can be embraced by nurturer and nurturee alike, since the cosmos itself has
refused (at least in this stage of history) to allow the redemption. In this last case,
the collective suicide at Jonestown was indeed an act...protesting the conditions
of an inhumane world [14a].
The foregoing analysis points to three key elements of Jim Jones' psyche: his
belief in socialism, his belief in himself as a unique conduit of higher forces that
can bring about a socialist utopia, and his belief that suicide can be an act
conducive to a future socialist utopia. Now, to disentangle the skein somewhat, we
will examine each of these three psychic elements in order:
I. Jim Jones' belief in socialism.
As an adult, Jim Jones recalled his childhood conversion to his own brand of
socialism: When I was laying on springs with no covers, and the rain was pouring
through the roof of my old ramshackle house, and they told me to pray to
God...there was no God that came. The rain kept pouring. I had a beam of
consciousness. I said there shouldn't be any poor; there shouldn't be any private
property [15]. The child Jim lies alone, uncovered, un-nurtured. The very forces
of nature harass his body and his thoughts. Jones has been told to pray, but prayer
to a god in the sky has no effect. Jones: When I looked inside of me [at the age of
five], I found the power of socialism in me, and quit praying [16]. Socialism is

the answer for the frightened child. Why? Because the problem lies not with Jones'
failed nurturers, nor with a God that does not exist. Rather, the problem is a
disequilibrium of forces in the cosmos that causes human suffering.
And how is this problem of a disordered world to be solved? By raising each
human being's consciousness, so that they may understand that they have the
power to reestablish cosmic equilibrium. Thoughts are higher than matter, just as
thinking beings are higher than both instinctive beings and insensate beings in
Jones' barn-church. But the highest thought is of Principle, which for Jones means
the cessation of all inequality and all consciousness of having less than any other
being or thought. Jones presided at the barn-church because he, unlike his
subordinates, recognized that my father was infinite spirit [17]. Like Jesus Christ
before him, Jones felt that he was the latest in a long line of prophets who though
being [men], make [themselves] God [18].
II. Jones as God
Jones saw socialism as a dual concept of doubt-belief according to which the
seeker overcomes all inequalities and injustices through the power of thought;
specifically, the content of this power-granting thought is that God is a force
within the human mind that, as it becomes progressively recognized and unfolded
by the knower, erases all limitations and deficiencies in the world [19]. Jones'
claim that he was God and that others could follow his deifying path was propped
up by his claims to be clairvoyant. This prophetic power, Jones admitted, was not
divine in any traditional Christian or religious sense. Rather, Jones was simply
more psychically evolved, and thus had access to higher, paranormal dimensions
[20].
III. Jones and Suicide
Our short discourse ends with a word about a few possible implications of Jim
Jones' early views on suicide. First, a reminder that Jones' tenderness toward and
sympathy for the downtrodden had a cruel counterpart: pets underwent mutilations
and neighborhood boys were brutalized during barn-church sessions [21]. The
same charismatic youth who felt guilt over a pet dog's death unflinchingly
tortured and starved his other pets. We have already quoted Jones to have said that,
ever since the pet dog's demise, the only factor that staved off his unrelenting and
deep-seated desire to commit suicide was his discovery of dependents that he
could nurture.
As we have stressed, Jones' nurturing could turn to punishment without

interval. His childhood friend Don Foreman experienced this on a number of


occasions, as when Jones locked him and another child in the barn loft [22]. Here
the intent seems to have been to keep the boys from forsaking the holy precinct
with their weak wills. Jones maintained this sadism throughout his entire life,
forcing congregants to stand for hours, straining them to their breaking point,
though, he claimed, it was for their own good. Jones railed against his followers as
dummies and stupid, even as he pleaded with them to start giving a f*ck for
the Divine Socialism that would deliver them. Don Foreman, on another occasion,
was asked by Jones to continue to speak with him in his living room past the
former's curfew. When Foreman refused (thus, perhaps, failing to receive Jones'
nurturing), Jim brandished his father's gun and shot at the fleeing young man [23].
So, how do we bridge the gap between Jones' childhood conversion to
Divine Socialism and the revolutionary suicide that ended over 900 lives? In the
jungle of Guyana in November 1978, group suicide may have seemed reasonable
to a man whose ministry (from childhood on) had been nothing if not a constant
oscillation between telling people they are gods and treating them as if they were
less than human. In this essay we have suggested that hiding behind Jones'
psychopathy was a childhood of abuse and neglect punctuated by occasional
pulses of idealistic rhetoric from his mother. This combination became lethal once
the child Jones began to think of himself as a psuedo-gnostic redeemer whose task
was to save humanity from limitations that could be attributed either to a
deficiency in the environment or to a deficiency in the wills of his followers.
NOTES
[1] FBI tape Q1053, part 1, cit. in David Chidester, Salvation and Suicide: Jim
Jones, The Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, revised edition (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), 54.
[2] The potion was actually potassium cyanide mixed with grape Flavor-Aid, the
latter ingredient giving the concoction its wine-like appearance (Tim Reiterman
with John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People
[New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008 (1982)], 559). Deborah Blakey, who endured
Jonestown white nights between December 1977 and May 1978, recalled:
Everyone, including the children, were told to line up. As we passed through the
line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink (Affidavit of Deborah
Blakey, reprinted in United States Congress, House of Representatives,

Committee on Foreign Affairs, Staff Investigative Group, The Assassination of


Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy [Washington,
D.C., 1979], 316, emphasis added; cit. in Chidester, Salvation and Suicide, 132).
[3] Jim Jones, Annotated Transcript Q353: Sermon (1972), Alternative
Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, accessed 15 August, 2015,
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=62922.
[4] Ibid. In the same sermon, Jones proclaims of himself: You are looking at the
body of Jesus Christ.
[5] Jones, on the last day of his life, told Tim Reiterman and others present at the
Jonestown pavilion that he wanted his epitaph to read: I've given my life for
people, serving people (Reiterman, Raven, 515).
[6] John R. Hall, Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural
History (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1987), 5.
[7] Lynetta, in a narrative called Town Employment Solved (Index of Stories
Written [by Lynetta Jones], Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples
Temple, accessed 23 August, 2015,
http://alternativejonestown.com/backup/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/LynettaJ
onesIndex.html), describes her husband as a semi-invalid all of our married life,
and writes of herself as of slight built and limited strength, but according to my
philosophy, nothing was impossible and my ambition for my son knew no
bounds! Reiterman has the following about James T. Jones: A road-construction
foreman before going to France to fight in World War I, he had returned home with
lungs scarred by mustard gas. With no more than a grade school education and
cursed with bad health...Jones had become a semicripple in the land of the work
ethic (Raven, 11). Lynetta found her in-laws closed-minded and bigoted; Jim
Jones himself later decried his father's cynicism, thus commending obliquely his
mother's optimism (Hall, Gone from the Promised Land, 4).
[8] Lynetta encouraged Jim to study, to put in his hours with his books at the
kitchen table each night. 'Don't be a nothing like your dad,' she harped. 'You have
to make something of your life and be somebody. Work at it. Nobody's gonna help
you' (Reiterman, Raven, 17). Also note with Hall (Gone from the Promised Land,
4) Lynetta's frustration with her in-laws' emphasis on isolated facts (apparently
specifics about Christian faith and about the ways of the world at large) an

approach that veered off from Mrs. Jones' less dogmatic, more expansive
tendency.
[9] Rebecca Moore, Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple (London and
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009), 11.
[10] Hall, Gone from the Promised Land, 6.
[11] See Lynetta Jones, Town Employment Solved and Animal Friends in
Index of Stories Written, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples
Temple, accessed 23 August, 2015,
http://alternativejonestown.com/backup/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/LynettaJ
onesIndex.html). From Town Employment: [Jim's] animals..., and there were
many, had taken up comfortable positions in (they hoped) quiet and less frequently
disturbed place: The salvage of these rejected and needy fellows had been my
son's very first objective. 'These things ARE my work,' he very often said, 'you
must understand, Mother, that I was sent to earth to do many things that others do
no wish to door cannot do.
[12] Danny Wedding and Ryan M. Niemiec, Movies and Mental Illness: Using
Films to Understand Psychopathology, 4th edition (Boston, MA: Hogrefe, 2014),
242. For Lynetta's nicknaming of Jim as Jimbo, see Lynetta Jones, Index of
Stories Written.
[13] Domenico Arturo Nesci, The Lessons of Jonestown: An Ethnopsychoanalytic
Study of Suicidal Communities (Rome: Societ Editrice Universo, 1999), 16.
[14] FBI tape Q636, cit. in Albert Black, Jonestown: Two Faces of Suicide. A
Durkeimian Analysis, Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 20.4 (Winter 1990):
285-306, here 295-296.
[14a] Mary McCormick Maaga, Suicide Tape Transcript, accessed 25 August,
2015, http://employees.oneonta.edu/downinll/mass_suicide.htm.
[15] Reiterman, Raven, 150. Jones' epiphany, it should be noted, contains all of the
elements of the ambrosial nectar theme central to many Black American new
religious movements (MSTA, Nation of Islam, Father Divine's Peace Mission,
etc.). Jones is in a womb of darkness (his room); he feels moisture on his body; he
sees a flash of light that comes out of the darkness, granting him gnosis. See James

L. Kelley, Western Esoteric Influences on the Nation of Islam's Cosmology,


Jay's Analysis, accessed 25 August, 2015,
http://jaysanalysis.com/2015/07/31/western-esoteric-influences-on-the-nation-ofislams-cosmology/. Downloadable version at:
https://www.academia.edu/14935205/Western_Esoteric_Influences_On_the_Natio
n_of_Islams_Cosmology. Cf. the following from Jim Jones, Q1059-1 Transcript
(1974), Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, accessed
23 August, 2015, http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27331: Can you imagine,
that there wasn't any heaven, and you gonna have to built it? Can you imagine out
here in this swirling bit of space, that's there only energy, and you can take it and
make something with it? Or it'll just leave you cold and void for all eons of time.
(-) ...[I]f I was sitting out there and looked on this planet, and I saw military
generals and rich oil and steel magnates robbing the poor, I'd come down with a
stroke of my power, if I had all the power you say he's got said he's omniscient,
omniluscent, omnipresent, omnipotentthat means all-powerful. (-) I'm saying
God is Principle. God is Energy, and you've got to learn that energy, and
appropriate it yourself.
[16] Jim Jones, Q1059-1 Transcript (1974), Alternative Considerations of
Jonestown and Peoples Temple, accessed 24 August, 2015,
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27331.
[17] Jim Jones, cit. in Hall, Gone from the Promised Land, 10.
[18] Jim Jones, cit. in Hall, Gone from the Promised Land, 30.
[19] On the doubt-belief concept, see Hall, Gone from the Promised Land, 38. On
God as a force within humans, see idem, 30.
[20] Chidester, Salvation and Suicide, 57-59.
[21] Lynetta Jones recalled of Jim, if [the children in the barn got] smart with
him, he'd just rip the lard out of 'em (cit. in Hall, Gone from the Promised Land,
10).
[22] Reiterman, Raven, 20.
[23] Ibid., 27.

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