Martha Beck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page is for the therapist and author, Martha Beck. For the murderer, see Martha Beck (murderer).

Dr. Martha Nibley Beck (born 29 November 1962) is a sociologist, therapist, and best-selling writer. She contributes regularly to Oprah Winfrey's O magazine.

Before her break with the LDS church, Beck co-authored Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior with her husband, John, in 1990. A large portion of the book dealt with overcoming homosexuality (the two have since divorced and both are now openly gay). Beck is the mother of three children, one of whom inspired her to write her 1999 book Expecting Adam. Her son Adam has Down Syndrome. She has since written Finding Your Own North Star and The Joy Diet.

Her most recent book, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, (released in March 2005) is a narrative in which Beck describes memories of sexual abuse by her father [1], prominent Mormon academician Hugh Nibley; her sexual relationship with her husband; Feminism; religiosity; her experiences teaching at Brigham Young University; cultural dissonance and anomalies in Utah; her spiritual journey leaving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and her research and use of controversial hypnosis and self-hypnosis methods to recover repressed childhood memories (including the alleged abuse). The book was originally conceived as a novel, loosely based on her life (with the main character being male), but was changed to relate her personal experiences at the encouraging of her publishers, according to a review in the Mormon magazine Sunstone. Beck has been criticized for failing to mention her current sexual orientation in the book, which purports to explain her sexuality; for her portrayal of Latter-Day Saints and Utah culture; and for her accusations against her father and others; that Brigham Young University systematically removed all mention of Equal Rights Amendment activist Sonia Johnson from its huge campus library.

On February 24, 2005, weeks before the scheduled release of Leaving the Saints, an article in the New York Times reported how Beck's memoir had already become controversial in Mormon circles. Hugh Nibley's family and many of his associates had denounced the book, and praise for it from Oprah Winfrey on her website and in her magazine had prompted 3,500 protest emails. Beck's seven siblings had denounced the book's accusations against their father as "false". Beck claims that a relative who supported her version of events spoke "only on the condition of anonymity after receiving threats of physical violence because of her support of Dr. Beck."

Sunstone Magazine published a review of "Leaving the Saints" where the reviewer, Tania Rands Lyon, declared that "By the end, I was persuaded. I hated most of the book, doubted many of the details, was disappointed in her relentlessly negative and ridiculous caricature of the LDS Church and culture, and questioned some internal inconsistencies; but I believed that she had been abused by her father". (link to article is below)