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Combatting Cult Mind Control
''Combatting Cult Mind Control'' is a nonfiction work by Steven Hassan described as a "Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults." The author discusses theories of mind control and cults based on the research of Margaret Singer and Robert Lifton as well as the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger. Park Street Press, a New Age and alternative beliefs publisher, first published the book in 1988. In 2015, Hassan's own Freedom of Mind Press issued a revised 30th anniversary edition, ''Combating Cult Mind Control'' (note different spelling), featuring Hassan's new analysis of how coercive groups use social media to gain undue influence and updates on organizations that he alleges practice mind control. The book, according to the author's website, has been re-published in seven different languages. Hassan is a licensed mental health counselor in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is a former member of the Unification Church. Summary Introduction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Hassan
Steven Alan Hassan (pronounced ; born 1953) is an American author, educator and mental health counselor specializing in destructive cults (sometimes called exit counseling). He has been described by media as "one of the world's foremost experts on mind control, cults and similar destructive organizations," though social scientists are divided on his work. He is a former member of the Unification Church, founded Ex-Moon Inc. in 1979, and in 1999 founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. He has written on the subject of mind control and how to help people who have been harmed by the experience. He created the BITE Model evaluation of controlling social groups to quantify cult-like behavior. Personal life Hassan was born circa 1953 and raised as a Jew. He is a native of Queens, New York, and as of late 2020, lived in Newton, Massachusetts. Hassan reported that, at age 19 while pursuing a poetry degree at Queens College, he was deceptively recruited into the Unification Church ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut [Massachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət],'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to the east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York (state), New York to the west. The state's capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also home to the urban area, urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England and a region profoundly influential upon American History of the United States, history, academia, and the Economy of the United States, research economy. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade. Massachusetts was transformed into a manuf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychological Association Division 30 defined hypnosis as a "state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion". For critical commentary on this definition, see: There are competing theories explaining hypnosis and related phenomena. ''Altered state'' theories see hypnosis as an altered state of mind or trance, marked by a level of awareness different from the ordinary Consciousness, state of consciousness. In contrast, ''non-state'' theories see hypnosis as, variously, a type of placebo effect,Kirsch, I., "Clinical Hypnosis as a Nondeceptive Placebo", pp. 211–25 in Kirsch, I., Capafons, A., Cardeña-Buelna, E., Amigó, S. (eds.), ''Clinical Hypnosis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuro-linguistic Programming
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book ''The Structure of Magic I''. NLP claims that there is a connection between neurological processes (''neuro-''), language (''linguistic'') and acquired behavioral patterns (''programming''), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, the common cold, and learning disorders,Archived aGhostarchiveand thWayback Machine often in a single session. They also claim that NLP can "model" the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them. NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists, as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as " leadership training" to businesses and government agencies. There is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multi-level Marketing
Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called network marketing or pyramid selling, is a controversial marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling the company's products or services, while the earnings of the participants are derived from a pyramid-shaped or binary compensation commission system. In multi-level marketing, the compensation plan usually pays out to participants from two potential revenue streams. The first is based on a sales commission from directly selling the product or service; the second is paid out from commissions based upon the wholesale purchases made by other sellers whom the participant has recruited to also sell product. In the organizational hierarchy of MLM companies, recruited participants (as well as those whom the recruit recruits) are referred to as one's ''downline'' distributors. MLM salespeople are, therefore, expected to sell products directly to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NXIVM
NXIVM () is the name commonly used to describe the personality cult of imprisoned racketeer and sex offender Keith Raniere. NXIVM is also the trademarked name of the defunct corporation that Raniere founded, which provided seminars and videos in the field of human potential development. The United States seized ownership of NXIVM related entities and their intellectual property through asset forfeiture following Raniere's conviction. The NXIVM Corporation was based in the New York Capital District and had centers throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The subsidiary companies of NXIVM recruited based on the multi-level marketing model and used curricula based on the intellectual property ("tech") of Raniere called "Rational Inquiry". Courses attracted a variety of notable students including actors as well as the children of the rich and powerful. At its height, NXIVM had 700 active members. Over its existence, former members and families of NXIVM clients alarmed b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Democratic Workers Party
The Democratic Workers Party was a United States Marxist–Leninist party based in California headed by former professor Marlene Dixon, lasting from 1974–1987. One member, Janja Lalich, later became a widely cited researcher on cults. She characterized the DWP as a political cult with Dixon serving as its charismatic leader. Marlene Dixon Marlene Dixon had earned a Ph.D at the University of California, Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. She taught sociology at the University of Chicago and then McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She was an admirer of the works of Robert Jay Lifton, Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank, but as the party began to unravel in 1984 she criticized the latter two as anti-communists. In November 1968, while a professor at the University of Chicago, Dixon participated in a political demonstration, and two months later when her contract renewal came up, the university's sociology department voted unanimously not to rehire her. The student ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aryan Nations
Aryan Nations is a North American antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist organization that was originally based in Kootenai County, Idaho, about miles (4.4 km) north of the city of Hayden Lake. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group in the 1970s. In 2001 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classified Aryan Nations as a "terrorist threat." In a review of terrorist organizations, the RAND Corporation called it the "first truly nationwide terrorist network" in the United States and Canada. History The beliefs of Aryan Nations are based on the teachings of Wesley A. Swift, a leading figure in the early Christian Identity movement. Swift combined British Israelism, extreme antisemitism, and political militancy. He founded his own church in California in the mid-1940s. He hosted a daily radio broadcast in California during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1957, the name of his church was changed to the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, which continues to be used by Arya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientology
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data indicate that there were about 25,000 followers in the United States (in 2008); around 1,800 followers in England (2021); 1,400 in Canada (2021); and about 1,600 in Australia (2016). Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy. This he promoted through various publications, as well as through the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation that he established in 1950. The foundation went bankrupt, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book ''Dianetics'' in 1952. He then recharacterized the subject as a religion and renamed it Scientology, retaining the terminology, doctrines, and the practice of "auditing". By 1954 he had regained the rights to Dianetics and retained both subjects under t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mormonism
Mormonism is the religious tradition and theology of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of the Latter Day Saint movement, although there has been a recent push from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to distance themselves from this label. A historian, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, wrote in 1982, "One cannot even be sure, whether ormonismis a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these." However, scholars and theologians within the Latter Day Saint movement, including Smith, have often used "Mormonism" to describe the unique teachings and doctrines of the movement. A prominent feature of Mormon theology is the Book of Mormon, which describes itself as a chronicle of early indigenous peoples of the Americas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moonie
The Unification Church of the United States is a religious movement in the United States of America. It began in the 1950s and 1960s when missionaries from Japan and South Korea were sent to the United States by the international Unification Church's founder and leader Sun Myung Moon. It expanded in the 1970s and then became involved in controversy due to its theology, its political activism, and the lifestyle of its members. Since then it has been involved in many areas of American society and has established businesses, news media, projects in education and the arts as well as taking part in political and social activism, and has itself gone through substantial changes. Early history In the late 1950s and early 1960s missionaries from the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) of South Korea and Japan came to the United States. Among them were Young Oon Kim, Sang Ik-Choi, Bo Hi Pak, David S. C. Kim, and Yun Soo Lim. Missionary work too ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exit Counseling
Deprogramming is a controversial tactic that attempts to help someone who has "strongly held convictions," often coming from cults or New Religious Movements (NRM). Deprogramming aims to assist a person who holds a controversial or restrictive belief system in changing those beliefs and severing connections to the associated group (religious, political, economic, or social) which created and controls that belief system.Neal, Lynn S. (2012). "Deprogramming". ''Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States''. Edited by Bill J. Leonard and Jill Y. Crainshaw. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO. Some methods and practices of people who have deprogrammed (''deprogrammers'') have involved kidnapping, false imprisonment, and coercion, which have sometimes resulted in criminal convictions. Some deprogramming regimens are specifically designed for individuals taken against their will, which has led to controversies over freedom of religion, kidnapping, and civil rights, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
