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Title: Cults in Our Midst by Margaret Thaler Singer, Janja Lalich, Robert Jay Lifton ISBN: 0-7879-0266-7 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: October, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: What Makes Cults Tick?
Comment: Cults use motivational psychology to create closed controlling environments where cult members have little opportunity for free thinking. Societal organizations such as the advertising and sales industries, schools, and governmental organizations also use motivational psychology, but these organizations exert less control over members' lives. Some cults control *all* aspects of their members' lives, including where members work and live, members' social companions, members' sexual companions (if any), and even when members can use the bathroom. Cults achieve complete control through a program of deliberate isolation plus psychological reward and punishment. Cult members mechanically serve the cult leadership's goals and fantasies, often accumulating money, wealth and power for the cult leadership.
Professor Singer is a psychologist with over fifty years of research and clinical experience, and her collaborator Janja Lalich is a former cult member. Together they have produced a well-written text describing 'What Are Cults' and 'How Do They Work'. This very readable text is filled with specific examples describing how cults affect their membership, and examples describing the obstacles that former cult members face if they return to overall society. The discussion describes the use and effects of extreme motivational psychology within cults. The discussion also assists understanding motivational psychology use and effects within overall society.
"Cults In Our Midst: ..." was written in 1995. Since 1995 the United States' sexual mores (reflected by the entertainment media) have liberalized, sexually transmitted disease has increased, and societal affluence has lessened. If this text was revised in 2003, I believe that additional discussion of (lack of, or unconventional) sexuality and (lack of) food as motivators and punishment would be warranted.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Cult Spectrum Revealed
Comment: I'm not an expert on cults. I've never (to my knowledge) participated in one. I have made a study, however, of human belief, and what I found in this book was fascinating and illuminating. I must confess that what I got the most out of it was not what Singer was writing, but what I found between the lines. There is clearly a continuum of cultic thought, technique, and behavior, and all groups and institutions fall somewhere along that continuum. Singer deals almost exclusively with those groups that land way out on one extreme, but when she discusses Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGAT) she eludes to this continuum. Where she falls short, I believe, is in recognizing (or discussing) that probably all religious belief falls rather far along this continuum, and no doubt had its roots way to the extreme. I would expect that it could be argued that Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Zoroaster etc. etc. etc. and the movements they began could all be evaluated against the criteria of a cult and found to exhibit most if not all the designating factors. They move away from the end of the spectrum where the hard-core cults are found when they mainstream and become more popular...it's simply too difficult to control that many people and that many variables. Religions have made a choice...sacrifice control for size, power and influence. Cults have not yet made that choice, prefering instead to retain the control and live with the limited power and influence that an individual cultic figure can muster.
The information found in this book is very valuable in helping each of us assess our own vulnerabilities to charismatic and interesting people and causes. That should not frighten us away from striving for those experiences, only warning us to approach with caution, with our eyes wide open and our radar screens well lit!
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent overview.
Comment: The outline of the book is straightforward: Part one identifies what a cult is. Ms. Singer takes care to emphasize that the term "cult" is a netural one.
Part two details the methods used by these cults. And it is in this area that the distinction between legitimate groups are distinguished from manipulative groups whose ultimate goal is to serve the will of the cult leader without criticism, rather than a beneficial goal beyond the personal service of the cult leadership.
A true self-help group, like Alcoholics Anonymous or a local church, will allow for the possibility that the convert might leave, and will not view it as a threat to the organization. As detailed by the anecdotal evidence in the book, the lengths to which the (malignant) cult leadership will stifle internal dissent and outside criticism, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these cults and their inherent distrust of an individual's self-determination. This, I can tell you, is *not* what goes on in your normal neighborhood church.
The final part is instructive as it is heartbreaking, as it emphasizes the loss of children's life, and on how to get people out of the cult. As Singer's anecdotal stories about ex-cult members compound upon the reader, the proper reaction to these types of groups should be growing contempt, as many of the members seem unable to formulate any mental or spiritual foundation after having been manipulated so perversely.
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Title: Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan ISBN: 0892813113 Publisher: Inner Traditions Intl Ltd Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse by Michael D. Langone ISBN: 0393313212 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Crazy Therapies : What Are They? Do They Work? by Margaret Thaler Singer, Janja Lalich ISBN: 0787902780 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 13 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Releasing The Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves by Steven Hassan, Steven Hassan ISBN: 0967068800 Publisher: Aitan Publishing Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing by William Sargant ISBN: 1883536065 Publisher: Malor Books Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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