Releasing the Bonds

Introduction

(To Steven Hassan's Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves. FOM Press, 2000, Copyrighted, all rights reserved. Permission to use or reprint must be granted in writing.)

When done reading, click here for chapter 1

Like most people, I knew nothing about mind control when I was deceptively recruited into the "One World Crusade," a front group for the Unification Church -- better known as the "Moonies." I was nineteen and a junior at Queens College. That fateful February in 1974, I had just broken up with my girlfriend and was an appealing target: bright, educated, from a solid family, idealistic, and especially vulnerable at that moment to the smiles of three attractive women who flirted with me and invited me over "for dinner."

Dinner led to other longer meetings. After an intense three day "workshop," I became convinced that God wanted me to drop out of school, quit my job, turn over my bank account, and follow the "Messiah" and my "true father" Sun Myung Moon. Within a few short weeks, I came to believe that Armageddon was at hand, that World War III would start in 1977, and that we alone were personally responsible for defeating Satan and erecting the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

I worked 18 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week fundraising, recruiting and indoctrinating new members, undertaking public relations and political campaigns, and meeting regularly with Moon and his highest-ranking lieutenants. As an American, I had no real power, just position. The upper echelons of the hierarchy were composed exclusively of Koreans and Japanese, with the Koreans in the position of the "master race." Moon had moved to the United States, and he needed American front men who were intelligent, passionate and dedicated. Over a matter of months, I went from being founder of a recruiting front group, C.A.R.P., at my former college, to the rank of Assistant Director of the Unification Church at National Headquarters in Manhattan. I was highly praised by Moon himself and at one point was held up to the membership as the "model member."

Had it not been for a miracle, I might still be a cult member today. In 1976, after three days without sleep, I nodded off at the wheel of a Moonie fundraising van and crashed into the back of an eighteen-wheeler. This near-fatal accident gave my family the opportunity to help me leave the cult. At that time, the only means available to my parents was a forceful rescue method called "deprogramming," which typically involves holding the cult member against his will. On the second day of my deprogramming, I threatened my father with violence, at which point he broke down into tears, asking me what I would have done if I were in his position. His sincerity touched me and, for a brief moment, I was able to see from his perspective and feel his pain. I reluctantly agreed to meet with the team of former members for five days, without contacting the cult or trying to escape.

As a devoted Moonie, I did my best to fight the deprogramming process, but the information that was presented gradually began to sink in. In the days that followed, I came to understand what "brainwashing" -- as practiced by Mao Tse Tung in his Communist political "reeducation" centers -- was all about. Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (Norton, 1961) helped me realize that the techniques we used in the Moonies were so much like those used to "brainwash" political prisoners. Eventually, I came to the painful realization that I had not only been subjected to mind control processes, but that I had recruited others into the Moonies too.

After my deprogramming, I returned to college and went on to complete a master's degree in counseling psychology. Realizing my unique position as a former cult member and counselor, I dedicated myself to helping others escape and recover from destructive mind control situations. Since 1979 I have taken many avenues to educate people about the dangers of mind control groups. That year, following the mass suicide of the followers of Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana, I founded EX-MOON Inc., a nonprofit educational organization made up of ex-members of Moon's Unification Church. I published a newsletter, held media conferences, and established a clearinghouse for information about the Moon organization. I later served for a year as the national coordinator of FOCUS, a support and information network of former members of destructive cult groups. Now, I have founded The Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc. (), with its Internet web site dedicated to informing the public about destructive mind control and deceptive cult practices.

In 1988 I wrote Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (Park Street Press). The publication of this book allowed me to share my experiences as a cult counselor with people all over the world. The book was translated into Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Polish and Czech. Combatting was based on my work in the field of "exit-counseling," a rescue method that was developed as a legal, non-coercive alternative to the intrusive and often illegal method of deprogramming.

Changes over the past thirteen years have caused me to develop my approach and refine my techniques. In the early 1990s, I learned that the leaders of many of the larger cults had started buying copies of Combatting so that they could learn how to prepare their members to resist the exit counseling process. Kip McKean, who founded the International Churches of Christ, reportedly held my book up at a general assembly meeting and told some 15,000 members that they would be in sin if they met with me or even read my book. In this way, cult leaders were able to impede the efforts of many families by preventing members from meeting with people outside the group.

I now know that this roadblock was actually a blessing in disguise because it forced me to develop more effective ways of teaching family members and friends how to think strategically and interact with their loved one in creative ways. I began to see that all of a cult member's friends and family are traumatized by the situation, in some cases quite profoundly. I realized that to mobilize them into a resourceful mode, I had to find ways to empower them, both as individuals and as a team of concerned, loving adults. These revelations have become the cornerstones of the method I currently use, which I call the Strategic Interaction Approach.

This book is the culmination of my twenty five years of experience in helping thousands of people all over the world and describes a practical, hands-on approach to helping those affected by mind control processes. In addition, the development of the Internet, which provides fast and economical access to information about particular cult groups, has played an enormous role in the development of my new approach. Indeed, this book could not have been written prior to the development of the Internet.

The Strategic Interaction Approach (SIA) is a dramatic evolution of and improvement upon exit counseling and promotes a family-centered, non-coercive course of therapy. Strategic Interaction therapy provides the friends and family of the cult member with a much greater understanding of cults, their methods, and the effects of the indoctrination process. It offers new insight into cult-induced phobias and effective tools for overcoming them.

The SIA is designed to help the cult member recognize that he has been under the influence of mind control, and consequently has surrendered personal power to the group and its leader. With continued work and application of this approach, he recognizes the pervasiveness of the group's control over his life. Once the former member has experienced such an awakening, my methods help him regain a sense of personal power, integrity, and direction. Contrary to what they had been indoctrinated to fear, most cult members I have worked with have experienced emotional, psychological and even spiritual rebirth. They were able to return to their families and were spared further injury -- in some cases, even death.

This goal-oriented communication course is designed for use by a professional therapist, although it can also be initiated and implemented by motivated family members and friends. This book is not meant to replace professional counseling, nor is it meant to solve every problem faced by the family and friends of a loved one involved in a cult. It is written for intelligent people who find themselves in a bizarre situation and don't know what to do. It is also written for the many hundreds of people who have contacted me after reading Combatting Cult Mind Control, asking what more they could do to help affected loved ones affected by mind control.

Since you are reading this introduction, I assume that you are hoping to learn how to help a relative or friend who is in trouble. Of course, you could be a devotee of one of the organizations whose members this book is meant to help, or a former cult member, or maybe you just have an interest in Strategic Interaction therapy. Because of my desire to help people, I am writing this book for anyone who wants to learn. I am frustrated by the impossibility of personally giving information and counsel to all the desperate people who call me, each of whom is seeking to help a friend or loved one escape the grip of destructive mind control. It is my hope that this book will help.

My entire approach is based on my belief that growth is an essential part of the human experience and that when people are encouraged to grow, they will do so according to what they believe is best for them. In my travels around the world, I have interacted with people with a wide array of belief systems and have concluded that there are basic, universal needs that transcend the requirements of the physical body. I have found that people want to have a positive sense of identity and a connection with others in a greater community. They want to feel and give love rather than hate and fear. They prefer to live with trust rather than mistrust. They would rather be told the truth than be told lies. They would rather be free than enslaved.

One of my chief motivations in exposing the destructive and deceptive practices of mind control cults is my high regard for religious freedom. I believe that everyone has the right to believe, and the right to not believe, whatever they choose. As a member of the Jewish faith, I believe in a God that created us with free will and the freedom to choose. I am also especially aware how often minority groups have been persecuted for their beliefs, or for merely being different. As a matter of principle, I am opposed to censorship or banning any group. Indeed, I celebrate diversity. I also believe that no legitimate group should fear an honest critique of its practices. In fact, I have found that my model for analyzing mind control practices has helped some individuals and groups to see that they were unknowingly perpetrating mind control and undermining basic human rights. In general, I believe the best way to prevent such abuse is to educate and warn people about the dangers of mind control.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution grants freedom of religion as it pertains to belief. In essence, people have the right to believe whatever they like -- even if those beliefs are demonstrably wrong (like "the earth is flat," or "men are superior to women," or vice versa). However, the Constitution does not give people or institutions the right to engage in behavior that violates other people's rights or the laws of the land, even if they claim religious motivation. Many cult leaders believe that it is necessary for them to practice deceptive recruitment and mind control techniques for ideological reasons. But if the effect of their actions is to make the person dependent and subservient, then I believe it is hurtful and people's rights are being violated. The bottom line for evaluating any organization is the consequences of its behavior. It is also the easiest way to evaluate distinctions between legal and illegal, ethical and unethical conduct.

I honor and respect all religious forms that honor and respect a person's individuality and freedom. I am a civil libertarian who fights to protect the right to believe whatever one wants to believe. That is why my work has had the broad support of religious leaders from a variety of denominations and spiritual paths, including Baptists, Buddhists, The Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Hindus, Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Pagans and Neo-Pagans, Roman Catholics, The United Church of Christ, Unitarians, and many others. I support a person's right to choose his spiritual path and want religious institutions to prosper.

Much of my work has been with people involved with religious cults, although I have certainly seen my share of other types of groups. I have helped former trainers and participants of large group "awareness training" programs, people who have been involved in irresponsibly conducted drug rehabilitation programs, and former salespeople for large, pyramid-structured, multilevel marketing commercial operations. In recent years, I have encountered a wide variety of less formal cult situations, such as people whose family dynamics were cult-like and women who experienced battered-wife syndrome. Over time, I have come to realize the pattern that ties all of these situations together: they all involve mind control techniques that restrict a person's ability to think, feel, and act autonomously.

The public's need to recognize cults and their destructive influence has never been greater. The mass suicides of the Heaven's Gate members, along with those of the Solar Temple group in Canada and Switzerland, and the tragedy in Waco, Texas, have brought the dangers of cults to the forefront of the world's consciousness. Yet, cult activity has increased exponentially since Jim Jones decided that his 900 followers should no longer inhabit the earth. Conservative estimates report that there are more than 10,000 destructive cults operating in the world today, directly affecting many tens of millions of lives. Those numbers are growing rapidly.

Cults are increasing in number and size for many reasons. Among the most fundamental of these is the breakdown of families, communities, and the growing sense that our society is in decay. Economic factors play a role. A large and growing segment of the world's population is poor, while a relatively small elite controls an ever-increasing share of the world's resources. As more people become disenchanted with their lot, they seek answers in fringe groups of all types, from fanatical religious sects, to New Age groups offering enlightenment, to militia groups that plan political and social revolution.

Add to all of this the approaching Millennium, an event that is essential to understanding the recent escalation in cult activity. Prophesies that go back hundreds of years, and in some cases thousands, are being used today by visionaries and madmen as the lens through which current events are viewed and interpreted. Will the Messiah come to Earth in the next few years? Around the world, millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims certainly think so. Many believe that "false prophets" and the Antichrist are working to establish a one-world government under Satan. Fear of a holocaust called Armageddon is even more widespread. The apocalyptic prophecies of the 16th century French mystic Nostradamus are believed by many to apply to this time. Some people predict that extraterrestrial beings or other mysterious spiritual entities will either rescue or destroy the human race in the next few years. Curiously, the Mayan calendar runs out in the year 2000. The year 2000 and the third Millennium (which begins in 2001) represent magic round numbers of the kind that have always stirred the human imagination, so we can expect that many groups far larger than Heaven's Gate will be standing by, preparing to rise to another plane of existence.

Apocalyptic visions, even those shared by large groups, are not new phenomena. What is new is the means by which they can be promulgated. We have television, faxes, and the Internet to spread inaccurate and alarmist ideas quickly. More ominous still, we have technologies that can give groups, and even individuals, the power to create apocalyptic disasters. On the other hand, many of the same technologies can also be used to disseminate valuable information and protect people s rights.

For these reasons, the coming years will be an especially fertile time period in which profound changes, both positive and negative, could take place. Throughout the world, millions of people are searching to find new purpose and meaning in their lives. Growing numbers of spiritual and political movements throughout the world are offering people hope for the future. The Millennium thus brings fresh challenges -- and with them fresh opportunities.

Living within a global community is an increasingly interdependent affair. We must cope with incredible stresses in a world that has never before been so interconnected by mass communication and transportation. In order to safeguard our personal and collective freedom, it is imperative that people learn more about how the mind can be positively and negatively influenced. People must learn to know themselves and take responsibility for their own beliefs, values and behavior. They must also develop and use a social support network to connect them to the resources of a greater community, and to help them to enjoy the fulfillment that can come with healthy, interdependent relationships.

In this book, I will establish criteria to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy groups and relationships. Cult leaders and their academic defenders love to compare their groups to benign mainstream organizations. We will focus our attention on the critical differences. Chapter by chapter, we will analyze what practices and tactics constitute destructive mind control. By identifying common cult scenarios, you will see how families can work together to free their loved ones. You will gain practical knowledge by reviewing checklists of important concepts, filling out evaluation forms to design a customized approach, and rehearsing communication strategies and dialogues to prepare for interaction with your loved one. (In most scenarios and dialogues in this book, clients names and identifiable characteristics have been changed to protect their privacy.)

I believe that real love is stronger than conditional love. The love that family members and close friends have for a person is much more powerful than any relationship within a mind control cult. Relationships in mind control groups are usually based on the conditions of obedience and membership. Once the member passes the "ho neymoon" phase and these conditions are made evident, friends and family have the potential for increasing a positive influence over time. Time is on their side because mind control is never one hundred percent, because the human spirit wants to be free, and because, ultimately, cults do not deliver what they promise.

(from Steven Hassan's Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves. FOM Press, 2000, Copyrighted, all rights reserved. Permission to use or reprint must be granted in writing.)

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