Debra Van Neste Cult Specialist

Cult Awareness and education are important to them as community resources towards critical thinking. It is essential to include everyone who believes in critical thinking, and education, that doesn’t blindly preach their way into what they believe is the right interpretation of the bible, or other sacred texts or alleged mystical teachings. The ethical alliance I am announcing today is with Damien Marie Athope, a prominent leader in this field, some of our projects entails arranging interviews to promote our work and what we can do to work well together. Over the years, prominent anti-cult organizations worked with faith-based groups who claim to help raise awareness against cults but instead some of these groups may push deprogramming as well as their own religious agenda.

In a historical moment such as the one we are experiencing, in which perhaps disengaging from certain dangerous ties (often conditioned by economic, social and family problems) becomes even more difficult, we wanted to address the issue of toxic relationships with the psychologist Luigi Corvaglia , specialized in sects and manipulative dynamics . John Bowlby, a British psychologist, has shown that the attachment style develops in the first two years of age: if not completely healthy, it can soften and normalize over time, but it can also be extreme with unsatisfactory emotional experiences. Going on like this, step by step, one finds oneself in a condition very far from the starting one, where the manipulated person will come to accept situations that he would never have accepted if they had been presented to him at the beginning of the relationship. While the narcissist who acts in an extreme and arrogant way is easier to spot, because a friend is enough to point him out, in the case of the sneaky narcissist this is much more difficult because his control mechanisms are more subtle from the beginning: they create feelings of guilt, moral blackmail, detachment from reality, extreme confusion.

Manipulation also involves several other elements such as: impression management; lying about facts and history; assuring conformity to a teaching without question (Lifton, 1961); betraying of confidences; denying reality; and changes to diet, sleeping patterns, and overactivity (Schein, 1961). The changes are not permanent and dissipate when the process of indoctrination ceases (Lifton, 1961; Gallanter,1999). Indoctrination begins with recruitment, binding an individual to the group through ritual and secrets, creating a sense of specialness, and replicating family bonds (Lifton, 1961; Satir, 1964), perverting social controls such as innate prosocial attitudes such as respect for authority and fear of negative consequences, among others (Bowbly, 1998; Shermer, 1997; Kent, 2005). Deception is also detailed in the article by Langone, where he shows with great clarity, the interplay of the three D’s: deception, dependence, and dread.

I co-founded an anti-cult org, called “Thinking Agenda” an LLC with the support and co-partnership of the late Dr Cathleen Mann who was a foremost cult expert. The LLC is an umbrella company that seeks to partner and be advocates with non-profits that focus around teaching critical thinking skills, and undue influence. The MIND model was developed by the late Dr Mann to break down what is a cult and facets of undue influence. I know the MIND model is a breakthrough and will help many understand cults and undue influence, including red flags of manipulation present in religious and non religious affiliations.