Cults In Our Midst Hidden Mena » (Revised & Updated Edition)

Margaret Thaler Singer is a clinical psychologist and emeritus adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In her career she has counseled and interviewed more than 3,000 current and former cult members and their relatives and friends. An expert on post-traumatic stress as well as cults, she lectures widely in the United States and abroad. She is the coauthor of "Crazy" Therapies.

Singer (emeritus, psychology, U. of California at Berkeley) warns that a multitude of cultic groups are exploiting followers throughout the United States using deliberate "mind manipulations" or "thought-reform processes." She categorizes the "three thousand to five thousand cults in the United States" as belonging to one of two categories: groups that use organized psychological and social persuasion policies to promote attitudinal change and establish long-term control of recruits and commercially sold "self- improvement" organizations that use similar persuasion processes, but do not intend long-term control. It is these persuasion processes that are at the heart of Singer's concern. She describes how they operate and how they can be countered. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR