Foreword to the 1988 Edition The phone was frighteningly loud. The clock read 4:30 a.m. It was difficult to take in what a reporter from The Berkeley Gazette was saying on the phone: “Margaret, I hate to bother you this early, but we have just learned that Jim Jones has decided to pull the trigger down in Guyana. I’ve been here all night at a house in Berkeley talking with ex-members of Peoples Temple and with relatives of persons down in Jonestown. There’s a mother here whose husband and 12-year-old son are down there and she is desperate. It is not known if everyone’s dead, or if there are survivors. I know I’ve told you not to work with ex-members of Peoples Temple because of the dangerous harassment that Jones’ so-called ‘Angels’ direct against former members. But these people need to talk with you and get some help with what has happened.” As daylight was breaking, I passed up the steps guarded by somber Berkeley police, as it was feared that Jones had left “hit orders” for members still in the area to wipe out defectors when he ordered the final “White Night,” his term for the often-rehearsed moment when he would have all his followers drink poison. The reporter, my son (also a reporter), and a few police officers had warned me not to give my usual gratis consultation services to ex-Peoples Temple members, even though I had long given these services to former cultists. Jones allegedly used his “angels” to wreak vengeance against members who left, and against their supporters as well. The woman whose husband and young son were eventually identified as dead in Jonestown was only one of many. I spent hours and days meeting and talking with various survivors as they returned from Guyana to the Bay Area and attempted to get their lives going again after the Guyanese holocaust. There were attorney Tim Stoen and his wife, Grace, whose young son had been held captive by Jones and died in Jonestown. There were the members of the basketball team who missed the mass suicide-murder. There was a nine-year-old girl who had survived having had her throat slit by a woman who then killed herself in Georgetown, Guyana, as part of Jones’ mass death orders. There was Larry Layton, who faced courts in two countries for allegedly carrying out Jones’ orders at the airport in Guyana where Rep. Leo J. Ryan and others died. I began to work with ex-cultists about six years before Jonestown and continue to do so to this day. I have provided psychological counseling to more than 3000 persons who have been in cults. I have written about some of this work and have talked with lay and professional groups in many countries about thought reform programs, intense indoctrination programs, cults, and related topics. My interest in the effects of thought reform programs began when I worked at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research after the Korean War. At that point I met and worked with Edgar H. Schein, Ph.D., Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., and Louis J. West, M.D., pioneers in the study of the effects of intense indoctrination programs. I was involved in the follow-up studies of former prisoners of war, interviewed long-term prisoners of the Chinese, and participated over the years in much of the work on conceptualizing thought reform programs. As the author does in this volume, I have repeatedly described the specific needs of persons who have been subjected to such and have emphasized the lack of knowledge that most citizens as well as mental health professionals have about the processes, effects, and aftermath of being subjected to thought reform programs. The author has clearly and convincingly described how mind control is induced. He integrates his personal experience in a cult, and his practical skills developed in years of exit-counseling of persons who have been in mind control situations, with theories and concepts in the scientific literature. The book comes alive with real-life examples. For the first time, an experienced exit-counselor outlines step by step the actual methods, sequence, and framework of what he does and how he works with families and the persons under mind control. He draws on the various scholarly works in the fields of thought reform, persuasion, social psychology, and hypnosis to offer theoretical frameworks for how mind control is achieved. Exit-counseling is a new profession, and the author has spelled out here a type of ethical, educational counseling which he and others have developed. He has devoted the time and has the literary skill and educational background to make this volume a major contribution. The reader is taken from Steve’s first telephone contacts with desperate families to the final outcome of his interventions. These counseling techniques and tactics are socially and psychologically well worked out. They are ethical and growth enhancing. While the need is great, there are few really adequately prepared and experienced exit-counselors. They do not offer what psychologists and psychiatrists offer, nor can they be replaced by these or other mental health professionals. Exit-counseling is a special field, one that demands specific knowledge, special techniques and methods, and a high level of skill. This book should have a wide appeal. Anyone with a relative or friend who has become involved with a group using mind control procedures will find it useful. Any citizen can profit from seeing how vulnerable to influence we all are and learning that mind control exists—that it is not a myth. We must heed the potentially destructive and frightening impact that the use of mind control by selfishly motivated groups can have on the very fabric of a society. This book fills a need and deserves a wide audience.