[ot] cult influence and power, 1988-2018

[Undiscussed Groomed for Male Slavery, One Victim of Many]

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.