mwccults2020

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Excellent film on Friedrichshof, a kind of art and therapy cult. Highly recommended. Can rent from this site. Made by film maker who grew up in the cult. 

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Readings for class 12

Recovery: This is a short version of Herman’s views - the detailed version is in her excellent book, Trauma and Recovery. Herman, Judith, 1998, Recovery from psychological trauma Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (1998) 52 (Suppl,), S145 S150

Resistance: On Resisting Social Influence, by Andersen and Zimbardo  

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Readings for Class 11

Recommended readings:

Education of a Torturer, Gibson and Haritos-Faturos, Psychology Today, 1986 (November), 20. 50-58. http://psychhome.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/7/7/1377191/education_of_torturer.pdf

There are a variety of short readings on leaving and recovering from cults here on the tab “Leaving a cult?”. Generally it’s a good website (but currently being updated so only accessible through web.archive at the moment): https://web.archive.org/web/20170628144040/http://www.culthelp.info/

Supplementary Reading: By yours truly - originally  published in Take Back Your Life, Lalich and Tobias, 2006. Bay Tree. (It is quite an old piece now! Written around 2004). Republished here in two parts on a useful site about abusive groups  (2nd part starts at end of article - next instalment) https://www.openmindsfoundation.org/troubles-overcome-are-good-to-tell-1/

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Follow up from Class 10

Here are the slides from this class (let me know if you have trouble accessing).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17R8PFk1gjzmhrfIFf1Ar1fAYgC-LUkuP/view?usp=sharing

And here is Chapter 7 from my book which covers much of the material from Class 10: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uOYpvUFaU-0BZlamSqIXljBSkQhc-u9_/view?usp=sharing

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Follow up from Class 8

Here is Chapter 4 from my book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing, that covers the material we discussed in class:    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9LS2N30J4IkVU1NRW1scEp2cWM

And there are various short pieces on my website that say the same thing in different ways: http://www.alexandrastein.com/publications.html

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Readings for Class 9

Recommended reading:

Appendix to George Orwell’s 1984:

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app

Supplementary Reading:

Hannah Arendt, 1948/1973. Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace,  Pps. 468 – 474. Pasted below:

Ideologies—isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurence by deducing it from a single premise—are a very recent phenomenon and, for many decades, played a negligible role in political life. Only with the wisdom of hindsight can we discover in them certain elements which have made them so disturbingly useful for totalitarian rule. Not before Hitler and Stalin were the great political potentialities of the ideologies discovered.

Keep reading

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Reminder about free Tuesday event in Mayfair. 

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This is the BBC documentary we watched last night for those who missed it. 

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Relevant to last night’s class.

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Readings for Class 9

Herman, J. L. (1997). Trauma and recovery. Basic Books.  This is a great book. I highly recommend it. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9LS2N30J4Ikd2hLUEU0M2R2LWc

Van der Kolk, B. A., McFarlane, A. C., & Weisaeth, L. (Eds.). (1996).Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society. Guilford Press. Chapter 12.https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9LS2N30J4IkWTVjR0JiYWR2b1E

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Here’s the article I mentioned in class.

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Readings for class 8

Recommended reading: Stein, A. (1997). Mothers in cults: The influence of cults on the relationship of mothers to their children. Cultic Studies Journal, 14, 40-http://www.icsahome.com/articles/mothers-in-cults–stein-csj-14-1-1997

Supplementary reading: Lalich, J. (1997). Dominance and submission: The psychosexual exploitation of women in cults. Cultic Studies Journal, 14, 4-21. http://cultresearch.org/pdf/csj14-1.pdf

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From a student in class. Note they are sort of “descended” from the Nation of Islam who we discussed in class this week. 

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This is a cultic church.

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Readings for Class 7

Recommended reading: Zablocki, Benjamin D. 2001. “Toward a demystified and disinterested scientific concept of brainwashing.”Pp. 160-205 in Misunderstanding cults: Searching for objectivity in a controversial field, edited by T. Robbins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. It does take a while to download, so be patient. And it’s quite long, but is a very useful article.

Supplementary reading: Another theoretical model: Lalich, Janja. 2004. “Using the Bounded Choice model as an analytical tool: A case study of Heaven’s Gate.” Cultic Studies Review 3:226-247. And a book of interest by Oxford prof: Taylor, Kathleen E. 2004. Brainwashing : the science of thought control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

EMAIL ME if you have trouble accessing the readings.