Steven Hassan
From Freepedia
Steven Alan Hassan is an anti-cult activist and director of the Center for Freedom of Mind. He served as an expert witness to the 1977-8 congressional inquiry that produced the United States Congressional Report on the Unification Church, and has appeared on 60 Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, Larry King Live, and The O'Reilly Factor.
He holds a master's degree in psychology from Cambridge College, Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as a nationally certified counselor (NCC).
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Background
Hassan was himself recruited into the Unification Church in the 1970s, at the age of 19, while studying at Queens College, and spent over two years recruiting and indoctrinating new members, as well as fundraising, campaigning, and personally meeting with Sun Myung Moon. [1] Hassan says in Combatting Cult Mind Control that he "ultimately rose to the rank of Assistant Director of the Unification Church at National Headquarters."
After his leg was broken in a car accident, his parents contacted former members of the Unification Church who engaged in a deprogramming session with Hassan, and convinced him to leave the organization.
Following the Jonestown tragedy in 1979, Hassan founded a non-profit organization called "Ex-Moon Inc.," whose membership consisted of over 400 former members of the Unification Church.
Around 1980, Hassan began investigating many methods of persuasion, mind control and indoctrination. At this time he attended a seminar with Richard Bandler and John Grinder (the co-founders of Neuro-Linguistic Progamming) on hypnosis. Later Steven Hassan moved to Santa Cruz, California to start an apprenticeship with transformational grammarian, John Grinder (p.32, Hassan, 1990).
His first book, Combatting Cult Mind Control (1990), comparing his cult experiences with Robert Lifton's description of brainwashing methods from Korea, has been widely praised by counselors and psychologists involved in the field of cult research, as well as former cult members and friends and relatives of active cult members.
Methodology
In his first book, Hassan describes cult mind control using the criteria from Robert Lifton which he relates in detail to his experiences with the Unification Church:
- milieu control (controlled relations with the outer world)
- mystic manipulation (the group has a higher purpose than the rest)
- confession (confess past and present sins)
- self-sanctification through purity (pushing the individual towards an unattainable perfection)
- aura of sacred science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
- loaded language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-and-white thinking)
- doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
- dispensed existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)
Ten years later, in Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves, he developed his own mind-control model, "BITE", which stands for Behavior, Information, Thoughts, and Emotions. Hassan contends that cults recruit members through systematic deception, behavior modification, withholding of information, and emotionally intense persuasion techniques, such as the creation of phobias), collectively termed mind control. He calls such groups "destructive cults," a term he defines by the methods used to recruit and retain members, not by the views the group espouses. He is opposed to the so-called deprogramming of cult members, and supports instead counseling them in order that they withdraw voluntarily from the organization. He writes:
My mind control model outlines many key elements that need to be controlled: Behavior, Information, Thoughts and Emotions (BITE). If these four components can be controlled, then an individual's identity can be systematically manipulated and changed. Destructive mind control takes the 'locus of control' away from an individual. The person is systematically deceived about the beliefs and practices of the person (or group) and manipulated throughout the recruitment process — unable to make informed choices and exert independent judgment. The person's identity is profoundly influenced through a set of social influence techniques and a "new identity" is created — programmed to be dependent on the leader or group ideology. The person can't think for him or herself, but believes otherwise. [2]
Criticism
Hassan says he spent one year assisting with deprogrammings before turning to less controversial methods. (See exit counseling.) However, lawyer Andy Bacus of the Unification Church, against whom Hassan spoke to Congress as an expert witness, told the Illinois Senate Committee on Education on December 7, 1993 that:
Steve Hassan ... is an ex-member of the Unification Church who was involuntarily deprogrammed. He has spent the last 15 years deprogramming other persons. Mr. Hassan has been most active recently in providing "exit counseling" to members of the Boston Church of Christ. In fact Hassan, who charges $1,000 per day for his services, has received tens of thousands of dollars from the parents of members of the Boston Church of Christ and other groups to provide "exit counseling" services. Like other "exit counselors", Hassan relies on the mind control theories of Margaret Singer to justify his actions. [3]
References
- Combatting Cult Mind Control, 1990. ISBN 0892813113.
- Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves, 2000. ISBN 0967068800.
- Steven Hassan: The Strategic Interaction Approach
- Hassan's website
- Hassan's reply to accusations of deprogramming
- endorsements of Hassan
- Profile of Steven Hassan, International Cultic Studies Association
- How "Exit Counseling" Mirrors Cult Recruiting
