Hi Zeuszor; While certainly most theories are based on constructs and can't be proved, one can prove the effectiveness, or lack of it , of how a technique actually works. IE : If you say your technique is better than other people, you should have some type of empirical evidence to back it up. Maybe he has some type of study or numbers to demonstrate this; in that case imo he should pr
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dr Mann; Zeuszors research is most likely collecting information from ex members of various groups.You might want to read about the information he gathered that made up his infamous "dossier" on the Jesus Christian thread, to get an idea of the kind of research it is likely he provides. I very much doubt whether he is involved in building infomercial websites. I also doubt whether
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Zeuszor, good to see you here, and to see you finally acknowledging your work as a paid researcher. ( As you know, this has been a long time discussion on the JC thread;imo, as mentioned before, if this was true, you needed to disclose to people who you are communicating with that you are collecting info ,and that the conversation or pm discussion is not private. And since you have now acknow
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Anticult; I definitely agree about the need for science in this area. I don't think it is "cultic" however to question someone who writes a negative review; just as books can be critiqued, so can reviews, and for much the same reasons. And you get a lot more information if you do further research. My position at the moment; I'd agree with some parts of the review,and so
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dr Mann; thanks for your reply. I suspect that a strong social support system can indeed in some cases preclude the need for counseling or therapy; but who, leaving a group can find that kind of support? Not many, since family are either members of the group that someone left, or often have been alienated by in group behaviors. ( As noted by a friend who recently made this point in a discussion
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Corboy; I already answered you...Go back a bit on the thread. (September 12, 11:25 am post) I did detail the type of studies that would be very useful. Right now there isn't much evidence for any approach being best in this particular area. Whose therapeutic approach is best, or is Dr Pignotti right and for the most part no one should get counseling? Well there is not a lot of science sup
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Dr Mann; Thank you for posting here. I'd be interesting to read your review of the snapping study; also does anyone have a link to the original study somewhere on the web? It seems from a quick review of Dr Pignottis link that one potential issue is the theory that amnesia is a common result of time spent in NRMs. It would also be great if you could clarify about appropriate fee s
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi All, Mr Ross:just Mo, but I don't think there is neccessarily an ethical problem in combining education and therapy.Career counseling, drug addiction counseling, gambling counseling all seem to combine both, and are accepted as good practice. Probably a more questionable issue would be if a therapist didn't identify themselves as such first , and get informed consent before c
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Anticult; thanks for the link. Yes; I am not finding much in the way of scientific study on any approach either. Imo; a testimonial on the site does mean that at least someone left happy; but I would guess that anyone who has been in this area for a while would have to have had some successes, or else they would eventually go out of business. I do agree that Mr Hassan should clarify h
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dr Pignotti, Thak you for producing a peer reviewed article. The authors have an interesting opinion, some of which I have already stated I agree with ( different modalities work better for different issues).They don't however seem to produce any information that proves that the therapeutic relationship is not important however...and in a quick perusal, I could not see whether they acknowle
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi all, Corboy; interesting link, thank you. Dr Pignotti; to start the ball rolling on therapeutic relationships studies.. "Research summary on the therapeutic relationship and psychotherapy outcomes" Lambert, Micheal et al, (2001) (Yes, I'm lazy and did not cite it properly, but that should be enough for you to find it) From the abstract; "Decades of research indicate
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dr Pignotti, You appear to be hinting that my use of the word"rapport" indicates I am an NLP practioner? Nope. You might note also my previous link to a study which suggests that eye movements don't seem to indicate what NLP practioners believe they do. It seems unlikely that an NLP practioner would do that. To quote Freud; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar :) By the w
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi All, interesting discussion. Anticult; I agree that fee schedules should be readily available. I did a quick run around the web. Dr Mann has a couple of sites on the first two pages googling her name which provide an office contact number but don't provide a fee schedule. I checked Mr Hassans website; he apparently has another practitioner working with him: fees for her or the educat
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Dr Pignotti, Re your other point ; there are certainly many approaches in counseling that work well. ( And ironically, often the theoretical underpinning of the various theories contradict each other.) At least one study ( I'll ty to find it if you are interested) suggested that the type of therepeutic approach used mattered much less that the rapport between the counselor and the client
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi , Actually I agree with some of Maples points. I always prefer reviews with a fair and professional tone; this one did come across ( to me) as a little bit personal. While some of Dr Manns criticisms seem to be based on the idea that the book would not be a professional academic book ( true, though as Maple pointed out the book was aimed at a different audience) however, truthfully the tone
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Anticult, yes more study would be helpful. And of course someone describing a new theory is likely to describe case histories in a way that presents their theory well. Dr Mann mentions NLP but there isn't much scientific data for the effectiveness of that either yet. In fact a couple of studies Test of the eye movement hypothesis of Neurolinguistic Programming and Research Findin
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

This is an interesting review.It does not seem particularly fair though. Several of her points don't make a lot of sense. Printing a bibliography on the internet is not the same as "plagarism" . While I am also sceptical of the cult/pre cult personality theory, it does not seem to have been an idea unique to Mr Hassan. And asking for scientific proof of this theory is perhaps sim
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Corboy; even if you are fairly hypnotically suggestable, (which I probably am) I find that generally you can stop someone from messing with you.Generally I prefer not to go to places where people like to give others advice on what to believe which avoids most of it; however there are some tricks you can use to help yourself not go down the rabbit hole if you don't want to. Firstly before
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Karma Mudra; I was wondering if you would be able to clarify something here. (By the way, for an allegation of rape, or of a sexual relationship, I can't understand why any organization would want to have the right to demand to see your therapists reports as "proof".) Not a lawyer and not giving legal advice; I just can't understand how in any circumstance, an organizatio
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi BeukerC1, Speakers looking lovingly at people they don't know in a crowd has never impressed me that much.A lot of people who are good speakers,even some politicians, are able to make strangers they speak to feel cared for and loved. Doesn't necessarily mean they would say stop and say help the person if they had a flat tire; imo an action that shows a lot more actual love than be
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Apollo: previously asked and answered. I'm not the topic, so lets get back on topic.
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Here we go again.Are you seriously talking about sending out members/ex members and concerned families personal details, bank accounts, social security numbers etc AGAIN to a bunch of perfect strangers? Considering the massive invasion of privacy involved, not really surprising that for the most part no ex member ( with the exception of Malcolm) ever posts here or on the web any more. Also, yo
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi Sir Laughs a lot, a lot of interesting information here. I am not sure that all of it is connected though?? Faking the death of someone dying by being eaten by a shark in front of witnesses including family member(s?) seems almost impossible, so that seems most likely to be unrelated. The boat mystery certainly seems to have some questions around it, maybe it was an accident where people did
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Zueszor, Just mo, but a discussion of therapy may be considered of use/relevant to some in or around high intensity religious groups. When you are discussing the possibility of creating change, the issue perhaps is that right now you are looking at and talking about sociological approaches, not about therapists. If you want to fix a broken car, you can go to an electric physicist for theories
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Mr Ross, Out of interest what were the ethical concerns regarding Steve Hassan? I am aware of the fact that at one point his fee schedule was not posted, but did not know that there were ethical concerns regarding his practice? Would be grateful for more info on this. By the way, Zeuszor, congrats on the degree, and I agree with you , ( for what its worth) that sociology/research at least at thi
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Zeuszor; what type of psych degree are you close to finishing?( ie Bachelors, Masters, PhD?) Psychology is a very interesting area of study. Actually though, the idea that one needs to "hit rock bottom" before one can change is a theory that was used by some substance abuse counseling approaches, in particular AA. In reality though, empirical evidence seems to suggest this is not a f
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Mitchell, actually it might help if you did some reading for her too. Respect for parents is very ingrained in Japanese culture; my guess is you may have unintentionally committed some pretty major cultural mistakes with her Mom. Perhaps finding some books maybe written by westerners who have lived for may years in Japan, or married into Japanese families may give you some helpful information.
Forum: Former Cult Members and Affected Families

I think with any study being quoted, that it is always good to read the original for yourself, as all to often , things can be lost in the translation. And unfortunately scientists themselves are like every other subset of humanity ie; some are more ethical than others. A study, easily found on google scholar, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine called "Source of Funding and Outco
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Sorry; of course there is also the "dissolution" type meditation that activates yet another part of the brain. Interestingly, it seems that the studies' authors don't feel this necessarily identifies anything unique about meditating "The present single case study reports the activation of different neuronal assembles during different meditations.It did not address the pu
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hi all, did a brief read through of that study, it seemed to be basically comparing brain waves of one person doing several different types of meditation? Ie "altered states of consciousness are associated with different patterns of brain activation depending on the content of the consciousness" Seemed kind of a "Duh" comment ; when he was doing a verbal meditation, verbal p
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"