Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (Hardcover)

Counseling members of destructive cults has come a long way since the old days of "deprogramming," and Steve is leading the way into new and compassionate methods with his Strategic Interaction Approach. His method involves not only the cult member, but his family, friends, and sometimes ex-members. It takes the form of family counseling; an important, even vital way to help the cult member relate to his "pre cult" self.

Steve is careful to distinguish between destructive and non-destructive cults, as he has no quarrel with beliefs, only actions. The focus is on freeing the mind, a precious freedom that destructive mind control is intent on taking away.

As another reviewer has said, this book can save lives. I can't recommend it highly enough for families and friends who have a loved one involved in a destructive cult.

Written in straightforward, clear prose, Hassan describes how cults exert their influence over idealistic but vulnerable people (who are often at transitional stages in their lives--away from home, newly divorced or widowed, or experiencing some other kind of loss or trauma). Many of us who come to his book are baffled as to how our loved ones--typically creative, intelligent and caring people--became involved with a destructive group. Former cult members wonder how they ever got recruited in the first place. Hassan shows us how.

And he does so with an insider's perspective. Hassan was an idealistic college junior from a loving jewish family--and newly broken up from his girlfriend--when he was deceptively recruited by 3 attractive female cult members. He rose quickly through the ranks to become a cult leader. One night while running a cult mission, he was involved in a near fatal car crash which provided an opportunity for his parents to have him deprogrammed. Hassan's deprogramming took a full five days but it set him off on a life path. Furious at how the cult and its leader had systematically deceived him, he set out to learn all he could about destructive mind control and to make public what he learned.

That was over 25 years ago. Since then he has become a licensed mental health counselor, human rights activist, and internationally known leader in the field of destructive mind control. He has helped get hundreds of people out of cults. This book reveals how. Hassan begins by describing how cults and their leaders deceive and manipulate people, playing upon their innate psychological mechanisms and the basic human need to belong to a group. He has obviously thought a lot about this and his discussion is the most insightful and thorough I have seen.

But the real reason to buy the book is for Hassan's unique method, the strategic interaction approach, for rescuing loved ones from destructive groups. His approach is more compassionate and sophisticated than the (now illegal) deprogramming that was used on him. It draws on recent work in psychology, his own experience helping hundreds of families, and his creativity and intelligence.Most important it is effective. I can personally say, it works.

The moral: there can be a happy ending to a cult story. It does not come easily but this book makes it possible.