This is part II of a series of posts I plan to make.
I will write my comments of Steven Hassan's latest book, Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs.
You can purchase the book in Amazon.com, there is a Kindle version which is very handy since you can read it wherever you have internet connection, or if you have an iPhone, an iPad, android phone, etc.
You can get it here:
The second chapter discusses What is Destructive Influence?
Hassan explains many social and psychological experiments:
Lifton's Eight Points: You can read about them here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism
Zimbardo's experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
A movie was made about this experiment:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0997152/
Hassan explains cognitive dissonance, which you can read about here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Hassan also talks about the Milgram Experiment, which shows how "authority" influences your decisions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Then he joins all the above concepts into the BITE model:
Behavior, Information, Time, Energy Control.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, or the WTBTS, control the behaviours, information, time, and energy of their members. Again, JW's fall into the definition of a cult.
He also mentions three stages of controlling the mind: Unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. The last Watchtower (this Sunday) was so culty... "be transformed"...
Anyways... that is a glimpse of chapter two.