I've not read anything Hassan has written. The 'cult personality' thing rings a bell because I would see that revealed during and after assemblies......... that gung ho energy that we have the truth thing. But I've also seen the same thing after sales meetings and after volunteer meetings.
I left the religion in the mid 1960's there was no literature available....no internet. I used three books to address my concerns . The True Believer by Eric Hoffer outlined the way a radical religious or political movement attracted believers and kept believers. No mention of the WTBTS but very accurate.
William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich also had a big influence on me as it's section on the concentration camps revealed to me the total absence of a merciful god. Jehovah was not a god to be worshiped, loved or listened to. It became obvious to me that he/it didn't exist.
The third book was Jame Michener's The Source "........a novel of the history of the Jewish people and the land of Israel from pre-monotheistic days to the birth of the modern State of Israel."
Since the Society loves to quote from a book written by Jews for Jews I needed a neutral source. What I learned was that the Old Testimony was not a Christian reference. That threw out about 60% of WT dogma.
To me this was also a book about time........ the movement of time and how a religion was constructed, how it survived and what it meant. The Society was diminished and far more pathetic in my eyes after reading that book.
From these three books I learned that all mandated belief systems were wrong because they were about people not their gods.
When my wife and I walked away from the JW's we were in our right minds and our personalities were intact.
People who can't walk away tend to wallow in rational ignorance. They are happy to stay ignorant about a wide range of issues.
That's the grip a high control movement has on it's true believers.