Brainwashing is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Landmark Worldwide, or simply Landmark, is an American employee-owned for-profit company that offers personal-development programs, with their most-known being the Landmark Forum. Werner Erhard, who created and ran the est system from 1971 to 1984, modified est in 1985 and renamed it the Landmark Forum. In 1991 he sold the company to some of his employees, who incorporated it as Landmark Education Corporation, which was restructured into Landmark Education LLC in 2003, and then renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC in 2013. Its subsidiary, the Vanto Group, markets and delivers training and consulting to organizations.
Eileen Vartan Barker is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has written studies about cults and new religious movements.
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges that the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.
Cult is a term, in most contexts pejorative, for a group which is typically led by a charismatic and self-appointed leader, who tightly controls its members, requiring unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices which are considered deviant. This term is also used for a new religious movement or other social group which is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined – having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia – and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.
David G. Bromley is a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, specialized in sociology of religion and the academic study of new religious movements. He has written extensively about cults, new religious movements, apostasy, and the anti-cult movement.
The anti-cult movement consists of various governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals that seek to raise awareness of cults, uncover coercive practices used to attract and retain members, and help those who have become involved with harmful cult practices.
Anson D. Shupe, Jr. was an American sociologist noted for his studies of religious groups and their countermovements, family violence and clergy misconduct.
The academic study of new religious movements is known as new religions studies (NRS). The study draws from the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, history, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and theology. Eileen Barker noted that there are five sources of information on new religious movements (NRMs): the information provided by such groups themselves, that provided by ex-members as well as the friends and relatives of members, organizations that collect information on NRMs, the mainstream media, and academics studying such phenomena.
James T. Richardson is Emeritus Foundation Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is a sociologist with legal training, who has edited and co-edited over a dozen books and has authored more than 300 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. Areas in which he is specialized include the sociology of religion, the sociology of law, religion and human rights, social control of religions, social psychology of law, social and behavioral science evidence, and treatment of Muslims in courts. Richardson has been an outstanding figure in American sociology of religion for decades, and is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in the field of law and religion in the World. He is also a known scientific critic of brainwashing theories.
The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion was formed to advance research in the social scientific perspective on religious institutions and experiences. The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is published by the society to provide a forum for empirical papers in the topic area.
Thomas Robbins was an author and an independent scholar of sociology of religion.
INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements) is an independent registered charity located in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London; from 1988-2018 it was based at the London School of Economics. It was founded by the sociologist of religion, Eileen Barker, with start-up funding from the British Home Office and Britain's mainstream churches. Its stated aims are to "prevent harm based on misinformation about minority religions and sects by bringing the insights and methods of academic research into the public domain" and to provide "information about minority religions and sects which is as accurate, up-to-date and as evidence-based as possible."
Guy Benton Johnson Jr. was an American sociologist and professor emeritus of the University of Oregon's Department of Sociology.
James Arthur Beckford was a British sociologist of religion. He was professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1988/1989, he served as president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and from 1999 to 2003, as the president of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.
The International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR), also known as the Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions (SISR), arose in 1989 from the International Conference on Sociology of Religion, founded in 1948. It is a bilingual (French/English) organization, which plays an important role in fostering international contacts between sociologists of religion, mainly through biennial conferences held in various countries. It publishes papers from these conferences as special issues of the journal Social Compass, on whose editorial board the association's past president plays a role. It currently has over 500 members from 47 countries and all the habitable continents. Past presidents of the society include James A. Beckford, Karel Dobbelaere, Bryan R. Wilson, Enzo Pace, and Jean-Paul Willaime. Its current president is Peter Beyer, from the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Karel Dobbelaere is a Belgian educator and noted sociologist of religion. Dobbelaere is an Emeritus Professor of both the University of Antwerp and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium. He is past-President and General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.
Dick Anthony was a forensic psychologist noted for his writings on the validity of brainwashing as a determiner of behavior, a prolific researcher of the social and psychological aspects of involvement in new religious movements.
Roberto Cipriani is an Italian social scientist. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Roma Tre University. "He has written extensively on popular religion, the sacred and secularization", and is known for his unconventional applications of the "concept of 'diffused religion' and then that of 'religion of values' ". He has made analytical contributions to the concept of diffused religion by using grounded theory. "He also underlines what he calls the 'meta-institutional' character of this religion, even if, he says, these characteristics have a religious institutional origin".
