Deprogramming is a controversial tactic that seeks to dissuade someone from "strongly held convictions" such as religious beliefs. Deprogramming purports to assist a person who holds a particular belief system—of a kind considered harmful by those initiating the deprogramming—to change those beliefs and sever connections to the group associated with them. Typically, people identifying themselves as deprogrammers are hired by a person's relatives, often parents of adult children. The subject of the deprogramming is usually forced to undergo the procedure, which might last days or weeks, against their will.
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.
A cult is 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. It is in some contexts a pejorative term, 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.
Bryan Ronald Wilson was a British sociologist. He was Reader Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Oxford and President of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (1971–75). He became a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1963.
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, abbreviated ACM and also known as the countercult 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.
Stephen A. Kent is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements (NRMs), and has published research on several such groups including the Children of God, the Church of Scientology, and other NRMs operating in Canada.
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.
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults is a 2004 psychology and sociology book on cults by Janja Lalich. It was published by University of California Press.
Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field is an edited volume discussing various topics related to cults, including the scholarly field itself, the concept of brainwashing, and the public perception of the groups. The book was edited by Benjamin Zablocki and Thomas Robbins, and was published by University of Toronto Press on December 1, 2001. It includes contributions from 12 religious, sociological, and psychological scholars, in 14 essays.
All Gods Children: The Cult Experience – Salvation Or Slavery? is a non-fiction book on cults, by journalists Carroll Stoner and Jo Anne Parke. The book was published in May 1977 in hardcover, and again in 1979 in paperback by Penguin Books.
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."
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.
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.
The ISKCON Communications Journal (ICJ) was a biannual magazine of dialogue, focussing on issues related to missionary development in ISKCON and with issues of communication, administration, social development and education which affected mission in ISKCON. ICJ also provided a forum for members of various communities to comment on ISKCON's development. It was established in 1993 and was published by ISKCON Communications Europe until its last issue appeared in 2005.
The People's Organised Workshop on Ersatz Religion (POWER), also called the People's Organised Workgroup on Ersatz Religion, was a British anti-cult organisation founded in 1976 based in Ealing, London. Some believe that POWER is a front organisation by large new religious movements (NRMs) meant to delegitimise other anti-cult organisations like Family, Action, Information, Rescue (FAIR). POWER functionally disappeared in 1977 but caused major controversy within its roughly one-year lifespan. The organisation published a brochure called Deprogramming: The Constructive Destruction of Belief: A Manual of Technique, which advocated for mass deprogramming of cult members, including methods like sleep deprivation, food deprivation, forced nudity, kidnapping, and "aggressive sex".
The New Vigilantes: Deprogrammers, Anti-Cultists, and the New Religions is a 1980 nonfiction book on anti-cultism, deprogramming, and new religious movements (cults) by sociologists of religion Anson D. Shupe and David G. Bromley. A foreword was written by Joseph R. Gusfield. It was published by SAGE Publications in its Library of Social Research series as volume 113. Some have described the volume as a companion to their previous work, "Moonies" in America: Cult, Church, and Crusade (1979). Shupe and Bromley approach the anti-cult movement in the United States through a resource-mobilization lens.
Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare is a 1981 nonfiction book by Anson D. Shupe and David G. Bromley about the "cult scare" in America in the 1970s. It was published by Beacon Press in Boston. Shupe and Bromley analyze six specific new religious movements (cults) – the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, the Children of God, the Divine Light Mission, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and the Peoples Temple – in order to partially dispel myths about them.
