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Steven Alan Hassan is a specialist researcher on organizations regarded as cults. He acted as an expert witness to the 1977-8 congressional inquiry that produced the United States Congressional Report on the Unification Church and has appeared on 60 Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, Larry King Live and The O'Reilly Factor.
In 1979, following the Jonestown tragedy, Hassan founded a non-profit group called "Ex-Moon Inc.," whose membership consisted of over four hundred former members of the Unification Church (or Moon group).
He holds a master's degree in counseling psychology from Cambridge College, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as a nationally certified counselor (NCC). A former member of the Unification Church himself, he now works as an exit counselor and runs the Center for Freedom of Mind.
Hassan contends that cults recruit members through systematic deception, behavior modification, withholding of information, and emotionally intense persuasion techniques (such as the creation of phobias), which he collectively terms mind control. He calls such groups "destructive cults," a term that he defines by the methods used to recruit and retain members, not by the views the group espouses. He is opposed to the so-called deprogramming of cult members, and supports instead counseling them in order that they withdraw voluntarily from the organization. He calls his method the "strategic interaction approach".
He was himself recruited into the Unification Church in the 1970s, at the age of nineteen, while a student at Queens College, and spent twenty-seven months recruiting and indoctrinating new members, as well as fundraising, campaigning, and personally meeting with Sun Myung Moon. [1] (http://freedomofmind.com/stevehassan/biography/) Hassan says that he rose to the rank of assistant director of the Unification Church at its national headquarters, though the organization denies this, and counter that he was the assistant leader of one small congregation for less than a year. After his leg was broken in a car accident, he says, his parents contacted former members of the Unification Church, who engaged in a deprogramming session with him and convinced him to leave the organization. His first book, Combatting Cult Mind Control (1990), has been widely praised by counselors, psychologists involved in the field of cult research, as well as former cult members and their friends and relatives.
Hassan writes:
- "My mind control model outlines many key elements that need to be controlled: Behavior, Information, Thoughts and Emotions (BITE). If these four components can be controlled, then an individual's identity can be systematically manipulated and changed. Destructive mind control takes the 'locus of control' away from an individual. The person is systematically deceived about the beliefs and practices of the person (or group) and manipulated throughout the recruitment process — unable to make informed choices and exert independent judgment. The person's identity is profoundly influenced through a set of social influence techniques and a "new identity" is created — programmed to be dependent on the leader or group ideology. The person can't think for him or herself, but believes otherwise." [2] (http://freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/faq/#1)
Books
External links
Religious Tolerance (http://www.religioustolerance.com) - website critical of Hassan.
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