Releasing The Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves

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Summary: 'Releasing the Bonds' - A Way to Empower
Review: As a former cult member who walked away from that group some years ago, I've found Steve Hassan to be a great resource to help me through all kinds of emotional struggles, both his online resources and his first book. Now, with the release of 'Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves', Steve provides even more resources not just to aid people affected by cults, but to help people truly empower themselves to think clearly and critically, and help them make the best decisions for their lives. Steve is a great resource, someone we need in the face of all sorts of false gurus, get-rich-quick multilevel marketing schemes, etc. His writing is crisp and easy to understand, and really creates a bond with the reader. I highly recommend reading 'Releasing the Bonds'; it's a great book to help you discover how to empower yourself.

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Summary: Life Changing information
Review: I have not only read Steve Hassan's book but I was a client of his as it was nearing publication. He assisted me in re-entering society after having spent nearly a decade in a motivational/commercial cult associated with a large multi level marketing company. Exiting the cult was the most terrifying experience of my life. Steve Hassan's approach is gentle and allows the former cult member to slowly begin to re-evaluate the paradigms that have been installed over years in a cult. To be honest, initially, I was as fearful of him as the people I was leaving. His guidance, experience and the strategic interaction approach he developed will help many, many people. The new life that I am fortunate enough to begin rebuilding is a living testimony to the methods in this wonderful book. Until now, the families and loved ones of someone ensnared in a cult have been nearly powerless in being able to help the one they have "lost". I thank god for Mr. Hassan, his work, dedication and this book.

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Summary: Essential for anyone involved in a cult
Review: I wish this book had been available when I walked away from the Moonies. It's a must read for anyone involved in a cult, or who knows someone who is.

Counseling members of destructive cults has come a long way since the old days of "deprogramming," and Steve is leading the way into new and compassionate methods with his Strategic Interaction Approach. His method involves not only the cult member, but his family, friends, and sometimes ex-members. It takes the form of family counseling; an important, even vital way to help the cult member relate to his "pre cult" self.

Steve is careful to distinguish between destructive and non-destructive cults, as he has no quarrel with beliefs, only actions. The focus is on freeing the mind, a precious freedom that destructive mind control is intent on taking away.

As another reviewer has said, this book can save lives. I can't recommend it highly enough for families and friends who have a loved one involved in a destructive cult.

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Summary: I'D RATE IT A 20 OUT OF 10!
Review: I would like to encourage you to get Steven Hassan's new book: Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves I am VERY impressed and congratulate Steve for putting together such a great work. His first book, Combatting Cult Mind Control, was the leader in its field until this one was published.

Folks, if you have been in, have someone you know in, or just wanting to know about: cults, spiritual abuse, false memory, abusive relationships etc Then this is a book that needs to be on your MUST get and MUST read list!

It explains simply and explicityly the problems we face and how each and every one of us, from professionals to the mum and dad whose adult/child has joined a cult, can take practical steps to help everyone involved, not just the cult member. This book will teach you how to evaluate your own situation, how to effectively communicate, and even how to understand and utilize the cults own beliefs and practices etc to your own advantage. One section I appreciated was on reality testing and his checklists on pages 268 and 288. Very few people understand this.

I have had the privilige of working with Steve and am more than impressed by his ability to communicate with people. I was able to have Steve in Australia in 1993 to conduct a seminar based on his first book and ongoing research. I look forward to being able to do this again.

Jan Groenveld...Brisbane, Australia


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Summary: Been there, got out, good to know how to help
Review: Steven understands how people think, how group psychology works and how it's possible to get out... This is a wonderful companion to Combatting Cult Mind Control. Buy this book. Kevin Hogan, ...

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Summary: a service to humanity
Review: They can educate and entertain but it is a rare and precious book that saves lives. This book is such a treasure.

Written in straightforward, clear prose, Hassan describes how cults exert their influence over idealistic but vulnerable people (who are often at transitional stages in their lives--away from home, newly divorced or widowed, or experiencing some other kind of loss or trauma). Many of us who come to his book are baffled as to how our loved ones--typically creative, intelligent and caring people--became involved with a destructive group. Former cult members wonder how they ever got recruited in the first place. Hassan shows us how.

And he does so with an insider's perspective. Hassan was an idealistic college junior from a loving jewish family--and newly broken up from his girlfriend--when he was deceptively recruited by 3 attractive female cult members. He rose quickly through the ranks to become a cult leader. One night while running a cult mission, he was involved in a near fatal car crash which provided an opportunity for his parents to have him deprogrammed. Hassan's deprogramming took a full five days but it set him off on a life path. Furious at how the cult and its leader had systematically deceived him, he set out to learn all he could about destructive mind control and to make public what he learned.

That was over 25 years ago. Since then he has become a licensed mental health counselor, human rights activist, and internationally known leader in the field of destructive mind control. He has helped get hundreds of people out of cults. This book reveals how. Hassan begins by describing how cults and their leaders deceive and manipulate people, playing upon their innate psychological mechanisms and the basic human need to belong to a group. He has obviously thought a lot about this and his discussion is the most insightful and thorough I have seen.

But the real reason to buy the book is for Hassan's unique method, the strategic interaction approach, for rescuing loved ones from destructive groups. His approach is more compassionate and sophisticated than the (now illegal) deprogramming that was used on him. It draws on recent work in psychology, his own experience helping hundreds of families, and his creativity and intelligence.Most important it is effective. I can personally say, it works.

The moral: there can be a happy ending to a cult story. It does not come easily but this book makes it possible.

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Summary: How to get out of a cult
Review: This book is not very sophisticated, but it explains in a first part how cults function in regard to mind control and then goes into great detail about how friends of a cult victim can help that person to get out of the cult. The author calls his method strategic interaction process. This method seems to be much more friendly than previous methods and it respects a persons freedem and is based on informed consent. Steven Hassan seems to be well informed and really intends to help people.

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Summary: Cult expert gives good advice
Review: This new book by well-known cult specialist, Steven Hassan, expands considerably on his first effort to educate readers about "mind control." Combatting Cult Mind Control came out in 1988, and it has remained a prime resource in the fringe arena of cult awareness books. Cults of all stripes have never been a phase of social interaction that will someday go away-or have gone away as some people think. They are here to stay as long as societies continue to grow, change, or decay. Cults can be harmful. Hassan's new book, Releasing the Bonds, reinforces this reality as well as giving us useful tools for what we can do about undoing the harm. Coming from considerable experience and dedication to his career, Hassan presents a readable analysis and applicable intervention strategy. If you have an interest in this arena, buy this book.

In the late 1970s, Hassan helped to pioneer a non-coercive approach to deprogramming that came to be called "exit counseling" by the early 1980s. In Releasing the Bonds he expands on non-coercive intervention with what he calls the Strategic Interaction Approach (SIA). Hassan emphasizes family planning and group therapy sessions that can help concerned persons develop confidence in a long-term strategy. SIA utilizes positive communication and role modeling to show rather than merely tell the cult member that there is a better life outside the group. Hassan encourages families to maintain as much rapport as possible with a cult member until a time for intervention can be optimized. He provides an educational format for concerned persons to learn about "mind control" and how it works. He dedicates one important chapter to unlocking the phobias that cults might induce in devotees. These phobias, mostly about exit costs or what someone might lose (their salvation, sanity, spiritual attainment, soul investment) are alleviated through education about influence techniques that include hypnosis and suggestion. Hassan is a licensed Mental Health Counselor with training in hypnotherapy.

The book includes an extensive reference section for general literature, and it offers book titles about 25 representative, controversial groups. There are also 18 representative cult awareness foundations and resource consultants listed. Readers could easily find their way to any number of appropriate organizations or individuals through those listed.

Joe Szimhart [one of the author's long-time colleagues in cult awareness and intervention]

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Summary: SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG
Review: Un libro b?sico. El punto de partida indispensable para todo aquel que desee conocer en profundidad los m?todos y t?cnicas empleados por los grupos sectarios para captar y mantener a sus miembros.

Adem?s de ofrecer un an?lisis de este tipo de comportamiento, ense?a la manera de proceder cuando un ser querido est? involucrado en alguna organizaci?n para poder ayudarlo.

Este libro es indispensable en la Biblioteca de cualquier persona relacionada directa o indirectamente con miembros de sectas tales como la ICOC.

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Summary: Must-read book on cult issues
Review: While there is no substitute for professional counseling, Releasing The Bonds goes a long way toward helping those affected by destructive mind control. That includes not only people recruited into manipulative relationships or groups, but their relatives and friends as well.

In what may well turn out to be the definitive handbook on cult intervention, Hassan presents his ''Strategic Interaction Approach (SIA)'' - a non-coercive, highly effective counseling system refined over the twelve years since he wrote the best-seller, Combatting Cult Mind Control. This tried-and-true approach has none of the drawbacks of involuntary deprogramming or voluntary exit-counseling.

Many other books on cult issues are long on describing problems, and short on practical advice. Releasing The Bonds is different, in that that it is a step-by-step manual filled with sensible, useful information. The book also includes a resource section, listing various cults experts and organizations (ranging from the secular American Family Foundation (AFF) to the Christian countercult ministry, Watchman Fellowship. Hassan also identifies cult defenders. In addition, the book includes an excellent bibliography, and a useful index.

Releasing The Bonds is a must-read book not only for those with a friend or relative caught up in a destructive cult or relationship, but also for anyone interested in cult-related issues. In clear, precise language, Steve deals with concerns ranging from religious beliefs to religious freedom.

The chapter describing destructive mind control alone is worth the price of the book.

Incredibly, cultists and cult defenders often claim that those who criticize cults are ''anti-religious'' or ''oppose religious freedom.'' Of course , such accusations are baseless. Instead, Hassan's sensitivity toward, and understanding of, religious freedom and other people's beliefs shows throughout the book.

I'm quite sure that this is not the last book from Steve's hand. While he writes that he considers ''Think globally, act locally'' to be an inspiring motto, it is also clear that he thinks big as well. In his conclusion to Releasing The Bonds, titled, ''We All Must Help!'' Hassan encourages people to get involved. For example, he suggests citizens set up local activist groups, urges governments to establish consumer protection agencies and to investigate cult lobbies, and challenges mental health professionals to commit to more research regarding all aspects of cult mind control. He shows what religious institutions, legal professionals and the media can do to help educate and protect the public.

Best of all, throughout the book, he shows what *you* can do.

Anton Hein Publisher, Apologetics Index