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| | John Koch, Boston Globe Staff, writes about Steve Hassan, cult expert, exit-counselor, and author |
 | | Hassan believes Natalie's "prognosis is very good, but it's going to take a long time.'' Part of the problem for her and many others like her, he says, is that they have "been dealing with mental health professionals who are ignorant about cult mind-control issues.'' These clinicians "are often missing the obvious,'' he says. |
| | In addition to such "exit counseling,'' Hassan works with ex-members of cults, like Natalie, to help them reconstruct a strong identity, an "alternate psychic reality'' to the group mentality they adopted and to the sense of personal failure that, according to Hassan, plagues people in the wake of cult involvement. |
| | Over the course of a contentious, often agonizing six days, during which Hassan briefly considered killing his father, a group of three ex-Moonies and a counselor convinced him he had been manipulated in much the same way Chinese Communists brainwashed citizens and dissidents in the 1940s and '50s. |
| www.freedomofmind.com /stevehassan/presskit/profile (324 words) |
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