I have thought a lot about cults.
Here are some things I’ve written, which indirectly form a kind of curriculum:
- cults are the wrong frame
- Boundaries
- Individualism and Collectivism
- some thoughts on blind spots,
- Trust Dancing and Distrust Wrestling: Exploring Malcolm Ocean’s NNTD
And then there’s “why did U leave?“.
Some other materials I can happily recommend:
- Amor, Aleaxandra. Cult, A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery. Fat Head Publishing, 2013.
- everyday blah, hapless creeps, dark wizards, and cult leaders, cult leaders, and spotting a cult leader by overt signs
Materials I’ve not read (yet) but come highly recommended:
- Kramer, Joel, and Diana Alstad. The guru papers: Masks of authoritarian power. North Atlantic Books, 2012.