Amazon.com: Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems (9781138677975): Alexandra Stein: Books
Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems 1st Edition
by Alexandra Stein (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 customer reviews
----------------
Written by a cult survivor and renowned expert on cults and totalitarianism, Terror, Love and Brainwashing draws on the author’s 25 years of study and research to explain how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts.
Illustrated with compelling stories from a range of cults and totalitarian systems, from religious to political to commercial, the book defines and analyses the common and identifiable traits that underlie almost all these groups. It focuses on how charismatic, authoritarian leaders control their followers’ attachment relationships via manipulative social structures and ideologies so that, emotionally and cognitively isolated, they become unable to act in their own survival interests. Using the evolutionary theory of attachment to demonstrate the psychological impact of these environments, and incorporating the latest neuroscientific findings, Stein illustrates how the combined dynamic of terror and ‘love’ works to break down people’s ability to think and behave rationally. From small local cults to global players like ISIS and North Korea, the impact of these movements is widespread and growing.
This important book offers clarity and a unique perspective on the dynamics of these systems of control, and concludes with guidance to foster greater awareness and prevention. It will be essential reading for mental health professionals in the field, as well as policy makers, legal professionals, cult survivors, and their families, as well as anyone with an interest in these disturbing groups. Students of social and developmental psychology will also find it fascinating.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
'Alexandra Stein combines deep knowledge of cultic groups from Jehovah's Witnesses to ISIS with wide-ranging research and a rich trove of interviews. This wise and informed book will interest the specialist and the general reader.'
Charles B. Strozier, lead author and editor, The Fundamentalist Mindset, and author Apocalypse: On The Psychology of Fundamentalism in America
'A brilliant and much-needed book, grounded in original research and the classic literature in the field, along with plentiful real-life stories to exemplify the main points. Stein informs readers how leaders dominate, how the mechanics of recruitment work, and how the manipulations of indoctrination succeed in creating blindly devoted followers. While indicating that we are all vulnerable, societal solutions are offered. Perfect for classes in sociology, social psychology, psychology, and political science. This book couldn't be more timely!'
'A brilliant and much-needed book, grounded in original research and the classic literature in the field, along with plentiful real-life stories to exemplify the main points. Stein informs readers how leaders dominate, how the mechanics of recruitment work, and how the manipulations of indoctrination succeed in creating blindly devoted followers. While indicating that we are all vulnerable, societal solutions are offered. Perfect for classes in sociology, social psychology, psychology, and political science. This book couldn't be more timely!'
Janja Lalich, Professor Emerita of Sociology and author of Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults
'A truly remarkable book. Drawing on attachment theory and research, Stein provides penetrating insights into how and why cults―from Jonestown to ISIS gain such control over the minds and behavior of members. It is essential reading for all seeking to understand contemporary threats of "totalist" systems of all kinds.' L. Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota and as author of the award winning book, The Development of the Person.
'In Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Alex adds a new and straightforward approach to understanding the profound effect of manipulative processes. This is a rich and rewarding text. It can take even the bravest and cleverest people years to leave, and years more to escape the behavioral conditioning of a totalist group. This book will help to speed that process for many people.' Jon Atack, Open Minds Foundation
“Illustrated with compelling stories from a range of cults and totalitarian systems, from religious to political to commercial, the book defines and analyses the common identifiable traits that underlie almost all these groups. It focuses on how charismatic authoritarian leaders control their followers’ attachments via manipulative social structures and ideologies so that, emotionally and cognitively isolated, they become unable to act in their own survival interests.” Denise Winn, Author, Human Givens
"This is one of the best books that I have read about cults, and I have a read a few because, like the author, I used to be in one myself... [The book] will be, I believe, a major benefit for those thinking of leaving a cult and for those who, having managed to escape, need to sort out in their own minds what happened to them and what they need to do next." ― James Cook, Journal of Mental Health
-------------
Read less
About the Author
Alexandra Stein is a social psychologist who lectures and writes on cults and totalitarianism. Formerly, she was an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK and has also taught at the University of Minnesota, US and the University of Westminster, UK. As a young woman she was a member of a political cult, an experience she described in her first book, Inside Out.
Product details
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 17, 2016)
-----------------
More about the author
› Visit Amazon's Alexandra Stein Page
Follow
Biography
Alexandra Stein, PhD, is a social psychologist who lectures and writes on cults and totalitarianism. Formerly, she was an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK and has also taught at the University of Minnesota, US and the University of Westminster, UK. As a young woman she was a member of a political cult, an experience she described in her first book, Inside Out. See more at: www.alexandrastein.com or follow her at @alexandraistein
-----------------
Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
5
5.0 out of 5 stars
----------------------
Top customer reviews
gracie
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is an important work for anyone wishing to understand ...February 20, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
This is an important work for anyone wishing to understand why outwardly normal and responsible people can suddenly change and become members of totalist organizations (for example, Isis). Stein clearly explains the processes used to recruit and retain these people, and offers remedies to help innoculate ourselves and our children against them.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
Not Helpful|Comment|Report abuse
Agi Wittich
5.0 out of 5 starsReally informative, accessible and comprehensiveMarch 7, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Well written. Accessible and comprehensive. Each chapter deals with different aspects of cult psychology and step by step brings the reader to a better understanding of the psyche of a cult member, of the group and of the leader. Filled with testimonials, the book succeeds in drawing the reader in and feel, rather than only understand, the complex reality of terror and love in cults and abusive situations.
Nick Child
5.0 out of 5 starsAttachment terror: A new backbone and heart to the field of harmful coercive relationshipsApril 19, 2017
Format: Paperback
HERE'S WHY everyone should read this brilliant and heroic book:
The field of harmful coercive relationships is huge. It stretches across all kinds of family and other groups. But it is all over the place. No one can have read all the shelves and webpages full of great description. Quantity has to do while we wait for a missing quality. The quality it lacks is the coherence of a good integrating theory.
Now the exciting news is that Dr Alexandra Stein's new book condenses that vast body of knowledge around the backbone and beating heart of a powerful integrating theory. No surprise ... that theory is attachment theory. It fits like a glove! You don't need to look for any other theories.
Attachment theory derives from our understanding of intimate family relationships. Cults function by replicating the most disturbed family attachment patterns to do their dirty work. Leaders of cults often name themselves as if they were parents or siblings.
So Alex Stein's Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems is definitely not just about cults. This new backbone and heart unites and carries the whole of our huge field forward. You will learn - from this book on cults - about harmful coercion everywhere, in all kinds of situation, including of course coercive patterns in families.
Read this book if you want to understand harmful coercion in families. She shows how disorganised 'fright without solution' attachment patterns are used by charismatic authoritarian cult leaders to acquire the coercive relationships over their followers that they thrive on. It's the same abuse of attachment in families except that the attachments don't need to be created - they're there on a plate.
READ IT AGAIN!
This book is so beautifully written that reading it slips down as easily as if you were chatting with Alex over a cup of tea in your house. You keep wanting to stop her to say: Just a minute, what did you say? Wow - that's good! Could you say it again please? ... Luckily, there she is on the page. You can re-read her as often as you like!
As well as an up-to-date summary of the field from a very well-read thinker, you get the benefit of Alex's own experience of being in a political cult. Until the field matures, unfortunately the commonest way to discover it is to be pushed in the deep end. And you get Alex's own comparative research on cultic and non-cultic groups on top of that.
The book's chapters step you through the stages of being drawn in out of your ordinary life, then to slide down the slippery slope into the hold of the hell of coercive terror, love and brainwashing. This 'fright without solution' may indeed really end with your physical as well as your emotional death. The nightmare is real. But not always without end.
All the way through, Alex shows how attachment theory enlightens us on how this hell of 'love' and terror operates. As ever, the alienation experience is key. The coercive system promises but prevents genuinely safe attachments within the group. It closes any escape hatches to healthier outside relationships or information. With the candle of attachment theory, you see how there can be escape from this hell, how outsiders can help that escape.
The chapters get better and better until the last one gives us a vision of how our new world could be. It's a kind of anthem of hope and humanity. But this is no rosy romantic vision. We see this vision based in the solid reality of a major coalescence of universal research and rationality about how relationships work (for good or evil) and the underlying neuroscience within the framework of attachment theory. That world is built on safer joyful relationships. That world will spot and stop the hellish ones before they get going.
THE MAGIC
The magic we receive here transforms our usual reductionist focus - on individuals and concrete incidents, things we can see and prosecute - into seeing relationships - the good, bad and ugly - just as or even more vividly than concrete things. Alex gives us such a rich grasp of intimate human relationships - how they work well and how they can be turned into hell - that the vision does not evaporate into fog. So we can know where we've been. We can know where we're heading. We know what we can do.
A recommendation: Read the last chapter first .. "The flute player: What should an open society do?" It will enrich not spoil your reading.
Attachment-based interviews assess how well the person puts together the narrative of their relationship story as a sign of their growing up and out of it. Alex quotes Primo Levi's 'narrative drive' after surviving Auschwitz, how he:
... deliberately assumed the calm sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge. I thought my account would be all the more credible and useful the more it appeared objective and the less it sounded overly emotional. Only in this way does a witness in matters of justice perform his task, which is that of preparing the ground for the judge. The judges are my readers.
And Alex writes:
We must raise up these narrators as heroes ... to bear witness, to tell the reality of life in these isolating, secretive, dangerous and unbearable situations, to speak both for themselves and for those who are unable. ... to hold to account the perpetrators, to prevent others experiencing the same thing. These are the heroes of totalism. We must listen ... [to] give each person an existence, allow them to be seen. In isolation one cannot be seen.
At every level, Alex Stein is a hero too. Her book tells us how she has comprehensively survived, studied, thoroughly thought through and achieved that state of humane but objective witness for the largely still ignorant world to judge. To do this is a truly heroic work because those coercive relationships set out to destroy in those they take in the very capacities required to be a useful witness and live to tell the tale.
Alex Stein's deep work and her graceful book are superb narratives of science, humanity and art. She gives us a new and essential core to our field and to the world. The book is a gift for any reader. Do read it. Then you'll want to read much more of Alex and her work on her website - try her Warning Signs - and hear her talking about her book and about prevention.
Nick Child, Edinburgh
------------------------
'A truly remarkable book. Drawing on attachment theory and research, Stein provides penetrating insights into how and why cults―from Jonestown to ISIS gain such control over the minds and behavior of members. It is essential reading for all seeking to understand contemporary threats of "totalist" systems of all kinds.' L. Alan Sroufe, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota and as author of the award winning book, The Development of the Person.
'In Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Alex adds a new and straightforward approach to understanding the profound effect of manipulative processes. This is a rich and rewarding text. It can take even the bravest and cleverest people years to leave, and years more to escape the behavioral conditioning of a totalist group. This book will help to speed that process for many people.' Jon Atack, Open Minds Foundation
“Illustrated with compelling stories from a range of cults and totalitarian systems, from religious to political to commercial, the book defines and analyses the common identifiable traits that underlie almost all these groups. It focuses on how charismatic authoritarian leaders control their followers’ attachments via manipulative social structures and ideologies so that, emotionally and cognitively isolated, they become unable to act in their own survival interests.” Denise Winn, Author, Human Givens
"This is one of the best books that I have read about cults, and I have a read a few because, like the author, I used to be in one myself... [The book] will be, I believe, a major benefit for those thinking of leaving a cult and for those who, having managed to escape, need to sort out in their own minds what happened to them and what they need to do next." ― James Cook, Journal of Mental Health
-------------
Read less
About the Author
Alexandra Stein is a social psychologist who lectures and writes on cults and totalitarianism. Formerly, she was an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK and has also taught at the University of Minnesota, US and the University of Westminster, UK. As a young woman she was a member of a political cult, an experience she described in her first book, Inside Out.
Product details
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 17, 2016)
-----------------
More about the author
› Visit Amazon's Alexandra Stein Page
Follow
Biography
Alexandra Stein, PhD, is a social psychologist who lectures and writes on cults and totalitarianism. Formerly, she was an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK and has also taught at the University of Minnesota, US and the University of Westminster, UK. As a young woman she was a member of a political cult, an experience she described in her first book, Inside Out. See more at: www.alexandrastein.com or follow her at @alexandraistein
-----------------
Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
5
5.0 out of 5 stars
----------------------
Top customer reviews
gracie
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is an important work for anyone wishing to understand ...February 20, 2017
Format: Paperback|Verified Purchase
This is an important work for anyone wishing to understand why outwardly normal and responsible people can suddenly change and become members of totalist organizations (for example, Isis). Stein clearly explains the processes used to recruit and retain these people, and offers remedies to help innoculate ourselves and our children against them.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
Not Helpful|Comment|Report abuse
Agi Wittich
5.0 out of 5 starsReally informative, accessible and comprehensiveMarch 7, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Well written. Accessible and comprehensive. Each chapter deals with different aspects of cult psychology and step by step brings the reader to a better understanding of the psyche of a cult member, of the group and of the leader. Filled with testimonials, the book succeeds in drawing the reader in and feel, rather than only understand, the complex reality of terror and love in cults and abusive situations.
Nick Child
5.0 out of 5 starsAttachment terror: A new backbone and heart to the field of harmful coercive relationshipsApril 19, 2017
Format: Paperback
HERE'S WHY everyone should read this brilliant and heroic book:
The field of harmful coercive relationships is huge. It stretches across all kinds of family and other groups. But it is all over the place. No one can have read all the shelves and webpages full of great description. Quantity has to do while we wait for a missing quality. The quality it lacks is the coherence of a good integrating theory.
Now the exciting news is that Dr Alexandra Stein's new book condenses that vast body of knowledge around the backbone and beating heart of a powerful integrating theory. No surprise ... that theory is attachment theory. It fits like a glove! You don't need to look for any other theories.
Attachment theory derives from our understanding of intimate family relationships. Cults function by replicating the most disturbed family attachment patterns to do their dirty work. Leaders of cults often name themselves as if they were parents or siblings.
So Alex Stein's Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems is definitely not just about cults. This new backbone and heart unites and carries the whole of our huge field forward. You will learn - from this book on cults - about harmful coercion everywhere, in all kinds of situation, including of course coercive patterns in families.
Read this book if you want to understand harmful coercion in families. She shows how disorganised 'fright without solution' attachment patterns are used by charismatic authoritarian cult leaders to acquire the coercive relationships over their followers that they thrive on. It's the same abuse of attachment in families except that the attachments don't need to be created - they're there on a plate.
READ IT AGAIN!
This book is so beautifully written that reading it slips down as easily as if you were chatting with Alex over a cup of tea in your house. You keep wanting to stop her to say: Just a minute, what did you say? Wow - that's good! Could you say it again please? ... Luckily, there she is on the page. You can re-read her as often as you like!
As well as an up-to-date summary of the field from a very well-read thinker, you get the benefit of Alex's own experience of being in a political cult. Until the field matures, unfortunately the commonest way to discover it is to be pushed in the deep end. And you get Alex's own comparative research on cultic and non-cultic groups on top of that.
The book's chapters step you through the stages of being drawn in out of your ordinary life, then to slide down the slippery slope into the hold of the hell of coercive terror, love and brainwashing. This 'fright without solution' may indeed really end with your physical as well as your emotional death. The nightmare is real. But not always without end.
All the way through, Alex shows how attachment theory enlightens us on how this hell of 'love' and terror operates. As ever, the alienation experience is key. The coercive system promises but prevents genuinely safe attachments within the group. It closes any escape hatches to healthier outside relationships or information. With the candle of attachment theory, you see how there can be escape from this hell, how outsiders can help that escape.
The chapters get better and better until the last one gives us a vision of how our new world could be. It's a kind of anthem of hope and humanity. But this is no rosy romantic vision. We see this vision based in the solid reality of a major coalescence of universal research and rationality about how relationships work (for good or evil) and the underlying neuroscience within the framework of attachment theory. That world is built on safer joyful relationships. That world will spot and stop the hellish ones before they get going.
THE MAGIC
The magic we receive here transforms our usual reductionist focus - on individuals and concrete incidents, things we can see and prosecute - into seeing relationships - the good, bad and ugly - just as or even more vividly than concrete things. Alex gives us such a rich grasp of intimate human relationships - how they work well and how they can be turned into hell - that the vision does not evaporate into fog. So we can know where we've been. We can know where we're heading. We know what we can do.
A recommendation: Read the last chapter first .. "The flute player: What should an open society do?" It will enrich not spoil your reading.
Attachment-based interviews assess how well the person puts together the narrative of their relationship story as a sign of their growing up and out of it. Alex quotes Primo Levi's 'narrative drive' after surviving Auschwitz, how he:
... deliberately assumed the calm sober language of the witness, neither the lamenting tones of the victim nor the irate voice of someone who seeks revenge. I thought my account would be all the more credible and useful the more it appeared objective and the less it sounded overly emotional. Only in this way does a witness in matters of justice perform his task, which is that of preparing the ground for the judge. The judges are my readers.
And Alex writes:
We must raise up these narrators as heroes ... to bear witness, to tell the reality of life in these isolating, secretive, dangerous and unbearable situations, to speak both for themselves and for those who are unable. ... to hold to account the perpetrators, to prevent others experiencing the same thing. These are the heroes of totalism. We must listen ... [to] give each person an existence, allow them to be seen. In isolation one cannot be seen.
At every level, Alex Stein is a hero too. Her book tells us how she has comprehensively survived, studied, thoroughly thought through and achieved that state of humane but objective witness for the largely still ignorant world to judge. To do this is a truly heroic work because those coercive relationships set out to destroy in those they take in the very capacities required to be a useful witness and live to tell the tale.
Alex Stein's deep work and her graceful book are superb narratives of science, humanity and art. She gives us a new and essential core to our field and to the world. The book is a gift for any reader. Do read it. Then you'll want to read much more of Alex and her work on her website - try her Warning Signs - and hear her talking about her book and about prevention.
Nick Child, Edinburgh
------------------------
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