Customer Reviews

Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves

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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.

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

This book does not simply "tell": it provides and enables.

My sister escaped (literally in fear in the dead of night) from a cult with her son. I saw first-hand the disabling terror she experienced as she tried to go shopping at the mall with my wife during the first week of her freedom. This book resonates with that experience.

But the real strength of the book is that it reveals, through reason, what each of us needs to know to recognize and deal with the increasing number of unhealthy organizations that are manipulating our individual rights.

Steve Hassan is the real thing and this book is a "must read" for anyone who cares about their personal freedom and a free society.

Steve Hassan knows whereof he speaks, and this book will help anyone looking to rescue a loved one or friend from the grips of the mind control tactics that characterize sects of all kinds. The most important aspect of Hassan's program is respect: respect for what may have sent a person into the clutches of a sect to begin with, and respect for the individual lost in the double-talk miasma of sect manipulation. This is a book of hope and love; every single member of a family can learn and grow from it, and its message tells us never to give up.
Read it through to the end and make sure you understand all aspects of the intervention described in its pages. Hassan will arm you with the tools needed to act wisely, humanely, fairly. Your friend or loved one deserves it. So do you.

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]

This book is grounded in Steve Hassan's personal experience of leaving the moonies and his massive efforts since then to provide education on how to help people leave destructive cults.

It is informative and practical. I have used the advice in it to good effect and can vouch for the fact that it is a grounded and workable approach.

In short, I strongly recommend it to anybody that needs to know more about destructive cults, how to leave them themselves or how to help others leave them.
[...]

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.

Steve's original book helped me immeasurably when I first got out after 19 years in a "high demand group" (cult). This book, what, 10 years later?, is helping just as much. There's nothing like having recovered from a trauma to make a person yearn to ease the road of others seen suffering the same abuse. And there's no relief like the relief of being given real working practical tools for resolving a compelling problem that once seemed hopeless.

If your loved one is being dominated by a destructive person or group, read this book. See if you find it helpful. As Steve often says, be a good consumer...decide for youself.

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.

Mr. Hassan shares extremely important information in his scholarly work. Another more visceral story on how to escape a cult was written by a young woman who escaped from the Kool-aid cult, aka The Jonestown Compound. SEDUCTIVE POISON is a well written, thoroughly gripping first hand account of Life and Death in the People's Temple Cult. When I finished reading it I finally had a sense of how and why young idealists like Mr Hassan and Ms Layton joined their respective groups, from where they garnered the strength to leave and why they would later try to save others by telling their own stories.

Excellent summer reading.