Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships [Paperback]

Janja Lalich (Author), Madeleine Tobias (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2006

Cult victims and those who have suffered abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides guidelines for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track. Written for victims, their families, and professionals, this book leads readers through the healing process.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Tobias and Lalich spent a combined total of 24 years in "restrictive groups" (i.e., cults), and both are currently involved in providing post-cult counseling and therapy. Their first collaboration, this book succeeds as an ambitious, comprehensive explanation of the cult experience and works well on several levels. Its stated focal intent is to encourage and assist those former cultists struggling to readjust to the "real world." Powered by the authors' experience, compassion, and intellect, it capably provides such support. In addition, however, Tobias and Lalich's systematic analysis of the shared characteristics of cults and cult leaders, along with extensive first-person accounts by former cultists, will educate those readers with a purely intellectual interest in the allure, power, and structure of cults. Recommended for public and religious libraries.
Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Former members of cults (including those born or raised in such groups) will gain valuable insights on their experiences. -- Michael D. Langone, Ph.D., Executive Director, International Cultic Studies Association

I wish every cult member, and every family of a cult member could read Take Back Your Life. -- Eugene H. Methvin, Senior Editor, Reader's Digest

Must reading for everyone who wants to understand the appeal of cults. This book's wisdom is vital. -- Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Stanford University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Bay Tree Publishing; 2nd Edition edition (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972002154
• ISBN-13: 978-0972002158
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for former cult members., October 22, 1998

By 

Troy Waller ([e-mail]) (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Captive Hearts, Captive Minds : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships (Paperback)

I wish I had found this book immediately after leaving the cult I was involved in.

This book offers invaluable assitance to those who have been involved with a destructive cult, whether it be relgious, political or psycho-theraputic. The text gives former members indications of what to expect in recovery as well as practical assitance to cope with their recovery.

The text also gives a breakdown of how and why cults operate as they do; how and why people get recruitted into cults; and how and why people leave cults.

This book is truly a gift from the authors' heart, experiences and study. Thanks to them.

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential roadmap to recovery, April 7, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Captive Hearts, Captive Minds : Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Other Abusive Relationships (Paperback)

For me, the special usefulness of this book came in the form of material directed at children who grew up in a cult, who have no other frame of reference to go back to.

The information I gleaned here gave me that frame of reference, and helped me to "detox" from the environment which was so seductively calling me back. It explains and makes sense of some very bewildering and deceptive manipulation techniques. And it has helped my therapy by outlining the kinds of issues that children coming out of cults usually face.

This book has a universal appeal for all cult escapees because it focuses not on beliefs or practices, but rather on manipulations and psychological pressures which are commonly brought to bear in cults. I found it easy to identify experientally with the material, without being challenged and put off by attacks on my strange beleif system which I was still disengaging from.

It's been a big part of my recovery. My thanks to the authors!

UPDATE January, 2012

Have loaned out and recommended the original 'Captive Hearts' many times over the last decade and a half, and was disheartened to find that it went out of print. Recently I've been excited to discover that the same material, vastly updated, is now available from the same authors under the title, 'Take Back Your Life.'

I still refer to this book periodically. It is a primary source for understanding the cult phenomenon, even those tendencies increasingly found in the modern corporate culture. We ALL are hard wired to respond to authoritarian influences in the same way, and this material acts as a healthy immunizer.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sane Advice for Those Leaving Cults, August 24, 2006

By 

D. L. Barnett (Paradise, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (Paperback)

We don't hear much these days about the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate or even Jim Jones. It's tempting to think that the cult movement has faded and that the world's attention is on more pressing matters -- like suicide bombers. But they are all of a piece, according to Chico State University Associate Professor of Sociology Janja Lalich.

In "Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships" ($19.50 in paperback from Bay Tree Publishing), Lalich and co-author Madeleine Tobias, a Vermont psychotherapist, make clear that modern day cults have not disappeared. "If there is less street recruiting today, it is because many cults now use professional associations, campus organizations, self-help seminars, and the Internet as recruitment tools" to entice the unwary.

Who gets sucked into a cult? "Although the public tends to think, wrongly, that only those who are stupid, weird, crazy and aimless get involved in cults, this is simply untrue. ... We know that many cult members went to the best schools in the country, have advanced academic or professional degrees and had successful careers and lives prior to their involvement in a cult or cultic abusive relationship. But at a vulnerable moment, and we all have plenty of those in our lives (a lost love, a lost job, rejection, a death in the family and so on), a person can fall under the influence of someone who appears to offer answers or a sense of direction."

For the authors, "a group or relationship earns the label 'cult' on the basis of its methods and behaviors -- not on the basis of its beliefs. Often those of us who criticize cults are accused of wanting to deny people their freedoms, religious or otherwise. But what we critique and oppose is precisely the repression and stripping away of individual freedoms that tends to occur in cults. It is not beliefs that we oppose, but the exploitative manipulation of people's faith, commitment, and trust."

Written for those coming out of cults, as well as for family members and professionals, "Take Back Your Life" deals with common characteristics of myriad cult types: Eastern, religious and New Age cults; political, racist and terrorist cults; psychotherapy, human potential, mass transformational cults; commercial, multi-marking cults; occult, satanic or black-magic cults; one-on-one family cults; and cults of personality. Chapters deal with the cult experience, the process of healing, stories of families and children in cults and therapeutic issues.

The book features riveting personal accounts from ex-cult members and offers a wide range of resources for the person who is trying to retrieve his or her "pre-cult" personality. Education looms large, for that can begin to break down the narrow black-and-white thinking cult members often display. Many cults redefine common terms or introduce special vocabulary making it difficult for members to make sense of the world outside of even their own inner aspirations.

The authors are also concerned about those in the education and helping professions who don't see the dangers posed by cults both to the individual and the larger community. Part of the purpose of the book is to make a credible case that any course of therapy needs to take into account a patient's cult associations.

"Take Back Your Life" is a book of hope, an excellent starting point for those thinking of exiting a cult and for those who are taking back their lives, one day at a time.