During a recent podcast interview, my friend and fellow survivor Lisa Kohn shared that while she was on tour to promote her memoir To the Moon and Back: A Childhood Under the Influence, she had the opportunity to be interviewed for a popular daytime talk show.

She said that before she went on stage the producer was doing a pre-interview and asked her ‘were you brainwashed?’

I was tempted to completely derail the conversation and delve into a treatise on what thought reform is, and why asking a survivor if they were brainwashed is a stigmatizing question - at best. But I refrained and decided to explore those issues in this episode instead.

Resourced mentioned:

• Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships bu Dr. Janja Lalich & Madeline Tobias.
• Pseudoscience and Minority Religions: An Evaluation of the Brainwashing Theories of Jean-Marie Abgrall by Dick Anthony.
• Brainwashing and the Moonies by Geri-Ann Galanti, Ph.D.
• Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control by Kathleen Taylor Ph.D..
• Thought Crime, an article on the Guardian by Kathleen Taylor Ph.D..
• Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandra Stein, Ph.D..
• Deception, Dependency, and Dread in the Conversion Process by Michael D. Langone, Ph.D..
• Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China by Dr. Robert J. Lifton.
• A 1957 there was a symposium panel of experts at the New York Academy of Medicine to discuss the topic of mind control.
• Psychotherapist Rosanne Henry’s website, https://www.cultrecover.com/.
• Bad Moon Rising, by John Gorenfeld.
• Moonwebs: Journey into the Mind of a Cult, by Josh Freed.
• The Relational System of the Traumatizing Narcissist, by Daniel Shaw.
• How Lifton’s Eight Criteria for Thought Reform applies to NXIVM’s Executive Success Programs, by Paul Martin, Ph.D..