Introduction and Welcome

Steven Hassan [00:00:11] Your mom and me, we've seen this life with eyes that only see in black and white.

John Dehlin [00:00:21] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners, and to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Steven Hassan [00:01:03] Tune me out if you must I know you've heard enough

John Dehlin [00:01:14] But I sing

Steven Hassan [00:01:15] this song just because I hope you'll be wiser than your daddy was I hope you'll be wiser than your daddy all right.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is June 1, 2018. I am so super excited for today's episode. We have some really we have an amazing guest and an amazing topic in store for you today.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] So today, let me go ahead and switch over to my other screen. Today we are going to be interviewing on Mormon Stories podcast Stephen Hasson. Stephen is the world's expert in cults. He's written a book called Combating Cult Mind Control, and he's going to be joining us in about 23 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:02:23] But we're really, really excited to be interviewing him. And the reason why I'm doing an introduction before we actually bring him on is because he's only able to give us an hour of his time and there's so much to cover. And so I'm going to be covering some of the material before we actually bring him on so that we can use all of our time with him very efficiently.

John Dehlin [00:02:50] Let me give you guys just a little bit of a kind of heads up on what you're going to hear today. Just a little bit of background on me. For those of you who don't know, we're anticipating that Stephen's going to be sharing this presentation broader to his network. And so I'm just going to give a little introduction myself. Those of you who are Mormon Stories fans will know this. My name is John Dehlin. I grew up as an orthodox Mormon in Katy, Texas. I served a Mormon mission in Guatemala. I married my wife, Margi in the Washington, D.C. temple after attending Brigham Young University.

John Dehlin [00:03:23] We raised four wonderful children together and are raising them as progressive Mormons. I had a successful technology career with Penning company Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to having a faith crisis. I had my Mormon faith crisis in 2001 while I was teaching early morning seminary for the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:03:45] However, I loved the church so much and believed in it and cared about it, or at least believed in the goodness of it that for many, many years we remained active and faithful in the church for the next 14 years, actually, with a couple of years off as sabbaticals. But I knew that there was a problem with people in transition. I knew that it was way too difficult to leave the Mormon Church. And so in 2005 I started a podcast, this podcast, Mormon Stories Podcast to improve Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:04:21] It's been wildly successful. It's been the successful and longest running Mormon themed podcast in the world. We have over 920 hours of interviews to date, audio and video. We have well over 20 million MP3 downloads and YouTube and Facebook views.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] And so many listeners reached out to me that I went back to school when I was 40 years old, pursued a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology with a focus on religion and mental health, religious faith crises, religious OCD, which is scrupulosity, LGBT issues, and in that process published 11 peer reviewed journal articles and one book chapter and did all I could to make it so I could do a better job supporting those in faith crisis. In 2015, I was excommunicated for the Mormon Church for my LGBTQ advocacy, but also for my unwillingness to stop the podcast.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] I also started during my Ph.D. the open stories foundation, which is a nonprofit to support Mormons in religious transition. I do provide, you know, in the Open Stories foundation, we provide workshops and retreats. I also, you know, have a small coaching practice where I coach people who are experiencing religious faith crisis. You can reach me@johndelin.com for that private practice. But you know, the work that we've done has been featured on in the New York Times, Good Morning America, National Public Radio, HBO Vice News, the Wall street journal, nightline, VH1.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] I've done a TedX talk and we're super excited that June 25th, the HBO believer movie starring Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons and Tyler Glenn of Neon Trees and myself will be premiering. And so we've done our best to help a lot of people in the process. Now I'm going to introduce you to Stephen Hassan. It is spelled Hassan, not Hassan. Stephen is not Muslim. He's Jewish. He grew up in a conservative Jewish family in Queens, New York.

Steven Hassan's Background and Story

John Dehlin [00:06:23] He describes himself as introverted in his book. He grew up as very Bookish individual. He loves books. He was an honor student. He skipped eighth grade and graduated early. But while he was a student at Queens College, Steven was recruited into the Mooney's.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] The Mooney's, or the Unification Church, is a billion dollar organization that Steven refers to as a culture. And he was basically just, you know, he can tell the story, but basically he was just sitting, I think at a table, maybe in a cafeteria. And like three by his, by his report, attractive young women came up and said, hey, come to this thing. And he came to it. And then he got sucked into more little meetings and over time, through pressure, became a cult member in the Unification Church under the Reverend Sun Young, Young Moon. And in a very short amount of time became a high level leader in the church.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] And he was recruiting for them, he was marketing for them, he was fundraising for them, and he had sort of the highest levels of access in that cult. Now this is in the 70s when Jim Jones was doing what he was doing in Guyana, you know, and Patty Hearst had been abducted by a cult. She was the daughter of a newspaper magnet. And cults were really raging in the 70s. So after two years, two plus years, and Stephen was really plugging, he had this awful car crash and it broke like his legs. And he was paralyzed, or at least he couldn't walk, immobilized. And in that time he reached out to his sister who never made him feel bad about being a member of the Mooney's, never called it a cult, never told him he was part of a cult.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] And so he reached out to her and she started loving and supporting him. And during that time his parents came and did an intervention and long story short, pulled him out of the Mooney's. And you can read about this in his book.

John Dehlin [00:08:37] But afterwards he obtained a master's degree in counseling Psychology from Cambridge College, became a nationally certified counselor and, and a licensed mental health counselor so that he could help more people and ultimately became the founder and director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

John Dehlin [00:08:55] And this is an organization that helps people become psychologically empowered. They promote awareness and they expose abuses of undue influence. You can Access them at freedomofmind.com and freedomofmind.com and Steven. They provide training for mental health professionals, educators, law enforcement. I think they've even testified at Congress.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] And they help families of cult members help get people out of cults. He's got 40 years of cult awareness and activism and his work has been featured on every major News outlet including 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, Oprah Winfrey in USA Today, Bill O'Reilly Show.

John Dehlin [00:09:40] He's been everywhere and he's brilliant and he's wise and he's kind and he's compassionate and he's amazing. He has authored three books that we are going to be. We're going to be talking about one of them. One's called Combating Cult Mind Control. One's called Releasing the Bonds, Empowering People to Think For Themselves. And then another one's called Freedom of Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] So super well published author, speaks all over the world. And now I'm going to give a disclaimer about the intent of this presentation. We were very careful in how we named this presentation. This presentation is not why the Mormon Church is a cult.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] And there are lots of reasons that we didn't name it that way. And I think Stephen is going to support these reasons. But we will not be calling the Mormon Church a cult in this presentation. Please don't be disappointed by that.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] But there are reasons why we are not calling the Mormon Church a cult in this presentation for many reasons. Number one is Stephen will be the first to tell you that it's counterproductive. I went up to a website to find a list of cults, and the leading world organization for cults refused to give a list of cults. And I thought, well, that's kind of interesting. Why in the world would the world's leading organization on cults refuse to give a list of cults? And the reason why is they said that it's counterproductive. It puts people on the defensive. It makes them stop listening.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] It creates what we've called in Mormon stories the backfire effect. It makes people actually cling more tightly to their beliefs and even their damaging beliefs. And so for that reason, we don't think it's going to be effective to sort of take that approach.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] In addition, if you read Stephen's book and you read about the criteria of cults, you'll realize that there are degrees of cultishness. And while, you know there are going to be aspects that Mormons identify with, they're going to be aspects that some people find alarming.

John Dehlin [00:11:53] There are also other aspects that don't meet criteria you're gonna find in there. Some cults physically brand their members with like a cattle prod. Some cults physically beat and abuse their members. You know, some of them engage in sleep deprivation and really egregious forms of, you know, you Know, seizing people and putting them in prison or, you know, capturing them and not letting them go. You know, there are degrees of cults and some cults kill people. So for lots of reasons, you know, Mormonism is a complex organization that in some ways will cause alarms and in other ways won't. So, and then finally, the most important thing is that everybody needs to reach their own conclusions on what is and isn't a cult, or what is or isn't cult like behavior.

John Dehlin [00:12:45] So, you know, you listeners, you be the judge. If you think the church fits this, then you can think about that. And if you don't, we don't want you to run off thinking we're insulting a religion you love.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] So one thing that I want to emphasize that Stephen talks about in his book is that there are many types of cults. So there are religious cults, there are meditation cults, there are political cults, there are psychotherapy and education cults, there are commercial and corporate cults, there are marketing cults. Utahn should be familiar with multi level marketing. That can be a cult.

John Dehlin [00:13:24] Families can be a cult, marriages can be a cult, gangs, you know, gangs can be cults, there could be Internet cults, There are lots of different types of cults. And so, you know, we also are not focusing on the Mormon Church being a cult because we don't want you to think too narrowly in this presentation.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] We want you to become aware, even if you've left religion altogether, we want you to become aware of anything that could be acting like a cult, anything that could be using undue influence on you. All of that you should be aware of. And so we want you to think broader than just Mormonism in this presentation.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Okay? All right, so we're going to go ahead and provide definition of a cult so that we can kind of know what we're talking about. Stephen Hasson defines a cult as any group in which mind control is used in destructive ways. Now, mind control may seem scary for some of you. You may be thinking, oh, mind control, that sounds like brainwashing. And Stephen goes into a great explanation in his book about what brainwashing is, what mind control is going to go ahead and give just a brief definition of mind control. Mind control is any system that disrupts an individual's healthy identity development.

Defining Cults and Undue Influence

John Dehlin [00:14:48] So if you just think about it, think about your identity, think about anyone who might be in a cult. Think about whether or not they have been allowed to develop, to discover who they are and to develop as individuals versus assuming an identity. And what I've done is I've put together a slide that I'm very proud of. It's very.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] It's very preliminary, but it's borrowing from some of the things I read in Steven's book. But I want to kind of run it by you. This is kind of what I'm identifying as the core problem. And I haven't showed this to Steven yet.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] But I believe that, you know, as human beings, we've evolved. We've evolved with DNA, we've evolved with personality. You know, we have the genetic combinations of whatever we inherited plus whatever happened in the womb, plus whatever upbringing we had has given us a personality, has given us a sense of self.

John Dehlin [00:15:52] And at our core as humans, you know, many would argue we're animals, we're base. If you look 20,000 years ago or 50,000 years ago, think about the caveman. Humans were driven by biological urges for food and shelter, sex and power.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] I think we have a tendency to want to maximize what I call neurochemical highs. A lot of people get stuck in addictions and drugs and alcohol in unhealthy ways just because they're. Or other types of unhealthy coping, whether it's Netflix or eating or whatever, we like our brains to get feel good. We like that oxygen, we like that serotonin. And anything that we can get sometimes to trigger those chemical highs can feel really good.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] And I think Mormonism calls this the natural man. And Mormonism says the natural man is an enemy to God. And that makes sense. We don't want to run around having sex with everything, whether there's consent or health or whatever. We don't want to run around killing people and. And being driven by our passions.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] So just living off of this sort of core native self can be violent, it can be sexist, it can be racist, it can be tribal, it can be uncivilized, it can be addictive, and it can be unhealthy. So what many of us have experienced within a religious context, and specifically within Mormonism, is we joined or were born into a religion, and that religion is less primal. It's. It's more civilized than being a caveman.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] It's more social, it's more organizational, and it taught us a bunch of values and ethics and morals, gave us community, a sense of identity, a sense of purpose and meaning in the world. It helped resolve a lot of our existential problems in life.

John Dehlin [00:17:44] There are all sorts of powerful things that this religion has given us. But the downside of any modern religion, if it's based on the Quran or The Bible is that we're limited by Bronze Age scripture and ethics and whatever the organizational ideal is for the human. And so if the Bible says, you know, if someone interprets the Bible to say that being gay is bad, then we are going to have to follow that. If it says women should stay silent or be subservient, then if we follow the scriptures, we're going to have to follow that. If the scriptures say we can cut off someone's head, if we don't agree with them, well, then we have the right to do bad things.

John Dehlin [00:18:23] And if it says God's a genocidal maniac, well, that's who God is, because the scriptures say so. But most importantly, religions give us this identity where we feel like we're sort of a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Because just because a religion tells us who we should be doesn't mean that's who we are. And many religions don't even give us a sense of to identify and discover who we are and to become an authentic self. And so so many of us get to whatever point we get to in our religious development, whether it's healthy or not, but we aren't our fully authentic self.

John Dehlin [00:19:02] And if we are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, if we are a woman, if we're a feminist, if we're an intellectual, if we are skeptical, you know, if we masturbate, heaven forbid, or have sexual experimentation, that religion can become toxic to us. It could literally be fatal to us. It can become deadly. And so we have the choice. We can either regress to the primal self, and that's what that arrow is on the right. For those of you listening just through the audio, this is all on video on YouTube if you want to see the visual aids. But we have the choice of reverting to our primal self, which is becoming again based and driven by biological urges and instincts and our emotions and neurochemical highs, or we have the chance to progress to a more authentic, enlightened self.

John Dehlin [00:19:52] And what comes with that is a freedom, an introspection, and self discovery. And I want to argue that the healthy people keep the good of the religion. They keep the good of the cult that they were a part of.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] But what they then do is they discard whatever is harmful or inauthentic. So they keep the good, discard the bad, do that self discovery, and then they add new, authentic, healthy pieces to their experience. And that is sort of what healthy religions do.

John Dehlin [00:20:32] And so what we're going to do now is we are going to stop this part of the presentation. And I am hoping that Steven is now joining us. So I'm going to look on the participants. Stephen has not yet joined us. So what we're going to do is make sure we get a hold of Stephen and.

John Dehlin [00:20:58] And while we're doing that, we're going to go ahead and take questions from our listening audience. So we have a bunch of people joining us live. And what I want to do is give people a sense for what the next hour to two hours is basically going to be like.

John Dehlin [00:21:18] So we're going to bring on Steven and he is going to talk to us for an hour about his book and about these notions of cults. And we're gonna try and apply it. We're not just gonna apply it to ourselves.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] We're not just gonna. Sorry. We're not just gonna apply it to religions, but we're also gonna apply it to ourselves as liberal Mormons, as progressive Mormons, as post Mormons. All that is legitimate. One of the things that I am very interested in doing and am very motivated to do is also, is also apply this to my podcast, to Mormon Stories, to the Open Stories Foundation. I want to make sure that there's nothing that we're doing within the Open Stories foundation that could ever be construed as cult like or that could ever be harmful to people. And so we're going to talk to Steven and then what I'd really love to do, if possible, is have maybe four or five of you join us after the presentation.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] And what I want to do is we're going to sort of go through Steven's model for cults, and we are going to do a breakdown of how cults control behavior, control information, control thoughts, and control emotions. And then once we go through that, and Stephen shares all of that with us, then what we're going to do is we're going to do an analysis of Mormonism and I'm even willing to do of the Open Stories Foundation, a Mormon Stories podcast, through the same lens so that we can understand to what degree there are cult like things in the church and to what degree there aren't. But when I do that, again, it's not with some secret, insidious desire to label the church a cult or to make people think that Mormonism is cultish.

John Dehlin [00:23:22] What we're really trying to do is we're trying to learn and we're trying to help people. And there are a lot of things that we want to try and accomplish in this experience. So, for example, again, I want to find ways that I can improve the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories podcast. But we also want to help other Mormons improve their experiences.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] So if you're in the Mormon Church, if you're struggling, we want to help you understand what might be damaging or what might not be damaging in your experience. We also want to help people who are out of the Mormon Church learn about healthy and unhealthy principles of living, healthy and unhealthy leadership principles, healthy and unhealthy organizational principles, because again, these experiences apply well beyond Mormonism. And then finally, we want to help people understand what the LDS Church is and, and how it can help people. So my technical group, Stephen, is working furiously to help get Stephen Hasson on and he's joined us. So. Wow. Without any further ado, Stephen Hasson, welcome so much to Mormon Stories podcast. It's such a pleasure having you.

Steven Hassan [00:24:59] Yeah, thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to do this.

Hassan Joins the Conversation

John Dehlin [00:25:02] All right, Stephen, well, we're so glad you can join us. We're really honored. What I want to do is begin by plugging one of the most exciting and amazing books that I've come across in my 15 to 20 years of doing what I'm doing. The book is called Combating Cult Mind Control and it's a best selling book. It's a guide to protection, rescue and recovery from destructive cults. Now, Stephen, what we did before you joined us is we took our audience through your history and so we explained your three books, we explained your biographical information at a high level about your experience with the Mooney's.

John Dehlin [00:25:48] We told everyone about freedomofmind.com and your organization and the sorts of training and consulting and coaching that you do. And we warned everybody that we will not be calling the Mormon Church a cult in this presentation. Can you begin by explaining maybe supporting that strategy? Why is it, you know, there's a lot of listeners who just are mad. Maybe they're in a mixed faith marriage where their spouse wants to divorce them, maybe they're mad at their church, or maybe their family isn't respecting them for the things they discovered. Why in the world would it be not prudent for them to use the language of cults when they are dealing with their religious family and friends?

Steven Hassan [00:26:36] Yeah, so the word is problematic because it has charge to it depending on where you're coming from. And over the 43 years since my rescue from the Moon Group, it's used so loosely and in different ways that I've just learned to just think of things in terms of healthy groups. And unhealthy groups and, you know, open groups that are honest and closed groups that lie when they're recruiting and to their members, it's just, it has less of the problems associated with it.

Steven Hassan [00:27:22] You know, when you're in a group that makes assertions that we are the one and only church or we are the only true whatever, you have a kind of a bubble around that belief system that insulates you and makes you feel like you're special and above everybody else who are in other groups. And it's easy for you to call other groups cults, but, you know, don't let anyone call you in a cult.

Steven Hassan [00:27:56] And again, because I've, you know, been a mental health professional and doing this work for four decades, I just think the word is loaded. So why use words if it's going to be a stumbling block for some people?

Steven Hassan [00:28:13] And when they tell me, but I like to call a group a cult, I say, you're, you know, you're an adult, you get to do what you want to do. And, you know, my issue with my book goes back to 1988, which was the 10th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, with 913 men, women and over 300 children who died with Sanadlaist Flavor aid.

Steven Hassan [00:28:42] And my publisher was like, we got to put cult in the title, you know, so it's got to be combating Cult Mind Control, not Combating Mind Control. And so when I bought the rights back in 2014, the decision was just keep the title basically the same. So I'm kind of stuck with that word cult in the title.

John Dehlin [00:29:06] No problem. Okay, so what we want to do.

Steven Hassan [00:29:11] Long winded John.

John Dehlin [00:29:12] No, that's great, that's great.

Steven Hassan [00:29:13] Try to be more succinct.

John Dehlin [00:29:15] No, no, it's really, it's, it's really, really useful. So what, what I've done is I've put together a presentation that outlines what we call the byte model. And while I'm getting the PowerPoint presentation ready, would you mind explaining to us what the bite model is and give it an introduction? And then what we're going to do is we're literally going to go through the B, the I, the T and the E, we're going to talk about each one in detail. And then we're going to end by showing that continuum that you so brilliantly put together, and we're going to maybe spend the last 15 minutes discussing that continuum. Does that make sense?

Steven Hassan [00:29:59] Yeah, that's fine.

John Dehlin [00:30:01] Okay, so please give us the high level overview of the bite model, and then we're going to go into each one specifically.

Deprogramming and Lifton's Eight Criteria

Steven Hassan [00:30:09] So briefly. I guess you've told your listeners that in my deprogramming Robert Lifton's book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism was used and his eight criteria.

John Dehlin [00:30:23] No, no, no, go ahead and talk about that.

Steven Hassan [00:30:26] So I was in the moon cult. I didn't think I was brainwashed or under mind control. I was in a van crash, I was in crutches, my family, I was basically in a situation of intervention where my family had hired ex members and their appeal to me was, look, you're an adult, you get to do what you want to do. But let us at least explain why we've left the church and what brainwashing is so that at least you can know what is known about it. And I was very happy to learn about Chinese Communist brainwashing because that's. That was what Lifton's book Thought Reform the Psychology of Totalism was all about.

Steven Hassan [00:31:17] He had been an Air Force psychiatrist, military intelligence, studying what was this thing called brainwashing because the term was coined in the 50s. And he came up with eight criteria that any environment may be judged as a brainwashing or he preferred the term thought reform environment.

Steven Hassan [00:31:38] And Lifton is a genius. He's written like 20 plus books. I've read them all. One of the most important people in my career because when I got out of the Moonies I went and saw him and said, your book saved my life. Kind of a little bit like what you were just doing. This book is really incredible. That's what his book was for me.

Steven Hassan [00:32:03] And he said which book? And I said thought Reform. He said, that old book, why was it so important to you? And I said his eight criteria was revelatory. For me it helped give me a touchstone on what are the characteristics that make up a destructive mind control environment.

Steven Hassan [00:32:26] But the book is very ivory tower. He's a genius. It's not meant for the lay person to read. I had to read it over and over again. I had to look up a lot of words when I was reading it. And as I began my journey of self healing to try to understand everything I could about persuasion and attitude change and hypnosis and everything else.

Steven Hassan [00:32:52] The paradigm that was put forth by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger stood out for me as monumentally important. Leon Festinger wrote a book called When Prophecies Fail about a UFO cult that I believe the book was written in the 50s.

Steven Hassan [00:33:12] And the idea of what he wrote about in this book was that this woman was Claiming a UFO was going to land at a mountaintop, and all the followers sold their goods and went up to the mountaintop. And when the UFO didn't arrive, he thought everyone would be disillusioned and leave. But he realized people actually believed more.

Steven Hassan [00:33:37] And he was like, trying to come up with, like, how is it possible that people would believe more? And he came up with this concept that's critical called cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance theory is the underlying on all cognitive behavioral therapies, talk therapies, etc. Because he posits we have thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that the human personality, the human mind, likes congruency between those three things.

Steven Hassan [00:34:13] So if we change a behavior, our beliefs shift to have reduced dissonance or to have consistency and our feelings align along those behaviors, etc. So those three things were like, yes, I can take lifton's criteria, I can take everything else that I've read, and I can make a new model based on those three things to describe mind control.

Steven Hassan [00:34:42] But then as I was going through all of the things like sleep manipulation, dietary manipulation, change of clothing, change of names, rituals, as I was going through all of that, there was a missing element which I realized was information, the lack of informed consent when people are being recruited into destructive groups, whether by lying, by withholding vital information, or by distorting information to make it more palatable, that that was a major feature of a destructive group versus a healthy group. And I know we'll get into the influence continuum later. And then I started thinking about other information, like how my recruiter found out all these details about my background, fed that information to one of the leaders, who then used that information to make me believe that they had mystical powers and could kind of know my spirit.

Steven Hassan [00:35:43] But I didn't understand that this information was being funneled and then used against me, or that they would plant people in small groups who were pretending to be new members, but they weren't. And they were kind of used as spies again, to feed information to the leadership in order to have an impact or to use confessions and to use that information against someone.

Steven Hassan [00:36:12] So the bottom line is I came up with these four criteria. And in the 1988 edition of Combating, it was in a different order. And as soon as the book came out, a minister friend of mine said, you know, if you switch the order, you can make this acronym called BITE B I T E so people could remember it more easily. And I was like, thanks, buddy, that's a great idea. And so the bite model was created.

Steven Hassan [00:36:47] And it really is like a laundry list of different variables in these four dimensions that I believe not every destructive group does every single thing. And there are good groups that do some of the things, but they don't do all of the things.

Steven Hassan [00:37:05] But with this lens, the control of behavior, control of information, control of thoughts, and control of emotions, one can then have a handy way of sorting. Now I see you have it on the screen. One can have a toolbox for evaluating anything that you encounter, whether it's a relationship with a woman or a man or a work situation with a company or a multi level marketing group, or literally anything. And you can see it later. You'll show the influence continuum. You'll see it's on the unhealthy side or it's on the healthy side.

Steven Hassan [00:37:53] And that's a lot of my hope in doing this podcast and in giving lectures and interviews is I want to empower everyone on the planet to understand how the mind works and how to protect themselves from undue influence, which is a legal term for an exploitative relationship where someone with more power is taking advantage of someone with less power.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] I love it. All right, so what we're going to do now is we're going to just dig into, we're going to go deep. Because what I want you to do is describe what cults do. And our intent is for Mormons and post Mormons cults. BUZZER oh, no, listen, I'll use the word because you know and I know you and I talked about not using the word cult. Here's what I. Here's what I thought about.

Steven Hassan [00:38:49] I'm teasing.

John Dehlin [00:38:50] Okay, thank you. By framing this as how to help the Mormon Church improve learning from cults, the context isn't framing the Mormon Church as a cult, but instead it's like, hey, everyone wants to do better. The Mormon Church can do better. And so here's what cults do now. Mormon Church don't do those things. Right. That's kind of the. That's the context.

Steven Hassan [00:39:13] Great.

John Dehlin [00:39:14] Also, and I'll share a slide that I shared previously to our listeners is that our intent with this interview is to find ways that John Dehlin and Mormon Stories podcast can improve. We want to help Mormons in their faith transition process, their experiences, because to the extent that they've been exposed, and let's just be clear, theoretically, the Mormon Church could be fine. But let's just say a local bishop, a local congregational leader could run his ward like a cult, right? Or a mission president out in the mission field, there could be a ton of great mission presidents, but maybe a mission president runs his mission like a cult.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] We want to help Mormons process their faith transition in that context, even if we're not calling the church a cult itself. And then we want to help people who've even left the church, in or out, learn principles of healthy living, of leadership, principles of organizational principles.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] And we want everyone to just see the church for what it is and again, help the church improve. So that's the context of what we're doing. So let's dive in. If you'll talk about. Can I interrupt you for one second, please?

The BITE Model: Behavior and Information Control

Steven Hassan [00:40:32] Just say that over the decades and in my influence continuum, I've gotten to a place where I talk about benign cults or positive cults and destructive cults. So, for example, I was interviewed by a writer who wrote a book called the Cult of Mac.

Steven Hassan [00:40:59] And I'm in that book because since 1982, I've only had Mac computers and I. I have iPhones and everything else. Or some people have talked about my Jewish temple as a cult because we hug people when we see each other and we're close to each other. Not everybody hugs, but we're a tight knit group of people. But people are free to come and go. Nobody tells us what we can read and what we can't read. People often are questioning authority, and it's totally cool, you know what I'm saying? So I just wanted to add that little twist in there that the word cult doesn't, for me at least, doesn't always mean destructive cult.

Steven Hassan [00:41:48] So I think what you're saying is you want to explain what destructive cults are about and how the Mormon Church doesn't want to have any of those attributes.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] I love it. I love it. That's right. And let me just pause. Stephen, as soon as you're done, I want my listeners to know what we're going to do is bring on a live panel of LDS folk. And what we want to do is. I'm getting an echo.

Steven Hassan [00:42:14] Can you mute.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] What I want to do is bring on a panelist of other people and discuss Mormonism from this context with me. No, no, no. You have to leave. And so I'll be bringing on other people.

Steven Hassan [00:42:37] I want to see the video, though, when you.

John Dehlin [00:42:40] Absolutely, yeah. But I want to let people know what they can do. Tim is going to post a link to our Zoom call, and we're going to bring panelists on. So what you have to do is download Zoom, click on the link, and you'll be able to Participate in this conversation. So if you want to join the post debrief of Steven's conversation, go to the comments download Zoom us download. Click on the zoom link and we'll have that conversation. Okay, so without any. Oh, go ahead, Steven.

Steven Hassan [00:43:15] No, I was just saying what a great idea.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] Yeah. And we'll share it with you for sure afterwards.

Steven Hassan [00:43:20] Great.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] So let's, without any further ado, tell us about behavior control. And you can kind of use this slide as a goal. Now remember, let's try and time our comments so that we go about 30 minutes on the Bite model. So we'll basically have to give about seven minutes to the B, to the I to the T and the E. And I've got a couple slides per. And so, you know, think about that pacing as we go. Is that okay?

Steven Hassan [00:43:53] I don't have a watch in front

John Dehlin [00:43:55] of me, but I'll help you take.

Steven Hassan [00:43:57] No. So I mean, you have it written out. Do you want me to go through each.

John Dehlin [00:44:03] Yeah, yeah. Just kind of describe what cults do for behavior.

Steven Hassan [00:44:08] So again, so I guess I want to start with just because I want to add to what you already have up and will be presenting. You know, developmental psychology assumes when you're an infant, your parent needs to make all the decisions for you, needs to control everything in order to help the infant grow up. And the assumption in developmental psychology is that the goal is by 18 to 21, you're an adult where you should be able to be thinking for yourself with a locus of control is within you and you have a good relationship with yourself and you have skills to navigate, social skills, intellectual skills, etc.

Steven Hassan [00:44:58] And so when people are hearing about behavior control, understand you need to control your kids behavior. You don't want them running out into the street and they need to eat and they need to sleep and all that good stuff.

Steven Hassan [00:45:13] Where the problem comes in for me with destructive, unhealthy groups is the unhealthy raising of children. Whether it's corporal punishment, which is overwhelming evidence, is not a good thing. It's very traumatizing, does not promote secure attachment or the indoctrination of phobias, which I know is the E, John, in the bite model, but I just wanted to mention it here and you know, ideally the destructive groups. The model of destructive groups in my model was the moon cloud that I was in, but I've since applied it to literally thousands of other organizations that I never knew existed. But people read my book and said, hey, you were describing my group.

Steven Hassan [00:46:11] So these are themes of the Bite model, like regulating physical environment. And just remember there's a continuum. And depending on where you are inside the organization, there can be less control or more control. I have another graphic in combating of a pyramid. And then circles emanating from the base of the pyramid of what I call fringe members.

Steven Hassan [00:46:40] So the control of reality when you're at the base or emanating outside that base is going to be much less extreme than if you're in the, in the pyramid itself or in the hierarchy. There's much more regimentation and much more control.

Steven Hassan [00:47:00] The theme with destructive cults is they don't want you to grow up. They don't want you to be independent, individuated adults. They want you to be dependent and obedient. That's the theme of behavior control. And that's the goal of behavior control in my opinion, to make. Make people who are suppress their own will, their own conscience, their own heart, their own creativity in service of the ideology and the power structure.

Steven Hassan [00:47:41] So within that there's everything from sleep manipulation. I was sleeping three to four hours a night. I was told Armageddon was going to happen any moment, that we had to harvest the right souls. I was told to drop out of college and quit my job and donate my bank account and move into the center. I was told what I could eat, what I couldn't eat. I had my hair cut off. I was put in a three piece suit, which was not what I was into at 19 years of age in college I was even asked, you know, if I love God more than my poetry.

Steven Hassan [00:48:26] I was a creative writing major in college and they used the story of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. And they literally said, we think your Isaac is your poetry, Steven, you love God more than your poetry. And they asked me to throw it out and I threw it in the garbage. And unlike the biblical story where Isaac wasn't killed, I never got my poetry back. But from a destructive mind control perspective, it was a powerful offering up of who I was prior to the group, in submission to the cult identity that was dependent and obedient to the group.

Steven Hassan [00:49:10] And that's another key theme in my work that I describe as a mental health professional, that it's almost like a dissociative disorder is going on with people in mind control cults where they have their real thoughts and then the group thoughts and their real feelings and the group feelings and the group identity suppresses who the person really is. And this is especially true in the case of people who are gay. For example, if they're in a homophobic organization that says God doesn't love gays and it's this abhorrent sex, sin, etc. People are in a bind where they're constantly feeling a pressure to deny their ontological, their existential self, which I think is horrible.

Steven Hassan [00:50:04] John, you know that I'm a human rights guy. I believe in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And if there's anybody in the Mormon church that wants to see a doctrine that Steven believes in, it's like, read the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because that's pretty close to spot on. Everything that I am working towards.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] Absolutely.

Steven Hassan [00:50:35] How am I doing with the bite model? Do I need to go on?

John Dehlin [00:50:38] No, that's good. So let's. So you've talked about regulating the physical reality, financial manipulation. Go ahead and read. You can read through these bullets and talk about that. Just briefly comment about them if you want.

Steven Hassan [00:50:52] So I was told who I could live with. I had to ask permission for any major decision. I think that may be the next slide. I was told what to wear, what I could eat. I did a lot of fasts with just water to purify myself from sin. I turned over my bank account. I had no vacation time. I worked seven days a week. I was praying maybe two to three hours a day and reading the Bible and reading the doctrine of the Moonies called the divine principle. And if I wanted to go see my sick mother, I had to ask permission. And if I was told that, you know, you're needed here, Steven, pray for your mom. I wouldn't visit my mother. And that's another consistent theme around behavior control that you, you can't do what you feel is important for you to do unless you get approval from someone above you.

John Dehlin [00:51:58] Right. Okay, so that covers. That kind of covers. Slide 1.

Steven Hassan [00:52:02] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:52:03] Regulating diet and food, regulating sex, regulating

Steven Hassan [00:52:07] appearance with hair sex for a second. So I was 19 years old and I was programmed that all women were evil. I was programmed in my cult that Eve seduced Adam sexually after she was raped by Lucifer and therefore all women were trying to rape me.

Steven Hassan [00:52:31] Any self pleasuring or masturbation was a terrible sin. I never did that. In two and a half years of membership, I had two nocturnal emissions, which I had a fast and take cold showers after. And when I tell people I was 19 to 22, like the height of male hormonal activity, I was just suppressing all of that energy, all that natural stuff that was so important in my maturation and it just was so unhealthy. And it took me a year after I got out of the group of counseling and therapy to be able to kiss a woman and not have all of the programming from the cult in my head. And it was so liberating to be able to, like, be normal again.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] I love it. Okay. And of course, lots of indoctrination and rituals and permission required for major decisions. Let's go to the next slide. I'll read them and then you could talk about them. So thoughts, feelings and activities reported to superiors. Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors. Discouraging individuals. Huge. Discouraging individualism. Encouraging groupthink. Rigid rules and regulations. Punishment, sometimes even physical punishment. Threatening harm to family or friends.

Steven Hassan [00:54:05] When I started helping sex trafficking survivors and labor trafficking survivors, I felt like I had to add it to the bite model, even though I know it. Most of the groups that I work with do not do these extremes. There's a cult that's in the news a lot lately called Nixium, where women were being branded near their genitals with the initials of the cult leader, Keith Ranieri.

Steven Hassan [00:54:34] But that's more the exception than the rule. And then if you leave a pimp or a trafficker or some of these groups, they will literally threaten to harm your family or friends to kill them. In some cases, again, the trafficking is about raping or being raped.

Steven Hassan [00:54:55] The number one thing, as I was saying earlier about behavior control, is to instill dependency and obedience. If you have conscience that says, no, I can't do this, but the rules and regulations say you have to do this in a destructive, unhealthy group, they make you do this. And for me, John, I think we may have touched on this when we chatted earlier this week. For me, in my life of faith, however you want to understand the Bible and the Garden of Eden story of Adam and Eve and God. God didn't make Adam and Eve robots or mind control slaves. Like, if almighty God wanted that, I sure God could have created Adam and Eve to be dependent, robotic slaves.

Thought Control, Emotion Control, and Healthy Groups

Steven Hassan [00:55:49] God wanted to give them free will deliberately, is my understanding. And therefore any group that comes along that says, we know what God wants and you need to be dependent and obedient, give up your free will is going against the great metaphor of the Bible?

John Dehlin [00:56:13] Absolutely. Okay, so we've got, let's see, we've got discouraging individualism, imposing rules and regulations, punishing, threatening harm to family and friends, sometimes rape, either forcing individuals to rape or be raped, dependency and obedience, and sometimes corporal punishment.

Steven Hassan [00:56:35] So ISIS does forced people to rape for Allah and just terrible terrorist cult, basically, but different religion Islam. But as the munis is a perversion of Christianity, ISIS and is a perversion of Islam in life.

John Dehlin [00:57:04] Absolutely. Okay, so that covers behavior. Do you feel like we covered it in a good overview?

Steven Hassan [00:57:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:10] Okay.

Steven Hassan [00:57:11] I'm open to people, you know, improving this, by the way, if they're absolutely left off or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] So let's do this. I'm going to read the bullets and then you comment about the bullets. Is that okay, great. So the second one's information and we'll do the first slide first. So deception, deliberately withholding information, distorting information to make it more acceptable, systematically lying to the cult member.

Steven Hassan [00:57:38] So I just want to emphasize that information is the food we use to think. And if we don't have truthful information, our minds are being controlled, our minds are being manipulated. So this is huge. And I just want to add that in terms of recruiting new members, like, I know there's a big difference between people born into a group versus people who are out doing missionary work recruiting people. But especially if you're recruiting people, the ethical group has an obligation to not do high pressure sales techniques, but to disclose honestly what's going on. So to pick the Jehovah's Witnesses for a minute, which is a group that when I wrote Combating initially I didn't think of as a destructive cult.

Steven Hassan [00:58:37] And then I started hearing from hundreds of former members who loved Combating. What I didn't understand is when they go door to door and they say, we'd like to study the Bible with you, they're using their own New world translation of the Bible that no theologian, Christian or Jewish admits is a legitimate translation and an accurate translation of the Bible.

Steven Hassan [00:59:04] So every person that is approached by a Jehovah's Witness is, is being lied to and manipulated, thinking they're following the Bible, but it's hearing what the Watchtower Society wants them to hear. So it's absolutely critical. And I also want to comment, and I hope this is okay, John, but a number of years ago I was invited to speak at an Ex Mormon foundation conference to present my Bite Model. And I listened to a man who had been teaching at the, I guess the LDS Institute, and he taught a class called Lying for the Deception as a Management Tool of the LDS Church. And I listened to his presentation and he blew my mind.

Steven Hassan [01:00:00] He started with Joseph Smith and he ended with a recording where he's saying to his boss, so you're telling me I have to lie to my students? And his boss said, yes, that's correct, otherwise you're fired. And he said, well, then I quit, and I'm forgetting the name of the man, but it was the most glaring thing for my education about the Mormon Church of deception. Like, if they're, if they're making their teachers lie to their students, is really

John Dehlin [01:00:34] something off, that's a problem. Yeah. Okay. Minimizing and discouraging access to non cult sources of information, including Internet, tv, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, other media, critical information, former members keeping members so busy they don't have time to think and investigate. Control through cell phone with texting calls and Internet tracking. Go ahead. Right.

Steven Hassan [01:01:05] So information, again, is the food, the tools we use to think. And all destructive groups program their members to not trust group critics or former members. Like, in the mind of a good member that's obedient, there's no legitimate reason to ever leave. And so if you've left and you're no longer in the faith, there's something inherently wrong with you. You're being controlled by Satan.

Steven Hassan [01:01:41] There's all numbers of labels, but there's no, like, why don't you hear what they have to say and think about it, whether it makes sense for yourself? And that's really the essence of my work. Helping families to get loved ones involved with destructive groups to take a timeout, step back, and actually learn about the bite model and mind control and actually look at the material and listen to the stories of former members and critics and make up your own mind like you're an adult. Make up your own mind, whether this is the God you believe in or this is an organization that you believe deserves your time and energy and money or not, so.

Steven Hassan [01:02:30] And then, of course, just keeping people busy is huge. And I'm just seeing a lot of. A lot of mind controllers. And I also work on cases where a woman's controlling a man and isolating him from his family and friends and taking him over, or a man doing the same to a woman and they're constantly texting and constantly tracking where they're going, etc. And it's just not a healthy relationship at all. And that's what we call a one on one mini cult or micro cult.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Yeah. And just this outsider, I think, just this idea of we tell insiders something different than what we tell outsiders. There are different levels where the more advanced you get in the organization, kind of like Scientology, the more access you get to information and leaders kind of keeping things to themselves that aren't generally available outside. Is that right?

Steven Hassan [01:03:32] Yes. So it's huge. The insider doctrine and outsider doctrine. I think a legitimate organization, there's one truth. So it doesn't matter where you are in the pyramid or inside or outsider. This is the facts, this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is our mission statement.

Steven Hassan [01:03:55] And we'll tell you what we think you're ready to know or what you're willing to swallow. I have to tell you a quick story in the Moonies because I've heard about this in hundreds of other groups, but when I was being taught to be a lecturer, I was told that, you know, Steven, people are spiritual babies. And you can't feed a baby steak, they will choke on it. You got to feed it formula or applesauce. So you can't tell people that we believe father's the Messiah, you know, because they won't join. So you have to feed them what you think they're ready to swallow. And only when they're ready, feed them, you know, food, you know, more substantive things of what we believe. And of course I believe that when, when I was a true believer.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] Yeah, very good. Okay, let's go to the next slide for information control. Spying on other members using cult generated information and propaganda and then unethical use of confession. Talk about those.

Steven Hassan [01:05:05] So the characteristics of a destructive group. And I don't know if any of your listeners have read George Orwell's 1984. He was writing about communism, this idea that Big Brother is spying on you or using in the Chinese communist system having spies where everybody is made to feel like if you don't report your brother or your sister, if they're violating a rule, then you're collaborating with Satan. And so people are urged for the sake of God and for the sake of the mother church or the organization. The spy. Of course, in Hitler, political Nazi cult, people were turning in their parents because they were saying bad things about Hitler and other things like that.

Steven Hassan [01:05:59] And then in terms of the extensive use of cult generated information, I mean the wealthier groups can just do amazing propaganda like glossy magazines, TV shows, radio shows, having celebrities they can afford to create the illusion of how wonderful the group is, how it's the fastest growing group on the planet. I know at least 100 destructive groups that say they're the fastest growing religion on the planet.

Steven Hassan [01:06:34] And then just a lot of propaganda where they're taking great sayings of great people out of context for their own purposes, songs, music, videos, etc. And then the confession is just about using private information, like part of the Healthy thing about being an adult is that you have different levels of what you're willing to share with others.

Steven Hassan [01:07:08] And of course, if you're an intimate marriage, you want to share with your partner those feelings. But in a mind control group, there's this feeling from the top that we should know everything. There shouldn't be any secrets in people's lives. We should know everything. And it's so unhealthy. I think having healthy boundaries is really important for good mental health.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] I love it. Okay, so we've covered information. Now let's go to thought. I'll read the big bullets. And then you just chime in. Requiring members to internalize the group's doctrine as truth. Changing a person's name and identity using loaded language and cliches, encouraging only good and proper thoughts, hypnotic techniques and manipulation of memories. Go ahead.

Steven Hassan [01:08:01] Lots there. So again, cognitive dissonance theory, our thoughts and our beliefs are so. They're kind of the filters we use for how to navigate reality. And the thing about an ideology that says we are the sacred science, we know the secrets of the universe, and if you adopt that as reality instead of this is one theory or the one map, it's really problematic because then you get stuck in that, using that as your filter.

Steven Hassan [01:08:43] The destructive groups often have the black and white all or nothing good versus evil grid where things are very binary and very polarized. Thought stopping is a behavior modification technique that can actually be used to help people in an ethical way or in an unethical way.

Steven Hassan [01:09:07] The way destructive groups use it is unethical in my opinion. And the way it works is this. I'll give use myself and the munis as an example. If I would be listening to a lecture or some indoctrination of the munis, and I disagreed with it. I was told that that was an evil spirit trying to invade my mind, it was a satanic spirit, and that I needed to chant, pray, or do something to center myself to get rid of the satanic evil energy that was trying to invade me. So in that process, my cult self was doing this automatic thought blocking and stopping technique.

Steven Hassan [01:09:58] But in reality, I was deprived of the ability for me to make my own decisions and think through a thought analytically and critically. And it's a really big problem when a group programs people with these thought stopping techniques. Some groups will use speaking in tongues, meditation. There's all kinds of different techniques, but we need to be able to analyze and think through and take opposing points of view and listen to the facts and judge them and use our heart and our critical thinking to guide us. Because maybe we need to change our beliefs. Maybe we need to shift and not accept the authority as the ultimate authority.

Steven Hassan [01:10:53] Maybe things are different than we thought. And loaded language is huge because there are terms that only have meaning within the group itself. So they serve a function of making people feel closer to each other because they're using the same loaded terms.

Steven Hassan [01:11:12] But that also is what Lifton referred to in his book thought terminating cliches where the words become like a label where your thoughts stop because, well, that's what that is. Example in the Moonies would be a chapter two problem.

Steven Hassan [01:11:36] What is a chapter? Well, in the Divine Principle, chapter two is about the fall of man and sexual problems. So any issue between men or women or gay or whatever was a chapter two problem. And any problem with relationships, horizontal or vertical, were keen, able relationships. And in the Moonies, you had to submit to your able figure and mindlessly follow whatever they told you to do.

Steven Hassan [01:12:08] Some groups change names. They all change your identity to be that group's identity. In my case, I did not have a name change. Let me just talk about hypnosis for a minute. Hypnosis is not sleep. And there's a lot of misunderstandings about what it is. It's actually a very naturalistic state where we're very absorbed, kind of in the zone where other things are irrelevant. And we're so concentrated in that zone that we're not analyzing what's happening.

Steven Hassan [01:12:48] So when people talk about sports and every shot they take is going in, if it's in basketball or golf or whatever, they're in a kind of hypnotic trance state. They're not thinking analytically about what's happening, you know, in the world. They're like in the game.

Steven Hassan [01:13:10] So the thing about hypnotic states is that very. I can't think of any destructive groups that are. That say, we're gonna hypnotize you now. But they'll often do visualizations or guided visualizations or how do you do deep breathing, or have you repeating a phrase or a meditative statement or something like that. And while you're doing that, again, it's your critical thinking goes offline. So your mind is more receptive to ideas being implanted, essentially. I've done many workshops on yes, and I thought about.

John Dehlin [01:13:58] Originally, I didn't include this as something that I thought about, but if you're in a. Let's just say you're in a religious experience and there's music or there's a boring talk or there's some sort of presentation you're watching that lulls you into kind of boredom or a trance like state of just kind of like boredom. That can be what you mean by hypnosis.

Steven Hassan [01:14:22] Boredom is a very effective way to induce trance states. By the way, I'm going to take a minute to just, just say a few more things about hypnosis just because I thought of something that is relevant for LDS folks.

Steven Hassan [01:14:38] So with hypnosis you can do we have five basic senses. Seeing and hearing and tasting and smelling and touching. And in hypnotic language, one can have a positive hallucination or a negative hallucination. Hallucination in any of those five senses. What do I mean by hallucination? It means, for example, if I was going to positively hallucinate a dog here in my office, maybe my last dog, Flame, I'm in a mildly hypnotic state because I'm visualizing something that isn't there. That's what's known as a positive hallucination. Making something there that isn't there or hearing your favorite song come into your mind. That would be an auditory hallucination.

Steven Hassan [01:15:34] Negative hallucination is where something is there and you make it disappear. Which I frequently have to do when I'm doing media interviews and things. I make the cameras disappear. So and not get too nervous and just talk with the interviewer and such. I'm actually imagining, John, that we're together versus me staring into the camera of my computer.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] You're doing great, Steven. You're doing great. Thanks.

Steven Hassan [01:16:01] But what I wanted to say about the LDS folks that I've worked with is they talked about a burning in their bosom as a proof experience for them. And I just want to raise the question about hypnosis and experience and is this a sign that the Mormon Church is legitimate or is this replicable in other contexts with other types of phenomena? And I've seen this over and over again with many people from many different groups where they. Where I'll ask someone. So what made you decide that this was the group you wanted to join? Well, I saw the golden light around the guru and I talked about positive hallucination and I talked about how he was listening to meditation tapes that suggested and put the idea in his head that when he met the perfect master, he would see a golden halo around the leader.

Steven Hassan [01:17:06] We can have those types of experiences and attribute them to spiritual causes when in fact they're human. A question that may be humanly generated. So I just wanted to add that one in there too, John.

John Dehlin [01:17:25] I love it. Okay, well, we've only got you. You've got seven minutes and you have to leave. Is that right?

Steven Hassan [01:17:31] I have another client.

John Dehlin [01:17:34] Okay.

Steven Hassan [01:17:35] So yes, I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [01:17:36] So let's, I'm going to just. So thought control, thought stopping, which is teaching people to stop negative thoughts. Rejecting rational analysis and critical thinking, constructive criticism, forbidding critical questions about leader doctrine or policy. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil or not useful. Installing a new map of reality. Those are all elements of thought control. I want to get to the continuum really quickly, so let's just talk about emotion control in two minutes and then we'll talk about the continuum.

Steven Hassan [01:18:16] So on the one hand you're made to feel super special, part of the elite, part of the chosen that has this glorious future whether you're going to heaven or you're going to outer space or whatever. But the reality on a day to day basis, because of the rigid rules and because of the high standards that the group has for people. When I say high, I mean not human standards. People experience tons of guilt and shame and fear.

Steven Hassan [01:18:49] And for me, healthy groups, particularly spiritual organizations, should be based on love, unconditional love, compassion, kindness, charity, peace, and not on guilt and fear programming. So that's the short one. And I'll just say that phobia indoctrination is the universal destructive mind control technique. In my research. Research, it's the implantation in people's minds that if they leave the group, terrible things are going to happen to them.

Steven Hassan [01:19:28] And I have four pages single spaced in my freedom of mind book in Chapter 10 of the Most common phobias. But the gist of it, John, is that when you have a phobia you can't visualize yourself out and happy and fulfilled. You can only generate negative scenarios. If I leave, I'm going to be miserable. A drug addict, commit suicide, become a prostitute, be homeless. You can't imagine, oh, I'm going to be, have a great job, great friends, travel the world, have a marriage, etc. Etc. And the minute people are able to meet former members who are happy and fulfilled and doing all those things. It's an immediate threat to the phobia programming which is cycling back why Destructive Environments program members against former members, to not trust them, like them, shun them, disaffiliate with them. But I think love is stronger than mind control and I think truth is stronger than lies.

John Dehlin [01:20:43] Hopefully. Usually we hope that's true.

Steven Hassan [01:20:46] Well, that's my operating belief system.

John Dehlin [01:20:48] I like it. Yeah. So extreme emotional highs and lows. You mentioned love bombing, praise.

Steven Hassan [01:20:56] You mentioned Love bombing is about effusive praise designed to flatter the person in order to get them to do what you want them to do.

John Dehlin [01:21:06] Yeah. And again, this idea of if you leave, I once had someone tell me a cult is any organization that won't let you leave with your dignity intact. And so scared of leaving, you'll lose your salvation, you won't be able to raise your kids, you won't be a moral person. How could anyone be healthy and. And leave their religion? Okay, so let's end. I love this influence continuum slide. And it's got three for those who are listening. It's got three sort of horizontal columns for individuals, then for leaders, and then for organizations. And I just think this is a roadmap for individual health, for being a healthy leader and, and for being a healthy organization. So would you spend our last few minutes just talking us through this continuum?

Steven Hassan [01:22:01] Sure. Again, the healthy side recognizes that people are born with authentic selves and that indeed, I believe healthy parenting is really recognizing your child as a unique being and that you're a steward to help them grow up to be themselves versus on the destructive side, to be an extension of your ego or a clone of who you are. The healthy side of parenting is really recognizing that authentic self. And it's love based. That's unconditional, conditional love is based on performance, doing what the group wants you to do, do.

Steven Hassan [01:22:48] In the healthy thing. I believe we have a conscience that guides us. We know if we're doing something wrong. I mean, an easy guide with ethics is would you want someone to do it to you? And if you wouldn't, don't do it to anyone else. That's a simple one. But in the case of destructive groups, the doctrine is everything you have to believe no matter what, no matter what your conscience tells you. And I did see your TEDx talk, John, and you were talking about your conscience and your crisis of meeting a gay person that you really liked who was very helpful to you. And holy mackerel, I have this doctrine that's telling me that there's something wrong with them, but no, they're real human beings.

Steven Hassan [01:23:38] It was an elegant, for me, demonstration of this point, but going down the continuum, because I know we're running out of time, having free will and the ability to critically think you need to have other sources of information.

Steven Hassan [01:23:58] What I'm seeing now in the Internet is just an incredible amount of search engine manipulation by wealthy groups to shut down negative information or former members or sites are being shut down that wealthy groups try to sue and the destructive groups just want to control, control, control, make everybody do what they say is right. And for leaders, they have to be accountable, they have to be transparent, they have to be honest.

Steven Hassan [01:24:33] They need to empower the people around them. And healthy organizations have checks and balances. And that means having outsiders to reality test important decisions and not just having insiders who have a vested interest in the status quo and keeping things going the way they've always done. And in the case of means, creating the ends in the Moonies, I was always told, you know, right now we have to lie because Satan's the God of this world. But later, when we have the Garden of Eden on Earth, everyone will tell the truth. But when I got out, I realized you're not going to have a loving, truthful world based on lies and manipulation.

Steven Hassan [01:25:20] And so this ends. Justifying the means is another big reason red flag of a destructive organization. And you need to have the freedom to leave. If a group or situation is stifling you or suffocating you, you need to have permission within yourself and ultimately within the organization to say, we're going to miss you. We wish you would stay, but we wish you well.

Steven Hassan [01:25:48] And the unhealthy groups are, you know, in this black and white, all or nothing. If you're in our group, you're in the truth. You're with God. And if you leave, then, you know, you're lost. So that's my quickie.

John Dehlin [01:26:03] I love it. Well, Steven Hassan, it's rare for me to sort of be really overwhelmed with, not just be overwhelmed by someone's brilliance and experience in this domain because I've been doing it for so long. But I've also been very isolated. But it's also very rare for me to be so overwhelmed personally and organizationally.

Closing Reflections and Resources

John Dehlin [01:26:29] I'm reworking all the content for my workshops and retreats based on just the little that I've learned from you. So I have a request, Stephen. The world needs more of you. And I need to figure out, and I don't mean that to flatter you, I think you've got some answers that can be transformative for our world. And honestly, because the word cult gets used to, I think there's just a lot of people that turn you off. I listened to your presentation at the Ex Mormon foundation years ago, but because the word cult came up, I'm like, well, that's. I don't want to associate with that.

John Dehlin [01:27:02] That's too insulting. But the truth is, the wisdom in here is profound. So what can people do to help you. And what can we do to get more of you, Steven?

Steven Hassan [01:27:12] Well, first of all, I'm very flattered and I was helped 43 years ago to wake up, and I'm honored that my work has helped you and they help many more people. I'm actually in a doctoral program right now because I want to do quantitative research on the bite model and the influence continuum to show it as a scientifically validated instrument.

Steven Hassan [01:27:39] So I have a nonprofit called freedom from undue influence.org so if anyone is interested in doing research or anyone would like to contribute. So we can hire some research assistants to do this, because I really would like to change the legal system and get the concept of undue influence updated to 2018.

Steven Hassan [01:28:04] And other than that, I would love to find young, passionate, inspiration, intelligent mental health professionals and others who want to learn what I'm doing. Because I'm 64 and, you know, there's not enough of hours in the day to do what needs to get done. The work is, as you say, planetarily important.

Steven Hassan [01:28:26] North Korea is the quintessential mind control, dictatorship, political cult, by the way, and the people there are just imprisoned. So the work is great. And I'm open to doing teaching with you, John. I look forward to meeting you in person and thank you for all your good work and for this invitation.

John Dehlin [01:28:50] I want to hold you to that. So our goal is how do we meet in person? Maybe we bring you to Utah, maybe I come to Massachusetts, maybe both. And let's teach together. Let's do webinars, whatever. Whatever would be beneficial to you. I'm all in.

Steven Hassan [01:29:07] Yeah. And I. People fly from all over the world to work with me for a week, intensively to help themselves or their family. So that's how I pay the bills, is my individual therapy work. But I would love to train more people and I look forward to meeting you and working with each other.

John Dehlin [01:29:35] I muted myself. Sorry. All right, everyone. The book is Combating Cult Mind Control with Stephen Hasson. Stephen, what's the website again? What are the two websites?

Steven Hassan [01:29:43] Freedomofmind.com and freedom from undoinfluence.org and of course, I have Twitter, which is cult expert, and Facebook and all the other things that are on my website.

John Dehlin [01:29:58] Alrighty. Thank you, Stephen Hasson. It's great to have you. You can take off and we appreciate it. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org but I sing this

Steven Hassan [01:30:22] song just because I hope you'll be wiser than your daddy was.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] Wiser is a song written and performed by Mormon Stories listener Russell Ash, a message intended for his children to have love and kindness be their guiding star.

Steven Hassan [01:30:46] Sa.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.