Margaret Thaler Singer, Expert on Cults

Margaret Thaler Singer, a Berkeley psychologist best known for her research on cults and her efforts to educate therapists and the public on the particular dangers of cults, just passed away. The San Francisco Chronicle's obituary can be found here: Margaret Singer - expert on brainwashing.

That article includes a succinct quotation from her on the basic problem, "There are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people."

It also mentions that she revised her best-known book, Cults in Our Midst (1995), co-authored with Janja Lalich, to include information on cults and terrorism. In her books, she discusses ways in which cults use religious practices that may be common and not at all dangerous in ordinary contexts and misuse them to make people subject to coercive persuasion.

For instance, excessive meditation can not only make people susceptible to manipulation. It can cause lasting problems, such as recurring feelings of depersonalization and what she called "derealization" or "feeling removed from one's body or as if one were watching oneself." She calls these flashbacks "involuntary meditation."

Singer's work on cults is valuable, among other reasons, because she takes a secular and psychological perspective on what the actual experience of cult members and victims has been, based on actual case work and professional studies. She didn't use her work as a vehicle to advance a particular religious agenda. In fact, she stressed in her book that it was a mistake to see cults as a religious phenomenon.

<< [I]t is not at all the case that all cults are religious. A cult can be formed around any content: politics, religion, commerce, self-improvement techniques, health fads, the stuff of science fiction, psychology, outer-space phenomena, meditation, martial arts, environmental life-styles, and so on. Yet the misconception that all cults are religious has left many unaware not only of the variety of cult contents but also of the plethora of cults, large and small, that has spread throughout our society. >>

She was active in the anti-cult organization American Family Foundation (AFF).