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We’ve created this infographic resource specifically to alert therapists to the perennial problem facing cult survivors: they often feel they have to educate their therapists about how destructive, authoritarian cults work, and essentially pay their therapist to learn how to help them.

It is with great sadness that I bid farewell to my dear friend, colleague, and mentor Alan Scheflin, who passed away last week at the the age of 81. Alan was a law professor emeritus at Santa Clara University. As a forensic expert, he had a master’s in psychology and counseling, and was a world authority on hypnosis. He had been president of the International Cultic Studies Association, and later on, was on the board of directors.

I first connected him in 1978, when I read his book The Mind Manipulators came out; he lived in San Francisco at taught at Santa Clara Law School at the time. I wrote to him and we became friends. Alan was a deeply analytical person, a progressive who wanted to help people. He was deeply invested in the notion that wrongdoing should be held up to the light, and that people should be held accountable. He was also a master at analyzing things, an absolutely brilliant and amazing man.