The Right to Believe Anything vs. Reality-Testing Freedom to believe is only a real freedom if you also have the freedom not to believe. Having the right to believe something carries with it a presupposition of the right to not believe it, too. When recruiters deceptively ensnare people into a closed belief system, it violates informed [...]
Charles Duhigg The "Change Agent" podcast is a five-episode series by The New York Times. It is hosted by Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author of "The Power of Habit" and "Smarter Faster Better." It uses real-life problems to try and solve a surprising story. (When we worked on the podcast [...]
Undue Influence Undermines Autonomy It is completely understandable that people might resist any request to help a person who has been unduly influenced. The person might say, "Why should I? They are an adult. I don't think it is right to interfere with their decision." If the person isn't asking for help, why get involved? Americans [...]
Combating Cult Mind Control For over forty years, I have endeavored to help people understand my own cult experience- being recruited into a front group of the Moonies in 1974 while a student at Queens College in New York. This year, on November 18th, 2018, my book Combating Cult Mind Control will be 30 years [...]
This past weekend, I attended and spoke at a conference at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. This one-day event was sponsored by MeadowHaven, The Protestant Chaplaincy of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Dartmouth Bible Church, and International Cultic Studies Association. The title of my talk was "Spiritual Abuse: Strategies to Help Someone to Exit, Heal and [...]
The knowledge base of the hard sciences including medicine and social psychological research is developing rapidly all over the world. The legal system is constantly being updated to incorporate new information and research. For the law to change, it often is up to diligent attorneys who represent clients who have suffered a harm and expert witnesses [...]
A few days ago, there was an announcement that Justin Bieber abruptly canceled a large portion of his "Purpose" tour dates. Now we hear it might be because of his involvement with Pastor Carl Lentz of Hillsong Church in Montclair. Several articles have been posted that allege that the founder of Hillsong Church had molested at least [...]
I want to share with you the wonderful experience I had attending the 2017 Congress of International Academy of Law and Mental Health (IALMH) in Prague. From July 9-14 I was among over 1500 people from over 100 countries who gathered at this event. Being at the congress was a fantastic experience. I truly learned a [...]
The opioid epidemic in the United States is claiming more lives than ever. Recent data estimates that 59,000 Americans died from drug-related causes in 2016. And, the estimate for 2017 is even higher. Much of this can be attributed to opioid addiction which often starts with dependency on prescribed painkillers that leads to abuse and illegal [...]
With so many topics and areas being covered by the Freedom of Mind blog, we have decided to create and maintain an index of articles for easy reference. I hope that this is helpful to all that visit our site. There is so much more information on our former database driven site which is still [...]
