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NonfictionSnapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change (1978)
A scan of the 1st edition is free to borrow on archive: https://archive.org/details/snapping00floc
Second edition is on Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0964765004/
Has anyone here read this book? I'm about a third of the way through and it's interesting. It's mostly about how new age cults in the 50s-70s were developed through an abuse of modern psychotherapy techniques, which is a little too relevant to the trans issue. Also the start of Chapter 6 rang a little too true to me and I had to share it:
IN ALL THE WORLD, there is nothing quite so impenetrable as a human mind snapped shut with bliss. No call to reason, no emotional appeal can get through its armor of self-proclaimed joy.
We talked with dozens of individuals in this state of mind: cult members, group therapy graduates, born-again Christians, some Transcendental Meditators. After a while, it seemed very much like dancing to a broken record. We would ask a question, and the individual would spin round and round in a circle of dogma. If we tried to interrupt, he or she would simply pick right up again or go back to the beginning and start over.
Soon we began to realize that what we were watching went much deeper. These people were not simply incapable of carrying on a genuine conversation, they were completely mired in their unthinking, unfeeling, uncomprehending states. Whether cloistered in cults or passing blindly through the world, they were impervious to the pain of parents, spouses, friends and lovers. How do you reach such people? Can they be made to think and feel again? Is there any way to reunite them with their former personalities and the world around them?
ETA: Also for some context on some of the interview subjects within the book here are two free documentaries, one on and by the 4-year-old evangelist preacher Marjoe Gortner and one on the original de-programmer Ted Patrick (the authors of this book are actually in that Ted Patrick one)
When people haven’t been reasoned into a position, it is impossible to reason them out of it.
We do understand how to reach cult members (some of the time). But that just doesn't happen with strangers over a single conversation.
You might be interested in Fear, Love, and Brainwashing which explores these extreme personality changes in cults (and domestic violence), from the perspective of Attachment Theory. And it goes further, to thread a direct link between the two: how the all-encompassing control dynamic of a dyadic (two partner) relationship can morph into group psychosis. Ever notice how many cult leaders are really just after sex? These cult leaders are abusers who leap from victim to victim and surround themselves with enablers and useful idiots.
I'll check that book out, but actually if you read chapter 6 you'll see a lot of examples of Ted Patrick snapping strangers out of cults over a single conversation