Myths and False Ideas About “Cults”
Material taken from a presentation delivered by Miguel Perlado, founder and president of the AIIAP, at the 4º Encuentro Nacional sobre Sectas (Valencia, 2018), examining the common myths surrounding cults and cultic attachment.
An Account of Psychotherapeutic Work with Ex-Cult/Cult Members using the Three-Step-Model
The category, “Religious or Spiritual Problem” can be found in the DSM-IV: V62.89 (Z71.8) under “Additional Conditions that May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention” with the following short description: “This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of spiritual values that may not necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution”. Normally the “loss or the questioning of faith” correlate with the withdrawal from a religious community,
Possible Predisposition for Cult Involvement
The contribution to empirical research of a possible predisposition for cult involvement is rarely available on an international scale. The current observations, experiences and statements made to this theme are indeed countless but are also often extremely inconsistent. So it is claimed, for example, that many cult members come from dysfunctional families or that a psychopathological disorder was already existent before joining a cult. In opposition to this include those who hold the opinion that cult members come from completely normal, functional and protective families who clearly have no history of psychopathological illness. The proposed work should be ascertained whether
Conceptions of Humanity
The rapid scientific and technological advances of recent centuries have profoundly changed humanity’s understanding of itself. Through their scientific revolutions, Copernicus and Darwin transformed the conception of the human being: “The Earth is not the center of the universe” and “The human being is also only an animal.” Today, the fields in which questions concerning human nature and the need for ethical limits are most intensively debated include biogenetics, where the human genome can be copied and altered; medical ethics, including assisted suicide and preimplantation genetic diagnosis; brain research, which raises the question of how free the human will is;