What do Spanish psychologists know about cults?
This text summarizes a study led by Miguel Perlado between 2016 and 2017 within the framework of the Working Group on Cultic Drifts of the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia (COPC). The study was conducted across all professional psychology colleges in Spain to assess licensed psychologists’ technical knowledge of the cult phenomenon.
Cultic Relationships as a Form of Psychological Maltreatment and Subjugation
This text is a summary of the presentation delivered by Miguel Perlado at the International Cultic Studies Association Annual Conference (Trieste, Italy, July 4–6, 2013), featuring a comparative analysis between intimate partner abuse and cultic abuse from a clinical and psychopathological perspective.
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,
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;