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Steven Hassan

Steven Hassan is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Steven Hassan rather than just read about it. In short: Steven Alan Hassan (pronounced ) is an American mental health professional and author who specializes in the area of cults. In his early career, in the late 1970s, he participated in deprogramming, but since then has advocated non-coercive exit counseling.

Steven Hassan — main illustration
Steven Hassan — illustration

Key takeaways

  • Steven Hassan belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Steven Hassan to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Steven Hassan from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Steven Alan Hassan (pronounced ) is an American mental health professional and author who specializes in the area of cults. In his early career, in the late 1970s, he participated in deprogramming, but since then has advocated non-coercive exit counseling. Hassan has written four books on the subject of mind control and is often described in the media as an expert on mind control and cults. Hassan's view of undue influence in such groups is echoed by some scholars with backgrounds in psychology and psychiatry. Some researchers in the sociology of religion are critical of his application of mind-control theory to what they characterise as new religious movements (NRM). Hassan is a former member of the Unification Church. He founded Ex-Moon Inc. in 1979. In 1999, he founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

Early life and Unification Church Hassan was raised in a Jewish family in Queens, New York. At age 19, while pursuing a poetry degree at Queens College, Hassan was recruited into the Unification Church, and was a member for 2+1⁄2 years. Hassan was involved in recruiting, fundraising, and political campaigning for the Unification Church of the United States. He was "a former Unification Church high official" and "a national leader of CARP" (Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, the Unification Church's campus organization). He described living in communal housing and sleeping less than four hours a night. He said that he believed President Richard Nixon was the Archangel and that, during the Watergate scandal, he and other members of the church engaged in prayer and fasting to "prove their loyalty to the president". He surrendered his bank account to the Unification Church, and quit college and his job to work for the organization. Hassan said that "he was ready to kill or die for" Sun Myung Moon. His membership in the church concerned and confused his family. In 1976, after working for two full days without sleep, Hassan fell asleep while driving, resulting in a serious automobile crash that required medical care. Hassan's parents hired "deprogrammers" who seized him from his sister's home and took him to an apartment. After five days of isolation and intensive deprogramming, Hassan became convinced that he had been "brainwashed" by the church. Feeling shame at his gullibility and guilt for his recruitment of others, he decided to "dedicate his life to studying cults and developing strategies to help their members escape." Hassan returned to his Jewish faith after leaving the Unification Church.

Career

Institutions In 1999 Hassan founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. The center is registered as a domestic profit corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Hassan is its president and treasurer. Hassan posts dossiers on the site about organizations he has investigated or received complaints about.

Exit counseling Hassan took part in some deprogrammings of others in the late 1970s, but has been critical of them since 1980 and has instead advocated exit counseling. Hassan's preferred approach, exit counseling, is also a form of family-initiated intervention, but distinguishes itself by allowing the subject to leave at any time and by adopting a non-violent, persuasive approach. In Combatting Cult Mind Control (1988), Hassan writes that although "the non-coercive approach will not work in every case, it has proved to be the option most families prefer. Forcible intervention can be kept as a last resort if all other attempts fail." Michael Langone, a psychologist and advocate for exit counseling, questions Hassan's humanistic counseling approach in a 1995 work. According to Langone, Hassan's "Strategic Intervention Therapy" operates on the assumption that, deep down, all members of "mind control groups" want to get out of the group. In the context of family intervention, the "counselor knows best what the cultist really wants" approach contains the risk of the counselor "manipulating the cultist from point A ("I'll talk to you because my family requested it") to point B ("I want to leave the cult") while mistakenly believing that he is helping the cultist "grow"." For Langone, the fact that the counselor's assistance has in no way been sought by the subject casts further doubt on the ethical propriety of such manipulation. Although exit counseling models like Hassan's emphasise the voluntary nature of the procedure, Shupe questioned in 2011 how willing the NRM member can be when: (i) they are not actually the client of the counselor (who has been hired by others), and (ii) they are not aware that the counselor's primary, preconceived purpose is to convince them to abandon their faith.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Steven Hassan illustration

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Steven Hassan

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Steven Hassan claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Steven Hassan before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Steven Hassan ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Steven Hassan

In research
Steven Hassan appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Steven Hassan in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Steven Hassan is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century American male writers, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, 21st-century American male writers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Steven Hassan outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Steven Hassan in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Steven Hassan means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Steven Hassan out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Steven Hassan in simple terms?

Steven Alan Hassan (pronounced ) is an American mental health professional and author who specializes in the area of cults. In his early career, in the late 1970s, he participated in deprogramming, but since then has advocated non-coercive exit counseling.

Why does Steven Hassan matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Steven Hassan?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Steven Hassan.

Tags

  • 20th-century American male writers
  • 20th-century American non-fiction writers
  • 21st-century American male writers
  • 21st-century American non-fiction writers
  • American male non-fiction writers
  • American psychology writers
  • American psychotherapists
  • American social sciences writers
  • Cambridge College alumni
  • Critics of Falun Gong
  • Critics of Scientology
  • Critics of the Unification Church

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