For those who have parents who have abused alcohol and who have either escaped the heritary factors or have inherited the problems caused by a parent's drinkling. Alcoholism is a complex interwining of factors that affects the parents as well as the children, often for generations upon generations. Recommended reading for those interested in alcoholism in general, women's alcoholism and fetal alcohol syndrome. Other suggested reading is this series, "Women and Alcoholism" also edited by Marc Galanter.

Sorry, but this book just doesn't cut it. I expected in-depth information about the psychology of cults and I got superficial anecdotes that never dipped below the headlines. Jim Jones was creepy? Oh, my, what a revelation. David Koresh liked to have sex with young girls? Oh, no, I never heard that before, except for in every first-paragraph newspaper article on Waco.

John D. MacDonald does a much better job in "The Green Ripper" of describing a cult and how it operates. Plus McDonald's novel is fiction so Travis McGee gets to shoot the crap out of the entire cult compound. Much more satisfying than "Cults". Don't waste your money on this one, I wish I hadn't.

If only someone would apply what we learn from this book to the Islamic radicals that have taken hold of entire populations, we'd be getting somewhere. In the West Bank, for example, more than 70% of the population supports suicide bombings inside Israel. Brainwashing and coersion are used in the schools and mosques to teach hatred and murder. It's the ultimate cult.

This is a fairly rigorous scientific study of the processes composing cults and charismatic groups. The author provides many examples and case studies, then develops a general theory into a process model. In engineering, we call this a control system. A system has various inputs and outputs and setpoints, or references. The setpoints are the desired results (outputs). Effective systems have a feedback mechanism assuring that the group produces the correct results. This is called monitoring. The leader of the group monitors the thoughts and the actions of the members almost fanatically and foresees contradictory evidence from the outside world and immediately attempts to rationalize it and reinterpret it in the mindset of the group. The group induces extreme stress, then provides relief of that same stress by conformance to the group's doctrines or ideas.

So great can be the stress induced on suspecting people, that sometimes the sanity of the person is threatened. There is a conflict between what the person's needs are and what the group's needs are. The person is expected to meet the needs of the group. The group provides stress relief after the member conforms. Of course, this constant stress inducement and relief is the technique used by the leaders to assure themselves that the people are in line both in mind and in action. Someone who sacrifices so much for the group is more likely to be a true believer. It also gives an idea of those most likely to join such groups: those in the midst of great personal problems and distress; in response to the recruit's current psychological distress where the world seems so messy and hard to understand, the group gives the person a false sense of certainty in their doctrines. Of course, I give here only a rough sketch.

The techniques identified are eye-opening and scary. It appears that not too many people are immune to some sorts of mind coercion. I suppose that knowledge is power and the more one knows about cults and charismatic groups and their repressive psychological terror tactics, the less the subject will be suceptible to recruitment. This study explains who some seemingly rational people can fall for such obviously deviant groups.