Save Our Children works to identify credible, helpful experts in the field of cults and coercion. Among them is internationally recognized Janja A. Lalich, Ph.D., founder and executive director of Walnut Creek, Calif.-based Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion.
For more than 35 years, Dr. Lalich has worked as a researcher, author and educator, specializing in what she calls “self-sealing systems” (for example, cultic and coercive organizations and relationships, terrorist/extremist groups), with a particular focus on recruitment, indoctrination, and methods and techniques of influence and control. She also specializes in research of the social psychology and ideologies of such organizations.
Further, Dr. Lalich has authored these books:
Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships. 3rd edition updated and revised. Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion, 2023. In print and audio. Spanish edition in progress.
Escaping Utopia: Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over (coauthor Karla McLaren, M.Ed.). New York: Routledge, 2017. In print and audio.
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
“Crazy” Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work? (coauthor Margaret Thaler Singer). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives (coauthor Margaret Singer). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.
Captive Hearts, Captive Minds: Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships (coauthor Madeleine Tobias). Alameda, CA: Hunter House, 1994.
We invite to you to review Dr. Lalich’s CV, which alone features dozens of citations that could be helpful to anyone researching cults.
