International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 83
services to schools and prisons to study TM. The
NIH agencies gave TM nearly $23 million from
1992 through 2010, then the awards stopped.
Siegel offers evidence that the NIH finally
discovered or admitted that, with all the new
studies about many forms of mindfulness and
meditation that are equally effective yet offered
for low fees or are free, TM is nothing special.
TM’s latest effort at proselytizing through many
high-profile celebrities who support the David
Lynch Foundation may be an effort to rescue a
failing and deceptive business model.
Furthermore, studies have shown that all forms
of meditation may be overhyped with respect to
their effectiveness for lowering blood pressure
and bringing about inner harmony. The one-size-
fits-all offerings of most yogic and meditation
styles may be too good to be true.
Another anecdote here regarding David Lynch:
In 2014, Lynch had a major showing of art at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in
Philadelphia. David Lynch: The Unified Field
was Lynch’s first major art show in the United
States.1 Lynch graduated from PAFA 2 years
before I began attending in the early 1970s. As
alumni, my colleague Brian O’Neill and I
attended the show with hopes of hearing Lynch
lecture, but his lecture was sold out. By
coincidence, we were behind the lecture hall
when Lynch appeared alone outside the back
door, smoking a cigarette. Brian, an amateur
photographer, walked up to him and requested a
photo and brief interview, to which Lynch
complied after he put out his cigarette. The
scene made me wonder: What’s with the
nicotine? A major promoter of TM does not
have the means or desire to kick a bad habit.
On page 144, Siegel states the “goal of this
book” is to “empower concerned citizens,
particularly parents, to confront and expose
TM’s deceptions and secrets ...The welfare of
children is what matters.” As TM exposés go—I
have several in my collection—Siegel’s book
functions very well. It offers a solid survey of
what TM is all about for people new to the sect
and is also a great reference for anyone familiar
with TM. If any school director has questions
1 See https://www.pafa.org/davidlynch
about David Lynch’s foundation to promote TM
in public schools, give them this book
immediately. We owe it to the children.
About the Reviewer
Joseph Szimhart began research into cultic
influence in 1980 and began to work
professionally as an intervention specialist and
exit counselor in 1986. Since 1998 he has
worked in the crisis department of a psychiatric
emergency hospital in Pennsylvania. He
continues to assist families with interventions
and former members in recovery. In 2016 he
received an ICSA Lifetime Achievement Award.

84 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019
Counterculture Crossover: Growing Up in the Love Family
By Rachel Israel
Reviewed by Robert W. Balch
Life Story Press, Maple Valley, WA. (2018).
ISBN-10: 9781732240018 ISBN-13: 9778-
1732240018 (paperback). (Amazon.com,
$25.00 Kindle, $20.00). 643 pages.
Counterculture Crossover is Rachel Israel’s
fascinating account of growing up in the Love
Family, a highly controversial religious
commune based in Seattle, Washington. In 1975,
at age 6, Ms. Israel became a member of the
Love Family when her mother joined, and she
stayed until 1983 when the Family broke up
after an unsuccessful palace coup. These were
the Family’s glory years, the classic phase
before the fall.
To its defenders, the Love Family was an
intentional community, a new religious
movement, and a beautiful utopian experiment
but to its detractors, it was a dangerous cult, pure
and simple. In 1971, two members had died
from breathing toluene, a solvent the Family
used to produce visions, which led the famous
deprogrammer Ted Patrick to describe the group
as a “collection of drugged-up, spaced-out,
wired-up mental zombies” (Patrick &Dulack,
1976, p. 152). In 1979, a National Enquirer
headline called the Family “America’s Most
Dangerous Cult—A World of Violence, Drugs
and Child Abuse” (National Enquirer, 1979).
1979 also was the year I met the Love Family,
and frankly, I was enchanted. For me, visiting
the Family was like being transported to a
magical fairy kingdom. The grounds and houses
were simple, clean, orderly, and tranquil,
brightened by flowers and well-tended gardens.
The members were distinguished by their long,
well-groomed hair, full beards, handmade robes,
gentle demeanor, and especially their names—
for example, Strength, Honesty, Courage,
Happiness—representing the virtues of Jesus
Christ. Unlike Ted Patrick’s zombies, I found
the members to be bright, alert, and genuinely
committed to their dream of building a new
society.
Enchanted though I was, my main interest in the
Love Family was sociological. Out of thousands
of communal experiments in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, the Love Family was one of the few
survivors, and I wanted to understand how it had
managed this feat. So imagine my shock when,
in 1983, the Love Family suddenly blew up over
allegations that its leader, Love Israel, had
become a self-indulgent, abusive, cocaine
addict. As luck would have it, I was able to
negotiate a leave of absence from my university,
and with the help of Janann Cohig, a sociology
student, I spent the next year in Seattle
interviewing members and defectors to find out
what had happened. I continued interviewing
over the next two summers, gradually piecing
together the Family’s history and uncovering the
roots of the discontent and corruption that led to
the big breakup. The research resulted in a few
professional articles about the community,
which today gather dust in university libraries
(Balch, 1988 1995 1998).
So I had a special interest in Rachel Israel’s
book. Not only does it describe the period that I
studied, but Ms. Israel also was one of the
teenagers I interviewed in the 1980s. She writes
from an unusual perspective. Unlike most
second-generation members, she was not born
into the Family but joined when she was old
enough to know about life in “the World.” She
and her mother had been beach hippies in
Hawaii and homesteaders living in the rough-
and-tumble backwoods of Alaska. Then
suddenly she was thrust into a radical communal
experiment where everyone was expected to be
perfect and merge with the collective mind. Her
experiences gave her a comparative perspective
that enabled her to remain an observer even as
she came to embrace the Family’s belief system.
Secretly, she kept a diary as a way of
maintaining her identity apart from the group,
and this, too, helped keep her in an observer
mode.