74 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 9, 2018
living on the dwindled group’s communal
grounds since the leader’s death.
After Patrick freed the son of Sondra Sachs from
the Hare Krishna movement in 1973, Sachs
became his secretary. Sachs appears in the film
to tell her story.
We also meet Flow Conway and Jim Siegalman,
mentioned previously, the researchers who met
with Patrick and dozens of former members. As
revealed in this film, Conway and Siegalman
utilized subjects of Patrick’s interventions for
much of the data in their 1978 book Snapping.
Snapping may have been science deficient, but it
did address a very real problem that no journalist
had tackled to that date. The problem,
“information disease,” was a phrase the authors
coined to indicate the content of mind in
converts influenced by deceptive, controversial
movements.
To relate terms such as snapping and
information disease in the anticult context,
consider Richard Dawkins, the famed atheist,
who in 1976 coined meme (imitated idea), which
reinforces the possibility of information disease.
Memes, per Dawkins, can “go viral” using an
evolutionary or biological model so flawed,
dangerous, or “diseased” memes can go viral.
This is another way of saying that cult members
participate in a shared delusion.
Patrick noted this phenomenon of shared
delusion as evidence in his nephew and his
friends, who were nearly recruited by a local
Jesus cult and then Patrick infiltrated that cult in
1971. Within days, he said he felt his mind
giving in to the ideas of the cult, despite the fact
that he felt armored against it going in. Patrick
called it hypnotism or a spell. He was not far off,
though his grasp of cognitive function lacked
sophistication.
Patrick sorely lacked training or education about
social influence. His limitations led to his often-
abusive tactics to “break” someone of a cult
“spell,” and that got him into legal trouble often.
Conway and Siegalman called this sudden
change process snapping, pointing to that
moment when someone snaps into or out of a
powerful conversion.
The film brings out deprogramming controversy
when it portrays Patrick as a kind of crusader
with good intentions, if not the best of
techniques. Social scientists viewed Patrick’s
cure as more harmful than the disease. The film
exposes that the worse Patrick could paint the
cults, the more heroic he could appear.
Nevertheless, he had a direct hand in freeing
many hundreds of cult members from cult
memes, or information disease.
I first met and spoke with Ted Patrick late in his
career, in the early 1990s, at a national cult-
awareness conference that had, years before,
moved to reject all forms of coercive
intervention or deprogramming. Not everyone
attending these conferences agreed, especially
the old guard of Patrick supporters who felt that
deprogramming was necessary to truly
“unbrainwash” a cult member.
In the film, we learn that Patrick grew up with
Black-church, Protestant values and also a
recognition that the Black churches had their
share of bad cult leaders such as Father Divine
and Billy Sunday. Patrick reveals his myopic
vision of cult history when he affirms that, as a
Black man, he already knew of this cult
phenomenon that had lately (around 1970) hit
White America. The film does not bring out why
Patrick had a string of successful
deprogrammings in midcareer.
People I knew who worked with Patrick were all
former members that Patrick would employ for
relatively low fees to assist on cases. At his
peak, Patrick had many cases going on
simultaneously or overlapping, so he tended to
show up days into an interaction with a captive
cult member. Often, by that time, the former
members had done their job well but Patrick
would come in, interact with the now former
member for a day or less, take credit for the
success, and collect the lion’s share of the fees.
Patrick thus created a business model, a machine
that made him famous and that many came to
believe was the only way to free brainwashed
people.
One of my peers in this intervention business,
Rick Ross, appeared in the film to address the
evolution of Patrick’s model into the
noncoercive exit-counseling approach. The latter
living on the dwindled group’s communal
grounds since the leader’s death.
After Patrick freed the son of Sondra Sachs from
the Hare Krishna movement in 1973, Sachs
became his secretary. Sachs appears in the film
to tell her story.
We also meet Flow Conway and Jim Siegalman,
mentioned previously, the researchers who met
with Patrick and dozens of former members. As
revealed in this film, Conway and Siegalman
utilized subjects of Patrick’s interventions for
much of the data in their 1978 book Snapping.
Snapping may have been science deficient, but it
did address a very real problem that no journalist
had tackled to that date. The problem,
“information disease,” was a phrase the authors
coined to indicate the content of mind in
converts influenced by deceptive, controversial
movements.
To relate terms such as snapping and
information disease in the anticult context,
consider Richard Dawkins, the famed atheist,
who in 1976 coined meme (imitated idea), which
reinforces the possibility of information disease.
Memes, per Dawkins, can “go viral” using an
evolutionary or biological model so flawed,
dangerous, or “diseased” memes can go viral.
This is another way of saying that cult members
participate in a shared delusion.
Patrick noted this phenomenon of shared
delusion as evidence in his nephew and his
friends, who were nearly recruited by a local
Jesus cult and then Patrick infiltrated that cult in
1971. Within days, he said he felt his mind
giving in to the ideas of the cult, despite the fact
that he felt armored against it going in. Patrick
called it hypnotism or a spell. He was not far off,
though his grasp of cognitive function lacked
sophistication.
Patrick sorely lacked training or education about
social influence. His limitations led to his often-
abusive tactics to “break” someone of a cult
“spell,” and that got him into legal trouble often.
Conway and Siegalman called this sudden
change process snapping, pointing to that
moment when someone snaps into or out of a
powerful conversion.
The film brings out deprogramming controversy
when it portrays Patrick as a kind of crusader
with good intentions, if not the best of
techniques. Social scientists viewed Patrick’s
cure as more harmful than the disease. The film
exposes that the worse Patrick could paint the
cults, the more heroic he could appear.
Nevertheless, he had a direct hand in freeing
many hundreds of cult members from cult
memes, or information disease.
I first met and spoke with Ted Patrick late in his
career, in the early 1990s, at a national cult-
awareness conference that had, years before,
moved to reject all forms of coercive
intervention or deprogramming. Not everyone
attending these conferences agreed, especially
the old guard of Patrick supporters who felt that
deprogramming was necessary to truly
“unbrainwash” a cult member.
In the film, we learn that Patrick grew up with
Black-church, Protestant values and also a
recognition that the Black churches had their
share of bad cult leaders such as Father Divine
and Billy Sunday. Patrick reveals his myopic
vision of cult history when he affirms that, as a
Black man, he already knew of this cult
phenomenon that had lately (around 1970) hit
White America. The film does not bring out why
Patrick had a string of successful
deprogrammings in midcareer.
People I knew who worked with Patrick were all
former members that Patrick would employ for
relatively low fees to assist on cases. At his
peak, Patrick had many cases going on
simultaneously or overlapping, so he tended to
show up days into an interaction with a captive
cult member. Often, by that time, the former
members had done their job well but Patrick
would come in, interact with the now former
member for a day or less, take credit for the
success, and collect the lion’s share of the fees.
Patrick thus created a business model, a machine
that made him famous and that many came to
believe was the only way to free brainwashed
people.
One of my peers in this intervention business,
Rick Ross, appeared in the film to address the
evolution of Patrick’s model into the
noncoercive exit-counseling approach. The latter
