Warping Reality: Inside the Psychology of Cults

by Wind Goodfriend (Author, Narrator), The Great Courses

6 hours and 11 minutes

Many of us have a deeply personal drive to seek inner fulfillment. We want to grow as individuals, explore our own potential, and make an important and lasting contribution to the world. It’s easy to run into groups that promise to help us along the way, and some of these groups are sincere. When a group, or even a charismatic individual, promises to help us meet our goals but then corrupts our good intentions for their own gain—when they exploit people in an organized fashion—that’s when you may have become a member of a cult. And it can happen much more easily than you might think.

In the 12 fascinating lectures of Warping Reality: Inside the Psychology of Cults, you will learn about some of the most widely known cults of modern times. But unlike any standard news reporting or documentary about the Peoples Temple, The Manson “Family,” The Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, Children of God, the Unification Church, and NXIVM, your expert, Dr. Wind Goodfriend, will help you explore the psychology of these cults. How could these cult leaders have committed such heinous crimes under the guise of “helping” members in their development?

In this course, you will not only learn about cults, but you will also meet two former cult members who are willing to share their stories. They explain what led them to join these groups, what they had hoped to get from the groups versus the reality, and why they each stayed for over a decade before walking away.

It is not the cult members who were interested in cult membership to abuse and betray others, but it is the cult leader who has lied to, manipulated, and used their members in fraudulent and violent ways. Learning about cults and the psychology of their leaders is the best way to limit their control over our communities, loved ones, and ourselves.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Audiobook, True Crime, History

7 pages, Audible Audio

Published October 11, 2024

Reviews

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cults are something that seem both far away and dangerous in the sense that a lion in the zoo is dangerous—that is to say, not going to be a problem for most people. Occasionally we hear of tragedy—sometimes great tragedy—involving them. The Manson family murders, the Jonestown and Heaven's Gate suicides, David Koresh and his followers’ mass death in Waco, Texas. The names are infamous but they don't seem particularly threatening to the vast majority of Americans. And yet, Goodfriend starts her series of lectures by showing us that cults are actually more common than we think they are and she personalizes her account by interviewing two survivors of cults at the beginning and end of the series. It's these two individuals’ accounts that lift this series up and make the cult phenomenon feel "real". Listening to them, you can easily believe that these were members of your extended family or neighbors down the street who slowly got into something over their heads and had their sense of self and self-worth stripped away until their understanding of reality—as the title suggests—became so warped that they effectively went crazy.

Most of the lectures are spent defining what a cult is, how you recognize one, and how people are sucked in. There is also a lot of time spent analyzing the characteristics of cult leaders and how they maintain control of their flocks. Unsurprisingly, these are disturbingly manipulative individuals who are capable of truly brutal acts in their exercising of control over their followers. One point I found especially interesting is that doing what the leader instructed didn't protect a person from punishment. The cult leaders could and would always invent something wrong with their followers and humiliate them into trying to make things more right. It reminded me a lot about the tools Mao used to break Chinese society and institute communism. But if you truly want to read something troubling, listen to the parts about the people who join cults. They aren't that different from so many people we know. They are trying to do good, to make the world a better place, and make a positive difference. It's these good intentions that seem to make them most vulnerable to the manipulations of the leaders of the cults.

The final part of the lecture is inspiring as Goodfriend returns to the man and woman she interviewed earlier in the book and begins a discussion of how they came to realize that something was very wrong with their lives and figured out a way to escape. It took unbelievable courage—isolated from everyone they knew before joining the cult, stripped of all personal resources, and psychologically battered to the point that they had no meaningful amount of self-worth, these people still found ways to grasp hold of reality and escape. But freedom is not enough to heal their trauma. That takes years of work with therapists trying to rebuild their sense of self and their lives.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the care taken to put forward rational, analytical theories and insights. The author did a fine job addressing a topic which is typically treated sensationally.

I find the concept of degree of cultish-ness as on a continuum useful. It is representative of my observations and rationality. The dissection of the phenomenon to consider characteristics and principles by which one may evaluate degree seems of course also pragmatic and readily applied. I include in the previous comment attributes of leaders, members, circumstance, and etc.

The topic would do well to be informed by more rigorous less anecdotally based research.

Chief critique: the narrator. Better as an author. Each sentence seemed inflected like a dramatic reading. That is to say, every sentence was made to feel like the most important sentence. Could / would be much better to match inflection and emphasis with what are the most important points (likely less than one per sentence - sarcasm).

[Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth the time and the four stars. This is a series of lectures, interspersed with interviews with previous cult members, and does a very good job of addressing the spectrum of activities that define a cult (while being clear that there is no simple checklist for "is or is not a cult"), defining the characteristics of cult leaders and how these work to gain followers, addressing when people are likely to be vulnerable to joining cults, and how people sometimes come to leave cults. It is very professional, told from both a social psychology perspective but ladened with personal experiences of interviewees. I particularly liked the emphasis on the idea that cult members aren't particularly gullible or stupid, but rather are often intelligent people who want to make a difference in the world but get drawn into a system that promises that but goes off the rails.

[Kirsti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The resplendently named Wind Goodfriend delivers a lecture series that focuses partly on cult leaders but mostly on cult members. She does in-depth interviews with two former cult members who escaped and went on to have successful lives. I was especially interested in her review of what many cult members (as opposed to leaders) have in common: an ability to care deeply; humility; honesty about oneself; and a strong desire to create a kinder, more just world. Goodfriend draws some interesting parallels between people who join cults and people who are in abusive relationships.

[Alexa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this very frustrating, this was very superficial, and shallow information you would pull more information out of a Stephen Hassan Summary Page and I think Sarah Edmonson summed this entire course up in 3 pages in her NXIVM book 'Scarred'.... not what I expected of great courses, I speed through the final 1/3d.

The interview style and the poor audio quality did this no favors as well. The guests were wonderful, but lackluster and the inclusion of podcast style chit-chat made me feel like my time was being wasted, when I am sure the intent was to be warm and friendly.

[Robert Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting listen and a little different from other Great Courses. Wind Goodfriend interviews a pair of cult survivors as part of the lessons and their experiences provide some insight into how easy it is to be lured into one through the most mundane of ways. The particular ones they were in aren't the big well known ones but they do have a pattern to them. Those pattern are addressed in the rest of the lectures which were quite informative, especially in looking at the personalities of the cult leaders themselves like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and Keith Raniere.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look into the psychology of not only those who become cult leaders but also those who end up entangled by them. Dr. Goodfriend discusses the history of some well known cults, using them as examples to further explore how cults begin, grow, and in some cases implode. Perhaps most fascinating are the interviews with two ex-cult members who describe their own experiences. This first hand knowledge is both informative and heart wrenching.

[John Bosley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Left with some key questions that made me wish I was actually in attendance, but overall it was a fantastic introduction to the topic, covering several essential factors in the cult experience.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This resource really helps to answer why cults happen, including from the perspective of the victims, which is an interesting opposition to the perpetrators’ psychology. It spends time on all phases of the experience and includes what we can do to protect ourselves and others.

[Elysse AKA EILIS Heller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked my abnormal psychology courses in college so I decided to read these courses and, once again, I liked it.

[Jacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A challenging and thought-provoking look at the psychological mechanisms by which cults operate.