Is technology CONTROLLING your MIND? | TEDx

Published on Aug 14, 2018

Destructive influencers are using the internet to deceptively recruit people using deception, manipulation, hypnotic and subliminal programming and more. Hassan's Influence Continuum is a new model that describes healthy, ethical influence on one end and destructive unethical influence on the other. The BITE model (Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control and Emotion Control) has been helping people understand and leave totalist relationships and destructive cults for decades.

Steven Hassan M.Ed. LMHC, NCC (pronounced HASS-en), is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing and unethical hypnosis and author of the best-selling book, Combating Cult Mind Control.

For over forty years, he has helped thousands of individuals and families recover from undue influence (mind control). With over 40 years of experience, he is sought after as one of the foremost authorities on undue influence, brainwashing, deprogramming and controlling groups and individuals. Steve understands the subject from a unique perspective as both a former cult member and as a clinical professional.

Steven is the Founding Director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, a coaching, consulting, and training organization dedicated to supporting individuals to have the freedom to think clearly and to freely consider how they want to live their lives. Steven pioneered a breakthrough method called the Strategic Interactive Approach (SIA), an effective and legal intervention alternative for families to help cult members. The SIA teaches family and friends how to strategically influence the individual involved in the cult.

He is the author of Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best Selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988, 1990, 2015), Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000) and Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults & Beliefs (2012, 2013). He is also the co-developer of Ending the Game, a non-coercive curriculum designed to educate and empower sex trafficking victims to leave pimps and traffickers. Steven provides training workshops and seminars for mental health professionals, educators, and law enforcement officers worldwide, as well as for families of cult members. He writes and speaks out about the importance of viewing ISIS/Daesh and other terrorist groups as destructive cults. Steve has appeared on innumerable television and radio shows. Newspapers, magazines and other media all over the world have quoted Steve Hassan extensively.

Steven is currently pursuing a doctorate at Fielding University to do quantitative research on the factors of control that characterize undue influence. He is an active member of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law, a Harvard think tank of forensic experts. Dr. Michael Commons, research director for the program, has invited Steven to create a division Freedom from Undue Influence in order to help facilitate this research.

Since his own deprogramming from the Moon cult in 1976, Steven has appeared on innumerable television and radio shows. Newspapers, magazines and other media all over the world have sought his expertise. Steven’s work has received praise from academic luminaries such as Robert Jay Lifton, Philip Zimbardo, Robert Cialdini, Anthony Pratkanis as well as clinical experts such as Daniel Brown, Judith Herman, Mary McCarthy and others. Steven taught Psychiatry Grand Rounds at Harvard Medical School in October 2017 and has been teaching 4thyear psychiatry residents at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for 17 years. Steven Hassan, M.Ed., LMHC, NCC (pronounced HASSen), is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing and unethical hypnosis and author of the bestselling book, Combating Cult Mind Control. Since 1976, media expert on brainwashing, deprogramming, mind control, cults and undue influence expert, helping people all over the world. He is a former cult member (the Moonies) which has fueled his passion to help others for over three decades. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). In July 2012, Steve published Freedom of MindHelping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs. Steven founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc., a counseling and publishing organization dedicated to helping people to become psychologically empowered, upholding human rights, promoting consumer awareness and exposing abuses of destructive cult groups. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

*Content and description are the property of TEDx