Cult Expert Dr. Margaret T. Singer Would Have Turned 100 Years Old Today

Today would have been our mom’s 100th birthday.?

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Our mom, Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, was a champion of free speech and personal freedom. As a UC-Berkeley psychology professor, she was one of the world’s leading experts on cults such as Scientology, People’s Temple, Synanon, Moonies/Unification Church, Werner Erhard, and other dangerous groups and individuals.

She fought tirelessly both in the classroom and the courtroom (as an expert witness) to expose coercive persuasion (or ‘brainwashing”) by these groups and others.

It was nearly 20 years ago that she died, and even today, we get pleasure in recalling our mom’s battles against evil groups, individuals and corporations, and the victories she won in countless David v. Goliath battles.?She paid a price for being outspoken (death threats, dead animals on the door step of our family home in Berkeley, protests at some of her appearances by cults). But these attacks only inspired her more. Our mom embodied the philosophy of Rick Sanchez of “Rick and Morty” cartoons, who says: “Your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer.” I am only sorry she didn’t live to see this cartoon that her grandchildren love so much. I know she would have agreed with this philosophy.

Beyond her professional life she was one of the great moms of all time. My sister Martha Singer and I are grateful for her love, wisdom, unfailingly good advice, and the Irish Catholic humor she instilled in us.?In tribute to her 100th birthday, I am reprinting a forward I wrote to the “Margaret T. Singer Collection,” a compilation of some of our mom’s scholarly work on cults, brainwashing, psychopaths, evil, and attacks on the self that was edited by Carol Giambalvo & Rosanne Henry.

“It's a delight to write about Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer. First of all, she was my mom. So, it's an easy task to conjure up all the wonderful characteristics that made her special to me personally. Equally important, my mom played a leading role in helping to define personal and psychological freedom during a period in world history where one of the greatest threats to civilization and freedom is the manipulation of our beliefs and lives by individuals, cults or other politically motivated groups with a hidden agenda.

“Most of the papers presented in this book were written at our brown shingle family home in the Berkeley hills. While she did some of her work at her office at the University of California where she was a professor of psychology, the vast majority of my mother's professional work, thinking, writing and meeting with therapy clients was done at home.

“In our family kitchen was a white mat-finish Formica table. The table was the center of our house and the center of my mom's work. The table served as her writing and editing desk. It was used 'to therap' people (a phase coined by my mother because therapy sounded too dismal to her). Many times my sister and I would come home from school to find someone being 'theraped' at the kitchen table. My mom would introduce us after which we would head upstairs so she could continue her session. A number of these individuals were ex-cult members who were seeking my mother's assistance in getting back their minds and their lives. Others were people who valued my mom's insights in helping them live their lives.

“The kitchen table also doubled as a message board, note pad, and shopping list. My mom would get a Ticonderoga #2 pencil and jot down important thoughts, insights, phone messages and make her 'to do' list of personal errands. At some point during the week, she would erase the table with a cloth and soapy water.

“Also on the table, was one of her greatest tools, the telephone. The slim-line phone was many times lost under a pile of research papers, the day's newspapers, books and mail. Despite its occasional camouflage, my mom would find the ringing phone and help whoever was on the other line.

“She spoke to thousands of people around the world on the issue of cults and coercive persuasion and helped them via the phone.

“Lastly, and most important to my sister Martha, my father and myself, the kitchen table actually doubled as a kitchen table where the family would gather for meals. Using the 1960s Danish modern chairs that were omnipresent in our household, we would gather around the table and individually recall what had happened in our lives that day as we ate dinner. The talk always turned to the work my mother was doing as well as the work my father was doing in the field of physics. Both of my parents were professors in their respective fields at UC-Berkeley. It should be noted that an occasional student dissertation waiting to be read and many times my mom's own research and papers were slightly stained with food that dripped or splashed off our plates.

“If Athens is the center of western civilization, then my mother's kitchen table was the center both of our family and of her passionate philosophy of freedom of expression and of the mind.

“She argued fascinatingly and endlessly about the insidious religious, political and individual cults that manipulated individuals into what Robert J. Lifton described as "the most dangerous direction of the twenty-century mind–the quest for absolute or 'totalistic' belief systems."

“She was very focused on how environmental and psychological manipulation was being expedited by modern day cults. And, how ultimately, the techniques of mind control and thought reform were designed to destabilize an individual's sense of reality and self.

“You will assuredly find the speeches and papers in this book as fascinating today as when my mother first produced these works. Her ability to use her Irish Catholic heritage and its great tradition of story-telling brings brilliant clarity to the subject and threat of thought reform today.

“My mother passed away in 2003. Being the type of person she was, she worked up until her hospitalization and death. Today, her work is as relevant and as important–if not more so–than when it was originally created.

“Nearly every place in the world today is threatened by some group or cult that is using the principals of mind control and thought reform to manipulate unknowing individuals. From our shores to the Middle East, from crazed celebrities jumping on couches to cult ownership of one of the nation's capital's daily newspapers, religious and political cults have a sinister ability to insinuate themselves into the mainstream and to attempt to gain an air of respectability. Margaret Singer valued those who stood up to cults and manipulative leaders. I am only sorry that she did not live to see the "South Park" television show's send-up of Scientology and the group's reaction to the piece. She would have loved it.

“My mother's greatest admonition to her family–and to her friends and clients–was always this: don't be afraid to walk away from anything that doesn't seem right. She always noted how cults and groups played on the systematic manipulation of social norms. If anything, being the person that she was, she personally wouldn't walk away from things that didn't seem right–she challenged them upfront and in their face. One of things that I value most of all in recalling my mother, and her work, is that she was the first person to challenge and ask questions of anyone and any group in any setting. She feared nothing.

“I am thankful to have had such a wonderful, tough, thoughtful, philosophical and street-smart person for my mother. I hope that the thoughts presented in this effort, as well as her books Cults in our Midst and Crazy Therapies, continue to advance the freedom of thought, expression and belief that my mother so prized.

“On behalf of my late father Dr. Jerome Singer, my sister Dr. Martha Singer, my wife Sharon Singer, and our families, we hope you take the information in this volume and use it to help educate others to the great threat of psychological and social manipulation that we face in the world today from cults, new age groups and totalistic belief systems.”

Sam Singer, San Francisco, California