Specialized Counseling
I have been providing professional counseling for former members of cultic groups since 1994. However, I do not provide exit counseling – that is, intervention to extract someone from a cult or cultic situation. If you are seeking to extract a loved one from a cult, please do a google search for “Cult Intervention”, where you can see information from most of the people who do that work.
I use psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy and trauma therapies to support former members of abusive groups in their post-cult recovery. Post-cult recovery is for many former cult members a difficult process, involving struggles at many levels to return from a restrictive, authoritarian culture to a life of freedom and autonomy.
While in many cases counseling from a qualified, licensed mental health practitioner can be helpful in post-cult recovery, I offer special familiarity and expertise with these issues, and can provide adjunctive consultation specific to cult issues to those already in psychotherapy. In addition, I also provide supervisory consultation to mental health professionals with cult-involved clients.
Please use the Contact page on this website for fee and insurance information and to check for availability.
Additional Resources on Cults
Articles
A Prison of Shame and Fear: The Role of Shame in Cult Indoctrination and Recovery
by Daniel Shaw
from my forthcoming book, some time in 2021
Traumatic Abuse in Cults: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
by Daniel Shaw
Cultic Studies Review, 2003, (2)2:101-129
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
from The Atlantic Monthly, March 2017
Videos and Podcasts
Dan’s talk on The Psychology of the Cult Leader
Dan featured on the Break It Down Podcast
The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 26, 2016
How Well-Meaning, Intelligent People End Up in a Cult
Comments on NXIVM, a sex-trafficking cult, on CBC 3/28/2018
A few words on a CBS News New York segment on fraudulent meditation schools – 9/17/2017
Books
Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation by Daniel Shaw
Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein
Take Back Your Life by Lalich and Tobias
