|
 Margaret
Thaler Singer, Ph.D.
A Loss for
the Family Field: The Death of Margaret T. Singer
From Family Process, March 1, 2004; By Lyman C. Wynne
The death of Dr. Margaret Singer on November
23, 2003, has evoked an outpouring of grief, admiration, and tribute in the
public press. She has been recognized as "the foremost authority on brainwashing
in the entire world." Her loss has distressed not only the many victims of
"coercive persuasion," but also those family members, professionals, and
paraprofessionals who have struggled to understand and cope with what she called
the "cults in our midst."
However, before focusing on cults for much of the last quarter century, Margaret
had already established herself as a leader in two other arenas of study and
treatment. First, during the 1950s she had become a leading researcher in the
field of psychosomatic medicine and was elected President of the American
Psychosomatic Society as recently as 1972-1973.
Meanwhile, because she and I both had been keenly interested in communication, a
phenomenon on the path between health and disorder, we were introduced to one
another in 1958. For more than 15 years we commuted between Berkeley and
Bethesda/Rochester, a week in each setting most months. We spent many, many
hours listening closely to tapes of psychiatrically ill persons, especially
those identified as schizophrenic patients. More closely still, we examined
communication of members of their families in the contexts of family therapy and
standardized research tasks. During these years Margaret became best known as a
family researcher and therapist.
For eight years she was a constructive member of the Board of Directors of
Family Process.
On a very personal note, I can say that the long-term, close collaboration,
bouncing ideas back and forth with Margaret, was an experience of genuine
mutuality. Though we worked with speech samples collected in a variety of ways,
Margaret's special skill and experience with Rorschach protocols was most
productive. Unconventionally, we were most interested in the conceptualization
of family members, individually and conjointly, viewed as a transactional
process between tester and family member, or family members with one another.
Thus, we were able to use the concept of the family as a system within which
some aspects melded together relationally, and other, excluded features were
outside the family's psychological boundary.
In retrospect, this "family research" was hard work and good fun. In her
research, Margaret engendered a vibrant, creative spark that opened the eyes of
many a colleague and student. As a clinician she was able to observe and clarify
incredibly nasty problems brought to her by a great diversity of clients and
consultees. She, and her astutely penetrating insights, will be sorely missed.
From San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday
November 25, 2003
By Steven Rubenstein, Chronicle staff
writer. Kevin Fagan contributed to this report.
Margaret
Singer, the soft-spoken but hard-edged Berkeley psychologist and expert on
brainwashing who studied and helped authorities and victims better understand
the Peoples Temple, Branch Davidian, Unification Church and Symbionese
Liberation Army cults, has died.
Professor Singer, 82, died Sunday after a long
illness at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.
"She's one of a kind, the foremost authority on
brainwashing in the entire world,'' said lawyer Paul Morantz in an interview
last year. Morantz led the effort against the Synanon cult in the 1970s. "She is
a national treasure.''
She testified in the 1976 bank robbery trial of
newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese
Liberation Army, and at the 1977 hearing for five young members of the Rev. Sun
Myung Moon's Unification Church whose parents sought to have them
"deprogrammed.''
On the witness stand or in the kitchen of her
Berkeley hills home, where Professor Singer did much of her work, she was calm,
authoritative, smart, unshakable, funny and unfailingly polite.
She interviewed more than 3,000 cult members,
assisted in more than 200 court cases and also was a leading authority on
schizophrenia and family therapy.
"I might look like a little old grandma, but
I'm no pushover,'' she told a reporter last year, just before tossing back
another shot of Bushmills Irish whiskey, her libation of choice.
"My mom spent her whole life assisting other
people -- victims, parents or lawyers -- and often for free,'' said Sam Singer,
a San Francisco publicist. "Nothing gave her greater joy than helping to get
someone unscrewed up.''
She was occasionally threatened by cult leaders
and their followers, and she never backed down. Professor Singer liked to tell
how, at the age of 80, she frightened off a stalker who had been leaving
menacing notes in her mailbox.
"I've got a 12-gauge shotgun up here, sonny,
and you'd better get off my porch, or you'll be sorry!'' she hollered out the
window. "And tell your handlers not to send you back!''
She was born in Denver, where her father was
the chief engineer at the U. S. Mint. She received her bachelor's, master's and
doctoral degrees from the University of Denver.
She began to study brainwashing in the 1950s at
Walter Reed Institute of Research in Washington, D. C., where she interviewed
U.S. soldiers who had been taken prisoner during the Korean War. She came to
Berkeley in 1958 and found herself in a prime spot to study the cult scene of
the 1960s and 1970s.
"I started hearing from families who had
missing members, many of them young kids on our campus, and they all would
describe the same sorts of things, '' she said. "A sudden change of personality,
a new way of talking . . . and then they would disappear. And bingo, it was the
same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners, the same sort of
thought-reform and social controls. ''
"You find it again and again, any time people
feel vulnerable,'' she said.
"There are always sharpies around who want to
hornswoggle people.''
She dispensed much of her advice over the
phone, which always seemed to be ringing with anxious parents, victims or
lawyers from around the world, all seeking advice. For decades, she also held
court at a large table near the front door of Brennan's bar and restaurant in
West Berkeley, where she and her husband, Jerome, were Tuesday night regulars
and where she would treat friends and admirers to corned beef, cabbage and
multiple rounds of Irish coffee.
She was the author of "Cults in Our Midst,''
the authoritative 1995 study on cults that she revised earlier this year with
analysis of the connection between cults and terrorism. She was the winner of
the Hofheimer Prize and the Dean Award from the American College of
Psychiatrists and of achievement awards from the Mental Health Association of
the United States and the American Family Therapy Association. She was a past
president of the American Psychosomatic Society and a board member of the Kaiser
Foundation Research Institute Review Board and the American Family Foundation.
She is survived by her husband of 48 years,
Jerome, and by two children, Sam and Martha, all of Berkeley.
A funeral will be held at 1 p.m. on Monday at
the McNary-Morgan, Engle and Jackson funeral home, 3630 Telegraph Ave, Oakland.
Memorial donations may be sent to the
American Family Foundation, P.O. Box 413005, Suite 313, Naples, Fla., 34101
[Better to send to P.O. Box 2265,
Bonita Springs, FL 34133].
From the Oakland Tribune
Former UC educator was psychologist, champion of free thought
and an expert on cults
By
Katherine Pfrommer, STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 27, 2003 - BERKELEY -- Margaret Singer -- a professor,
psychologist, champion of free thought and world-renowned expert on cults and
brainwashing -- died Nov. 23 at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center after a long
illness. She was 82.
"My mom was really one of the world's leading experts on cults and she spent
her lifetime fighting for people's ability to think and act freely," son Sam
Singer of Berkeley said. "She was engaged in one of the most important
intellectual battles in the world -- the fight against George Orwell's vision of
a "1984" state or cult that would affect people's beliefs and behavior."
Well-versed with the likes of Peoples Temple, Branch Davidian, Symbionese
Liberation Army, Unification Church and other groups, Mrs. Singer testified in
hundreds of cases in court -- but she also assisted anyone who called her listed
home phone number asking for help.
"My mother's kitchen was action central for the anti-cult movement from the
60s up until the beginning of this year when she got ill," her son said. "You
couldn't put the phone down without it ringing again. It wouldn't matter if it
was Thanksgiving or Christmas day, the phone would ring, ring, ring."
Born July 29, 1921, in Denver, Colo., Mrs. Singer earned her degrees at the
University of Denver, obtaining her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1952.
In the 1950s, she studied the effects of brainwashing on Korean War veterans
at Walter Reed Army Institute in Washington, D.C., where she became fascinated
with coercive psychological techniques and persuasion -- what became known as
brainwashing.
While in Washington, D.C., she met her future husband, Jerome Singer, in an
elevator. The two moved to Berkeley in late 1950s and both became professors at
UC Berkeley. The couple was married for 48 years and have two children.
Mrs. Singer noticed the similarities between the brainwashing techniques
applied to the Korean War veterans and cult members early on, and described six
conditions which were created to take control over a person's mind against their
will, her son said.
Among the cases Mrs. Singer testified for were the 1976 bank robbery trial of
Patricia Hearst, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and a 1977
trial about deprogramming members of the Unification Church, or "Moonies."
"She was so helpful, so willing to give her time," said colleague Hal
Reynolds, student affairs officer and director of cult awareness program at UC
Berkeley. "It was like having a wonderful resource -- who was also warm, witty
and tough at the same time. She did a lot for UC Berkeley."
From the Los Angeles Times
Brainwashing Expert Dies of
Pneumonia
By
Dennis McLellan
Margaret Thaler Singer, one of the world’s leading experts on cults and
brainwashing – who served as an expert witness in numerous high-profile court
cases, including testifying for the defense in the 1976 bank-robbery trial of
kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst – has died. She was 82.
Singer, a clinical psychologist and
former psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who also
was known for her work on schizophrenia, died of pneumonia Sunday in a Berkeley
hospital after a long illness.
Singer, who did groundbreaking research
on the brainwashing of U.S. soldiers captured during the Korean War, often was
sought out by lawyers as an expert witness and by the news media for comment in
high-profile cases, including the People’s Temple and the mass murder-suicide at
Jonestown, Guyana, the search for the Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles, and the
Branch Davidian and Heaven’s Gate cults. Over the years, she interviewed more
than 4,000 cult members, including Charles Manson and many of his followers.
Singer interviewed Hearst extensively
after her capture in 1975. Kidnapped by the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation
Army in 1974, Hearst eventually joined her captors and participated in an armed
bank robbery.
Enlisted to determine whether Hearst had
been brainwashed into delivering the group’s revolutionary ideology, Singer
testified in a hearing outside the jury’s presence that she had studied Hearst’s
speech patterns and concluded that on most of the seven tape recordings issued
by the SLA, Hearst was reading statements written by her captors.
The judge, although expressing
admiration for Singer’s work, agreed with the prosecutor’s argument that
Singer’s conclusion should be kept from the jury because the study was “in a
field that has never before been accepted as a subject upon which expert
testimony can be given.”
The trial, which resulted in Hearst’s
conviction, greatly boosted Singer’s stature as an expert in brainwashing.
She was born July 29, 1921, in Denver,
where her father was the chief operating engineer at the U.S. Mint and her
mother was a secretary to a federal judge.
Singer, who played cello in the Denver
Civic Symphony while attending the University of Denver, received a bachelor’s
degree in speech and a master’s degree in speech pathology and special
education.
After earning a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology in 1943, she worked for eight years in the department of psychiatry
at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine.
In 1953, she began working as a
psychologist for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C.,
where she specialized in studying returned prisoners of the Korean War who had
been brainwashed into denouncing the United States and embracing communism.
She did further research, with a heavy
focus on schizophrenia, with the National Institute of Mental Health, the Air
Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She moved to Berkeley in the late 1950s,
becoming an adjunct professor at the university when her husband, Jerome R.
Singer, joined the physics department faculty. She was a professor of psychology
at UC Berkeley from 1964 to 1991.
Singer, who lectured around the world,
received dozens of national honors for her work, including the Hofheimer Prize
for Research in 1966 from the American College of Psychiatrists and the Stanley
R. Dean Award for Research in Schizophrenia in 1976 from the American College of
Psychiatrists.
Singer is survived by her husband; a
son, Sam; a daughter, Martha; and five grandchildren.
From the San
Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mercury
News, Wednesday, November 26, 2003
By Jessica Portner
UC-BERKELEY PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR DID RESEARCH ON BRAINWASHING
Margaret Singer, the
world-renowned professor emeritus of psychology at UC-Berkeley who demystified
cults through groundbreaking research on brainwashing and testified at trials
against the Unification Church and the Symbionese Liberation Army, died Sunday
at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley. She was 82.
A soft-spoken woman
and brilliant researcher, Mrs. Singer interviewed more than 3,000 cult members
and testified at more than 200 trials, including the 1976 bank robbery trial of
newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who had been kidnapped by the Symbionese
Liberation Army. The group was a radical band formed in Berkeley during the
Vietnam era that abducted the 19-year-old heiress, calling her “a prisoner of
war” before she was persuaded to join them in their crimes.
Mrs. Singer also took
the stand on behalf of the parents of five members of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's
Unification Church. The parents alleged their children had been brainwashed by
church teachings.
Richard Ofshe, a
professor of social psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, a
self-described “sidekick” of Mrs. Singer's, said she was a dream to work with --
unless you were a lawyer cross-examining her in court.
“She was like a
little old lady with steel tips in her tennies,” Ofshe said. “I saw attorneys
break into tears trying to cross-examine her. It's hard to beat on a little old
lady who was a lot smarter than they were.”
The only child of an
Irish Catholic family, Mrs. Singer was born in 1923 in Denver, where her father
was the chief engineer at the U.S. Mint. Mrs. Singer received a doctorate in
clinical psychology from the University of Denver.
Her fascination with
mind-control techniques began in 1952 when she took a post at the Walter Reed
Institute of Research in Washington, D.C. There, she interviewed U.S. soldiers
who had been forced to make treasonous statements while they were prisoners
during the Korean War.
Mrs. Singer's
interest in cults grew when she arrived in Berkeley in 1957. It was an ideal
location to study the blossoming New Age cult scene of the 1960s and 1970s where
Hare Krishnas and the Unification Church were actively soliciting members around
the campus.
In a 2001 Mercury
News interview about her groundbreaking research on cult leadership and
indoctrinating tactics, Mrs. Singer said, “People are basically lonely. They
want to join something. The more mysterious it is, the more inviting and
intriguing.” She noted cults often recruit members by using flattery, offering
friendship, respect, and pretending to trade secrets.
More recently, Mrs.
Singer co-wrote “Cults in Our Midst,” a 1995 study on cults that she revised
earlier this year with analysis of the connection between cults and terrorism.
She won the Hofheimer Prize and the Dean Award from the American College of
Psychiatrists.
David Clark, an
American Family Foundation associate who has worked with cult-affected families,
said that despite her fame, Mrs. Singer would routinely console families whose
children had been in cults over the years.
“She understood their
plight and realized what a lonely place these families are in because they went
through conventional avenues of lawyers and clergy and didn't get more support,”
Clark said.
Brenda Daeges, who
lives in Bellevue, Neb., was one of those frequent callers. “I was a mess when
I met Margaret,” said Daeges, a former member of the Apostles of Infinite Love
cult who met Mrs. Singer at a conference. “I tried to get her to help my family.
She would let me call her collect. I don't know how many times she saved me.”
Her son, Sam Singer,
president of Singer and Associates, a San Francisco consulting firm, said his
mother was never deterred by those who sought to stop her. There were numerous
break-in attempts at her rambling Berkeley home. Singer said his mother would
deter prowlers by threatening to shoot trespassers with a 12-gauge shotgun --
even though she didn't own one.
“She was always
extremely cautious because there's a lot of people who tried to hurt her,”
Singer said. “She always stood up for what she believed in.”
Margaret Singer
Born: July 29, 1923,
in Denver
Died: Nov. 23, 2003,
in Berkeley
Survived by: Her
husband of 48 years, Jerome, and by her children, Sam and Martha, all of
Berkeley.
Services: Will be
held at 1 p.m. Monday at the McNary-Morgan, Engle and Jackson funeral home in
Oakland.
Memorial: Donations
may be sent to the American Family Foundation, Box 413005, Suite 313, Naples,
Fla., 34101
[Better to send to P.O. Box 2265,
Bonita Springs, FL 34133].
From the New
York Times
December 7, 2003
By Anahad O'Connor
Dr. Margaret Singer, a leading
expert on brainwashing who testified in several high-profile cases contending
that various groups inappropriately manipulated their members to control their
behavior, died on Nov. 23 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 82.
The cause was respiratory failure, said her son, Sam.
In her long career, Dr. Singer investigated and testified about techniques used
by North Koreans against American soldiers in wartime and the Symbionese
Liberation Army's influence over the kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst.
In the 1950's, Dr. Singer interviewed a number of American soldiers who had
renounced the United States after returning from captivity in North Korea. The
soldiers, she found, had been isolated and plied with propaganda, at times under
the threat of physical harm.
Years later, she testified in defense of Ms. Hearst in a case that brought Dr.
Singer national recognition and helped generate public curiosity about mind
control.
Dr. Singer and her colleagues delved into a little known area of psychology at
the trial, arguing that Ms. Hearst had helped rob a bank because she had been
brainwashed to embrace the values of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which
abducted her.
The group, the team argued, subjected Ms. Hearst to intensely stressful
conditions, like isolating her from family and friends and locking her in a
closet for six weeks, allowing its members to indoctrinate her and force a
bizarre behavioral transformation.
Though Ms. Hearst was convicted, the trial bolstered Dr. Singer's reputation as
an expert on mind control. In the following years, she repeatedly testified
against the Unification Church, led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
In one case, a libel suit against The Daily Mail of London, she argued that the
church was a cult that brainwashed its members by showering them with intense
affection, a process she called "love-bombing."
Dr. Singer said that she had interviewed hundreds of members of the church and
testified that its techniques for mind control were more powerful than those
used by the North Koreans on their war prisoners. The church lost its case.
"This has put us back to the start of the road again," Michael Marshall, an
official of the church, said at the time of the lawsuit. "But we shall continue
to fight for recognition and to show that we are a genuine religious movement."
Dr. Singer went on to testify as an expert witness in dozens of cases against
groups she described as destructive cults. Former members of the groups or the
anguished families of members, like some of the people who lost relatives among
the Branch Davidians in the Waco, Tex., in 1993, would often seek her advice.
Several members of the People's Temple, with Dr. Singer's help, left that group
before 900 people committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.
Dr. Singer would often help win lawsuits against groups that former members
claimed had lured them into dark, insular worlds that left them psychologically
traumatized.
"Her testimony would help people understand the clinical impact of a cult's
manipulation and exploitation," said Dr. Richard Ofshe, a sociology professor at
the University of California at Berkeley who worked with Dr. Singer for 20
years. "There was a constant stream of people who would go into these
organizations and end up in psychiatric emergency rooms."
Dr. Singer's battles made her a target for harassment and death threats. At
times, she found dead animals on her doorstep.
Margaret Thaler Singer was born in Denver and earned her bachelor's degree,
master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Denver. She became an adjunct
professor at Berkeley in the 1950's.
Dr. Singer conducted several widely known studies on schizophrenia and was a
renowned family therapist. She spent much of her career at Berkeley, but also
taught at the University of Rochester and Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
among others.
In addition to her son, Dr. Singer is survived by her husband, Dr. Jerome R.
Singer; a daughter, Martha Singer, also of Berkeley; and five grandchildren.
Mercury News Staff
Writer Sarah Lubman contributed to this report. Contact Jessica Portner at
jportner@mercurynews.com or (408)
920-2729.
Churches That Abuse - Book Review by M. T. Singer, Ph.D.
Conference 1997: PA Presenter
Conference 2000 WA: Speakers
Conference 2001 NJ: Speakers
Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives - Book Review by Rev. Walter Debold
Langone, Michael: "Recovery From Cults"
Singer, Margaret & Addis, Marsha: "Cults, Coercion, and Contumely" - abstract
Singer, Margaret T., Ph.D., & Lalich, Janja Ph.D.: "Crazy" Therapies: What are They? Do They Work? - The Therapeutic Relationship
Singer, Margaret T., Ph.D.: "Undue Influence and Written Documents: Psychological Aspects"
Singer, Margaret Thaler, Ph.D.: "Post-Cult After Effects"
Singer, Margaret, Ph.D. et al.: "Psychotherapy Cults" - abstract
Singer, Margaret, Ph.D.: "Crazy" Therapies: What Are They? Do They Work?"
Singer, Margaret, Ph.D.: "How United States Marine Corps Differ from Cults"
Singer, Margaret, Ph.D.: "Six Conditions for Thought Reform"
Singer, Margaret: "'Crazy'" Therapies"
Singer, Margaret: "Coming Out of the Cults"
Singer, Margaret: "Cults In Our Midst: Hidden Menace in Our Lives
Singet Margaret, Ph.D.: "Thought Reform Exists: Organized, Programmatic Influence"
|
