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Pullum accounts for the persuasive appeals of some of the most popular American healing evangelists of this century and establishes a rhetorical genre of faith healing discourse. For each, he discusses their background, the nature of the audiences to whom they preached, and why they were so ...

Pullum accounts for the persuasive appeals of some of the most popular American healing evangelists of this century and establishes a rhetorical genre of faith healing discourse. For each, he discusses their background, the nature of the audiences to whom they preached, and why they were so successful. Pullum concludes by drawing together the major rhetorical features of faith-healing discourse.

This is a book written for practising therapists, scholars, clergy, students, and those with a general interest in non-traditional healing and helping practices. It tells the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in both the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures. It ...

This is a book written for practising therapists, scholars, clergy, students, and those with a general interest in non-traditional healing and helping practices. It tells the story of Bradford Keeney, the first non-African to be inducted as a shaman in both the Kung Bushman and Zulu cultures. It offers lessons on the essence of making a difference in others' lives, not through the familiar, well-worn paths of traditional psychotherapy but through the work of spiritual healers and 'doctors' of the oldest cultures on this planet. It is an integration of psychological, spiritual, kinesthetic, and anthropological methods into a biography of one of the most charismatic, creative clinicians working today, not just in traditional mental health settings but in the jungles of the Amazon, the deserts of Namibia and Botswana, and the most remote islands in the South Pacific. The authors present applications of indigenous shamanistic concepts to the practice of helping and healing. The book centres on a series of nine chapters that examine specific principles of shamanism and apply them to the practices and desires of counsellors, therapists, and educators, including a wide range of examples from Keeney's own personal experiences as well as those of other shamans he has come to know. This is a book that challenges the foundation of everything we think we know and understand about helping and healing.

From the mass weddings of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church to the mass suicides at Jonestown, charismatic cults and their devotees have become facts of American life. Once exotic offshoots of the Sixties counterculture exciting suspicion, scorn, terror, and counter-terror (as in the brief vogue ...

From the mass weddings of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church to the mass suicides at Jonestown, charismatic cults and their devotees have become facts of American life. Once exotic offshoots of the Sixties counterculture exciting suspicion, scorn, terror, and counter-terror (as in the brief vogue of "deprogrammers"), cults have grown so common and entered so many areas of public life--managing everything from roadside flower-sellers to major metropolitan newspapers and nation-wide political campaigns--that only spectacular disasters like the immolation of the Philadelphia cult MOVE seem to remind us how extraordinary their burgeoning really is. Using material gleaned from fifteen years of direct encounters with cults and their detractors, as well as a wide range of his quantitative research, Marc Galanter shows not only how cult members feel and think at all stages of their involvement but also how larger social and psychological forces interact within the cults to command and reinforce individual commitment. After examining the powerful combination of social cohesiveness, shared beliefs, and altered consciousness that cults offer potential recruits, Galanter shows how these forces are orchestrated into self-contained social systems that relieve anxiety within while warding off threats--real or imagined--from without. Finally, he demonstrates this basic system in action, both in apparently successful movements like the Unification Church and in catastrophic failures such as MOVE and Jim Jones's People's Temple, and reflects on how and why some groups turn to violence. The book is full of compelling stories--first-person accounts of conversions, daily life under the rule of charismatic leaders, disillusionments, and departures both voluntary and forced--and fascinating overviews of many of the most influential cults, including the most comprehensive psychological analysis ever published of the evolution of the "Moonies." Many of Galanter's findings, especially his account of the similarities between cults and "zealous" self-help movements, are highly controversial, and his discussion of the powerful influence that Alcoholics Anonymous exerts over its members will spark much debate. Moving beyond the exposes and confessions that have characterized so much of the literature on this subject, Galanter offers the most extensive psychological analysis of cults available. Although based on extensive on-site research, it is immediately accessible to both the general reader and to anyone personally or professionally concerned with cults.