The first edition of "Snapping" was published in 1978, which was the year of mass suicide of cultists at Jonestown, Guyana. While authors Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman did not predict such an event, their book was on the shelves at the right time.
"Snapping, America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change" was not about cults as such, but it made Conway and Siegelman into instant cult experts. At one point, they were sued by Scientology for labeling that movement/religion as a cult. They continue to serve with anti-cult groups like the Rick Ross Institute.
Their identified goal was to introduce and explain a new theory of personality change based on communication and information storage theory. Their theory is highly speculative, but the book is worthwhile for its careful journalism of the experiences of ex-cult members and their families and its careful exposition of the cultural factors that led to the greatly increased popularity of cults and cult-like movements in the second half of the 20th century.
In the first part of the book, Conway and Siegelman look at a few of the changes in America during the 60's and 70's including the popularization of Eastern religions, the popular tolerance for psychedelic drugs and consciousness altering practices, and the self-indulgent inwardness of the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow. They look at the development of cults based loosely on Eastern Religion. The look at the popularity of specialized personal growth training like est and Scientology. They try to find a common connection between weird teaching and therapies and weird religious movements.
They interview persons who have gone through cults and come out of them, harmed to a greater or lesser degree. They interview Ted Patrick, the famous practitioner of de-programming, and the reformed evangelist Marjoe Gortner. They document the practices of cultists in deceptive recruiting, bonding, building trust, and gaining influence over recruits to the point that new recruits seem to their families to have become entirely different persons. They interviewed Robert Lifton, the psychiatrist who tried to explain the brainwashing of American prisoners in the Korean war. They look at cult recruitment essentially as deceptive persuasion, backed by socialization, leading to total brainwashing.
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