Jon is a leading expert on authoritarian cult groups as well as a best-selling author. He has worked with hundreds of former members and has lectured and written extensively in a career spanning four decades.
Jon wrote Scientology: The Cult of Greed as a simple introduction to the subject. His influential book Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky is the only comprehensive history of this bizarre group. He has published two novels, Voodoo Child (slight return) and Halcyon Daze as well as a translation of Lao Tze’s Tao Te Ching. In his spare time, he hybridises tomatoes, plays drums and paints.
‘If you want to make your body stronger, go to a gym. If you want to make your mind stronger, pay close attention to what this book tells you.‘
– Alan Scheflin, praise for Opening Our Minds
According to Professor Stephen Kent, Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, ‘initiated the era of modern scholarship on Scientology.’ Professor Emeritus Alan Scheflin, in the introduction to Opening Our Minds, said, ‘If you want to make your body stronger, go to a gym. If you want to make your mind stronger, pay close attention to what this book tells you.’
Through his popular YouTube channel and podcast, he endeavours to make complex psychological ideas accessible. His scholarship has been supported by many academics from varying fields of study.
Jon’s book Opening Our Minds shows how cultic behaviours are established throughout society and sheds light on the methods used in pseudo-religions, therapy and commercial cults, terrorism, gangs, grooming, hazing and modern slavery. He also shows that these methods succeed because of failures in our education system.
Jon Atack Family & Friends Podcast
Subscribe to Jon Atack Family & Friends YouTube channel for more than 400 fascinating longform conversations with experts and former members discussing how to spot, avoid, and overcome exploitative persuasion of all kinds. The channel also features Yuval Laor, Ph.D.’s groundbreaking work on belief, awe, and fervor, and interviews with many experts on authoritarian cults.
You can also subscribe to Jon’s podcast to listen to these conversations on all major podcasting platforms.
For a more personal view, check out Lyrical Whacks, wherein Jon and his lovely wife discuss their shared love of music, poetry, art and good books in addition to reading some of their own work.
Opening Our Minds:
avoiding abusive relationships and authoritarian groups
Every abusive relationship, every destructive group, every dangerous government has a human predator at its heart.
Predators rely on persuasion. Honest persuasion lets us know all the facts – and differing opinions about those facts. It allows us enough time and privacy to consider these facts and opinions.
Predators persuade by controlling information, and hiding important facts and differing opinions. This is manipulation. To ‘manipulate’ means to manage or influence skilfully, especially unfairly. Facts are hidden or distorted, and we are rushed into decisions that take away our own authority and harm our interests.
Predators cause upset, conflict, corruption and devastation. By seeing through their methods, we can take power away from human predators and have a much better chance to overcome the problems they cause in our personal and group relationships.
Critical acclaim for Opening Our Minds
If you’re interested in reading more of Jon’s work, you can find it all here.