------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library and preservational electronic archive. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Professional Profile: Dr. Michael D. Langone Michael D. Langone (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara), AFF Executive Director, has guided the foundation during a decade of growth to maturity as the preeminent professional association dealing with cultism and unethical social influence. A colleague of cult research pioneer John G. Clark - at both Harvard and a prominent Boston mental health clinic - Dr. Langone came over with Dr. Clark to AFF not long after its inception as a public information and referral service. He proceeded to organize the foundation's critical fund-raising effort, set up administrative systems for new programs, and take the lead, as a co-author, in writing Destructive Cult Conversions: Theory, Research, and Treatment, a book which helped to legitimize the popular sense that cult experiences were often terribly destructive, and explain convincingly why this was so. Dr. Langone's subsequent scholarly and public education work has elaborated and refined his (and his colleagues') analysis of the problem and ways to ameliorate it both clinically and socially. The medium for this has been a number of AFF-convened committees of helping professionals and academics working on special educational, research, or clinical delivery projects determined collegially under the AFF aegis and aimed to have some smaller or larger impact, each in its own way, on the problem of cultism in society. Apart from conceiving, implementing, and administering this system, Dr. Langone has been a creative part of it. He founded and edits, with the help of a board of AFF-associated experts in the field, the Cultic Studies Journal. It is perhaps his most important personal legacy. He wrote the very widely circulated Destructive Cultism: Questions and Answers and co-authored both Cults: What Parents Should Know, greatly praised by parents and clinicians, and Satanism and Occult-Related Violence. He is now editing Recovery from Cults, which stems from the AFF's 1991 benchmark conference in Philadelphia. Dr. Langone was also the animating force in founding the Society for the Study of Social Influence, which counts among its members some of the nation's leading academics in fields germane to cultic studies. Apart from his administrative and scholarly contributions - and we could list here numerous other publications in professional journals and books as well as presentations to professional association meetings - Dr. Langone must be credited with diligently, patiently, and with some success, encouraging those uneasy about studying the harmful aspects of cultic groups to confront the reality that victims of cultic processes have been telling us about for a decade and more. 2 Professional Profiles: Meri Wieder Sirkin Meri Wieder Sirkin (R.N., M.S. [Rutgers], C.S.) is a clinical nurse specialist in child and adolescent psychiatric and mental health nursing who will chair the new AFF Nursing Committee. For over a decade, she worked at Fair Oaks Hospital in Summit, NJ, cošrdinating clinical services of dually diagnosed adolescents - those with substance abuse and emotional/psychiatric problems - during their inpatient treatment for substance abuse. Her work involved assessments and therapy (both individual and group), inservice education and supervision for nursing and counseling staff, and outreach workshops as well as lectures for professionals, parents, and adolescents. While at Fair Oaks, she also worked on her master's thesis, "A Descriptive Study of Cult Members and their Jewish Families of Origin." For help with her research, she called the New York Cult Clinic and Hotline, run by Arnold Markowitz, hoping to find interview subjects, and was in turn interviewed by Mark Sirkin (currently Director of the Beren Center, Yeshiva University, chairman of the AFF Psychology Committee, and a member of the Cultic Studies Journal Editorial Advisory Board) who found their mutual interests overlapped. The Cult Clinic and Hotline needed volunteers to do what she offered, and the arrangement worked. After the thesis was completed, "a draining process," she put it on the shelf and intended to go on to other things. But people at work began "picking her brain" on cults, and especially on Satanism, sparking her interest anew. This time she called the Cult Clinic for information on Satanism, in which it became apparent that large numbers of adolescents, who presented with the usual problems, were becoming seriously involved. As the resident "expert," because of her contacts with other cult experts, Ms. Wieder Sirkin did public speaking on the subject. To enlarge her understanding of the phenomenon - as she says, she felt a responsibility to learn more - she decided to attend an AFF meeting in Teaneck, NJ, where she became aware of the absence of nurses from the group of professionals. She also met again, after three years' divergence of paths, Mark Sirkin, whom she married in 1990. They enjoy, in their free time, "anything outdoors," particularly cross-country skiing. They also do some joint lecturing on cults. Ms. Wieder Sirkin was recently promoted to the position of Health Services Cošrdinator at the Psychiatric Institute of Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, NY, where her duties are as varied as before, but even more demanding. She looks forward to joining with several other outstanding nurse-educators in the new AFF Nursing Committee, which she believes will have a real impact on the understanding of cults and Satanism by her fellow professionals nationwide. ================================================================= If this is a copyrighted work, you are acknowledging by receipt of this document from FACTNet that on the basis of reasonable investigation, you have not been to obtain a copy elsewhere at a fair price, and that you are and will abide by the following copyright warning. WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS: The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photo copies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified by law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. FACTNet reserves the right to refuse to accept an order for copying or other duplication, or delivery of copied or duplicated material if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------- CARD CATALOG ENTRY DOS FILENAME OF TEXT FILE: CO1091AF.TXT DOS FILENAME OF IMAGE FILES: none ADMINISTRATIVE CODE: OK SECURITY CODE: SCO DISTRIBUTION CODE: RO DESCRIPTION FOR BBS FILE LISTING: The Cult Observer Vol. 8 No. 10 SORT TO: AFF CONTRIBUTOR: American Family Foundation (AFF) LOCATION OF ORIGINAL: American Family Foundation (AFF) NOTES: Back issues and selected reprints of the Cultic Studies Journal are available from the American Family Foundation, P.O. Box 2265, Bonita Springs, FL 33959-2265. PROFESSIONAL PROFILES: | 1 Dr. Michael D. Langone | 2 Meri Wieder Sirkin For additional verification see the contributor of the document. UPDATED ON: 8/30/94 UPDATED BY: FrJMc =================================================================