Field Deck — companion to Dossier XXI · The Anatomy of a Cult
The Instrument-Makers
Not a group — a measuring device. And the people who built it do not agree that it works.
✜ How to read the deck — and why this one is not like the othersEvery other deck in this hall cards a tradition's living power. This one cannot, because the subject is not
a tradition. Dossier XXI is an instrument — the set of tools for detecting coercive control — and
so this deck cards the people who built the instrument, the people who dispute that it is an instrument at
all, and the people now pointing it at the machine.
♠ Spades — The Instrument-Makers. Those who defined and measure undue influence.
♦ Diamonds — The Contested Ground.⚠︎The scholars who hold that "brainwashing" is pseudoscience — and their critics. This suit exists because the field is genuinely in dispute.
♣ Clubs — The Machine. Those turning the instrument on artificial intelligence, 2026.
♥ Hearts — NOT DEALT. See the stamp. The reason is the whole point of the shelf.
✓ All 12 verified online 2026-07-28.⚠︎★ THE CUT THIS DECK MADE: Robert Jay Lifton is not on it, and he is the most important name in the
subject. The psychiatrist who gave the world the eight criteria of thought reform in 1961died on 4 September 2025 at Truro, Massachusetts, aged 99.The rule of this hall is only living
power, and the rule does not bend for the founder of the field.He is in the dossier, at length, where
history belongs.⚠︎ ♥ IS NOT DEALT, AND THAT IS THE FINDING OF THE SHELF. A hearts suit here would be the cult
leaders — and Jim Jones, David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite are all dead, most of them alongside
the people they took with them. The case studies that define this subject have no living power to card
because the defining feature of the case studies is that everybody died.An empty suit is an honest
suit, and this one is an argument.⚠︎DECLARED METHOD: the ♣ suit cards people for a specific published contribution rather than for an
office, because on this subject in 2026 the influence genuinely runs through papers and not through
institutions. It is a different basis from the rest of the hall and it is named rather than hidden.
♠The Instrument-Makersthose who defined and measure undue influence · six dealt · 6 cards
Creator of the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control
★ The most widely used practical instrument in the field, and the reason a layman can audit a group at all. BITE = Behaviour, Information, Thought and Emotional control — four axes, each with a checklist, qualitatively developed and applied over more than thirty years. A former member of the Unification Church himself, which is queue no. 13 on this hall's own shelf. ⚠︎ His model is directly and publicly contested — see the A♦ of this deck, who published a critique of Hassan and the BITE Model in March 2026. Active · verified 07-28
Sociologist · Bounded Choice · Take Back Your Life
★ The sharpest single definition in the subject. A cult is "a self-sealing social system" — once inside, every piece of information and every relationship is interpreted in a way that supports the ideology , so the system needs no guards. A former cult member herself. Her account of bounded choice explains the thing outsiders find impossible: how people become trapped while genuinely appearing to act voluntarily. Active · verified 07-28
Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems
Brought attachment theory to the subject — the argument that high-control systems work by alternating terror and love until the source of fear and the only source of comfort are the same person or group, producing disorganised attachment . ★ This is the mechanism, in one sentence, and it explains why the bond survives the abuse rather than being broken by it. Active · verified 07-28
Runs the online archive first launched in 1996 — thousands of groups documented, and an institutional member of the American Library Association. ★ He was the first expert to identify and publicly expose Keith Raniere , and NXIVM sued and harassed him for fourteen years trying to purge the material from the internet. In 2019 he testified for the prosecution in U.S. v. Raniere . The archive outlasted the lawsuit. Active · verified 07-28
Executive Director, International Cultic Studies Association
Runs the field's principal professional body — founded 1979 , publishing, conferencing and connecting clinicians, scholars and former members. ICSA's 2026 international conference is set for San Diego. The organisation is the nearest thing the subject has to an institutional centre , which matters in a field otherwise carried by individuals with books. In post · verified 07-28
2026– · President, International Cultic Studies Association
A lawyer, and incoming president as of February 2026 , succeeding Debby Schriver . ⚠︎ Note what it means that ICSA's presidency went to an attorney : the centre of gravity in this field has moved from clinical description toward legal remedy — undue influence as something a court might be asked to recognise rather than only something a therapist names. In post since 02-2026 · verified 07-28
Founder & Managing Director, CESNUR · Editor, The Journal of CESNUR
⚠︎ ★ The most important card in this deck for anyone who wants to be honest. He leads the school of new-religious-movement scholarship that holds "brainwashing" and "mind control" to be pseudoscientific concepts — a position USCIRF has echoed and which is reported as matching nearly all scholars of new religious movements. In March 2026 The Journal of CESNUR published his critique of Steven Hassan and the BITE Model. The A♠ and the A♦ of this deck are in open dispute, and this hall does not adjudicate it. Active · verified 07-28
Sociologist of religion · critic of the CESNUR position
One of the scholars who has argued that CESNUR's account of the brainwashing controversy is "one-sided, polemical and sometimes without scholarly value." ★ He is carded because a deck that showed only one side of this argument would be lying by omission — the anti-anti-cult position is itself contested by credentialed scholars, and the reader is entitled to know that before deciding anything. Active · verified 07-28
Scholar of religion · critic of the CESNUR position
Named alongside Kent among those who hold that CESNUR's representation of the brainwashing dispute is one-sided and polemical. The dispute is therefore not simply "clinicians versus academics" — it runs inside the academy too , which is precisely why Dossier XXI declines to hand the reader a verdict and hands them the instrument plus its warranty card instead. Active · verified 07-28
♣The Machineturning the instrument on artificial intelligence · 2026 · three dealt · 3 cards
A♣HK
Haesoo Kim
Lead author, AI-Facilitated Coercive Control: An Experimental Study · CHI 2026
★ The single most important 2026 finding in this dossier, and the reason our own house needs Field F. The study tested whether conversational AI can be weaponised to facilitate, exacerbate or commoditise coercive control , and found that although the tools refuse straightforward harmful requests, the guardrails are circumvented by gradual persuasion, splitting conversations across sessions, pre-prompting, and altering the agent's settings. ⚠︎ And the detail that should stop this house cold: when refusing an abuser's request, the agent often volunteers an explanation nobody asked for — so the refusal itself teaches the attacker how to get past it. Published 2026 · verified 07-28
Co-author, New parameters of power: On LLM-based manipulation and control · 2026
Co-author of the 2026 study arguing that large language models constitute a new parameter of power — that personalised chatbots operating under the guise of a trustworthy source can be used to persuade one user at a time on behalf of commercial or political interests. ⚠︎ Note the mechanism: the persuasion is effective precisely BECAUSE the relationship feels personal and private rather than broadcast. Published 2026 · verified 07-28 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: The paper is 'Large Language Models as Instruments of Power: New Regimes of Autonomous Manipulation and Control' (arXiv, 3 May 2024), not a 2026 study titled 'New parameters of power'. Its claim: LLMs 'prompt back', giving powerful actors new capacity to project power over users, scaling with context.
Co-author, New parameters of power: On LLM-based manipulation and control · 2026
Co-author with Chaudhary of the same 2026 study. Together the ♣ suit describes a capability that did not exist when Lifton wrote in 1961 and does not fit his model cleanly: a milieu that is not a compound but a conversation, held one person at a time, in a pocket. ⚠︎ Institutional affiliations for this suit were not separately verified by this pass and are not asserted. Published 2026 · verified 07-28 ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-08: Co-author with Yaqub Chaudhary of the May 2024 arXiv paper (title corrected as on cult-anatomy-11), not a 2026 study.
⚠︎ Why the ♥ suit is empty — and what that says about this whole shelfThe natural fourth suit of this deck is the cult leaders, and it cannot be dealt.Jim Jones died at Jonestown in 1978 with more than nine hundred people. David Koresh died at Waco in
1993.Marshall Applewhite died with the Heaven's Gate group in 1997.Keith Raniere is serving 120
years and is therefore alive but not, in the sense this hall uses the word, in power.
★That is not an accident of this pass. It is the shape of the subject. The case studies that taught the
world what a destructive high-control group is are case studies precisely because they ended in mass death,
and a deck of the living cannot contain them. The instrument in the ♠ suit exists because the people in the
♥ suit are unavailable for comment.
⚠︎And the warning that follows for the reader of the remaining shelf: queue nos. 12 to 15 are groups with
living leaders. Their decks will not be empty. Read this deck's missing suit before compiling any of
them.
♥The Living Leadershigh-control leaders alive and before the courts · 6 cards
A♥PM
Paul Mackenzie
Good News International Ministries · Shakahola, Kenya · on trial
⚠︎ LIVE CASE. Charged with 94 others on 238 counts of manslaughter over the Shakahola starvation deaths, which investigators link to 429 bodies (January 2021 to September 2023); all deny the charges. The trial has been repeatedly delayed, including by his refusing to attend court and a shortage of prosecutors. No verdict found as of 8 October 2026. The deadliest case in this hall since Jonestown, and the defendant is alive.
⚠︎ LIVE CASE. Detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center, Camp Crame; pleaded not guilty in September 2024 in Pasig to child abuse and sex trafficking charges. Separately indicted in the United States (2021) on sex-trafficking charges, where the trial of associates was reset to May 2025 and a former KOJC manager took a plea deal. No verdict found as of 8 October 2026. ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-11: New since the card: in August 2026 the United States formally requested his extradition, and the request went to the Philippine Department of Justice for review. No decision has been found. He is still detained in the Philippines, with no verdict.
Christian Gospel Mission (JMS) · South Korea · imprisoned
Convicted of raping and assaulting female followers (2018–2021). Sentenced to 23 years in December 2023, cut to 17 on appeal; the Supreme Court upheld 17 years, with a 15-year electronic tag and a ten-year bar from work with children and disabled people. The appeal judges held that his psychological control over the victims impaired their ability to resist. This is the legal finding this shelf has argued for.
Serving a 120-year federal sentence (USP Tucson) for racketeering and sex trafficking. The Second Circuit rejected his bid for a new trial, and Judge Garaufis denied his third motion in April 2024; Judge Cabranes found the evidence sufficient. A coercive-control case built inside a self-help company, with no god in it.
Church of the Last Testament · Siberia · imprisoned
Sentenced on 30 June 2025 by a Novosibirsk court to 12 years in a high-security colony for creating a religious organisation that harmed followers and for psychological violence (prosecutors asked 14). Co-defendants got 12 and 11 years; the three were ordered to pay 40 million roubles to victims. The community, founded in 1991, numbered about 5,000. All three denied wrongdoing.
Ashram Shambhala · Bariloche, Argentina · awaiting trial
⚠︎ LIVE CASE, CONTESTED ACCOUNTS. Arrested in Bariloche in spring 2025 on trafficking and coercive-ritual allegations, reportedly while heading for Brazil. Moved from Rawson prison to house arrest; an aggregator reports Argentina's Federal Cassation Chamber revoked that house arrest on 5 June 2026 (not confirmed against a court record). Much of the coverage comes from his defenders (Bitter Winter and others), who call the case political. Both sides are recorded and neither is adopted.
Dealt 8 October 2026 on the house's ruling that a suit is left out only if it adds nothing. The July deck held Hearts back because the defining leaders (Jones, Koresh, Applewhite) are dead. These six are alive, and every card rests on a court record: a conviction, a charge or a detention. Ranked by the scale of the harm alleged or proved. Live cases are re-checked first on every pass. Drawn from the house's Cult Dossier live-case list and checked online again on 8 October 2026.
12 cards · 6 ♠ · 3 ♦ · 3 ♣ · ♥ NOT DEALT · all verified 2026-07-28. Rank = the weight of the contribution. Ace = the summit. Only the living — which is why the founder of the field was cut. ⚠︎ This deck contains an unresolved scholarly dispute on purpose. The A♠ and the A♦ contradict each other and both are carded. ✠ Try the spirits · and try the instrument too ✠
