Resources in Psychology of New Religious Movements

A selected review by Dr. James Knoll of journal articles and other resources in this field appears here.

• Black, Albert. “Jonestown: Two Faces of Suicide: A Durkheimian Analysis.” Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior 20, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 285-306.
• Brown, Norman R., Lance J. Rips, and Steven K. Shevel. “The Subjective Dates of Natural Events in Very Long-term Memory.” Cognitive Psychology 17, no. 2 (April 1985): 139-177.
• Bynum, Jack E. and William Thompson. “November 18, 1978 in Jonestown: Statistical Effects of Micro Demographic Event.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 7 (1979): 45-57.
• Dunning, Christine M. and Milton N. Silva. “Disaster-Induced Trauma in Rescue Workers.” Victimology 5, no. 2 (supp. 4) (1980): 287-297.
• Dwyer, Philip M. “An Inquiry into the Psychological Dimensions of Cult Suicide.” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 9, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 120-127.
• Harrary, Keith. “The Truth About Jonestown.” Psychology Today 25 (March 1992): 62-69; reprinted in Religious Cults in America. Ed. Robert Emmet Long. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1994, pp. 10-20.
• Hochman, John. “Miracle, Mystery, and Authority: The Triangle of Cult Indoctrination.” Psychiatric Annals 20, no. 4 (April 1990): 179-184, 187.
• Hoyt, Michael F. “Observations Regarding Patients’ Reactions to the Jonestown Massacre and the Moscone-Milk Assassinations.” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 9, no. 2 (April 1981): 303-309.
• Jones, David R. “Secondary Disaster Victims: The Emotional Effects of Recovering and Identifying Human Remains.” American Journal of Psychiatry 142, no. 3 (March 1985): 303-307.
• Jorgensen, Danny. “The Social Construction and Interpretation of Deviance: Jonestown and the Mass Media.” Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1 (1980): 309-332.
• Kroth, Jerry. “Recapitulating Jonestown.” Journal of Psychohistory 11, no. 3 (Winter 1985): 383-93.
• Lasaga, Jose I. “Death in Jonestown: Techniques of Political Control by a Paranoid Leader.” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 10, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 210-13.
• Nesci, Domenico Arturo. [only English-language items listed]
  • “A Subjective Introduction to the Study of a Collective Suicide.” Acta Medica Romana 26, no 2 (1988): 137–42.
  • “An Ethnopsychoanalytical Approach to the Tape Recording of the Collective Suicide of the Peoples Temple.” Acta Medica Romana 26, no. 2 (1988): 249–59.
  • “Group Narcissism in the Collective Suicide of the Peoples Temple.” Acta Medica Romana 26, no. 2 (1988): 260–68.
  • “Inner Evil and Collective Suicide: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Interpretation of the Peoples Temple’s Holocaust.” Acta Medica Romana 27, no. 2 (1989): 201–9.
  • “Collective Suicide at Jonestown: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Study of Leadership and Group Dynamics.” In Politics and Psychology: Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspectives. Ed. J. Offerman-Zuckerberg. New York: Plenum Press.
  • The Lessons of Jonestown: An Ethnopsychoanalytical Study of Suicidal Communities. Rome: Società Editrice Universo, 1999. [Reviewed by Rebecca Moore, 2018]
  • Revisiting Jonestown: An Interdisciplinary Study of Cults. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018. [Reviewed by Rebecca Moore, 2018]
• Nesci, D. A. and G. Bersani. “The Collective Suicide of the Peoples Temple: A Psychohistorical Approach.” Acta Medica Romana 26, no. 2 (1988): 176–88.
• O’Reilly, Patrick, and Phyllis Rosen. Undue Influence: Cons, Scams and Mind Control. Point Richmond, California: Bay Tree Publishing LLC, 2013.
• Osherow, Neal. “Making Sense of the Nonsensical: An Analysis of Jonestown.” In Readings about the Social Animal, 7th edition. Ed. Elliot Aronson. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1995. Available online. Also available on this site.
• Riggio, Ronald E. “More Psychology of Good and Bad Leadership: What are the cheap psychological tricks used by bad leaders?” Psychology Today, October 19, 2009.
• Stack, Steven. “The Effect of the Jonestown Suicides on American Suicide Rates.” Journal of Social Psychology 119, no. 1 (February 1983): 145-46.
• Ulman, Richard Barett and D. Wilfred Abse, “The Group Psychology of Mass Madness: Jonestown,” Political Psychology, International Society of Political Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 4 (December 1983), 637-661.
• Zee, H. J. “The Guyana Incident: Some Psychoanalytic Considerations.” Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 44, no. 4 (1980): 345–63.
• “The Guyana Incident: Some Group Dynamic Considerations.” In Compliant Behaviour: Beyond Obedience to Authority. Ed. M. Rosenbaum. New York: Human Science Press, 1983.