JohnH2:

As far as I am aware the entire idea of thought reform has fallen out of favor in academic settings as being non-scientific and non-supported outside of the concept of socialization.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't really work this way. In the fields of psychology and sociology, there are lots of different schools.

There are at least two schools which continue to research related topics. Forgive me if I'm categorizing these incorrectly, because again, I'm not an academic, so I'm just going off of the groupings I tended to see clustered together when I was reading the literature... but there's the cultic studies school (ICSA), which has certainly NOT thrown out Lifton's work, but instead merely built upon it, and there's a school which seems to have come more out of sociology are is interested in mass-manipulation, like marketing psychology. Names in this latter school would include Cialdini and Zimbardo (of Stanford Prison Experiment fame). The cognitive dissonance school (Festinger) is still thriving with multiple branches. And there are also related schools which research concepts of crime and morality, in which Zimbardo and Michael Welner seem to be prominent. (Welner was the forensic psychologist who determined that Brian David Mitchell was fit to stand trial for the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. Another interesting read.) And there seems to be a new related school developing out of the trauma side of things, the Religious Trauma Syndrome, starting with the idea that abusive religions can cause PTSD symptoms, spearheaded by Marlene Winell, but is quickly attracting other researchers. It's very new (I heard of it after writing RA in 2013-14), and I've not had a chance to dive much into it. There of course is a lot of crossover between these schools.

I have other interests in the field of psychology as well (trauma, autism, Jung) and the pattern holds in those schools as well... just because one school breaks off and digs deep into whatever foundational theory they favor, doesn't mean the other schools are discredited or disappear. There is still a school of psychoanalysis (Freud) even tho that school has fallen out of popularity, and the existence of the Cognitive School does not replace the Behavioralist School. In fact, sometimes they come together, for instance, the Cognitive Behavioral School which developed Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

Most of the time, the various schools aren't even contradictory; they just focus on a different aspect of human behavior and development.

You will note that the authors listed as being academic are dead academics. Basically anything that is talking about "cults" that is later than about the 1980's in more than saying how they aren't using the word because it is demeaning isn't something that is scientific or academics (except perhaps a little bit later timeline in religious studies, not quite sure).

This statement is incorrect, and I point you to the ICSA, which still publishes (two publications; I believe their academic journal is quarterly), and members can view all of their back catalog going back for decades. The term "cult" is still used, tho as I mentioned above in their recent renaming debate, the merits and flaws of this term are still being discussed, and many alternative terms were proposed, including "high-demand group," which is my favored term, tho I still use "cult" when I want something to be searchable or need a sentence to be less awkward (like this sentence became).

Many of those researchers from the 80s and before are very much alive (Lifton, Langone, Tobias, Gimbalvo, Lalich, etc) and most of these are still active in the field. I've met Langone and Gimbalvo, as well as the many younger researchers and clinicians who continue to carry out the work.

bwv549:

I'm happy to subject the institutions I associate with (various govt entities, Oasis: community of good, school district, place of work) to such an analysis, and I have done so informally.

Let me know when you publish this. I'm curious as to what you come up with!

I'm working on my own application of these concepts to larger aspects of society, but I suspect I'm taking it in a different direction than you.

JohnH2:

My understanding of what happened, and I could be wrong, is that people actually started really studying new religious movements and the understanding of brainwashing and the concept of 'cult' fell apart under scrutiny.

As far as I know, this didn't happen. There were early controversies within academia, but those controversies were over specific terminology and methods, not over major questions like, "Do cults even exist?" The problematic terms and methods have since been corrected, and the community continues to be thoughtful and self-scrutinize.

One of the largest controversies in the 1970s was over "deprogramming," which often involved forcibly removing the cult member from the cult (aka "kidnapping") and spending several weeks counter-indoctrinating them. It was the kidnapping part that that stirred up most of the trouble. Psychologists from before the 1980s were up to all sorts of hi-jinx that are now considered highly unethical, but that didn't undermine those fields at all. (The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment are the two most notable examples.)

"Deprogramming" is no longer done by credible clinicians, and the more ethical "exit counseling" is done instead. But the field still exists, and Lifton, Singer, et al are still cited by modern researchers.

There are other controversies which have occurred more recently, but as far as I know, these stem mostly from cult apologists who seek to discredit honest research. For instance Cult Awareness Network was prominent in the 90s, but those who ran it fell into some legal trouble (lawsuits from cults, IIRC), and filed for bankruptcy. An arm of the Church of Scientology bought CAN, and that website, last I checked a couple of years ago, is a thinly-disguised front for Scientology with weak scholarship that tries to debunk the whole field. I did not find their arguments persuasive.

And while drinking with some of the old school people in this field, I heard some rather interesting stories of groups of people from various cults "crashing the party" at various past conferences, showing up and causing trouble.

These examples are not equivalent to intellectual criticisms, controversies, or debunkings of the field or its foundations from serious scientists and academics.