Jean-Marie Abgrall:
Jean-Marie Abgrall, born April 12, 1950 in Toulon, France, is a French psychiatrist, criminologist, specialist in forensic medicine, cult consultant, and graduate in criminal law. He has been an expert witness at the Supreme Court of Appeal and Court for Businesses in France on the subject of cults, and analyst of cult deviances. In particular, he is most knowledgeable about Children of God and the Order of the Solar Temple, which he said maintained links with Gladio, NATO's stay-behind organization during the Cold War. He also said that the AMORC, of which he had been a member, had been related to Jacques Foccart's networks [1]. He has written many books on the subject, several of which are used as references. Abgrall has been orally attacked by various groups, including the Aumism movement and the Belgian Raelian Movement, which lost a trial against him.[2][3]
[edit] Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous
[edit] Report for Landmark Education
Dr. Abgrall is featured in the Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous (Travel to the Country of the New Gurus) documentary on France 3, which accused Landmark Education of being a cult, as an expert on cults and psychiatry. Landmark Education's spokeswoman and Landmark Forum Leader Sophie McLean referenced Dr. Abgrall in her discussion with Pieces a Conviction staff. However, Dr. Abgrall was interviewed on Landmark Education by Pieces a Conviction's investigative journalism]team, and asserted a different opinion on-camera from the one he gave in his written, sealed report to Landmark Education. Dr. Abgrall states :
It's not true that I said it's not a cult! I neither wrote that it is a cult nor that it's not a cult. I haven't taken a stance. My critique is of techniques that haven't been mastered at all. There is no control of a psychologist. They just put anyone in there, which means that if they guy takes a blow, he leaves alone in a daze, there's no one to take control for him. They don't exchange information, there's no real inspection of the technique. These guys aren't trained, as if tomorrow you set up shop as a psychotherapist. I mean, that's what's shocking.[4]
Jean-Marie Abgrall ceased cult watching activities on May 29, 2004, after an instruction revealed that he had been paid for an audit mission in 2001 by Landmark Education, qualified as a cult in the 1995 French Commission report on cults.
[edit] References
- Soul Snatchers: The Mechanics of Cults, by Jean-Marie Abgrall, Alice Seberry (Translator), December 1999, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1-892941-04-6, Algora Publishing, paperback
- Healing or Stealing?: Medical Charlatans in the New Age, by Jean-Marie Abgrall, Chantal Thomas, 2000
- Los Secuestradores de Almas, by Jean Marie Abgrall, 2005
- La Mecanique Des Sectes, by Jean-Marie Abgrall, 2002
- Tous manipulés, tous manipulateurs, by Jean-Marie Abgrall
- Les sectes de l'apocalypse: Gourous de l'an 2000, 1999
- Martin et le gourou by Jean-Marie Abgrall, 2001
- Sectes, gourous, etc... Eviter aux ados de se laisser piéger by Dominique Biton and Jean-Marie Abgrall
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