CULTS, RECRUITS OF

Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, a psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said of people the cults seek to recruit: “About one-third are very psychologically distressed people. The other two-thirds are relatively average people, but in a period of depression, gloom, being at loose ends, such people are vulnerable to well-planned recruitment techniques” (Time, September 4, 1978).277