ICSA - International Cultic Studies Association

03/07/2026

Day three of the 2026 ICSA International Conference is underway in San Diego, with more than 300 participants joining us in person at the Hilton Bayfront and through the Online Track.

Today’s programme continues the conference’s interdisciplinary exploration of coercive control across interpersonal, institutional, religious, and cultic contexts.

This morning’s programme covers a wide range of subjects, from emerging forms of online manipulation and wellness culture to clinical training, therapeutic recovery, legal accountability, media advocacy, and survivor-centred practice. A selection of sessions taking place this morning includes:

🔹 Scaling clinical competence: Lessons from the Collaborative Certification Training Model of the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion
Janja Lalich, Natalie Fabert, Melanie Friedman, Kristina Berger, and Nichole Nelson explore how specialised clinical education can help practitioners better recognise coercive influence and support survivors of cultic abuse.

🔸 Online solicitation: The new frontier of coercive control
Robin Boyle-Laisure examines the growing risks of online predation and digitally mediated exploitation, including the challenges legal systems face in responding to these evolving threats.

🔹 America’s cult of wellness: Wellness, wealth and the war on modern medicine
Kim Peirano considers the coercive dynamics and potential harms within contemporary wellness culture, including how promises of transformation can exploit distrust and fear.

🔸 When coercive control becomes a crime: Forensic, clinical, and survivor-centred insights from Finland
Pia Puolakka draws on forensic psychology, psychotherapy, legal casework, and survivor advocacy to examine how psychological abuse can be recognised and addressed within legal systems.

🔹 EMDR Therapy: Applications for survivors of coercive control
Jonna Fries, Erin Hwasta, and Briana Messerschmidt explore how EMDR can support survivors of coercive control, trafficking, abuse, and high-control groups in their longer-term recovery.

🔸 Why media voices matter: The impact of Decult
Anke Richter explores how Decult has used survivor advocacy, journalism, and documentary storytelling to shift public narratives about cultic experiences.

Several of these sessions are available through the Online Track for registered conference attendees, with recordings of live sessions added in the following days.

Explore or register for the Online Track here: https://buff.ly/5SaMNJi

03/07/2026

We are kicking off the third day of the 2026 ICSA International Conference with a record attendance of more than 300 participants joining us both online and in person at the Hilton Bayfront in San Diego.

Over the past two days, the conference has brought together researchers, clinicians, legal professionals, educators, advocates, survivors, and families from around the world to examine coercive control across interpersonal, institutional, religious, and cultic contexts.

Today’s programme continues with presentations, panels, workshops, and discussions addressing coercive control, recovery, trauma, family support, legal and policy responses, high-control groups, professional practice, and survivor-informed research.

For those who have been following online, or who are interested in attending next year, we invite you to explore the 2026 conference agenda for a fuller picture of the breadth of this year’s programme. Across four days, the agenda includes plenary addresses, research presentations, clinical and professional workshops, survivor-informed discussions, panels, networking opportunities, and live online sessions.

Topics span coercive control, high-control groups, recovery and trauma, family dynamics, legal and policy responses, religious and spiritual abuse, safeguarding, therapeutic practice, education, prevention, and emerging research. The programme reflects the interdisciplinary nature of ICSA’s work, bringing together perspectives from psychology, law, social work, medicine, education, public health, and lived experience.

👉️ View the full agenda: https://buff.ly/ggY7gAa

The Online Track remains available to registered conference attendees, with selected sessions available on demand and additional live discussions taking place throughout the event. It is not too late to join online and take part in the final days of the conference.

02/07/2026

The 2026 ICSA International Conference officially opened this morning with welcoming remarks from ICSA President Carol Merchasin, followed by a special plenary address from Dr. Constantine Psimopoulos of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.

Dr. Psimopoulos explored the ethical dilemmas at the intersection of autonomy, well-being, and coercive control. His presentation considered how sustained manipulation, isolation, exploitation, and psychological abuse can undermine not only individual agency, but also the conditions necessary for people to flourish.

Drawing on research in bioethics and human flourishing, he examined how coercive environments can erode mental and physical health, close relationships, meaning and purpose, character, and life satisfaction—often without overt physical force.

The session also addressed a critical ethical question: How can autonomy be meaningfully respected when a person’s capacity to make free and informed decisions has been strategically compromised?

A recording of the session will be available shortly to Online Track conference attendees. It is not too late to join online and access this plenary, along with other conference presentations, on demand.

👉️ See and register for the online track here: https://buff.ly/5SaMNJi

The 2026 ICSA International Conference brings together researchers, clinicians, legal professionals, educators, advocates, survivors, and families to examine coercive control across interpersonal, institutional, religious, and cultic contexts. Across four days of presentations, workshops, panels, and discussion, the conference explores the systems, practices, and relationships that can compromise autonomy—and the research, policy, and recovery-informed approaches needed to strengthen prevention, accountability, and support.

02/07/2026

We are wrapping up the first day of the ICSA International Conference 2026 in San Diego!

Today’s programme featured four workshops exploring recovery, connection, and practical support for people affected by coercive control and high-control groups:

💠 Reflecting is creating: Using the expressive arts to share and connect
Christy-Ann Brown led a creative workshop on reclaiming personal identity and subjectivity through expressive arts, particularly for those whose voices have been silenced by coercive control.

💠 Mapping financial influence: Genograms and money scripts for healing after coercive control
Heidi Clemons explored how financial abuse and coercive control shape money beliefs and behaviours. Participants used financial genograms and money scripts to identify patterns, challenge limiting beliefs, and build financial resilience.

💠 Building bridges across worldviews: A collaborative approach to addressing a loved one’s cult-related involvement for families and clinicians
Patrick L. Ryan, Rachel Bernstein, Joseph F. Kelly, Erin Falconer, Natalie Fabert, and Doni Whitsett led a full-day workshop on practical, ethical, and trauma-informed approaches to supporting loved ones involved in cultic groups. The session focused on communication, conflict reduction, and building mutual understanding across differing worldviews.

💠 Former members workshop
Adam Arnold and Melea Peloquin facilitated a peer-led space for former members of cultic and high-control groups to connect, share experiences, and explore common challenges related to identity, relationships, recovery, and resilience.

There is still time to join us online. The ICSA Online Conference Track provides access to selected on-demand presentations, as well as live online sessions and Q&As with speakers throughout the conference.

Join researchers, clinicians, advocates, survivors, families, and educators from around the world as we continue exploring coercive control, cultic dynamics, recovery, and prevention.

Register for the Online Conference Track: https://buff.ly/5SaMNJi

10/06/2026

Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals experience disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence, often involving identity-based abuse, coercive control, and systemic barriers to support.

In this article, the authors introduce the SINCERE model, a seven-element relational safety framework designed to address gaps in existing trauma-informed approaches, which frequently rely on cis-heteronormative assumptions and may overlook the unique realities faced by TGD survivors.

Key themes explored include:
• 🧩 Identity-based abuse and coercive control
• ⚠️ Systemic entrapment and institutional betrayal
• 🔍 Limitations of traditional trauma-informed models
• 🤝 Practical strategies for fostering relational safety
• 📚 Building professional competency in supporting TGD survivors

An important contribution for mental health professionals, researchers, advocates, policymakers, and anyone working in the fields of trauma, abuse, coercive control, and gender diversity.

Read the full article:
https://buff.ly/l5jRhZh

This Pride Month, we wish to acknowledge the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals, who have often faced unique challenges within high-control groups, coercive environments and abusive relationships. Research has consistently documented the psychological impact of hostile religious and high-control settings on LGBTQ+ people, including increased risks of anxiety, depression, minority stress, and identity conflict. Yet LGBTQ+ experiences remain significantly underrepresented within cultic studies research, leaving important questions about vulnerability, coercion, recovery, resilience, and post-group experiences largely unexplored. Greater attention to these perspectives is essential to building a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of coercive influence and its impacts. You can access more content that covers these themes via ICSA’s Online Library.

01/06/2026

For ICSA's June reading list, we've selected a collection that focuses on the somatic, psychological, and systemic dimensions of healing from spiritual trauma and authoritarian manipulation. Together, these books explore how high-control environments inflict complex trauma on the nervous system, how deceptive structures exploit human vulnerability across history, and how survivors can utilize creative expression, somatic awareness, and psychological insights to reclaim personal autonomy and achieve lasting recovery.

📘 Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing by Hillary L. McBride, PhD
An approachable look at the long-term psychological and somatic impacts of spiritual abuse, using a framework that welcomes survivors from any faith tradition.

📙 Opening Our Minds: Avoiding abusive relationships and authoritarian groups by Jon Atack
A helpful introduction to the history and scholarship of undue influence, showing how deceptive systems operate legally, socially, and politically.

📗 When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion by Laura Anderson
An analysis of how authoritarian faith groups can inflict Complex PTSD, with a practical focus on how survivors can safely restabilize their nervous systems.

📕 Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
An insightful exploration of neuroaesthetics, highlighting how creative expression and non-verbal processing physically assist the brain in trauma recovery.

Together, these texts provide an excellent, multi-layered resource for mental health professionals, researchers, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of authoritarian dynamics and healing.

Read the full summaries and critical reviews: https://buff.ly/YyA8BQE

26/05/2026

Coercive control often remains “invisible in plain sight” due to systemic biases and outdated professional policies that focus on single incidents rather than patterns of behavior. This study investigates the PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ (PSQM), a training tool that uses metaphor and psychoeducation to improve detection and intervention.

This latest research by Kate Amber and Roderick Dubrow-Marshall, published in the 2026 IJCAM Vol 9, explores a "new lens" for professionals to bridge this gap.

This PSQM training tool uses metaphor and psychoeducation to:
✅ Improve detection and intervention for professionals.
✅ Validate the experiences of survivors.
✅ Expose the systemic failures and perpetrator tactics that allow abuse to thrive.

If you work in law enforcement, mental health, or the legal system, this research is an essential step toward transforming how we support survivors of domestic abuse and cultic groups.

Read the summary and full article here: 🔗 https://buff.ly/6JaaFx4

The PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ provides a new framework designed to overcome professional bias, validate survivors, and transform the systems currently failing victims of coercive control.

21/05/2026

In an era marked by increasing polarization, disinformation, and organized manipulation, understanding and protecting against coercion is more relevant than ever. While the mechanisms of abuse and resulting harm differ in form and social context, there are striking parallels across abusive intimate relationships, gangs, sexual exploitation and trafficking networks, ideological radicalization, and, of course, cultic environments. Despite their prevalence, research and evidence-based knowledge of these phenomena remain relatively underdeveloped.

During the 2026 ICSA Conference, we will explore these topics with some of the world’s leading experts in the field, including psychologists, journalists, academics, health care providers, lawyers, and individuals with lived experience.

🌍 ICSA International Conference 2026
💡 Theme: Expanding the scope of coercive control: Understanding abusive dynamics and their impacts across interpersonal, institutional, and cultic contexts
🎟️ Tickets: US$375
📍 San Diego, California
📅 1–4 July 2026
🏨 San Diego Hilton Bayfront

Each year, ICSA’s International Conference brings together researchers, clinicians, service providers, survivors, and family members from around the world to engage in open dialogue on the most pressing issues in cultic studies and coercive influence. The event fosters collaboration between academic, clinical, and lived-experience perspectives to deepen understanding, strengthen recovery and prevention practices, and promote ethical dialogue.

👉️ Join us during four days of discussion and knowledge exchange https://buff.ly/isHcDTq
Since 1979, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) has been working to advance research and open dialogue on psychological manipulation and cultic influence, providing education, support, and collaboration for survivors, families, and professionals.

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15/05/2026

Did you see that our first round of speakers and sessions was announced?

In an era marked by increasing polarization, disinformation, and organized manipulation, understanding and protecting against coercion is more relevant than ever. While the mechanisms of abuse and resulting harm differ in form and social context, there are striking parallels across abusive intimate relationships, gangs, sexual exploitation and trafficking networks, ideological radicalization, and, of course, cultic environments. Despite their prevalence, research and evidence-based knowledge of these phenomena remain relatively underdeveloped.

During the 2026 ICSA Conference, we will explore these topics with some of the world’s leading experts in the field, including psychologists, journalists, academics, health care providers, lawyers, and individuals with lived experience.

🌍 ICSA International Conference 2026
💡 Theme: Expanding the scope of coercive control: Understanding abusive dynamics and their impacts across interpersonal, institutional, and cultic contexts
🎟️ Tickets: US$375
📍 San Diego, California
📅 1–4 July 2026
🏨 San Diego Hilton Bayfront

Each year, ICSA’s International Conference brings together researchers, clinicians, service providers, survivors, and family members from around the world to engage in open dialogue on the most pressing issues in cultic studies and coercive influence. The event fosters collaboration between academic, clinical, and lived-experience perspectives to deepen understanding, strengthen recovery and prevention practices, and promote ethical dialogue.

👉️ Join us during four days of discussion and knowledge exchange. Link in bio.
Since 1979, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) has been working to advance research and open dialogue on psychological manipulation and cultic influence, providing education, support, and collaboration for survivors, families, and professionals.

hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag hashtag