Steven Alan Hassan is an American writer and mental health counselor who specializes in the area of cults and new religious movements. He worked as a deprogrammer in the late 1970s, but since then has advocated a non-coercive form of exit counseling.

Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.