Examining Mormon Mind Control w/ Luna Lindsey Corbden Pt. 1 - Mormon Stories 1443

When the System Is the Message: Mormon Mind Control Under the Microscope

Most people who leave the LDS Church do not leave because they stopped caring. They leave because something broke open inside them and they could not put it back together. Luna Lindsey Corbden's work, featured on the Mormon Stories Podcast episode 1443 hosted by John Dehlin, offers one of the most carefully constructed frameworks for understanding why that breaking open is so hard and why it takes so long.

The question this episode tries to answer is blunt: does the LDS Church use mind control tactics? Corbden, who spent years researching psychological manipulation after her own faith transition, argues the answer is yes, though she is careful to separate intent from outcome.

Background: A Former Member Who Did the Reading

Corbden is not a psychologist by training. Her degree is in computer science, and she describes herself plainly as a psychology enthusiast with a serious interest in trauma and manipulation. She wrote a book on LDS control tactics that is available on Amazon and that serves as the backbone of this five-part Mormon Stories series.

Her entry point into this research was personal. After leaving the church, a friend asked whether she had ever been "deprogrammed." Her initial reaction was dismissal. She had figured it all out, she thought. But the question stuck, because there were patterns in her thinking she could not explain and hang-ups she could not trace to any obvious source. So she started reading.