My books
RADICALIZATION
Radicalization is my most recent book, originally published in the spring of 2021 in Sweden. The English translation was published 2024.
Radicalization is a well-written, pedagogical, and thoroughly researched book about how extreme religious and political organizations work to make people dependent on them. The book specifically discusses the Islamic State, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Moon Movement, the Pentecostal Church, the Church of Scientology, and the Nordic Resistance Movement.
There are also sectarian tendencies in organizations such as companies, sports clubs, nonprofit associations, criminal gangs, and motorcycle clubs. The book provides a comprehensive review of cultic ideologies, language, and leadership. It describes the radicalization process—how people are recruited, shaped, and live their lives within cults and cult-like organizations.
The author offers practical advice to professionals in education, social services, psychiatry, law enforcement, and corrections on warning signs, intervention, how to motivate individuals to leave, and how to support people in radical environments.
Finally, the book presents an overview and discussion on working with defectors, including instructions and advice for practitioners as well as effective treatment plans.
Håkan Järvå was a member of the Church of Scientology for fourteen years. After leaving, he trained as a psychologist and has worked with individuals leaving cults and radicalized organizations. He has previously compiled the anthology Sektsjuka (2009) and co-authored Influence and Manipulation (2013) with Peter Dahlgren.
PÅVERKAN OCH MANIPULATION (INFLUENCE AND MANIPULATION)
I wrote this book together with researcher Peter Dahlgren. In the book, we start from the two psychological systems people use to make decisions: one fast and automatic, driven by gut feeling, and the other slow and reflective, where we think more deliberately.
The book further explores how language and argumentation can be used for manipulative purposes, and finally places this in a broader context—examining how mass media influences the individual.
We like to believe that our decisions are based on facts and relevant information, but as the book shows, we are unconsciously influenced by entirely different factors. These factors are based on fundamental psychological mechanisms that often help us in everyday life—but which can also be exploited to manipulate and influence us by those who know the tricks.
The book is not yet translated to English but if you are interested in reading more about these mechanisms I can recommend Influence by Robert Cialdini and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Links to these books can be found under the heading recommended reading.
RADICALIZATION
”For anyone interested in how ordinary people can end up in radical environments—and why it’s so difficult to leave them—this book is a real gem. There’s so much you didn’t know before that you may need to read certain sections more than once.
For me, it was slightly unsettling to realize that everything I would instinctively do to persuade someone to leave a radical environment is exactly what you shouldn’t do. In other words, there’s very little that’s obvious in this field, and it’s high time a book like this reaches a wide audience—especially among those who meet people who may need help staying away from fundamentalism.
Teachers, in particular, should read it. On top of that, it’s written in a fluent and engaging style rarely seen in fact-heavy literature.”
INFLUENCE AND MANIPULATION
The book is unique in that it combines several broad perspectives: the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Other books usually focus on one or the other. The aim of this book is to bring these perspectives together into a cohesive whole, in order to create a broader understanding of a subject that has, in fact, affected all people throughout history.
Using psychology as a starting point, the book begins by explaining how people think and reason. It then moves on to describe how we should think and reason, and finally concludes by placing everything in a broader democratic context—how the media influences our decision-making and how societal issues are portrayed.