The psychological harms and manipulations of Law of Attraction and manifestation-based groups

ICSA CONFERENCE 2026

Date: July 1-4, 2026
Hilton Bayfront, San Diego

Session summary

This presentation critically examines the psychological and spiritual impacts of Law of Attraction and manifestation-based belief systems. Drawing on lived experience, clinical practice, and psychological theory, Andrew Jasko explores how these frameworks can promote hyper-responsibility, emotional suppression, magical thinking, and victim-blaming while contributing to anxiety, shame, and distorted decision-making. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which manifestation-based systems can become psychologically harmful and learn trauma-informed approaches to recovery and rebuilding autonomy.

Full Abstract

The Law of Attraction (LOA), also known as manifestation, functions as a quasi-religious framework within self-help, New Age, and entrepreneur communities. Promoted by bestselling authors, coaches, and speakers as a universal principle for creating wealth, health, and personal transformation, LOA claims that individuals literally attract life outcomes through thoughts, feelings, and intentions. While LOA is widely accepted in spiritual circles and can produce certain subjective benefits, it has received relatively little critical psychological examination despite its cultural prominence.

This presentation examines the psychological and spiritual harms embedded in LOA and related manifestation practices. LOA’s core doctrine—that individuals are fully responsible for everything that happens to them—promotes hyper-responsibility, victim-blaming, and emotional suppression. It encourages adherents to interpret suffering as personal failure, guilt for negative emotions, and fear of attracting misfortune. LOA fosters obsessive cognitive patterns, compulsive thought-monitoring, and a suppression of honest emotional experience, reinforcing avoidance rather than authentic processing of pain. By privileging personal agency over systemic factors, relational context, and multicausality, LOA also contributes to isolation, hyper-individualism, and a reduced capacity for compassion toward suffering in others.

Drawing on lived experience with manifestation and LOA-oriented groups, along with trauma-informed clinical practice and psychological theory, this talk identifies specific mechanisms through which LOA teachings exacerbate anxiety, shame, and psychological distress. It outlines implications for recovery, including reestablishing balanced decision-making, developing a healthy relationship with intuition, gaining a realistic understanding of the roles of thought, behavior, and circumstance in life outcomes, and restoring autonomy after long-term cognitive and spiritual manipulation.

Speaker
Andrew Jasko, MPhil, MA, MDiv, AMFT
Founder and Psychotherapist | Life After Dogma

Andrew Jasko is a psychotherapist, comparative religion scholar, and founder of Life After Dogma. Raised in a high-control Pentecostal environment as the son of a minister, he trained for ministry, served as a missionary in India, and later underwent a profound deconversion and recovery from religious trauma. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Golden Gate University. Andrew specializes in religious trauma, cult recovery, and high-control groups, integrating approaches such as Internal Family Systems (IFS), EMDR, mindfulness, and depth therapy. Through Life After Dogma, he provides education and therapeutic support for individuals recovering from coercive belief systems and rebuilding identity, agency, and psychological wellbeing.

https://internationalculticstudies.org/events/the-psychological-harms-and-manipulations-of-law-of-attraction-and-manifestation-based-groups/