MASKS of CHARLES MANSON: MY INTERVIEWS with the AMERICAN ICON OF EVIL by Dr. Paul Dawson. Through prison interviews with Charles Manson, Dr. Dawson reveals the secrets of Manson's desert commune and murder cult, which was active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Charles Manson led the Manson Family cult, which consisted of 20-30 hardcore members and ranged up to 100 followers, including mostly girls, often underage girls. The Manson Family lived a strange, avant-garde lifestyle involving petty crime, wild sex orgies, daily use of hallucinogenic drugs, marijuana, brainwashing, and drug dealing.Charles Manson was guilty of sex assaults, mental and physical abuse. The hippie-style sex, love, and New Age psychobabble transitioned over months into a paranoid, dark vision. Charles Manson ordered his followers to commit mass murders. The forming of the Manson Family is discussed, which was 5:1 girls-to-guys. A particular emphasis is on the development and life passages of the young women in the Manson Family. Many of the girls Manson recruited for his hippie-murder cult seemed to be wild-and-crazy teenagers, hippie girls stoned on drugs, with parental issues, and identity-crisis turmoil, which Manson exploited.Dr. Dawson conducted a series of interviews with Charles Manson, poster boy for killer-cult leaders, in September 1988 while he was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California. Dr. Dawson provides a very rare, sensational and spellbinding investigation and assessment inside the treacherous, enigmatic mind of this infamous icon of criminal evil.Manson's depraved aura, the repulsion of this homicidal-cult guru, and his murdering, cult-kingpin rampage is investigated in depth. He was the wild-eyed, scraggly-haired Dark Prince of the 1960s. Manson was the demon-hippie, psycho-serial-killer-by-proxy of the Woodstock era who sent his "Manson Family" of fanatical, cult-crazed robots out to commit multiple homicides in the mansions of Los Angeles.Dr. Dawson earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from The New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty in New York City. He has been a psychologist in clinics, schools, mental hospitals; he was chief psychologist of a state prison system; he has been in private practice & consulting in New York. Dr. Dawson has written over 60 books.