Deprogrammer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person hired to free someone from the beliefs of a cult or group by persuading them to abandon what they were taught
2. Someone who works to undo the effects of brainwashing by helping a member of a cult regain independent thinking
3. An individual who counsels people out of extremist or controlling belief systems and back toward their own judgment

Etymology: Deprogrammer is a recent coinage built from parts that are themselves old. The first part, "de-", comes from Latin "dē", meaning "down" or "away from," which English took in as a prefix meaning reversal or removal. The second part is "program," a word that had long meant a written schedule or plan before it took on its later computing sense. Adding "-er" gives an agent noun: someone who undoes a programme. The word's sense is the striking part. A program in the sense of a set of instructions is what gets reversed here, but the target is a person's beliefs rather than a machine. Deprogramming came to describe the work of persuading a member to leave a cult, often through intensive conversation, and the deprogrammer is the person who does that work.