International Cultic Studies Association

The American Family Foundation (AFF) was founded by Kay Barney in 1979 in Lexington, Massachusetts. It was one of a few anti-cult groups founded in this period, and one of several dozen disparate parents' groups founded in the late 1970s by concerned parents. Barney's daughter had joined the Unification Church, and he came to see her relationship with it as alarming and controlling; he sought to learn more and therefore counteract its influence. The American Family Foundation was conservative in orientation.

For a time the AFF was affiliated with the Citizens’ Freedom Foundation (CFF) which later became the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). They were the two biggest anti-cult organizations in the United States. However, unlike CAN, the AFF largely did not engage with freelance deprogrammers, whose acts were often illegal. Instead the AFF mostly engaged with psychologists and other professionals concerned by cults. For its first few years, it focused largely on trying to convince various levels of governments to take up legal action against cult groups; after several years of failure, they abandoned this route and decided to instead focus on education by 1984. It functioned as the "academic arm" of the anti-cult movement.

They promoted the idea of satanic groups connected to "satanic ritual abuse" as part of the Satanic panic. They had a "Task Force on Satanism", and sold a "Satanism information packet" that checked for a "ritual abuse behavioral checklist" and included miscellaneous news clips on allegedly satanic crimes. Their periodicals also ran articles on the topic, and editors of their periodicals expressed a belief in ritual abuse. Believers in Satanic ritual abuse referred to the AFF to help survivors of the alleged practice. At this time they were also connected to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

They have historically given out the John G. Clark Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Cultic Studies. They had the "Center of Destructive Cultism" as an arm of the main organization. In 1999, its executive director was Michael Langone. It also developed links with Christian counter-cult movements such as the Christian Research Institute. In December 2004, it changed its name from the American Family Foundation to International Cultic Studies Association, to reflect a more international orientation. Different cult monitoring organizations coordinate through the ICSA. They host conferences, including an annual international meeting.

The ICSA is the only significant North American anti-cult organization to survive into the twenty-first century.