To Whom It May Concern: I just want to say that Gentle Wind morphed into FSRG, and I am one of their victims, now leaving the project. We have been badly financially abused, and also sexually harassed. This is a high control cult group, with very strict swaying between negative messages to keep you "working on yourself" with the instruments because you are "badly damaged" and the only cure being the instruments. They are still going on, and we have experienced first hand their con artist ways. We were so stupid--you can't imagine. Gave them thousands of dollars...And then one of the group leaders shows up in a Volvo Cross Country, while all of us are working so hard to keep them afloat. The kicker for me was being asked to have sex with the leader, possibly with other women involved, to help with the production of the instruments from the Spirit World! I am jsut leaving. It's hard to admit I've been a part of something so dark...

Mary, it takes a lot of courage for a former follower to admit they were duped. We greatly admire your honesty and are so glad that you've made it out of there.

If you browse around in this forum, you will find hundreds, thousands of people who have been scammed, fooled, conned, tricked, and financially harmed. Each story is profound and each individual has been hurt in unique ways. Some still have a sense of humor, and others are crying while they try to recoup what they had and move on.

There are present cult members reading these forums. That doesn't matter to some of us, but to others it might.

None of us were "stupid," including you -- simply trusting, mostly full of good intentions, and inexperienced in the cruel practices of the cult leaders.

One of the better explanations we've read about how sexual manipulation is used in cults was by Corboy on one of these forums: [forum.culteducation.com]

Congratulations and all good wishes,

Judy and Jim

Wouldn't it be perfect if a cult recovery group existed in Maine to apply for the mental health funds being newly distributed by the Attorney General from seizure of Moe and Tubby Miller's fraudulent Gentle Wind Project?

They did a lot more harm than "making false claims" about their products, but that story's been told a thousand times over on these pages, cult after cult after cult.

The AG didn't get much from them, but it will help a few folks.

Judy and Jim
____________________________________



AG’s office seeks to issue grant money: [www.bangordailynews.com]
AUGUSTA, Maine — The Office of the Attorney General is seeking grant proposals for nearly $69,000 to be distributed as part of the state’s settlement last year with the Gentle Wind Project over devices it marketed and claimed relieved emotional distress.

The Kittery-based Gentle Wind Project contended the devices — ranging from small laminated cards to disks resembling hockey pucks — were based on the principles of Tibetan and Asian medicine and could help improve people’s emotional, mental and physical health. . . .

The Attorney General’s Office contended the nonprofit violated the Unfair Trade Practices Act by making false claims about its products.

AG's Press Release: [www.maine.gov]

At least they got busted for making false claims. That seems to be the way to close these types of people down, unless they are smart enough to find the loopholes.

Maybe a cult-scam education website in Maine could use some of those funds.
Or a consumer anti-scam education program?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2009 12:19PM by The Anticult.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks - William Shakespeare

Caught in the Act of Manipulating: The Rise and Fall of a Cult and Its Leaders

A book review by Jim Bergin, M.A., Gentle Wind Project Cult former member

Here they go again – “Caught in the Act of Helping: How a government official destroyed 23 years of effort aimed at producing revolutionary, new stress relief technology” by Mary Miller (aka Moe Miller, Claudia Panuthos, Mary Elizabeth Carreiro, etc. of Gentle Wind Project (GWP): aka GW Retreat, Brothers & Sisters of the Spirit World, Family Systems Research Group, FSRG-I Ching Systems, and on and on) is a sadly predictable diatribe whose only redeeming value is as a pitiful example of cult post-apocalyptic strategy, whereby cult leaders display typical delusions of persecution and distorted reality when they are exposed and “caught in the act of manipulating.”

These delusory responses, as expressed in Miller’s book, arise due to the inevitable conflicts the cult has with reality. When cults, such as GWP, are exposed by former followers, as well as prosecuted by the justice system, the group and leaders must devise strategies to recreate their prevarications. Typically, these self-induced perceptions are ones of being surrounded by "peril" whereby the proclaimed enemy seeks to destroy the cult's and its hapless followers’ path to “save the planet.” The cult, as usual, attempts to evade all blame, deflecting it to the outside world, as cited on every page of Miller's missive.

In Miller’s duplicitous fantasy, where anyone with critical views of the cult, and those who don’t perform like Miller’s cult followers, are defamed, GWP and its leaders, the Miller “family” (Tubby, Moe, and the other females living with them), are portrayed as the “poor” victims who only want “to save the world,” but are thwarted when their deceptive dealings are exposed by multiple legal difficulties: one recklessly initiated by the cult leaders themselves; the other by government legal authorities responding to complaints from victims of GWP. Miller blames the first “assault” on a married couple, Jim Bergin and Judy Garvey (using pseudonyms “Bernie” and “Grady” in her book) – two former GWP Cult followers and one time so-called GWP Board members (now conveniently cast as having some sort of fictional “catastrophic mental illness,” according to the dissembling author) – and several international cult watchers and well known cult educators (including Rick Ross, Steve Hassan, and others) who posted Bergin and Garvey’s exposes of seventeen years as GWP followers on their own websites. (In the real world Bergin, Garvey, and the others were defendants, over several years, in federal and state courts, from frivolous lawsuits unwisely concocted against them by the Millers and their GWP Cult). Bergin and Garvey were assisted in their successful landmark defense – which in the book Miller fantasizes as a conspiracy – by Jerrol Crouter, Esq., the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (see Gentle Wind Case Summary [cyber.law.harvard.edu]), and experts with a specialty in cults, Dr. Arthur Dole and Dr. Cathleen Mann.

GWP’s second set of legal problems – about which the author vainly attempts to transform the Millers from snake oil hustlers to victims throughout tedious pages of indefensible libelous misrepresentations, in the reviewer’s opinion – came from Maine’s Assistant Attorney General, Carolyn Silsby, Esq., with whom the Millers and GWP subsequently signed a Consent Decree on August 14, 2006 pleading to lesser charges of deceptive practices and misuse of funds, and were summarily told to pack up GWP’s bags of expensive “healing” hockey pucks and obtuse laminated computer-designed cards, return all funds illegally obtained, and leave the state.

Unfortunately, the obsessive disinformation, that continues for 451 pages, doesn’t end there: Bergin and Garvey are defamed by Miller as somehow able to influence not only Maine’s Attorney General, but national and international media; Federal Judge Gene Carter, who ruled against the Millers in their frivolous federal lawsuit against Bergin and Garvey; Governor John Baldacci; cult recovery experts worldwide; and former GWP followers. Miller’s irrational conspiracy theory goes on ad nauseum maligning anyone outside her convoluted interpretation of reality. The Millers even condemn their own high priced attorneys. Top government officials are accused of surreptitiously sleeping with each other; Federal Judge Carter is said to be influenced by Maine’s Governor Baldacci, and it only gets worse for those who take the plunge into this circular narcissistic rant. Miller goes so far as to misappropriate the work of Dr. Robert Jay Lifton – Distinguished Professor Emeritus, CUNY, Harvard Medical School, contributor to Cultic Studies Review, and past keynote speaker at the International Cultic Studies Association Conference – on GWP’s behalf. Anyone familiar with Lifton’s work on brainwashing might find this humorous, if it wasn’t so embarrassingly outrageous and an insult to Lifton.

Many will have sympathy for those long-term followers still trapped in this Alice in Wonderland GWP-hole. Now morphed back in business under yet another name, this time in Massachusetts, the Millers are up to the usual old scams (see [www.life-insights.com]). Mary “Moe” Miller might be seen sporting a new “research” Volvo Cross Country, and John “Tubby” Miller with now-limited success, reportedly attempting his same lurid “energy work” tricks on a former generous female follower/benefactor, and – if history repeats itself – on others (see Wind of Changes, [www.windofchanges.org]).

In sum, this book is a spurious and malevolent attempt to rewrite reality and obfuscate this group’s illegal activities in the eyes of the Millers’ unwitting followers. Researchers into cult behavior and delusions, and legal authorities needing a better understanding of how these groups function, would find this poorly edited trumped-up apologia pro vita sua vanity publication a repetitive and obsessed example of a typical cult strategy to reframe perception, but hardly worthy of the time or price tag.


Disclaimer regarding Steve Hassan

The Ross Institute of New Jersey/May 2013

See [www.culteducation.com]

The inclusion of news articles within the Ross Institute of New Jersey (RI) archives, which mention and/or quote Steven Hassan, in no way suggests that RI recommends Mr. Hassan or recognizes him in any way.

News articles that mention Steve Hassan have been archived for historical purposes only due to the information they contain about controversial groups, movements and/or leaders.

RI does not recommend Steven Hassan.

RI has received serious complaints about Steve Hassan concerning his fees. Mr. Hassan does not publicly disclose his fee schedule, but according to complaints Steve Hassan has charged fees varying from $250.00 per hour or $2,500.00 per day to $500.00 per hour or $5,000.00 per day. This does not include Mr. Hassan's expenses, which according to complaints can be quite substantial.

Steven Hassan has charged families tens of thousands of dollars and provided questionable results. One recent complaint cited total fees of almost $50,000.00. But this very expensive intervention effort ended in failure.

Dr. Cathleen Mann, who holds a doctorate in psychology and has been a licensed counselor in the state of Colorado since 1994 points out, "Nowhere does Hassan provide a base rate and/or any type or accepted statistical method defining his results..."

Steve Hassan has at times suggested to potential clients that they purchase a preliminary report based upon what he calls his "BITE" model. These "BITE reports" can potentially cost thousands of dollars.

See [corp.sec.state.ma.us]

Steve Hassan runs a for-profit corporation called "Freedom of Mind." Mr. Hassan is listed as the corporate agent for that business as well as its president and treasurer.

RI does not recommend "Freedom of Mind" as a resource.

RI also does not list or recommend Steve Hassan's books.

To better understand why Mr. Hassan's books are not recommended by RI read this detailed review of his most recently self-published book titled "Freedom of Mind."

See [www.cultnews.com]

Steve Hassan's cult intervention methodology has historically raised concerns since its inception. The book "Recovery from Cults" (W.W. Norton & Co. pp. 174-175) edited by Dr. Michael Langone states the following:

"Calling his approach 'strategic intervention [sic] therapy,' Hassan (1988) stresses that, although he too tries to communicate a body of information to cultists and to help them think independently, he also does formal counseling. As with many humanistic counseling approaches, Hassan’s runs the risk of imposing clarity, however subtly, on the framework’s foundational ambiguity and thereby manipulating the client."

RI has also learned that Mr. Hassan has had dual-relationships with his counseling clients. That is, clients seeing Mr. Hassan for counseling may also do professional cult intervention work with him.

Professionals in the field of cultic studies have also expressed concerns regarding Steven Hassan's use of hypnosis and Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

Based upon complaints and the concerns expressed about Mr. Hassan RI does not recommend Steve Hassan for counseling, intervention work or any other form of professional consultation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2013 08:55PM by rrmoderator.

In addition to Gentle Wind Project / Mary Miller's new book, the cult also posted some poor quality propaganda videos on You Tube. We'll include the links here so they're in the GWP history on this forum.

[www.youtube.com]
3 You Tube Videos of Mary Miller, each with off-camera interviewers (using gwp member-speech).

--"Dear Governor Baldacci"

--"Caught in the Act of Helping Part 1"

--"Caught in the Act of Helping Part 2"

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2010 10:34PM by The Anticult.

Its probably the best idea to put new info about the new incarnation of GWP called Life Insights in this thread, to keep it all together in one place?

Someone could notify this GWP debunker Dave Touretzky [www.cs.cmu.edu] to update his GWP page. [www.cs.cmu.edu]


Is John “Tubby” Miller [www.cs.cmu.edu] in the new GWP called Life Insights too?


Life Insights...LI...Lie...appropriate acronym.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2010 10:37PM by The Anticult.

(Disclaimer: I am a citizen, with no training or license to be a psychotherapist. The articles quoted are for resource and continuing education--and to illustrate the complexity of these issues and why it can be so difficult to 'walk away' and the useless cruelty of telling people to just 'drop the victim mentality.'

FYI a friend who is a therapist has, as part of her required continuing education, taken a 3 month long course on countertransferance (areas where therapists risk getting stuck and missing stuff like projective identification). And...she took that counter transferance class 4 years earlier. Why take that class on repeat?

Because new findings had occurred and she wanted to stay up to date. All this to keep her license current. Thats what genuine, licensed therapists do--they recognize they are capable of making mistakes and for that reason they take continuing education classes so they can stay sharp and bring us their best.

Note: all attorneys have to do required continuing education classes as well, to stay current with their field. Ditto for CPA accountants.

So..behold the mighty irony: leaders of some groups consider themselves flawless and infallible and thus, as gurus, need not take continuing education classes.

But these same gurus who as gurus areconsidered infalliable and thus exempt from taking required continuing education classes, usually make sure to hire CPAs and attorneys who themselves take continuing ed classes.

Few gurus or human potential leaders would willingly hire an attorney or CPA who claim they didnt need law school or accountancy training because they got their expertise from a channelled source.


Dear Mary, Judy, and Jim:

It has been a number of years since I posted the information that Jim and Judy refer to by URL.

In that post, I stated rather blithely that once you realize you've been used in a group, to 'take back your power.'

In the years that have followed, I have learned that this is not always easy to do and it cannot always be achieved by an act of will, or even by intelligent insight.

In some bad relationships or group sitaution, a targeted persons actual core identity has been usurped/shoved to one side by material from a dominent persons psyche and the targeted person may suffer a real disruption in his or her identity, long after he or she has physically fled or left or long after the domineering person has died. In some situations, ones pattern of emotions and sexuality may remain affected, leaving the targeted person fearing that he or she 'wanted it' or colluded by becoming aroused by sensations that would have been neutral or repugnant before the target met and was groomed by the domineering but needy other.

There is a concept called projective identification. Now this excerpt refers to a situation between a patient and therapist. But...you can substitute the word, 'leader' for 'patient' and 'recruit' for 'psychoanalyst.

(quote)

Quote

Different definitions of projective identification exist and there are disagreements as to a number of its aspects. For example, where does the process begin and end, exactly "what" is projected and what is "received", is a second person required for projective identification to take place, does projective identification occur when it is within the awareness of either party involved, and what is the difference between projection and projective identification. Ogden (1982) describes the process of projective identification as simultaneously involving a type of psychological defense against unwanted feelings or fantasies, a mode of communication, and as a type of human relationship.

As a defense a psychiatric patient, for example, can use PI to deny the truth of unwanted feelings or beliefs by projecting them into the other person. Additionally, because the analyst begins to unknowingly enact these feelings or beliefs (even though they were originally alien to him or her), the patient is in a sense "controlling" the interaction with the analyst. This is often experienced by the analyst as a subtle pressure to behave or believe in a particular way; but it is an influence which the analyst usually is not attentive to or it is not experienced consciously.

"By influencing the analyst to behave in a particular way, more exploratory, original and vulnerable material is prevented from coming into the discussion.

(unquote)

This last sentence is important. Its how dysfunctional families and groups can, without verbal instructions, generate areas of taboo, zones of silence, in which only some matters can be even thought or discussed, and other areas are censored, becoming secrets we keep even from ourselves--without our consciously choosing to do so.

As an example, I grew up with a mother who drank too much. As a kid, I stared right at the bottle of Gordons Gin by the toaster. Without even being told, I accepted it as part of the scenery. I even, without conscious awareness trained myself to tune out the odor of alcohol on human breath. My sense of smell is accurate in other areas--I can pick up garlic, melting chocoate, baking bread or gas leaks. But to this day, many decades later, I have great difficulty smelling alcohol on breath, because I learned to tune it out as a child, along after Ive gained insights into alcoholic family dynamics. I can do so, but I have to make an extra effort.

I was projectively merged with my parents, due to the age appropriate malleable boundaries of childhood and my own survival needs as a kid. What worries us in RR.com is if a group that is not licensed for psychotherapy uses techniques of regression so as to render adult boundaries fluid once again as is the case in childhood.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

Quote

Other authors have identified multiple motivations for projective identification including: to control the object, to acquire its attributes, to evacuate a bad quality, to protect a good quality, to avoid separation (Spillius, 1988, vol. 1, pp. 81-3). Here is a simple example of projective identification in a psychiatric setting:

A traumatized patient describes to his analyst a horrible incident which he experienced recently. Yet in describing this incident the patient remains emotionally unaffected or even indifferent to his own obvious suffering and perhaps even the suffering of his loved ones. When asked he denies having any feelings about the event whatsoever. Yet, when the analyst hears this story, she begins to feel very strong feelings (i.e. perhaps sadness and/or anger) in response. She might tear up or become righteously indignant on behalf of the patient, thereby acting out the patient's feelings resulting from the trauma. Being a well trained analyst however, she recognizes the profound effect that her patient's story is having on her. Acknowledging to herself the feelings she is having, she suggests to the patient that he might perhaps be having feelings that are difficult for him to experience in relation to the trauma. She processes or metabolizes these experiences in herself and puts them into words and speaks them to the patient. Ideally, then the patient can recognize in himself the emotions or thoughts that he previously could not let into his awareness. Another common example is in the mother/child dyad where the mother is able to experience and address her child’s needs when the child is often unable to state his own needs at all.

The above examples describe projective identification within the context of a dyad. However, PI takes place within a group context as well. Another notable psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion (1961) described projective identification in the following way: "the analyst feels he is being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognize, in someone else's fantasy" (p. 149). This ongoing link between internal intra-psychic process and the interpersonal dimension has provided the foundation for understanding important aspects of group and organizational life. Bion's studies of groups examined how collusive, shared group phenomena such as scapegoating, group-think and emotional contagion are all rooted in the collective use of projective identification.

This article is highly valuable.

Rosenman, S. (2003). Assaultive projective identification and the plundering of the victim's identity: Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis & Dynamic Psychiatry Vol 31(3) Sep 2003, 521-540.

Some discussion of it here: (a small quote from a longer post)

Corboy March 06, 2008 02:55PM-continuing education module

Quote

Rosenman, pages 530-531. (It should be noted that Dr. Rosenman speaks only of victims of violent assault. He did not examine certain kinds of socially engineered settings (LGATs) in which people become exhausted and are led to question and then dismantle their identities--C)

Dr Rosenman listed key aims of assault. In passing he mentioned a matter that is worth our close scrutiny:

'To elicit pity and nurture from the victim, thereby furtively parenting him (the assailant)...(to aim a blow) that falls outside the comprehension of the victim in order that he lack the cognitive structure to detoxify the deed.'

Rosenman then gives us this:

"Sometimes the ready use of the term "identification with the aggressor" may incorrectly suggest that a given victim is an active, introjecting agent (eg is actually consenting C) in this maneuver, whereas in reality, he unhappily undergoes being routed, mesmerized, and taken over by an alien force.'

"Once the images of the predator have a foothold within the subjects core identity, they campaign to confiscate more of the subject's psyche. "

(Rosenman page 526)

Then the harder it would be to associate in an EX group dedicated to open discussion and emancipatory questioning of what has harmed them.

Repeat: If people have been subliminally conditioned to feel protective, even that they have the responsiblity of nurturing and parenting the person or the process that has instilled shame and self distrust, the harder it will be to question that or associate with others who want to question it.

[forum.culteducation.com]

(corboy April 17, 2009 03:48PM)

[forum.culteducation.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2010 10:06PM by corboy.

Make no mistake. This was (and is) a group of rotten, evil snake oil salesmen trying to remake themselves and their stupid plastic "Magic hockey pucks" and "Holy laminated cardboard cutouts".

One State's Attorney General (U.S.A.) already drove them out of one state so precident has been established.

Time for all other states to drive these bastards out of their miserable existence once and for all. These people are horrible parasites.

Just my 2 cents...just saying...