I cannot vouch for this book as I have not personally read it. It was recommended to me, so I'll pass it along...

Who's Pulling Your Strings?: How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life by Harriet Braiker

their blurb: "explains how depression, low self-esteem, chronic anger, and feelings of helplessness are often the result of being caught in relationships with manipulative people"

might be worth the effort...

So my friend left some time today to go participate in another weekend-long seminar. I think this might be the first time in the ILP bull* whatever. I'm kind of dreading whatever phone call I'll receive from her in the middle of the night. And if I do get that phone call, I have to decide whether or not I want to answer..
My new question, though, is this: What can I expect after this weekend, having taken this next step?

Oh, and I think I neglected to mention that after several years, she informed this week that she's decided to stop her counseling, because she "doesn't need it anymore, and doesn't have the time for it." Scary stuff there.

Quote
elena
There are writings about this that suggest it is far easier to maintain a defense of one's ego and one's mind against overt, brutal, dictatorial coercion that it is against the more subtle Landmarkian variety. I'm thinking of Singer and Ofshe's "Peripheral versus Central Elements of Self."

Thanks Ellen for the title. I appreciate you sharing the readings you know about.

Here's a link to one copy I found:
[www.heart7.net]

-lightwolf

As in:

"For those not so overwhelmed by the experience, we suspect that it creates circumstances in which the easiest way to reconstitute the self and obtain a new equilibrium is to "identify with the aggressor" and accept the ideology of the authority figure who has reduced the person to a state of profound confusion. In effect, the new ideology (psychological theory, spiritual system, etc.) functions as a defense mechanism. It protects the individual from having to further directly inspect emotions from the past which are overwhelming. The person is then able to focus attention on some intellectual abstraction rather than on details of the distressing events themselves. "

Which would explain why they go about rattling off these intellectual abstractions and weird science... it has been postulated that the obsessive-compulsive style may have an emotional source, the obssessions and compulsions act as a defense against overwhelming or unacceptable feelings. Perhaps this organization teaches people how to be obsessive compulsives to cope with their frustrations, inadequacies, guilts.... it gives them a collectively licensed mental routine for handling their Dark Matter

Quote
nutrino
Which would explain why they go about rattling off these intellectual abstractions and weird science... it has been postulated that the obsessive-compulsive style may have an emotional source, the obssessions and compulsions act as a defense against overwhelming or unacceptable feelings. Perhaps this organization teaches people how to be obsessive compulsives to cope with their frustrations, inadequacies, guilts.... it gives them a collectively licensed mental routine for handling their Dark Matter

Bingo!


Obsessive-compulsives are jokingly referred to (in the trade) as people who "rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic."


...And further postulated that the overwhelming emotions one is defending himself from by obsessive-compulsive activity is fear, or more precisely, a morbid dread of being found out or exposed.


Seems like that certainly might have been one of Werner Erhard's major fears, what with the trail of victims he left in his wake. The flip-side of a narcissistic presentation is a kind of corrosive anxiety - which Alexander Lowen writes about in his excellent little book - that stems from a frustrated and unsatisfactory early childhood. It makes sense that a small child who lives in constant fear of losing or never attaining love from his mother would be chronically anxious and this would leave indelible marks on the personality of the adult. A child born to a cruel, domineering, cold, or manipulative mother faces untold obstacles. Not all turn cruel themselves or "identify with the aggressor," but certainly enough do.



Ellen

Yes, I realized that what was being taught in the LGAT I was in was dysfunctional ways of coping with REAL LIFE. Self-deception tops the list of coping strategies. We were taught how to lie, first and foremost, to ourselves. It was called "reframing". We were taught to lie about the world around us. We were taught how to dodge, deny, avoid, evade REAL LIFE (the messy parts). We were taught to fabricate a reality that suited us, nevermind evidence to the contrary! We were taught how to live crippled lives, based on the lies we told ourselves.

Perhaps the more investetd in the lies people are, the more difficult it is to see through them, the more the lies seem like truth. 2+2=5.

All the lies crashed in on me the day REAL LIFE hit me hard. When my father died I started to see through the lies in a real big way. It was his death that was the beginning of the end of my years in the LGAT trance.

skeptic

Quote

It was called "reframing".

We studied Reframing extensively in NLP. It is a powerful, valuable tool when used appropriately. The essence of good reframing is to give experiences a new "frame" or meaning... the real art of good NLP was providing the client with wonderful new frames to contain their life experiences, such as a particularly difficult life experience might be reframed as part of the Hero's Journey where one is tested and deepened by life... my take on good psychological work is that it infuses the client with new, or renewed sense of meaning... that the lived life HAS meaning, that one's "story" is, in fact something of essential value, and even the most embarrassing, humiliating times could be the deepest and most valuable teachers.

This is where I personally believe the EST/LEC crosses the line from the idiosyncratic or conjectural to the flat out inexcusable... they present, as settled fact, as inherently obvious, as beyond debate, that one's personal "story" is meaningLESS. They do not, they NEVER, ONCE have, and they CANNOT provide any evidence that this is a true statement !

You doubt me ? Any former ESTholes reading this ? Any fervent Lekkies ?
Here's the challenge. HOW do you know that life is meaningless ? I couldn't care less that you think it, or you think you think it, show me, demonstably, HOW you know this to be true. IF you are so damn certain that this is the incontestible truth, then prove it.

Here, Now.

You have my undivided attention.

You know something, put it to any memeber of the Landmark organization, past or present, and they CAN NOT answer ! Really !

Even worse, they know this. And they're really defensive about it. And they'll gat all weird and rhetorical if you won't be shaken off by their jive assed schtick. But they won't answer the question. Ever.

I think many of us go through various trials when we question everything we know, are shaken deeply, are ground down or ground up, face a problematic present with little respite, and despair a worse future. At those times it may seem that life is an utterly meaningless excercise in futility, or worse, a disaster of great magnitude - the "full catastrophe," as Zorba pointed out. But how can this catastrophe have no meaning? It certainly has meaning to the person living it. To be truly ~empty & meaningless,~ one would have to have no sensation whatsoever. No emotion, no feelings, no evauative faculties - dead, in other words. I wonder if that is the underlying fear that compels some to cleave to groups like Landmark. They did used to sell "aliveness." And it is a common narcissistic comment, by the way - that is, the feeling that one is dead, deadened, or a machine. (Again, Lowen for reference.)


Ellen