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rrmoderator
turambar:
Specifically the lawsuit filed against the Ross Institute by Landmark Education contained a range of claims.
In my opinion Landmark Education does use coercive persuasion to break people down and gain undue influence.
Alright.
(1) On what is that opinion based
(2) What specific expertise and educational background do you claim?
(3) Have you actually attended Landmark Forum to form this opinion, or are you forming it from watching the portions of the French LF in the posted video?
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This is done to make money, because Landmark is abusiness for profit.
So your first allegation is that Landmark Education uses coercive persuasion to break people down and gain undue influence for profit. My questions to you then, are:
- Why is Landmark not structured in such a way as to benefit from this technique?
- Why are the prices not higher, given that people over whom LE exercises undue influence would probably pay higher prices? $45 for the course I attended the other night seems awfully cheap if my defenses are down.
- Why are the courses limited, rather than having Scientology's system of lifetime "auditing" and large-scale donations? Even the most dedicated Landmark brainwashees run out of courses to take after two or three years.
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And the company has made Werner Erhard a very rich man, and others associated with the company have done quite well.
Whether or not that assertion is true, and I'm not at all sure it is, it is irrelevant to the argument you are making except as an emotional indictment based on the idea that "Landmark is a cult". If Landmark is not a cult, then your emotional indictment does not follow.
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Because it is a privately held for-profit company, we may never know how many millions Erhard has tucked away, nor what has been paid to his other family members and business associates.
Nor do we care, unless the money has been somehow stolen or coerced from Landmark attendees. Given the low course fees and high customer satisfaction rate of graduates even years after they've attended a course, that seems unlikely.
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The undue influence Landmark gains through its programs I believe enables the company to get the results it wants, which are praise regarding its programs, accompanying testimonials, enrollment by past participants in more courses, past customers recruiting their friends, family, co-workers etc. and free labor as "voluteers" to reduce overhead.
The alternate explanation, of course, is that Landmark Education earns repeat business and volunteer labor because it puts out a good product.
Why is this explanation so unreasonable to you?
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Landmark isn't a "summer camp" its a multi-million dollar company that boasts sales of over $70 million per year.
And Red Hat Software posted sales of $335 million last year, again on largely volunteer efforts. For-profit companies are not precluded from having large percentages of volunteers. In fact, it's the latest fad in business models.
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EST and Landmark Education really are essentially the same thing. Other than Werner Erhard supposedly selling control of the company in the early 1990s. His brother and sister run the operation with the help of old associates like Art Schreiber.
I never attended EST, but my impression is that it entailed a lot more special jargon and some really militant, coercive methodology. But let's say for the sake of argument that your assertion is true. Landmark Forum has been revised quite a lot over the years. As examples, attendees can leave to go to the bathroom or take medication whenever they want. EST attendees couldn't. There are no locks on the doors in Landmark. EST had locks on the doors. The overall amount of jargon Landmark uses is way down from what EST uses, according to the Landmark volunteers to whom I've spoken. Forum Leaders don't seem to be the hard core drill sergeants they used to be. A follow-up long term course is available and its cost is included in the price. So even if Landmark Forum started out as EST, it has markedly changed for the better.
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Some people think Erhard never really relinquished control and still calls many of the shots from behind-the-scenes.
That seems possible, but my impression from reading biographical material on the web about Erhard is that he was not a long-term, stick-to-one-thing kind of guy. I have the impression that Erhard gets bored and takes off.
So I don't agree, but my opinion is also just a guess.
There are three defining elements of a "destructive cult."
See [
www.culteducation.com]
1. a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power;
2. a process I call coercive persuasion or thought reform;
3. economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
[/quote]
(snip)
Subsequent to the "sale" of EST Landmark lacks this evident personality-driven critieria, i.e. an ever-present charismatic leader, which is the single and most saliant element that defines cults.
Whether or not you think that the prices are too high (and I found them quite low), your #1 and #3 cult criteria fall for lack of a cult-like leader or coterie to do the "exploiting" and a mechanism for exploitation. Landmark simply does not lend itself to sexual or other exploitation, given that many of its instructors are volunteers, too.
That only leaves #2, a process of what you call coercive persuasion or thought reform.
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Other than that single criteria in my opinion Landmark could be considered a "destructive cult."
This would include the two other criteria as cited by Lifton.
CORRECTION: You really mean that you believe that Landmark meets one, not two, not three of Lifton's criteria.
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You may not wish to recognize this, but many experts have as those interviewed through the French report and notably Margaret Singer.
No, I do not accept the French "report", given the fact that it is "entertainment news" as opposed to balanced reporting. For the same reason, I do not get my facts from Geraldo Rivera or even from the Fox News Channel.
That leaves Margaret Singer...
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Dr. Singer did not think Landmark was a "cult" for the same reason I have cited above, but she would not endorse or recommend Landmark and thought the company used coercive persuasion.
...who did not think that Landmark is a cult.
Okay, so Rick Ross has said that Landmark Education does not meet Lifton's criteria for cult status, and neither does it meet Margaret Singer's criteria for cult status.
I have to go back to work, and you've presented an array of reasons why you believe that Landmark Education is dangerous and there exist others who think that LE is academically controversial. I am not going to bother getting into that part of your post, because at that point neither I nor you have any demonstrable and objective expertise on the academic side and I certainly don't have time to try to convince you that I don't feel I've been harmed. But you've helped me do what I came here to do, which is to refute the silly idea that Landmark is a cult.
Thanks!
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See [
www.culteducation.com]
This paper by Richard Ofshe, a sociologist at Stanford, outlines "coercive persuasion."
"The key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:
The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance
The use of an organized peer group
Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity
The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified."
These four factors are all evident in the Lanadmark Forum.
Please understand that all persuasion is not the same. For example there are distinctions to be made between education, adverstising, propaganda, indoctrination and thought reform.
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Again, in my opinion Landmark Education uses "thought reform," though they may call it "education."
Please also understand that Raymond Fowler, who Landmark touts as someone that didn't see "brainwashing" in their programs, is not an expert in this specific fieldm (i.e. coercive persuasion). Fowler may have been the "President of the APA," but he is not known for his work regarding coercive persuasion and did not speak officially for the APA regarding his opinions about Landmark.
It is interesting to note that even though Landmark Education paid Jean-Marie Abgrall, M.D. more than 45,000 euro to determine if they were a "sect" (European for cult) and used "brainwashing" Abgrall was critical of Landmark and when interviewed would not either deny that they are a "sect" or use "brainwashing."
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Clinical psychologist Philip Cushman researched "mass marathon training" groups like Landmark and he noted that---
"13 liabilities of encounter groups, some of which are similar to characteristics of most current mass marathon psychotherapy training sessions:"
They lack adequate participant-selection criteria.
They lack reliable norms, supervision, and adequate training for leaders.
They lack clearly defined responsibility.
They sometimes foster pseudoauthenticity and pseudoreality.
They sometimes foster inappropriate patterns of relationships.
They sometimes ignore the necessity and utility of ego defenses.
They sometimes teach the covert value of total exposure instead of valuing personal differences.
They sometimes foster impulsive personality styles and behavioral strategies.
They sometimes devalue critical thinking in favor of "experiencing" without self-analysis or reflection.
They sometimes ignore stated goals, misrepresent their actual techniques, and obfuscate their real agenda.
They sometimes focus too much on structural self-awareness techniques and misplace the goal of democratic education; as a result participants may learn more about themselves and less about group process.
They pay inadequate attention to decisions regarding time limitations. This may lead to increased pressure on some participants to unconsciously "fabricate" a cure.
They fail to adequately consider the "psychonoxious" or deleterious effects of group participation (or] adverse countertransference reactions.
It seems to me based upon my experience with EST/Landmark beginning in the early 1980s to present that Landmark exhibits all 13 of these liabilites.
Dr. Abgrall cited some concern.
"They lack reliable norms, supervision, and adequate training for leaders."
He said, "My critique is of techniques that haven't been mastered at all. There is no control of a psychologist. They just put anyone in there, which means that if this guy takes a blow, he leaves alone in a daze, there's no one to take control for him. They don't exchange information - there's no real inspection of the technique. These guys aren't trained, as if tomorrow you set up shop as a psychotherapist. I mean, that's what's shocking."
Dr. Cushman also noted that "groups were determined to be dangerous when:"
"Leaders had rigid, unbending beliefs about what participants should experience and believe, how they should behave in the group. and when they should change."
"Leaders had no sense of differential diagnosis and assessment skills, valued cathartic emotional breakthroughs as the ultimate therapeutic experience, and sadistically pressed to create or force a breakthrough in every participant."
"Leaders had an evangelical system of belief that was the one single pathway to salvation."
"Leaders were true believers and sealed their doctrine off from discomforting data or disquieting results and tended to discount a poor result by, 'blaming the victim.'"
In my opinion Landmark Education exhibits all four of these characteristics and is potentially dangerous.
This can be seen by the many personal injury claims that have haunted the company over the years, its repeated bad press and the constant complaints received by the Ross Institute about Landmark.
Landmark has tacitly concurred by requiring its participants to sign off on paperwork that waives the right to a trial by jury, in the event of a personal injury claim. This is something no licensed counselor, pscyhologist, psychiatrist, would typically require a client to do.
Landmark said in its lawsuit that my opinions are wrong and that they amounted to "product disparagement" or more simply put, defamation.
However, instead of moving forward and proving this position, when faced with discovery Landmark cut and ran.
This would lead many to conclude that Landmark knew through discovery more evidence would be found and compiled to support the conclusions cited above. After they realized discovery would not be sealed and therefore secret, they decided to dismiss their own lawsuit with prejudice.
Landmakr had never before done this in litigation.
The French report that Landmark has tried keep off the Internet is further proof of all these points.
Your denial and attempt to defend Landmark Education on this message board doesn't change its history, the facts cited, or the outcome of the litigation recentlys, which humiliated the company in a very telling way.