I found this article interesting. I am posting with a few brief quotes, which seem to fit in with my experience.

[www.icsahome.com]

"The elimination of individual boundaries is perhaps best seen in the characteristics known as the demand for purity and confession, in which members are expected to expose all their doubts about the group/leader/rhetoric, and then they are attacked for having such thoughts. To disagree implies that one is a separate, differentiated person, with one’s own, individual ideas; and this is unacceptable. "

I had expressed some doubts about the content of the program. This seems to have been reported back to the staff. My recruiter disregarded my boundaries, even after I had plainly stated them, and on several occasions, told her that she was over the line. Before she did Landmark, she had treated me as a friend, and would never have done that. Her partner, (a Landmark employee), took some restricted course, apparently for employees only, and stated that she had been told that, "Boundaries are for cattle."

As to therapists and attempts at recovery:

"Believing. Too many clients have had their experiences invalidated because the therapist didn’t want to believe that human beings could do such terrible things to one another; thus, the therapist saw the clients as paranoid or exaggerating."

This has been my experience. I have considered "learned helplessness," but I HAVE made the attempts. It's hard to trust or move forward when your therapist doesn't believe you. Add to the above paragraph that the human beings that are doing "such terrible things to one another " were, at one time, trusted friends, colleagues and family members.

"The third phase of Herman’s recovery model is from stigmatized isolation to social connection. One hallmark of PTSD is social isolation. People are afraid to trust anyone for fear of having their trust betrayed once again. "

I sincerely doubt that I will ever trust another living soul for as long as I live. These people are vile beyond anything that I could ever have imagined in an organization that supposedly "empowers" people, and that operates out in the open.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2018 06:10AM by kdag.

kdag quoted:

"Believing. Too many clients have had their experiences invalidated because the therapist didn’t want to believe that human beings could do such terrible things to one another; thus, the therapist saw the clients as paranoid or exaggerating."

I imagine that in their reluctance to believe client reports of LGAT abuses some therapist [and academics, for that matter] may be motivated by more than cognitive dissonance.

Logic says that therapists and related professionals would take special umbrage in revelations that non-professionals are 'practicing w/o a license'. One really has to wonder at why this is so often not the case, and given that spate of bad press and legal actions involving LGAT's.

I certainly know of individuals in my field who are terrified of social, professional and commercial reprisal should they speak up. I know of many who have left the field rather than to be professionally compromised.

Where is the media in all of this?

It seems, for instance, that a W.E. can survive virtually any charge that has been levied. Hmmmm???