Sane Again,
I take it from your name that you were once involved with one of these groups. I am happy that you are no longer involved. One comment you made is alarming to me. You stated that 'she should not work and earn more money that me" So my husband, who is involved with Mens Division International, is telling me that I can quit work at anytime because he will make more than enough for the both of us. Is he saying this because that is what he is told to do? Any information that you can share regarding your experience would be greatly appreciated.

Does anyone know anything about the point team weekend? The one that is for 12 to 24 hours. If so please share your experience. I would like to gather as much information as possible.

Thank You

I haven't been involved in MDI specifically, or any other (apparently) free-standing mens organisation, so I don't have specific experience to share in that. I've been involved in Quest, which is an offshoot of EST, as are many other organisations listed here, such as Landmark, lifespring, PSI, mankind organisation etc.

They share a common root 'philosophy' and set of 'techniques', (usually including some kind of vow of secrecy), and most of them use these techniques to manipulate people into loyalty to the organisation and recruiting others into the organisation. Some appear to be run by 'true believers', others just out for money.

One of their techniques is to build a whole mythology around certain key words and concepts, which generally don't have the same meaning that they have in normal life. The keywords are associated with powerful psychological processes that give them an emotional and psychological meaning beyond reason and sometimes beyond conscious thought.

The MDI site has many of the keywords and concepts that are taught on the general LGATs, some general and some specifically in relation to relationships and gender roles:

"honor, commitment, integrity, training, serving for the betterment of humanity... code of honour, commitment before ego, Honor the truth, respect confidentiality, keep your word, be prepared, defend humanity, always be faithful to the men (or the women, if you are a woman).

These are all keywords in the basic gender philosophy I described above. I don't know how this is implemented at MDI but in my experience its fairly subtle - not so much 'tell your wife to quit her job' but subtly working on the idea that your wife must be vulnerable, she must be willing to trust you to support and 'hold' her, that is the woman's role, the woman's energy - the man's role is to support and hold and provide and protect etc etc. I don't know what the purpose of this thinking is, other than to indulge what many people want in the same way that the general LGATs indulge people's desire for power and control in their lives in general. And of course, the thinking is paradoxical, a general feature of LGATs - women are more powerful than men therefore they must be protected. Typical thought-stopping logic.


Maybe this organisation is run by true believers and run without some of the worse elements but - just look at the secrecy - how can that be good for a relationship? The man goes off and does things that he has to keep secret as part of his manhood code. If he is abused in any way he can't tell you. If he has doubts about the organisation he can't tell you. If he wants to give money to the organisation he can't discuss the reasons with you.

And there is usually an association with a women's organisation, with equivalent training and concepts. If there is, he will put you under huge pressure to attend it.

I have to stress I don't know this group, and they are all slightly different. But the pattern is to start off with fairly reasonable and normal ideas and practices, then move on to more extreme things as they go through more initiation-type experiences, and prove their 'commitment' and ability keep their 'word' and prove their 'integrity'.

Something else worrying about MDI website quotes there is more - selflessness - than you see in some of the other groups. They talk about being 'selfless', humility, operating from 'commitment not ego'. This is worrying because the basic technique is to break down the ego so that ego-functions are deferred to the leader or the group - in other words, the leader and group do your critical thinking for you, and also define your identity and your self-esteem. The ego has a bad reputation in life, its the 'selfish' thing - but the truth is that a strong ego is essential for healthy human functioning. These groups don't remove any egos, they just 'stand-in' for the person's own ego, which is not healthy. "Earn and honour rank" is also worrying; where there is a hierarchy there is a lot of pressure to 'move up' and a lot of subjection to the power of the men higher up the hierarchy - and who knows what they're really in this for?

I hope this has been helpful; I'm sorry I don't have anything more precise to say about this. Just remember that the conditioning around words like 'integrity' and keeping your 'word' is very powerful, so the advice given by someone earlier - to remind him that his first word was to you - is very good advice. I suffered a severe mental breakdown after involvement in one of these groups so don't just believe everything I say(I might be crazy and I'm afraid I'm beginning to sound like a zealot!) - read as much as you can on this site and remember that the underlying psychology in most groups listed here is the same, so if for example, you find a useful posting about the mankind project, you can show it to him and he will hopefully see the similarities.

You could also ask about practical things like the money - how much does it cost, how much will it add up to if does all the courses? What does he get for the money? Can he get whatever he gets some other way? He can practice integrity and be good role model to his son without joing a secret society! These things are available free! And if he wants the male bonding he can watch a sport, start a poker game or whatever. It might be a harmless group but why take the risk at whatever the price is? Warn him that its kind of like the mafia and belonging to the godfather 'just when you think you're getting out, they pull you back in, they pull you back in'... :twisted:

Morgan,

I whole heartedly agree with your take on Sterling and you did a wodnerful job of outing the man behind the curtain.

I had been involved with the Sterling Mens Division for six years and also felt uneasy with the cultish aspects of it and had this sense that the Emporer had no clothes but no one seemed willing to admit that. I stayed with it because I cherished the relationships I had with many of the men. The uneasiness that I felt was shared with other men which lead to the creation of MDI.

We have tried very had to keep MDI a "leaderless" organization. Yes there are men charged with running things but we have checks and balances in place. We have an elected Board of Directors comprised of Men from around North America who are elected every two years. To date no man has served for more than two terms. We have a President charged with overseeing operations he is appointed but serves for 2-3 years.

We put on a weekend event for men called the Legacy Discovery. It runs from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. The location of the event is not a secret, we try to ensure that men get a good (more than six hours) sleep each night. we limit particpation to 20-40 men to avoid "group think". I get that a men only organization may seem threatening to some but it has been wonderful for me -- a profesional man in his fifties with a wife and daughter and very high profile stressful job. It gives me a chance to down load and blow off steam without alcohol, drugs or naked women. It puts me in touch with the joy of being a little boy again while reminding me of just how much of a difference I can have in the world on both a micro and macro level.

There is nothing secretive about what we do but there is a honoring of the sanctity of what we say. we hold what we say confidential so that a man need not worry that should we run into each other at restaurant I won't turn to my wife and say, "you can't believe how screwed up that guy is."

Men come and go and we strive to reach out to other mens organizations so we can share ideas and ways of being.


Is any of that so terrrible or evil?

Living life large with passion and heart.

duxdeluxe:

So you now oppose the Sterling Weekend and would not recommend that anyone do the Weekend under any circumstances?

How is the "Legacy Discovery" weekend essentially different from the Sterling Weekend?

I never said I "oppose the Sterling Weekend and would not recommend that anyone do the Weekend under any circumstances." If you are going to moderate this board please be responsible and do not misquote what people say.

The LD differs from the Sterling Mens Weekend possibly everyway imagineable.

Just the size of the event distiguishes them. There is no denying the difference in intimacy of being with 20 men vs. 100. They are not run by one man, nor even the same group of men. Each one is markedly different than the next because they are driven by the participants and the men of the area that is putting on the event.

Men are well fed, can go to the bathroom when they want and are given a chance to get two good night's sleep. It is about self discovery not embracing someone else's world view. No one gets video taped, no one makes money from this.

When I did my Legacy Discovery I discovered who I was and gained a better understanding of how I got there. I came to appreciate some basic truths about myself, not because anyone was telling me these were my truths but by what I was saying and how I was reacting to what was going on.

The only thing they share is that they are male only events.

If you have specific questions I will gladly answer them but my intention is not to belittle what Justin Sterling does. There is some value there but it requires that a man fully go in with his eyes open. We spend a lot of time in MDI trying to get men to give up the jargon they get from the Sterling weekends and to just speak personally about what they think and what their experiences are.

I am on this forum for that specific purpose. I am not going to quote other sources or rely on other people's opinions. I will say what I feel and think and try to articulate why.

Thank you for the opportunity to do that.

Living life large with passion and heart.

duxdeluxe::

Please read the posts here more carefully.

Questions (note the question marks at the end of each sentence) were posted asking what you believe about Sterling.

You say, "There is some value [at Sterling] but it requires that a man fully go in with his eyes open."

So to some extent you continue to support Sterling, despite the controversy that surrounds the company and its owner.

You describe the "Legacy Discovery" weekend as smaller, more intimate and less authoritarian than Sterling.

But it still appears to be an LGAT (large group awareness training).

Don't you think the men involved would be better off in a support group that is facilitated by a licensed helping professional?

Maybe something through a counseling center, college or community services center.

Wouldn't that be better than doing self-styled therapy with non-professionals, that are not accountable for their specific training, education or conduct through a licensing body or board?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2008 05:44AM by rrmoderator.

Quote
rrmoderator
duxdeluxe::

Please read the posts here more carefully.

Questions (note the question marks at the end of each sentence) were posted asking what you believe about Sterling.

There are questions posed seeking information and those posed as rhetorical. I read yours as rhetorical, the danger of the internet and not having the ability to speak face to face.

You say, "There is some value [at Sterling] but it requires that a man fully go in with his eyes open."

So to some extent you continue to support Sterling, despite the controversy that surrounds the company and its owner.

I support individuals making their own decisions based on having all the informaion they need to make those decisions.

I have no doubt that the stones any one might cast at Justin steling could easily be cast at the Catholic church. Lots of controversey there, lots of flawed leaders but lots of people swear by it. I guess the same could be said for the US Military and just about any government not every one will agree with someone's decisdion or beliefs and certainly not their methods. To me the question is does an individual have the giright to disagree and make heir own decision or will they be ostracized and shunned. I remember after 9/11 the republicans made a big deal of calling any one who did not support the War "unAmerican"

I will tell you that I hae stood in circles of men where men shared markedly different ethnic, cultural and political beliefs but for two hours they set those aside and just listen to one another.

You describe the "Legacy Discovery" weekend as smaller, more intimate and less authoritarian than Sterling.

But it still appears to be an LGAT (large group awareness training).

I don't know what would consitute a a LGAT. Is 20 men large? I would not consider it even a training. In law school I sat in lecture halls with 200 students and a teacher in the front of the room very much in charge of everything that was going on. was that an LGAT?

Don't you think the men involved would be better off in a support group that is facilitated by a licensed helping professional?

I don't get it as an either or. I was in therapy while a part of MDI. They are markedly different. In therapy, I speak, the therapist listens. In MDI many men speak and in hearing them I hear something that rings true for me. Often I hear it more clearly bedause I am not being guarded. For the record we have men of all walks of life in MDI, including therapists and religious leaders.

More importantly we don't provde counseling or therapy. we provide a place for men to be with men and step outside their daily routine. If anything we provide a place where MEN CAN RECONNECT WITH THE JOY OF BEING A BOY -- however we do it for a brief 2 hours a week because anything more might be deemed irresponsible. We do have jobs and families.

Maybe something through a counseling center, college or community services center.

All those places are only as good as the people staffing them, I am sure that there have been plenty of people who have had bad experiences with each, just like here are people who I am sure have had and will have bad experiences with MDI.

Wouldn't that be better than doing self-styled therapy with non-professionals, that are not accountable for their specific training, education or conduct through a licensing body or board?

We don't do therapy, I have often urged men to seek professional help if they are grappling with an addiction or serious marital or legal issues. I'd like to think the men of MDi are pretty clear on what they are there for... to give men a place to be heard without being judged. To give men a chance to fail without suffering any humiliation or adverse ramifications. We are as accountable for that as any doctor or therapist. Not just to our membes but as a not-for -profit to the IRS.

I am signing off and going home, now. Thanks for the forum.

Living life large with passion and heart.

duxdeluxe:

Sterling is a for-profit privately owned company, not a church, government, political party or branch of military service.

The Sterling company is based upon the personality, leadership and programs devised by Justin Sterling (aka Arthur ''Artie'' Kasarjian).

Sterling has no credentials in marriage and family therapy, counseling, etc. and has only his personal experience, which was a badly failed marriage that ended in a bitter divorce and supervised visitation with his daughter. His wife once worked with him at Sterling.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Sterling apparently was once involved in a notorious LGAT called est, now known as Landmark Education, which runs something called the Forum.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Sterling Institute of Relationship has a deeply troubled history of complaints and bad press.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Your defense of Sterling is startling, given its history.

LGATs (aka Human Potential groups) generally have a bad history.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Clinical psychologist Philip Cushman researched this subject and wrote the following research paper.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Cushman "isolated 13 liabilities of encounter groups, some of which are similar to characteristics of most current [LGATs] mass marathon psychotherapy training sessions:

1. They lack adequate participant-selection criteria.

2. They lack reliable norms, supervision, and adequate training for leaders.

3. They lack clearly defined responsibility.

4. They sometimes foster pseudoauthenticity and pseudoreality.

5. They sometimes foster inappropriate patterns of relationships.

6. They sometimes ignore the necessity and utility of ego defenses.

7. They sometimes teach the covert value of total exposure instead of valuing personal differences.

8. They sometimes foster impulsive personality styles and behavioral strategies.

9. They sometimes devalue critical thinking in favor of "experiencing" without self-analysis or reflection.

10. They sometimes ignore stated goals, misrepresent their actual techniques, and obfuscate their real agenda.

11. 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.

12. They pay inadequate attention to decisions regarding time limitations. This may lead to increased pressure on some participants to unconsciously "fabricate" a cure.

13. They fail to adequately consider the "psychonoxious" or deleterious effects of group participation (or] adverse countertransference reactions."

Moreover "groups were determined to be dangerous when:

1. Leaders had rigid, unbending beliefs about what participants should experience and believe, how they should behave in the group. and when they should change.

2. 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.

3. Leaders had an evangelical system of belief that was the one single pathway to salvation.

4. 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.'"

Many former LGAT participants have said that the groups they were in used coercive persuasion techniques.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Staford University professor Richard Offshe identified "the key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:

1. The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance

2. The use of an organized peer group

3. Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity

4. The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified."

Some attempting to apologize and/or ameliorate the methods used by LGATs that parallel coercive persuasion will often compare them to the military training, political propaganda, advertising, religious indoctrination or even education.

However, coercive persuasion, also called "thought reform," is quite different from education, advertising, propaganda and indoctrination.

See [www.culteducation.com]

This is a chart prepared by psychologist and University of California Berkeley professor Margaret Singer.

Most LGATs are run by for profit privately owned companies.

Again, as such they not typically subject to any licensing or regulation, as are licensed professionals, such as marriage and family therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists.

IMO -- People are far safer going with licensed professionals and support groups facilitated by licensed professionals available through local social services, colleges, community centers and/or hospital services.

If they want to join a men's group there are many with a far less controversial history than Sterling or MDI, such as as local Rotary clubs, businessman groups, the Elks, etc.

There are also sporting and outdoors clubs and activities, continuing education through local colleges etc.

RRModerator,

I completely agree with everything you said factuallyabout Justin Sterling and his work. I just disagree with what it all means. For some people it its probably the last place they should go. For others it might be exactly what the doctor ordered. (and yes some therapists have recommended it to their clients)

I support forums like this one because I feel people should know what they are getting into before they immerse themselves into it. However, I am uneassy with repeated mantra that it is somehow all evil.

I just don't buy into the notion that for profit makes something inherently evil and that something slightly outside the norm is bad for you.

For the sake of full disclosure I was thrown out of the Sterling weekend I attended. But that was exactly what I needed. As a very successful high profile lawyer I needed and welcomed the challenge of coming up against the some what storm trooper atmosphere of the Sterling Weekend. What I got personally was the realization that going along with the crowd was not always the wisest path to follow. That is was okay to make a mistake and that there really was no need to appologize for or feel guilty about my success.

I subsequently joined a mens team for the relationships that offered. I don't know how old you are but getting into a meaningful relationship with men you do not know is not an easy thing as you get older and get married.

More to the point I found great value in interacting with men who I seemed to have nothing in common with. These were not the men I would have choosen as friends. I am still reticient to call or think of them as friends. They are however men who I trust, not an easy thing to find in today's world.

In time I grew disatisfied with the claustrophobic and heavy handedness of the Sterling Institute, so with some other men we created MDI. It is nothing like the Sterling Institute for all the reasons cited above in my earlier post.

No omnipotent leader, no dogma, no promise of salvation. Just a place for men to get into relationships with other men.

I feel we are exactly the same as the Rotary, Elks, Knights of Columbus etc. (all of which have their secret initiation rituals by the way). We are just newer at the community game.

When 9/11 hit NY, the men of MDI in the New York Region committed to take Red Cross training so that they would be prepared for any future catastrophy. We are currently engaged in a fundraising effort to purchase a sleepaway camp for YCS, New Jersey's largest foster care agency. The intent is to donate the camp, not to run it or be involved in its operation.

After Katrina, the MDI men of Atlanta made weekend trips down to New Orleans to help rebuild homes on their own dime, to rebuild homes not recruit needy victims.

Each year, the men of LA run an event to honor the area's veterans. 2000 people were in attendance last year and the event got significant media coverage.

There is a lot more but hopefully you get the point.

We are not constrained by having by-laws and long standing histories that limit our members to a particular ethnic group or occupation hence the reason why men choose to join MDI rather than a church group, the Elks or Knights of Columbus. Men need not beleive in god, they need not support our troops or they might be deeply religous or passionately suppport the war in Iraq, they might even be gay.

One trend I am particularly proud of is that a number of gay men have come to MDI and have discovered that they can stand powerfully amongst hetrosexual men exactly as they are. No appologies no need to act macho. At one time the President of our organization was a black man. Again many of the standard organizations have not been all that welcoming to men of color.

The other thing that distinguishes MDI from "support" groups is that we actually show up for men in a time of need. For example, recently a man was moved when some 100 men showed up at his mother's funeral. There were no banners there, no secret handshake, no mention of MDI at all. the only one who knew where these men came from were the MDI men themselves.

We have raised funds for men dying of cancer to ensure that their wife and kids would be well taken care after they were gone, with no strings attached.

Unlike Church groups there is no gossip going on and no peer pressure, we tend to be men from different circles and different neighborhoods so we are not competing with each other to be king of the hill.

So yes, I am a big supporter of men's organizations. I do not believe MDI is the only entity that can provide any of the above but I am proud of what we offer. And yes I think the world, families and our communities would be better served if there were more entities like MDI out there.

The ball is in your court, feel free to tell me what I am missing here.

Howard Spierer -- I think for integrity's sake it is important that I make my name public. I choose not to hide behind an anonymous moniker.


And again, thank you for posting this although it does not seem to coincide with your personal views.

Living life large with passion and heart.