This article explains how empathy is lost in many LGAT situations. People dont realize they're losing empathy. They think they're getting something so valuable (a feeling of total power and boundlessness) that they either dont realize anything has been taken from them, or empathy is resented as a downer that disrupts the omnipotence.
This is a very good item to read. What follows is a small excerpt:
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www.culteducation.com]
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Within the narcissistic framework constructed by the training, the use of infantile splitting-dividing the relational world into "all good" and "all bad" objects emerged as a dominant defense against anxiety in the group.
In order for the Lifespring experience to he taken in, it needed to be idealized as an all-good object. The trainer could not. be questioned nor the content of the training challenged.
Participants whose opinions deviated from the trainer's were seen as a threat to the feelings of elation and well-being enjoyed by participants. Such threats had to be actively defended against in order to preserve the fantasy of omnipotence cultivated within the training.
Conclusion
We have argued that while many participants experienced a sense of enhanced well-being as a consequence of the training, these experiences were essentially pathological.
First, ego functions were systematically undermined and regression was promoted by environmental structuring, infantilizing of participants and repeated emphasis on submission and surrender.
Second, the ideational or interpretive framework provided in the training was also based upon regressive modes of reasoning--the use of all-or-nothing categories, absolutist logic and magical thinking, all of which are consistent with the egocentric thinking of young children. Third, the content of the training stimulated early narcissistic conflicts and defenses, which accounts for the elation and sense of heightened well-being achieved by many participants.
[i:e1937eb39d](The feeling of power--editor) [/i:e1937eb39d]
"The devaluation of objective constraints upon a person's action promoted grandiose fantasies of unlimited power. A corollary to this devaluation of the external world wits that interactions with others lacked substance."
([i:e1937eb39d]The loss of empathy--persons become interchangeable objects, to be toyed with and discarded--appropriate when we are 2 years old, but a dangerous state of mind when one is in an adult body--editor) [/i:e1937eb39d]
"People appeared to be interchangeable so that ephemeral, indiscriminate emotional contacts were experienced as profound and meaningful.
Identification with Lifespring necessitated considerable idealization so that any threat to this experience was aggressively defended against.
What makes LGATs attractive is they cause participants to feel powerful. Its head-rush produced by social engineering.
If you made people feel this way by selling them happy powder, you'd be busted. But do the same thing through social engineering and you get rich.
This feeling of power is not rooted in actual, adult achievement.
It is produced by losing something--by losing access to important adult cognitive/emotional functions and regressing to the state of mind of a tiny child, about age 18 months to 2 years.
This is the age where we are so young that we are heedless of future consequences. We are energized by still feeling merged with our primary parental caregiver ([i:e1937eb39d]in the LGAT you're led to re-enact this by emotionally merging with the leader, who functions as surrogate parent and bestows praise and inculcates drastic shame, just as parents do[/i:e1937eb39d]), Yet in this phase, while feeling protected and merged with the primary parent, you have the sheer excitement of becoming autonomous--you learn to walk, you can touch, grab, explore.
You dont get this stunning independence again until learning to drive.
Life is just delicious in this phase. You feel totally protected by the parent, totaly invulnerable--and you can move around at your own initiative.
But at this age, kids are unaware of the independent existence of other persons and dont know other people have feelings. They're too young for empathy.
That is why tiny kids have to be closely supervised if they play with animals or with each other--they dont realize that if they hit, bite or squeeze too hard, they could actually hurt a playmate--or injure an animal if they squeeze too hard. Other children and animals are objects, not beings needing care and consideration.
This is why tiny children feel omnipotent, but actually require supervision and protection from caregivers.
You are so young you feel like you can fly, but your parents know full well that there is such a thing as the law of gravity and broken bones--and they take care to child proof the house until you are old enough to protect yourself.
But in LGATs people get this feeling of early childhood omipotence, but are turned loose in adult bodies, with adult relationships and adult access to credit cards, flying high and heedless like tiny kids, but with no awareness that they are vulnerable in this state.
Saddest of all, in the LGAT world, vulnerability is despised, (though vulnerablity is actually well understood as a motivating device)
Empathy is despised in the LGAT world because it means feeling the pain of human connection and that means awareness of vulnerability in oneself and others.
Ever notice how often many LGATs and similar groups dislike any mention of vulnerability?
They love to say 'there are no victims'--if you see everyone as an object, not as a person with inherant dignity, then there's no such thing as a victim--you cant victimize an object.
So, that is the way to feel omnipotent--be convinced only you are real and everyone else is just an object, a thing, to be toyed with and then tossed aside when boring or making funny noises--funny noises that a person with empathy would call a broken heart, puzzled by LGAT induced
heedlessness..
Must mention it isnt just LGATs that do this--its an attitude that now permeates large sectors of the spirituality/human potential scene.
Any time someone says 'There are no victims' that's someone who treats everyone as an object. If you give pleasure, you will be a valued object.
If you become boring you get tossed aside, the way a 2 year old ditches a
used toy and forgets it ever existed.
Its fine when 2 year olds do this--its age appropriate and two year olds are, hopefully parented to become kind and responsible when older.
But when this attitude is in an adult body and accompanied by charisma--we've seen what happens.