Here's this, if you haven't already seen it:

[www.culteducation.com]

Corporations and large private employers are constantly on the lookout for quick fixes... I've interacted with numerous senior corporate personalities, and have been struck by their combination of sophisticated reasoning in areas like finance, compensation, acquisition, regulatory compliance.... often combined with their striking naivete (this normally comes from being well insulated from day to day reality by a phalanx of assistants, lawyers, public relations toads....) about human emotion and the grubby facts of real life among regular people... so a "solution provider" industry spings up, especially the consulting business, and their job is to take the dysfunctional organization, slap some sense into it, neaten things up, plaster over the cracks, so by the next management meeting everybody can nod, smile their tense smiles, and be all whoop-dee-doo that we're now...... ummmmm.... "complete"....

Basically, the unspoken truth is that management can go by one of two roads, they can lead by example, meaning they have to do the long, gritty hard work of self education, emotional growth, working through their own contradictions, "necessary lies", marriages.... (oh, btw, you want a REAL barometer of how healthy a corporation is ? Look at the quality of the marriages of the senior executives.... no kidding, spouses are probably scrutinized MORE carefully than the actual candidate in a lot of senior positions.... FWIW)

But, that means, you know, getting feedback that you don't want to hear from people you don't want to hear from, doing painful self inventories, all that stuff that is hard.... and most management feels so entitled to some undefined higher plane of being that such candor smacks of [i:d09cc1dbb8][b:d09cc1dbb8]lese majeste[/b:d09cc1dbb8][/i:d09cc1dbb8]...


So what's you basic organization to do ? The obvious. Force "change" down the throats of the gruntlings... who might have very compelling reasons for resisting change... while exempting the senior managment from doing too much except playing along while the gruntlings are psychologically flogged...

For illuminating example.... I'm dealing with a major financial corporation right now, one which (you wouldn't pick this up on the surface... it slowly becomes apparent with close and continued interaction) which has the earmarks of having some deep level "transformational consulting" or something like that.... and the consequences are incredibly weird and deeply unsettling... and totally consistent with everything I have learned about cult thought processes....

The simple cannot acknowledge or process certain types of new, out of the box information. Its as if the entire organization has a super-powerful "go deaf-tune out-deny it away" mental module installed... so one of two things happens... either I will present them with a new perspective, something potent, well reasoned, finely written by a respected contributor to the literature, and ask them, well, what IS your response to this line of thinking ?

You know what I get back ? This mind numbing "we look forward to reading it" and then the silence of the tomb... I have NEVER experienced such a capacity to selectively consider alternative viewpoints... it's just surreal.... and I'm telling them, look, the market is changing, fast, your customers are demanding an higher level of sophistication, you must adapt... and I get the same bland, tuned out, overly nice, "play nice, send to shredder" dysfunctionality that I used to get from my LGAT acquaintances.... So I'm pretty sure that LGATs have been taken on by these "leaders" who stupidly had no idea what the real tradeoff costs were going to be....

Oh, the second, even stranger thing is the Echo Chamber... assuming that some fringe of a good idea sticks, it seems to float up two layers of management, then float back down, as if they had thought of it.... freakish.... [b:d09cc1dbb8]my own thoughts repeated almost verbatim back to me as if they are making the creative suggestion to me [/b:d09cc1dbb8]???????


Heloooooo.... earth to headquarters.... this is DERANGED.

Now, someone explain again to me, HOW did we get to this place ?[/size:d09cc1dbb8][/color:d09cc1dbb8]

Dear Nutrino, there is a book, slim and excellent, on narcissistic families.

You may find a lot of overlap between that model and what you have observed first hand, in LGATs and LGAT-y/narcissistic corporations

The book is 'The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment' by Pressman and Pressman.

The authors came up with this model because so many distressed clients came to them, suffering severely, yet their famlies of origin looked really good on the surface, there was no evidence of overt physical abuse or substance abuse. The authors, both of whom are therapists, were utterly perplexed--they respected their client's knew something had happened to them, but the usual causes of trauma were seemingly lacking.

Turned out the families were not really for the care of children and support of peer adult relatedness between the parents--the real, secret
goal of the family, was to maintain a collective image of looking good, and children's well being was sacrificed to keep this going.

The Pressman's noted that some families do well caring for tiny kids, so long as they are cute, adorable, and make the parents look good. When these same children became more autonomous, start expressing preferences, are no longer malleable extensions of the Look Good Family, the parents withdraw their nuture, and the kids are left blindsided, wondering what the heck they did wrong to find themselves chilled out.

One woman described how her mother would selectively dissociate and tune her out---this woman said relating to her mothers was crazy making.

Physically she was present, but emotionally she was absent. (The term for this is dissociation, and very likely LGATs teach people to do this whenver they encounter stuff that doesnt fit into the LGAT scheme--its a case of 'beam me up, Scotty')

This woman said trying to relate to her mother was 'like trying to grab smoke.'

People who grow up in famlies like this may be 'pre-formatted' to adapt quite readily to life in dysfunctional, essentially narcissistic corporations--and to LGATs.

This is NOT to say people 'ask to be abused.'

A genuine growth group assists us to become aware in relation to these dynamics--it does not entrench them further.

We dont find freedom by substituting one illusion for another.

Nutrino's advice to scrutinize the marriages of top executives is a very interesting one.

Many ambitious people who are eager to look good often select mates, not for the sake of true companionship, but covertly, as investments---this person will make me look good. He or she knows how to charm folks at parties, knows how to make the house look good, and can be counted on to have every hair in place, keep her clothes looking great, smile, smile, smile and not complain at having to keep the house and kids on track while I am absent most of the day.

The children are socialized to look good, and make their parents look good. Some kids are willing to do this. Others rebel.

This post is so good in so many ways. I am dealing with my counselor about my destructive narcissistic mother that I grew up with, and how she is still destructively so today.

I am the one that responded as a rebel in my life to this family dynamic with my mother.

The deep emotional woundedness of this aspect is also what drew me to the LGAT experience hoping to fix this gaping wound in me.

All it did was make the wound deeper, and bigger in me.

But, the one good thing that has come from this LGAT mess in my life.

It has caused me to finally wake up to the source of this emotional woundedness within me. I am now in professional counseling cleaning out this festering wound from childhood at age 44.

Just in case any apologists are reading this post. NO, I don't thank an LGAT for showing me this. I hold them accountable for making a deep emotional wound in me go atomic in blowing up in my life as it produced very destructive damage across every area of my life. I mean ALL AREA'S of my life have been destroyed by applying this crap philosophy.

Quote
corboy
Dear Nutrino, there is a book, slim and excellent, on narcissistic families.

You may find a lot of overlap between that model and what you have observed first hand, in LGATs and LGAT-y/narcissistic corporations

The book is 'The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment' by Pressman and Pressman.

The authors came up with this model because so many distressed clients came to them, suffering severely, yet their famlies of origin looked really good on the surface, there was no evidence of overt physical abuse or substance abuse. The authors, both of whom are therapists, were utterly perplexed--they respected their client's knew something had happened to them, but the usual causes of trauma were seemingly lacking.

Turned out the families were not really for the care of children and support of peer adult relatedness between the parents--the real, secret
goal of the family, was to maintain a collective image of looking good, and children's well being was sacrificed to keep this going.

The Pressman's noted that some families do well caring for tiny kids, so long as they are cute, adorable, and make the parents look good. When these same children became more autonomous, start expressing preferences, are no longer malleable extensions of the Look Good Family, the parents withdraw their nuture, and the kids are left blindsided, wondering what the heck they did wrong to find themselves chilled out.

One woman described how her mother would selectively dissociate and tune her out---this woman said relating to her mothers was crazy making.

Physically she was present, but emotionally she was absent. (The term for this is dissociation, and very likely LGATs teach people to do this whenver they encounter stuff that doesnt fit into the LGAT scheme--its a case of 'beam me up, Scotty')

This woman said trying to relate to her mother was 'like trying to grab smoke.'

People who grow up in famlies like this may be 'pre-formatted' to adapt quite readily to life in dysfunctional, essentially narcissistic corporations--and to LGATs.

This is NOT to say people 'ask to be abused.'

A genuine growth group assists us to become aware in relation to these dynamics--it does not entrench them further.

We dont find freedom by substituting one illusion for another.

Nutrino's advice to scrutinize the marriages of top executives is a very interesting one.

Many ambitious people who are eager to look good often select mates, not for the sake of true companionship, but covertly, as investments---this person will make me look good. He or she knows how to charm folks at parties, knows how to make the house look good, and can be counted on to have every hair in place, keep her clothes looking great, smile, smile, smile and not complain at having to keep the house and kids on track while I am absent most of the day.

The children are socialized to look good, and make their parents look good. Some kids are willing to do this. Others rebel.

RSWinters wrote:

Quote

Just in case any apologists are reading this post. NO, I don't thank an LGAT for showing me this. I hold them accountable for making a deep emotional wound in me go atomic in blowing up in my life as it produced very destructive damage across every area of my life. I mean ALL AREA'S of my life have been destroyed by applying this crap philosophy.

The reason why professional psychotherapy is done slowly, for just 50 minutes at a time, is to prevent the process from going too deeply, too quickly, and instead, paces the insight process precisely so the client's life will NOT be disrupted and will not 'go atomic.'


Here are some observations from the Pressman's book:

Quote

In a narcissistic family, the responsiblity for the meeting of emotional needs becomes skewed--instead of resting with the parents, the responsibility shifts to the child. The child becomes inappropriately responsible for meeting parental needs and in so doing is deprived of opportunities for necessary experimentation and growth. (pp 12-13)

A very interesting feature noted by the Pressmans is that some narcissistic families do very well at nurturing the children when the youngsers are babies or very tiny children, then as the children grow up, become autonomous and require a more skillful degree of parenting, the adults become less and less capable of parenting the children and instead, expect the children to adapt to the needs of the parents.

This is remarkably similar to the kind of 'bait and switch' reported by many cult survivors. Often, early in one's cult involvement, the group actually supports growth and development, but over time, the person is pressured to feel shift more and more into a parental/codependent relationship and ends up emotionally abandoned by the group, yet sacrificing more and more of his or her integrity to keep the group going.

The Pressmans write:

Quote

As the child's psychological needs become more of a factor in the life of the family, the narcissistic family truly develops. ((that is the inability of the adults to adequately parent the children is unmasked as the children grow older and in need of more skilled parenting than these adults are capable of--C)) The parent system is unable to adapt to meet the child's needs, and the child, in order to survive, must be the one to adapt. The inversion process starts: the responsibility for meeting needs (that is, parenting-C)gradually shifts from the parent to the child. Whereas in infancy the parents may have met the needs of the child, now the child is more and more attempting to meet the needs of the parent, for only in this way can the child gain attention, acceptance, and approval....the needs of children, especially the emotional needs, increase geometrically as their tractability decreases.' Pressman and Pressman The Narcissistic Family pp 28-29

Parents who were able to do well caring for a child in infancy and who are less capable of parenting that same child when she is older may seek to disguise their lack of parenting skills by constantly talking about all the great sacrifices they made taking care of their child as a baby.

The child who is no longer getting adequate care from this same parent is shamed into disowning her own sense that something is going wrong.

Likewise cult leaders love to dwell on how well they once took care of their devotees, using their rhetoric to distract from how, in the present moment they are either neglecting their group--or becoming downright abusive.

Quote

The high functioning survivor of a narcissistic family may appear to have let the walls down, be emotionally available in an appropriate way. And for all intents and purposes, he may be--most of the time. When he is feeling threatened, however, he (abruptly) detaches, becoming aloof, cool and distant. Significant others can suddenly feel cut off. They become frightened, fearful of losing thier loved one or parent; they may feel guilty and responsible. page 128

Intimacy and connectedness get abruptly turned on and off, like a water faucet, in ways that bewilder others.

This resembles how persons in many LGATs are trained to 'drop the connection' as soon as an encounter takes a direction that challanges the LGAT--the narcissistic family from which the person has sought healing.

Persons who have already, without knowing it, been "pre-formatted' by growing up in the kind of narcissistic families described by the Pressmans may have these reaction patterns further entrenched if, later in life, they get recruited into an LGAT that re-enacts the covert narcissistic dynamics of thier famlies of origin.

Corboy, this book you suggest sounds like a valuable resource. This seems to "put the finger" on the trauma that so many people can't quite identify.

Thanks for this suggestion. I'm going to find it and add it to my library.

Dear Fish and others:

If you want a copy of the Pressman & Pressman book, see if any
new editions have been published. An updated edition will give further
developments of the author's model.

If you're interested in seeing if other clinicians have worked with the Pressman's model, phone a medical library and ask a librarian how
to track other articles and books which discuss applications of the Pressman's work. There are databases that cover the currently published
literature for psychiatry and clinical psychology.

Ask the librarian how to tell whether a particular journal is 'peer reviewed'--those are the ones that publish material if it has been approved of by a jury of qualified professionals--that's gold standard stuff.

Note: another salient difference between professional psychotherapy vs LGATs is that its possible to benefit from psychotherapy and never know a thing about the the concepts or philosophy your therapist uses to assist you.

You dont need to become a student of Kohut, Kernberg or Winnicott's writings in order to benefit from working with a therapist who has been trained to apply their work.


This is different from the LGAT process which links the healing and transformation process with conversion and submission to the world view/doctrine propagated by the LGAT.

The backgound chatter regarding "corporate culture" and LGAT dynamics is getting.... mmmm.... a wee bit eyebrow raising.

For example, one of the unspoken rules of screening job applicants for corporate positions is that anyone who has stepped outside of the corporate structure for two years or more will never again fit into a hierarchy, and the candidate won't be given further consideration.

I think that corporations have found "happiness" by merging some of their approaches with the human behavior R&D which has been very conveniently outsourced to the LGATs.....

Large companies are routinely full of psychic splits, such as one very large outfit that is probably one of the worst originators of exploitive credit card relationships, and yet at the PR level, they love to talk about their "values" and the importance of "giving back to the community"... which is just the most egregious crock of slimy self justification and sanctimonious malarky.... they're out in the marketplace screwing millions of struggling middle class working americans into debt slavery and they probably put about .01% of their skim into "giving back to the community".... but at the senior level, they are so well dressed, so well educated, so moderate and reasonable in their speech, and it seems, phenomenal in their capacity to deny personal responsibility for what they are really doing, every day, without a hint of remorse....

What I've concluded, and I've pitched this idea to some other observers who tell me they've privately concluded pretty much the same thing... in order to advance in these mind-splitting cultures you have to have a special ability to compartmentalize your thinking and treat the most hideous contradictions as if there is no contradiction.... and you then get this creeping paranoia and self censorship that the old Soviet Union would appreciate... people have to be very, very careful not to drink too much, or lose self control, lest they blurt out a "unspeakable truth" which WILL be made note of, and your career WILL be derailed, and nothing more need be said about it....

Now, can we see how this ties in so neatly with the real effects of many LGAT processes ? Sure, your presence at the training is "optional", however if you decline this "option".... well, my friend, you aren't a team player, and we will have to take a closer look at the terms of your contract....

The other thing is that by outsourcing, the corporation has a layer of deniability.... the consulting-trainer company becomes the bad guy if there has to be a bad guy.... the ownership of what is really going on becomes diffused.... especially when your grievance can then be put down as your "interpretation"......

So I think the time has come for a close examination of outsourced LGAT type events, trainings, and..... eeeee... "education" that is brought in-house as potentially abusive labor practices, possible as inappropriate and offensive as if one brought in an obscure religious fanatic and the employees had the "option" of listening to a three day rant or sending out their resume and hoping for a decent severence package...

[enron.trampolinesystems.com]

A former employee of Enron discovered the true nature of a covertly
narcissistic company:

Quote


A native of Midland, Tex., who describes himself as a political progressive, Mr. Vernon said that when he joined Enron in December 1999, he hoped that the company would be diverse and a meritocracy.

But in the course of two years working at Enron, he said, he "realized it was just another Houston, Texas, corrupt thing - that we grow in this town - where the rich white Republicans think they can write any law they want to at any time."

His frustration grew, he said, when Mr. Lay took part in an online chat within the company on Sept. 26 and brushed off Mr. Vernon's question about the way Enron had accounted for deals it had made with supposedly independent partnerships. Enron began to collapse after it became known in November that it had used the partnerships to overstate earnings by at least $600 million.

By mid-November, with Enron's stock plunging, Mr. Vernon had begun to post dozens of messages a day on the Yahoo discussion board under the screen name "utlonghornsrule," referring to the University of Texas, where he received a master's degree in economics.

His messages warned investors away from Enron's stock, and many sharply criticized Enron and Mr. Lay.

"We were just sitting there with nothing to do," Mr. Vernon said of the period when he posted the messages. "We were just sitting there watching our stocks go down."

The final straw for him came Nov. 19, he said, when Enron canceled its Christmas party.

At 5:16 p.m. that day, in a (not always grammatical) message sprinkled with vulgarities, Mr. Vernon wrote that Mr. Lay had "just cancelled the Enron christmas party so he wouldn't have to show up for his own party with armed bodyguards."

He went on, "Lied and said employees were ambivalent. Trust me, nobody believes a word" that Mr. Lay says, the posting said, using a vulgar epithet. "People have enjoyed the company spending a few dollars on them and giving them a chance to laugh and dance a bit. Esp since most of us adore our coworkers.

"Ken Lay is the sorriest sack of garbage I have ever been associated with, a truly evil and satanic figure."

Other people quickly posted responses defending Mr. Lay, including one who wrote, "1) You are an embarrassment to UT - so shut up.

*** 2) You don't know what you are talking about - You don't run with the big dogs."

Mr. Vernon said the style of that note led him to think that it was the work of a senior Enron employee.

It did not take long for Enron to find out the identity of "utlonghornsrule." The day after his vituperative posting, Mr. Vernon said, he was called into a meeting with his manager and a top human resources officer. "My boss said, `What were you doing?' and I said, `I was frustrated,' " Mr. Vernon said. "They escorted me out immediately." He said he had been paid his salary, but no severance pay.

Mr. Vernon said he understood why he was fired. "I was using their equipment," he said, "I was in their building, and it was a flagrant violation of company policy to do what I did. I'm not going to litigate it. I don't think it was unfair."

He does not see himself as a whistle-blower, he said, and he is embarrassed by the language his anger led him to use - but he is still angry.

IMO, Mr Vernon was a man with a sense of justice who was angry to discover that he was working for a covertly narcissistic company that talked the language of public service but whose actual values were cruel.

At least (according to the romanticized versions) the old time pirates flew the black Skull and Crossbones flag openly--you knew at a distance you were facing a pirate ship and that gave time to load the cannons and assume battle stations before the ships came within firing range.

Well, here we are in Dot-Com Bust II, otherwise known as the mortgage industy collapse.... word was out that a lot of these often very dubious, regulation skirting lenders, brokers, banks, and homebuilders, not to mention hedge funds (some of which have fully imploded, many others are in varying degree of implosion) were behaving like mini-cults....

I believe that there are periods when entire industies are sales force driven, the hordes of lying analysts and brokers in Dot Com I, the ones issuing "strong buy" on companies they KNEW were failing.... it wasn't like they tried to do right and slipped up, they KNEW....

What I've also seen is that sales forces and sales managers are particularly easy marks for LGATs, 'persuasion trainings"... they traffic a lot in seduction, false intimacy, half truths... and they get a heap of training to help them perfect their acts....

In Dot-Com II, the subprime crack up, you had the same dynamic, it became a sales force driven event with a lot of political enablers....

Now, where this concerns us is that you will find a high percentage of sales people are engrossed with "mind science" seminars.... the two just go together like bread and butter.... and when the sales and marketing people begin to exert a greater influence on the corporate structure, more unreality sets in, more wish fulfillment thinking, more short term payoff gamesmanship.... and a lot more denial of anything not "with the program".... in other words, they rapidly cult-up....