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Wow, positively sinister!
I can't believe I fell for this!

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midonov123
Researcher,
....Would that lead to psychosis?]


Hi MD,


I looked at this too. It seeemed to me that the author was suggesting that the sustained refusal or attempt to inhibit the usually automatic response to turn your head towards any movement you perceive in a setting where there is very little peripheral movement would "confuse" or "frustrate" your instinctive, self-protective reaction, and, beyond that, would dampen or desenitize, over time, your perception and/or your ability to sense the environment, as in your above examples. Moveover, that this artificially imposed restriction on what would be a natural response erodes the inside/outside "interface," boundry or perceived significance, which would make sense for the contention that Landmark and similar "trainings" bring about an "interiorization" - an emphasis on what is sensed internally or in the imagination over what is felt, sensed, or perceived from the environment. As the opposite of this, who hasn't known a combat vet or a victim of trauma or abuse who doesn't have an exaggerated "startle" response or is otherwise physiologically "hyper-vigilant." It would seem that they instinctively and self-protectively over-emphasize the importance of peripheral information coming in from the environment. (This might tie into the rapid lateral eye-movement "therapy" that has had some success with victims of PTSD, though I haven't read or heard anything about it recently.) The author's suggestion might make sense in the examples he gives of a space, room or darkened space where there is only an occasional movement which would be more readily perceived and, perhaps, sensed as a threat. But it doesn't make much sense to me that it would apply to a room full of people who are moving about, even if only slightly, all the time. I would think your mind would accommodate the situation with expectations that would neutralize any startle reflex, but maybe the intense focus "demands" that you control an ordinary reflex to the point that it becomes habitual and "confounds" your usual reality-testing, causing it to "go on strike" or alter its functioning in some way. I would imagine this would be temporary, in most cases, excepting for those whose minds won't "recalibrate," for one reason or another. Does this make sense?

In addition, I think your analysis of the intellectual dis-engagement of perception from reality, (by "reframing," re-naming, or otherwise "re-configuring"), that Landmark and similar programs teach, demonstrate, and practice that can be deadly, for some people, is correct for the reasons you cite. They lose the ability to "explain" reality to themselves and cling, with some ferocity, to the subsitute "explanation" Landmark provides. Of course, this "substitute" explanation was cobbled together from philosophical and psychological "floor-sweepings," so how good could it be? Most people "sense" that the substitute "explanation" is faulty, problematic, or dangerous - at least at some level - if they have anything resembling a functioning conscience. I imagine this "conflict" causes such discomfort for many that they opt for the imaginary, wishful-thinking-type explanations, which is another way of saying they opt for insanity. The set of beliefs and convictions, (those usually formed in very early childhood), that they arrived with might have been "dysfunctional," but the set that Landmark "implants" is downright bizarre. Normal "walking wounded" trade their neuroses for psychoses, as you have seen.

Why anyone would risk their very most precious ability to perceive, guage, and make sense of reality to these rank amateurs and con artists I don't know. But the fact that that is what they are doing is, of course, only obvious to those of us on the outside.


Ellen