To whom it may concern:

Mass marathon training or large group awareness training (LGATS) have a long history of serious problems.

See [www.culteducation.com]

Groups like Landmark Education and its forerunner est, Lifespring, Sterling Institute of Relationships and Mankind project have generated controversy, personal injury lawsuits and ongoing complaints.

See [www.culteducation.com]

13 liabilities of encounter groups, some of which are similar to characteristics of most current 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.

The 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."


Also see [www.culteducation.com]

Many LGATS use coercive persuasion techniques.

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


Robert Lifton labeled the extraordinarily high degree of social control characteristic of organizations that operate reform programs as their totalistic quality (Lifton 1961). This concept refers to the mobilization of the entirety of the person's social, and often physical, environment in support of the manipulative effort. Lifton identified eight themes or properties of reform environments that contribute to their totalistic quality:

1. Control of communication

2. Emotional and behavioral manipulation

3. Demands for absolute conformity to behavior prescriptions derived from the ideology

4. Obsessive demands for confession

5. Agreement that the ideology is faultless

6. Manipulation of language in which cliches substitute for analytic thought

7. Reinterpretation of human experience and emotion in terms of doctrine

8. Classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior and not worthy of respect

Hopefully this is helpful in promoting a better understanding of LGATs and why they are of concern.

Was Santa Claus there too?

These kinds of groups suck people in that are looking for easy answers and magical thinking. They have ignored reality and responsibilty. Some can last years enrolling in these kinds of groups, fueled by dreams of getting rich quick with little effort "helping people", but most people realize the destruction caused by this way of thinking, which is why these groups are forever creating new names and avoiding consequences. They leave waves of hurt people in their wake, rejected by the untrained professional "peers". Extremely sad. Most guys are "volentolding" there to prey on naive woman and get in there pants.

The extremely high divorce rate should be warning enough for anyone thinking of taking a personal development course that promises to fix you life in 3-5 days. Kiss your spouse good bye as some creep will use the brainwashing atmosphere to move in to seal the deal.
If something seems to good to be true, it is. If you're over the age of 5, you're past the days of easy and quick fixes aren't you?
Real change takes real work. There is no law written saying you have to pay a thousand dollars a day etc to get "real transformational help".

If you are looking for help in your life, look to your parents, a sane, successful friend, a pastor, a boss, anyone with a proven history. Anyone with real qualified training. Not lemmings that managed to keep making payments towards a dellusional brainwashing camp designed to drain your bank account and leave you broke and broken, that of course certifies you after dozens of thousand dollar courses. You have a brain, you have a still small voice inside you, try listening to that instead of childish ignorance.
Baa baa the sheople seem to belly up to the bar too often. If you believe in LGAT, I would like to sell you my magical mind fixing hat, it's only $20,000 to purchase BUT you can make payments to me....here come over to my limited edition Beamer...I have hats for all your friends too! Yeah! We're all fixed!!

Aah, and now to wait for the 33 people left in the group to rally and defend the sect, always predictable responses too..1) maybe you should try it 2) you sound like you have some anger issues 3) we have found it to be very helpful 4) you shouldn't judge it if you haven't "experienced" it 5) do you think you have all the answers 6) judge not lest you be judged 7) I'm a psychologist 8) my husband is a loving caring man 9) the leader is a psychologist 10)maybe there was marital problems before the course 11).....ok sheople....I know there are a couple more responses I am missing, stayed tuned people....here they come, kool-aid and iPhone in hand... Now type lemmings! type I say! Defend your infallible enlightened sect leader