you can read a thread of alt.fan.landmark entitled "Psychological studies" which links to some web pages of two papers along those lines. one gives a participant-observer account of Lifespring training (it really rips on the whole process) and the other does statistical analysis of the personality traits common to people in NRM*'s. I would really like to see one of those done on
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

contact the local LEC center and they'll hook you up even if that portion of your sample will tend to have a lot of bias towards the experience.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteConcerned OzHowever, most people leave cults through exhaustion - mental, physical or emotional, not necessarily interlectual riggour. often they join for the same reason.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

everyone who pays for the course or has somebody else pay for the course feeds the machine. it may seem morally neutral to take a course or two, don't recruit anyone and drop out. still, you have given them a minimum of $395. as Manichean as that sounds.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Concerned Oz, you've inspired me to contact my sister again which I had thought over. reading what you posted here gave me the motivation to go and send her an e-mail this morning. I have a kind of Christmas feeling about it. anything can happen. I hope she has drawn away from LEC since I last heard from her.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

This sounds vaguely familiar. Did this get out into the news media at all?
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

the cliché. the relationship ended after one partner got involved in Landmark. I thought that I would create an alphabetical registry. simple. first name of person. location of person. relationship with person. one or two lines about what happened. I have a few questions. who would put up a page for free? how do you set it up so that a tally goes up of people whose first name starts with, s
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

calling LGAT's a farce and leaving it that oversimplifies the situation. a family I knew years ago seemed like kind and happy people before est and still do after est. they would probably say they benefitted from it. the wife of my uncle who spent twenty years helping in est and then Landmark seems none the worse and says that she gained from it. I have also seen family members pass
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteelenaLandmark is poisonous to normal relationships. It is designed that way to keep her oriented towards the group and away from outsiders. My advice would be to forget this one for a while. And get a copy of "Outrageous Betrayal" to read yourself. Then send it to her anonymously. great book. I thought the same myself and yes I thought of sending my sister a copy. when I thou
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I can identify. you described the situation between my sister and my myself. since then, we don't talk. she decided she could make decisions for me and I send her an e-mail saying to keep away and telling her that I would keep away from her. I did it out alienation and in part for revenge. I have felt contempt for her. lack of respect for her and thinking like, anyone stupid enough to
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Let me just say that I did post to jump on the band wagon of attacking Warytraveller. That "true for me" phrase irritates me whoever uses it and has nothing to do with the person who uses it.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteAlexis I also was raised Catholic. And I can say that I have learned that any person can take any doctrine or belief and construe it to feed their own egos. The Catholic Church is not inherently a cult. Neither is Judaism or Muslim or any other religion that teaches people to live good, upstanding, moral lives. But there are sects that pervert their teachings and in essence are not truly
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quotewarytraveller2 I understand this is true for you. And for others a diifferent opinion is rendered. Ana323 and dpa10 had overall positive experiences. Mine with Est was positive as well. But I didn't go as deeply into as dpa10, gc4062 or yourself. "True for you": phrases like that strike me as a way to deflect criticism or maybe it strikes me as bad word usage. Will also
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quotewarytraveller2I don't know. Is this a rhetorical question? No. I thought I might learn something.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

A reference in the other thread piqued my interest. Who could list the "four distinctions" LEC makes and the "three hooks" that people have?
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I found a reference on the LiveJournal LEC community (scroll down to the bottom for the moment). here the poster seems to imply a recruiting drive. seems to have something to with LEC''s Conference for Global Transformation and the Honoring Institute. they have a cute name for their allies: the Impossible Promise Keepers. could anyone explain what if anything this jargon jamboree
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

at the Tuesday night "special intro" I noticed a majority of people who had already done the courses. they seemed to make up the majority, family, friends as a minority and I do not know of anybody there just out of curiosity. the people who returned did so, I thought, to make the place seem packed and LEC seem popular. a few people, I noticed, had professionally printed badge
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

glad that an article will appear in Stay Free! and that you took the time to put in those citations. thinking that a large part of the target audience for LEC would read the 'zine.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Corboy, you make good points. no way did I mean to sound or come across as an LEC apologist. of course I did not need to use the Zen analogy, my argument had to do that other spiritual ways have demanded obedience. such as the school set up by Gurdjieff within his lifetime. Gurdjieff called his students idiots, berated, teased them and challenged them all the time and used intimidation
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quotekittypaw So glad you escaped with your mind intact, Acid Reindeer. I did not come out with my mind intact. mother put me in there twice, once for a longer time, the second for a shorter time. revenge had a large part in her putting me in the second time. the second time traumatized me to the point where as soon as I could act like a wreck I did. (you cannot act like a wreck inside an insti
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Corboy, would like to say that I agree totally with the first two of your numbered observations. the third one not so. certain isolated situations may violate the third every once in a while. like the family in the book called The Siege who decided to break down the defenses of their autistic child. or in Zen or other spiritual schools for example. monasteries and nunneries work on authoritarian
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

QuoteHope Another Forum topic was drama. Participants who shared were reprimanded and asked to lose the drama if they expressed themselves with any kind of inflection, anger, sadness, humor, sarcasm, etc. It didn't take long before zombies were sharing their life experiences - all kinds of horrific stuff -straight faced, with no emotion. I got a look at the day-to-day notes taken to me d
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quotecorboy This notion of freeing people from past conditioning is very 'Sixties'. No one on the planet has the wisdom to know what we should be deconditoned from and what can be put in its place. To declare that humans need deconditioning and that you or your organization are wise enough to know how we need to be re programmed is the height of arrogance. it surprises me that you sa
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

on rackets: this comes from a psychological school called Transactional Analysis, as in I'm Okay, You're Okay and Games People Play, which BTW I happen to like a lot and which has helped me to figure myself out. rackets in TA make up predictable exchanges with self or other people with players, an aim and a pay-off, with the object to win sometimes by losing or to win by winning. they a
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

at the Forum introductory meeting, constant talk about risk. as far as I can tell the people who get involved in the Forum in a hardcore way versus those who take it and move on do so to avoid risk. will explain that last sentence on request.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Quotegc4062 nyc, you have noted the circular language, which is typical of the average forum fanatic. It's like your typical politician, no matter what country or party, who can talk for days about something, and actually say nothing. Was it Orwell who introduced the concept of doublespeak? sort of yes, sort of not. Orwell coined the phrase newspeak , the updated form of language us
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

Has anyone compiled a list? If one does not exist we can always compile one here.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

that word "wienies" that, you used my relative also has used a lot. as to whether or not he believed it, he couldn't have, he would have seen and maybe taken part in the changeover himself. not a dumb man, either, he must have known and I think he does know. intellectually I know groups ask you to lie and I know that members often do and yet still have trouble accepting that
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

I had an e-mail exchange with another one of my relatives who said that he had participated in est from 1975 to '95 and in the last couple of years has gotten involved with LEC. trying to impress him or something I mentioned that est had changed its name to the Forum. he knows me well enough to know that I would not have an open attitude to the Forum or to LEC. he said (trying to get
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"

for the record, my relative formed a group to help elderly people, as opposed to young people.
Forum: Large Group Awareness Training, "Human Potential"