Erhard Seminars Training
Learn more about Erhard Seminars Training
| Erhard Seminars Training | |
| Type | Private Corporation |
|---|---|
| Founded | October 1971 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, USA
<tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Key people</th><td>Werner Erhard, Founder |
Erhard Seminars Training, or est (generally in lower-case), a controversial New Age large group awareness training (LGAT) seminar program, became popular during the 1970s. Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg) founded est and conducted the first est seminar in San Francisco, California, in October 1971. Landmark Education bought the rights to the intellectual property contained in the Est Training in 1991.
Contents |
[edit] History of est
(See also the timeline section below)
The company originally incorporated in 1973 as a non-profit foundation in the State of California under the name of the Foundation for the Realization of Man. An amendment to the articles of incorporation, filed in July 1976, renamed it as the est Foundation.
In his survey of the self-help movement, Steve Salerno summarizes the impact of est in its day:
Werner Erhard touted a regimen known as "est," in which trainers would literally scream obscenities at followers in an effort to bully them past their hang-ups to a higher, more tough-minded phase of "beingness". But est remained on the fringe. It was too quirky, and its chief architect too flaky, to capture the popular imagination. Besides, like other upstart regimens that sold unabridged Empowerment, it depended on a worldview that was out of sync with what most people could plainly see happening around them. (Arguing for full control of one's destiny was not easy in the era of the draft.)<ref>Steve Salerno, SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, New York: Published by Crown, June 21, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-5409-5, p.27</ref>
The "est" organization metamorphosed — supporters might say "transformed itself" — in 1980 - 1981 into the corporate "Werner Erhard and Associates" (WE&A). WE&A replaced the "est training" with the course dubbed "The Forum" in 1984<ref>Anthony Gottlieb, "Heidegger for Fun and Profit", The New York Times, January 7, 1990</ref>. In 1991 a series of name-changes saw WE&A become "Landmark Education", and "The Forum" became "The Landmark Forum". Landmark Education continues to operate seminars with similar methods and teachings. Steven Pressman, comparing the Landmark Forum with the est course, states that the courses' "words and phrases ... had hardly changed"<ref>Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2, p.267-268</ref>, and that a Landmark Education course presenter equated the two courses with the phrase "when this work was first presented"<ref>Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2, p.271-272</ref>.
As of 2006, Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) programs like Landmark Education contribute to promoting the ideas and concepts of Werner Erhard, though without stressing his name, his controversial reputation or his ideological forebears.
[edit] Name origins
In his book Outrageous Betrayal, Pressman recounts how Erhard adopted the name "est" from a science fiction book he had read: est: The Steersman Handbook, written by L. Clark Stevens and published in 1970<ref>Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2, p.40</ref>
Authors Espy M. Navarro and Robert Navarro, in their book Self Realization: The est and Forum Phenomena in American Society, 2002, give a more detailed explanation :
The word "est" in Latin means "it is." It is also part of the title of a work published in 1970 by L. Clark Stevens called EST: The Steersman Handbook: Charts of the Coming Decade of Conflict. This book which Erhard was very familiar with was about electronic social transformation (est). The series of essays talked about the unfolding of social transformation in America in forms never experienced before. The est people would be technical, eclectic, computer literate individuals who would be capable of handling constructive activities that would be crucial to the earth's survival. They would also be people who would demonstrate love, care for others and who would help create the climate of freedom and peace that would be necessary to enable a social transformation to occur. Among the thinkers who are quoted are such luminaries as R. Buckminster Fuller, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ralph Nader, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Lewis Mumford and Eric Hoffer. These are considered to be "est people,' or the prime movers of the coming electronic social transformation<ref>Espy M. Navarro & Robert Navarro, Self Realization, The est and Forum Phenomena in American Society, Xlibris Corporation, October 2002, ISBN 1-4010-4220-1</ref>.
[edit] Influences on and philosophy of est
The forebears of est allegedly include Martin Heidegger[citation needed]. Erhard himself cites Zen, or as some have alleged, Westernized Zen (although the depth of his studies of Buddhism have come into question). The "est" principle that we ourselves created this world as God and created amnesia so as to play a game on ourselves (or Himself) derives from the writings of Alan Watts, a hipster popularizer of religious thought, most notably of Zen and of other eastern religions. (One should not confuse est with Buddhism, however: Buddhism, as a non-theistic philosophy, does not teach doctrine of the self as the creator of the world.)
As quoted in est: Making Life Work by Robert A. Hargrave, Erhard cited the influence of Zen, Subud, Encounter Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Scientology and Mind Dynamics. Erhard's supporters would later accuse Scientology of having engineered a campaign against Erhard for his borrowing of key concepts, such as "being at cause", meaning the cause of an event. The Church of Scientology regards est and Erhard himself as "Suppressive" and enemies of the Church. <ref>Church of Scientology Flag Executive Directive 2830RB of July 25 1992, "Suppressive Persons and Suppressive Groups list"</ref>
Donald Stone records the interpretation, both internally<ref>Donald Stone, "The Human Potential Movement", Charles Glock, Robert N. Bellah (editors), The new religious consciousness, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, ISBN 0-520-03083-4, p.93-115</ref>, and externally<ref>Donald Stone, "The Human Potential Movement", Charles Glock, Robert N. Bellah (editors), The new religious consciousness, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, ISBN 0-520-03083-4, p.97</ref> which sees est as a component of the Human Potential Movement.
Responsibility assumption formed an important part of the est curriculum: however, critics charge that estian responsibility operated only in one direction, from the top down — est Forum Leaders and Erhard himself tending towards autocratic shows of discipline.
One can perhaps best grasp the nature of the est program by reading through some of the many personal narratives available on the web. These illustrate the nature of est from the points of view of both the program's supporters and detractors. The Psychology Today article gives a factual account and occasionally shows up in on-line sources.
[edit] Controversies
One participant, James Slee, died during a seminar when the trainer refused to allow paramedics to enter the room. The est trainer involved, David Norris, later asked all of the seminar participants "to consider the possibility that Jack Slee might have 'willed his own death'"<ref>Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal, Page 208.</ref>. Slee's family sued the organization. Other participants had breakdowns. Researchers have reported a number of cases of psychotic reaction among those enrolled according to a study by M. A. Kirsch and L. L. Glass in 1977.
Marc Galanter, M.D., formerly of the World Health Organization, writes in his statistical study Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion :"After an initial correspondence with Werner Erhard, I met at some length with the movement's director of research so that we might consider studying this transformation. Our discussions of getting it, however, yielded no operational definition."<ref>Marc Galanter Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-19-512369-7 , p.81</ref>Eileen Barker wrote of the ambiguous status of est, speaking of
... movements which do not fall under the definition of religion used by the Institute [for the study of American Religion], but which are sometimes called 'cults'. Examples would be est, Primal Therapy or Rebirthing.<ref>Eileen Barker, New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1989, ISBN 0-11-340927-3, p.149</ref>
Finkelstein wrote on the problems of categorizing est:
[The] literature resembles the early literature on encounter groups and other vehicles of the human potential movement; it consists of only a few objective outcome studies which exist side-by-side with highly positive testimonials and anecdotal reports of psychological harm. Reports of testimonials have been compiled by est advocates and suffer from inadequate methodology. More objective and rigorous research reports fail to demonstrate that the positive testimony and evidence of psychological change among est graduates result from specific attributes of est training. Instead, non-specific effects of expectancy and response sets may account for positive outcomes. Reports of psychological harm as the result of est training remain anecdotal, but borderline or psychotic persons would be well advised not to participate<ref>Peter Finkelstein, Brant Wenegrat, Irwin Yalom, "Large Group Awareness Training", Annual Review of Psychology, 1982, p.538., Quoted by Eileen Barker, 1998, p.56-57.</ref>.
A segment on 60 Minutes in March 1991 portrayed Erhard as physically abusive to his son and featured accusations by some of his daughters of incest and of physical abuse. One daughter later toned down allegations of violence, saying that a reporter had offered her two million dollars to "spice up" accusations. Defenders of "est" and Erhard alleged a sting operation by the Church of Scientology, as detailed in the book 60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard: How America's Top Rated Television Show Was Used in an Attempt to Destroy a Man Who Was Making A Difference, by Dr. Jane Self.
[edit] Associated publications
- A look at est in education: Analysis, review and selected case studies of the impact of the est experience on educators and students in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education, by Robert W. Fuller and Zara Wallace, published January 1, 1975, by est, an educational corporation (ASIN B0007ANT6A). Joan Holmes, current president of The Hunger Project, served as consulting educational psychologist for the preparation of this book.
- The Graduate Review, a public newsletter sent to graduates of Erhard Seminars Training. Later re-titled The Review.
[edit] Erhard Seminars Training and tax evasion
The United States IRS settled a dispute over alleged tax evasion with Erhard by paying him $200,000 for wrongful disclosure of false information.
In another case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found Erhard accountable for civil tax evasion on February 8, 1995, in the case "Werner H. Erhard v. Commissioner Internal Revenue Service".
See also
- Ellen Erhard v. Werner Erhard, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Public Record, June 20, 1996, for issues related to IRS tax-petition disputes between Werner Erhard and his second wife, Ellen Erhard. The case decided as follows: "Ellen Erhard appeals the Tax Court's dismissal of her petition as untimely filed. We affirm."
[edit] Timeline
For additional information, see Landmark Education
Source: Hesse-Nassau Evangelical Church website:
- October 1971 - Erhard Seminars Training, first est seminar held: in San Francisco, California
- 1973 - The Foundation for the Realization of Man incorporated as a non-profit foundation in California
- July 1976 - est Foundation - amendment to the articles of incorporation, California
- February 1981 - Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A)
- 1984 - WE&A replaces the est training with "The Forum"<ref>Anthony Gottlieb, "Heidegger for Fun and Profit", The New York Times, January 7, 1990</ref> — later to become "The Landmark Forum" in the 1990s
- January 16, 1991 - Breakthrough Technologies
- * signed by attorney Donald R. Share
- * Art Schreiber as initial agent
- January 23, 1991 - Transnational Education Corp.
- May 7, 1991 - Landmark Education Corporation
- * Brian Regnier signed as President and Secretary of Transnational Education Corp
- * Harry Rosenberg as director and treasurer
- June 5, 1991 - Werner Erhard and Associates International, Inc., now a subsidiary of Landmark Education Corporation
- * Gilbert H. Judson, president
- * Regina Tierney, secretary
- July 14, 1992 - Alexandria, VA - federal district judge rules Landmark Education Corporation did not have successor liability, in the case brought by a Silver Spring, Maryland woman for emotional damages allegedly due to participation in the Forum under Werner Erhard and Associates.
- February 2003 - Landmark Education Corporation became "Landmark Education LLC"
[edit] Successive organizational name-changes
| Name | From | To |
| The Foundation for the Realization of Man | 1973 | July 1976 |
| The est Foundation | July 1976 | February 1981 |
| Werner Erhard and Associates | February 1981 | January 16, 1991 |
| Breakthrough Technologies | January 16, 1991 | January 23, 1991 |
| Transnational Education Corp. | January 23, 1991 | May 7, 1991 |
| Landmark Education Corporation | May 7, 1991 | February 2003 |
| Landmark Education, LLC | February 2003 | present |
[edit] Finances
CEO Stewart Esposito controlled Erhard Seminars Training's $38 million USD budget, as well as managing 300 employees:
As CEO of a 38 million-dollar international education company with 300 employees, he designed and implemented strategic plans and breakthrough initiatives<ref>The Centre for Strategy Implementation, CSI People, Stewart Esposito</ref>.
[edit] The Training
The training itself featured lectures interspersed with exercises (known as "processes").
[edit] The "Truth Process" and the "Danger Process"
Finkelstein et al. (1982) report on est's "Truth Process", an event occurring on the second day of the training. During this exercise trainees lie on the floor, eyes closed, meditating on an individual problem they have selected.
</br>
</br> "At the trainer's command, the trainees imagine a situation in which that problem has occurred and systematically explore the detailed bodily sensations and images associated with the problem itself. As the trainer orders the trainees to examine images from the past and from childhood, powerful affects are released. The room is soon filled with the sound of sobbing, retching, and uncontrolled laughter, punctuated by the exclamations of those remonstrating with figures from their past... Later in the second day, during the so-called "Danger Process,” trainees come to the dais in groups of 25 and stand facing the audience. The trainer exhorts those on the dais to "be" themselves, and reprimands those who appear to be posturing or falsely smiling, or who fail to make eye contact with the seated trainees. It is not uncommon, apparently, for trainees to faint or cry when called to the dais in this fashion, and some later recount that they found the experience liberated them from social anxieties."<ref>Report of the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control, November 1986, Margaret Thaler Singer, University of California, Berkeley; Harold Goldstein, National Institute of Mental Health; Michael Langone, American Family Foundation; Jesse S. Miller, San Francisco, California; Maurice K. Temerlin, Clinical Psychology Consultants, Inc.; Louis J. West, University of California Los Angeles </ref>
[edit] Rules
The basic training aimed to transform participants' lives in 60 hours over a period of two weekends.
During the training, the participants followed a list of rules[citation needed]:
- No going to the bathroom for 7 hours (later changed to 4).
- No talking to one's friend or neighbor during the training.
- No eating or drinking during a bathroom break.
- No meditating, sewing, knitting, reading, stretching, and other activities during the training while participants sit in their seats.
- Participants on medication had to sit in the last row, in the back of the room.
- No leaving the room for anything except during the prescribed breaks.
- No smoking or gum-chewing allowed during the training.
- No "If's" or "But's" used during the training. (The word "And" replaced those words.)
[edit] Appearances in documentaries
[edit] The Century of the Self
Werner Erhard appeared in the 2002 British documentary by Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self. He appears in episode 3 of 4. This segment of the video discusses the est Training in great detail, and includes interviews with Est graduates John Denver and Jerry Rubin.
[edit] Transformation
In 2006, Erhard appeared alongside Landmark Forum Leader Laurel Scheaf (pictured) and Landmark Forum Leader Randy McNamara (pictured), in the Robyn Symon documentary: Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard<ref>Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard, Documentary, 2006, , documentary, Directed by Robyn Symon</ref>.
[edit] Assessments and reactions
[edit] Academic studies of est
[edit] Dr. Michael Langone
- Dr. Michael Langone, in an article on Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) (a term which collectively refers to est, Lifespring, and similar encounter groups), states:
I know of no research, however, that convincingly demonstrates positive behavioral effects of these trainings. In my opinion, one of the best studies from a methodological standpoint was "Research on Erhard Seminar Training in a Correctional Institution" (Hosford, Ray, E., Moss, C. Scott, Cavior, Helene, & Kerish, Burton. Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 1982, Manuscript #2419, American Psychological Association). Of 313 inmates who volunteered for est training in a Federal Correctional Institution, 150 were randomly selected for the training, while the balance acted as a waiting-list control group and were given scholarships to be used upon release. The groups did not differ on demographics or variables related to criminal history. They were given a full battery of psychological tests and biofeedback instruments, with half of the group pre-tested and half post-tested (to control for the possible contaminating effect of testing). Three-month and 12-month follow-ups were conducted to assess behavioral outcomes (incident reports, furloughs, work performance, etc.). Although the psychological tests reflected some positive change, these self-report changes did not manifest themselves in alterations in physiological measures or in actual behavior. The research and anecdotal evidence seem to indicate that LGATs are very successful at producing positive opinions about the trainings — an outcome that the financial officers of every service business would value. However, whether or not they have a substantial positive effect on behavior that is not due to placebo factors, is still an unanswered question. <ref>Michael Langone, PhD, Large Group Awareness Trainings, Cult Observer, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1998</ref>
[edit] Quoted comments
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America :
... Erhard Seminars Training (est), a pricey, psychobabbling series of long and demeaning behavior-modification sessions that preached the virtue of selfishness.<ref>Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-87316-8</ref>
Philip Cushman, Constructing The Self, Constructing America :
Even today, abundance theory is alive and well in many religious cults and in restrictive psychotherapy trainings such as est.<ref>Philip Cushman, Constructing The Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995, p.130. ISBN 0-201-62643-8</ref>
Jonas B. Robitscher, The powers of psychiatry :
... the Werner Erhard est seminar ... the ... lucrative application of pop psychology.<ref>Jonas B. Robitscher, The powers of psychiatry, Boston, Houghton Mifflen, 1980, p.455. ISBN 0-395-28222-5</ref>
Alex Howard, Challenges to Counselling and Psychotherapy :
There is a large potential market for the sale of "ordinariness" as a desirable commodity. Zen Buddhists, and other monastic communities, have been offering it for years.... A more modern version of ordinariness, on sale as a commodity, was Jack Rosenberg's 'est', or 'Erhardt [sic] Seminars training'. 'est', with its pretentiously small 'e', was a sixty-hour marathon, staged over two weekends, and based in a large hotel room with up to two hundred and fifty trainees and one trainer. Erhardt used his skills as a philosopher and salesman to provide a glossy training package that integrated Zen with more contemporary psychotherapies. The aim was to get 'it' by the end of the training programme. The 'it' on offer was 'enlightenment', the realization that there is no enlightenment, no key, no secret wisdom, no crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. In other words, candidates paid a considerable sum of money to get 'nothing' out of the training, and trainees were repeatedly reminded that when they finally left the hotel room, all that would happen would be that they would leave the hotel room and carry on with their lives... Sure enough, it worked. I got nothing out of it.... Unfortunately, although predictably, est 'graduates' tended to make rather too much noise and fuss about this nothing, and lionized Erhardt as though he were something special. He, again predictably, tended to puff up with this sense of being special. Consequently, the whole movement became yet another American carnival of noise and messianism that grew rapidly at the end of the 1970s, with tens of thousands of disciples in the USA and Europe, only to decline just as quickly when it went out of fashion. Therefore the market is currently wide open for someone else to offer another version of 'nothing', designed to help us come to terms with the miracle of nothing-special existence<ref>Alex Howard, Challenges to Counselling and Psychotherapy, Houndmills and London, Macmillan, 1996, p.72-73. ISBN 0-333-64287-2</ref>.
[edit] Oblique comedy
- The movie "Semi-Tough" (1977) parodies the EST training. Bert Convy plays Frederick Bismark, (a caricature of Werner Erhard). Bismark's organization and its training have the name "BEAT", standing for "Bismark Earthwalk Action Training". A form of Rolfing (which many EST people received in order to straighten them out by painful forms of massaging) appeared in the film as "Pelfing". In real life, Erhard had a Mercedes-Benz whose licence plate read "SO WUT": in the movie, a limousine's license plate read "BEAT IT".
- An episode of Mork and Mindy had David Letterman playing an Erhard-like character by the name of Ellsworth offerring ERC or Ellsworth Revitalization Conditioning.
- Six Feet Under (Episode 16, Season 2, (2002): "The Plan") features a seminar-delivery organization called "The Plan", which the character Claire Fisher immediately compares to "est".
- In the movie "Stripes", John Candy's character "Ox" refers to est during the recruits' "rap" session in the barracks.
- In the 1990 film The Spirit of '76, Rob Reiner plays Dr. Cash, an abusive EST trainer who traps time traveler Heinz-57 (played by Geoff Hoyle) in one of his seminars, continually referring to him as "Heinz Asshole."
[edit] Scientology procedure
New members of Scientology would often have to go through an "Est Repair Rundown", if they had previously participated in Erhard Seminars Training:
Est Repair Rundown: an auditing action designed to repair the damage done to a person mentally and spiritually by the practice of est (Erhard Seminars Training). Est was an offbeat group which used destructive techniques, and some people new to Scientology are found to have been previously involved with est. It is necessary to undo the harmful effects of est before such persons can make adequate progress in Scientology auditing<ref>Scientology Glossary of Terms, Church of Scientology Official Site, 2006.</ref>.
[edit] See also
[edit] Staff, participants and other individuals
[edit] Celebrity participants
- John Denver - est participant, co-founder of The Hunger Project Wrote song "Looking For Space", which is dedicated to EST. as their theme song,
- Cher
- Yoko Ono
- Valerie Harper
- Four members of the Fifth Dimension
- Joe Namath
- Diana Ross
- Cloris Leachman
- Carly Simon
- John Curry
- Ken Blanchard
- Joanne Woodward
- Polly Bergen
- Raul Julia
- Ted Danson
- Anthony Zerbe
[edit] Others
- Wolfgang Somary - investment banker, loaned Werner Erhard and Associates $14 million
- Robert W. Fuller - est participant, co-founder, The Hunger Project
- Ellis Duell - est participant, past Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Hunger Project
- Lynne Twist - est participant, founding executive and past director of global funding for The Hunger Project
- Steven Pressman - author of Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile, (1993), St. Martin's Press
- James Slee - est participant, passed away suddenly during an est training session in 1983
- Charles "Raz" Ingrasci - headed est mission to the USSR; past officer of Lifespring and board member of The Hunger Project; now President and CEO of the Hoffman Institute
[edit] Related organizations
- Werner Erhard and Associates - immediate successor-organization to est
- Landmark Education - inheritor-organisation to est
- Landmark Education and the law
- The Hunger Project
- Exegesis, an est-like organization functioning in the United Kingdom in the 1980s
- Paradigm 3 - website
- Performance Design Corp.
- Hermenet Inc. - mention in article The Power of Words
- Action Technologies - website
- The Conversation Toward Autonomy /Arnold Siegel & Company, Inc. - website
See also the list of associated organizations.
[edit] References
[edit] Books
[edit] Biographies of Werner Erhard
- Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile by Steven Pressman
- Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of EST by William Warren Bartley, III
- 60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard: How America's Top Rated Television Show Was Used in an Attempt to Destroy a Man Who Was Making A Difference by Jane Self
[edit] Other
- Adelaide Bry est (Erhard Seminars Training): 60 Hours That Transform Your Life, Harpercollins, 1976
- Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. 2nd edition, Stillpoint Press, 1995. [1] ISBN 0-9647650-0-4
- V.J. Fedorschak The Shadow on the Path: : Clearing the Psychological Blocks to Spiritual Development. Hohm Press, 1999. ISBN 0-934252-81-5
- Sheridan Fenwick Getting it: the psychology of est. Penguin, 1977. ISBN 0-14-004467-1
- Carl Frederick est: Playing the Game the New Way, Delacorte, 1974.
- Robert Hargrave est: Making Life Work, Delacorte, 1976.
- Ray E Hosford, C Scott Moss, Helene Cavior and Burton Kerish Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 1982, Manuscript #2419, American Psychological Association)
- Ray E Hosford, C Scott Moss, Helene Cavior and Burton Kerish "Research on Erhard Seminar Training in a Correctional Institution"
- Rhinehart, Luke, The Book of Est
[edit] Articles in periodicals
- Brewer, Mark. "We're Gonna Tear You Down and Put You Back Together", Psychology Today, August 1975
- L. L. Glass, M. A. Kirsch and F. N. Parris "Psychiatric disturbances associated with Erhard Seminars Training" American Journal of Psychiatry, 1977; 134(3): 245-7.
- Peter Marin "The New Narcissism" Harper's, October 1975, 251:45-56.
- Perry Pascarella “Create Breakthroughs in Performance by Changing the ‘Conversation’” (Industry Week, June 1997)
- Eliezer Sobel “This Is It: est, Twenty Years Later” (QUEST Magazine, Summer 1998)
[edit] External links
- Werner H. Erhard v. Commissioner Internal Revenue Service, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Public Record, No. 93-70357 (9th.Cir. 02/08/1995)
- An account of the life, influences and controversies surrounding Erhard
- Uncomplimentary article about est in Psychology Today (August 1975)
- Independent Research, Case Studies, and Surveys (Landmark Education Website July 2005)
- Comprehensive list of articles on Erhard, est, Landmark, and the Landmark Forum at the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Contoversial Groups and Movements
- Independent presentation of the history, sources, methods and potential dangers of "est" (The Skeptic's Dictionary)
- Independent Pro and contra presentation of est and Landmark Education, followed by series of links to articles (Apologetics Index - Resources on Religious Cults, Sects, Religions, Doctrines, etc.)
- Series of awareness-raising articles about est/Landmark Education (at SIMPOS, a Dutch "foundation for information on social problems and occult tendencies")
- Is Don Rumsfeld a Werner Erhard Disciple?, March 2, 2005, Cosmic Iguana
- "Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous", Pièces à conviction, May 24, 2004, Exposé (journalism), France 3 television network
- Video viewable on Dailymotion, at Videos / Landmarkeducation.
[edit] Citations
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