Is Landmark Forum a cult?

Landmark Forum is the third generation of est, Erhard Seminars Training.

I would not call it a cult, as it does not profess to be a religion. I know of a lot of people who have gone through the seminars and it is not some lifelong attendance and adherence unless you choose to participate. It does set up to be a “new” way of thinking and self actualization.

It is a very rigorous way of facing the realities of one’s personality and how one’s psychology is manifesting itself in the day to day life. In some ways, it is a boot camp approach to facing one’s demons, rather than doing the work with athera[pist.

@zenvelo Did you read the article I’ve sourced?

@NerdyKeith I read it years ago. I am not a Landmark or est fan, but I do know people that have benefited. I also know a few who went through est and were a est-tards for a while, and also others who thought it was a huge rip off.

It really comes down to whether one is at a point in one’s life to take a hard look at oneself, and are ready to take steps. If not, it is a waste of time.

Just looks like yet another group peddling high-priced bullshit.

@Darth_Algar Well it is. Because from what I’ve heard from others, they pressure their current members to recruit more members. And also when you progress, the price goes up and up and up. You’d be better off seeing a qualified therapist if you have issues in your life.

I have a lot of experience with Landmark.

Some claim that it does work for them.

Almost everyone who takes the first weekend class (the Forum class) finishes it, and almost all of those get a lot out of it. Insights and shifts in how they can be about things, that they might never have gotten to by themselves, or not for years.

Others claiming that it’s basically a rip off of Scientology.

It’s not a ripoff of Scientology. The similarity as I see it is they both use stuff from psychology and get people to question their set ways of thinking for a bit, and promise that they can have huge breakthroughs in their lives. But Scientology apparently has several wacko elements that Landmark doesn’t. Scientology is sort of like a religion while Landmark is essentially a school. Scientology has weird shit about aliens while Landmark is just about your approach to language and priorities and ways of thinking about stuff, self-image, communication skills, leadership skills, and having conversations with people. Scientology apparently involves talking people into making donations and sometimes seems to have hunted people down or something. The worst Landmark ever does (unless maybe some individual is a crazy person) is if a volunteer or participant gets over-excited about suggesting you take another course. They do keep trying to suggest that everyone suggest the course to everyone they know, but they don’t tell you to try to force anyone to do it, and they do tell people to lay off people who aren’t interested. But that message can get a bit confused. Sometimes participants get carried away in their excitement and in their enthusiasm and the shifts in their perspectives, and can come across (and/or truly become) weird or annoying.

There’s also been cases with those who have given personal testimonials after having nervous breakdowns from taking part in these seminars.

One problem with Landmark is that they merely require you to affirm that you’re mentally healthy. Then they put you in a 3-day intensive class which involves constant exercises from pop psychology, which tends to crack through people’s usual stuck ways of thinking about things. That has many really cool effects on most healthy people. Many people get rid of tons of personal crap and get all kinds of insights and inspirations and clean up messy relationships and do all kinds of great stuff, and gain a bunch of new ways to relate to their lives, that is really great. BUT some people are maybe not so able to cope with that, and if they were not in a good place to have all that suddenly opened up, then that can cause problems. Landmark will try to spot that and address it during the classes, and they are available for conversations with graduates… if the graduates think to go in for them. But there is a lack of professional support for a person who might not handle that sudden blast of deconstruction well, so that potentially releases some chaos and causes problems for some people. A n d…

I actually had a former friend who attempted to force this upon me, I rejected it every time. I noticed after taking part in this program he became very controlling and condescending. And adapted very much an all or nothing attitude to everything in life. Suffice to say, we are no longer friends.

Yep. So, some people will also have part of their personality that’s not so great decide to latch onto these skills, and use them in not so great ways. Some people also decide to keep assisting and participating or working for Landmark, and some of them are not so healthy, but they can take on the mindset of the courses in an unhealthy way. The courses themselves repeatedly tell you that the suggestions of the exercises “are not the truth” and just “invite you to try on the idea that (whatever)”, but I have seen some people, particularly some who continue to assist or work for the company, become arrogant smartasses who validate their obnoxious behavior by staying forever in the mindset of some of the exercises.

So, I would recommend the courses themselves to psychologically healthy people. Compared to visiting a psychiatrist for $100+ per hour once a week for months or years, taking a weekend course for $400–500 can get a lot more done much much more quickly and cost-effectively, and in a very different way that gives skills and perspectives and so on. The courses themselves are really quite cool if you can handle them. But some people may not be able to handle them, and could have some chaos added to their lives. Unstable or fragile people, no – see a psychiatrist first or instead. Psychopathic and sociopathic and manipulative people, I wish would stay away too because although they might turn themselves around, they may also just gain skills for being more manipulative. And/or they may not even realize they’ve become uber-jerks because they use Landmark as an affirmation system for their egos. Some of those people even manage to get hired by Landmark.

I appreciate your answer, but I am skeptical. Are there any books that have been published that discuss the Landmark Forum point of view? Are there any controlled experiments that have been done to test their methods? Could you outline their approach in a short paragraph? Until I see evidence to indicate otherwise, I am assuming the null hypothesis that what they do is ineffective.

Self-admitted troll here – did The Landmark Forum and was curious about there was online about it. I don’t have time to fully give my own experience, which was complex (mostly positive), but this writer’s take is probably the closest I’ve seen to my own, and it also has the advantage of explaining what happens in the course better than any of the other reviews I’ve come across:

http://thirtytwothousanddays.com/blog/2011/02/landmark-forum-cult-scam-or-path-to-enlightenment/

The problem with that story and others I find on the Web is that they are all very vague. What I would like to know are specific changes that a person made as a result of the Landmark Forum. Something along the lines of, I developed a closer relationship with my friends or I quit my job and joined the Peace Corps.

I’d be happy to try to answer whatever you want to know.

Are there any books that have been published that discuss the Landmark Forum point of view?

I don’t know of books about Landmark by others. I know that about 2009, Landmark actually published a book to try to deliver the Forum impact in book form, which they’d never tried to do before because so much of the Forum is an experience, not information. Searching “Landmark Education” on Amazon, it looks like they’ve published several now, though it sounds like you’d like a published external perspective.

Are there any controlled experiments that have been done to test their methods?

Probably not. Landmark itself is very into constantly evaluating its results and tuning and re-inventing its processes, so they have their own data, but it’s of course from their own perspective. And one of their main measures is actually just about keeping themselves going – the most common measure they use is just how many enrollments are generated, and how many people show up for each class.

The enrollment measure though is evidence something is happening. They do essentially zero advertising for the forum. The people who took the class do all the advertising, voluntarily (though they do keep encouraging everyone to do that). There is no incentive for participants to talk to friends about Landmark or get their friends to sign up, except maybe social pressure they might feel for the class group itself. But it really is the enthusiasm generated by the participation in the class itself, that has kept growing enrollment for decades. What happens is people take a class, get really excited about what they got out of it, and want their friends to get the same things, and so suggest they come to a free intro, share what they got out of it, ask them if they think they’d get something out of it and if they want to sign up. And enough of the guests say yes that these courses keep getting run to packed rooms, now all over the world.

Could you outline their approach in a short paragraph?

The “short” part is challenging because there’s so much I could say.

The approach is to have a few hundred participants spend almost all of three days together in a focused course that presents many perspectives and exercises picked from a variety of disciplines (philosophy, psychology, linguistics, etc) presented in concise plain-language ideas and exercises that mostly involve short conversations and sharing impressions with the people next to you (one on one, sometimes in small groups), and people sharing to the whole group, and talking to the (very well trained) leader in front of the group. On breaks there are assignments which usually involve talking to people in your life (generally by phone) with whom the exercises have brought up something useful for your relationship with those people. People who can then share those experiences with the group (often they’ve had something striking happen in those conversations). People are exposed to a torrent of new ideas, perspectives, approaches, ways of being with others, that lead to them experiencing themselves and others differently, that have them see new possibilities and all sorts of things open up.

What I would like to know are specific changes that a person made as a result of the Landmark Forum. Something along the lines of, I developed a closer relationship with my friends or I quit my job and joined the Peace Corps.

You’ll hear exactly that sort of report (what each person got, not that they all join the Peace Corps), over and over, if you go to one of the free intros.

Even then, those people will have thought of just one story to tell, and some of them will have practiced telling just one, because really the Forum changes the way people are able to be, and reminds them who they are and what they really care about, so people tend to have tons they could say.

In my case, I got a sudden sense of being a decade or two younger, of remembering who I was when I was 18, and being that person again, and free to do whatever I really wanted with my life. I popped out of a long depression that had been killing me. That was the immediate effect.

Flowing straight out of that, I got out of a horribly co-dependent marriage. My sense of my body and appetite changed, and I lost 30 pounds without diet or exercise just via increased self-awareness. I got involved with an wildlife organization and was put on its board of directors doing a project that came to me in a class exercise. I stopped doing work I didn’t like, and started doing work I love, and got my best client ever.

I’ve of course heard many other people’s stories. Extremely common are things like:

* Speaking to family they hadn’t spoken to in years, and turning bad relationships into good ones.

* Changing work relationships and getting promotions or new business or changed responsibilities or work conditions.

* Starting new businesses.

* Getting out of bad relationships, or saving failing relationships.

* Taking care of bad stuck situations, such as legal problems.

All sorts of other stuff. Basically, people change how they’re being, and stop being shut down and stopped in the ways they’ve gotten stuck, and do things they had built up lots of reasons and habits that were artificially keeping themselves from doing things about. And they get many of the people they interact with to see do new stuff too.

They also change how they are. The clouds part that were obscuring their personalities.

Also, taking the Forum led to me taking all sorts of courses, not just other Landmark courses, but a variety of other types that led to more and more self-awareness and health and happiness and good relationships and so on. Some of those I recommend just as much, or even more, but Landmark’s the one that smashes through the most crap in one weekend.

Thank you. It gives me something to think about.