Did anyone take the est seminars in the late 70s/early 80s?

[Bricker]

Well? Will you take responsibility and admit it?

[Ulfreida]

ho ho. raises hand.

It's far from the only embarrassing thing I did back then.

[wmulax93]

I was born in '81, so I'm curious what this was.

[Rachellelogram]

Originally Posted by wmulax93

I was born in '81, so I'm curious what this was.

I was born in '84, but google says this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

[Bricker]

I didn't, but a good friend did, and he was so transformed by the thing that he begged me to take it. He was willing to pay for it, in fact, if I took it and said it wasn't the most amazing thing ever.

I haven't thought about it in a long time, but I happened to be driving by the hotel where is was hosted all those years ago and was reminded of the descriptions he gave.

[JWT Kottekoe]

Was EST the one where they didn't let you go to the bathroom?

Speaking of EST reminds me of another incident back in the day. Some fellow students lived together in a rented house. One of the guys was friendly, but easily taken advantage of. There were not enough bedrooms so he ended up sleeping in the garage. He got quietly angry and decided to transform his life by taking an assertiveness training seminar (not EST). He came back a complete asshole, so his house mates kicked him out of the house.

[wmulax93]

Originally Posted by rachelellogram

I was born in '84, but google says this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

I usually post from my phone using Tapatalk - I can't always just Google something quickly. Plus, seeing that article, I don't get why going to one would be seen as something someone would hide.

[sisu]

Nope but i did what seems to be similar course in the '80s in Australia called Alpha Dynamics.

At the time i found it helpful but now I see the founder says he is the soul of Jesus.

http://www.alphadynamic.com.au/seminars_free.asp

[MsRobyn]

Originally Posted by wmulax93

I usually post from my phone using Tapatalk - I can't always just Google something quickly. Plus, seeing that article, I don't get why going to one would be seen as something someone would hide.

est is one of those embarrassing relics from the 70s that some people don't want to talk about. It's kinda like an old cocaine habit. It was something you did because other people were doing it, too, and if you convinced yourself that you got something out of it, other people did it because you did it.

It morphed into something called the Forum in the 1980s. I went to one of their introductory seminars. It was interesting, but not interesting enough to drop the $500 for the next seminar.

[cynyc]

OMG. WHo was that guy? Werner Eckhardt or something? I knew two people who thought the found The Way. One dragged me to a big Manhattan venue to listen to him. So I was listening and hearing that he wasn't saying a damn thing! Wonder if there is anything one youtube. And everybody was like applauding and going Yes! Yes! And the man wasn't saying anything except words.

Nice job if you can get it.

Shaking my head...

[LynnM]

fyi, probably more than you want to know:
http://www.angelfire.com/ut/7777777/Est01.htm

[Mrs. Cake]

No, but for a short time I worked in a restaurant next to a place the seminars were held. They'd come in after the seminars, disrupt the restaurant staff and customers, agressively demand things on the menu, wander from table to table, stand over other patrons talking loudly and generally be dicks.

We referred to them as Est-holes and they were a primary reason nobody worked long at that restaurant.

[Leaffan]

Never heard of it. Sounds a lot like Anthony Robbins and the like.

[hogarth]

Originally Posted by Leaffan

Never heard of it. Sounds a lot like Anthony Robbins and the like.

There's pretty much a direct lineage from Eckhardt to Robbins.

[raspberry hunter]

This is related to the Landmark Forum stuff, right? I had a friend who did that and said it changed his life.

To the rest of us looking in, it seemed to change his life for the worse. All of us got alienated by the "new," more aggressive, more pushy him (although he got more LF friends, so I suppose that came out even overall). He got dissatisfied with his job and decided he wanted to do more upper-level management, which he wasn't really suited for. When this was pointed out, he quit and went into another field of work, where I think he's doing more management-ish things, but I think he found he wasn't really into it, and I do know he's making less money and is working with a less interesting group of people doing less interesting things than in his previous job. Maybe he'd say he's happier, though? Dunno because I haven't heard from him in some time.

I got pushed by him to go to one of the LF meetings, where they instructed everyone to think of a problem in our lives we wanted to work on. I have trouble with exercising, so that was my problem. "Envision how you'll feel once you've obtained your goal!" they said. "I'll feel much the same as I do now, except more tired," I said. They didn't like that answer...

[Musicat]

Originally Posted by JWT Kottekoe

Was EST the one where they didn't let you go to the bathroom?

Yeah, but Burt Reynolds had a solution for that. It's called a busman's friend.

[DMark]

And if est wasn't hip and cool enough, you could always sign up for the Primal Scream Therapy - another so-called life changing process that cost a bundle back in the day.

I actually knew a woman in Berlin who saved up money and flew to California to have all of her problems solved by that Primal Scream...and after she left Berlin, a mutual aquantence said, "When she realizes what a rip off scam it is, she will really be doing a primal scream."

Ah, the great con/cults of yore.

[ouryL]

$600 in 1978?
NO WAY NO HOW!!

[outlierrn]

Originally Posted by Musicat

Yeah, but Burt Reynolds had a solution for that. It's called a busman's friend.

Yeah, but he didn't get it.

[DrDeth]

We had something that was "EST-light" or maybe "EST- like". A waste of time.

My fun thing was getting up and going to the bathroom, and the dude running it told me I couldn't, and I said "How are you going to stop me?"

After that, about half the class made a break for it.

[jtgain]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Cake

No, but for a short time I worked in a restaurant next to a place the seminars were held. They'd come in after the seminars, disrupt the restaurant staff and customers, agressively demand things on the menu, wander from table to table, stand over other patrons talking loudly and generally be dicks.

We referred to them as Est-holes and they were a primary reason nobody worked long at that restaurant.

This is the first I've heard of est seminars, but wouldn't becoming pissy and aggressive over every minor inconvenience in life make a person more stressful and more unhappy with their lot in life? Was the idea that if you demand everything, you will get it and be happier? What was the point of not allowing bathroom breaks?

[MsRobyn]

From what I remember, the people running the seminar used to use subtle psychological pressure and power games to get the class to play ball. When the leader tells you you can't leave the room to go to the bathroom, for example, you're likely going to comply because you want everything that the seminar promises, and if that means tying your tonker in a knot because you have to pee so badly your back teeth are floating, you'll do it. The organization places absolute power in the leaders and that's made abundantly clear from the outset.

When you challenge the leader, as DrDeth did, you take away his power because it's obvious that he can no longer control the group. From that point on, he's got to struggle to take back that power, which makes things interesting.

[MsRobyn]

Originally Posted by jtgain

This is the first I've heard of est seminars, but wouldn't becoming pissy and aggressive over every minor inconvenience in life make a person more stressful and more unhappy with their lot in life? Was the idea that if you demand everything, you will get it and be happier? What was the point of not allowing bathroom breaks?

I answered the last question in my most recent post. It's part of controlling the group. When you've got a roomful of people who can number in the hundreds, you've got to use psychology to maintain power and authority, and to control the group. If you tell people they can't fulfill basic biological needs, and you tie it in to something about the seminar, most people will comply with the leader's instructions. (I believe Stanley Milgram had something to say about this.) It's when people like DrDeth challenge that authority that the leader loses his power and authority; the leader can no longer maintain control because the audience now knows that there's nothing the leader can do to stop them from doing anything.

This thread reminded me of a friend who had done the Forum thing, which had similar rules. She was really into it for a while but became disillusioned when one of her Forum buddies got hypoglycemia because the audience wasn't allowed to eat outside of specified times. The group went from fairly early in the morning until about noon or 1 p.m. without a break, which was too long for this guy to go without food, and it never occurred to him to just eat something. My friend realized at that point that she wasn't getting enough out of it to keep going through this.

In terms of your first question, the change in behavior doesn't usually last without reinforcement in the form of "advanced" seminars. Basically, you go to the first seminar for free to hook you in. The real magic, you're told, happens in the second seminar, which will cost a few hundred dollars. After the second seminar, you're told that you'll get sooper sekrit magical powers if you go to the advanced seminars, which cost more money.

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by DrDeth

My fun thing was getting up and going to the bathroom, and the dude running it told me I couldn't, and I said "How are you going to stop me?"

After that, about half the class made a break for it.

My boss circa 1990 was telling me about one of these things and how they wouldn't let you do this or that, or made you do this or that. All I could do was smile, laugh and tell her that there was no way they could make me do things I didn't want to do or not do things like go to the restroom.

"Oh, but there's peer pressure from the rest of the audience"

Yeah, so?

She saw it as this great and wonderful thing. I saw it as a exersize in conformity.

[jtgain]

Right, but what about the seminar would make the attendees go to the above poster's restaurant and start being petty and demanding? Did it teach you to not take the slightest amount of crap from anyone and to demand everything you want? If so, I would think that would make a person far unhappier.

[MsRobyn]

Originally Posted by jtgain

Right, but what about the seminar would make the attendees go to the above poster's restaurant and start being petty and demanding? Did it teach you to not take the slightest amount of crap from anyone and to demand everything you want? If so, I would think that would make a person far unhappier.

IIRC, the program was based on the idea that you had to go for what you want, and to make sure no one got in your way. Basically, the program was teaching its audience to be an asshole.