Burnside's Piece on Mr. W

[Ursus]

The best things about Hyde had nothing to do with Hyde other than the banality of the program bullshit made them seem more intense.  Kind of like a sip of water after two hours in the wrestling room. It was the things in between, that happen by themselves that were good.

Could not have said it better myself!   :tup:  :tup:

[Ursus]

Here is some material I found on one of the LGATs.  It is long, 13 single-spaced pages on the pdf, and pretty dry, i.e., an analysis by two professors, one in Psychology (Janice Haaken), the other in Sociology (Richard Adams), originally appearing in the journal Psychiatry volume 46, August 1983. So I'm not going to bore you with the whole thing.  I am posting here a few paragraphs from the introduction, to give an impression of the context, and then some prescient portions from the body of the paper.  If this is too much material for reading all at once, scroll down to the section on pseudo self-awareness for its potential relevance to the Burnside piece on Mr. W.

This paper presents an overview of a Lifespring Basic Training workshop from a psychoanalytic perspective.  Basing our conclusions on a participant-observation study, we argue that the impact of the training was essentially pathological.  First, in the early period of the training, ego functions were systematically undermined and regression was promoted. Second, the ideational or interpretive framework of the training was based  upon regressive modes of reasoning.  Third, the structure and content of the training tended to stimulate early narcissistic conflicts, and defenses, which accounted for the elation and sense of heightened well-being achieved by many participants.  

A major contemporary force in developing popular conceptions of the self has been the  human potential movement, grounded in the premises and practice of "Third Force" psychology--humanistic psychology--which emerged in the 1950s and found increasingly widespread expression in the next two decades.  The growth of the human potential movement has been both exponential and chaotic. In the realm of education and therapy it has created numerous gurus and schools and provided an array of techniques and  procedures for the enhancement of personal growth.  In the 1970s an effort was made by several persons, and groups to consolidate various practices into cohesive packages as training programs.  These widely marketed programs, designed and organized to effect significant and positive changes in the lives of participants were first successfully initiated by Werner Erhard with est, and are now dominated by est and Lifespring. The investigation presented here focuses on the structure and processes of a Lifespring training program.

 

The interpretive framework adopted here is supported by several psychoanalytic premises concerning group behavior.  In discussing the relationship between ego functions and group behavior, Freud noted that "intensification of the affects and the inhibition of the intellect" characterized "primitive groups" (1959 p20).  Primitive groups promote the  blurring of ego boundaries and psychological merger with the group leader, who serves as an ego ideal for group members.  By projecting ego and superego functions, e.g. the regulation and control of impulses, into the leader, members may express infantile aggressive and libidinal drives normally held in constraint (Kernberg 1980 p212). This psychological state may be described as regressive in that it is reminiscent of the experience of early childhood--the oceanic experience of oneness with the all-good,  protective parent who mediates between the child's immediate needs and the external world.  

Regression, however, does not inevitably imply pathology.  From a psychoanalytic perspective, many healthy and adaptive forms of human activity, such as falling in love (Grunberger 1979 pp5-6) and artistic achievement (Kris 1964 p28), require the capacity to regress.  When falling in love, one must be able to experience temporary states of  psychological merger with another person and artistic achievement often involves access to impulses and irrational of primitive fantasies.  In addition, the ability to work in groups or to engage in collective forms of social action requires the capacity to merge with the group ideals and group interests. The critical distinction in determining pathology in group members concerns the extent of regression--i.e., the dominance of primitive fantasies or impulses and the level of ego control maintained.  By ego control, we mean the capacity for reality testing, for mobilizing adaptive defenses, for distinguishing between internal and external events, and for bringing affective states under rational control.  

Many of the encounter groups of the human potential movement have been described as regressive because of their disinhibitive effects and their tendency to stress abandonment  to strong emotions while disparaging reasoning and intellect (Back 1972 p79, Schur 1976 pp48-53). The emphasis upon "getting in touch with your feelings" and "getting out  of your head" may be of therapeutic value in encouraging participants to gain access to previously warded off impulses, a process which often occurs in successful forms of psychodynamic therapy.  However, without an interpretive framework which reconciles affective states with objective reality and logical thought processes, such group cathartic experiences offer little opportunity for sustained therapeutic change and may, in fact, be psychologically damaging (Lieberman, Yalom, and Miles 1973 pp167-209).

From the section on "DIMINISHED EGO FUNCTIONS AND REGRESSION":

The trainer began the workshop by discussing the purpose of Lifespring, writing "personal growth" and "personal awareness" in bold letters on the board.  Awareness was defined as "understanding things as they are."  The trainer emphasized that the answers were already within us--it was just a matter of discovering them. "Everything has always been available to you.  It's a matter of noticing it, of awareness."  This nativistic approach to knowledge was dramatized by a banner across the front of the room which "grew" in size each day.  The enigmatic phrase, which spanned twenty feet by the fifth day, was "What am I pretending not to know?"  

Following the introduction by the trainer, the group discussed the various motives for coming to Lifespring and how to achieve "full value" from the training.  The key phrases, which described the vehicle to personal growth, were "submission," "100 percent  commitment," and "spontaneity."  

This emphasis upon submission and total involvement required some attention to resistances--the doubts, and reservations which participants inevitably would experience.  The trainer moved to a discussion of "how we avoid," drawing from the audience examples of avoidance behaviors such as forgetting, sickness, and daydreaming.  The question was posed, "What stands in the way of creating maximum value for yourself?"  By the end of the first evening, the trainer had explained emphatically the major  contingency for achieving the expected transformation:  complete submission to the Lifespring experience.  By the device of identifying resistances as "ways of avoiding," participants' questions, doubts and concerns were labeled as obstacles to personal growth.

A variety of rules for "playing the Lifespring game" were then reviewed and participants were asked to stand to indicate agreement with them. While all groups, are guided by implicit or explicit rules, the Lifespring rules were notable for their emphasis upon obedience to the instructions of the trainer and their arbitrariness or lack of an apparent rationale. The effect of a prolonged discussion of the rules, which included some challenging questions by participants, was to fortify the position of the trainer as a  legitimate authority who was in control and to diminish the participants' control.  

Audience responses were managed in a way which reduced the ability of participants to  think critically and simultaneously inflated their self-esteem.  In order to speak, participants had to stand, be acknowledged by the leader and speak into a microphone.  The audience was to applaud after the person finished speaking, presumably indicating  support for the "risk of sharing."  The experience of having to speak before a large group, hearing one's voice amplified and being rewarded with applause was undoubtedly useful for those who were fearful of public speaking.  However, since the applause was mandatory, it was not an indication of the quality or coherence of participants' comments.  The trainer acknowledged as valid only those audience responses which confirmed or illustrated a point being made.  Over the five days, responses came increasingly to mirror the idiom of the trainer, and the applause became increasingly enthusiastic.  This essentially distorted and magnified the import of what was being said, undermining  reality testing.  For example, midway through the training, one participant stood and  announced elatedly, "I've got it!"  Considerable applause followed even though there was no explanation about what he had 'gotten'.  

What was rewarded by the trainer was compliance or pseudocompliance. Participants who offered critical comments or who suggested a different way of conceptualizing a problem had their statements dismissed, were subjected to ridicule, or were confused with paradoxical logic. The "dissenter" was generally maneuvered into some form of compliance before being permitted to sit down and receive the applause.

The trainer used a variety of techniques to neutralize comments which challenged or qualified the point being made and maintained sufficient control over audience responses to assure that defiance and critical thinking were not publicly rewarded.  The use of confusing "double talk" was particularly effective in disarming those who threatened to  de-legitimize the trainer's position.  Statements such as "What you think isn't is, and what  you think is isn't," or "Well, what is the answer?" were perplexing enough to cause the participant to falter in uncertainty. The suggestion that the participant was disturbed, confused, "avoiding," or "game-playing" were other tactics used to discredit objecting participants.  

As the training progressed, participants became increasingly reliant upon the trainer to interpret reality.  Defenses and the capacity for critical reasoning were undermined by both the structure of the training and the responses of the leader. Typically, a didactic session followed each experiential exercise, providing an interpretive framework for the feelings evoked. The trainer provided attributions for the heightened arousal which was generated by the exercise.

From the section on "IDEATIONAL THEMES AND REGRESSION":

On the second evening during the didactic session, the ideational content of the Lifespring message was reviewed elaborately with the use of diagrams. The trainer began with a discussion of "how we respond to events."  He argued that by "resisting events" or "attempting to change them," people merely rely on prior belief systems or "automatic" ways of interpreting the world. This way of responding is a reactive one which ties  people to the experience of the past and to unrealistic expectations for the future.  The trainer emphasized that "coming from a position of change never works."  On the other hand, "submission" to events and acceptance of things as they are results in "creative choice," "awareness," "joy" and "growth."  The paradox of this implicitly conservative message was that personal control was promoted through submission or surrender to the  existing reality of the trainer.

The following interchange took place as one of the researchers attempted to challenge the logic of the presentation, using the language and categories provided by the trainer.  

JANICE: Part of what you're saying matches my experience and part of it doesn't.  I can see how in some situations conflict is made worse by reacting on the basis of rigid, unrealistic expectations.  Yet, in other situations--like the women's movement or other social movements--those who resist are the ones who create change.  For those who submit and back away from conflict, no change takes place.  Also, beliefs can limit us but they can also sustain us at times. The belief in justice or equality, for example, can provide hope for another way of cooperating in the world. There needs to be some distinction between rational and irrational or infantile beliefs here.  

TRAINER: Your problem is that you're stuck on the level of analyzing and beliefs.  You're hung up on having to analyze everything.  

JANICE: I thought that this was the time for that--the didactic period. Isn't that what you're doing on the board?  Am I wrong? (Some audience laughter)  

After the audience laughter the trainer removed his chart, displaying some irritation, and began a new chart entitled "Levels of Awareness."  He started with "belief," stating that this was a low level of human awareness: he then discussed "analyzing" and "experimenting."  He distinguished these three low levels of awareness, which presumably maintain the "illusion of certainty," from "experiencing and observing," which are unfettered by belief and lead to "natural knowing."  By stressing that "all beliefs are arbitrary," the trainer promoted a radical devaluation of the external world. This solipsistic view of the world, which presupposes a presocial self, contributed to the general tendency of Lifespring to cultivate regressive modes of reasoning.  

Although there was often an element of truth in the trainer's arguments, the extensive use of all-or-nothing categories, absolutist logic and magical thinking distorted what would otherwise have been reasonable points. Ideas were not presented as problematic beliefs which were open to scrutiny but as transcendent truth--"natural knowing."  The critical eye of the participant was turned away from tile content of the training and toward him/herself as the source of all knowledge.

From the section on "INFANTILE OMNIPOTENCE AND IDENTIFICATION WITH THE LEADER":

After participating in a variety of regressive exercises, participants came increasingly to identify with the trainer and to share his power during the third and fourth days of training.  Shifting from the emphasis upon submission and trust, the trainer suggested that we were totally responsible for all events in our lives--"100 percent accountable"--including the selection of our parents.  An exercise designed to illustrate the theme of "taking full responsibility" involved the use of pairs.  Partners were to tell each other of an occasion when each had been victimized.  Several people told stories about having been beaten by a parent as a child.  We were then instructed to retell the story from a position of 100 percent accountability--in other words, how we "set things up to be that way."

This exercise transformed the infantile helplessness which participants had experienced earlier into infantile omnipotence.  Many participants reported feelings of elation and expansiveness following this exercise.  The level of insight gained was akin to the reasoning of a small child who has not yet cognitively overcome an egocentric view of  the world--the conviction that all events emanate from the self.  The subjective experience of liberation which accompanied this exercise seemed to stem from the sense of  omnipotent control generated among the participants.  The group was particularly vulnerable to this type of primitive reasoning because of the effects of the earlier training.  The lowering of inhibitions, the extensive structuring of the environment and the undermining of critical thought combined to elicit archaic defenses such as omnipotence.  

Identification with the powerful position of the trainer as a defense against infantile helplessness and dependency was made evident by the increasing reliance upon his language over the five days of training.  The language of the human potential movement, which provided the "official" lexicon of Lifespring, seemed to exhaust and encompass all of human experience, e.g., "getting off automatic," "going for it," "taking risks," "taking  responsibility," and "creating your own reality."  These phrases took on an almost magical communicative power within the group.

As the training progressed and the trainer's words were repeated by group members, the trainer became softer in his style and more accessible to the group.  His occasionally stepping down from the podium and mingling with the group allowed a greater sense of psychological merger with him.  Our collective seduction was dramatically enacted on the fourth day as participants took the position of the leader on the podium and "shared" the  growth which they had achieved thus far.  Laura, an attractive and articulate woman of about thirty, who had been the first participant to object to a rule on the first evening, approached the microphone.  Her voice trembling, she began to explain how socially isolated she had become and spoke of the barriers which she had erected to keep people  at a distance.  The trainer then asked if she would be willing to try an exercise in "trust."  The lights were dimmed and the woman stood on a chair ready to fall backward into the  arms of six men selected from the audience.  As sensual music played, the trainer stood  close to her, murmuring in intimate tones.  Finally she allowed herself to fall, and the  men began to rock her back and forth to the music.  The trainer remained close to the woman, who was now sobbing, massaging her stomach and speaking softly to her.  The exercise was quite poignant, moving many participants to tears.  Although the surface meaning of the exercise concerned trust, it was compelling in its libidinal and religious undertones. There had been a series of testimonials followed by the "baptismal" of a  formerly recalcitrant participant.  She had fully immersed herself in the experience and had finally yielded to the trainer.

The desire for merger, which is reminiscent of the security and total dependency of early childhood, has been identified in various psychological phenomena, e.g., falling in love, religious experiences, and intoxicated states.  However, what we found particularly troublesome in the various trust exercises presented in Lifespring was the implied indiscriminate nature of trust.  The desire for intimacy was gratified instantaneously.  It  appeared to matter little whether or not the object of desire was trustworthy.  The emphasis was upon abandonment to an undifferentiated, unknowable other who existed as an extension of one's own needs.

An essentially solipsistic view of the world was supported by the experiential and ideational content of tile training throughout the five days. While reactions to others always contain projective themes, at Lifespring the boundary between inner and outer reality, between self and other, was constantly being obliterated by the structure of the training.  This contributed to the sense of expansiveness and boundless power experienced by participants. The idea of "mirroring" was used in several exercises as a metaphor for projected reality. "What you see in others," we were told, "is a mirror of yourself."  

Exercises which mobilized narcissistic defenses, i.e., feelings of inflated well-being and exaggerated personal power, were alternated with attacking exercises, which were narcissistically injurious.  The latter evoked feelings of shame and worthlessness and made the group vulnerable to the judgments of the leader.  One example involved a game  called "Red and Black," which required the group to divide into two teams and develop  strategies, based upon a set of rules, for achieving the greatest number of points.  Neither team was able to recognize that the main contingency for getting the maximum number of points was that both teams succeed.  Essentially, if one team lost, both lost.  And both teams did lose.  This exercise could have been an occasion for discussing the cultural context of competition and aspects of our society which make it difficult to identify cooperative contingencies.  Instead, the trainer castigated participants, finally stating with disgust, "You all make me sick." Since the exercise was at the close of the evening, we were to go home and reflect upon what we had learned.  Many participants were silent and  tearful as we closed the evening session.

By assuming the position of a harsh and rejecting parent, the trainer was able to mobilize infantile feelings of badness.  This experience made it more likely that participants would attempt to defend against feelings of being a bad and powerless child in subsequent exercises by identifying more strongly with the leader.  The tendency to identify with him in order to share in his power was particularly evident on the morning following the Red and Black exercise as 8 or 10 participants lined up enthusiastically on the stage to give testimonials.  This was the first time in the training that participants were invited to join the leader in his elevated position on the stage.

During the final two days of the training, there was a great deal of hugging and other indications of affection among participants.  However, these expressions of "love for  everyone" seemed to be narcissistically motivated.  They were an extension of the expansive mood and feelings of power experienced by many of the participants rather than an expression of mutuality or attachment.  Another group exercise, based on an  assembly line model of human relations, illustrates the indiscriminate nature of intimate overtures.  Participants assembled in two concentric circles, facing each other.  Each facing pair was to simultaneously indicate one of four possible gestures of intimacy:  no contact; a handshake; holding hands; or an embrace.  After completing this brief, silent  interaction, the lines shifted and new pairs were formed, repeating the procedure. Most pairs embraced so that by the conclusion of the exercise, close contact had been made among the majority of participants.  

While this exercise may have been helpful for those who fear physical contact, providing a form of desensitization, it stripped such interactions of the relational context which generally gives them meaning.  Instead, it became a rather compulsive, counterphobic reaching out which provided little information concerning problems of intimacy. These fleeting physical contacts were experienced as if they had profound human implications.

From the section on "PSEUDO SELF-AWARENESS AND REALITY TESTING":

The events of the fifth and final day of the training provided an opportunity for participants to use what they had learned in responding to an unanticipated crisis.  Following the morning break, one of the more actively involved participants, Patrick, leaped up and took the position of the trainer on the podium. Initially it appeared that Patrick was acting out against the trainer by mocking him and by ignoring rules.  However, it soon became apparent that he had decompensated--his speech was  incoherent, he was out of contact with reality, and he appeared to be hallucinating.  The trainer approached him and told him to stop "game playing."  His "other choice" was to "go to a place where they allow people to play crazy games."  Patrick merely gazed vacantly at the trainer and continued to mutter Lifespring phrases.  Various participants responded by encouraging Patrick to "go for it" and "let it all out."  They did not  understand that he had already "let too much out."  His apparently fragile defenses had been repeatedly challenged by the trainer, who had often accused him of "bullshitting."  

When it became clear that Patrick was unable to pull himself together, the other participants were asked to leave the room.  We gathered outside, initially stunned by what  had transpired.  Then the group coalesced into a "circle of love," initiated by several members, out of the desire to "send Patrick our energy."  The group was clearly attempting to provide comfort to its members in an upsetting situation.  What was remarkable was the level of denial and misinterpretation of what had occurred.  The group  transformed Patrick's psychotic episode into a positive experience by using the categories of reasoning provided by the training.  Drawing upon the infantile omnipotence encouraged by earlier sessions, some of the participants declared that "we are going to heal Patrick--he'll feel our energy."  Others commented cheerfully that "he is getting in touch with his feelings" and "whatever he chooses is right for him, it's the very best for him."  After Patrick had been spirited away, the group reconvened to continue the training.  What could have been an occasion for discussing what had happened, including the impact of the training on Patrick, instead stimulated an outpouring of testimonials.  

Since the group's idealization of the trainer was potentially undermined by this incident, decisive defensive operations were necessary to prevent the eruption of hostility in the group.  The group felt impelled to reaffirm the goodness of Lifespring and to externalize and redirect the bad feelings evoked, which were potentially directed toward the trainer.  Hostility was deflected from the trainer, who received the uncontaminated affection of  the group, onto one of the participants who had remained outside the "circle of love."  This participant, one of the researchers, had been a symbol of resistance throughout the training by asking questions and at times disagreeing with the trainer.  During one group exercise, he had been selected by half of the participants as the "least attractive" person in  the group.  He was offensive to many participants for being "too analytical," "rigid," and "not feeling enough."  

In the wake of the morning's events, affective states were intensified and a mood of hysteria was palpable.  While loving feelings were directed toward Lifespring, the hostile component of what had been evoked was now directed more intensively toward the participant-researcher.  One participant stood and stated, "I've got something to say to Dick.  You know, I really hate Dick!"  Another participant charged, "You don't give your love, Dick.  All I want, Dick, is for you to love.  And you hold back your love!"  When Dick explained his reactions to the events of the morning, various participants shouted out angrily, "You're coming from your head, stop analyzing, come from your heart!"  

Within the narcissistic framework constructed by the training, the use of infantile splitting--dividing the relational world into "all good" and "all bad" objects emerged as a dominant defense against anxiety in the group. In order for the Lifespring experience to be taken in, it needed to be idealized as an all-good object. The trainer could not be questioned nor the content of the training challenged.  Participants whose opinions deviated from the trainer's were seen as a threat to the feelings of elation and well-being  enjoyed by participants.  Such threats had to be actively defended against in order to preserve the fantasy of omnipotence cultivated within the training.

From the "CONCLUSION":

We have argued that while many participants experienced a sense of enhanced well-being as a consequence of the training, these experiences were essentially pathological. First, ego functions were systematically undermined and regression was promoted by  environmental structuring, infantilizing of participants and repeated emphasis on submission and surrender. Second, the ideational or interpretive framework provided in the training was also based upon regressive modes of reasoning--the use of all-or-nothing categories, absolutist logic and magical thinking, all of which are consistent with the  egocentric thinking of young children. Third, the content of the training stimulated early narcissistic conflicts and defenses, which accounts for the elation and sense of heightened well-being achieved by many participants. The devaluation of objective constraints upon a person's action promoted grandiose fantasies of unlimited power.  A corollary to this devaluation of the external world was that interactions with others lacked substance.  People appeared to be interchangeable so that ephemeral, indiscriminate emotional contacts were experienced as profound and meaningful. Identification with Lifespring necessitated considerable idealization so that any threat to this experience was aggressively defended against.

 

Download: Download entire pdf here

link to copy here:  
http://www.rickross.com/reference/lifes ... ring4.html

[Anonymous]

Is this it?

Since the group's idealization of the trainer was potentially undermined by this incident, decisive defensive operations were necessary to prevent the eruption of hostility in the group. The group felt impelled to reaffirm the goodness of Lifespring and to externalize and redirect the bad feelings evoked, which were potentially directed toward the trainer. Hostility was deflected from the trainer, who received the uncontaminated affection of the group, onto one of the participants who had remained outside the "circle of love." This participant, one of the researchers, had been a symbol of resistance throughout the training by asking questions and at times disagreeing with the trainer. During one group exercise, he had been selected by half of the participants as the "least attractive" person in the group. He was offensive to many participants for being "too analytical," "rigid," and "not feeling enough."

In the wake of the morning's events, affective states were intensified and a mood of hysteria was palpable. While loving feelings were directed toward Lifespring, the hostile component of what had been evoked was now directed more intensively toward the participant-researcher. One participant stood and stated, "I've got something to say to Dick. You know, I really hate Dick!" Another participant charged, "You don't give your love, Dick. All I want, Dick, is for you to love. And you hold back your love!" When Dick explained his reactions to the events of the morning, various participants shouted out angrily, "You're coming from your head, stop analyzing, come from your heart!"