Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
successfull seed graduates
GregFL:
On the other side, Stripe, I don't wish Art or any of them anything but the same peace I seek myself. In fact I would love to talk to any of them
Now that wasn't always true. I think once upon a time I would have danced on Art's grave. Not now, I don't begrudge anyone anything anymore.
GregFL:
--- Quote ---On 2004-12-10 06:01:00, Anonymous wrote:
"
--- Quote ---
On 2004-12-09 21:20:00, Robin Martin wrote
If you look at it another way, you are still letting your past experiences control you and you've fought that war far too long.
Anon, get help - find peace. "
--- End quote ---
And if you look at it in yet another way, this shit is STILL going on and we're trying to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/curre ... ature.html
I'm not the anon you were speaking to but sorry, I can't 'find peace' knowing that kids are still being, ahem...."treated" this way."
--- End quote ---
That article fails to investigate properly where growing together of Lake Worth got its "techniques" and improperly credits George Ross and Miller Newton. Neither of these guys did anything but observe the Seedlings running the Straight group in St Petersburg and wrote down what they saw.
In other words, they plagarized Art's program and then added a little fluff to make it appear to be their own. Then they ran off and started their own little personality cults.
The modality that was the Seed and is in modern day "growing together", "kids helping Kids", "SAFE", "AARC" and others still in existence is a self perpetuating model.
This begs the question, who did Art Plagarize it from originally? I have a very hard time believing he started out in a house where people came and went freely, kind of hippy lovey dovey rehab, and rapidly within two years resulted in the facist program with strict and very effective mind control techniques that I was in in 1973 St Pete.
Anonymous:
--- Quote ---On 2004-12-10 07:51:00, GregFL wrote:
This begs the question, who did Art Plagarize it from originally? I have a very hard time believing he started out in a house where people came and went freely, kind of hippy lovey dovey rehab, and rapidly within two years resulted in the facist program with strict and very effective mind control techniques that I was in in 1973 St Pete.
"
--- End quote ---
It came from a combination of AA's 12 Steps and Chuck Dederich's Synanon.
http://orange-papers.org/orange-gulags.html
Anonymous:
A portion of that page:
Many people tried to emulate Synanon. Places like Daytop Lodge and Phoenix House in NYC. The most successful for kids-only Synanon follow-on was The Seed founded in June 1970 in Fort Lauderdale by the charismatic Art Barker. (Art had come from NYC). The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) was so impressed with The Seed that it gave Barker a $1 million grant. Drug Czar Robert DuPont led NIDA while Barker was being funded his grant money. Barker had visions of making Seeds all over the state of Florida and then all over the country. But in 1974 the US Senate published a study which accused The Seed of using methods which it likened to Communist brainwashing techniques. Besides this unwanted bad-press, The Seed was having other difficulties. The Senate was cracking down on NIDA in its consideration of a request from Barker for another cool million to expand his services throughout Florida. The Senate had told NIDA that Barker was doing human experimentations and that NIDA's own regulations required the people being experimented upon to sign statements of consent. And then there was the new host home regulations. The state of Florida's HRS had adopted a set of standards of how to regulate the host home element of The Seed and Barker said he had problems with those new regulations. Under the weight of all these problems Art Barker gave up on his expansion plans.
GregFL:
Ah, but Anon, that website took their information from Wes Fagers Website. Wes Fager has long claimed a connection to Synanon but has been unable to make it.
To reiterate, to date NO CONNECTION has been made to the synanon. NONE. The only thing we know is there is some commonality of technique and cultic language. Some of this commonality exists because the synanon was an offshoot of AA that went cult and Art Barker was a rabid AA guy. This I know... Art Barker never attended the synanon. I know this almost to a certainty. There is cirumstancial evidence that others brought the more rigid techniques and synanon style with them, but as of right now, as we write here, this is the biggest mystery in the whole history of the program...the biggest gaping hole so to speak.
So it still begs the question...how did it rapidly go from 1971...an open house hippy love fest rehab to what it was in 1973, a rigid mind control cult and the precursor to Straight, Inc.?
Also notable is that in 1974, after the NIDA grant was cancelled, the press started reporting on the techniques and giving press to the abuse charges, Art started slowly changing the program back and letting up on the techniques a bit, eventually turning away from treating minors.
Was Bobbie Dupont resonsible for Art changing the program? Was it a deal where Dupont gave him the grant under the condition he start using the synanon techniques? Did Dupont also put a person in such as Cliff or Underwood that was familar with the synanon techniques? Cliff and John were much older and different than almost anyone else there and I remember John talking about another place and saying something to the effect that "all this started at ...." but I can't remember the name and it is a very old memory which makes it rather muddy.
Above is one theory I have, but honestly it is only a theory right now.
This is a very compelling question...one that I wish someone who really knew would answer.
John Underwood would be one I would think may have the answers. I sure wish he would show up here and let us know what he knows.
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