Why Are You at Hyde?

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

What sort of "cult-like" and "coercive behavior modification techniques" did you encounter at Hyde?  It would be interesting to compare your experience with what's going on at Hyde currently.  I continue to learn about cult-like and coercive behavior modification techniques at Hyde.  Have things changed over all these years, or not?

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

What sort of "cult-like" and "coercive behavior modification techniques" did you encounter at Hyde?  It would be interesting to compare your experience with what's going on at Hyde currently.  I continue to learn about cult-like and coercive behavior modification techniques at Hyde.  Have things changed over all these years, or not?

   I was there at the same time as Mike.  We had the seminars where you had to reveal intimate personal secrets. And then there were the Community meeting head shaping sections.  There was the Hitler Youth, turn in your buddy, program.  There was forced menial labor if you did not comply.  Coercive is a fair and objective term for the program.

Emil Nightrate

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

What sort of "cult-like" and "coercive behavior modification techniques" did you encounter at Hyde?  It would be interesting to compare your experience with what's going on at Hyde currently.  I continue to learn about cult-like and coercive behavior modification techniques at Hyde.  Have things changed over all these years, or not?

I encountered coercive behavior modification techniques in Hyde seminars. These seminars were only designed to make us "invest" in the process. Once we spill our guts, we've made another investment, we've lost a few more little secrets that define us as individuals, we've handed our identity over to the group, and taken another little step toward becoming Hyde groupies. The more we share, the more committed to Hyde we are. I believe that's the rationale behind it. All of Hyde's activities, without exception, are based on that sort of group dynamic, even the academics.

From Hyde's point of view, it is imperative that we not have an identity that is not part of the group. It is imperative that we tear down the barriers between the ego and the group. Then our behavior can be modified as a group, as Hyde sees fit.

The purpose of the seminars is not therapeutic, it's coercive. If Hyde seminars were really intended to be therapeutic, they would help us with our underlying problems. Now, I came to Hyde with some family problems so repressed that I did not even know they were there. These were "ticking time bombs," which eventually did  go off, to devastating effect. Hyde seminars didn't --- couldn't --- help me with these sorts of problems, of which I was unaware.

Therapeutic or coercive? Hyde's facilitators are not sensitive and competent psychologists. They are from the Inquisition.      

Hyde's coercive behavior modification techniques cannot but fail to do harm, particularly to students. Their ability to think critically and independently is inhibited at a period in their development when it needs most to be exercised. Precisely at the age when they have to make their most important choices --- college, major, marriage, career --- it dawns on many of them that they have been unfitted to do so. I know of one Hyde graduate who relapsed into self-destructive behavior following graduation day when the artificial Hyde decision-making apparatus --- the "scaffolding" --- was removed. Did Hyde disavow responsibility for her, saying that she simply failed to internalize Hyde values? How cynical if so! Is it any surprise that a student denied an opportunity to think and decide for herself for five years should fail in an independent setting? At least Hyde dedicated a memorial stone to her.
 
I say that Hyde is a cult because students, parents, administration, faculty, and board of governors are under one man's dominion.  

Mike

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

What sort of "cult-like" and "coercive behavior modification techniques" did you encounter at Hyde?  It would be interesting to compare your experience with what's going on at Hyde currently.  I continue to learn about cult-like and coercive behavior modification techniques at Hyde.  Have things changed over all these years, or not?

I encountered coercive behavior modification techniques in Hyde seminars. These seminars were only designed to make us "invest" in the process. Once we spill our guts, we've made another investment, we've lost a few more little secrets that define us as individuals, we've handed our identity over to the group, and taken another little step toward becoming Hyde groupies. The more we share, the more committed to Hyde we are. I believe that's the rationale behind it. All of Hyde's activities, without exception, are based on that sort of group dynamic, even the academics.

From Hyde's point of view, it is imperative that we not have an identity that is not part of the group. It is imperative that we tear down the barriers between the ego and the group. Then our behavior can be modified as a group, as Hyde sees fit.

The purpose of the seminars is not therapeutic, it's coercive. If Hyde seminars were really intended to be therapeutic, they would help us with our underlying problems. Now, I came to Hyde with some family problems so repressed that I did not even know they were there. These were "ticking time bombs," which eventually did  go off, to devastating effect. Hyde seminars didn't --- couldn't --- help me with these sorts of problems, of which I was unaware.

Therapeutic or coercive? Hyde's facilitators are not sensitive and competent psychologists. They are from the Inquisition.      

Hyde's coercive behavior modification techniques cannot but fail to do harm, particularly to students. Their ability to think critically and independently is inhibited at a period in their development when it needs most to be exercised. Precisely at the age when they have to make their most important choices --- college, major, marriage, career --- it dawns on many of them that they have been unfitted to do so. I know of one Hyde graduate who relapsed into self-destructive behavior following graduation day when the artificial Hyde decision-making apparatus --- the "scaffolding" --- was removed. Did Hyde disavow responsibility for her, saying that she simply failed to internalize Hyde values? How cynical if so! Is it any surprise that a student denied an opportunity to think and decide for herself for five years should fail in an independent setting? At least Hyde dedicated a memorial stone to her.
 
I say that Hyde is a cult because students, parents, administration, faculty, and board of governors are under one man's dominion.  

Mike

I'm curious to know when you were at Hyde.  Which campus?  

I was there just a couple of years ago and your description seems very current.  I was astonished by the group pressure tactics and the seminars where there was a clear expectation that people would spill their guts.  It's fine with me to have group discussions where people feel comfortable talking about their issues and challenges.  But there was something terribly coercive about the Hyde environment.  What was especially troubling was seeing how many group members dissolved and "lost it" during seminars and how unable the incompetent, untrained staff were to clean up the mess.  

I feel badly that I even attended those emotional gang rapes, not that I had much choice.  I did my best not to pile on and go after group members.  But I feel dirty just having been a witness to those shameful events.  Not everyone in the seminars left scarred, of course, and some may have found the process useful.  But, good heavens, I've lost count of the number of scorched souls who walked away from seminars in a state of despair, shock, or worse.

[Anonymous]

Mom and dad discovered some pot in my possession, and after beatings, groundings, and various other abusings, they hit on the idea of sending me to boarding school. They kept banging the gong of my so-called "drug problem" to justify their increasingly abusive overreaction. Things being totally unbearable at home, I left for boarding school all too willingly. First stop was Wayland Academy, which expelled me after a semester on suspicion of marijuana use, but agreed to readmit me the following year! I completed the second semester of my freshman year at Lake Forest Academy and returned the following year to Wayland. At the end of my second year I was informed that I would not be readmitted to Wayland, on grounds of another unsubstantiated charge of marijuana use. I felt unwelcome at home, and so I accepted a friend's invitation to stay with him and his family in Aspen, Colorado, for the summer. Meanwhile, mom and dad had discovered Hyde, a weird cult-like school that applied coercive behavior modification techniques, where I spent my junior and senior years. After four years of incompetent, stupid, and downright criminal treatment at the hands of a band of truly nutty adults, I graduated from high school in 1977.

Later I discovered that my father had smoked hash in Amsterdam.

Mike

What sort of "cult-like" and "coercive behavior modification techniques" did you encounter at Hyde?  It would be interesting to compare your experience with what's going on at Hyde currently.  I continue to learn about cult-like and coercive behavior modification techniques at Hyde.  Have things changed over all these years, or not?

I encountered coercive behavior modification techniques in Hyde seminars. These seminars were only designed to make us "invest" in the process. Once we spill our guts, we've made another investment, we've lost a few more little secrets that define us as individuals, we've handed our identity over to the group, and taken another little step toward becoming Hyde groupies. The more we share, the more committed to Hyde we are. I believe that's the rationale behind it. All of Hyde's activities, without exception, are based on that sort of group dynamic, even the academics.

From Hyde's point of view, it is imperative that we not have an identity that is not part of the group. It is imperative that we tear down the barriers between the ego and the group. Then our behavior can be modified as a group, as Hyde sees fit.

The purpose of the seminars is not therapeutic, it's coercive. If Hyde seminars were really intended to be therapeutic, they would help us with our underlying problems. Now, I came to Hyde with some family problems so repressed that I did not even know they were there. These were "ticking time bombs," which eventually did  go off, to devastating effect. Hyde seminars didn't --- couldn't --- help me with these sorts of problems, of which I was unaware.

Therapeutic or coercive? Hyde's facilitators are not sensitive and competent psychologists. They are from the Inquisition.      

Hyde's coercive behavior modification techniques cannot but fail to do harm, particularly to students. Their ability to think critically and independently is inhibited at a period in their development when it needs most to be exercised. Precisely at the age when they have to make their most important choices --- college, major, marriage, career --- it dawns on many of them that they have been unfitted to do so. I know of one Hyde graduate who relapsed into self-destructive behavior following graduation day when the artificial Hyde decision-making apparatus --- the "scaffolding" --- was removed. Did Hyde disavow responsibility for her, saying that she simply failed to internalize Hyde values? How cynical if so! Is it any surprise that a student denied an opportunity to think and decide for herself for five years should fail in an independent setting? At least Hyde dedicated a memorial stone to her.
 
I say that Hyde is a cult because students, parents, administration, faculty, and board of governors are under one man's dominion.  

Mike

I'm curious to know when you were at Hyde.  Which campus?  

I was there just a couple of years ago and your description seems very current.  I was astonished by the group pressure tactics and the seminars where there was a clear expectation that people would spill their guts.  It's fine with me to have group discussions where people feel comfortable talking about their issues and challenges.  But there was something terribly coercive about the Hyde environment.  What was especially troubling was seeing how many group members dissolved and "lost it" during seminars and how unable the incompetent, untrained staff were to clean up the mess.  

I feel badly that I even attended those emotional gang rapes, not that I had much choice.  I did my best not to pile on and go after group members.  But I feel dirty just having been a witness to those shameful events.  Not everyone in the seminars left scarred, of course, and some may have found the process useful.  But, good heavens, I've lost count of the number of scorched souls who walked away from seminars in a state of despair, shock, or worse.

[Anonymous]

I'm curious to know when you were at Hyde. Which campus? I was there just a couple of years ago and your description seems very current.

Bath, 1975-77.

[Ursus]

I'm from the same time point and campus (Bath) as Mike and Emil, and I concur with their impressions and experiences.

I encountered coercive behavior modification techniques in Hyde seminars. These seminars were only designed to make us "invest" in the process. Once we spill our guts, we've made another investment, we've lost a few more little secrets that define us as individuals...

 There is also an element of shame and embarassment that binds you.

We had the seminars where you had to reveal intimate personal secrets. And then there were the Community meeting head shaping sections. There was the Hitler Youth, turn in your buddy, program. There was forced menial labor if you did not comply. Coercive is a fair and objective term for the program.

The purpose of the seminars is not therapeutic, it's coercive.

 All too true.

Hyde's coercive behavior modification techniques cannot but fail to do harm, particularly to students. Their ability to think critically and independently is inhibited at a period in their development when it needs most to be exercised.

 This is also the period of development at which these skills begin to be formed.  At Hyde, they are not.  There is such unbelievable pressure to NOT explore independent critical thinking, it just blows my mind, looking back, how dangerous and cruel this is to do to a child.  You are talking about one of the key survival skills we as human beings require to function in the world at large.

I say that Hyde is a cult because students, parents, administration, faculty, and board of governors are under one man's dominion.

 There are many other reasons it is as well, touched upon in many other threads, too much for me to go into here...

I was there just a couple of years ago and your description seems very current. I was astonished by the group pressure tactics and the seminars where there was a clear expectation that people would spill their guts... I feel badly that I even attended those emotional gang rapes, not that I had much choice. I did my best not to pile on and go after group members. But I feel dirty just having been a witness to those shameful events.

 Ya gotta wonder, from their point of view, seeing this year after year, decade after decade... I mean, do they get off on this, or what?  Thirty years of seminar after seminar, family meeting after family meeting, school meetings, one on ones, and whatever new pat names they have for these type of emotional disembowelments,etc. etc. etc... all the dredging up of people's deepest darkest secrets, their fears, their shames...  And then comes the all-too-predictable requisite contrition, the improved malleability, the ensuing gung-ho rah rah to complete "the cure".  It makes me absolutely sick.

[Anonymous]

I'm curious to know when you were at Hyde. Which campus? I was there just a couple of years ago and your description seems very current.

Bath, 1975-77.

  The whole seminar thing was so foreign to my mother who was half Yankee and half Irish.  You never talked family out side the family.  the thing in retrospect that seems so screwed up about the process was that after some nasty nasty family secrets came out in a seminar,  Joe screamed at us and walked out of the room.  Nothing was ever said about it on the part of the Hyde staff ( can't question Joe !) and I never received any sort of counciling about our secret.  

  My Mom did have some discussions in private with Joe.  My mother was a very attractive woman with long black hair, which seemed to be Joe's predilection (dream weaver not withstanding) and widowed Despite the fact that Joe was still living with Blanche at the time there were some entreaties on Joe's part that were not IMHO entirely appropriate  My Mom to her credit and my undying gratitude told Joe, politely where to go.  I my Mother's estimation even though my Dad was a cruel drunk at the end of this life, Joe was not half the man that my father was.  My dad was actually a brilliant man with a fantastic gift for language.  So my Mom found Joe to be a dullard in comparison.

Sorry if the last paragraph was a bit to revelatory and seminarish but I feel better and I think my Mom would want it put out there

Emil Nightrate

[Ursus]

I know of one Hyde graduate who relapsed into self-destructive behavior following graduation day when the artificial Hyde decision-making apparatus --- the "scaffolding" --- was removed. Did Hyde disavow responsibility for her, saying that she simply failed to internalize Hyde values? How cynical if so! Is it any surprise that a student denied an opportunity to think and decide for herself for five years should fail in an independent setting? At least Hyde dedicated a memorial stone to her.

Mike, who was this?

[Ursus]

The whole seminar thing was so foreign to my mother who was half Yankee and half Irish.  You never talked family out side the family.  the thing in retrospect that seems so screwed up about the process was that after some nasty nasty family secrets came out in a seminar,  Joe screamed at us and walked out of the room.  Nothing was ever said about it on the part of the Hyde staff ( can't question Joe !) and I never received any sort of counciling about our secret.  

My Mom did have some discussions in private with Joe.  My mother was a very attractive woman with long black hair, which seemed to be Joe's predilection (dream weaver not withstanding) and widowed Despite the fact that Joe was still living with Blanche at the time there were some entreaties on Joe's part that were not IMHO entirely appropriate  My Mom to her credit and my undying gratitude told Joe, politely where to go.  I my Mother's estimation even though my Dad was a cruel drunk at the end of this life, Joe was not half the man that my father was.  My dad was actually a brilliant man with a fantastic gift for language.  So my Mom found Joe to be a dullard in comparison.

Sorry if the last paragraph was a bit to revelatory and seminarish but I feel better and I think my Mom would want it put out there

Emil Nightrate

Good for you, and good for your mom, Emil!  What a cretin that Joe Gauld is!  It just seems like -- if you dig deep enough -- many of these personality cult leaders end up preying sexually on their constituents.  It is such an unbelievable total abuse of power.  Kudos to your mom for having the intelligence and backbone to stand up to this slimebag.

[Anonymous]

I know of one Hyde graduate who relapsed into self-destructive behavior following graduation day when the artificial Hyde decision-making apparatus --- the "scaffolding" --- was removed. Did Hyde disavow responsibility for her, saying that she simply failed to internalize Hyde values? How cynical if so! Is it any surprise that a student denied an opportunity to think and decide for herself for five years should fail in an independent setting? At least Hyde dedicated a memorial stone to her.

Mike, who was this?

Michelle Correa.

Sorry if the last paragraph was a bit to revelatory and seminarish but I feel better and I think my Mom would want it put out there.

Emil Nightrate

It does feel good finally to be able to say what we really wanted to say in those seminars. We were supposed to be sharing secrets, but given the consequences of criticizing Hyde, we were concealing more than we were revealing. I'm starting to realize that for Hyde's discontents, those seminars were self-defeating and probably affirmed our identity!

Mike

[Ursus]

What happened to Michelle?  She sure was a spark and a half!  

(I've been more or less completely out of the loop due to working out my own trauma from Hyde...)

[Anonymous]

What happened to Michelle?  She sure was a spark and a half!  

(I've been more or less completely out of the loop due to working out my own trauma from Hyde...)

Drug overdose.

[Ursus]

Sorry if the last paragraph was a bit to revelatory and seminarish...

Totally different ballgame.  Revelations, such as there are, are voluntary and certainly not followed by judgemental histrionics!  Actually, kind of therapeutic for all of us, ...I hope!   :lol: