A Forensic Psychiatrist Evaluates ESP
The 2nd 2003
By John Hochman, M.D.
Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
University of California at Los Angeles
Introduction
I have reviewed the manual for 16 days, ten hours a day. “ESP” large group awareness training “programs for executive success,” which also calls itself
Even on the following questions:
It is a mind control involved in this training?
Curriculum is a “cult” in any case?
What adverse effects or consequences can produce a program?
Look on the website of ESP. The website is a limited amount of material, some of which were useful to me in forming my opinions.
There is much in content and format of the ESP, which is not original, and is very similar to many aspects of cults and cult like organization with which I am familiar with.
Mind control and ESP Intensive
Mind Control represents indoctrination without informed consent. It is based on the strategy envisages mislead and misinform. In particular, relies on emotional manipulation.
Hours: control group mind will seek to maximize the influence of leaders of stakeholder groups at the expense of a constant influence of friends and family. One way to quickly make this change is to maximize the amount of time that participants in the group, the group leaders. ESP Intensive participants log on to sixteen days ten hours, or experimented on, or in segments of five days. Over three hours a day are common lunch and dinner bread days in advance.
Fearing manual states in italics: “We found our students do not want to retire at the end of the day!” Because the participants experienced the day scheduled for 8 pm and ends at 22:00, in ordinary circumstances, most participants are tired and wants to go to friends and family, sleep and get ready for another long day starting at 8 o’clock in the morning. It makes me think that the emotional appeal or other manipulation can occur to everyone to spend more time at all.
Limitations in the ability to get feedback from friends and family: participants are asked to promise that those who do not share what they learn and challenging to their methods. They will be able to answer common questions that should be adopted, for example: “What did you learn today?” or “What is happening at the seminar will come?” It serves as the distance of the participants in their ongoing relationships. It also serves to prevent the participant to obtain information about what people live in the outside world, some of which relate to a participant.
The secret: the participants said that the promise not to share with the participants will remember the content or intensive methods. Participants are misguided feelings of guilt over the fact that the “promise breaker” If you talk about your personal experience over many hours. The effect of partial closure of communication with friends and family, and serves to strengthen the common bond with another secret they share.
Effect of eccentric vocabulary of communication: stop communicating with friends and family presents as many English words are redefined to suit the particular significance of the group leaders. The result is a statement which is close to incomprehensible to outsiders (eg, team mission is to create value and sustain each other). It serves to integrate the participant group and isolation from the outside.
Preventive neutralizing criticism of the group participants and their family / friends from the beginning: What is a group called “strategy levers for change” is the subject of much attention in the intensive. This clearly indicates that an undesirable behavior that must be met with the disapproval of other group members. So the end result is that if a participant criticizes what the group is “distress”. Since foreigners can perceive aspects of group activities and groups as “manipulative” or “sect”, these two words are used as unique examples of “abstract” lever to use. The clear objective of the educational performance of the group is to encourage participants to ignore family and friends, who tend to criticize the group in these exact words. Finally, an intense feeling of superiority attempts to participants simply learning theory Spy (“Espians understand the model, but not Espians no”), as a feeling of superiority, to dissuade the parties that support the critical work of others.
Paramilitary rituals and decorations: a paramilitary structure increases the ability of managers to control the participants through a “chain of command.” [Keith Ranieri] title of the leader as a “vanguard” is a word of military origin, and participants are often expected to “thank” the vanguard of the end of each session. , Range in the group is still visible on color scarf and the number of holes in the tissue, and this is reinforced by two-handed handshake ritual in the hands of senior officers on the go Superior. Progress includes the ability to be “coach”, which seems to be the monitor (or sometimes every day, monitor), members of low rank. It is clear that the relationship of subordination to his superior class is supported in rank.
Requires daily contact with their superiors, is conceived as a personal growth: From paramilitary uniform, it is clear that it is better that the classification, course participants are required to daily short call “check in” with “coach”. Support for higher headscarf can not occur without the consent of the coach, which became part of the eyes and ears, whether participants, for example, making removal. In addition, to support this group of frozen titled show “persistence” of “long-term commitment.” Because each day during the testing of this kind is something unnatural for most adults do, all the unpleasant feelings undoubtedly met with confrontation “must be able to maintain long term.”
Cult as elements of the ESP Intensive
Requirements Engineering: In an attempt to instant credibility in this age of technology is successful, this group described their activities as “technology” and “science.” (Others did the same in the past). However, no evidence of verification by means of scientific methods of the group is doing. The Group uses “pop psychology” theory, higher efficiency tips, tricks, impress others, and other concepts that have been disseminated through seminars and books for decades – so it’s not technology that the group can claim credit. The group also includes a gross simplification of psychological theory and the human condition (for example “. Everything is the result of a conflict of values”), the leader of a group can be created by a few sentences with a ring of truth but it’s not science.
Extravagant claims unfounded: as “proof” of the value of their “technology”, said a group of extraordinary educational outcomes for 400,000 people. However, their website shows only a dozen witnesses. This is evidence for each of 10,000 participants.
Selfish moral cult, whether the organization maintains that religion, philosophy, etc., each of which has its own self-created moral system, which is usually selfish. The emphasis here is on how to break the promise that a participant hurting yourself others are saying everything he did and learning for hours. Participant is recommended to tell others, is a “threat to [his] inner honesty and integrity.” No mention of how this secret essence for the group leaders, who are safe from criticism of foreigners, although nobody knows exactly what they are doing.
Messianic claims, not to mention the obvious profit motive. “ESP mission is to create a comprehensive ethical framework of human experience to stop the destruction of values ??in the world and move humanity to eliminate activities based on fear of the world” ESP is presented as a means to save the world from “hunger, theft, dishonesty, envy and insecurity. “After saying this, participants are encouraged to” promise “to enter people’s ESP. Good intentions are laudable, but only to a certain extent. Before the world is saved, only guaranteed result of recruitment and enrollment continued to advance the seminar is to generate income. Fees are high, and speak for themselves. Members are encouraged to take forward a “line”, which requires, among other things, more courses, meaning, and ESP.
Custom crowned head: Participants are instructed to solving the founder of ESP as a “vanguard”. The revised methodology that is the source of all “technology” that group, because no one else is mentioned. It seems that the different views and his philosophy is often presented in the third person plural “We believe.” The website shows that ESP is now queen of classes, as Mrs. Salzman, who was senior proctor in this manual is updated as the only group “prefect”. All this is easy for participants who sold corresponds to call your dentist (who completed the study generally accepted) the title “doctor”.
Success on the success of the program executive about becoming a more complete and powerful Spying: Although it seems to support the skills, the participants could become managers if they want the focus is clearly to make participants spend hours with ESP courses continue firm friends and family to attend seminars, getting a scarf, standing on the world of spies, receiving the meanings of words in English spies, etc. All these achievements are largely irrelevant to the outputs on the “real world”. Call friends and relatives to appointments to recruitment in ESP is presented to participants as a way to gain experience “a real advantage in relations” and “impress that special someone.”
Potential negative impacts of intensive ESP
ESP Intensive appears to be a gateway that invites the participation of new participants in training and seminars, and get your friends and family to do the same. In a general sense that the goal is to integrate people into the subculture – but a special kind of subculture. This is an area-class, ruled by Vanguard, who writes his English Dictionary has its own moral code, and the ability to generate taxes on subjects by involving them in his workshop. This is an area with no physical borders, but with psychological borders – affects how his subjects spend their time, socialize, and think. Increased participation serves to increasingly distance participants from their relationships, so that is slow and subtle, and therefore not entirely clear.