[net.misc] EST?

cly (02/11/83)

All I know is that they don't let you go to the bathroom
for 4 hours. That makes me totally ineligble for EST.
But seriously, it seems to "help" a lot of people - just
as many religions and other things do. I doubt if it has
any magic answers, though.

porges (02/13/83)

#R:ittvax:-61400:inmet:6400005:000:1884
inmet!porges    Feb 11 14:58:00 1983

	I admit to having no first-hand EST experience, but perhaps this
counts as "first-and-a-half" experience.  I had a female (non-romantic)
roommate who took the training because her (only) co-worker had taken it.
At the end of the first or second day she came home at three in the morning 
and tried to explain something like this:  Suppose you have a "problem" like

	"I want to leave my husband but he won't let me."

	All you do (she said) was change the word "but" to "and":

	"I want to leave my husband AND he won't let me."

	You have now removed the problem.
	I was not too thrilled by this logic;  it seemed "you had to be there".
	On the Thursday of the week between the two weekends, I came home and
found "Miss X" in tears.  She was freaked out for about four hours but was
eventually able to go to sleep.  It was plenty scary.
	She finished the second weekend and came out of it reporting "All those
people are [anal orifices]."  When the EST people called to say that they loved
her and wanted her to come to more graduate seminars, she cut them off.
	
	One book you should look into for more of this sort of story is called
"Snapping" -- the authors' names are not on me.  This book covers all sorts of
sudden personality changes coming from groups like EST and the Moonies (I
intend no further comparison of these two groups).  It seems that in all groups
like this (Scientology is in here too) the group eventually causes various
weird psychological phenomena which are taken as proof of the correctness of
the group's philosophy.  These phenomena can also be produced by "conventional"
hypnosis,  and it is fallacious to go from "some weird effect" to "the person
producing these effects knows TRUTH."  (Tougue-speakers take note.)

	Hope this wasn't a waste of your time.

					-- Don Porges
					...harpo!inmet!porges
					...hplabs!sri-unix!cca!ima!inmet!porges
 

debenedi (02/15/83)

My favorite "EST proverb" is:
    EST doesn't teach you anything you don't already know.

How pretentious.

Robert DeBenedictis
yale-comix!debenedi