est
to the psychotherapeutic community as a
support to therapy -- as something which may assist the true purpose of
all therapists, the well-being of their patients.
A well-known New York psychiatrist who has attended
est
workshops
(and who asked not to be identified) told me that he believes
est
's
effectiveness is based on dealing with the responsibility of the conscious
and in bypassing the neurotic complexes people work through in the
therapeutic processes. He feels that any movement that makes people
responsible, as opposed to the irresponsibility implicit in work with
the unconscious, and that brings this concept of self-responsibility to
people who might not be reached in other ways, has value.
His criticism of
est
focuses largely on its representations.
He feels that it claims (though
est
denies it makes any claims)
to accomplish far more than it actually does, that its depth is minimal,
and that it makes change and growth seem easy, which they are not. He also
feels there's a dishonesty in its approach, which states, in effect, "We
have it; we won't tell you what it is but come and get it anyway." Some
professionals are more disturbed by this type of criticism than by what
they feel is lacking in the content of the program itself.
Most criticisms of
est
come from one of four main points of view:
(1) that it is fascistic, (2) that it is brainwashing, (3) that it is
too abbreviated to have any long-term or significant effect, and (4)
that is is narcissistic. Each of these criticisms has been made in a
different context. What follows is a summation:
(1) While he was president of Esalen, Richard Farson strongly denounced
est
as a "totalitarian neo-Fascist, crypto-Nazi outfit." In an
interview in
The Village Voice
he described it as "the next step
in exaggeration of the things we did innocently and thought were good."
Soon after he made these comments, he left Esalen.
When writing this book I contacted Farson to see if he wanted to stand
by the statement he had made to
The Village Voice
. He said that
that quote had been "misleading" and made the following statement: "My
main concern about
est
comes from the fact that in any educational
program, public schools included, people tend not to learn much about
what is in the subject matter or content of the progam but, at a deeper
level, they learn the method by which the program is taught. That is
why school children learn more about competition than about algebra,
more about sitting still than about history, and more about obeying
adult authority than about reading. These lessons are powerful because
they are taught not by the
curriculum
but by the
ritual
of education. When people learn, as I believe they do in
est
,
that it is acceptable, perhaps even necessary, to coerce, abuse, demean,
incarcerate and exhaust people 'for their own good' we have a classic
means/ends dilemma and, I'm afraid, the precondition for fascism."
It's quite true that the structure of the training is predetermined --
that the data and processes emanate in a definitive manner from the
trainer. My feeling about the so-called fascism, however, is that those
parts of the training which have been criticized were deliberately
developed to jolt people into a space from which they could then be
open to self-experience. Fascism implies creed and victimization. The
est
training has no creed, and people have free choice to stay
or to leave, to keep their agreements or break them, to respond to
instructions or not, to create their own experience or to be angry at
the tactics.
est
says that the real fascism -- the fascism of mechanical
conditioned behavior, justified by explanations and protestations,
and without the experience of satisfaction -- is alive and well, ruling
most of our lives. People who have experienced themselves -- who know
the truth directly -- cannot be enslaved.
(2) The brainwashing charge has been stated most outspokenly by Mark
Brewer in
Psychology Today
(August, 1975). Concluding an article
which questions Werner's integrity and
est
's validity, he wrote:
"Any citizen is free to spend money experiencing himself as a mechanical
anus, and therefore discovering himself to be perfect. To each his
own. However, I personally distrust any organization that transforms and
uplifts thousands through the nihilism of a belief system that denies
all other beliefs as bullshit. The use of brainwashing techniques,
ostensibly to enhance people's lives, becomes bizarre when the outcome
is to create unpaid salesmen. Smiling, they march out each week to share
their brainwashed joys with friends, neighbors and coworkers. . . ."
Characteristically,
est
chose not to refute Brewer's charges,
in a letter published in the December, 1975, issue of
Psychology
Today
. But nine Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s, all
est
graduates, did
respond. Ignoring all but the brainwashing issue (the rest was such clear
mud-slinging), they wrote that "dehypnosis" and "deconditioning" were more
accurate descriptions. They went on to say, "In the
est
training,
people are offered an opportunity to look at and be more aware of the
belief systems and automatic patterns of living which get in the way of
their experience of living. Unlike brainwashing, which destroys belief
[and substitutes another], the
est
training offers epistemological
alternatives in which people can experience their experience rather than
reacting automatically or through a system of beliefs.
Choice
,
not brainwashing, is what the
est
training is about. We have
found that there is nothing to believe in
est
.
"The central issues for us," they concluded, "are these: (1) Does the
est
training force or cause anyone, overtly or subtly, to believe
anything? (2) Have we, as
est
graduates, found our experience of
loving enhanced by the training? Our answers are (1) No. (2) Yes." The
authors of this brief and direct response are an impressive array of
well-known professionals in the field.*
* Earl Babble, Ph.D.: Professor of Sociology, University of
Hawaii; Frank Berger, M.D., D.Sc.: Professor of Psychiatry,
University of Louisville, School of Medicine; Ouide Bilon, Ph.D.:
Workshop Institute of Living Learning, University of Maryland &
Gestalt Institute, Washington, D.C.; James Bush, D.S.W.: Mental
Health Educational Consultant, Martin Luther King, Jr. Hospital; Enoch
Callaway, M.D.: Chief of Research, The Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric
Institute & Professor of Psychiatry in Residence, School of
Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; Byron A. Eliashof,
M.D.: Psychiatrist, Associate Clinical Professor, University of Hawaii
Medical School; Kermit L. Fode, Ph.D.: University of California,
Los Angeles, Department of Psychology & Senior Psychologist,
Ventura County (California) Mental Health Department; J. Herbert
Hamsher, Ph.D.: Associate Professor, Clinical Psychology, Temple
University, Philadelphia & Head, Research Committee, ITAA;
Jack Sawyer, Ph.D.: Fellow, the Wright Institute, Berkeley &
Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley.
When we spoke of this article Werner told me that he feels that mature,
intelligent, and thoughtful studies about
est
, even those which are
critical, are important. If
est
is true in people's experience,
it can only be furthered by looking at all its possibilities and by
encouraging sincere criticism. If
est
is not true in people's
experience, no matter how many nice things are said about it, and no
matter how many people believe in it, it will wither on the vine.
(3) An article in the July, 1975, issue of the
Journal of Humanistic
Psychology
by Larry LeShan doesn't identify
est
by name
but clearly is referring to
est
when it pokes fun at a guru who
"promised all sorts of wonderful and permanent changes in your life if
you attended two weekends with him or one of his students."
Although LeShan admits that he didn't try the "short method," he is
skeptical of its claim of a quick enlightenment. "It tends to distort
our entire view of the great work and quest that we are engaged in --
of the gardening of ourselves and others. It leads to simplistic beliefs
[and] inadequate conceptualizations . . . There is no easy way to get
there. As a matter of fact, there is no place to get to. We are engaged
in a process of becoming more and more at home with ourselves, each other
and nature, not an attempt to arrive at a place. There is value in most
of the methods we are exploring. Someday we will be more successful than
we are now in putting the best from each together. When we are, however,
there is one thing I can promise you. It still won't be quick and easy."
He goes on: "Buddha worked on his own development his whole life and not
he nor Jesus nor Socrates ever promised it would be easy. . . . Somehow
it seems unlikely that the Lord of Compassion would have advised his
disciples to give up their hard work and buy an alpha tuner."
LeShan's style is witty and convincing; I'd love to read what he might
write
after
he took the training. In response to what he says,
I'd like to point out that
est
makes no claims about offering
people enlightenment. As I see it, what
est
proposes to do
is to transform people's
ability
to
experience
living,
so problems clear up "just in the process of life itself." It is not
preparation for sainthood. It is merely a beginning, an opening, from
which people can move on to new places in their lives.
About his skepticism regarding the long-term results from such a short-term
experience, I would like to say here that I, too, was skeptical about
whether or not the
est
high lasted. I, like so many others,
have had high moments after encounter groups, meditation, and other
brief or extended mind-expanding experiences. But these feelings were
always short-lived.
My own experience with
est
, and that of the professionals and
graduates I interviewed, is that most people continued to experience
growth and change over a long period of time. In many cases, in fact,
the experience seems to expand with time. Among those I spoke with were
graduates of the earliest trainings in 1971, when
est
began.
Werner spoke to this recently when he described, before 6,200 graduates,
a reunion of the first thousand or so graduates four years after they
had taken the training.
"My experience of these people," he said, "was absolutely inspiring
[because] I could see that
est
had literally disappeared into their
lives. It had become a part of the fabric of their daily experience. They
were not stuck with
est
jargon; they were communicating and
they were sparkling, alive, beaming and happy. And when they, share
the training with people, they do so totally out of their experience of
their lives working.
"You see," he explained, "the training was no longer an exterior event --
something that had happened to them. It was not a set of rules to follow
or something they had to remember. They weren't carrying
est
around in a basket. It was simply where they were coming from."
(4) The charge of "narcissism" against
est
-- the deification of
the isolated self -- was spelled out by Peter Marin in
Harper's
magazine (October, 1975). Like LeShan, he did not take the training;
however, his point concerning the isolated self is valuable and reflects
the concern of others that the new therapies are "a retreat from the worlds
of morality and history, an unembarrassed denial of human reciprocity
and community."
In a long and comprehensive article representing this point of view,
he comes down hardest on the assumption that "the new therapies provide
their adherents with a way to avoid the demands of the world, to smother
the tug of conscience." He is especially concerned that, because of
"the unrealized shame of having failed the world and not knowing what
to do about it," graduates of
est
(as well as of the other "new
disciplines") will abdicate their social and political responsibilities
toward each other and the rest of humanity.
Ironically, I happened to read this article the same day my mail contained a
communication from
est
with information on how and where to register
to vote. The letter from Werner that accompanied this said, in part, "The
experience of self takes you out into the world to serve others. . . . It
is your willingness to come out of your experience into the world, to
be responsible for its condition, and to participate in life that is
making this thing [
est
] work."
Werner spoke to this issue in a radio interview: "It is a fact that
individual well-being contributes to societal well-being. . . . To weep
for the world is to say that I didn't do it. And I
did
do it. . . .
So I have a very large problem with this business about weeping for
the world; I think that's nonsense. It belongs to me; I want to be
responsible for it, rather than weep for it. I want to get up and do
something about it."
My own feeling about the
est
training, alone or in combination with
the graduate seminar programs, is that it is both incredibly effective
and undeniably imperfect.
I feel that it errs, for example, in not offering body work and an
opportunity to experience oneself energetically, despite its concern
with body sensations. Exercise and breathing techniques are invaluable
for expanding the experience of mind and body. Arica and most of the
yogas incorporate body work in their disciplines. And such systems as
bioenergetics very effectively work through blocks using a combination of
conceptual, emotional, and physical technique. This omission seemed even
more significant to me after I heard that Werner gets Rolfed frequently
and provides free chiropractic care, and sometimes Rolfing, Feldenkreis,
Alexander technique, and other body techniques for his staff, a clear
recognition of the importance of a healthy physical body. A graduate
seminar titled "The Body" is a step in the right direction but the lack
of body work remains a missing link in the training.