Lifespring

Lifespring
Type For-profit, private company
Industry Self-help
Founded 1974
Founder(s) John Hanley Sr.
Headquarters United States
Key people John Hanley
Charles Ingrasci

Lifespring was a for-profit private company, founded in 1974. The company promoted itself through books and word of mouth advertising. By 1989, officials stated that over 300,000 people had enrolled in the company's seminars.[1] Lifespring has been classified as a New Age/human potential training company.

The company was the subject of investigative reports by the media, and was criticized by former staff and participants.[2][3] After a series of lawsuits in the 1980s which alleged that Lifespring was responsible for mental damages to the plaintiffs ,[4] the company paid out damages as a result of settlements and one lost jury decision .[4]

Contents

History

John Hanley Sr. founded Lifespring in 1974 after working at an organization called Mind Dynamics with Werner Erhard, the founder of est, which became the basis for Landmark Education. Lifespring concentrated on how people experience each other, whereas est dealt with changing the way people experience themselves.[5] However, there were many similarities between the two.

The former Director for Corporate Affairs of Lifespring, Charles "Raz" Ingrasci,[6] also worked with Werner Erhard, promoting an est mission to the USSR and the Hunger Project. Ingrasci is now President of the Hoffman Institute[7] which offers programs such as the Hoffman Quadrinity Process which some regard as similar to Lifespring.[8]

Though John Hanley denied that Lifespring was a duplicate of Erhard Seminars Training, Melton and Lewis described the similarities between the two as "striking", in their 1992 work, Perspectives on the New Age.[9] Melton and Lewis point out that both Werner Erhard and John Hanley had previously worked at Mind Dynamics. They then went on to cite specific examples of techniques utilized by both Lifespring and EST, stating that both used "authoritarian trainers who enforce numerous rules", both groups require applause after a member's "share" in front of the group, both deemphasized reason, in favor of "feeling and action".[9] The authors also pointed out that graduates of both Lifespring and EST were "fiercely loyal", and recruited heavily for their respective groups, reducing marketing expenses to virtually zero.[9]

Course overview

The Lifespring trainings generally involved a three-level program starting with a "Basic" training, an "Advanced" breakthrough course, and a 3-month "Leadership Program" which taught the students how to implement what they learned from the training into their lives.

Studies commissioned by Lifespring in the 1980s by researchers at Berkeley, Stanford, and UCSF, including Lee Ross, Morton Lieberman, and Irvin Yalom, found that an overwhelming majority of participants in these trainings called them either "extremely valuable" or "valuable" (around 90%). Many participants of these trainings found them to be among the most profound experiences of their lives and claimed they were able to produce substantial results in their lives as a result of their participation. [10] Less than 2% found them to be "of no value".[10] Training graduates were often eager to share their own experiences in the Lifespring trainings with family, friends, and co-workers, although they were precluded from sharing fellow trainees experiences. There was never any any compensation for assisting in enrolling others into the workshops.[10] However, another, independent study found that, "The merging, grandiosity, and identity confusion that has been encouraged and then exploited in the training in order to control participants is now used to tie them to Vitality (Lifespring) in the future by enrolling them in new trainings and enlisting them as recruiters".[11] More than 400,000 people worldwide participated in the Lifespring workshops.[12]

The Lifespring training was composed of successive sessions on Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday day and night, Sunday day and night, a Tuesday night post-training session ten days after graduation, and a post-training interview. Evening sessions began at 6:30 pm and lasted until 11:30 or 12 or later. Saturday sessions started at 10 am and lasted until approximately midnight. Sunday sessions started at 9 am and lasted until approximately midnight. Initial Trainings were usually held in the convention facilities of large, expensive hotels. A training was usually composed of 250–300 participants, many volunteers, several official staff, an assistant trainer, and a head trainer.[11]

The training itself consisted of a series of lectures and experiencial processes designed to show the participants a new manner of contending with life situations and concerns and how other possible explanations and interpretations may lead to different results. Some individuals complained that they felt harangued, embarrassed, or humiliated by the trainer during the trainings. Some few individuals choose not to complete the trainings. A preponderance of those that began the trainings found them life altering. Additionally, the trainer used many English words in a manner that was different than their usual meaning. "Commitment", for instance, was defined as "the willingness to do whatever it takes". "Conclusion" was defined as a belief. Also, words such as "responsibility", "space", "surrender", "experience", "trust", "consideration", "unreasonable", "righteous", "totally participate", "from your head", "openness", "letting go" were redefined or used so as to assign them a more specific meaning.[11]

By the conclusion of the training, the Lifespring trainer and volunteers attempted to recruit participants for subsequent, advanced trainings, as well as encouraging them to invite guests to their post training. Participants have quoted the trainers as saying, "Share what you have found with your friends. I want each person here to bring friends to a guest event and to the post-training. Don't keep this to yourselves. Allow them to do the training by sharing with them." Some individuals felt uncomfortable and pressured,[11] by what they considered this unreasonable request. Most, however, invited friends and family to the event.

At the post training, several days later, invited guests of the participants were brought to an adjacent room, and encouraged to commit financially to partake in a future training session. The participants that had just completed the training were also encouraged to enroll in future advanced trainings.

The book Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training made comparisons between Lifespring and Werner Erhard's Est training.[13]

Lifespring has been characterized as a form of "Large Group Awareness Training" in several sources.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][13][9]

Lawsuits

Lawsuits) were filed against Lifespring for charges ranging from involuntary servitude to wrongful death. The suits often claimed that the trainings place participants under extreme psychological stress in order to elicit change. Lifespring was ordered to pay money to participants who required psychiatric hospitalization and to relatives of members who committed suicide.[4]

Critical viewpoints

In 1980, ABC's 20/20 aired an investigative report about Lifespring. They interviewed cult expert Dr John Gordon Clark of Harvard Medical School, who said the group practiced mind control and brainwashing. In 1990 KARE-TV (Channel 11) ran a segment called "Mind Games?" that Lifespring claimed was deceptive and sensationalized.

The Skeptic a newsletter of The North Texas Skeptics, reported in 1989 on criticism from a participant that was a staff volunteer until becoming disgruntled with the organization.[3] This former staff volunteer said that workshops were too stressful and disruptive, and that the program was "an urban cult" .[3]

One prominent critic of Lifespring is Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Mrs. Thomas asserted in an interview with The Washington Post that she chose to seek counseling after her decision to stop participating in Lifespring. In order to avoid phone calls from fellow Lifespring members, urging her to remain in the course, she chose to hide in another part of the United States. One explanation for the criticisms and actions taken by roughly 8% of all Lifespring graduates comes from clinical psychologist and Lifespring graduate Bronson Levin. Levin said, "people who are not prepared for the intense emotional experience of Lifespring or who have hidden traumas tend to become overwhelmed as childhood memories come thundering back to them during training." Virginia Thomas went on to speak on panels and organized anti-cult workshops for congressional staffers in 1986 and 1988. [2]

Lifespring awareness groups claim that participants are asked to enroll family, friends, etc., in the workshops and to enroll in additional courses.

In 1993, Lutheran Reverend Dr Richard L. Dowhower, conducted a survey of clergy attitudes toward other groups that they have labeled as cults. The 53 respondents were from the Washington, DC area and included 43 Lutheran clergy and seminarians, one Roman Catholic and one Jewish clergyman, and an Evangelical minister. The response chart indicates twenty eight (28) responses to "The cults I am most concerned about are:", with the answer "Scientology, est/Forum, and Lifespring". .[25] Dr Dowhower was an advisor of the American Family Foundation, which published the Cult Observer.[25]

British TV producer and filmmaker Peter Pomerantsev has theorised that model Ruslana Korshunova's suicide was related to her involvement with Rose of the World, a controversial Moscow-based organisation which describes itself as "training for personality development". While researching for a documentary into Korshunova's death, Pomerantsev learned that the model spent three months attending training session at Rose of the World. These sessions—which encourage participants to share their worst experiences and recall repressed memories—are modelled after Lifespring, whose controversial methods were the subject of multiple lawsuits for mental damages in the US during the 1980s. Korshunova attended training sessions with a friend, Ukrainian model Anastasia Drozdova, who committed suicide under similar circumstances in 2009. Friends of the two women reported changes in behaviour after several months at the Rose. Korshunova became aggressive, while Drozdova experienced violent mood swings and grew reclusive. Both lost weight. After three months of training, Korshunova returned to New York to look for work, where she wrote of feeling lost and doubting she would ever find herself. Rick Ross, head of the Cult Education Forum, argues that organisations such as Rose of the World "work like drugs: giving you peak experiences, their adherents always coming back for more. The serious problems start when people leave. The trainings have become their lives—they come back to emptiness. The sensitive ones break." Only months after leaving the Rose, Korshunova was found dead.[26]

Spinoffs

While trainings continued until the mid-nineties in certain parts of the country, the lawsuits and the bad press crippled the company. One Lifespring follower, Sue Hawkes, started a similar program, called Vistar, but it was unsuccessful. Lifespring training, once offered under a unified corporate umbrella, now appears in several forms world-wide delivered by differently-named companies.

[27] The Lifespring program was adapted for Russia and is known as Leadership Academy or Sinton. The new religious movement called Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness has been referred to as an "offshoot" of Lifespring.[28]

See also

References

  1. ^ Lifespring, The Religious Movements Homepage Project, The University of Virginia
  2. ^ a b The Nominee's Soul Mate, The Washington Post, Laura Blumenfeld, September 10, 1991; Page F01
  3. ^ a b c The Newsletter of The North Texas Skeptics,March program looks at Lifespring, Volume 3 Number 3, May/June 1989
  4. ^ a b c Anne McAndrews, Redbook Magazine, May, 1994
  5. ^ A Critical Analysis of The Transformative Model of Mediation, Terri L. Kelly, Department of Conflict Resolution, Portland State University
  6. ^ In the Matter of the Complaint of Lifespring, Inc. against KARE-TV, Channel 11, Minnesota News Council, Determination 83
  7. ^ Hoffman Institute, Board of Directors, Charles "Raz" Ingrasci, President & CEO
  8. ^ Vahle, Neal; Connie Fillmore Bazzy (2002). The Unity Movement: Its Evolution and Spiritual Teachings. Templeton Foundation Press. pp. 399, 402, 403, 480. ISBN 1890151963. 
  9. ^ a b c d Melton, J. Gordon; James R. Lewis (1992). Perspectives on the New Age. SUNY Press. pp. 129–132. ISBN 079141213X. 
  10. ^ a b c Lifespring Scientific Research, Scientific Inquiry: A Report on Independent Studies of the Lifespring Trainings, Page 3
  11. ^ a b c d The Politics of Transformation: Recruitment — Indoctrination Processes In a Mass Marathon Psychology Organization, Philip Cushman, fair use excerpt, Introduction
  12. ^ "Anne McAndrews, Redbook Magazine, May, 1994". http://rickross.net/reference/lifespring/lifespring3.html. Retrieved 2006-11-06. 
  13. ^ a b Fisher, Jeffrey D.; Silver, Chinsky, Goff, Klar (1990). Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training. Springer-Verlag. pp. 142. ISBN 0387973206 , ISBN 978-0387973203. 
    Page. vii. — "The research reported in this volume was awarded the American Psychological Association, Division 13, National Consultants to Management Award, August 13, 1989."
  14. ^ DuMerton, M.A., C. (July 2004). Tragic Optimism and Choices. Trinity Western University. 
  15. ^ Zeig, Jeffrey K. (1997). The Evolution of Psychotherapy: The Third Conference. Psychology Press. pp. 352, 357.. ISBN 0876308132. 
    "Training or T-groups, sensitivity training, and encounter groups spread and were followed by commercially sold large group awareness training programs, such as est, Lifespring and other programs."
  16. ^ Burlingame, Gary M. (1994). Handbook of Group Psychotherapy: An Empirical and Clinical Synthesis. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 528, 532, 535, 539, 549, 550, 555, 556, 581, 583.. ISBN 0471555924. 
  17. ^ Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich. Cults in our Midst (book), 1995, pp. 42–43. ISBN 0-7879-0051-6.
  18. ^ Intruding into the Workplace, Dr Margaret Singer, excerpted from Cults in our Midst (book), 1995.
  19. ^ Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGAT), Cultic Studies Journal, International Cultic Studies Association, retrieved 1/17/2006.
  20. ^ The Mary Polaski "L" Series, Mary Polaski, written 2000, retrieved 1/10/07.
  21. ^ Large Group Awareness Trainings, Michael Langone, Ph.D., Cult Observer, Volume 15, No. 1, 1998
  22. ^ Coon, Dennis (2004). Psychology: A Journey. Thomson Wadsworth. pp. 520, 528, 538. ISBN 0534632645. 
    "Large-group awareness training refers to programs that claim to increase self-awareness and facilitate constructive personal change. Lifespring, Actualizations, the Forum, and similar commercial programs are examples. Like the smaller groups that preceded them, large-group trainings combine psychological exercises, confrontation, new view-points, and group dynamics to promote personal change."
  23. ^ Tindale, R. Scott (2001). Group Processes: Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology. Blackwell Publishing. pp. 630. ISBN 1405106530. 
    "EST, FORUM and LIFESPRING are all examples of LGATs, for members seek to improve their overall level of satisfaction and interpersonal relations by carrying out such experiential exercises as role-playing, group singing and chanting, and guided group interaction."
  24. ^ Coon, Dennis (2003). Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior. Thomson Wadsworth. pp. 648, 649, 655.. ISBN 053461227X. 
  25. ^ a b Clergy and Cults: A Survey, The Rev. Richard L. Dowhower, D. D., Cult Observer, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1994).
  26. ^ Pomerantsev, Peter (2011-05-01). "The Lost Girl". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/01/the-lost-girl.html. Retrieved 2011-05-21. 

Further reading

External links