| Werner Erhard | |
|---|---|
1978 Edition |
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| Author(s) | William Warren Bartley |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Biography |
| Publisher | Clarkson Potter |
| Publication date | 1978 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 279 |
| ISBN | 0-517-53502-5 |
| OCLC Number | 3892730 |
| Dewey Decimal | 158 B |
| LC Classification | RC339.52.E7 B37 1978 |
Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est is a biography of Werner Erhard by William Warren Bartley, III. The book was published in 1978 by Clarkson Potter. Prior to writing the book, Bartley was a friend of Erhard's and was involved in his company Erhard Seminars Training (est). While writing the book, Bartley was paid US$30,000 in the role of philosophical consultant for est. Erhard wrote a foreword to the book. The book's structure describes Erhard's education, transformation, reconnection with his family, and the theories of the est training.
The book became a bestseller and was well-received by graduates of the est training. Reviewers generally commented that the book was favourable to Erhard, and a number of critics felt that it was unduly so, or lacked objectivity, citing Bartley's close relationship to Erhard. Responses to the writing were mixed; while some reviewers found it well written and entertaining, others felt the tone was too slick, promotional, or hagiographic.
Contents |
Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg), a California-based former salesman, training manager and executive in the encyclopedia business,[1][2] created the Erhard Seminars Training (est) course in 1971.[3] est was a form of Large Group Awareness Training,[4][5] and was part of the Human Potential Movement.[6] est was a four-day, 60-hour self-help program given to groups of 250 people at a time.[7] The program was very intensive: each day would contain 15–20 hours of instruction.[6] During the training, est personnel utilized jargon to convey key concepts, and participants had to agree to certain rules which remained in effect for the duration of the course.[8] Participants were taught that they were responsible for their life outcomes, and were promised a dramatic change in their self-perception.[6]
By 1977 over 100,000 people completed the est training, including public figures and mental health professionals.[6] est was controversial: critics characterized the training methods as brainwashing,[9][10][11][12] and suggested that the program had fascistic and narcissistic tendencies.[6] Proponents asserted that it had a profoundly positive impact on people's lives.[6][13][14] In 1985, Werner Erhard and Associates repackaged the course as "The Forum", a seminar focused on "goal-oriented breakthroughs".[3] By 1988, approximately one million people had taken some form of the trainings.[3] In the early 1990s Erhard faced family problems, as well as tax problems that were eventually resolved in his favor.[3][15][16] In 1991 a group of his associates formed the company Landmark Education, purchasing The Forum's course "technology" from Erhard.[3]
William Warren Bartley,III, professor of philosophy at California State University, prior to writing his biography on Erhard, had authored The Retreat to Commitment, on the epistemology of Sir Karl Popper; Wittgenstein, a biography of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; edited Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic; and authored a book titled, Morality and Religion. Bartley was first introduced to est in March 1972 by a doctor whom he had consulted about his nine year struggle with insomnia.[17] Finding his insomnia cured, he became very involved in the est organization,[18][19] and served for several years as the company's philosophical consultant.[19] He received payments of over US$30,000 in this capacity during the two years he spent writing the book.[2] He also served on the "Advisory Board" of est.[19] Bartley interviewed a number of individuals who were involved in his subject's life and made use of quotations from a wide array of sources.[20] Bartley commented on his subject in an article on the book in The Evening Independent, stating: "He's not a huckster, although he's a great salesman. I think he's a very good man, a very important man. ... He's a fascinating man. People are interested in him."[21]
The book covers three related aspects: it describes Erhard's personal life story, including his family relationships; it details the various schools of thought Erhard had come across in his personal search, before creating the est program; and it provides an overview of the basic practical and theoretical assumptions underlying Erhard's outlook, as transmitted in the est program.[18][22] Erhard wrote a foreword to the biography.[23] He comments that a quote from Søren Kierkegaard selected by Bartley "seems to pierce to the heart of what happened" in Erhard's life.[23]
The book recounts how Erhard, previously known as Jack Rosenberg, used the name Jack Frost in his work as a car dealer.[24] Erhard explains to Bartley: "It was an introductory gimmick. I wanted to give customers a name that was easy to remember."[24] The author interviewed Erhard's mother, Dorothy Rosenberg, who said of his skills as a salesman: "He could sell you City Hall."[25] Erhard's aunt, Edith, commented: "Not only would he sell you City Hall. You would think you got it all tied up in a ribbon. Werner sold something to you graciously."[25]
Erhard left Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1960, leaving behind his wife and their four children.[23] Bartley recounts a revelation Erhard experienced in March 1971 while driving into San Francisco, California to work at Grolier Society.[26] Erhard described to Bartley what the revelation experience felt like: "What happened had no form. It was timeless, unbounded, ineffable, beyond language."[27] He told Bartley that he realized: "I had to 'clean up' my life. I had to acknowledge and correct the lies in my life. I saw that the lies that I told about others — my wanting my family, or Ellen (his second wife), or anyone else, to be different from the way that they are -- came from lies that I told about myself -- my wanting to be different from the way that I was."[26]
Erhard was self-educated in philosophy, Mind Dynamics, and Scientology.[28] Bartley writes that Erhard was "profoundly dissatisfied with the competitive and meaningless status quo", and was influenced by the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.[29] Erhard told Bartley he had a positive experience with Scientology which helped expand his mind, commenting in the book: "After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the mind as a machine. I can now operate my mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments-- the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things."[28] Erhard reconnected with his family after an absence of 12 years.[23] According to the book, his long absence from his family caused them feelings of confusion and pain.[23]
His second wife, Ellen Virginia Erhard, told Bartley she felt inadequate when Erhard had affairs during their marriage: "When he started to have affairs, I saw that as a token of my utter inadequacy. I was terribly afraid that he would leave me."[30] Werner Erhard told Bartley he did not wish to undergo the trauma of problems in his second marriage as had happened in his first.[30] "If I were to destroy another marriage, I wouldn't be Werner Erhard anymore. I would be the liar Jack Rosenberg. Jack Rosenberg could botch a marriage. Werner Erhard had to do it right," he said.[30]
The book was a bestseller in 1978,[31] taking 8th place on the TIME non-fiction bestseller list of November 20, 1978.[32] Bartley told The Evening Independent in February 1979 that the book had sold a total of 110,000 copies and gone through five editions.[21] The growing numbers of est graduates contributed to strong sales.[2]
Jonathan Lieberson, writing for The New York Review of Books, described the book as "attractively written, never shrill or unduly proselytizing, careful to avoid the hysteria and tribalism that usually characterize the early years of movements like est", but considered Bartley to have "fallen" for Erhard.[33][34] Given Bartley's previous work, Lieberson stated, he might have made an ideal interpreter of Erhard, but he found this expectation "disappointed [although] the book is nevertheless instructive".[33][34] A review of Werner Erhard in Kirkus Reviews similarly concluded, "Too entranced to be truly objective, Bartley is nonetheless an insightfully partial observer."[35] Booklist stated that Bartley, as an est student, had made the "mistake of being too close to his subject to be objective or critical."[36]
In Psychology Today, Morris B. Parloff stated that Bartley had written his biography of Erhard "carefully, lovingly, and well".[22] Kris Jeter, writing in Cults and the Family, commented that "wise researchers know and teach that one should be in love with their research topic", and counted Bartley's book among several in which "this love was highly evident".[18] Steve McNamarra, in the Pacific Sun, said that the book was "clearly written and, while basically sympathetic" was not "an adulatory 'house job'." McNamarra found the sections detailing Erhard's "soap opera", making up three-quarters of the book, the easiest to read, while the "intersections", passages in which Bartley provided concise summaries of the philosophical traditions underpinning Erhard's est training, were tougher but ultimately rewarding.[37]
Kenneth Wayne Thomas, in Intrinsic Motivation at Work, described the book as "somewhat sympathetic" to Erhard and the est philosophy;[38] Steve Jackson, writing in Westword, similarly included it among "books sympathetic to Erhard, est and Landmark", written by an "old friend of Erhard's".[39] Stephen Goldstein, in a Washington Post review, said Bartley had made it "obvious from the start that he cares about his subject and his own est experience" and had told "a rather simple, straightforward story that pretty much lets you draw your own conclusions [about Erhard] or keep the ones you have already reached."[40] A reviewer in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries stated he was "enthusiastic about this book", praising the "personal quality [of] the narrative, which, though, sometimes becomes overly detailed."[20] He highly recommended the book for general and college libraries focused on the social sciences.[20]
Other commentators felt that the book was unduly favourable to Erhard. A review of the book in The Christian Century stated that Bartley had got "sucked into" writing a "promo on Erhard, founder of one of the pseudo-therapies of the '70s."[41] The Los Angeles Times commented that "[Bartley's] philosophical justification of est as a mishmash of totalitarianism, hucksterism and existentialism makes this book more a public relations product than an objective study."[2] A Chicago Tribune review described the book as a "painstaking [...] act of devotion" that nevertheless failed in its mission: "No one reading it is likely to agree with Bartley that the founder of est is a philosopher and spiritual leader of Gandhian magnitude except the already convinced."[42] James R. Fisher, in Six Silent Killers: Management's Greatest Challenge, and Suzanne Snider, writing for The Believer magazine, referred to Bartley's book as a "hagiography",[43][44] and Rachel Jones of Noseweek considered the book "sycophantic".[45] A review in The Evening Independent described Bartley as Erhard's "friend and admitted booster", telling his "often-sordid story in detail."[21] E. C. Dennis, writing for Library Journal, found that Bartley's work "has a slick tone and more than a trace of hero worship".[46] Dennis acknowledged that the book gave "the full details of Erhard's 'soap opera,' often in his own words," but was critical of Bartley's writing, saying he cast "a Freud's-eye-view on his subject's youthful failings, but after the famous 'transformation' his tone becomes almost reverential."[46] Dennis stated that the book failed to ask important questions, but that large public libraries should carry a copy, given its status as an "authorized" biography.[46]
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