The term large-group awareness training (LGAT) refers to activities—usually offered by groups with links to the human potential movement—which claim to increase self-awareness and to bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives.
LGATs are unconventional; they often take place over several days, and may compromise participants' mental wellbeing.
Though early definitions cited LGATs as featuring unusually long durations, more recent texts describe trainings lasting from a few hours to a few days.
Forsyth and Corazzini cite Lieberman (1994) as suggesting "that at least 1.3 million Americans have taken part in LGAT sessions".
Definitions of LGAT
In 2005 Rubinstein compared large-group awareness training to certain principles of cognitive therapy, such as the idea that people can change their lives by reinterpreting the way they view external circumstances.
In the 1997 collection of essays Consumer Research: Postcards from the edge, discussing behavioral and economic studies, the authors contrast the "enclosed locations" used in Large Group Awareness Trainings with the relatively open environment of a "variety store".
The Handbook of Group Psychotherapy (1994) characterised LGAT as focusing on "philosophical, psychological and ethical issues" relating "to personal effectiveness, decision-making, personal responsibility, and commitment."
Psychologist Dennis Coon's textbook, Psychology: A Journey, defines the LGAT as referring to programs claiming "to increase self-awareness and facilitate constructive personal change". Coon further defines Large Group Awareness Training in his book Introduction to Psychology. Coon and Mitterer emphasize the commercial nature of several LGAT organizations.
The evolution of LGAT providers
Lou Kilzer, writing in The Rocky Mountain News, identified Leadership Dynamics (in operation 1967–1973) as "the first of the genre psychologists call 'large group awareness training'".
Leadership Dynamics directly or indirectly influenced several permutations of large-group transformation trainings. Werner Erhard (successively associated with Erhard Seminars Training (est or EST), WE&A and Landmark Education) trained as an instructor with Mind Dynamics.
Michael Langone notes that Erhard Seminars Training (est) became in the popular mind the archetype for LGATs.
While working for Holiday Magic, Lifespring founder John Hanley attended a course at Leadership Dynamics.
Chris Mathe, at the time a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, wrote that most of the current commercial forms of Large Group Awareness Training were modeled after the Leadership Dynamics Institute.
Academic analyses, studies
"Large Group Awareness Training", a 1982 peer-reviewed article published in Annual Review of Psychology, sought to summarize literature on the subject of LGATs and to examine their efficacy and their relationship with more standard psychology. This academic article describes and analyzes large group awareness training as influenced by the work of humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May.
LGATs as commercial trainings took many techniques from encounter groups. They existed alongside but "outside the domains of academic psychology or psychiatry. Their measure of performance was consumer satisfaction and formal research was seldom pursued."
Psychological factors cited by academics include emotional "flooding", catharsis, universality (identification with others), the instillation of hope, identification and what Sartre called "uncontested authorship".
Psychologist Chris Mathe has written in the interests of consumer-protection, encouraging potential attendees of LGATs to discuss such trainings with any current therapist or counselor, to examine the principles underlying the program, and to determine pre-screening methods, the training of facilitators, the full cost of the training and of any suggested follow-up care. for example, found that the program he studied "consists of a pre-meditated attack on the self". A 1983 study on Lifespring found that "although participants often experience a heightened sense of well-being as a consequence of the training, the phenomenon is essentially pathological", meaning that, in the program studied, "the training systematically undermines ego functioning and promotes regression to the extent that reality testing is significantly impaired". Lieberman's 1987 study, funded partially by Lifespring, noted that 5 out of a sample of 289 participants experienced "stress reactions" including one "transitory psychotic episode". He commented: "Whether [these five] would have experienced such stress under other conditions cannot be answered. The clinical evidence, however, is that the reactions were directly attributable to the large group awareness training."
In 2003 the Vatican reported its study results about New Age training courses:
In Coon's psychology textbook (Introduction to Psychology) the author references many other studies, which postulate that many of the "claimed benefits" of Large Group Awareness Training actually take the form of "a kind of therapy placebo effect".
Tapper mentions that "some large group-awareness training and psychotherapy groups" exemplify non-religious "cults".
Benjamin criticizes LGAT groups for their high prices and spiritual subtleties.
LGAT techniques
Specific techniques used in some Large Group Awareness Trainings may include:
- meditation
- biofeedback
- self-hypnosis
- yoga
Finkelstein's 1982 article provides a detailed description of the structure and techniques of an Erhard Seminars Training event—techniques similar to those used in some group therapy and encounter groups.
Although extremely critical of some LGATs, McWilliams found positive value in others, asserting that they varied not in technique but in the application of technique. and strongly criticised the 1986 DIMPAC report, which included large group awareness trainings as one example of what it called "coercive persuasion". In 1997 the APA characterized Singer's hypotheses as "uninformed speculations based on skewed data".
Despite the APA rejection of her task-force's report, Singer remained in good standing among psychology researchers. Singer reworked much of the DIMPAC report material into the book Cults in Our Midst (1995, second edition: 2003), which she co-authored with Janja Lalich.
Singer and Lalich state that "large group awareness trainings" tend to last at least four days and usually five.
Their book mentions Erhard Seminars Training ("est") and similar undertakings, such as the Landmark Forum, Lifespring, Actualizations, MSIA/Insight and PSI Seminars.
In Cults in our Midst, Singer differentiated between the usage of the terms cult and Large Group Awareness Training, while pointing out some commonalities.
Elsewhere she groups the two phenomena together, in that they both use a shared set of thought-reform techniques.
See also
- Brainwashing
- Multi-level marketing
- List of large-group awareness training organizations
- Group dynamics
- Crowd psychology
References
Further reading
Books
Articles
- Polaski, Mary. "The Mary Polaski "L" Series"