Large Group Awareness Training

Large Group Awareness Training (or LGAT) refers to the training methods used by some companies, in what has been referred to as the human potential movement. By using the LGAT techniques, these companies claim to increase self-awareness and manifest positive personal changes in individuals' lives. These programs have been compared to group therapy and religious revival meetings. Langone referred to Large Group Awareness Training as new age trainings and Philip Cushman referred to them as mass marathon trainings

Most large group awareness training programs have psychiatrists and psychologists involved with them. The training programs often involve more than two hundred people at a time. Though early definitions cited LGAT as being of unusually long duration, more recent texts cite the training as lasting from a few hours to a few days. About a million Americans have attended LGAT seminars.

Definition
DuMerton described Large Group Awareness Training as "teaching simple, but often overlooked wisdom, which takes place over the period of a few days, in which individuals receive intense, emotionally-focused instruction." Rubinstein compared Large Group Awareness Training to certain principles of cognitive therapy, such as the idea that people can change their lives by interpreting the way they view external circumstances. And, in "Consumer Research: Postcards from the edge", when discussing behavioral and economic studies, the 'enclosed locations' used with Large Group Awareness Trainings were contrasted to the 'relatively open' environment of a 'variety store'.

The Handbook of Group Psychotherapy described Large Group Awareness Training as focusing on "philosophical, psychological and ethical issues", as related to a desire to increase personal effectiveness in people's lives.

Psychologist Dennis Coon's textbook, Psychology: A Journey, defined the term as referring to: "programs that claim to increase self-awareness and facilitate constructive personal change." Coon further defines Large Group Awareness Training in his book Introduction to Psychology.

Evolution
Lou Kilzer, in The Rocky Mountain News, claimed that Leadership Dynamics was the first of the genre of what psychologists termed "Large Group Awareness Training".

Navarro described Mind Dynamics as the major forerunner of large group awareness trainings. He went on to say that, although Mind Dynamics was itself only in existence for a short period of time, it was the impetus for the development of an industry of similar trainings.

Lifespring, Erhard Seminars Training and The Forum are groups that worked to improve people's overall level of satisfaction and interpersonal relations through group interaction.

Academic analysis, studies
"Large Group Awareness Training", a 1982 peer-reviewed article published in Annual Review of Psychology, sought to summarize literature on the subject and examine its efficacy and relationship to more standard psychology. This article was one of the first academic works to analyze and describe large group awareness training from a psychological perspective. Influenced by the work of humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Rollo May and often considered part of the human potential movement, LGAT's are commercial trainings that took many techniques from encounter groups. Existing alongside but "outside the domains of academic psychology or psychiatry. Their measure of performance was consumer satisfaction and formal research was seldom pursued." The article describes an est training, and discusses the literature on the testimony of est graduates. It notes minor changes on psychological tests after the training and mentions anecdotal reports of psychiatric casualties among est trainees. The article considers how est compares to more standard psychotherapy techniques such as behavior therapy, group and existential psychotherapy before concluding that "objective and rigorous research" was needed and that unknown variables might have accounted for some of the positive accounts. Borderline or psychotic patients were advised by psychologists not to participate.

Among the psychological factors cited by academics are emotional "flooding," catharsis, universality (identification with others), the instillation of hope, identification and what Sartre called "uncontested authorship."

In 1989 researchers from the University of Connecticut received the "National Consultants to Management Award" from the American Psychological Association, for their study: Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training.

Psychologist Chris Mathe wrote that in the interests of consumer protection, potential attendees at LGAT's are encouraged to discuss such trainings with their current therapist or counselor, examine the principles upon which the program is based, determine pre-screening methods, the training of facilitators, the full cost of the training and any suggested follow-up care.

Techniques


Finkelstein's 1982 article provides a detailed description of the structure and techniques of an Erhard Seminars Training, noting an authoritarian demeanor of the trainer, physical strains of a long schedule on the participants and the similarity of many techniques to those used in some group therapy and encounter groups. The academic textbook, Handbook of Group Psychotherapy notes that Large Group Awareness Training organizations are "less open to leader differences", because they follow a "detailed written plan", that does not vary from one training to the next.

Specific techniques used in Large Group Awareness Trainings include meditation, biofeedback, self-hypnosis, relaxation techniques, mind control, body touching, yoga, trance induction, visualization, neuro-linguistic programming and attack therapy. These techniques are applied during long sessions, sometimes called a marathon session when lasting for eight hours or more.

In his book Life 102, LGAT participant and former trainer Peter McWilliams describes the basic technique of marathon trainings as pressure/release and asserts that "pressure/release is used in advertising all the time," as well as in "good cop/bad cop" police interrogations and in revival meetings. By spending approximately half the time making a person feel bad and then suddenly reversing the feeling through effusive praise, participants experience a stress reaction and an "endorphin high." McWilliams gives examples of various LGAT activities called processes with names such as "love bomb," "lifeboat," "cocktail party" and "cradling" which take place over many hours and days, physically exhausting the participants to make them more susceptible to the trainer's message, whether it is in the participants best interests or not.

Although extremely critical of some LGAT's, McWilliams found positive value in others, asserting that it was not the technique which was positive or negative, but the way in which it was used.

Evaluations of LGATs
Finkelstein noted the many difficulties in evaluating LGAT's, from proponents' explicit rejection of certain study models to difficulty in establishing a rigorous control group. Some studies have been partially funded by the organizations they studied.

Not all professional researchers view LGAT favorably. Researchers such as psychologist Philip Cushman 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 they 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 the 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". DuMerton writes that "..there is a lack of scientific evidence to quantify the longer-term positive outcomes and changes objectively.." Jarvis described Large Group Awareness Training as "educationally dubious" in the 2002 book The Theory & Practice of Teaching.

Controversial tactics sometimes used by these groups have included physical violence, isolation, entrapment, brainwashing, and sexual experiences. Tapper mentions that "some large group-awareness training and psychotherapy groups" are examples of non-religious "cults". Benjamin criticizes these groups for their high prices and spiritual subtleties. In an academic research paper on "Choices", a type of LGAT, researchers cited LGAT programs with having perhaps a million American attendees, many of whom give positive testimonials of "healing effects" and "positive outcomes in their lives".

Compared to cults
The American Psychological Association commissioned, subsequently rejected, ,and strongly criticized, the report by the APA Task Force on Deceptive and Indirect Techniques of Persuasion and Control, in which anti-cult psychologist Margaret Singer included large group awareness trainings as one example of what she called "coercive persuasion." The APA claimed that Singer's hypotheses "were uninformed speculations based on skewed data" and that the report "lacked scientific rigor and an evenhanded critical approach to carry the imprimatur of the APA." The APA also claimed that "the specific methods by which Drs. Singer and Benson have arrived at their conclusions have also been rejected by all serious scholars in the field." Singer sued the APA, and lost on June 17, 1994 After the report was rejected, Singer reworked much of the rejected material into the book Cults in our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives, which she co-authored with Janja Lalich.

Singer and Lalich claimed "large group awareness trainings" tend to last at least four days and usually five. The book mentions Erhard Seminars Training and its derivatives such as the Forum, "Lifespring, Actualizations, MSIA/Insight and PSI World.

In her book, Singer differentiated between the usage of the terms cult and Large Group Awareness Training. Singer also writes that employees taking part in a company-wide Large Group Awareness Training program not only complained about attempted religious conversion, but also objected to the specific techniques used.

An article in Cult Observer by Michael Langone Ph.D. analysed Large Group Awareness Training. Langone wrote that Large Group Awareness Training has been compared to "brainwashing" and "cults", and posited that many of these groups have an implied or even explicit religious nature to them. Langone concluded by stating that he knew of no specific academic research which showed that Large Group Awareness Trainings have positive behavioral effects. Langone cited a study which showed no difference between the Large Group Awareness Training test subjects and the control group. The International Cultic Studies Association has grouped some Large Group Awareness Training organizations together with research about them. Lorne Dawson stated in his book on cults and new religious movements that similar thought reform techniques are used in both cults and Large Group Awareness Training.