What is Landmark forum?

[success21]

I was browsing through the threads the other day on this forum, and I read something about it here.
(please forgive me if this post is sort of childish, but I am curious about this. I have read some about it in Wikipedia and when I googled it, I also get a lot of results about this(landmark) forum is a "cult" or something. I can't understand it. What's the controversy surrounding it?)

Could anyone explain about this?

[Brutha]

Landmark is a self help community which teaches people to teach responsibility for their life. That means that the participants might weaken ties with family members with people who abuse them or demand to be treated differently.

That's enough for people to come and call a self help group a cult.

Then Landmark exerts pressure on participants into recommend Landmark to their friends. It's something that ethically questionable and it provides further ground to speak of Landmark as a cult.

It however doesn't mean that Landmark isn't effective in improving the life of the participants.

[1shivers]

Landmark is a step child of EST, a concoction of Werner Erhardt.

Are there powerful tools? you betcha. Do people get things out of it? They certainly feel that way. But Landmark, like LifeSpring (another EST stepchild) and EST itself, breaks your defenses/ego down without a greater context, and in the hands of often very egotistical "leaders."

These type of groups are also very much an intangible high without much substance.

I've know people who've been a part of the organization or been through the programs of all three. Save your money.

Here's some further reading, a study done on Lifespring:

Pathology as "Personal Growth": A Participant-Observation Study of Lifespring Training

[Angela]

I loved it. I highly recommend it.

In fact, I'm going to review the Advanced Course sometime in the next few months.