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Werner Erhard and Associates, also known as WE&A or as WEA, was a commercial personal development program which operated from 1984 until early 1991. It replaced Erhard Seminars Training. Initially WE&A marketed and staged est training (in the form of the est seminars and workshops), but in 1984 the est training was replaced by WE&A with a briefer, a less authoritarian and more marketable program based on Werner Erhard's teachings and called The Forum.

In 1991 Erhard sold the assets of WE&A to a group of employees, who later formed Landmark Education. Erhard then retired and left the United States.

Timeline

The Forum

Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training, a longitudinal study published by Springer in the series Recent Research in Psychology in 1990 concluded that attending the Forum had minimal lasting effects — positive or negative — on participants. The research won an American Psychological Association "National Psychological Consultants to Management Award" in 1989. The results of the research study appeared in two articles in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1989 and in 1990,

Public-opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich did an investigation of the response of participants to their experience of the Forum. Yankelovich reported that "more than seven out of ten participants found the Forum to be one of their life's most rewarding experiences". The study reported that 95 percent of Forum graduates believe the Forum had "specific, practical value" for many aspects of their lives, and 86 percent of those surveyed said that it helped them "cope with a particular challenge or problem".

See also

• List of large-group awareness training organizations

References

1. "Accordingly, Werner Erhard and Associates ("WEA") was established as a sole proprietorship in February 1981." Erhard v. IRS, 1995. http://www.assetprotectionbook.com/erhard.htm Retrieved 2007-10-05
2. Gastil, John (2010). "Learning and Growing". The Group in Society. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE. p. 228. ISBN 9781412924689. Retrieved 11 March 2023. Lifespring, or simply the Forum. The basic procedure of these courses parallels the group training workshops described earlier, but the emphasis shifts from group effectiveness to personal development.
3. ^ Gottlieb, Anthony (1990-01-07). "HEIDEGGER FOR FUN AND PROFIT". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-02-07. Mr. Erhard's est encounter sessions - which, by some estimates, had as many as 500,000 takers between 1971 and 1984 - attracted plenty of criticism for their authoritarian form of indoctrination. But they also produced hundreds of obsessively eager acolytes: enough for him to set up a watered-down and more marketable organization, known as the Forum, which replaced est in 1984.
4. Wakefield, Dan (1999). "Six Days of Hell". How Do We Know when It's God?: A Spiritual Memoir. Center Ossipee, New Hampshire: Beech River Books (published 2010). p. 98. ISBN 9780982521458. Retrieved 7 June 2020. The est training is replaced by a modernized, briefer, less confrontational, more Socratic sort of program called 'the Forum' .
5. "Site by Former Associates committed to providing accurate and reliable information about Werner Erhard". Retrieved 2007-09-09.
6. Goldwag, Arthur (11 August 2009). "Cults: What Makes a Cult Cultish?". Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 29. ISBN 9780307390677. Retrieved 11 March 2023. In 1991, after twenty years and seven hundred thousand customers, Erhard retired and sold his intellectual property to his brother Harry Rosenberg. Investigated by the IRS and hounded by lawsuits from his children and ex-employees alleging abuse and exploitation, he left the country soon after.
7. J.D. Fisher, R. C. Silver, J. M. Chinsky, B. Goff and Y. Klar, Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects, Published by Springer-Verlag, October 1990, ISBN 0-387-97320-6.
8. Fisher, Jeffrey D.; Cohen Silver, Roxane; Chinsky, Jack M.; Goff, Barry; Klar, Yechiel (1990). Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects. Recent Research in Psychology. New York: Springer Science & Business Media (published 2012). ISBN 9781461234289. Retrieved 2017-04-09. with the exception of one univariate effect, no evidence of negative effects was found on any of the measures Many of the potential favorable outcomes of the Forum were assessed on constructs represented in the multivariate analyses (i.e., Positive and Negative Affect, Health, Perceived Control, Social Functioning, Life Satisfaction, Self-Esteem, and Daily Coping). On seven of these eight dimensions, there were no significant short- or long-term multivariate treatment effects. On one, Perceived Control, the short- but not the long-term multivariate comparison with nominees revealed that Forum participants became more internally oriented.
9. Fisher, Jeffrey D.; Cohen Silver, Roxane; Chinsky, Jack M.; Goff, Barry; Klar, Yechiel (1990). Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects. Springer-Verlag. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-387-97320-3.
   Page. vii. – "The research reported in this volume was awarded the American Psychological Association, Division 13, National Consultants to Management Award, August 13, 1989."
10. Fisher, Jeffrey D.; Silver, Roxane Cohen; Chinsky, Jack M.; Goff, Barry; Klar, Yechiel; Zagieboylo, Cyndi (1989). "Psychological effects of participation in a large group awareness training". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 57 (6): 747–755. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.57.6.747. ISSN 0022-006X.
11. Klar, Yechiel; et al. (February 1990). "Characteristics of Participants in a Large Group Awareness Training". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 58 (1): 99–108. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.58.1.99. ISSN 0022-006X. PMID 2319051.
12. "Erhard's Life After Est". Dialogue Ireland. 2009-02-10. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
13. Wakefield, Dan (1994). "Outrageous Betrayal[:] The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile". Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Vol. 3, no. Spring. New York: Tricycle Foundation. Retrieved 2017-04-09. according to a study by opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich, seven out of ten participants in The Forum found it to be 'one of their life's most rewarding experiences,' while 94 percent felt the program had 'practical' and 'enduring' value.

External links

• Werner Erhard and Associates
• est and Werner Erhard, The Skeptic's Dictionary
• Werner Erhard, Wikiquote

• Werner Erhard
• Large-group awareness training
• New Age organizations
• Privately held companies based in California
• Self religions