Marion in Wonderland

This post is for anyone who is thinking about the Landmark Forum, and would like to know more about it.  Maybe you have been invited to an introductory evening, or a friend has told you about it.

As you can see from my previous posts, I have been considering whether to attend the Landmark Forum, and have decided against it.  Before reaching this decision, I attended an introductory evening at the Landmark Forum London HQ, discussed it with my partner and a friend, and did some research on the internet.

There is general agreement that the Landmark Forum does not benefit everyone, so it’s worth investigating to make up your own mind.  At the introductory evenings, you will be strongly encouraged to sign up on the spot - so it’s worth knowing a bit more about it before you go.

Below are some of the websites I visited, both pro- and anti-.  Hopefully you will find them a useful aid to making up your own mind.

Tom Hume’s blog - an interesting post, with lots of comments which led me further, to The Truth about Human Potential Seminars / Total Group Awareness Training Truth - two sites for a blog apparently set up to debunk Landmark.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on Landmark.

THE FREETHINKERS PAGE - a rambling personal account with lots of interesting comment - anyone who quotes Frank Zappa is ok with me.

Apologetics Index - another site investigating Landmark, which seems to anticipate harassment and feels obliged to print all sorts of legal disclaimers.

The Scoop About the Landmark Forum - a fan site

What’s the deal about Landmark Education? - a broadly favourable site, hosted by “psychology professionals” (sorry, my bias is showing)

Cult Awareness Information Centre (CAIC) - a general site providing information about a large number of cult organisations.  This page in the site gives access to “Journey to the Land of the New Gurus” - a French TV documentary about the Landmark Forum.

The Rick Ross Institute investigates a number of organisations, including Landmark.

I will add to this list as I find further sites.  If you find any sites worth adding to the list, please let me know.

Last week I described my visit to an introductory evening at the London HQ of Landmark Education.  I could have said a lot more, but I like to keep my posts fairly short.  So this is the next instalment.

If you read my previous post to the end you won’t be surprised to learn that I have decided not to go ahead with the Landmark Forum.  I would like to give some of my reasons for this decision, which I hope will help others who are thinking about this to make up their own minds.  My thanks to those who took the trouble to comment on my previous post - I will try to address some of the points you raised.

There is no doubt that the Landmark Forum applies psychological pressure on its participants.  The sessions go on from early in the morning until late at night, with restricted opportunities for breaks or refreshment, even visits to the bathroom, and participants are asked to do overnight “homework”, leaving very little time for rest.  It would not be surprising if many people find this a disorienting experience.

The Landmark Forum process involves participants making public confessions of traumatic events in their lives (I saw a little of this in the introductory session).  While such confessions may be valuable in a private, therapeutic context, sharing your deepest secrets with a large number of strangers in an emotionally charged situation, while your basic needs for rest and refreshment are limited, is a highly risky undertaking.  It’s worth bearing in mind that Landmark does not claim to provide “therapy”, and that the course leaders are not (as far as I know) trained psychiatrists or counsellors.  So why are they encouraging people to expose their vulnerability?

There are numerous allegations that Landmark Forum course leaders have engaged in psychological abuse of participants.  A French TV documentary, using cameras smuggled into a Landmark Forum session, shows a participant being harangued and insulted in front of 80 others for almost an hour, until she breaks down in tears.  Shortly after this documentary was broadcast, and a French government investigation was announced, Landmark closed down its French operations.  Landmark has attempted to prevent this documentary from being published over the internet, and I believe it was pulled from YouTube, but I was able to find it here (with English subtitles, by the way).  I strongly recommend it to anyone who is considering attending the Landmark Forum.

There are also many accounts of people who have suffered psychological damage after attending the Landmark Forum, which you can find on the sites listed in my previous post.

One of the comments on my last post acknowledges that it’s “not for everyone” and says that many people find it helpful, but I think that is missing the point.  It seems that some people find out too late that it’s not for them, after the damage has been done. 

I simply don’t want to take the risk, and I certainly don’t want to be associated with an organisation that treats people in this way, even if I were to benefit from it myself.

If anyone out there has any experiences good or bad of the Landmark Forum, I would love to hear of them.  It might, or might not, help me to decide if I should enrol on this course - although writing this has pretty much made my mind up, as you will see if you read on.

When the Landmark Forum was first suggested to me as a means of addressing the problems in my life, I dismissed it - I had already spent enough money and time on counselling, therapy and now life coaching, and had made a private decision to stop, once the current series of self-examination sessions is over.  But inevitably the suggestion came up again, and I decided to find out more.  I had never heard of it, and was inclined to look at it favourably, since I like and respect the person who made the suggestion. 

So I checked out the website, and yesterday I turned up for an evening’s free introduction, in an office block behind Euston Station.  On the way, I really enjoyed a small Italian restaurant on Eversholt St. - despite its unfortunate name, Pasta Plus, it served genuine quality Italian food - I can still taste the grilled calves’ liver with sage - at a reasonable price.  I decided to stay sober, although the wine list was tempting. 

Anyway - by the time I got there, the place was packed, and I was sat right at the back of an enormous room, listening to a very long (too long) and slick (in a deliberately informal way) presentation, with lots of jokes, pauses in which the audience were supposed to communicate with each other about their deepest fears and desires, and a longer pause for the organisation’s sales team to operate, persuading people to sign up for the paying course.   I was accosted by two people separately, at considerable length, and finally roused the energy to refuse any further persuasions.  People got up (skilfully prepared to appear informal) and “shared” their life experiences (some laughably trivial, some truly awful), and the joy and success they had found since taking part in the Landmark Forum’s courses, usually involving tearful reconciliations with their loved ones. 

The presentation was actually quite entertaining, and I found myself quite carried along.  But I had no intention of signing up on the evening - luckily, I can’t make any of the scheduled course dates - and I eventually got out, so late that I took a taxi to the station.  The driver was listening avidly to a phone-in about Barack Obama’s comments on “baby fathers”, which chimed with the “relationships” theme of the evening.

Today I have been googling the Landmark name, and found an enormous number of pro- and anti- comments, a few of them listed below.  For all the people whose lives have been “transformed”, there seem to be an equal number who have been damaged in some way.  Interestingly, most of the organisation’s supporters have “landmark” in the URL, suggesting a level of involvement rather than independent approval.  So although I was minded to go ahead, now I’m not so sure.

Here are some links with information and comment on Landmark:

Tom Hume’s blog - an interesting post, with lots of comments which led me further, to The Truth about Human Potential Seminars  / Total Group Awareness Training Truth - two sites for a blog apparently set up to debunk Landmark.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on Landmark.

THE FREETHINKERS PAGE - a rambling personal account with lots of interesting comment - anyone who quotes Frank Zappa is ok with me.

Apologetics Index - another site investigating Landmark, which seems to anticipate harassment and feels obliged to print all sorts of legal disclaimers.

The Scoop About the Landmark Forum - a fan site

What’s the deal about Landmark Education? - a broadly favourable site, hosted by “psychology professionals” (sorry, my bias is showing)

Oh, I give up.  I can’t do this.  I could spend the money on a new camera.

I saw the Dresden Dolls a couple of years ago, at a concert of Brecht songs organised by Patti Smith, and I thought they were fantastic, almost the best thing on the programme - as well as Patti Smith herself, despite nearly forgetting the words to Jenny’s Song, and a duet by Antony (of the Johnsons) and Martha Wainwright, of Surabaya Johnny.  Or was it Marc Almond who sang that? My memory is getting worse.  Anyway, when today I came across Amanda Palmer’s terrific blog (thanks, Virginia), I had to share it.  Enjoy!

The other day I finally met up in First Life with my best and oldest SL friend, the excellent Caterin.  We relaxed over a few (yes, a few) drinks in a London bar, after some confusion, and texting back and forth over which bar we were supposed to be in (quite like SL, really), and shared our memories of exploits in the virtual world.  I did worry beforehand whether I would recognise her, but I needn’t have.  If the residents were surprised by Caterin’s stunning appearance, they seemed remarkably unfazed by it, and left us to chat in peace.

Decisions, decisions - how does anyone make decisions? I like to think I am a rational and methodical person who weighs up the arguments, compiles spreadsheets and evaluates the advantages of the options before me. In fact (although I can do a pretty good spreadsheet) my decision-making is a random mixture of impulse and inertia. I also rely on irrational “defining moments”, when a situation, or a chance remark, brings things into focus, and my decision is made.

The other day I attended a “workshop” (really a sort of informal presentation) designed to promote the internal reorganisation of the company I work for. Since the changes they are planning could leave me without a job by the end of the year, I felt obliged to go along, although I have become increasingly dispirited by the work I am doing, my lack of prospects and the remoteness of management. I reasoned that it would be a good thing to develop a positive attitude and look for new opportunities thrown up by this reorganisation.  Since this meeting, further developments have brought my possible departure much closer.

The workshop was held in rooms at the Wellcome Institute in Euston Road, among a fascinating collection of artworks and artefacts relating to medical science.

Actually, it wasn’t all bad. Looked at objectively, the reorganisation is both necessary and ambitious, with some chance of success. I found myself thinking contradictory thoughts - one the one hand I could find a place for myself - on the other, it’s time to get out.  Some of the people taking part said constructive and sensible things about the problems and the opportunities for growth. All good stuff.  Incidentally it’s interesting that the imagery used in these presentations shows people doing exciting things - racing cyclists, hot-air ballooning, parties on the beach - rather than our actual jobs - sitting in front of computer screens, or manning data centres.

In the corridor as we left I stopped to look at a huge print of this picture by Spencer Tunick, of one of his famous mass nude shoots. I think this one was in Melbourne - it’s titled “Women aged 35 and over”. The way he creates a “beach” of human bodies, contrasted with the deep blue water and the urban skyline, is just breathtaking.

The amount of organisation involved in getting hundreds, even thousands of people to take their clothes off in public and lie down in neat rows, all adopting the same position, must be extraordinary, to create what is actually a fairly straightforward (beautifully executed) photograph.  In addition to creating these magnificent images, he encourages people to expose themselves, and to engage in the artistic process.  Many people who have taken part in these shoots have found them a liberating and uplifting experience.

The methods he uses contrast with another photographer of humanity en masse, Andreas Gursky, who uses a great deal of digital manipulation, as in his massive panorama of stock exchange traders, which is in the Tate Modern. This is the only image I could find, it doesn’t really convey the full effect.  If you consider the full size is about 2 x 3 metres, you’ll get the idea.

 As I began to turn these thoughts over in my mind, a colleague stopped beside me - he had spoken in the workshop, and is a thoughtful and intelligent person.  He glanced at the Tunick and said, in a tone of mixed bewilderment and contempt, “what’s that for?” .  In these situations it’s easy, and a lot of fun, to think up a marvellous put-down afterwards, but I didn’t say anything coherent at the time.  Only on the way home did it occur to me that this was indeed a defining moment.  I don’t belong here.

Home early, a beautiful sunny evening, and the Old English rose bush is in full flower. Bliss.

Today I tried a random approach, holding the camera at arms’ length underneath the flowers, getting some lovely backlighting from the blue sky, which mainly resulted in a lot of unfocused blurs. This is one of the more successful.

With a little (very little) tweaking on the computer, more details appear.  Bacon Rolls drew my attention to a group on Flickr for pictures with black backgrounds, and this one will definitely go in.

I have been experimenting with still-life photos of flowers and fruits, and I thought I was getting some good effects with a completely black background, like this one, using sunlight coming through the window as the light source and a sheet of black card as background.

The idea was to contrast the spring freshness and bright colours against the unreflecting black - a sort of memento mori. The problem with this one is the over-strong sunlight - I have since invested in studio lights, which will give more control.

I took these pictures before seeing an installation at the Barbican in London by the Iranian-born artist Shirana Shahbazi who is way ahead of me. The installation consisted of huge wall paintings (apparently produced under her direction by painters of cinema posters) of flowers and fruit against a black background, with skulls to emphasise the message, and enormous portraits of a young woman - in all a beautiful and moving show.

There are more pictures on the Barbican website. There was also a book of her pictures, Meanwhile, which I enjoyed even more than the installation, and which includes several photographs along similar lines.

Well, here I am again, after a longish absence. I put the blog on hold for a while, with the idea that I would “sort some things out”. Of course it doesn’t work like that, and nothing has been sorted out. Life goes on, and it just gets more and more complicated, the more I think about it. But hey, that’s life. And this, dear readers, is not life, it’s a blog. So I’ll enjoy it while I can.

Pictures - what is the use of a blog without pictures? Here’s a couple I took the other day.

Shop windows are so obvious as a subject - you get to play with reflections, and you can make facile social comments about consumerism and such. But I couldn’t resist these shoes.

This blog is on hold, while I try to sort some things out.  I haven’t written anything for over a month, and the lack of time (I am actually busy in the office!) isn’t the only reason.  I’m really no longer sure what this is for.  I wanted to write something about the things I have been doing in Second Life, like the fabulous show that Velazquez Bonetto and Josina Burgess have put on using my photographs, but it just seems too difficult.  I am now going into an extended period of reflection and self re-organisation, and I may be gone some time.