Smirking Idiots

Reminded Me Of The Other Smirking Idiots Who Started The Whole Mess

You may recall an earlier post of mine in which I mentioned the smirking idiot with Prof. "P." on the bus. (I know it's hard to keep all my smirking idiot observers straight but bear with me)
Watching that smirking idiot reminded me of telling Rhea L. (post madness therapy) about how much all that adds to the confusion of trying to figure out what everybody else is doing, while they refuse all direct communication, and work as hard as they can to make sure I never do. (to save their own butts)
Everything from my point of view became a non stop attempt to identify the truth, hidden in multiple versions of reality and multiple possibilities which are never validated by anyone. The example I used with her in 96, was this one:
As I was walking down the main floor hallway (this was before I was given the boot right out of the building by my former shrink, the chatty Dr. F. who won't speak directly in case he ruins his professional image apparently)Alan H. the Information Control Officer (makes you want to salute doesn't it?) and two women who worked in the Administration building were walking towards me. Al giggled a bit as he saw me approaching and then said in one of those side of the mouth ways they all have, "Careful. Don't let her see us!" (delighted little smiles all round) One of the women then leaned into Al and asked quietly, "Why do you think she doesn't say anything?"
I doubt that the two women knew that I had been sent across the street and told that I wasn't "allowed" to confront anyone at Homewood about what the staff had done or what I said very plainly to Dr. Deb E. that Dale was doing.
Whatever the "truth" may have been for them in 96, it is a good example of what it is like to be isolated, ignored, manipulated and silenced by those who apparently consider their own lives to have a higher value.
Back to the little incident:
As I got closer to Al H. he looked at me and nodded hello as was his custom for years. I told Rhea in my recovery therapy that this was a good example of the whole group's behaviour both inside, and outside, Homewood. In order for me to be able to know what was going on with them, I would have had to ask them all, as individuals, every time they did that, "Is this one of the times when YOU think I can see you and hear you? or is this one of the times when YOU believe you are "hidden" from me by what you believe is your superior understanding and/or value?
You see it all looks the same to those of us who are being treated like we are all stupid or unconscious. It LOOKS the same because it IS the same.
Of course, the group gets to keep it's delusions going because we are told we are not "allowed" to confront anyone, ask questions they don't like, or try to tell them anything about either us, or themselves, that they would just rather not know.
Resolution of this manufactured madness is not the goal. Preventing resolution is the group goal.
Much of that is done by dictating to the victim ust what she may think, say, do and feel, and how she will react to her treatment. If she fails to "comply" the fault will be found to be in HER, not in those doing the silencing and side stepping of responsibility.
An enforced silencing of the victim does much to keep the group delusion intact, the guilt at arm's length, and to that end, no one admits to anything, no one apologizes, and no one makes amends. (Just as I announced all those years ago on the answering machine which they listened into all the time while "hiding" from me in plain sight.) They only preach endlessly to others about it. Those "others" who apparently CAN be blamed without the fault being found in those doing the "blaming of others" when I ( and those like me) am the "other" in question who is being blamed. It's a great doublethink system isn't it?
Worse than that, after taking over control of our lives FOR us, and then defining us any way they want, whether we like it or not, we are often expected to be grateful to our controllers and even found to be flawed in character if we don't love them for it.
You want to express your opinions on everything? Does Dale still ask you what you think, I think? That's a manipulation in his little "game" and part of the set-up. And yes psychiatry, there are "set-ups" in the world performed by such domination types. You see, asking everyone to express their opinion about what is going on in his vicitm is how he gets all the chaos going and for which he will later manage to avoid "responsibility." Express your opinions on this:

Of all the people involved in this, my own "fascinating case," which of them do YOU think deserve the most love and gratitude from me after twelve years of effort to get some help and to find any justice?

Where Do We Go From Here?

To Full Exposure:
So That We Can ALL "Share This Experience" From My Point Of View

The rest of this personal blog is going to be written as:

1. The revelation of ALL the rumours acted out for me in this community without any attempt to discern the true from the false made by me.
2. Some suggestions from me to you about getting the gossip spread as quickly and efficiently as possible.
3. Some questions I would like to have answered.

So please, continue to express all of your opinions on this just as you have all been doing for the past twelve years and push and shove your way into my personal boundaries as always. Don't forget to deny the damaging effects to my life and above all, take care of your own interests for surely the lives of each and every one of you are so much more real and important to you than mine could ever possibly be to me.

Please continue to mock ridicule and smirk while you find all the fault in me that you possibly can. Especially those of you who don't know me at all. For as Dale the "game boy" could no doubt tell you---but he won't because that would ruin his game) "It's about your righteousness!"
Let everyone you know "sneak" onto the worldwide web just like they used to "sneak" onto my unlisted telephone number to listen to the messages I was leaving for them. (which they knew long before I broke down as you all know) Perhaps you remember now retired bus driver Earl filling in all the passengers as he was "amazed" to find out I was talking to THEM. How much do you want to bet he got that from Homewood employee Marg or her sister and brother in law? Did you people want to bait me some more? Why don't you just do that and then you can check here when I am not looking and see if I took your bait. Do you know what "mechanical anuses" means yet? Or stimulus response machines? Do you "get" how you were manipulated to co-operate with "game boy" yet? How about that he considers everyone (not just me) to be his "inferiors?"
My watchers are really enjoying watching your watchers watching me watching you. Guess which of the watchers are mine? Guess how long they have been watching you deny the bloody obvious? Guess how easy it is to listen in on a radio frequency? Are you all still having fun?


Article of Interest For those who like to solve things rather than avoid them:
http://pistachiopress.blogspot.com/2006/02/from-rick-ross-site.html

Bus Passenger Assessment

So...Allegedly.....

The current assessment of me, my reactions, my personal experience from my perspective, my lack of education, etc. by an employee of the University of Guelph, as shared with another long time smirking idiot on the # 10 bus just yesterday.

The highly educated, certain that they know, what they do not understand at all, still just don't get it.....That is why it is said inside the nurse's training, "Your education won't help you."

It is apparently Prof. "P.'s" opinion that my taking of notes about what is going on regarding me with the local yokels (himself included) is quite pointless. (An opinion shared by some in the court offices building I might add) Many think that what I am doing collecting information is all just nonsense anyway. They frequently discuss amongst themselves that I do not have my priorities straight in their collective opinion and since they think they understand my experience and the position I am in "better" than I do, they often feel quite irritated with me.
As Prof. P. points out to others when they are sharing their tales of my life, I am not "educated" like my "observers" so really, you can't expect too much from such a dull witted virgin/porno movie making/transvestite such as myself now can you? ( of course I am sure he didn't put it in quite that way) It is however, P.'s opinion that I am just making a problem out of his sharing his views on my fascinating case with anyone who happens to ask among the geezers and students at the Mall. After all, they asked him...what's the big deal? It 's not like who goes out there with any intention to do it. After all, he is highly educated. Would a highly educated man actually be just another food court, mall gossip? Of course not! It is just MY perception problem.
I can't help but wonder though if it was me sharing my views of that event of his we all heard about, would he feel any objection to that? If so, is that because if I kept talking about him, it might affect his life negatively, and so that would be different? Or would he also be seen as just telling "a sob story" when he complained, just to "seek fame."

You see, the opposite view of Prof. P.'s opinion of me, from MY perspective, is that HE is denying he is part of the problem, and also denying that his "assessments" of me and also those of all others involved, doing the same kind of thing, have harmed me in any way or had a very real and serious negative impact on my life. He is minimizing the impact of all of this in order to excuse himself and others.
As the analysis of the nurse's so-called "game" states, "individual responsibility is diminished by the number of people involved."

Now once, when Prof. "P." was gossiping....excuse me....offering up his educated evaluation...to others about me at the Mall, he stated that he didn't "know yet what 'It's about responsibility' was supposed to mean but as soon as he found out, he would let them know. Perhaps then he can now use himself as the example. Or will he continue to play "follow the leader" and like Dale, also continue to deny he has played a small, but effective, part in causing my collective problems? You see this "effect" is part of the "satisfaction" which is "guaranteed" for Dale when he sets the whole hing in motion by "switching positions" and "setting me up" right at the start of the "game."

Also, as a matter of interest, you may find it interesting to read the book, "Cults of Unreason" by Christopher Evans, PhD. It is old, (1973 ) but you may find it "enlightening" to read the first section especially.

Dale also of course, continues to deny his role in all of this but I don't expect he would do anything else. It is the group's beliefs that matter to him now; not mine. Mine are irrelevant. Like all aggressors who operate with "hidden" agendas of "Domination" at any level, he knows what he did, I know what he did, he knows I know it, and he knows that the group doesn't believe me and that I also know they don't. So to him, this is unresolvable for me which makes him the "winner."
Will the assessment of me continue to be MY lack of understanding? Will it continue to be seen as my incorrect reactions to all of those involved and still involving themselves, in "secret?" I think that may very well be the case. That is HOW they keep the public circus going, in it's "continuous nature" while absolving themselves of responsibility at the same time. Still there is little, if any, connection in their minds to the fact of their talking about me constantly, and my "delusional" beliefs that they are talking about me. This is why Dale calls this "Theatre of the Absurd." He is the "director" of this "movie" and knows that to the masses involved, one and one never adds up to two as long as the true premise is not seen.
For the group to maintain their own position, I HAVE to be having a perception/reaction problem. The alternative is to see BOTH me, and themselves, as we all really are, and that would mean they may have to feel stupid and even ashamed of themselves--and we can't have that!
As the lawyers were rumoured to have said, "No one in Guelph would take my case as Homewood and the University bring too much money into Guelph. So naturally, they would have to sacrifice the individual to keep the cash flowing. I am not denying this group dynamic exists. On the contrary. I am stating it openly. No one can see it better than I am from my position.
Oh, by the way, did Frank B. tell "him" (my secret boyfriend) what Martin B. thought he should know about me? Or did Frank continue to tell Martin that he was not going to discuss me with him?

Well, all I can say is that I hope that Prof. "P." and his smirking pal on the bus (and everyone else I "think" is involved, don't feel too distressed about my making a problem for THEM by complaining about their perfectly normal twelve year long groupthink session, and the effect it has had on me and my life. Comfort yourselves by knowing there is a Team out there now, protecting people like them from "mentally ill" defective people like me. All you have to do now is call the emperor with your "sob stories" and he will no doubt ACT to relieve your distress by tranquilizing me.
Hmmm....does anyone else see anything odd in that idea?

Back to the Bus Passenger Assessment: As I got off the bus observing the eyeglow and the little smirk on the face of the gray haired who had just received the latest assessment of me from Prof."P" I wondered again what THIS guy believed I saw at that moment. So, I did a little test in order to observe this specimen. I made a little smile back at him then observed the specimen's reactions. He said nothing at all but dropped his eyes to the floor. (I actually get to see that a lot when those who believe they are my "superiors" in either the understanding of my fascinating case, or in personal worth assume they are "hidden" from me or conning me . The light of their amusement glows in their self deluded little eyeballs and while they "humour" me with their words and sometimes their sighing, long suffering patience, their eyes always drop to the floor so they can convince themselves that I don't know them as they really are. It is actually quite to watch them put on this performance. I had a VERY difficult time getting my head around the notion that THEY believe they are "hiding." It was one of the main aspects in this group routine that I needed to see in order to work towards making sense of the whole thing.

I must say that as I have observed all these fascinating specimens acting out for me all over Guelph, seemingly without much, if any, self awareness being shown by them, I noticed that all of the "symptoms" they apply to us in reaction to them really DO exist. Except they are not mine.
They deny the truth about BOTH themselves and me. I see "inappropriate affects" in them, (incorrect reactions to disinformation and misdirection)tons of grandiosity, embellishments of their stories, outright fabrications, behavioural problems, clearly obvious boundary problems, and lots of group bonding through exclusion ( belonging to a special group) of an "outsider." Yet, as far as I can tell, none of them have received the correct psychiatric labels, nor are they being forced out of their jobs, discussed "covertly," nor drugged into submission for their own good. Yet THEIR "symptoms" and OUR "symptoms" seem to be pretty much the same, so why is that? How do psychiatrist s decide WHICH of all these "symptomatic" people they will treat and which they won't?

I kind of suspect it has a lot more to do with WHO we know than WHAT we ,and perhaps, with our job titles or lack of them, which most influences that mysterious decision making process.

Perhaps the boundary violating, gossip mongering, grandiose, judgemental, opinionated, fabricating, self deluded hypothetical, highly educated nut is considered to be less 'dangerous" than say....me. Or perhaps it's just that when those big paychecks just keep on coming, no matter how grandiose and confused you may be, those happy "affects" remain with you since you have far fewer worries because of it. In such a well paid position, there is less chance that the angry frustrated and resentful "affects" will overwhelm the lunatic with the higher social status, however shallow that may seem. The big pile of funds, the ongoing invitations to the terribly refined Crocodile Egg Taster's Event, and the unchallenged right to refuse the load of "helpful" drugs that often make one wish one were dead (but which one must never SAY out loud in case it results in even more "help")could certainly change the way those "symptoms" are experienced and evaluated by others, couldn't it?

More to come to finish this post and then stay tuned because I am going to show you to yourselves as I see you, not as you want to believe I see you....As was said about me on the bus, and also at Upsdell's, by those lined up at the cash, as I stood there, two feet away, copying my unacknowledged letters to Homewood,
"She is just going to show HIM." (mocking laughter) Yes, mouthpiece. That's right. I AM "going to SHOW him." (note the change in emphasis that changes the meaning of the same words) and I intend to show the rest of you also just exactly what "It is" in the nurse's training that you "fail to see which is right in front of you." YOURSELVES.....

This Last Week In Guelph:

The Citywide "Assessment" My Madness

So...Allegedly.....

The locals are having another go at my sexuality and sexual identity, according to all they have heard and passed along to all the other "experts" in the community. This week, I have been proclaimed to a lesbian...again. I have heard this before along with: perpetual virgin, heterosexual, bi-sexual, asexual, pornographic moving making slut, and once, as defined by mall food court staff apparently, a transvestite. ( I must admit I liked that one the best!)
This is a very popular topic among the neurotic assessors who justify their contempt for the one being assessed. Have you noticed that?

I remember in Ottawa that was the topic with the bus drivers there too who were assessing their fellow worker, before he ended up going after them I mean. If you pay attention to case histories, it is a very common theme of the groups that get involved. The only thing I can manage to think about that is that many of you must be spending one hell of a pile of time in your lives worrying about "Wee Willie" and who is going to be his closest "friend," or if he is going to have any "friends." Perhaps I just can't relate since most of us women don't actually give ours names, as if they had lives of their, own separate from us.

I have also heard this last week (and I am quoting here), "It's all true." of course, I can never know exactly what "It" is to the speaker of this truth I have had defined for me, but then all of this is treated like it's none of my business anyway, just as "it" has been for the last dozen years of what is left of my life here. I have no more voice in the story of my own life now than I did then. I am to be quiet and not upset all the "superior" people around me who are still deciding FOR me exactly who I am going to be allowed to be and how I am going to feel about it. This has an old time feel to it for me.

Now this part of the post is for whichever "him" it is that is reported to be "very concerned" that I have not gone to visit my relatives for many years (and of course for all you other nosy parkers who feel qualified to judge my life for me as well)I am not going anywhere NOW either. Do you think you can handle it without going into one of your group tizzys? For "him",no matter which "him" that may be, "What the hell business is it of yours anyway.?" If it is my parent "him", believe me, he already knows exactly why I do not go to visit him, and he has known for many years. He also knows exactly what I asked him to do to change that and he is no more interested now than he was twenty years ago. So I have accepted his decision to ignore me. So I will not be going anywhere now either, even if I get drugs forced into me against my will for my "character disorder." (I heard E.P. came up with that one at Homewood. Trying to get somoene to back away from me I heard.)
Now, you might all note the parallel that has been created for me here, which I have also lived there, and which is denied bu BOTH of my main protagonisits and both of the groups which suppport them, public in cluded, in both cities.
Now tell me again about my "perception/reaction problem.

You might also consider something else:
I know a hell of a lot more about the thinking and behaviour of the participants in this, in BOTH cases, than Homewood Administration , in it's "certainty", does NOT know. So if the concerned "he" in this is planning to assess the crap out of that too, I suggest you consider your LACK of awareness in this and perhaps you might also consider the meaning of the statement, left years ago on the tapes for Dale and the then staff of Hamilton 2 and 3, just as I whispered it into their arrogant little ears listening in, to it all: "Shut up. Shut the hell up." Would you like me to "interpret" that, or translate that for you, into psychiatrese?"

What Is Ockham's Razor?

When a new set of facts requires the creation of a new theory the process is far from the orderly picture often presented in books. Many hypothses are proposed, studied, rejected. Researchers discuss their validity (sometimes quite heatedly) proposing experiments which will determine the validity of one or the other, exposing flaws in their least favorite ones, etc. Yet, even when the unfit hypotheses are discarded, several options may remain, in some cases making the exact same predictions, but having very different underlying assumptions. In order to choose among these possible theories a very useful tool is what is called Ockham's razor.
Ockham's Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: ``Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'', which translates as ``entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily''.
In many cases this is interpreted as ``keep it simple'', but in reality the Razor has a more subtle and interesting meaning. Suppose that you have two competing theories which describe the same system, if these theories have different predictions than it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better: one does experiments with the required sensitivity and determines which one give the most accurate predictions. For example, in Copernicus' theory of the solar system the planets move in circles around the sun, in Kepler's theory they move in ellipses. By measuring carefully the path of the planets it was determined that they move on ellipses, and Copernicus' theory was then replaced by Kepler's.
But there are are theories which have the very same predictions and it is here that the Razor is useful. Consider for example the following two theories aimed at describing the motion of the planets around the sun.

1. The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance.

2. The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance. This force is generated by the will of some powerful aliens.

Since the force between the planets and the sun determines the motion of the former and both theories posit the same type of force, the predicted motion of the planets will be identical for both theories. The second theory, however, has additional baggage (the will of the aliens) which is unnecessary for the description of the system.
If one accepts the second theory solely on the basis that it predicts correctly the motion of the planets one has also accepted the existence of aliens whose will affect the behavior of things, despite the fact that the presence or absence of such beings is irrelevant to planetary motion (the only relevant item is the type of force). In this instance Ockham's Razor would unequivocally reject the second theory. By rejecting this type of additional irrelevant hypotheses guards against the use of solid scientific results (such as the prediction of planetary motion) to justify unrelated statements (such as the existence of the aliens) which may have dramatic consequences. In this case the consequence is that the way planets move, the reason we fall to the ground when we trip, etc. is due to some powerful alien intellect, that this intellect permeates our whole solar system, it is with us even now...and from here an infinite number of paranoid derivations.

For all we know the solar system is permeated by an alien intellect, but the motion of the planets, which can be explained by the simple idea that there is a force between them and the sun, provides no evidence of the aliens' presence nor proves their absence.
A more straightforward application of the Razor is when we are face with two theories which have the same predictions and the available data cannot distinguish between them. In this case the Razor directs us to study in depth the simplest of the theories. It does not guarantee that the simplest theory will be correct, it merely establishes priorities.

A related rule, which can be used to slice open conspiracy theories, is Hanlon's Razor: ``Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity''.

Paranoid Patty's view: I fail to see much difference between stupidity and malice. The only difference being one of conscious intent. Whether there is intent to harm or not, the results (or effects if you like) of malice or stupidity, when directed at someone, are the SAME for the victim. The reason I need a real investigation in my own fascinating case, is to discover how much conscious direction existed in the "game."

With that discovery and concrete evidence comes the knowledge of the difference between a brainwashed, idiot follower and a psychopath. I have the right to know that for what SHOULD be obvious reasons.


ONdisk

"Innocent", Mystified Onlookers and "Objective" Observers

All the people I am talking about here who have been involved in this for a dozen years or so know that what I am saying is true. Yet they still pretend that they don't know, (and also pretend that they are not pretending) and that the fault now lies within me for stating the facts which may cause some of them to have to face negative consequences.
The negative consequences to me, as a result of their group behaviour though, is seen as irrelevant, or often completely denied. You see, diagnosing me got everyone else off the accountability hook by turning the reality of the them, and the situation, as reported by me, into a disease process in me. This just happens to be the metaphysical "play" of the nurse's special training and also it would seem, of the mental illness system itself. Presto! Change-O! Reality has been defined by "authority" and 'group consensus" to be the exact opposite of itself.
The perpetrator and the whole group becomes "innocent" and the target becomes guilty for her "perception" of them, her supposedly "false" accusations, and her inappropriate affects. (formerly known as emotional reactions)Ain't that just amazing? I know you all think so since you have been using that very word for many years.
I have committed the ultimate thought crime you see. I have told the Emperor of Homewood and all his loyal followers that they have been conned and manipulated to buy an invisible act.
The only thing making much of "mental illness" so complex and difficult to sort out is the amount of time and energy spent denying the real causes and invneting alternate "realities" to wish it all away. the diagnostics are very often the result of a a dysfunctional society's wish fulfillment.
The only thing making much of what is defined as ''mental illness'' so "incurable" is the amount of time and energy spent trying not to know the real cause and inventing alternate realities to just wish it all away. The diagnostics are very often, the dysfunctional family's wish fulfillment. When all the "identified " patient's experience, perceptions and feelings are invalidated everybody else involved gets off the hook. And THAT you constant assessor's, is what "It's about responsibility" is all about in the nurse's little so called "game." Be sure to tell everybody who is waiting to hear the latest about it all, you overbearing analysts. No doubt It will be assessed again, by the highly educated, that I am "just making a problem where there is none."
Dr. Brian F.:
In Trillium in 95 you said to Richard F.,in my presence, a few feet away, " I think we should let young Daniel off the hook."
At the time, "young Daniel" was supposedly a patient. You and Dr. Dick then turned together and looked at me. I thought to myself then, "And which version of "reality" out of those running through my head then, was I expected to choose here?"
I was already aware that no mater what I said, out of the centre of all that chaos I was in, both internally and externally, all roads could lead to being psychiatrized, no matter what I said, since the truth had already been invalidated for at least a year and a half or so.
Let me list for you some of the possibilites on that above remark alone:

1. You were just talking aobut the patient "young Daniel". Period.
2. It was another "test" to see how I would react to that remark and you watched me to see if that would go as expected.
3. it was a "message" delivered "covertly" by Dr. F. letting me now that he knew about what "young Daniel" had done to me along with the staff of H2 and H3 and he (dr. F.) was letting me know he was on my side in this.
4. Same as 3, except that he was warning me I had better let "young Daniel off the responsibility hook if I knew what was good for me and he had all the power over me now if I did not "let him off the hook." (Since it had been acted out for me publicly once that it was actually a "doctor" who had started this hunt of me, and not Dale at all, how could I be sure this one telling me to let everybody off the hook was not that "doctor?")I was now under the total control of the friends of my protagonists, at the very least, so who was going to beleive "crazy" me over a doctor?
5. If I revealed that I thought the talk about "young Daniel" was anything about the doctor on H2 and H3 who had told me to keep my silence through the other doctor at CMHC, then Dr. F. was now in a position to define that also as an "idea of reference," proving my protagonists and his supporters "right" once again. (Many of us nuts "think" we hear hdden meaning in things that no one else seems to be able to hear, which we "think" are connected. Of course from our point of view, we often think they are pretending not to hear what is perfectly obvious. Sometimes, some of those involved are doing just that) Since "they" of course, don't se any connections, they asume there simply ARE no connections.

Given just this short list of possible "realities", and I could do more, at a time when you were already overwhelmed and fragmented by the chaos, in a community that had multiple versions of your 'reality' going non stop, which version of just the aforementioned scene would you choose as "real" and what appropriate reaction would all you judges have to that? Think about it carefully because it is kind of a trick question.
The reality of it is that no matter which one you choose, you can be judged to be stupid and/or crazy for any of them. If you choose one, and you are wrong, you will be judged something like this:
Answers from the above list picked as the Truth:

1. You're just too stupid to be able to pick up on an analogy.
2. That's a symptom. You "think" people are watching you and talking about you.
3. That's symptoms too. You are just "looking for hidden meaning" "Young Daniel" didn't "do" anything. You only "think" he did because you are crazy. Your "wish" to have the doctor on your "side" is just born out of some sort of transference.
4. You're just paranoid. There was no "warning." Why, Dr.F. doesn't even know what you are talking about. (This would be a good spot to make the point that is in the Nurse's training: "Everything that is being said is true, except that what is driving it has been switched." Of course no one would take your word over that of a psychiatrist. He's an expert and you are nuts.
5. It is an idea of reference. Your sick mind is connecting things which have no real connection; not because of anything that was done to you but because it is bubling up from within you. That is a symptom too isn't it? Why Dr. D. never tried to "silence" you. He was only trying to "help" you. he is completely "mystified" by your "false" twisted accusations, as is poor Dale, (and now your poor relatives.) You have simply "fabricated" all of this. More symptoms in YOU.
Since Homewood staff, bus drivers, University students and staff, cops, lawyers, landlords and all the rest of the public are certain they understand MY experience, with Dale T. and staff BETTER than I do, why don't we ask them also which one THEY would pick if they were forced into my position? Bet they find a way to blame ME for all, or most of It. That is what this demonstration of power is about you know. The majority follows the aggressor and that is why later they blame the vicitm's perception and reactions. It gets everyone who participated in the abuse (which they usually deny even exists) off the hook.

Maybe you should also ask what Prof. "P." would he would do? Then he can pass it along to the bus driver who identified me for him,(in my presence as whatever version of "me" and my "reality" they had going at that time,)Jimmy H. who can tell all the others on break, who can then pass the latest on to their friends, relatives, and neighbours who work for Homewood, who will then pass it on to Dale, who can then make up some more crap and perhaps, use his intimidation process again. Next, all can then assess the crap out of that, and then act it all out for me at the mall, the Library or the streets of Guelph, while continuing to deny the whole thing.

Remember, whatever you do, DO NOT ever make the connection between yourselves doing all the talking for the last twelve years, with the fact that my reporting of your talking, is seen by all of those doing the assessing about the situation and me as, as symptoms, since I don't know about all the talking you are still doing. Really there can't be any connection at all can there? Since "stupid" barely conscious me, does not know about clever conscious you." By all means, keep right on "hiding"" in plain sight. Or, you could try waking up to reality, and join me in "switching" it back.

To Steal a Little Bit from Jon Stewart:
"Here it is, your moment of Zen."

I remember reading somewhere once that the intellectually challenged people do not go "mad." I think that is because human beings must be aware of a contradiction, or multiplicity of meaning to BE confused by it.
A high number of people in my own "fascinating case," do not see any reason for me to have been confused, nor why I "had to have a breakdown over it."In fact, several have expressed just these sentiments, with sneering contempt, while striking the "observation" pose, while standing only a few feet away from me. ( I used to believe such incidents were part of the "joke" being directed by my protagonist. For HOW could such obvious scenes NOT be a joke? )
One of the people who performed this little act for me said she was "quite sure SHE would never go crazy since she's not as stupid" as I am. Perhaps she has never heard about why some people don't go "mad." I think there are many people involved in this who are going to be able to take great comfort from knowing it is very unlikely they will ever go mad, don't you?
And the switch hits just keep on coming....

This is apparently part of the continuous effects brought into being by recreating the training of mechanical anuses, who don't think, but just react spontaneously, without reason, to the instructions of a leader who cannot be questioned or blamed for anything. It is carried on, in an infinite repeat of Itself, by those who "fail to see what is right in front of them." In this case, guess who those "people" might be. Go ahead "objective observers," guess

Sharing A Nurse's Bizarre Experience

"In life, understanding is the booby prize." -- Werner Erhard

And I am "sorry" too, Dale T. (Just as as Dale T. wrote down for me after this line...)

Sincerely,
Patricia,
"the loser" in the "game" of life, as compared, apparently, to your view of yourself as the "winner."



''We're Gonna Tear You Down and Put You Back Together"
Psychology Today/August 1975 By Mark Brewer

Thousands of educated citizens in New York, San Francisco and other cities buy $250 tickets for the latest pop-psych trip, Erhard Seminars Training, or est. A stubborn journalist reports his experience with est and with the supersalesman who invented it out of psycho-techniques, Eastern and Western. When you know you're a mechanical anus, you've ''got it.''

Loose and cool in a black silk shirt and doeskin jacket, Werner Erhard sauntered down the center aisle of San Francisco's Civic Auditorium to thunderous applause. His smooth, handsome, male-model features bore the confident smile of a man who had packed a large auditorium at three dollars a head without a lick of advertising, and the 7,000 bright and well-dressed people who received him exude the equally rare satisfaction of those who are about to be reminded they are perfect.

The fact is, however, that Werner could have told them almost anything, because the crowd that night was made up totally of est graduates - a fast-growing brand of person who has ''gotten it'' through an experience called Erhard Seminars Training, of which Erhard is founding genius and guiding light. What they had all gotten in the ''Training'' was a ''new dimension'' that has, according to thousands from New York to California, changed their lives.

Est is no ordinary California cult. It is a multimillion dollar corporation that has doubled in size each year and operates nationwide with the efficiency of a crack brigade. It boasts a President who taught at Harvard Business School and left the position of General Manager of Coca-Cola Bottling Company of California to join Werner; it has been endorsed and even joined by prominent lawyers, doctors and psychologists; it has trained California schoolchildren under s Federal grant; and its Advisory Board is chaired by a former chancellor of the University of California Medical School, San Francisco.

That night as Werner took the stage in his easy, practiced, TV-emcee style, I was probably the only doubter in the house. His intimate, slightly nasal voice commanded a rapt attention as he addressed a subject dear to his heart: What It Is.
''It,'' he intoned, with a variety of examples, is ''the awareness that you 'are';'' which gradually led to the equally simple revelation that ''the only way to be happy is to do what you're doing.''

''SO WUT'' Those words may be too facile for the uninitiated, but to the est people who sat spellbound by them, they were virtual gospel. The 90-minute performance concluded with a neat explanation of how everyone's life was turning out perfectly every instant, and then Werner thanked them humbly and disappeared through a rear exit to his waiting Mercedes 450 SEL and whooshed away into the night, his personalized plates demanding, ''SO WUT''. So he has a pretty nice little deal going, that's wut.

All this started back in 1971, but the origins of est are not a favored topic of discussion with the staff, and neither is the paltry matter of who owns est. Mild-mannered corporate President Don Cox gave the following rather stiff explanation:
''Technically, est is owned by a trust which operates est for the benefit of the public, to whom est ultimately belongs. I'm not at liberty to divulge the name of the trust.''

In a later conversation, however, when I brought up the subject again, it amused Cox to invoke the punch line of an old Hindu proverb, saying ''it's like 'on what the elephant is standing no one knows.' '' Est people are like that. On the same matter, Werner quipped, ''Don't wanna know and there won't be any mystery.''
Whoever owns the thing, est is a company whose primary business is the sale of a ''standard training'' which currently goes for $250 a head and lasts from 15 to 18 hours each Saturday and Sunday for two consecutive weekends. It is a training that ''doesn't teach anything,'' according to Werner; ''what it does is give people the space to learn from themselves.''

More accurately, est has sold this space to over 35,000 people, there are some 8,000 more waiting in line for it, and est has probably grossed over six million dollars by now. This has all been accomplished by a national staff of fewer than 100 people, but who are considerably augmented by a small army of unpaid volunteers; in 1974 more than 3,500 volunteers contributed anywhere from a few hours to more than 40 hours a week for further the cause, and it is the est volunteer even more than the paid staff who makes est what it is. Stuffers of envelopes, reconcilers of records, answerers of phones, the est volunteers (who are typically middle class and in their late 20s) keep the office lights burning literally at all hours. They are known to non-est people chiefly for their zombielike attention to duty, for their unfailing adulation of Werner and loyalty to the cause, and for a searching smile that one Berkeley psychologist, even after she took the ''Training,'' described as ghoulish. Recently, Don Cox has had to impose a curfew to keep est workers from hanging around the office toiling all the time.

Free Vitamins but Few Bucks. The busy three-story office building that est leases on Union Street in San Francisco (and has already outgrown) is indeed an unusual place. It hums with an efficiency that is rather astounding, inspired by the guiding precept ''to serve Werner and make est work.'' To this end, they work like ants for low pay or none at all and, as Cox happily attests, never get sick. They do get free medical examinations and insurance, free vitamins, free chiropractic maintenance, and as an occasional bonus for exemplary services, they can get Rolfed, a process of twisting and pummeling the body that is reputed to be therapeutic. ... ''The result,'' Cox concluded, ''is that this organization produces miracles.''

Cox represents a miracle of sorts himself. Formerly Vice President and Director of Planning with Coca-Cola USA and then General Manager of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of California, Cox took a hefty cut in salary to become est's chief executive.
''What you're seeing,'' Werner snapped one afternoon, ''is people who know how to make the world work. People who know how to make life work!''

The ''Training'' is the common bond that holds it all together, and to talk to an est graduate about what it all means without having ''gotten it'' yourself is a lot like talking about LSD when you've never tripped. Moreover, it is a crucial and well respected tenet of est that graduates will not discuss the content of the training with the uninitiated.

This rule stems from the est maxim that the training cannot be explained or understood, but only experiences. It is a convenient line of the sales pitch, but there is also a good deal of truth to it. What the training is more than anything else - and far more than any wide-eyed description that est graduates or staff give - is a brave new application of classic techniques in indoctrination and mental conditioning worthy of Pavlov himself. Nevertheless, it is difficult to condemn offhand anything that produces as high a degree of satisfaction and as strong a sense of new personal worth as est usually does.

No Advertising. The fact is, though, that almost none of the trainees know what they're getting in for when they arrive for the first long day of training. Ever since a small hand-picked group took Werner's initial est training in a borrowed apartment, the organization has eschewed advertising in favor of strong personal endorsements by new graduates. The glowing but suitably vague testimonials of a friend or relative bring potential recruits to guest seminars held in swanky hotel banquet rooms and led by est volunteers who have been rigorously drilled through a series of special ''postgraduate'' trainings on the tactics of getting people signed up for the trip.

''The purpose of the training,'' says Werner officially, ''is to transform your ability to experience living so that the situations you have been trying to change or have been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself.'' And the guest seminar leaders cleverly come no closer than that to telling their audience what it is they're being urged to buy. They are inevitably asked, if it is encounter, Zen, meditation, positive thinking. It is all those things and none of them, they smile. It is also Transactional Analysis, the Bible, Gestalt and Taoism - and a good seminar leader can name several more. It is the latest model with all the options, a sort of short course in all those things you've heard about but never had time to get into. And there always seem to be only a few spaces left in the next training, but if you sign up that night you can make it.

My own training began at San Francisco's plush old St. Francis Hotel, where the new customers were processed on the mezzanine by est-folk who checked application forms, cheerfully verified or forthwith collected everyone's payment, then fitted each one with a tag that blared their first name and led them down to the spacious California Room.

No Talking. The recruits were told to take one of the 250 straight-backed chairs arranged in three neat groups before a low dais. Such a sense of rigid order, such a condescending mental-ward tone to the brisk instructions of the enigmatic est assistants prevailed that only the vague promise of a new life seemed to keep most of the newcomers present. Then when a tall, bespeckled automaton named Ron suddenly took the stage to bark like a drill sergeant that there would be NO TALKING, only the prepaid 200 bucks kept them.

As people began to look around carefully out of the corners of their eyes, Ron droned on: During the training, no one would move, talk, smoke, eat, or take notes, and no one would leave the room at any time for any reason unless a formal break (of which there would be a maximum of two each 16-hour day) was announced. Nor, during the nine-day period of the training, would anyone partake of alcohol, narcotics, or prescription drugs, although medicine required under doctor's orders could qualify for exemption. These, Ron impressed again and again, were ''agreements'' - not rules - and the trainees were instructed to register their accord by sitting still. Ron added finally that no general comments from the group would be ''appropriate,'' but that if anyone cared to ''share'' something he was personally experiencing, he could simply raise a hand and, if recognized by the trainer, one of the young volunteers would speedily provide a microphone. Ron spent the next five minutes showing us precisely how to hold the mike, and the tone of the training was effectively set.
Napoleon in a Sport Coat. So in swept Tony Freedley, one of Erhard's original est disciples and the senior trainer, who would harangue and cajole the recruits through the first half of their training. A dapper, diminutive fellow - who like all est men dresses exactly like Werner in sport coat, open collar, slacks and sleek shoes - he strode to the fore like Napoleon preparing to exhort indolent troops on the eve of a hopeless battle. Military training was apparent in his carriage and in the slightly pigeon-toed gait, and in fact, after receiving a degree in English literature from Harvard, Tony did three tours in Vietnam as a SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) commando for the Navy, running over 80 missions behind enemy lines. He has a round, almost soft face, but there is something tough and smart about it and he is one of the sharpest and most perceptive men you might ever meet.

He goes for the throat. They were present, he roared in command voice, because their lives did not work. Their lives were shit. Hopeless. They did not know what they were doing, did not know how to experience life, were struggling, desperate, confused. They were ASSHOLES! Tony savored the word a moment, used it again, and thenceforth, as is a matter of course in the training, the recruits were always referred to as assholes...until they ''got it.''

He began to describe all the pain and stress and discomfort and anxiety they were going to feel in the long hours ahead. Like an interrogator assuring a captive that he will inevitably crack, Tony took pleasure in predicting the sheer desperation with which each trainee, hours and hours hence, would desire merely to talk, stand up, leave the room, smoke a cigarette, go home, take a shit, anything. How they would feel hatred, boredom, ripped off...''until finally you begin to get'' he shouted ''that you will do anything to keep from experiencing what is actually happening to you.''

Werner's Razor. That line is essentially Werner's razor: your mind is so confused with beliefs and reasons about what is or could or should be wrong with you, or the world or everyone else, that you are incapable of even experiencing life, much less enjoying it. Therefore, yelled Tony, ''We're gonna throw away your whole belief system. ... We're gonna tear you down and put you back together.''
Such efforts, or course, are commonly known as brainwashing, which is precisely what the est experience is, and the result is usually a classic conversion.
So on a Saturday morning in the St. Francis Hotel, Tony Freedley and his est assistants were starting off on another edition of the timeless endeavor to make the new man. By distorting the fundamental stimulus-response mechanisms of eating, moving, sleeping, smoking a cigarette or going to the john, while Tony bombarded them hour after hour about how their lives and their thinking were all fucked up, the training would shake, confuse and finally, in a great majority of cases, dislodge the old ideas and behavior patterns. And then in would go the desired est perceptions, and ultimately the notion that you are perfect the way you are.

When I asked Werner the difference between est and mass mind control, he brushed my query aside as not being ''a representational question.'' At a subsequent interview, however, he offered a rather characteristic reply. ''It's exactly the opposite of that,'' he explained. ''When you do the opposite of something though, there will be several people who'll say that you're really doing whatever that something is.''
Even some members of the est Advisory Board, whose duty it is to evaluate the techniques and results of the est training, are not much clearer about what's going on. The chairman of the Board is Philip Lee, M.D., Chancellor of the University of California Medical School from 1969 to 1972 and now a professor of social medicine and health policy there. It was the training, along with ''getting to know Werner,'' that led Lee (who also sits on the boards of the Carnegie Corporation and Mayo Foundation) to join the Advisory Board, which he views as a sort of public service activity, adding that ''as a faculty member, it's one of the things we're expected to do.''
''We want to find out what it [the training] does, and second, then why,'' said Lee, explaining one of the roles of the Advisory Board. ''We don't know either one yet.''
Commonsense Psychology. It takes nearly 70 hours to get most or all of the trainees converted, and that time is filled with a variety of techniques and processes designed to alternately confuse and enlighten the subjects, to develop the authority of the trainer and build his suggestive power over the hapless ''assholes.'' There is also, to be sure, a good double dose of commonsense psychology from which almost anyone could profit. And no matter what Erhard and his disciples teach or how they teach it, the training is a masterful amalgam of consciousness-altering techniques. And its effects upon the innocent is a rare thing to witness.

After several hours on the initial premise that the trainees are worthless, Tony produced on the blackboard, like Mephistopheles revealing the sign of the microcosm, the est chart of thought. It was a table of mental processes delineating all conceivable mental functions, divided into realms of experience and non-experience. Belief, reason, logic and understanding were shown to be nonexperiential, and these secondhand mental exercises had to be abandoned to get at the meat of life.
In other words, as Werner methodically instructed me one morning while we sat before the marble fireplace that warms his Victorian office, ''Anything you're stuck in, you're the effect of. Man can't reason, he can only have reason. Most people can't feel, they can only have feelings that get pulled out by certain stimuli. That's the way man reasons - on a stimulus-response basis. When you transcend reason, then you are able to reason. Like, for instance, Einstein transcended reason when he developed the theory of relativity. So he was able to reason.''
For hours on end, however, out of boredom or real doubt, the trainees poured their resistance to this unthink into the microphones, and each time Tony was on them like a SEAL commando.
''But don't you have to believe in something to....''
''Don't give me your goddamn belief system, you dumb motherfucker!'' he roared at one guy, charging off the dais. ''That doesn't work! That's why your whole life doesn't work. Get rid of all that shit!''

The afternoon dragged past and Tony's assault on belief continued. Endlessly he seemed to recognize hands, dull-faced assistants hustled down the aisles with mikes, and one trainee after another shared disbelief, skepticism, pain or antagonism. Tony cursed or kidded each into seeing that it was all just another belief. And after each ''sharing'' Tony thanked the offerer and the other 249 ''assholes'' applauded briskly, as previously instructed, and the sharer generally sat down in confusion. Which was all right, Tony assured them all, because confusion was the first step toward ''natural knowing,'' the very pinnacle of est-think.

It's Your Own Fault. Gradually, Tony moved on to another mainstay in the est body of knowledge, the idea of ''taking responsibility for your life.'' It is basically the perception that your problems aren't caused by sickness or fate or other people, they are caused by you, and until you accept that, you'll never solve any of them. Not surprisingly, almost everyone in the room had an example of some exception in his own case, but Tony would have none of it. He wouldn't have cared if you'd been gang-raped or born with a brain defect, it was no goddamn excuse. Hours passed. Tony pounded away.

In our culture, however, six hours of deprivation is like seven years of locusts, and when aching backs, filling bladders, and desperately wandering minds finally neared the point of open rebellion, Tony showed them est's curative process. Concentrate on the pain, he taught them, until you can see its shape, its color, its texture, its very volume, and then it will disappear. And lo, one after another testified that indeed - no really! - it was gone; Tony smiled down serenely and sipped from a stainless steel beaker of tea.

The remainder of that first session, which lasted until about midnight, presented the preliminary forms of the est ''process.'' The processes are crucial to the est experience, and are officially referred to as ''directed meditation;'' used according to Werner ''to help people learn to create their own experience,'' but there are other names and explanations.

It began with Tony telling the trainees that they were going to enter a meditational state and transport themselves to an idyllic beach. As a respite from hours of harangue, the prospect was received like water on the desert, and with all bodies properly positioned in the chairs and all eyes shut, Tony began to direct their minds in the droning repetitive monotone of a language record, he bid them, ''... Create a space in your left foot. ...Good: ... Create a space in your left foot. ...Thank you. ...Create a space in your left foot. ...Good.''
''The Poem.'' Always repeating the directions three times, he moved them from one foot to the other step by step up each leg and through each area of the body, relaxing the group with incantations reminiscent of some theatrical mass hypnotist. Then, when the state of reverie was apparently reached, but before they were led to the promised beach, Tony read them a long creed that est refers to as ''the poem.'' No copies of it may be had, even by est graduates. About as poetic as the Pledge of Allegiance, the lines are a long repetitive series of first-person affirmations about expanding awareness and heightening powers.

Tony led the group through three long processes that night, beginning each one with the same hypnotic direction (''...Create a space in your head....'') and then the rambling creed, impressing their minds with positive attitudes and reinforcing his suggestive power. After each one, the trainees emerged blinking and slack-jawed, as if from a trance, and finally, near midnight, Tony sent them home rather tired and confused. But before they left, he promised them the big Truth Process the next day.
The Truth Process was indeed the high point of the second day, and it was approached over eight arduous hours like the peak of some mountain. What the trainees finally experienced, however, lying all over the floor of a banquet room in the Jack Tar Hotel, and prefaced of course by ''directed meditation,'' was very similar to the Freudian process of abreaction.

We were told to choose one big problem that we wanted to solve and were then coached for hours on how, under the trancelike ''directed meditation,'' to dredge up from memory all the actions and emotions associated with the things until we ultimately reached the cause of it whereupon, like the pains of the day before, the afflictions would miraculously disappear.

Sobbing on the Floor. To varying degrees, the same technique is used in Gestalt therapies, Primal therapy and the ''auditing'' of Scientology, but in the est training it was done by almost 250 of us, lying on the floor, writhing and gesticulating amid a din of whimpers, sobs, retching and orgasmic groaning. At the end of it, the majority of the ''assholes'' were convinced that they had undergone a mysterious and deeply cleansing ordeal.

William Sargant, a British psychiatrist who made a study of very similar techniques of indoctrination and conversion in Battle for the Mind (1957), has described abreaction as ''a time-work physiological trick which has been used, for better or worse, by generations of preachers and demagogues to soften up their listeners' minds and help them take on desired patterns of belief and behavior.'' Werner staunchly maintains that the training is not intended to be psychotherapeutic. But his truth, it seems, shall make you free of symptoms.

One est graduate who relates having a ''fairly dramatic'' experience during the Truth Process is Philip Lee of the Advisory Board, and yet even he is a bit doubtful. Lee recalls ''having had backaches on and off for, oh, 18 years, symptoms that would be fairly typical of a disc,'' and he ''was having pain at the time of the training.

''I traced that back, went back to where it began, and during this process I realized that that pain wasn't a disc, but it was related to my relationship with my father. It wasn't clear to me what the factor was that was causing the pain, but after that I didn't have the pain. ... Well, that was enough to convince me that there was something to this.''

Yet when I asked Lee how he thought the process worked, he seemed less sure of its value: ''Well, I don't know. You know, I had that experience. But I'm a very uhh ... you know, I think it's easy to be conned. I think we're very gullible. I'm skeptical constantly about whether it had all these profound effects.''

After dinner that second night, the trainees were put through what seemed like a bizarre induction to the est corps. The seats had been rearranged into long rows, the assistants seemed even stricter and more vigilant than usual, and a squad of fire-eyed est volunteers sat in a separate phalanx of chairs at the rear.
Row by row, we were commanded to line up on the stage, standing straight with our toes flush against a long white line, to be searchingly examined by our peers in the training, and it would be difficult for you to imagine the tension and fear that Tony and his assistants were able to whip up over this objectively ridiculous exercise.

Quiet and Afraid. While the assistants sternly patrolled the ranks of seated ''assholes'' to make sure they were quiet and attentive and suitably fearful of their own turn on the line, Tony strutted back and forth shouting in his best voice that this was it - none of that ''bullshit'' they always used to get along in life could help them now, they were going to be sees as they really were.
''Wipe that smile off, '' Tony snarled at one young man. ''We don't think you're funny we think you're pathetic.'' To another: ''Stop trying to look so cool. They can see right through that. And there's NOTHING behind it!''

After each row had been on the line for a few minutes, the cadre of inspectors at the rear rose together, split into two groups and marched up either side of the room like stormtroopers. Reaching the front, they moved down the line, stopping suddenly before some unlucky trainee to stare feverishly into his eyes, nose to nose, for several minutes before returning to their seats as suddenly as they had come.

The tension and harassment, along with the trauma many of them suffered at standing openly before a large crowd, produced a number of breakdowns. In each row of 30 or 40 persons who took the stage, there were usually four or five who sobbed piteously or even swooned, completely overcome. Tony usually snapped, ''That's just another act.'' One man hung his head and bawled like a soul in hell. Another vomited.
''The Sunday Night Massacre.'' In the larger context of the est experience this ordeal is a key step in the process of conversion. ''The Sunday night massacre,'' as one timid little man termed it, epitomized the aim of the first weekend. As in any serious training, the overriding effort is to hound and confuse the subjects until they crack under the pressure, and, in the helplessness of that moment, embrace the system.

Finally the trainees were ordered to stack their chairs and hit the deck again, whereupon Tony led them through another noisy and emotional process. At the end of it, he told them, by God, go out there and give 'em hell all week, and at about 1:00 a.m. the ''assholes'' poured onto abandoned streets, halfway through their training as cocky as marines on the first leave after boot camp.

The intervening week, however, according to the trainees' testimonials at a mid-training seminar, was full of strange effects. There were those of course who expressed dismay at feeling no different from before. ''Just stick with it,'' they were encouraged, ''you'll get it.'' Several proclaimed a sort of early conversion, relating exciting states of happiness, increased energy and a great sense of well-being, while others, typical of people who have had their mental constructs juggled, reported strong and erratic emotions, such as crying for no apparent reason or breaking up in laughter at something no one else thought funny. Several others simply said that they felt pretty weird, at which the seminar leader would grin fiendishly as he led the group in a round of applause.

Still, regardless of their reactions to the course, virtually all of the ''assholes'' remained true to the instruction not to try to figure out what was happening to them. Indeed, they seemed content to be told it was all done ''because Werner found that it works.''

When I tried to discover the paths through which Werner had acquired this wisdom, it was not easy. Est is a closed and defensive organization apparently believing with some justification that anyone, especially a journalist, who has not completed the training is an unknown entity and potentially a detractor. It was difficult to get much information out of them. But I persevered in wondering where Erhard came from, and the est office finally gave me a brisk two-page item headed ''Werner Erhard: Professional Activities.''

Aside from mentioning that he was born in Pennsylvania in 1935 and was graduated from high school in 1952, which was the extent of his formal education, it says only that ''From 1963 to 1971 he was associated with Parents Magazine's Cultural Institute and from 1967 to 1971 he served as its vice president.'' Now Parents Cultural Institute ceased to exist in 1969, so they must have made a mistake on the dates, but perhaps that's just as well, because from 1969 to 1971 Werner had other associations that might easily be misinterpreted.

A Change of Name. Long before, however, he was born near Philadelphia as Jack Rosenberg, son of a small restaurant operator. After finishing high school he worked at several jobs, eventually becoming a sort of supervisor for a construction outfit. A few years later, about 1960, ''to avoid the responsibilities I had,'' he took off for parts unknown. Those responsibilities amounted to a wife and four kids, and he avoided them all the way to St. Louis in the company of a woman named Ellen who is now his second wife. At about the same time, he changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard.

In St. Louis, Erhard worked as a representative for a school that taught operation of construction equipment and sold used cars. After a while he headed further west and began working for a correspondence school. He called on people who had indicated interest in the courses and, like good est volunteers today, talked them into buying some. Later he did a stint up in Spokane selling the Great Books and undergoing and studying hypnosis.

In 1963 Erhard joined the Parents Cultural Institute, a subsidiary of Parents Magazine. The institute's sole business was publication of a set of encyclopedias to sell door to door. Werner excelled and did indeed become a vice president. He likes to recall that his duties were to ''develop personnel, train executives,'' and run ''a sort of development course,'' but the personnel department at Parents recalls that ''his actual duties were as sales manager'' and that he hired, trained and supervised door-to-door salesmen.

When PCI folded in 1969 Werner moved onto the fast track of the door-to-door circuit, Grolier Society, Inc. That corporation, which is presently inactive, was one of numerous Grolier Inc. subsidiaries, and its business was selling encyclopedias door to door. Here again, Werner recalls his job with Grolier as that of executive for development, but an old hand at Grolier remembers that he was a division manager who trained and supervised a stable of salespeople.

Werner stayed with Grolier until 1971, or roughly until est started, but this tenure somehow does not find its way into the resume. The Grolier Society was at that time the target of several legal actions for fraudulent and deceptive sales techniques. The State of California filed two suits against Grolier Society, Inc. in 1970, charging that along with outright lies, the Grolier pitch used a variety of deceptive routines to trick people into buying encyclopedias. The State sought permanent injunctions against these practices and was successful in both cases.
On to Scientology. While with Grolier, Werner took up Scientology and distinguished himself by having been ''expelled from the church,'' according to one spokesman. In fact, Scientologists get a sort of glint in their eyes when werner is mentioned, and a public information officer maintains ''we feel he took a lot of data from us and called it his.''

After Scientology, Werner took the Mind Dynamics trip, which was a highly successful course that taught people how to control their minds and make them more efficient, largely through self-hypnosis. Werner thought it was great stuff and soon became an enthusiastic MD instructor. But Werner does not include Mind Dynamics among his professional activities either. MD, which has gone out of business, is being sued by the State of California for fraudulent claims and practicing medicine without a license. Publicity about Werner's MD days would also dull his claim that he is solely responsible for the techniques used in est, for much of est is patterned after Mind Dynamics. Some of the processes are almost perfect copies.

In late 1971 Werner branched off and started his own training so that he could ''do what I think everybody wants to do, which is to serve people.'' And as usual, serving people has proved to be good work if you can get it. As founder and Chairman of the Board, Werner claims to receive only $30,000 a year from est (which incidentally showed a small loss in 1973 and is said to be designed only to break even), but in addition to his $14,000 Mercedes, he lives in a home worth at least $100,000, high in the hills of Marin County, worked in a magnificently furnished Victorian mansion on Pacific Heights in San Francisco that serves as his office and pied-a-terre, has a personal staff including valet, a leased plane, literally thousands of people who work for Erhard Seminars Training, Inc., without pay, and thousands more who would walk to Bogota is he suggested it.

It is interesting to note that Werner wrote a brief article entitled ''Service'' for the Mind Dynamics house organ a few years back. To enhance their appreciation of MD, he wrote, the graduates should ''serve'' others by getting them to take the course. ''Choose five people that you are going to be responsible for having in Mind Dynamics. Be especially alive and in tune with these people ... discover and carry out whatever service is necessary so that these people are able to overcome their obstacles and actually be in the course.'' Naturally, he did not mention that he would be pocketing a substantial portion of each $200 that these new recruits would fork over when they signed up for his class.

So perhaps it's best that not many of the trainees checked up on Werner. They might have gotten the idea that Werner has almost always been in the business of training people and psyching them up to sell something for him.
''You don't know anything yet,'' Ted Long hollered at us the next Saturday morning. ''You've got a long way to go.''

Long is a thirtyish-looking man with rather thin, severe features and prematurely gray hair, who was an attorney and vice-mayor of a small town near San Francisco before he saw the light and became an est trainer. Like virtually all est-men, Ted Long dresses, talks and acts like Werner.

The first session that Saturday lasted eight hours without a break, and the subject matter - after another dose of you're an asshole, your life is miserable, the training cannot not work - was a harangue on the nature of reality. The point came in a sudden switch, where nonreality (defined as that which is based solely on personal experience) suddenly became reality, and that which had been referred to for several hours as reality (the objective physical world) became unreal.

You're a Machine. Sunday's instruction tacked no less a subject than the human mind and how it works. In a sealed ballroom of the Sheraton Palace, the trainees sat in their chairs for an exhausting 10 straight hours, while Ted broke the mind into five nifty functions, which he rammed down their throats as much by virtue of his own tenacity and the hopelessness of arguing as by the relative plausibility of it all, or the already well-conditioned receptiveness of the audience. In the end he had a beautifully interlocking model of the mind as a stimulus-response machine. It showed that, since your mind has no choice about the stimuli it records or the responses it produces, you have absolutely no choice about what you are or what you do. ''That's it, folks,'' Ted crowed triumphantly. ''You're a machine. A machine! Nothing but a goddamn machine! That's it,'' he repeated in a cruel, mocking tone. ''You can't be anything but what you are. And that's a machine.''
All those hours of training, all those processes and indoctrinations, had solidly established the authority of the trainer, and many at that moment must have felt as if the age-old questions of free will and determinism had been settled for all time. And since the vast majority of the trainees had been long ago persuaded that they were leading worthless lives, the effect of this thumping conclusion was shattering. The power that the training had achieved over their minds was never more impressive than at this point. It plunged the crowd into profound depression. To pay 200 bucks, be convinced you're an ''asshole,'' then be told there was nothing you could do about it was too much. In the dead, dull silence it was as if the veil of hope were rent and a helpless damnation revealed. It blew their minds.
The Miracle. Than came the miracle. If you accept the nature of your mind, Ted explained with a rising optimism in his voice, and take responsibility for having created all the stimulus-response mechanisms it comprises, then in effect you have freely chosen to do everything you have ever done and to be precisely what you are. In that instant, you become exactly what you always wanted to be!
The validity of this explanation faded in and out of mental focus like a line of poetry not quite remembered, but in that dramatic moment of the training, the tired yet painstakingly conditioned trainees gripped it almost desperately, and it was implanted in their minds.
They were - no! - they had been ''assholes'' only because they did not realize that whatever they were, warts and all, it was exactly what they wanted to be.
The light dawned slowly, with Ted chirping, ''See? See?,'' and then one and another acknowledged eagerly that, yes, they got it, and gradually a swell of exultant revelation swept the place. It was amazing to behold. They were perfect exactly the way they were.
There were those who didn't catch on, or who didn't think much of the revelation, or who were even hopping mad about being sold a bill of goods. But as usual about 200 people, roughly four fifths of the crowd, proclaimed their conversion, and the mood changed as if lepers had been cleansed. At this juncture they were allowed to go to the bathroom.
The initial rushes of the est conversion are, of course, hard for non-est people to swallow, since they appear absurdly simple or idiotic or both, and a lot of friendships and marriages have busted up soon after the training. Later on, though, when things have settled, some graduates simply have a feeling of okayness and self-confidence, while others, consumed by the notion that their mind is not only a machine but a perfect machine, act like robots. They are trained human beings, and they love it.
Est Ecstasy. Afloat on the new surge of confidence and lightheartedness, the majority of trainees returned from dinner that night eager for the next and final stage of instruction. They were greeted by a bubbly little number who was nearly ecstatic as she told them how clearly she knew that the main thin on their minds right then was wondering how to tell their family and friends about the amazing est experience. And boy, oh, boy, she giggled, nothing would enhance their experience like telling someone else about it. But, she warned, they had to be careful, they certainly didn't want to go trying to describe everything and ruin their friends' chances to have their own experience, now did they? Of course not. The thing to do, she instructed them, was to bring their friends to one of the guest seminars so that people who have been specially trained in these matters can handle them. And guess what? Their first chance to turn someone else on would be at their own post-training seminar the very next Wednesday night. Then she coached them for a few minutes more on how not to say too much, but just enough to indicate that this is something really far out.

The next Wednesday night, about a third of the new grads brought someone with them, and the new faces were quickly separated for special ''guest seminar'' treatment, while the grads themselves received another dose of est salesmanship.
Sitting again in the familiar chair formations with a trainer before them on the dais, they were introduced to the graduate seminar series, without which, it was clearly suggested, their experience would be incomplete. These seminars are conducted by various est trainees on subjects like ''Be Here Now,'' or ''What's So'' or ''About Sex,'' and they are held for several hours one night each week for about 200 graduates over 10 or 12 weeks, usually at the bargain price of $25 a head.
Below each of their chairs, the new graduates were conveniently provided a pencil and a sign-up card for the seminars, and when the trainer instructed them to go ahead and fill out the cards - even if they didn't think they wanted to take one of the seminars - the group complied automatically.

The Big Pitch. ''I didn't like the way they pushed those seminars on us,'' said one of the graduates who manages a door-to-door sales organization and is familiar with the tactics of coaxing a purchase. ''He was taking advantage of the control he had over everyone, and I could see exactly what he was doing, but he was giving them the pitch so beautifully I couldn't say anything. Like this chick next to me said she wasn't going to take one, but then sure enough, when she started filling out the card she signed up.''

The pitch, a steady barrage of mailings, and occasional telephone blitzes, has put about 80 percent of est graduates in the seminar program. But as Werner and Don Cox are quick to point out, they charge such a low price for the seminars that they actually lose money on all of them.

So why do they push them? To serve the graduates, of course, and as Werner says, ''to the degree I'm serving people, I am being served.'' In other words, besides keeping the body of faithful intact, the seminar series provides a constant corps of proselytizers who are receiving a weekly re-infusion of the word, along with subtle and not so subtle encouragements to spread the light by selling the training to their friends, neighbors and family. This may be what they really mean when they say that est ''makes your life work.''

Many est graduates eschew the evangelical role and resent the insidious salesmanship. But they are a minority, and the much larger result is a sort of legally clean pyramid sales routine that has, in each year est has operated, doubled the number of graduates.

So est makes people happy, and efficient, and perhaps such training is the wave of the future. In fact, it is Werner's hope that est will find its way into our social institutions. The recent, Federally funded est training of school children is a step in that direction.

Any citizen is free to spend money experiencing himself as a mechanical anus, and therefore discovering himself to be perfect. To each his own. However, I personally distrust any organization that transforms and uplifts thousands through the nihilism of a belief system that denies all other beliefs as bullshit. The use of brainwashing techniques, ostensibly to enhance peoples' lives, becomes bizarre when the outcome is to create unpaid salesmen. Smiling, they march out each week to share their brainwashed joys with friends, neighbors and co-workers, and they know that many will want to be sold. A friend of mine, an enthusiastic est graduate who considered becoming a guest seminar leader until it all began to seem insidious, wistfully recalled the power of the training. ''They could've told me anything.'

Please see my related post: Ockham's Razor which I was inspired to include by the idea of "Werner's Razor." In my "madness" I "think" I see a parallel there too.

Patient Confidentiality

Is Of The Utmost Importance
By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D.(P)

At Homewood Health Centre patient rights are taken so seriously that the primary care nurse of one block of patients is not even allowed to discuss the patient or the diagnosis with the staff on for another block, even if on the same unit. Pretty impressive huh? (Or dopey, depending upon how you see that)

Attention! Attention! All citizens of Guelph!
February 6th, 2006 : The Ministry of Health, Psychiatric Division, has an announcement.

CJOY Radio, AM and FM: From The thought police.
" We have a woman missing." She is in need of your "help."
(so everybody start the hunt and don't forget to fan the flames of community hysteria)

" Her name is (Full Name announced)." Police say she suffers from ''schizophrenia'' and needs her medication.
(But this is strictly ''confidential'' so don't tell anyone and remember, if she ''thinks'' she is being abused in any way, watched, followed, and reported on, it is just some of the ''symptoms'' that proves we should do this. So, when you catch this madwoman, (much the same way you ''caught'' me in 95) remember to deny her report of all of this that we have done to help her, and instead be sure to praise the Emperor's New A.C.T.

If her label is currently ''affective'' type (wrong reactions) and she gets angry about this, and suspicious, no longer willing to talk to the doctors who lie to her, she may well get a change of label to ''paranoid'' perhaps, or, if she is ''too'' vocal about it, perhaps ''Borderline.''

If she no longer trusts anybody after being told this is all ''confidential'' and after such total violation of her personal boundaries, it is most likely she will be assessed as having ''trust issues'' because the duplicitous schizo system, will NOT accept responsibility for it's OWN doublespeak and behaviour. The fault MUST be found in the identified patient so that it will never be seen in the group which assesses itself as ''normal'' by virtue of it's collective agreement on just what is ''normal.'' In such cases, reality is defined, just as it was for me, by group consensus and ''authority.'' To attempt to question or debate such ''authority'' can only be seen by that ''authority'' as a flaw in the questioner.
This ''authority'' can never be questioned or blamed for anything.

Now think:
In Dale T.'s ''game'' targeting me, the lesson to be learned is: " Reality is NOT that which is defined by group consensus or authority but is that which you experience.''
Anything clicking in the heads of you ''normal'' people yet about the 180 degree ''switch'' which is near the baseline of the nurse's ''game'' performed not long after he ''hooks his item'' ? Or are you all still too busy maintaining your ''righteousness''?

The nurse's choice for ''power'' works by keeping his target, his goal of domination, and the contents of his training a ''secret'' so that he can convince the group that the ''reality'' between his victim and himself is the exact opposite.

This is how it works for all other aggressors too, even though most of them didn't pay anyone to train them in how to do It.

Simple Samples

For Simple Minds

So...Allegedly.......

It was acted out for me at Homewood and in the community at large that ''they'' and a ''he'' had been inside my apartment on Liverpool St.

Let's take this one thing as an example of how this works. In Dale's recreation three possibilities exist in relation to this act.

1. I am deliberately being fed false information which I will accept as true and when reported will be judged to be my ''delusions.'' This could have been done at Dale's direction with the others being told by Dale that I was fully aware of them and this was a ''joke'' which included me in the ''fun.'' Either way, the people involved know I see them and hear them in this instance.

2. The staff and townsfolk involved have produced this as gossip which has no factual existence whatsoever and even Dale himself does not know it is being done. All those acting out don't know that I can see them and hear them, even though they are perfectly obvious, because they judged me to be their inferior, unaware of everything around me and therefore fair game.

3. It is a true fact and he really gained physical access to me by manipulating others including my landlord(s)to believe he is my ''rescuer'' and not my stalker. The group does NOT know that I see and hear them, but Dale DOES know and he also knows that the attack is breaking me down as planned and also that the group has no idea what he is doing.

How would you like to spend years (or decades) of your life unable to get anyone to talk to you directly, to take you seriously about your experience while they continue to report back to your abuser, as you spend your life wondering if your protagonist is still manipulating others and getting physical access to you? What would you think of the manipulative two-faced arrogant idiots who may still be helping him to do it?

Now take the above example with it's possible multiple versions of reality, and multiply the chaotic effect by hundreds of examples, involving thousands of people, all of whom continue to believe they are "allowing" you to see what they intend you to see, and not what they don't. Concrete reality in this situation is constantly shifting and unidentifiable. This will give you an idea of what it is like to be on the "effect" side as a targeted individual.
This target remains isolated without a single person admitting to what they did, or what they know, in order to avoid responsibility for the group effect by blaming their victim's perception and reactions, including telling the victim she only "thinks" she's a victim. There is no genuine, direct communication at all and because there isn't, the targeted person is disconnected from concrete reality and breaks down. The resultant breakdown is then defined as "proof" that the protagonist with the hidden agenda of domination was right all along. (hidden from the group,and originally hidden from the victim too, but not permanently hidden as it often is with the group)
I defined the problem including the effect it was having on me for all my main judges and assessors and a number of others as well, long before I broke down from the effects of it. Their covering up the truth is what kept it going though out the community which kept up the behaviour without being "enlightened" as to what was actually going on. Of course, I was not believed no matter how many times or how many ways I told them exactly what it was. After all, the aggressor was "mystified." It was ignored and I was invalidated. That's how my protagonist, and the system, validate themselves. (coincidentally an instruction for power in my protagonist's "special" training)

Monkey See, Monkey Do..

Parrot Hear, Parrot Repeat...

So Allegedly.....

A number of people on the street are now talking about how they know that Dale's so-called "game" is scripted. In 2000, Dr. K.K. said that also before I gave up trying to get those in the system to "do something about" Dale regarding his obviously planned behaviour.
Beer Belly Blondie (not his real name, as far as I know),has lost the amused glow in his eyes and now pretends he does not know who I am. This is true of quite a few people lately. He is at Wally's Tavern daily it would appear. In the last week of January, the middle aged skinny woman I call "Scraggy" went to the liquor store to buy something for B.B.B. As she had been on her way there, I gave her a big smile. I think she told him that I had smiled at her and that she didn't know why...or something like that. (Maybe she "thinks" people are laughing at her. If so, she's right. She was the one I told the shrinks about years ago who was performing for this "wack job" here on the train to Toronto in 95 while her younger followers watched me for my reactions to her performance. Perhaps you will remember that "perception problem" of mine for which I was offered "something to reduce my awareness." ) After all, it would not have made sense for University students to be acting out like rectal orifices on the train would it? We all know how highly integrated and respectful all university students are don't we? I must have been "mad" to think otherwise!
Another blond woman who brushes her short hair up at the back got on the bus at the public housing stop on Delhi Street. She wondered to another passenger if she is the blond woman I mentioned earlier in this blog. Answer: no dear. You're not. Though I know you like to share all the news too.That one is the friend of the one from the Court Offices Building. She has let her hair stay gray now.
Manicky Marilyn has talked abut a cop who was in Homewood for about two years. (This is all confidential so don't tell anyone OK?)At Food Basics on Eramosa, one of the cashiers made a remark about Nazis as I walked in the door and then they all enjoyed a laugh together as they turned in unison and looked at me. I wonder if that came from Myrna G. again? I thought of that because I saw the one who used to work there mornings (and perhaps still does)with the dark hair and the lacy tattoo on the back of her right wrist, get off the bus at the Earl St. Stop and wait to cross the street right near the White House Apartments. She had earlier discussed what she had heard of my future sex life with the other cashiers there. Would you say these people who are considered to be "normal" have some serious boundary issues? (I know shrinks like that word..."issues")
At the library it is said: "Oh they are always blaming the whole world for their problems aren't they?" (Note the absolute terms used by the dysfunctional assessors)
If you really want to get all the latest dope, there are about half a dozen people who seem to be very busy spreading the bulk of it every chance they get.

In December, a man about 65 was filling them in at the Library desk. (someone does almost daily you know)Anyway, this older man said someone ( a"he")had decided to read my main blog but when he realized it was about eight layers deep he said: "What have I gotten myself into her?" (ha ha ) (nothing you can't pull right back out of )The next day a younger man rushed in to the Library desk with more rumours. He was dressed in the clothes of a city employee street worker. "She's been threatening to get a lawyer for the last ten years!" (more laughs for the masses) Actually, that's an "interpretation" of what I have said. I have no intention of getting a lawyer at this time. I am intending to remain a public reporter of all the news and everyone's opinion so that it won't be so hard for all of you to get the latest. I will do this until my RRSP is drained and I become amusingly homeless since I am now known to be too "dangerous" to work with most humans.

Some female university students pointed me out and one said: "And just what's so special about her?" When I lived in the "Whisper-In" suite on Liverpool St. other neighbours on the street included the following: Mark F. at 223 (same last name as Randy of the GTC and Cheryl of the apartment overhead.)M. B. at 208 (same last name as a therapist)and in the basement there a P.P. (same last name as the Homewood nurse who repeated at the Hamilton 3 nursing station, what I said "Trickster", inside my own apartment, no doubt picked up by the "Whisper-In" and then reported to Dale who was in the information gathering portion of his exercises so that he could repeat it back to me as the "psychic," or "schizo," (who would think people were reading my mind")I already told you; that is not what this little schizo thought.
Or perhaps they just got it directly from the neighbours all "helping" me as told to them by Marlene, or her children Donna or Jonathan. I once hear that Dale was calling there and discussing me and my "condition" with the ten year old Donna.
A blond woman on the bus thinks I am really "inventive" and then remarks as I getting off the bus that "she" is said to live on XXX St. (my street now) so maybe that IS her..."
Soon to come:
the Earl St. contributors to the rumour mill. So stay tuned.....