Werner Erhard and Associates, also known as WE&A or as WEA, operated as a commercial entity from February 1981 until early 1991. It replaced Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. as the vehicle for delivering the ''est'' training, and offered what some people refer to as personal and professional development programs. Initially WE&A marketed and staged the ''est'' training (in the form of the ''est'' seminars and workshops), but in 1984 the est training was replaced by a more modern, briefer, rigorous and philosophical program based on Werner Erhard's teachings called "The Forum".

Anthony Gottlieb Anthony John Gottlieb (born 1956) is a British writer, author, historian of ideas, and former Executive Editor of The ''Economist''. He is the author of two major works on the history of philosophy, '' The Dream of Reason'' and '' The Dream of Enli ...

: "Heidegger for Fun and Profit", in '' The New York Times'', January 7, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/books/heidegger-for-fun-and-profit.html?ref=martinheidegger, retrieved 2011-10-29 In 1991 Erhard sold the assets of WE&A to a group of employees, who later formed Landmark Education. Erhard then retired"Site by Former Associates committed to providing accurate and reliable information about Werner Erhard"
Retrieved 2007-09-09. and left the United States.

Timeline

* February 1981: Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A) set up. * 1984: WE&A replaces the est training with "The Forum". * 1991: Erhard sold the assets of WE&A to a group of employees who later formed Landmark Education.

The Forum

Evaluations

Objective studies

A scientific study conducted by a team of psychology professors concluded that attending the Forum had minimal lasting effects — positive or negative — on participants. The research won an American Psychological Association "National Psychological Consultants to Management Award" in 1989.
Page. vii. – "The research reported in this volume was awarded the American Psychological Association, Division 13, National Consultants to Management Award, August 13, 1989." The results of the research study appeared in two articles in the '' Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology'' in 1989 and in 1990, and in 1990 in a book titled '' Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training''. J.D. Fisher, R. C. Silver, J. M. Chinsky, B. Goff and Y. Klar, '' Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects'', Published by Springer-Verlag, October 1990, .

Subjective surveys

The abstract of Charles Denison's PhD dissertation for the College of Education (University of Denver), "The Children of est: A Study of the Experience and Perceived Effects of a Large Group Awareness Training (the Forum)", reported that the Forum had a definite structure, curriculum, and pedagogical approach. Denison's study identified the primary concepts of The Forum, called "distinctions". Denison's data indicate that qualitatively significant results were produced in participants' self-assessed functioning in cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains. Most participants attributed significant life effects to their experience. Public-opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich did an investigation of the response of participants to their experience of the Forum. Yankelovich reported that "more than seven out of ten participants found the Forum to be one of their life's most rewarding experiences". The study reported that 95 percent of Forum graduates believe the Forum had "specific, practical value" for many aspects of their lives, and 86 percent of those surveyed said that it helped them "cope with a particular challenge or problem".

Conceptual evaluations

Professor of Communication Studies, Bruce R. Hyde, in his paper "Saying the Clearing: A Heideggerian Analysis of the Ontological Rhetoric of Werner Erhard", discusses the Forum as the beginnings of Erhard's work in developing transformational education utilizing an ontological approach rather than an epistemological approach.

Impact

One of the more common alleged results of the Forum was the healing of relationships with parents. One facet of this course was to urge participants to stop blaming their parents for their problems and begin to express their natural love for them that was often buried under accumulated resentments. Many

project A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of even ...

s to come out of WE&A involved working to foster value, camaraderie and opportunities to serve the community. As an example of this a group of participants in a "High performance" seminar threw a Christmas party at a homeless shelter by planning, preparing, cooking and participating with the people in the shelter. As a result, they came "away with the gift of knowing we are them and they are us, homeless or sheltered, employed or out of work, broke or salaried; we recognize ourselves in their eyes and in their plight."

References

External links

Werner Erhard and Associates
'' The Skeptic's Dictionary'' * Werner Erhard, '' Wikiquote'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Werner Erhard And Associates Werner Erhard Large-group awareness training New Age organizations Privately held companies based in California Self religions