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''

seminar A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some parti ...

s and

workshop Beginning with the Industrial Revolution era, a workshop may be a room, rooms or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Workshops were the only ...

s), but in 1984 the est training was replaced by a more modern, briefer, rigorous and philosophical program based on

Werner Erhard Werner Hans Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg; September 5, 1935) is an American author and lecturer known for founding est, which operated from 1971 to 1984. He has written, lectured, and taught on self-improvement. In 1977 Erhard, with the su ...

'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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 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 Landmark Worldwide (known as Landmark Education before 2013), or simply Landmark, is a company, headquartered in San Francisco, that offers personal-development programs. Landmark Education started in 1991 with the licensing of rights to use i ...

. 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 The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

"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 The ''Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology'' is a monthly academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. Its focus is on treatment and prevention in all areas of clinical and clinical-health psychology and especiall ...

'' in 1989 and in 1990, and in 1990 in a book titled ''

Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training ''Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training: A Longitudinal Study of Psychosocial Effects'' is a non-fiction psychology book on Large Group Awareness Training, published in 1990 by Springer-Verlag. The book was co-authored by psychologists Jeffre ...

''. 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 Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

, 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 Daniel Yankelovich (December 29, 1924 – September 22, 2017) was a public opinion analyst and social scientist. Education After attending Boston Latin School, Yankelovich graduated from Harvard University in 1946 and 1950 before completing postgr ...

did an investigation of the response of participants to their

experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...

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 A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

. 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
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The Skeptic's Dictionary ''The Skeptic's Dictionary'' is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book. The skepdic.com site was launched in 1994 and the book was published in 2003 wi ...

'' *

, ''

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'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Werner Erhard And Associates Werner Erhard Large-group awareness training New Age organizations Privately held companies based in California Self religions