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Overview
When psychology is practiced by those who are not qualified to do so, the effects on the client can be severe and permanant. Benchmark Young Adult School has many councelors, of which none are certified to practice psychology. Yet they have group therapy sessions every day "facilitated" by unqualified personnel. "Emotional growth" was a term coined by CEDU schools (now defuct), is a euphemism for "mind experimentation". I'm sure many of the staff have good intentions, but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with them. According to several sources, after particularly harsh lecture from former councelor Joelle Walters (now dean), a student took his own life by jumping head first off a bridge on State St. Suicide attempts were relatively common when I was at Benchmark Young Adult School. In one case, a student, who was sent to Benchmark for ADHD, was so distrought and miserable that he decided to slit his wrists just so he could get a vacation. He would rather be in a mental ward than on State St. This is what happens when psychology is practiced without license in an experimental manner. Trial and error is fine if you are troubleshooting computers. You can simply undo what you just tried, and try again. It's a little harder when your "error" does a swan dive into the pavement. These are the more serious, direct effects of the kind of Behavior modification practiced at Benchmark Young Adult School, although they are hardly the most common, or the longest lasting. Where did it all come from? - Benchmark's Genetics: Synanon
Charles E Deiderich is where it all started. After being exiled out of AA, Deiderich, A recovering alcoholic, drug addict, and college dropout, in 1958 founded Synanon (derivation from "Sins Anonymous"), a program designed ti treat heroin addicts. Among the concepts he helped develop were confrontational therapy (groups such as those at benchmark), telling your story, "You can't con a con", telling your dirty stories, no newcomer contact with parents, and thought control. He believed, among other things that harsh verbal confrontations and accusations would somehow help people to heal. He described this tough love approach to group "therapy" as an "omni-confessional" in which indictments and attacks were routine. What eventually evolved into the rap sheets and dirt lists of CEDU and benchmark evolved from his concept of "therapy" known at Synanon as The Game.
By the mid 80s, the IRS had confiscated Synanon's assets and the program was shut down. Unfortunately, not before Synanon members left to spawn programs of their own, among which were, Straight (shut down), the Seed (shut down), and CEDU (yup. you guessed it, sued out of existance as well). CEDU If you haven't figured it out yet, CEDU stands for Charles E. Dederich University. This has been confirmed both by early CEDU members, and by a representative of the California Dept of Education. After a well publicized incident with a Rattlesnake, CEDU spinsters tried to claim CEDU stood for "see yourself as you are, and do something about it." The CEDU schools were started in 1967 by Mel Wasserman, a furnature salesman (after he became associated with Synanon), in Running Springs California, just a few miles from Redlands. This was the original CEDU high school / middle school, which later expanded itself into a "College" just a few miles down the street which was named the Hilltop institute. Eventually, CEDU expanded and opened up 7 campuses around the counrty before it's downfall. CEDU incorporated the same "confrontational therapy" and cultish aspects of Synanon but adding aspects of a brainwashing technology, known as "Lifespring", closely related to est, to the mix, which CEDU named "Propheets" (which later became Friendship Workshop at Benchmark). Jayne Longnecker has confirmed this link. Even the term "self actualization" (rings a bell?) can be found scattered around as a central tenet of Lifespring's philosophy. If you went through friendship workshop you are going to want to read that link. Although advanced workshop material is hard to comeby, this is what a group of psychologists observed at a basic training seminar they witnessed. Lifespring has been classified as a cult by the Rick Ross institute. If you do more research on Lifespring you will find out that they use several techniques of thought suggestion and hypnosis such as Neuro-Linguistic-Programming. Not surprisingly, Lifespring has been attacked with many lawsuits, most of which they have settled out of court. In 1986, Jayne Longnecker joined the staff of Hilltop Institute (CEDU's college) in Running Springs California. By 1993, she had worked her way to the top as Director of Hilltop. At that point She decided it was time to start her own program. Currently I am trying to find Hilltop graduates from that era but it is proving difficult. I suspect she was as successful with the students there as she was at Benchmark. If you want to know what CEDU was like, please visit the links section at the end of this document and/or this forum here. CEDU was a mirror image of Benchmark, which is why it can be classified among many other CEDU clones, started by ex-CEDU staffers. Carl Janowitz also came from a CEDU affiliated school, known as Cascade which was later (very soon after he jumped ship) shut down for systematic and widespread ritual sexual abuse. Jayne's accountant also came from CEDU and she kept up her contacts with members of the educational consulting industry such as Lon Woodbury. Eventually, as all truth eventually finds it's way to the surface, students and parents organized to bring the school down. Massive internet propaganda, lawsuits, and criminal action combined quickly forced all CEDU/Brown schools into Bankruptcy. See the following article excerpt for details:
Friendship Workshop (description) Introduction Friendship Workshop is based upon CEDU's "Propheets", with content mainly derived from "The Brother's Keeper". "Propheets" were an invention of Mel Wasserman, CEDU founder and furnature salesman. Much of "Propheets" was derived from "est" and "Lifespring", two LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) techniques made popular during the 1960s and 70s. APA's assesment of LGATs here. The information here has been gathered from both my own experiences, and those of other participants. Unfortunately, Jayne Longnecker, owner of Benchmark Young Adult School, has refused to comment on the content of Friendship Workshop. Several Catchphraises / themes are repeated often during the Workshop, some of which are listed as follows:
Rules The first rule of friendship workshop is "You don't talk about friendship workshop" -- not to parents, not to other students, not to anybody. What is said, and what happens inside the workshop stays inside the workshop. Immunity Before the workshop starts, there is an orientation meeting where all students are given an opportunity to "drop their dirt" without reprecussion (in theory) so they can "go clean" into the workshop. Although there are no reprecussions for the immediate participants, anybody outside the workshop mentioned in the dirt dropping generally gets completely shafted. Perfect Isolation It usually takes the staff a while to prepare a building to host a Friendship Workshop. Everything has to be sealed off. The windows are covered up and the cracks under the doors sealed with duct tape. All furnature and decorations are removed. Only chairs remain, one for every person. Watches and personal affects of all types are confiscated, no exceptions. There is no way to tell if it is day or night or how much time has elapsed. The Reading There is a brief reading from a book, believed to be "The Prophet" By Kalill Gibran. The Skit This is an exercise in ritual humiliation. All participants are made to don costumes and perform a skit / monologue. The staff composes the script and the content supposedly has to do with one of your "issues" as they see it. Disclosure Circle- Part I Everybody sits around in circle for this exercise and participants take turns disclosing things that they feel ashaimed of or dirty about that they have never told anybody before. "Tell it All Brother" by Kenny Rogers is played on repeat for the duration of this exercise which lasts an estimate of 45 mins to an hour on average. Lyrics for "Tell it All Brother" here Excerpt:
Listen Here (Real Media) not recommend for former FSW participants Circle of Exclusion The participants lock arms in a tight circle with one participant and one staff member excluded. The point of this "game" is for the excluded particpant to charge into the circle and force him/herself inside. At the same time, the staff member actively works against this effort. As the game progresses, new participants are chosen until everybody has had a turn outside of the circle. I Am a Rock During this exercise "I Am a Rock" By Simon and Garfunkel is played on repeat: Excerpt:
Participants in this exercise curl up in a foetal position on the floor and are told that they are rocks, and islands, blocking out feelings etc. The facilitator goes around the room yelling things at you which he/she would imagine would result in such a condition (confrontations from parents, etc.) She does not touch you during this exercise at all, instead yelling abuse which in her imagination, and the knowledge of your background, might have caused you to block out emotion. Open up and Remember The participant lays on the floor with arms outstretched and eyes closed in stark contrast to the position before. Soft music is played and the participans are told to feel comfortable. The participants are then told to imagine parts of their bodies relaxing and falling asleep part by part. Then she tells us to remember something as if it was happening. Unfortunately, neither me, nor anybody who i have intereviewed remembers exactly what she told us to experience. During this exercise most particpants start openly weeping. The facilitator comes over to each participant as he/she breaks down and places the participant's arms on his/her chest, and wipes tears away with a tissue. Disclosure Circle - Part II At this point in the workshop, it is probably very early morning of the following day. People are barely awake but are not allowed to sleep. Unexpectedly, a new disclosure circle is set up so that one can "get everything out". This second round of disclosures is far more explicit than the first. After the intense emotional experiences in the workshop, and the sleep deprivation, people's inhibitions are lowered to the point where they reveal things they would not otherwise reveal. The room is filled with crying. Partner Choice Each participant chooses a partner for the remainder of the course. This is a silent process, guided by what people see in each other's eyes. You are supposed to pick somebody you see as trustworthy. Trust Walk Standard stuff. One partner is blindfolded and gets lead around by the other. It is only at this time one gets an idea of approximately what time it might be. At Arms Length Participants in this exercise hold each-other at arms length while the participant being pushed away yells his desires in relationships at the other. Eating An elaborate and lavish (for benchmark's standards) fiest of all sorts of snacks is revealed already set up in another room on a table. Everybody is allowed to eat and drink as much as they please, though during this break period talking is restricted to: "between your friend only". Communal Nap There are a series of closing lectures of which nobody remembers the content after which everybody piles on the floor in a communal pile and goes to sleep for several hours. The New You The Workshop ends at this point. The doors are opened and participants walk out into the sun, greeted by the entire student population bearing flowers and smiling. Again, you are told by your counselor, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life". At this point, participants are allowed to return to their apartments and sleep for the rest of the day. Results of Friendship Workshop Everybody who went through Friendship workshop, with a few exceptions, loved the experience. After they emotionally tear you down, you experience euphoria as they build you up. People became closer than ever before to their counselor and a sense of camaraderie and loyalty develops. The facilitator became the ideal of love and comfort, somebody who you can trust. This effect is usually permanent, unless, for example, somebody reads Lifespring / est training material, discovers the similarities, methods of manipulation, and starts to question the ethical uses of such tactics. My personal opinion as a participant is that the purpose of the workshop is to bind the student to the counselor like a dog to a master, creating loyalty and trust. It would be one thing if this trust was deserved, or if it were based upon a decision of free will but this is not the case. An artificial state of misery is created in the student through disclosures, exercises, and trance inducing techniques. Once the student is sufficiently miserable and emotionally vulnerable, the counselor establishes his/herself as the symbol of comfort, of love, and of hope. It would be one thing if a counselor legitimately comforted somebody in the event of a tragedy but it is entirely another to have a student recall / re-experience past tragedies in order to provide comfort. Providing comfort by creating suffering is never acceptable. Friendship Workshop (explanation / analysis primarily for students) All Quotations in this section taken from "Thought Reform Programs and the Production of Psychiatric Casualties" By Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph. D., and Richard Ofshe, Ph. D. We all know plenty about this. Staff bringing up private things in group. The confrontations, etc. Any forms of therapy practiced at benchmark should have been performed by licensed professionals and they weren't. There were at least two suicide attempts that I personally witnessed at State St, many more that I have heard of, as well one confirmed suicide on State St. This is the sort of thing that tends to happen when people practice psychology without a license, or even a high school education. Although a good portion of Benchmark's staff do have high school diplomas, only Jayne, Mona And Joelle (who are all not councilors) have college degrees. Even then, their areas of speciality are not in an area relating to psychology. Behavior modification is illegal to practice in the State of California unless you are a licensed Psychologist. The elements of "thought reform", an unethical behavioral modification technique I have listed here from the Rick Ross Institute:
In order to avoid embarrassing anybody i am going to speak in very general terms about the types of psychological abuse that went on at Benchmark. The philosophy of "tough love" first requires somebody to be broken down until they hit "rock bottom" which is when somebody is vulnerable enough for psychological techniques such as "friendship workshop" to be effective. Although this does not fit the normal workflow of "tough love" programs, they found methods of breaking people down useful nonetheless. You take away trust (dirt-lists, staff bringing out personal information in group, etc.), hope (any possability of leaving), and family (through censored comunication, and behind the back slander), resources (money, identification (for some), posessions) and after enough "beating down", when the stress has you at your wits end, you have an individual that is more receptive to input, in the form of less than legitimate behaviour modification techniques. Why the ridiculous rules? Because they wanted to see if you would obey them. If you did, it meant that you were accepting their programming. Friendship Workshop, is based on CEDU's Propheets which incorporates elements of Lifespring and EST (LGAT tecnhiques). The basic point of this exercise is to create an artificial sense of depression which is later comforted at the whim of the staff. It is important for such techniques to work, that the enviornment be completely controlled by the staff. This is why the building is sealed off from sunlight and all personal posessions are taken away. This is also done so that a "new identity" created to the staff's specifications, can begin to replace your "self-concept" as the workshop progresses. Remember the emphasis on "you're a new person now" when the workshop is finished. First comes the embarrasment, in the form of skits of self-mockery, which are performed by each individual in front of the group. The Scripts are written by the staff and usually involve one or more "issues" the staff think are relavant, not necessarily, or even usually, the "issue" that you came to Benchmark for. The point of this as an ice-breaker, to weaken your will of self-concept, and to get you comfortable with being embarrassed. After this comes the disclosure circle. This phase of friendship workshop creates both a sense of camaraderie with the group, a feeling of intense depression, as well as a feeling of trust for the counselor which further exercises build on. As the confessions pass down the circle, one gradually feels more comfortable disclosing personal information. As the hunger and sleep deprivation (which has an effect similar to alcohol) starts to break down your mental facilities of judgement and resistance, you begin to disclose information and events you otherwise would not have wanted to disclose, or felt comfortable doing so. This exercise is performed several times through-out the course of the workshop as the night / day (you don't know) progresses. After the creation of a trance state, while lying down on the ground, after you have dug up some miserable things perhaps better left unremembered, and after you are crying (a state of decompensation), The councelor then knows he/she has your mind in her hands. Now she comforts you. Who remembers crying in agony and then Joelle's soft hands picking yours up, and placing them on your chest. Who else remembers how good that felt. To have somebody comfort you in your sadness (which they created for the purpose of comforting you). Now you trust and love her. Now you feel comfortable with her. The workshop, by this point, has reached the phase where you are being built back up. Now they comfort you. Why?
For more information on thought reform in general, and its psychological fallout, Please read here. Although these techniques were used in some degree in every part of daily benchmark life, Friendship workshop was probably the most powerful example of the type of Behaviour modification / thought reform Benchmark practiced. It was designed to take you when you were vulnerable, and create a sense of loyalty and attachment to your councilor, who you were trained to believe was the only person who "really knew you" and could take away your pain. The type of psychological damage inflicted by such techniques are usually permanant, and range from post traumatic stress disorder, to various dissociative disorders (not knowing who you are). This philosophy of "the new you" is evident in many aspects of benchmark, from the "I and ME" stuff, the code of arms / ethics, the "being real" stuff and the constant accusations of "manipulation" upon criticization of program or any of it's aspects. Eventually, you start to wonder if you are truly lying, if you really have covered up the new you, and if the program really could fix it. Who you were, in their eyes, was a lie, and they could sell you your true self if you would give them your will. Some resisted friendship workshop's effects. Some were more affected by it. Since effects of PTSD rarely show up for 5 to 10 years after the event it remains to be seen how many people truly escaped it's influence. The first time i went through i still had hope and the will to resist. I knew what they were doing (to some extent) and i played along. After they had broken me down, they sent me back in for another round. I remember almost nothing of my second Friendship Workshop and the subsequent few weeks. Like many, I feel like I had come to a point of "self actualization" (popular Lifespring term) where I had realized that my true self could only be discovered with the help of the staff. I was a lie, and they could help me find my true inner self. This is where the danger of dissociative disorder springs from. A person creates a second identity to replace his real identity and they end up fighting.
I find it very difficult to think about friendship workshop, find my mind wandering, and find it very difficult to concentrate when thinking about this. I will leave it to you to do your research in this area. If you haven't already, i would recommend talking to a psychologist about your experiences in Benchmark, especially Friendship workshop. LGAT Links: Description of the original EST training Links on est (Lifespring's progenitor) Raps (group) Although benchmark originally called their groups "raps" (from the CEDU term), they later changed the name to simply "group." As in CEDU, studnets fill out a "rap sheet" with three things they would like to talk about in group. These topics can range from something having to do with the student's "issue" or somebody else's "issue", or it can be (more often than not) a request to confront another member in group. The group is lightly moderated, and topics can be strayed from and added to, but in general the facilitator chooses the topics from among the "rap sheets". It is important to realize that a particular student's "issue" does not necessarily have to be the one he came to Benchmark for. Staff are at liberty to bring up any topic they wish to, and to redefine what the student's issue is supposed to be. The student either accepts the new definition, or is labeled either as "not following the program" or as "having a negative attitude". There is no way to change the system and the student is totally powerless to every executive whim of the staff members. The staff at Benchmark had no need for extensive video surveillance to know what was going on. The dirt list gave them more information than they could possibly want. Dirt lists were the reason you could never fully trust anybody at benchmark. The system functioned in a similar manner to the soviet system of secret police. You never knew who was an informer, and thus, everybody was a potential informer. Fear kept the students in line. Here's how it worked. Say we have Joe, Adam, Bob, Amy, and Laura. Joe sees Laura kissing Bob (a no-no at benchmark, they shouldn't even be talking to each other at level 1). Joe tells Adam what he saw, but tells him not to tell anybody. Laura, giggles all the way home and just can't wait to tell Amy what just transpired. Now staff makes everybody write a dirt list.
But there is a problem here. Laura and bob left stuff out. Staff knows who Bob's friends are, and the incident is big enough to need a total dirtlist rewrite. Staff then goes: Whoa. Wait just one darn minute. Rewrite your dirt lists. You left shit out.
Now staff knows Joe knows about this, becuase Adam hates Bob and doesn't talk to him, so Joe must know something about this. Laura and Bob's punishments just got worse, since they didn't report it on the second chance. Amy, on the other hand, the opportunistic little b****, is in staff's good graces. With enough enthusiastic snitching she might even get her level (get promoted... sort of). Staff then asks for one more rewrite:
The results: Amy is in staff's good graces. Laura and Bob wonder why. Bob gets the worst punishment, for not admitting to kissing Laura. Laura gets the second worst punishment. Joe gets punished after that for knowing about it, and Adam gets lightly punished. Jason is totally fucked. You can see how, if you have 20-30 of these things you can uncover a wealth of information, even just by requesting a dirt-list rewrite. This was very common, and you never knew if they did it for a reason, or were just "fishing". Malnutrition When students are inevitably put in motel they are fed the "Benchmark diet" which consists Daily of:
Students are often kept on this diet for months, and have been known to scrounge or beg for food. One student reported losing 60 lbs on this diet.
But it's ok becuase Benchmark's "nutritionist" said so. Is that it? More stuff coming soon. I need to document a lot of stuff more thoroughly before I post it here. Be patient. |
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