A little more info

Further to my rant about Landmark this week (see a couple of blog entries down) a friend of mine has offered a bit of a clarification on what exactly Landmark does and how it works. Since I admittedly have no knowledge of it, I thought I'd publish his comments for your interest.

I've just been catching up on your blog and read the Landmark story.
First up, my position is that I would never do Landmark because it isn't for me so I won't defend them. However, I would like to clarify what I believe they do.

I know a couple of people, including my ex-housemate, who paid the fee and went along to their course. It is a facilitated self-help group that is all about getting to the root of a problem that is dragging someone down in life, very much like a psychologist finds and exposes childhood insecurities of a patient with a view to accepting them to move forward. For my housemate, she thought she was going along to get closure on how she felt about leaving her ex after seven years. After doing the course, it wasn't her break-up that was causing her grief, it was the way her mother never approved of her throughout her life.

Personally, I believe people can sort this stuff out for themselves but we all have different abilities and some people need external input to achieve some things in life. Oddly enough, it's like the opposite of Scientology's belief that psychology has destroyed the world. ;)

As I said, I've never been to a Landmark course and I don't feel I would ever need to go but the people I know said it helped them immensely. It took a lot out of them emotionally and physically, especially to go to sessions after your own work and come home late at night.

Separately, both of them said if I wanted to go that they would pay for me to do it with the hope that I would do the same for someone else in the future. So I wouldn't call it a cult. Scientology on the other hand...well...

...and what would this be without a disclaimer? I am in no way affiliated or related to anyone who works for Landmark. I only know a couple of people who have been as participants.

If that guy is still smoking, then maybe that wasn't what was really bothering him? He probably needs different input to achieve giving up; he just hasn't found it yet (if he even really wants to look).



So there ya go.
Dave