Could "Landmark" be like Scientology? How would a person know the difference?

http://www.landmarkeducation.com/introduction_to_the_landmark_forum_video.jsp I have heard of this before & know someone who has a friend doing this. They want the person to come to a 3 day seminar at first but I think they might ask for a lot of money after brainwashing. Has anyone here every experienced this or a member of Landmark?

You suspect that this is a brainwashing, and want to hear from someone who has done it to tell you that it isn't brainwashing?

Brainwashing is nonsense. If people are convinced then they are convinced. It is intellect that convinces.

If people are easily convinced of untruths then they were stupid and SHOULD be someones puppets anyway.

If a religion is true then you cant fault it for being convincing.

If a religions ideologies require that one preaches the word and spreads the faith then you cant fault believers for doing so. You cant fault believers for making the attempt. You can only fault them for not, contradicting their own beliefs.

What constitutes brainwashing? I mean, if this person comes back from the seminar unconvinced, would you be satisfied? And if they come back convinced... then what? The MUST be brainwashed? Its no more intelligent to embrace falsities as it is to reject truths.

I hadn't heard of it, but it has an entry in the skeptics dictionary:

http://www.skepdic.com/landmark.html

It sounds like a new age pseudo-psychological cult.

' Andy Testa, on the other hand, posted an account of his experience with Landmark Forum, in which he claims that he was hounded by recruiters who insisted that his resistance was proof he needed their help.

Some people claim to have had breakdowns after attending such programs as Landmark Forum [see Lell, who had one after attending Landmark sessions, and Abstracts of Articles in Psychological Journals concerning est and The Forum]. According to Robert Howe, Stephanie Ney, 45, claims that a two-day Landmark Forum seminar "stripped her of her natural psychological defenses and unleashed the specter of a failed relationship with her father," leading to a nervous breakdown and commitment to a psychiatric clinic. Yet, many of those who seek out cults like Scientology or self-help programs such as Landmark are troubled already. Some are deeply troubled and the training might send them over the edge. But whose fault is that? Such people might have gone to the movies and been pushed over the edge, like "Heinrich Pommerenke, who was a rapist, abuser, and mass slayer of women in Germany." He "was prompted to his series of ghastly deeds by Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments."* (A woman who took est when she was 17 wrote me: "The intent of these seminars is to dig in deeply, without providing any aftercare. In that sense, they are responsible. They are taking money, knowing what they are trying for, not allowing people's natural defenses to operate that tell them when it's a good idea to dig. Then, the programmers walk away. Even for non-deeply troubled people, this is a concern and the impact can be negative." [Programmers should be trained to handle "troubled" people and should know that they can't push every participant to the same degree without occasional disastrous results].)'

http://www.skepdic.com/landmark.html

Judging based on this one excerpt, it is advisable that 'Landmark' provide complete physical and cognitive and nutrition diagnosis and supplementation to counter balance the risks of individual stress resistance differences.

I just had a look at their syllabus and Landmark is nothing like Scientology. It's some kind of psychology or something. But not Scientology.

1) Not Scientology and no similarity to it.

2) If brainwashing is involved you would have to understand that brainwashing is really PDH (pain, drug, hypnosis - drug the person then through use of pain and hypnosis install commands into the subconscious) invented in the time of Hitler (for the take over the world view and conquer and enslave man) and is still used today by government supported political psychology. Scientology and Dianetics are opposed to this kind of treatment. Although the Movie Clockwork Orange was a fictional work, it is truly representative of brainwashing. I see a need for more thorough research in your future.