Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before he abandoned his wife and children, changed his name to Werner Erhard, moved to California and began promoting his self-awareness programs, known in the 1970s as est and later as the Forum, Jack Rosenberg was a car salesman in Philadelphia. Inspired by a self-help course called Mind Dynamics, by Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich , by Scientology and cybernetics, and advised by a skilled tax lawyer, Erhard launched est in 1971. And for 20 years he reigned as guru of the "human potential movement." According to freelance journalist Pressman, the womanizing, charismatic and demanding Erhard collected tens of millions of dollars from 500,000 people who took his courses. Eventually lawsuits, desertions among his coterie and the rise of new New Age mind-improving programs ended Erhard's empire and in 1991, owing millions to the IRS and others, he went into exile in Mexico. Pressman here cuts into him with surgical precision.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Pressman, a San Francisco-based journalist, offers a compelling account of the 1980s guru who rose from selling used cars to peddling personal transformation. Erhard's dubious Est program--today known as The Forum--promises outlandish benefits in return for outlandish cash outlays. Like many of his predecessors, (notably L. Ron Hubbard, the demented fabricator of Scientology, whom Erhard briefly followed), Erhard progressed from a tireless, aggressive proselytizer to a psychotic egomaniac. Pressman skillfully documents Erhard's ascension to godlike status, and his irrevocable, shameful plummet following an episode that aired in 1991 on 60 Minutes , in which Erhard's daughter accused him of sexual abuse (a charge that Erhard allegedly deflected by characterizing it as "a nurturing experience"). Most public libraries should place this expose on the same shelves as Wendy Kaminer's I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional ( LJ 6/1/92).
- Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (August 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312092962
• ISBN-13: 978-0312092962
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #559,357 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs some work, November 29, 2005

By	lightwolf (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews

I find it fascinating that most of the other reviews give the book either 1 or 5 stars - similar to the thoughts of most people I know about est/Landmark who have either gone thru est/Landmark or known someone who has. I read this book as the "other side of the coin" against Erhard's biography, and was disappointed. I think that for a work like this, the author needs to provide better documentation for his information. There are footnotes in places, but I was looking for rather thorough documentation, and this is lacking. It ended up being a view of Erhard and est that offsets Erhard's version of things, and little more. In the end we are left with a he said/he said argument. Like the earlier reviews suggest by their polarized ratings, people have already chosen their sides. So this book doesn't advance the debate, but it does flesh out the story.

38 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant investigative journalism!!, January 22, 2005

By	M. R. Estante "http://aralarcalifornia.blogsp... (North America) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

For those of you who have done Landmark Education and reaped benefits ... this is a great book to read. ALthough Landmark has some useful programs, the dark side of the organization is the multi-level marketing coercion tactics to get you to take more and more courses. Once you do the Landmark Forum, you really need not do anything else within the company's course catalog. If you do, then make sure it is truly your own free will choice. Read this book to separate myth from reality about what is the true "what's so" about Landmark. Be a conscious consumer and do your homework. There are too many people who have spent money through the hard sales strategies of Landmark staff and volunteers. If you are keen to have information as power in your arsenal to say NO to Landmark, Pressman's book is invaluable. Based on cour reports and interviews, this is a detailed overview of a man whose life seems as "inauthentic" as much as his company preaches "authenticity". Don't fall into a codependant, addictive relationship with Landmark courses to fix yourself by reading what is really behind those "enrollment" conversations and heady jargon. Landmark's encounter style is a reflection of Erhard's seemingly loving yet ultimatley controlling perspective on human relations. A must read for Landmark graduates who found wonderful breakthroughs but don't want compulsive calls from their Landmark Center telling them that the next seminar will deliver more. In the end, YOU are a much better guide for your life when you are emotionally healthy, instead of some Forum Leader whose more interested in you as a statistic than anything else.

Do yourself a favor, glean what you need to from this book, and know that leaving Landmark behind is a step forward to your own personal empowerement.

If you are looking for deep personal healing and a program that has been endorsed by credible individuals ... research the Hoffman Process or check out the Hendricks Institute on Relationships. Unlike Landmark, these programs do not have all the "severe baggage" associated with them.

48 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dancing with the listening in a conversation for possibility, January 24, 2004

By A Customer

EEEEEEEEEyyyyyyooooowwwww!!!

It all came flooding back to me, the EST training, followed by a communication seminar, an advanced communication seminar, the Six Day training (where we were to become "commandos", were required to watch some, er, "offbeat" movies, and talk about real personal stuff), then Mastery Of Empowerment, where we did Zen like meditations, repeatedly acknoledged that Werner was Source (of ??? not exactly specified), and got a jolly good vibe going.

Oh yes, there were also seminars with Fernando Flores, an interesting fellow who was once the finance minister for Salvador Allende, heavily into language and information theory... once upon a time Werner's left brain, so to speak, who inexplicably wasn't there on Mount Olympus one day...

Needless to say, there's a lot of stuff, many narratives woven together that many self proclaimed Forumites don't know about, weren't there when it happened, all of which got simplified and cooked down into easy to digest tales of days gone by.

Let me tell ya something. It never is so simple, never was, never will be. Pressman's book Outrageous Betrayal rings true as pure coin to my ears, it succeeeds in capturing the flavor of the 70's into the 80's hustle, the strange blend of improvisation, amateurishness, needfulness, as well as the intensity, the drive, the self deception, and the absurdity of that era. Werner was kind of an uber-manifestation of all that.

Somewhere along the line I found myself growing. The sense of community and shared purpose that once was sustaining and uplifting turned stale and oppressive. It was time to move on,
grow up another notch, leave the great psychodrama behind for another generation to project it's unresolved collective issues on.

Reflecting on it, there is no way that something as intense and nutso, while mind expanding and challenging too, could have possibly happened had Werner Hans been a normal run of the mill dude. You couldn't get there from here without the sound and the fury.

Its that complexity, trickster archetype, puer aeternus and senex stuff that James Hillman talked about that Pressman can't wrap his mind around, 'cause he's treating Werner as just another scandalous mountebank when he was much more than that.

I still loved reading the book, no qualmes with the truth telling approach, Pressman is right on with what he says, only too bad he couldn't fold it in with the larger story, which isn't all that sweet and perfect either, just larger, weirder, more glorious, and kinda creepy too...

To this day I ask myself, what the heck was THAT ???

The I discovered a fantastic little book written in 1895 by Gustave Le Bon titled The Crowd... most highly recommended for anyone thinking about LGATs or mass thinking of any kind. This incredible book put it into perspective for me. I think it should be required reading for every college student in America.

If you are considering any large group spiritual or self help-transformative seminar, please take the time to read Le Bon's masterpiece carefully, and read it twice, and take notes, before you sign on the line.

Bon Voyage kiddos... life can surpass any fiction ever written