science

Getting It: The Psychology of est

Getting It: The Psychology of est is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Getting It: The Psychology of est rather than just read about it. In short: Getting It: The Psychology of est is a non-fiction book by American clinical psychologist Sheridan Fenwick first published in 1976 which analyses Werner Erhard's Erhard Seminars Training or est. Fenwick based the book on her own experience of attending a four-day session of the est training, an intensive 60-hour personal-development course in the self-help genre.

Key takeaways

Getting It: The Psychology of est belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Getting It: The Psychology of est to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Getting It: The Psychology of est from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Getting It: The Psychology of est is a non-fiction book by American clinical psychologist Sheridan Fenwick first published in 1976 which analyses Werner Erhard's Erhard Seminars Training or est. Fenwick based the book on her own experience of attending a four-day session of the est training, an intensive 60-hour personal-development course in the self-help genre. Large groups of up to 250 people took the est training at one time. In the first section of Fenwick's book, she recounts the est training process and the methods used during the course. Fenwick details the rules or "agreements" laid out by the trainers to the attendees, which include not talking to others or leaving the session to go to the bathroom unless during an announced break period. The second section is analytic: Fenwick analyzes the methods used by the est trainers, evaluates the course's potential effects, and discusses Erhard's background. Fenwick concludes that the program's long-term effects are unknown, the est training may not be appropriate for certain groups of people, and that a large proportion of participants report perceived positive effects. Writing in Library Journal, psychiatrist James Charney describes the book as "the only useful critical look" at the training. Zane Berzins of The New York Times Book Review characterizes the book as a "calm and professionally informed view". Hearings held in 1979 before the United States House of Representatives on a juvenile delinquents program depicted in Scared Straight! cited the book for background on the est training, as did psychologist Gidi Rubinstein in a 2005 study of the Landmark Forum published in the academic journal Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.

Background Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg), was originally from Pennsylvania and migrated to California. A former salesman, training manager and executive in the encyclopedia business, Erhard created the Erhard Seminars Training (est) course in 1971. est was a form of Large Group Awareness Training, and was part of the Human Potential Movement. est was a four-day, 60-hour self-help program given to groups of 250 people at a time. The program was very intensive: each day would contain 15–20 hours of instruction. During the training, est personnel utilized specialized vocabulary to convey key concepts, and participants agreed to rules which remained in effect for the duration of the course. Participants were taught that they were responsible for their life outcomes. Est had its critics and proponents. A year after Getting It was published, over 100,000 people completed the est training, including public figures and mental health professionals. In 1985, Werner Erhard and Associates repackaged the course as "The Forum", a seminar focused on "goal-oriented breakthroughs". By 1988, approximately one million people had taken some form of the trainings. In the early 1990s Erhard faced family problems, as well as tax problems that were eventually resolved in his favor. A group of his associates formed the company Landmark Education in 1991.

Author Sheridan Fenwick, in her early thirties when Getting It was published, had graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goucher College and received a doctorate in psychopathology and social psychology from Cornell University. Her Ph.D. dissertation was published in 1975. Fenwick served as the director of social policy in the Department of City Planning of Chicago, Illinois, as assistant attending psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center, and as a faculty member of Columbia University's department of psychology. Fenwick writes that although she had been trained as a clinical psychologist, she avoided "consciousness" movements and never participated in transactional analysis or similar therapies, including Transcendental Meditation, Esalen, Arica, Gestalt therapy and Mind Dynamics. When she met with graduates of the est training and heard their testimonials and observed their level of self-confidence, she considered taking the training. After some preliminary research, Fenwick decided to take the training as a participant rather than as a professional observer. She paid the $250.00 course fee and enrolled in a four-day est program to examine its methods and its appeal. She reports that the training was an "extraordinary experience", but that she had "serious concerns about the implications of the est phenomenon", and that people should know more about it. The book was first published September 16, 1976, by J. B. Lippincott Company. A second edition was published by Penguin Books in 1977. Fenwick went on to work as director of the Behavioral Medicine Clinic at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, before retiring in 1993 to set up Psybar, an online service to provide psychological experts for court cases.

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Getting It: The Psychology of est

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Getting It: The Psychology of est claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Getting It: The Psychology of est before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Getting It: The Psychology of est ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Getting It: The Psychology of est

In research: Getting It: The Psychology of est appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Getting It: The Psychology of est in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Getting It: The Psychology of est is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1976 English-language non-fiction books, 1976 non-fiction books, J. B. Lippincott & Co. books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Getting It: The Psychology of est outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Getting It: The Psychology of est in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Getting It: The Psychology of est means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Getting It: The Psychology of est out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Getting It: The Psychology of est in simple terms?

Why does Getting It: The Psychology of est matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Getting It: The Psychology of est?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Getting It: The Psychology of est.