A Creative Animation Documents What Happened When a 1970s Self-Help Seminar Turned Into a Nightmare (NSFW)

Self-improve­ment is a won­der­ful thing, and we obvi­ous­ly embrace the idea here at Open Cul­ture. But cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ings and self-help sem­i­nars can often serve to break peo­ple down rather than build them up. The cult-like men­tal­i­ty one finds in such envi­rons should not sur­prise us: 1 in 5 busi­ness lead­ers have “psy­cho­path­ic ten­den­cies”; many self-help gurus actu­al­ly do become — or start out as — nar­cis­sis­tic cult lead­ers. In the short film above by film­mak­er Joey Izzo we see one cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ing course that imme­di­ate­ly devolved into a night­mar­ish scene of abuse and humil­i­a­tion.

Based on an inter­view with Gene Church — a par­tic­i­pant in the 1970 four-day lead­er­ship sem­i­nar in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia — the film mix­es ani­ma­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy, and dra­mat­ic recre­ations filmed in 16mm, por­tray­ing “an uncon­ven­tion­al Mind Dynam­ics class where par­tic­i­pants were forced to find a ‘moment of truth’ through a num­ber of degrad­ing and often vio­lent acts,” writes Rob Mun­day at Short of the Week.

Par­tic­i­pants of the men-only encounter group each paid $1000 for the priv­i­lege. All of them were dis­trib­uters of a cos­met­ics brand called Hol­i­day Mag­ic, owned by William Penn Patrick, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire John Bircher who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran as a Repub­li­can for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia and who owned both Mind Dynam­ics and a cor­po­rate train­ing com­pa­ny called Lead­er­ship Dynam­ics Insti­tute.

Patrick offered his sem­i­nars both “for his peo­ple” and “who­ev­er want­ed to come,” says Church, and aimed to teach them “how to be suc­cess­ful, how to be a bet­ter hus­band, father, leader par­ent, on and on and on.” Over­promis­ing seems to be a hall­mark of fraud­u­lent self-improve­ment cours­es, and this one was no dif­fer­ent. What set it apart is the degree to which the par­tic­i­pants vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­ject­ed them­selves to what Church’s room­mate at his hotel called “a rather rough four days.” As they would learn, the true pur­pose of the course was to force its stu­dents to find their “moment of truth” through var­i­ous forms of beat­ing and tor­ture. One man was placed in a cof­fin, beat­en severe­ly, then locked in overnight; one was placed in a cage; one tied to a cross. These are just some of the hor­rors, accord­ing to the film.

Like some kind of sadis­tic Mil­gram exper­i­ment gone total­ly off the rails, the pro­gram enlist­ed all of the par­tic­i­pants to admin­is­ter beat­ings to each oth­er and pre­vent each from leav­ing. And like the Mil­gram exper­i­ment, the Mind Dynam­ics sem­i­nar stands as one of many object lessons in “the per­ils of obe­di­ence.” There are many more exam­ples of dark descents into cultish abuse in the self help world. Writer C.L. Tay­lor tells the more recent sto­ry of self-help busi­ness­man James Arthur Ray, who in 2011 was con­vict­ed of “three counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide when three peo­ple died dur­ing one of his ‘new age’ retreats.” These involved “sleep depri­va­tion, fire walk­ing, fast­ing, board break­ing and arrow break­ing,” and a sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny that turned dead­ly.

The fact that peo­ple are often will­ing to relin­quish their auton­o­my in order grow as indi­vid­u­als says a great deal about the amount of help peo­ple per­ceive they need and the degree to which human beings can be manip­u­lat­ed by charis­mat­ic lead­ers. In most cas­es, those lead­ers have no busi­ness giv­ing advice in the first place. As one for­mer self-help “expert,” Michelle Good­man (who found her­self pushed into the are­na by her pub­lish­er) admits, “the dirty lit­tle secret of those in the advice busi­ness is that we wind up teach­ing oth­ers the lessons we most need to learn our­selves.” Her advice to those who came to her with prob­lems she could­n’t real­is­ti­cal­ly solve: “You should real­ly talk to a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al about that.” To learn more about Church’s har­row­ing expe­ri­ence with Mind Dynam­ics, read his book The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Behold Octavia Butler’s Moti­va­tion­al Notes to Self

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness