Inside the psychokult - 4: half a century torture and suicide

In the fourth text of the study of the world of psychocults, Samizdat tells the history of the emergence and death of the main franchise of the training of personal growth of Lifespring. About how John Henley created a company where people were tortured and brought to suicide, over and over again departed from responsibility and who became his successors in Russia - read in a brief review of Samizdat.

Investigation: How psychocults bring to mental collapse and suicide

I.

The main course , after which families are thrown, leave home and take loans for transformation

II.

Advanced course: Heroes are thrown out of the boat, and the word is taken by the coach

III.

Leadership course: people walk from the windows, or why, after the transformation, not to become the same

IV.

The history of Lifespring Corporation, its Russian students and suicide chains half a century long

In 2016, singer Lolita Milyavskaya, with the support of State Duma deputy Elena Mizulina, wrote a statement to the police at the Moscow training center, where her husband, Dmitry Ivanov, attended the basic and advanced courses of Roman Tikhonov. Among the tasks, for example, it was: it was necessary to imagine himself lying in the coffin, bulging eyes and listening to the comments of the coach and other participants in the course about their inferiority. On the live air of her Instagram, Lolita said that for another task, her husband bought pink leggings and had to walk along the street in them. Such an exercise was invented to free people from "destructive attitudes and experienced painful experiments."

In the summer of the next year, Lolita came a notification of the decision made - they refused to open a criminal case: the MTC had a contract signed by Dmitry Ivanov, and it was not possible to prove the theft of funds.

Again, in the broadcast mode , Lolita read out an excerpt from a decision to refuse to institute criminal proceedings. According to the version of the investigator, “during this time [participation in the training] in the family of Dmitry Ivanov and Lolita Milyavskaya there was a discord. Most likely, Dmitry expected his wife to return with a tour later and he would have time to go at home, because during the training he did not have enough time, and Lolita returned a day earlier. ”

In general, psychocults are often involved in criminal cases - most often under articles on bringing to suicide or illegal educational activity without a license. The train of such processes, the solutions according to which are often made in favor of the accused, stretches for personal growth for a long time. The roots of the entire industry go back to the bench.

Between the courts

1969, USA. The judge announced the verdict: five years of prison for fraud. Student John Henley, the future creator of the most successful company - the organizer of personal training called Lifespring, was sitting on the dock. He was found guilty that he sold tenders for cleaning non -existent toilets to cleaning companies. In 1969, he was not yet 21 years old, and the punishment was replaced with conditional. Leaving the courtroom, Henley went to look for a new job.

In the 1960s, America was covered by the ideas of the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Karl Rogers. The main thesis of the new current was this: people have a huge personal potential and initially strive for perfection. Psychotherapy is able to benefit a healthy person who wants to reveal his capabilities. On the basis of these ideas and general achievements of social psychology, group classes arise that help teachers, managers and consultants master financial literacy, critical thinking, self -confidence, control of emotions and other useful skills.

One after another, training groups that serve the interests of large companies that needed the tibildting and motivation of employees began to arise. One of them was the cosmetic company Holid Magic, where John Henley settled down after he almost got into prison. Like all the employees of the company, Henley took part in the training called Leadership Dynamics.

Before starting classes, the participants signed the paper that they would not have complaints about the organizers if their mental health suffers during the training process. The listeners were insulted, beaten, deprived of sleep and locked them in the coffin so that they realize the value of life. According to the creators, the training had to destroy their previous identity and replace it with leadership qualities.

At one of John Henley’s classes, they locked in the coffin at 14 hours, and he just fell asleep. His equanimity struck the training organizers so much that they decided to enroll him in Leadership Dynamics Institute.

Working at Leadership Dynamics, John himself adhered to a tough and confrontation option for working with clients. The training participant said that in one of the classes four people kept him on the floor, pressing a wet rag to his mouth and nose until he lost consciousness. When he woke up after a swoon, Henley explained to him that all this was for his own good. “If you wish for success as much as your next breath, you will achieve it,” the instructor concluded.

Nevertheless, at the beginning of the seventies of the course of the course of the course, the lawsuit filed, in which Leadership Dynamics was accused of torture, sexual violence and fraud. In 1973, the company was recognized as a financial pyramid and closed. Henley nevertheless managed to get out of the water dry again and decided to continue with former colleagues, who also managed to avoid responsibility.

Life beats with a key

In 1974, former LEADERSHIP DYNAMICS coaches Bob White, Randy Revell, Charlene Amfermou and John Henley founded a company called LifeSpring - “Source of Life”. John Henley belonged to 92.7 % of the shares, so he is considered the main owner. Henley set himself the task of making his trainings more emotional. His program was not to relax, but to fill people with vital energy and a sense of present moment. Lifespring promised to his customers that the courses would make them more open, help to see themselves from the outside, and learn how to build a trust. The instructors promoted the idea of ​​“personal awareness” and convinced the participants that all the answers were already inside them.

Henley divided the training into five days of the basic course, five days of advanced, which was called “Interpersonal Experience), and 70 days of the leadership program. Each stage cost more than the previous one. Lifespring also offered short two -day seminars on such topics as relationships, health, finances, sexuality, “illusions and own subjective reality”, creativity, “discovery of personal power”.

In the classroom, the instructors demanded that people share their personal stories, and the group applauded in response. Participants took the obligation to bring their friends and acquaintances to the course. The coaches held an authoritarian position, introduced many rules and punished those who violated them. At the training, Lifespring was prohibited from wearing a clock, getting to the toilet, letting classes even for good reason, and disclose information about the course. “It seems contradictory, but the only way to freedom is control,” said John Henley.

The program provided for lectures, but the emphasis was placed on the practical part. Henley filled his course with group discussions, meditation, games, catharsical exercises (catharsis in psychology - re -experience of traumatic experience and liberation from it), as well as “most effective techniques” from eastern spiritual disciplines and parapsychology. After the Lifespring training, the participants suddenly began to believe in signs, reincarnation, palmistry and spiritualistic sessions. Graduates denied the existence of morality, claiming that they themselves create reality with the help of the power of their mind. They filed with admiration about the training and claimed that he changed their life, but could not explain how this happened.

The courses quickly gained popularity. Lifespring has expanded the assortment and introduced specialized trainings for children from 6 to 12 years old, adolescents, businessmen, prisoners, couples. The company also acquired the monthly publication The LifeSpring Family News, where John Henley and other community members broadcast their philosophy. According to the organizers, in 1977, more than 20,000 people passed the trainings. By the end of the eighties, the official figure of seminars exceeded 300 thousand people. Among them were congressmen, military, police, students of famous universities, even US President Jimmy Carter. The state and universities provided educational loans for the passage of the program. Lifespring organized corporate trainings for companies. The company founded a charity support fund of humanitarian and educational programs Lifespring Foundation, led by John Henley's wife, Candice.

The collapse of the empire of psychocults

At the end of the seventies, a series of lawsuits against Lifespring began. In 1979, Gail Renik died in Seattle due to asthma-a 27-year-old model and real estate agent. On the fifth day of the trainings, she suffered several attacks of asthma, but the coach assured her that she came up with problems with asthma herself, and ordered her to stop using pills. During the last attack, when Renik practically did not breathe, the coach looked at her, asked: “Gail, what caused the attack?” - And he left. According to various sources, the family of the girl sued the company from 300 to 400 thousand dollars. Another girl, Linda Smith, was hospitalized in a psychiatric dispensary two weeks after the end of the trainings. Upon returning home, Linda, listening late in the evening from the trainings, took out a gun and shot in her head. The number of suicides that took place immediately after the end of the trainings is still unknown, since the relatives of not all the victims turned to the police or the press. But even those who turned to higher authorities for help did not always win things.

Only two cases against Lifespring reached the jury, in other cases, the company paid plaintiffs from 150 thousand dollars to 500 thousand, never pleading guilty. In the year, Lifespring spent about a million dollars on litigation, which was not a problem for them: the company's income reached more than 24 million in the same period.

In 1983, Lifespring won the case against Florence Simpson, her client from Philadelphia. She convinced the court that the company had to warn her about the stress that she would transfer at the training. Representatives of Lifespring, in turn, assured the jury that they warned customers about the prohibition of training in the presence of mental problems. The jury sided with Lifespring and decided that Florence had already available to trainings did not allow us to understand whether the trainings had done even greater damage to her.

In 1984, Deborah Bingham from New Jersey sued LifeSpring due to the psychological injury that the trainings inflicted on her. Immediately after their end, she considered herself a “new man”, but a few weeks later she woke up, feeling absolutely empty. This led to problems with sleep, food and panic attacks and shaking. And it began during one of the exercises on the course, when the rest of the participants stood opposite the deborus and criticized the woman non -stop, mocked her body and personality. After the training, Deborah had to undergo psychiatric treatment, but this did not help after years. Then the jury accused Lifespring and ordered to pay a woman an amount of 800 thousand dollars. Lawyer Gerald Raland led several cases, protecting the victims of Lifespring. Among his wards was a man who, after the end of the trainings, was sure that God asked him to sacrifice a little son, and a woman who believed that she was able to control the work of traffic lights.

Since the 1970s, Lifespring has often been criticized in the press. Psychological magazines called the company a psycho -culture and accused it of the coaches used hidden techniques of control and pressure, not allowing people to leave the community. In the 1980s, reporters of the 20/20 television show and The Washington Post issued investigations of LifeSpring, where they talked about psychological violence against training participants. The company twice changed the name - first to the "Heritage Center", then to the "Center for Gratitude". In 2000, Lifespring ceased to exist, but before that Henley managed to get to Russia.

The story of one octopus

For the first time, transformation trainings were held in Russia in 1989 by the LifeSpring Foundation with the Charity Fund with the support of the Russian Academy of Sciences. With the participation of Kandis Henley, John Henley's wife, the Foundation “Spring of Life” opens-for some reason the founders choose a named, not quite correct translation of the word “Lifespring”.

The Spring of Life opened its representative offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Naberezhnye Chelny, Vladikavkaz, Kaliningrad, where she began to conduct her classes and educate Russian coaches. From this moment, the Russian page of the history of transformation trainings began.

By 1995, disagreements related to the ambitions of managers, financial policy and management issues arose between the American and Russian sides of the “spring of life”. The situation ended with a break in relations between maternal and subsidiaries, and the Americans decided to make a second attempt: Candice Henley established the charity fund to support humanitarian and educational programs. One of the graduates stood at the head of the company - Roman Tikhonov, the same coach, on whose course the husband of Lolita Milyavskaya will be ordered to put on pink leggings. Roman - a graduate of Moscow State University, from 1996 to 1998 was trained as a personal growth coach in the United States, where he studied with John Henley himself. To this day, he remains one of the most important figures in the world of Russian trainings.

Less than a year later, the previous “spring of life” survived a new series of splitting and began to multiply with division. In 1997, only the name and office remained from the “spring of life”, where invited specialists later began to conduct business training. By the end of 1997, the transformation business in Russia finally got out of the control of the Americans and Russian coaches brought up on the traditions of the deceased Empire Henley came to the fore. In 1997, they controlled five companies conducting LifeSpring format training in various interpretations: two “Spring of Life”, “Step to the Future”, “Open Forum” and “Inspiration Network”.

Real leaders

In 1999, the Rosa of the World training center arose, setting its task "Harmful and comprehensive development of a person in the material world, in the mental component of man, in the emotional sphere and spiritual growth." The creator of the Center Vladislav Novgorodtsev went through his first training in Moscow back in the early nineties, and he liked it so much that he decided to devote his whole life to this matter. In 1995, he trained in an American training company, after which he made a career in the fragment of the Russian franchise Lifespring under the name “Open Forum” and went on independent swimming. For almost ten years, the Rosa of the World has successfully carried out activities and has not been fundamentally different from all other training companies: Vladislav and other coachies conducted both group courses and corporate ones.

In 2004, Roman Tikhonov founded the Moscow training center (MTC), where his wife, Natalya Tikhonova, worked with him in a couple. Together they conducted three -speed courses, which consisted of the main part, advanced and leadership programs.

People leaving the windows

Now a criminal case is being carried out against the MTC about bringing Tatyana Legeza to the suicide, who committed suicide in 2015, a year after the completion of the leadership program. According to the decision of the Simonovsky court, in March 2019, the Moscow training center had to stop working, but not because of the continued investigation in the legend case, but because of a parallel lost lawsuit about the organization of illegal educational activities. This, however, did not prevent the company from opening a new site under a different name.

Training centers in Russia are not prohibited, but sometimes they close after criminal cases or accidents. There is a practice when almost immediately centers with the same coaching composition simply change the name and continue their work. So in the end, it happened with the "rose of the world" Vladislav Novgorodtsev.

On June 28, 2008, the body of the 20-year-old model Ruslana Korshunova under the window of her rented apartment was discovered in Manhattan. A few months before, Ruslan ate courses at Novgorodtsev’s school “Rose of the World”. Together with her, her friend and model Anastasia Drozdova took the courses.

Anastasia jumped out the window a year after the death of Ruslan. Then it was not possible to prove anything, and the accusations of the Rosa of the World were not brought, but the company was still closed. Novgorodtsev said in the media that cases with girls began to scare away from the company of customers.

Almost immediately, he opened the Novgorod Euducation, which works now. Among their trainings, in addition to the basic and advanced, there is a special one for women in which they are taught to “love and be loved”, and a pair - for men and women created to strengthen relationships. Точное количество действующих в России тренингов личностного роста сегодня неизвестно. Они действуют во всех крупных городах страны, и только в Москве такие услуги оказывают сотни компаний. По консервативным оценкам самиздата на основании анализа открытых источников и с вычетом компаний-клонов в целом по стране их не менее трех тысяч.

В следующем сезоне самиздат расскажет о гендерных тренингах, где женщин побуждают заниматься проституцией, а мужчин обещают превращать в воинов, рискуя собственной жизнью. А также о людях, которые годами ведут борьбу против психокультов, сотрудничают с ФСБ, подают иски и раз за разом оказываются в числе проигравших.

Если вы или ваши близкие сталкивались с тренингами личностного роста и вы хотите рассказать свою историю, пишите нам на почтовый ящик [email protected]