Werner Erhard and Associates - Evaluations of "The Forum"

Evaluations of "The Forum"

In their self-published book Self Realization: The est and Forum Phenomena in American Society, Espy M. Navarro and Robert Navarro stated:

What is a fact is that the collective experiences of over 1,400,000 human beings who have gone through either the est training or the Forum series, and each of their particular contributions that have resulted from these experiences have certainly had an impact on America and the world.

Werner Erhard, without any formal credentials, degrees or advanced educational training used his innate intelligence, intuition and insight to promote self-awareness in the United States. In the 1970's he was right for the times — in synch with the fledgling "me generation." By the time that he had retired the est training in 1984, and when he left the Forum in 1991, almost 750,000 people had undergone the courses that he had developed and marketed ... providing one of the best and quickest opportunities available to radically alter one's life. The importance of the est training and the Forum series, especially in the United States, is in the form of individual contributions that have transformed and enabled the people of this nation to enjoy a new level of spirituality, empowerment, perception and enhancement of their personal enlivenment and contribution.

A scientific study, commissioned by Werner Erhard and Associates and conducted by a team of psychology professors, concluded that attending the Forum had minimal lasting effects — positive or negative — on participants' self-perception. The research won an American Psychological Association "National Psychological Consultants to Management Award" in 1989.

The results of the research study appeared in two articles in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1989, and in 1990, and in 1990 in a book titled "Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training".