• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Lifespring: The Self-Help Cult That Breaks Minds

MrRING

Android Futureman
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
6,053
I recently started listening to a new podcast called Good Cult that has some interesting things to say about the self-help group Lifespring.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-cult/id1643228328

The description of the show:
River Donaghey grew up in a cult. Or at least that’s what some people called it. His parents called it a “personal-growth seminar group.” Its leader called it “one big happy family.” But there was a dark side to the world River grew up in. One he never heard about as a kid.

In the 1970s and 80s, a self-help company called Lifespring took America by storm. Hundreds of thousands of people walked out of Lifespring as true believers, convinced that the seminars had the power to change the world. But dozens of trainees claimed that after taking a seminar, they had a psychotic break. Some spent months in the hospital. Others attempted suicide. And at least four people died.

River spent the past year digging into the bizarre, untold story of Lifespring and its controversial leader: a convicted felon turned New Age guru named John Hanley. What he uncovered made him question everything he thought he knew about his childhood. And about the seminars that are still changing lives—and ruining them—to this day.
The thing is, I can remember this group being talked about back in the day, but I hadn't thought about them for years. The suicide that they cover in the first episode was of somebody who went to the training, which stirred up so many dark things about his past that shortly after attending the meeting he stripped naked and jumped from the top of a building.

The current Wikipedia page on Lifespring has plenty of detail on lawsuits related to the trainings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring
Lifespring claims to have trained more than 400,000 people through its ten centers across the country. A number of lawsuits were filed against Lifespring (personal communication with trainers), including two cases in which deaths allegedly resulted from trainings. Lifespring settled most of the suits.

In one case an asthmatic was allegedly told that her asthma exacerbation was psychological and later died from the exacerbation. The lawsuit was settled for $450,000, and Lifespring admitted no wrongdoing. In another case a man who could not swim was made to jump into a river and drowned. This case was also settled out of court.[22] Many suits said the trainings placed participants under extreme psychological stress.

The Washington Post published an article about the company in 1987.[4] It quotes Hanley as saying, "If a thousand people get benefit from the training, and one person is harmed, I'd can it. I have an absolute commitment for having this training work for every person who takes it." However, according to the Post, by 1987 Hanley and other Lifespring executives had known for more than a decade that some people were not suited for this level of personal inquiry. As evidence, the Post cited:


  • Talk among top company officials about how to make the trainings less harsh while maintaining their effectiveness
  • Dozens of reports submitted to Hanley in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Lifespring staff about participants who became panicky, confused, or nervous

Over time, the training company began qualifying students and required doctors' signatures for people who might require therapy rather than coaching.
A video on Lifespring from it's heyday:

And coverage of ex-members - Ginni Lamp Thomas is the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas:
Steve Hassan leads a meeting for former cult members. Ginni Lamp (Thomas) speaks at 17:40 about her involvement in Lifespring. Ginni Lamp married Clarence Thomas in 1987 and then officially became Ginni Thomas. I apologize for not clarifying that previously. Many of the major former member activists speak at this meeting including Joe Szimhart, Paul Martin, Carol Giambalvo and more. It was a time in history where it was 10 years from the Jonestown assassination of Congressman Leo J. Ryan and murder of over 900 Americans (over 300 were children). We were pushing for a Cult Awareness Week to create more knowledge and awareness about destructive authoritarian cults.
 
Last edited:
In the 1990's, I knew a couple from southern California (hey at least they weren't from Florida) who had gone through the initial Lifespring weekend courses. One urged me to do it as my fears would disappear and I would become incredibly effective. I thought it sounded too much like EST and declined. Plus, it was expensive; I vaguely recall it costing $375/weekend, and several weekends being required.

Both people, for about a year after their training, did indeed confront their fears, accomplishing much - and in the process alienated many friends and family members. They eventually drifted away from Lifespring and become more normal. While they were in the Lifespring true believers phase, they were actively encouraged by their coaches to be selfish and use other people to accomplish their goals. It was a version of the perennial classic "I get to do what I want and if you don't like it that is your problem." A focus on short-term goals, no acknowledgement of responsibility to others in the community, and ultimately unsuccessful, I think, because so unbalanced.

I mistrust any group mind-changing experience which does not allow you to go to the bathroom for over 12 hours at a time, and which uses social embarrassment and intimidation to achieve results. My friends, while in the true believer phase, explained that these were just techniques to help them overcome their shortcomings, and were harmless in themselves.

Jack Kornfield, an American Buddhist author, has written about the difference between healthy and unhealthy communities. Even though he wrote about spiritual communities, I found much relevance to all sorts of communities: psychological, self-help, ecological, religious, political, etc. In this lifetime, I am always suspicious of true believers of any sort. I long to be a true believer and have no doubts and know what it all means; I just can't figure out how to do it. Maybe next lifetime :)
 
Last edited:
I recently started listening to a new podcast called Good Cult that has some interesting things to say about the self-help group Lifespring.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-cult/id1643228328

The description of the show:

The thing is, I can remember this group being talked about back in the day, but I hadn't thought about them for years. The suicide that they cover in the first episode was of somebody who went to the training, which stirred up so many dark things about his past that shortly after attending the meeting he stripped naked and jumped from the top of a building.

The current Wikipedia page on Lifespring has plenty of detail on lawsuits related to the trainings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespring

A video on Lifespring from it's heyday:

And coverage of ex-members - Ginni Lamp Thomas is the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas:
I caught this same new podcast. Very interesting as the podcaster was brought up in a cult (his revelation) and when he looked into the teachings, he found Lifespring. He is doing 6 episodes about Lifespring if I understand him correctly.

@Endlessly Amazed, I think you would find this podcast interesting.
 
I caught this same new podcast. Very interesting as the podcaster was brought up in a cult (his revelation) and when he looked into the teachings, he found Lifespring. He is doing 6 episodes about Lifespring if I understand him correctly.

@Endlessly Amazed, I think you would find this podcast interesting.

Thanks, yes! I have marked this as a weekend viewing. I suspect that many cults share the same psychological manipulations. Not because the leaders went to the same "Cults R Us" training, but because the manipulations are rooted in human needs and drivers of behaviors.
 
One of the things revealed in the first episode is that John Hanley, the leader of Lifespring, took the idea of the kind of training from another edge-of-sanity self-help guru after his own experience at one of their training sessions. According to the Good Cult podcast, Hanley was mostly a con artist before that meeting, but when he took their training he so annoyed the trainers and other participants that they jumped him and locked him in a metal coffin (a prop brought to the session regularly). After beating on the outside with baseball bats, they left him in the coffin for most of a day, but he refused to come back and admit that they finally had him beat. Within that confined space, he became sure of how he could take the concepts and build on them for what became Lifespring. He wasn't a licensed psychotherapist or psychiatrist, but they would apparently just make stuff up spur of the moment in sessions without consideration of if it was ethical or beneficial.
 
One of the things revealed in the first episode is that John Hanley, the leader of Lifespring, took the idea of the kind of training from another edge-of-sanity self-help guru after his own experience at one of their training sessions. According to the Good Cult podcast, Hanley was mostly a con artist before that meeting, but when he took their training he so annoyed the trainers and other participants that they jumped him and locked him in a metal coffin (a prop brought to the session regularly). After beating on the outside with baseball bats, they left him in the coffin for most of a day, but he refused to come back and admit that they finally had him beat. Within that confined space, he became sure of how he could take the concepts and build on them for what became Lifespring. He wasn't a licensed psychotherapist or psychiatrist, but they would apparently just make stuff up spur of the moment in sessions without consideration of if it was ethical or beneficial.
I was shocked by this turn, but it just shows me how sociopathic the leader of Lifespring is.

And manipulation and isolation is the key trait to cult leaders. Anyone who questions is either threatened (if they've got family in the cult) or manipulated in other ways if they don't. Though cults are arranged to set people up to have families within the cult.
 
Back
Top