Getting It: The Psychology of est

Getting It: The Psychology of Est is a non-fiction book by American clinical psychologist Sheridan Fenwick, first published in 1976. It analyzes Werner Erhard’s Erhard Seminars Training or est. The book is based on Fenwick’s own experience of attending a four-day session of the est training.

About Getting It: The Psychology of est in brief

Summary Getting It: The Psychology of estGetting It: The Psychology of est is a non-fiction book by American clinical psychologist Sheridan Fenwick, first published in 1976. It analyzes Werner Erhard’s Erhard Seminars Training or est. The book is based on Fenwick’s own experience of attending a four-day session of the est training, an intensive 60-hour personal development course in the self-help genre. Fenwick concludes that the program’s long-term effects are unknown, the estTraining may not be appropriate for certain groups of people, and that the large proportion of participants experience positive effects. A year after Getting It was published, over 100,000 people completed the Est training, including public figures and mental health professionals. A second edition was published by Penguin Books in 1977, and a third edition by Bippincott Lincott Company in 1989. In the first section of the book, Fenwick describes the training process and the methods used during the course. The second section is analytic: Fenwick analyzes the training methods used by the est trainers, evaluates the course’s potential effects, and discusses Erhard’s background. In her analysis of the training, she states that the est program’s effects and the methodology of the course are unknown.

She concludes that people should know more about it and that it should be investigated more closely. The first edition of Getting It: The Psychology of Est was published September 16, 1976, by J. B. Lincincott & Company, and the second edition in 1977 by Penguin Lincitt Company, was published in 1977. It is divided into two sections: The first section describes Fenwick s own experiences of the program; the second section analyzes the est program  and analyzes its methodology and effects. It was written by Fenwick as a clinical psychologist, but she avoided transactional analysis or similar therapies, including Transcendental Meditation, Esalen, Arica, Gestalt therapy and Mind Dynamics. It has been cited in court cases for psychological experts to provide an online service to provide psychological experts for court cases. A hearing held in 1979 before the U.S. House of Representatives on a juvenile delinquents program depicted in Scared Straight! cited the book for background on the est Training.