by Adelaide Bry
But as the men came and went, I heard the same theme over and over. Convicts admitting that they had known what they were getting into and now accepting the consequences.
From another, a young redhead, "When I run up against a brick wall, I know that's the way I want it."
Another, a tough-looking six-footer: "What I see now is that I used my own agreements instead of looking out there at the world. I never bought anyone else's agreements until I got hit over the head, literally, with a club. The sky was the limit in my life. Oh, hell, I'm not going to say I'm perfect now but even here I get along a hell of a lot better than I used to."
Each had come to the training for a different reason. "I took it because there wasn't anything else to do," a twenty-three-year-old blond who looked like a college student explained. "But I really roll with the punches now. Sure I'll be glad when I get out of here [he had three years left on a five-year sentence]. But right now I'm paying attention to right now."
The words sounded pat to me but the person speaking was totally real. Later, others were to say essentia]ly the same thing. If Werner had accomplished nothing else during the training, this kind of acceptance alone was worth the whole venture. I was told that most prisoners spent their lives daydreaming about the distant future, looking to the time when they would be released. By being in the here and now, and by accepting that "here" meant three sets of barbed wire, guard towers, and restricted movement, then they had choices. A former dope dealer summed it up with a Werner quote: "It's much easier to ride the horse in the direction he's going."
Some of those interviewed hadn't completed the training. "They had X-rated movies going that weekend" one confessed with a grin. Another, who felt Werner "could make a person change their mind about love," said he got tired of sitting. And another left "because I'm partly satisfied with what I am." The training is heavy stuff, and I could see that an X-rated movie was an easy distraction.
The most interesting responses were from men who were knowledgeable about therapeutic and rehabilitation techniques. They had been involved in counseling or drug abuse programs and/or group therapy, including Transactional Analysis. Some of these programs they had experienced before they were imprisoned or in other prisons; others they had pursued at Lompoc.
A particularly sharp, articulate graduate told us: "I stood up there and had the most fantastic thought. Everyone looked so . . . transparent. And I suddenly realized, 'What am I afraid of? Them?' I was sick that I've walked around afraid this long. I think about that every time I get into a conversation and our fronts go up and I can feel the fear between us. I don't take the initiative yet to try and break down that fear and to see just how far it would go."
Another observed that the people who don't get anything out of est are the same people who don't get anything out of counseling or therapy. "They just don't want to look at themselves."
When the series of brief interviews was over, I met with Burt Kerish, Lompoc's competent and gracious clinical psychologist for the last fifteen years. He had been in the first Lompoc training, conducted personally by Werner (there have been two trainings so far, attended by 118 prisoners). Eager to share his experience, Burt told me that he got that people both in and out of the prison found him intimidating. "And I was not aware of it." Among his life changes since the est training: "I find more aliveness in assisting at est than playing at the beach, and I enjoy both."
Burt had asked three est graduates to meet with me in an informal setting to discuss the training in more detail. I was excited about it. One of the three, I was told, had been convicted of rape and bank robbery. Another was also a bank robber, and the third was a big-time dope smuggler. We were sitting around Burt's office, informally, with no bars, guards, or guns -- none of the props I had expected.
Of the three men, Jack* was the most eager to share his experience. He was also the most articulate, a handsome young black who had been convicted of both rape and bank robbery.
* I've used fictional names for prisoners throughout this chapter.
"What I got out of est is self-control and self-awareness." His deep brown eyes looked directly at me. "Some days my mind just can't stop wishing I were out. So then I say, 'Why wish to be out there when you can't? Just relax and flow with it and take it as it comes.' I go through that maybe ten times a day to pull myself out of it. But it works. I tell myself, 'This is all there is right now so just relax and quit fighting because you can't do anything but worry yourself to death trying to make it something it isn't.'"
Jack had been in Transactional Analysis in the prison and he felt that TA was his first awareness of how he was "put together."* He also felt it had prepared him for the est experience which he had been through eight months previously. "Frankly," he said, "none of it is any magic for me. But what works best is something I got from est, and that's telling myself that this is what it is, so just let it be."
* Transactional Analysis is a system developed by the late Dr. Eric Berne in which the personality Is arbitrarily divided into three parts: parent, adult, and child. A shorthand, rhythmic explanation is that the "parent" part Is concerned with what you were taught; the "adult" with thought; the "child" with felt. TA is a concrete system for looking at oneself. It is widely used in therapy and business to help people clarify their thinking and feelings, and then change their behavior.
He confessed that he had slept during the processes so he had no recollection of them. (Recall that the trainer claims all you have to do is be at the training -- awake or asleep -- and the rest just happens.)
While Jack and I talked the other two men listened and watched, saying nothing. But when he began to speak about the Danger Process, their attention picked up. It was the one process the prisoners I talked with had consistently responded to.
"I got up on the platform," Jack began, "and looked at the rest of the prisoners and I saw that everybody in that audience was really scared. While I was watching one guy, especially, who wouldn't look at nobody -- he just stared at the wall -- I thought that it couldn't be that bad. So when I got up there I just started looking people in the eye. And I saw that they were scared of me." It was an important realization for this man who had devoted his life to compensating for his fears.
The man they called Smarty finally spoke up. He was thoughtful and chose his words carefully. "I can conceive, now, of not doing what I used to do, on the basis of not breaking my agreements. Both TA and est helped. I have a wife and three kids out there and, if not for that, I would have gone back to my old bag, which is running drugs and making a lot of money, but not now."
Bill, the third prisoner, attacked Smarty for his new views. "You lived before for the accumulation of money through drugs. You going to really change your motivations now?"
"Yes, I am." The answer was soft, honest, undefensive. Bill must have believed him. He didn't press his point.
Instead, he offered to talk about himself. "I put in for parole and they disapproved it. When I found out, I got pretty upset, went back to my cell, and just sat there experiencing my upset. You know what?" He paused for dramatic effect. "It went away!"
"I'm going back to school to get a B.A. in sociology, and maybe become a social worker. I don't want the world. But I'd like to live as comfortably as I can and that's what I'm going to do." He pounded his fist for emphasis. "I just read an article called 'The Americanized Robot' about how people are working and spinning their wheels, and we here are just rejects. Sure, there were a lot of us who were programmed to buck society. But not me anymore." And then, in case I hadn't heard, he repeated, "No more."
Burt Kerish wanted to talk about his experience -- which surprised me. The prisoners eagerly absorbed his words. There was no hint of glee on their faces as they heard their superior expose what in other circumstances would be considered weakness. They were with him.
"The first thing I did when I went into the training was to put my psychologist number on it. That was probably the last time. What I do now is simply suspend al
l judgment. Judgment is a voice in the back of my head and it still goes on but I don't allow it to affect my relationships."
Burt shared that he had always been on guard against being taken in by anybody -- car salesmen, insurance salesmen, or "slick Philadelphia cons like Werner. Now what I do is to enjoy him and everybody else while that little voice inside just keeps going.
"I'm eligible to retire soon," he told me. "Until I took est I was just going to play, which meant sailing or sitting. Now I look at play as if it were work and there is no difference. People ask me what the hell I do around here, in the prison, and I tell them I'm playing. No one can tell the difference because I'm having such a good time."
I was deeply moved listening to these four men -- three on the inside looking out, and one their mentor, with them as an equal. I had come to the prison expecting to find grim tragedy: people who were bitter, lost, angry. They may have been there, but they weren't among the men I encountered.
Instead what I found were people leading caged lives with integrity. I found people whose lives had gone wrong but who were facing where they were at with humor, intelligence, compassion, and courage.
When it came time for me to leave, I did so reluctantly. I felt that I had found an oasis of beauty and love in the midst of a wasteland. I had made real contact with those I met, and we had shared some good honest experiences. I would cherish those moments always; I got that I enjoyed those hours in prison more than many hours when I'm "having pleasure."
We all shook hands and then, spontaneously, we hugged each other. At the time it seemed the most natural thing to do. It was only later, hours after I had left the prison, that the incongruity of me in the arms of these tough, once-brutal men hit me. I found myself laughing out loud at the recollection.
When I left the prison and heard the electronic lock click shut behind me, I had the fleeting sense that I was being locked out.
The est involvement with prisoners is more than an interesting one. I feel that it may have broad ramifications for all of us, from those who park illegally and cheat on their income-tax returns to the big-time gangsters who end up in jail.
The essence of it all is taking responsibility for your behavior. An est article about the prison training says, "Being in prison doesn't seem to be such a terrible punishment for people after they have taken responsibility for their lives. Being responsible may be the key to making prisons work. As Ted [Ted Long, an est trainer] pointed out in the training, 'If you guys find out that you dig it here, they might have to close this place.'"
Take that outside prison walls and what you get is: Being responsible may be the key to making society work. And if everyone finds out they dig being wherever they are, fulfilling their responsibilities in their offices and schools and homes, then society's punitive measures might become obsolete.
Werner tells the story of his experience training a ghetto chief: *
* East West Journal (September, 1974).
"About halfway through the training, Arthur [the chief] stood up and said, 'You know, Werner, I just realized something. You are going to take all my stuff away from me. And if I go back to the ghetto, and I don't have my stuff, I'm liable to get killed. I don't know whether I belong here or not.' Anyway, Arthur took the whole training. . . . The point of the story was, by becoming detached . . . by becoming unattached to his survival mechanism, he became the cause of his behavior instead of the effect of his behavior."
What, if any, long-term effect does the training have on the prisoners who took it? Burt Kerish, as quoted by an est staff writer, says: "Most of the inmates who took that first training have been released, and I don't mean to say it was because of the training. I don't really know. Some of them got out because their sentences were up. Others were able to tell the parole board clearly that they were ready to be responsible."
The About est brochure quotes a letter sent to est by Frank Kenton, the recently retired warden of Lompoc: "There has been nothing but praise about the program from those involved and any inmates and staff who have heard about it. Seldom has such a program received such acceptance. We thank you for presenting it here at Lompoc, and the benefits are certainly reflected in the attitudes and many positive responses that have come to our staff's attention."
Most telling, although inconclusive, is the evaluation done by Dr. Scott Moss in July, 1974, which he has kindly permitted me to share. His report was based on twenty-minute interviews with five people in each of three groups chosen at random: those who completed the training; those who began but did not complete it; and those who did not sign up or participate in any manner. He chose the first ten from among the 160 inmates who signed up. (Of those, fifty-three completed the first training.)
Dr. Moss's informal conclusions were that the group which finished the training saw life in prison as more valuable and meaningful than the other two groups. He noted that "a subjective impression was that the [subjects in Group I] were more intelligent, open and generally able to express themselves. This could have influenced the semantic differential ratings; i.e., which came first, the est experience or the personality traits?" (In a subsequent report, he wrote: "Group I did not turn out to be more intelligent than the other two groups . . . they were somewhat better educated, more verbally expressive, tended to be in a greater number of inmate organizations, suffered less major reprimands, and showed greater self-control.")
Dr. Moss observed that those subjects who completed the est training were apparently more relaxed, more insightful, and more able to express themselves than those who had had no contact. He quotes them in his report:
I'm doing things the same as I was, but at least I know what I'm doing now... est is the solution to problems I've had for a long time. . . . It gives you a direction to solve problems. It helps me get along. . . . I found out things that help me that I should have known myself. est helps us see them better. . . . It's hard to put into words, but I feel easier about myself; who I am; why I do things. . . . I can really evaluate honestly why I do things I do. . . . I seem to have a better perception of myself and my surroundings. . . . I can't explain it; I'm just accepting things as they are.
Dr. Moss notes, in passing, the "mystique connected with est" and that "no one seems to know why they [the prisoners] feel so strongly about it or how changes have occurred." He speculates that it might be the trainers' charisma.
In conclusion he says, "Regardless of the reasons, it is evident that est is a beneficial experience for those inmates who completed it."
The quote I like best comes from a recent prison grad: "I am now the guru of my whole unit. I got sixty guys following me around asking me questions about the way things are. They say to me, 'Hey, September, say it again what you said before,' and I say it again, and they say, 'Yeah, right on!'"
Jason
Jason is twenty-one, tall, lanky, with gentle blue eyes. I knew, through his parents, that he had been deeply depressed and that in the three years since he finished high school he had done little besides sleep and smoke grass. He recently got a job working with a golfer.
Going to est was really scary for me. When they kept telling me I was going to change my whole life I was scared of that. I thought they might do it.
They kept telling us that the room was a safe place but I didn't feel so safe there. I hated a lot of the people. I didn't want to go back the second day. Someone told me about a girl who had told him that she had cried the whole first night. That made me feel better, so I went back.
The only part I enjoyed was where everyone has to make a fool of themselves. I really liked seeing all those people who I was afraid of being fools.
The first month after the training I was in a panic, like I was being pushed into a corner. I thought I was going nuts. I went over and over what the trainer had said and my mind was throwing it up. Some nights I would go out behind the garage and sob. I couldn't understand why. After a month it stopped. I started thinking about what was really going on with me and the
fear stopped. I stopped biting my nails and started playing the guitar. I began to get that I'm responsible for what happens to me.
I'm not a good salesman for est. But I started thinking intensely about what I wanted to do with my life. And I got a job. I'm learning all I can and I'm starting to take pride in doing a good job. I even started making my bed and keeping my room neat. I like the Idea of cleanliness, which I never did before. My room was a mess. Now I'm thinking, "What can I do next to be better?"
My relationship with my family is a lot closer. I've always liked my father a lot but my mother and I didn't get along. Now it's great. I have a really nice family.
I used to blame everybody. Like I used to tell my mother, "You owe me something. You brought me into this world."
I get depressed for a couple of hours now and then and I move on to something else.
7
Tots, Teens, Grads, and Others
"I'm inventing new words and stuff. Like 'Nothing is impossible.'" -- An eight-year-old graduate
There's no such thing as being too old for est training -- there was a man over seventy who trained with me. And if you're at least six years old, you're not too young. Although you can only get it in the training, est, like its participants, comes in many shapes and sizes.