Control Cult - Exegesis courses

I read this this morning in the observer, found it quite disturbing. We hear of group sex cults almost daily in the UK media. The lady who is the topic of the story used to work for this company, now she is Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair's "Lifestyle Guru".

observer.guardian.co.uk...

"Those who attended the induction were encouraged to move on to the second level of the Exegesis programme. Few have talked about what happened within the cult's inner core but it has subsequently been plagued by lurid allegations involving group sex and mind games."

"During the four-day induction course, attendees were lined up on a stage where they would scream out their worst experiences in a bid to confront their demons. Many ended up shaking uncontrollably from the experience. Oldfield says it cured him of his panic attacks. 'I was hyper-ventilating and I confronted my panic and found out where it came from. I turned into a newborn infant. The memory of that second birth was still there, deep inside my subconscious. I could feel the newness of the air on my skin, on my fingers and on my hair.'

But there was a darker side to the programme. 'It made you very insecure, and it made you focus on whatever it was that was bothering you deeply in your subconscious. It sort of pushed you, like doing psychotherapy in three days,' Oldfield said."

This is about the so-called guru Carole Caplin but it may as well be about Mrs Blair herself:

As one of the cult's former members put it: 'People think Carole's Machiavellian but she's really not bright enough. She never had a plan for dealing with any of this. Exegesis made her stronger but it also made her naive. It means any of the mess she's in now she never saw coming.



For some reason my lasting impression of Cherie Blair will be of her answering the door at Number 10 on a bad hair day in her dressing gown, totally unprepared for the press entourage outside.

Transformational programs are useful for some, but they have to have some good material to work on transforming to begin with. In the case of this candidate I am not too sure.