Fight Club, cognitive science, dopamine...and what the heck is an LGAT?

An interview with John Hunter, PhD

Dr John Hunter is a researcher and lecturer in Johannesburg, South Africa focusing on bipolar disorder, with a particular emphasis on Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs). I had the opportunity to interview him on December 13, 2023, and it was a fascinating, in-depth conversation. You can view his website on this link: https://johnhunterphd.com/

In this interview, Dr Hunter describes what an LGAT is, the undue influence these groups appear to exercise over participants, and his intriguing theory about the role that dopamine plays in these groups. In particular, he investigates how stress, sleep deprivation, and reward are used to manipulate participants’ emotional states.

We also discuss how this theory can help us understand the peak experiences that occur within religious practices. He also shares an essay he wrote about how the novel and film Fight Club seem to be based on Chuck Palahniuk’s experience with the LGAT industry.

This interview will be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners interested in spiritual and religious trauma, bipolar disorder, and peak experiences. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell us how you got interested in psychology, and this area in particular.

I studied finance initially at the University of Cape Town. In 2002, I went across to London to try and get work in investment banking. And it was just a really bad time. I just couldn't find work anywhere. So I went through a period of about nine or 10 months of incredible psychological stress. And then very abruptly, I was offered a job kind of out of the blue. I got this sort of sense of reward, and removal of stress. A few days later, I experienced mania for the first time, which is the elevated state of bipolar disorder. That was the first time I'd experienced that. I felt euphoric, confident, and full of energy. The world had so much meaning and purpose. And for about three months I was in that state.

You write about how your later diagnosis of bipolar disorder was key to your understanding of a Large Group Awareness Training. Tell us about that.

In 2010, I joined a company in Durban, South Africa. And as part of the induction, they wanted us to take part in these two personal development seminars. At the time, I didn’t know that they were LGATs. They wouldn't tell us what was involved. They just said, “You've got to trust it and it's going to be amazing. You'll have the best time of your life.” The chairman said to us, “You'll have the best day you've ever had, on the final day.” And I thought, “Well, if you've been manic, that's a pretty high bar.”

So I went into it blind. I didn’t know what to expect, and if we didn't complete the seminars, basically, we'd be fired. So there was a lot of pressure to do it. You're kind of told that it's going to be unpleasant, but that it's worth it, and that you've got to suspend your judgment. We were told, “It's like a course of antibiotics. You've got to finish it, otherwise it's not going to work.” And so there was all this stuff that made it difficult to get up and leave. And for me, also, losing the job was a big thing. Because I had lived with bipolar disorder for seven years when I took part in the LGAT, I had studied the triggers for manic episodes, and I knew that three major triggers are: (1) psychological stress; (2) sleep disruption; and (3) goal attainment (or “reward”). This was important in coming to understand what LGATs appear to be doing.

This LGAT lasted four days. The first three days were highly psychologically abusive: a lot of screaming, shouting, guided visualizations where you confront your mother and father, people crying. Many of the exercises and interactions appear to be designed to elicit guilt, shame, inadequacy, uncertainty, and fear. It was just horrific. So, the first trigger of mania – psychological stress - was clearly incorporated into the seminar. Then, there was sleep disruption. We’d finish at two in the morning, and they would give us homework every night. And that carried on for three nights in a row, so the second trigger of mania was also clearly incorporated. Then on the final day, they switched it around, removing all the psychological stress and replacing it with love and affirmation (“reward”). Because at the end you finish, and you graduate, and it's a lot of hugging and it feels like the leader and everyone else in the seminar loves you. You’re no longer an “asshole” – you’re “one of us.” So basically, what I noticed was that the three major triggers for mania were there: the psychological stress, the sleep disruption, and the goal attainment. 

Then I noticed the way that [participants] behaved afterward aligned closely with what I understood to be hypomanic [a mild form of mania] and manic symptoms. I was like, “These participants are doing all the things that you expect to see in bipolar disorder!” They were so euphoric, they had incredible levels of energy. People were saying that they were managing on just two or three hours of sleep a night. And people were doing impulsive things as well. A number of people got divorced immediately after participating, [and making other very impulsive decisions as well.]

[Matt’s Note: Hunter’s experience was not at all unusual. While LGATs are not considered cults, Chapter 8 of Dr Margaret Singer’s book (Cults in Our Midst) focuses on LGATs and the chapter is entitled Intruding Into The Workplace. Multiple press outlets have reported that large corporations, including Panda Express and Lululemon, have previously required employees to take part in similar training.]

How did you begin to realize that your experience was not unique—that these sorts of training were being run by multiple groups worldwide?

I didn't know what a Large Group Awareness Training was at the time. I had just been through this particular seminar, and they claimed to be unique (which is, ironically, not a unique claim for these organizations). But then you look up a couple of the exercises, and start finding your way to discussion forums, and you realize, “Oh, the same thing has been done for the last 50 years all over the world. It's pretty much identical.” On culteducation.com, there's a section on Large Group Awareness Trainings. And I think there were 17,000 or 19,000 posts at the time, from people who had been through these seminars.

I just started reading through all of them with this lens of mania and hypomania. Although the vocabulary used by participants may not be identical to that used by clinicians, I recognized that they were often describing indicators of hypomania and mania as a result of participation. A graduate, or those promoting the seminars, might say that participants feel more “decisive” when talking about [how they felt after a training], but the word “impulsive” might come up when you're talking about bipolar symptoms. Other words like “energy,” “confidence,” “power,” “freedom and spontaneity,” “productivity,” “euphoria,” “high,” “joyful,” “limitless,” and “creative” were used in the context of sudden LGAT “transformations,” but there were also participants who spoke of psychosis, mood swings, and suicidality and depression. These are all things that are associated with elevated and depressed moods in bipolar disorder. The more I investigated it, the more I became convinced that the “transformation” promised by LGATs is a short-term high that is very similar to the elevated states in bipolar disorder (hypomania and mania). Not only are the triggers of hypomania and mania present in LGATs, but the indicators of hypomania and mania also align closely with the indicators of LGAT “transformations.”

Your interest in this topic eventually became your PhD thesis. Tell us about that.

I thought, “Well, what are some of the major neurobiological theories and psychoanalytic theories that explain mania?”

The first major theory was a psychoanalytic theory from 1911, called the Manic Defense Hypothesis, [which asserts] that we've got these unconscious forces that are trying to keep us in balance and protect us. So the idea was that people with bipolar disorder—what was called manic depressive illness at the time—tend to be very sensitive to criticism. They've got very fragile self-esteem. As a result, an unconscious positive force pushes against those negative feelings to keep them in balance. And sometimes that positive force spirals out of control and pushes them way too high. So that’s a simplified version of an early psychoanalytic explanation for mania.

There are more recent theories. One of the more common theories to explain bipolar disorder would be the dopamine hypothesis of bipolar disorder. Neuroscientists would be upset with this simplification because obviously our brains are a lot more complicated than this, but the basic idea is that an elevation of dopamine leads to mania, and a depletion of dopamine is associated with depression. So I thought, “Okay, dopamine's maybe got something to do with it. Do any of the triggers for mania, or any of the LGAT conditions, have a significant impact on dopamine?”

And I found that acute psychological stress elevates dopamine, sleep disruption elevates dopamine, and goal attainment elevates dopamine. And psychological stress also makes the dopamine system more sensitive to reward.

So what happens in a Large Group Awareness Training is that they put you through an incredible amount of stress. So, theoretically,  your brainstarts producing dopamine to keep you in balance, trying to keep you in psychological homeostasis. A useful way to think about the effects of an elevation in dopamine is to consider the impact of taking a substance like cocaine… which causes a significant increase in dopamine signaling… it makes you feel confident and elevated and optimistic and energetic, and all of these things are very useful if you are psychologically threatened. Because of this, a release of dopamine when a person is stressed would theoretically be a very useful internal defense. But not only does your brain start to produce dopamine when you are stressed, but stress also makes the dopamine system more sensitive to future rewards. So, your dopamine system is now sitting there vigilant…waiting [for a reward]. And if anything rewarding happens, it doesn't kind of fire a little bit—it fires a lot.

So, what takes place in an LGAT? Number one, huge amounts of psychological stress. Dopamine starts elevating (this continues, intermittently, for a few days) and then on the final day of the seminar the stress is abruptly replaced with social reward… the graduation and the hugging and the approval from the trainer, etc. And so now, because this system is just ready for anything rewarding, this powerful social reward comes through. And theoretically, you've got this massive elevation in dopamine. So what would you expect in terms of the effects of that on people's behavior? You would expect euphoria, which you see. You’d expect incredible confidence, which you see. You’d expect increased levels of energy and productivity, which you see. You'd expect impulsive behavior, which you see. At extreme levels for particularly vulnerable people, you'd expect to see psychosis. While not very common, cases of psychosis have been reported as a result of LGAT participation consistently for the last 50 years. So the other thing is there's a dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia. A lot of the antipsychotic medications are dopamine blockers, because there's so much information that suggests that dopamine plays a role in psychosis.

And what have you seen for the last 50 years in these seminars? All these claims of manic behavior—impulsivity, participants talking about “the results”, the “transformations” that they've experienced— all of these results align with drastic mood elevation and increased dopamine levels.

So it seems that this theory, which you’ve named the dopaminergic-defense hypothesis, can explain quite a lot about the effect that LGATS have on participants. It also explains how different individuals might react differently to the same training—can you explain that?

Well, my view is that psychological stress is important for their results, and some people might find the sessions more stressful than other people. Some people's brains might have a response leading to psychosis. A few unlucky people might not be able to keep up with dopamine [stimulation], and their dopamine reserves [will lower] and they may fall into depressive states. So the claims of suicide, the claims of depression afterward the training, the claims of mood swings as a result of participation, and the claims of psychosis that have been coming through fairly regularly for the last 40, 50 years… There are ways of explaining these things now. It's almost exactly what you would expect to see when you're applying a one-size-fits-all process to a group of non-standardized people.

What you're going to see is this normal distribution of results. I believe that the trainings have evolved, to make sure that most participants get the [dopamine] high – this is the “transformation” they are selling. And then some people get it not as much. Some people experience psychosis, some people experience depression, and those are the outliers.

Have there been lawsuits or legal consequences for these groups? It seems to me that these groups could be accused of practicing mental health interventions without proper licensing.

One of the larger groups from the 1970s and 1980s which is no longer around (at least not under its original name) was Lifespring and it was hit by a string of lawsuits for harm coming to participants. This apparently played a big role in why it no longer exists as Lifespring. These organizations claim to not be doing anything related to psychology or mental health, although my view is that – given the nature of what is discussed by participants, and the techniques used, there are elements that seem very close to (poorly applied) therapeutic techniques. I address this in a section of my PhD, but it appears that as long as you don’t explicitly describe what you are doing as psychology, you can get away with it. Seems like a loophole to me.

How many people per year take these types of trainings? Is there any way to make an educated guess?

Dr. Michael Langone, who used to be the president of the International Cultic Studies Association, estimated that there are hundreds of these organizations around the world. (It’s important to note that LGATs are not considered to be cults by most cult awareness groups and educators.)Just one of the big organizations—I'd prefer not to mention their actual name [for legal reasons]—they claim 3 million people have participated in their seminars.  

What recommendations would you have for social workers or other mental health practitioners who learn that their client might be suffering from involvement in one of these groups?

If you're a mental health practitioner, I would say, look at my PhD. It's a little bit manic, so it's probably longer than it should be. But there's a lot of information in there, both from the neuroscience perspective and from the social psychology perspective, in terms of what [LGATs] are actually doing to manipulate people and to shut down critical thinking. While it’s long, it’s quite easy reading and it brings together information from more than 120 unique data sources to provide a detailed account of the history and processes of LGATs.

It seems that when friends or family members try to convince a person who is acting impulsively after taking an LGAT training, that it’s very hard to get them to slow down and think rationally, and not make huge changes in their life, like quitting a job or getting a divorce. Why do you think that is?

Having experienced hypomania and mania myself, I can just say that all the decisions made when you are in those states seem like they are really good ideas at the time. I’ve lived with bipolar disorder for more than two decades and I’ve completed a Ph.D. on the disorder, so I understand how mood distorts thinking and behavior. This doesn’t protect me from doing and saying things that I might really regret when I’m in those states. Now consider a person with no background in psychology, who is pushed into an elevated state, told that they are “transformed,” and encouraged to embrace this new life. For some this might pay off and risks taken may lead to great things, but for others these risky, impulsive decisions can ruin relationships and lives. It seems to me that LGATs are happy to count the successes, but very reluctant to acknowledge their role in the problems that result for many participants.

There are some fascinating elements of your dopaminergic-defense hypothesis that can be applied to religion, not just LGATs. Can you describe that a bit?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, in 2003 I had a manic experience, which I first thought was a religious experience. And I was like, “Well, I was fooled by this. Could other people be fooled by similar natural experiences?” At the time I thought many people might be fooled by a manic episode (because it felt just I as I expected a religious experience to feel), but at the time I thought only the 1-2% of the population with bipolar disorder could experience mania. And then in 2010 [after the LGAT], I was like, “Oh, you can actually get pretty much anyone to experience these symptoms, using a very specific process.”

And what's the process? Psychological suffering, followed by social reward.

So, what occurs in Christianity? You've got guilt, shame, and inadequacy. You were born a sinner, you're going to burn forever in hell if you don't repent. If you actually believe much of what is written in the Bible, then you've got a very good reason to experience psychological suffering. If you've got a conscience, and you're thinking, “What am I like as a human being, compared to the standard that's been set by my religion?” And if you're making that comparison, you're going to be feeling quite inadequate, and ashamed, and guilty,which is psychological suffering.

And so you have this period of psychological suffering, plus the possibility of death. So just from an existential perspective, the fear of death, which is pretty terrifying, and add to that the fear of hell—if you take on some of those beliefs, that's a lot of psychological suffering, which is then, through ritual and prayer, abruptly replaced with a sense of social reward of being forgiven, made new, washed clean, reunited with God the Father.

So you've got this process of psychological suffering followed by social reward, which we know based on my work on LGATs can elevate dopamine levels. And we know from functional imaging and pharmacological studies that an elevation in dopamine or seeking arousal seems to play a major role in at least some types of religious experiences.

If you're in a religious context and you're praying for forgiveness—it could be at home or even in church—that's going to make the priming even more relevant. And then you experience this elevation of dopamine, and you feel amazing power and joy and confidence and boldness and hope. You've been told to expect, for example, the Holy Spirit when you give your life to Jesus and are forgiven—and then suddenly you have this wonderful feeling. And so it's not unreasonable that a person might interpret that wonderful feeling as an encounter with God.

How has your own experience with bipolar disorder shaped your work and your understanding of religion?

Well, I experienced mania in 2003 and I was certain it was a religious experience. When I realized that it was a natural experience, it made me wonder whether other people might confuse natural experiences with supernatural experiences. I'm not a Christian now. I'm not an atheist, but I'm not a religious person now. And even in 2020, which was when I had my last manic episode, I thought that I was having a religious experience. I've done a PhD on bipolar disorder. I understand exactly what the symptoms are, but that's how compelling the experience can be.

A lot of people probably think that a bipolar diagnosis is easy to make, but the average delay between first symptoms and diagnosis is about eight years. Dr. Kay Jamison [a leading authority on bipolar disorder]—she was studying bipolar disorder at the time that she had her first manic episode, and she didn't think that it was a manic episode! So it's not like somebody experiences mania and they're like, “Oh, I'm definitely bipolar.” It just feels incredibly good. So people are going to explain it to themselves in other ways, before they might get the diagnosis or have an outsider come and say, well, maybe it's bipolar disorder.  So to think that other people might interpret this very ambiguous experience as something other than a natural experience based on something going on in their brain is very plausible. If it occurs in a religious context, then a person could easily interpret it as a religious experience.

What are the next steps in your research that you’re excited about?

My research is inductive. It’s about generating a hypothesis. The dopaminergic-defense hypothesis is saying, “Look at what the literature says about the relationship between these trainings and dopamine elevation. Look at what's going on in these seminars in terms of the way people are behaving, and what they are reporting about how they feel and what they are thinking. They all look like what you would expect with an elevation in dopamine or maybe a depletion of dopamine.”

My own psychiatrist, on the other hands, he’s a positivist. That framework says, “Until you measure the dopamine, there's nothing really there.” And I agree. That's a very important part of the scientific process. So the hypothesis has been generated based on observation, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that what these things are doing is they're elevating dopamine.

But to actually gather the evidence about dopamine levels, you need to send some people in there [to an LGAT training] and measure it. There are big practical considerations about getting permission from these organizations. I expect that they don't want people to know what they're actually doing and if it was confirmed that participation causes a significant increase in dopamine then it would also explain why some people experience psychosis and behave in ways that are problematic. I doubt they’ll support that sort of research. There’s no upside for them unless they are genuinely interested in the mechanism behind what they are doing

Also, that empirical testing of the relationship between participation and dopamine elevation, it's hard to do. I don't think that an ethics committee, knowing what goes on in these seminars, would want to send people in there [as study participants]. If the hypothesis is that some people might experience psychosis from participating, what ethics committee is going to be like, “Oh, great, just take some random people and throw them in there”?

Thats a good point. So, what other researchers and writers would you recommend for readers to check out on this topic?

I recommend Dr Steven Hassan, but I've also had a number of conversations with John Atack, who's a former Scientologist, who's got a great podcast. There's also a paper that I wrote on the relationship between LGATs and Fight Club. Chuck Palahniuk, the guy who wrote Fight Club, had taken part in one of the major LGATs in 1989, and the book and movie is – I believe -a metaphor for the LGAT industry.

What do you see happening down the road for LGATs and similar organizations? How can mental health professionals and public policy workers be involved in reducing the negative influence of LGAts?

There are a bunch of lawsuits going on in the troubled teen industry in the US at the moment. The workshops that are being used on these teenagers, most of whom have got preexisting mental health conditions, are based very heavily on Lifespring [a now-defunct LGAT organization]. So I think that might draw a lot of attention to them, and I think that there may be a possibility for laws to be changed, but I think that the way to deal with it is to just raise awareness. You can't wait for the lawmakers. I think that people should be able to take part in these seminars, but that they need more information than the elated sales pitch of a close family member or friend, who has been explicitly told not to reveal any details about what takes place in the seminar. Concerns have been raised about these seminars for decades, and anyone who takes part in one should be aware of these concerns and allowed to make an informed decision about participation.

A positive is that a lot of people are becoming aware of them and if you go onto YouTube or any other forms of social media that allow discussions, you can get a pretty good sense of people’s experiences from the comments. It's got to become more so, but I think a lot of work is being done, and people like yourself, myself, whoever— we just need to keep having these conversations.