From: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu (Robert McGrath)
Subject: Old but good sources on TM
Reply-To: mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 17:38:02 GMT

Here are a couple of classics that give TM a really rough going 
over.  Good stuff.

Eric Woodrum,
"Religious Organizational Change: An Analysis Based on the TM Movement"
Review of Religius Research, Volume 24, No. 2, December 1928, pp. 89-103.

Abstract: 
"Literature in the sociology of religion and general sociology is reviewed
to identify patterns on religious organizational change.  A battery of
methodological techniques including participant observation, unstructured
interviewing, and content analysis are employed to assess changes in the
TM movement organization.  During the Spiritual Mystical period
(1959-65), the movement attracted a few salvation oriented persons
with a variant of Hinduism.  The Counter Culture period (1965-69)
brought rapid growth as the diversified movement organization
recruited youths anticipating world transformation and this worldly
bliss.  In the Secularized, Popular Religious period (1970-present),
TM is marketed as a scientifically validated technique for worldly
benefits.  Most contemporary transcendental meditators have practical
utilitarian motivations and little committment, but a hidden
religiously oriented inner sect exists whose members'  dedication is
integral to the movement.  Organizational development and belief
change correspondence is established and parallels with other
movements identified."

[And I would add that the TM movement appears to have entered a new
Political Action period about 1990.]


Michael A. Persinger, Normand J. Carrey, and Lynn Suess,
TM and Cult Mania, The Christopher Publishing Houes, North Quincy
Mass., 1980.  [Psychologists, Laurentian University, Sudbury Ontario]

"Claims of the TM effects are neither unique nor special but are the
consequences of procedures associated with suggestion, placebo
reactions, simple relaxation, neurotic belief, and the mislabeling of
vauge emotional experiences.  In this book we investigate the precise
psychological and social procedures by which this movement manipulates
human behavior." p.7

Table of Contents:

1.  Introduction
	TM: Trick or Treatment?
	How Will (TM) Believers Respond to This Book?
2.  The TM Movement:  "Same Stuff, Different Bag"
	TM-Like Movements:  Symptoms of Social Change
	The Coue Treatment:  Turn of the Century TM
	The Emergence of TM
	The TM Success
3.  Flaws in the TM Experiments:  A Critical Evaluation
	Failure to Control for Set Effects
	Failure to Control for Expectancy of Relief
	Failure to Control for Placebo/Suggestible-Prone Subjects
	TM is not a Unique STate of Consciousness
	The Mantra Is an Aritifact
	No Comparitors
	Solicited Testimonials
	The Fasces Method or "Drown 'Em With Data Approach"
	No Direct Verification
	The Biased Experimenter
4.  All TM Effects Can Be Produced By Suggestibility/Placebo
Conditions
	Misconceptions About Hypnosis as a Special State
	Personality Characteristics of Very Responsive People
	Factors Influencing "Hypnotic" Responses
	Comparison of TM and Hypnotic/Placebo Effects
	Are TM Adherents Just Highly Suggestible?
	TM Conditioning as Stages in Suggestibility
	
5.  The TM Sell Job
	Proof by Numbers
	Proof by Affirmation
	The Einstein Sanction
	Proof by Television
	Proof by Lack of Disproof
	TM Teachers: Portrait of Pseudotherapists
	The Maharishi:  Manipulator of Images
6.  The TM Word Games
	Violation of Discourse Levels
	Simplicity as Profound Understanding
	The Use of Vague Terms
	Proof by Paired Questin-Answer
	Proof by Metaphor
7.  TM as a REligion
	TM Trasition into Religion
	TM as a Protoreligion:  From High School to Hinduism
8.  The Neurotic Believer Syndrome and TM
	The Believer's Methods of Avoiding Madness
	New Self, No Anxiety
	Transitional Anxiety
	Unfortunate Consequences of Neurotic Believers in Cult
	Settings
9.  TM:  Trigger to the Psychotic Prone?
	The Problem of Psychosis
	TM: Philosophy and Psychosis
	Meditation and Psycholtic Triggering
10.  Conclusion
	The Omnipotent Opiate
	Some First-order Proctections Against Cult Mania
	Things to Come
Appendix: TM Data Pool
Selected Bibliography


[This book is now out of date, but very thorough up to 1980.  Lots of
interesting stuff, including total demolition of the pro-TM
research, a severe pounding of TM's word games, inconvenient details
of people who have been harmed by TM, as well as embarassing info
about law suits.]

-- 
  Robert E. McGrath
  Urbana Illinois
  mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic