PSI Seminars is a for-profit private company which offers Large Group Awareness Training

Large Group Awareness Training

Large-group awareness training refers to activities usually offered by groups linked with the human potential movement which claim to increase self-awareness and bring about desirable transformations in individuals' personal lives...

 courses. PSI was founded in 1973 by Thomas Willhite and Jane Willhite and the company is presently based out of Clearlake Oaks, California

Clearlake Oaks, California

Clearlake Oaks is a census-designated place in Lake County, California, United States. It is located on the extreme south sast of Clear Lake, 13 miles east-southeast of Lakeport, at an elevation of 1,335 feet...

Courses

PSI Seminars offers a series of progressively more challenging seminars;

• PSI Basic, a weekend seminar people attend in a city close to their home
• PSI 7, a seven day seminar held at the PSI headquarters located on a ranch in Clearlake Oaks, California
• Men's Leadership Seminar and Women's Leadership Seminar, nine day seminars also held at PSI headquarters. The curriculum is slightly different for men and women, so men and women attend separate courses.

History

PSI was founded in 1973 by Thomas Willhite and Jane Willhite, the company is presently based out of Clearlake Oaks, California

Clearlake Oaks, California

Clearlake Oaks is a census-designated place in Lake County, California, United States. It is located on the extreme south sast of Clear Lake, 13 miles east-southeast of Lakeport, at an elevation of 1,335 feet...

.
Jane and Thomas Willhite also founded the non-profit PSI World.

Outside sources

Neal Vahle's The Unity Movement cited PSI Seminars as one of nine growth organizations that grew out of Mind Dynamics

Mind Dynamics

Mind Dynamics was a seminar company, founded by Alexander Everett in Texas in 1968. Mind Dynamics later led to two other companies, est and Lifespring....

. Other groups also cited by Vahle as having been influenced by Mind Dynamics, included Erhard Seminars Training

Erhard Seminars Training

Erhard Seminars Training, an organization founded by Werner H. Erhard, offered a two-weekend course known officially as "The est Standard Training"...

, The Forum

Werner Erhard and Associates

Werner Erhard and Associates, also known as WE&A or as WEA, operated as a commercial entity from February 1981 until early 1991. It replaced Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. as the vehicle for marketing, selling and imparting the content of the est training, and offered what some people refer to as...

, and Lifespring

Lifespring

Lifespring was a for-profit private company, founded in 1974. The company promoted itself through books and word of mouth advertising. By 1989, officials stated that over 300,000 people had enrolled in the company's seminars...

. Rodney Stich and Conan Russell compared the organization to est, writing that it was "an EST type self-awareness and motivational organization."

PSI Seminars has also been cited by authors of books on self-improvement, including Extreme Success, and Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield is an American motivational speaker and author. He is best known as the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, which currently has nearly 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages...

's The Success Principles

The Success Principles

The Success Principles is a book authored by Jack Canfield and released in 2005. In it, Canfield reveals 64 principles that he and others have utilized to achieve great levels of success. He is also the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books which have sold millions of copies...

.

The coursework of PSI Seminars was also analyzed in a 1983 study in the academic journal

Academic journal

An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry is a cross-cultural medical journal founded in 1976 by Arthur Kleinman who was Editor-in-Chief until 1986. The journal was continued by Byron and Mary-Jo Good, and Peter J...

. The study examined the extent to which chronically ill members of the population in Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

 sought out alternative methods

Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine is any healing practice, "that does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine." It is based on historical or cultural traditions, rather than on scientific evidence....

 of self care by utilizing nonprescribed treatment patterns. Philips described PSI World as a self-help program. His work, Living Synergistically, published by PSI World, was cited in Kraft's Ways of the Desert.

In an episode of Larry King Live

Larry King Live

Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....

, guests Michael Beckwith

Michael Beckwith

Michael Beckwith is a New Thought minister, author, and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, California, a New Thought church with a congregation estimated in excess of 8,000 members...

, author Bob Proctor, and John DeMartini announced that they would be working together for two weeks at PSI Seminars. Proctor spoke favorably of PSI Seminars on the program, stating: "I don't own the company, but it is the best course I've ever seen."

Controversy

PSI Seminars has drawn criticism from customers who claim that the program functions much like a cult, especially because attendees are encouraged to sign up for all three classes. (The Basic [$595; 3 days], PSI-7 [$4,450; seven days], and Mens/Womens Leadership [$5150; 10 days].) In 1995, PSI Seminars was singled out as one of a growing number of new-age self-help groups with a history of civil-rights infringements in the book Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace by Dr. Margaret Singer

Margaret Singer

Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, was a clinical psychologist and a part-time Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S....

, who attended the seminars. Singer also warned against companies hiring the firm to assist in trainee motivation.