The Best Of Est?

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Critics say Landmark is an elaborate marketing game that relies heavily on volunteers. Says Tom Johnson, an "exit counselor" often summoned by concerned parents to tend to alumni: "They tire your brain; they make you vulnerable." Says critic Liz Sumerlin: "The participants end up becoming recruiters. That's the whole purpose." Psychiatrists who speak on Landmark's behalf dispute these claims. But Sumerlin says a 1993 Forum turned her fiance (now her ex) into a robot. She organized an anti-Landmark hot line and publications clearinghouse. Landmark officials made sounds to sue her.

Landmark alumnus Walter Plywaski, a Colorado electronics engineer who took on the company after his daughter ran up a $3,000 tab on courses, thinks Erhard is still pulling the strings. Says he: "Erhard is like the Cheshire Cat. He has gone away, but the smile is there, hanging over everything." Rosenberg says his brother is not and never has been involved in Landmark. Steven Pressman, author of a scathing 1993 biography of Erhard, calls that slick corporate maneuvering: "They've gotten out of the yoke of Werner because he became their worst p.r. man. But it's one of the greatest success stories in mass marketing."

Indeed, the transformation has been such a success that it was the subject of a recent case study by the Harvard Business School. According to the study's co-author, Karen Wruck, the product that Landmark sells is "an abrupt or jarring change, like an 'aha'"--a "peculiar" one, certainly, but patently marketable. But Landmark, the study notes, has challenges ahead. It will have to gauge the effectiveness of its volunteers in expanding the business and weigh the need to raise outside capital. Perhaps, Wruck says, it will need to go public.

--With reporting by Richard Woodbury/San Francisco