Ross describes his techniques. "I teach sexual accelerators. There are ways of using your language and your energy to take a woman's initial response of being turned on and to ramp it up. You want her to have fascination, attraction, desire, lust," he says.
Dr. Phil asks Ross, "How successful have you been at this from a business standpoint?"
"I've certainly been very influential," he says. "It would be true to say that there's not a place around the world where there's not someone studying my material."
"Have you been on the sleazy side of this and are now saying you don't like what direction it's taking?" Dr. Phil probes.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with men learning to be more attractive, getting women into bed," he says. "What disturbs me is that the other schools that have cropped up rely a lot on of invalidation, on making women doubt their own attrac
"You said both men and women want to have sex. Is that the objective of your technique?" Dr. Phil asks.
"The objective is to give men choice so that they can create attraction at will," he says. "If you cannot create that attraction, you're not going to get a one-night stand, you're not going to get a relationship, you're not going to get married either. You're going to hear, 'Let's just be friends.'"
"You published a book in 1992 entitled, How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed," Dr. Phil says.
"Yes," Ross says.
"You used to teach ‘Get *' workshops," Dr. Phil says. "Are you moving away from that?"
"I have no problem with teaching men to get *," he says. "The marketing is obnoxious to get attention, but the marketing is not the message."
"You have a Get-* newsletter on how to * that girl who just wants to be friends," Dr. Phil says.
Ross says he wrote the newsletter in 1993.
Dr. Phil takes Ross to task. "You said there was a time that you did these things, and that you think that it's taken a dark direction," he says, as he reads Ross' guarantee. "'If you don't get *, I don't get paid.' That sounds like a pimp."
"What you're hearing from the other guys is not the entire truth. What you heard up here made it seem like it was all sweetness and light, but there's a lot of stuff they're doing that's actually really kind of nasty," Ross says, explaining, "One of the things they rely on doing is flipping women back and forth between feeling like they're being approved of and feeling like they're being criticized. They do something called push-pull, where they'll give the women a little attention, and then they'll pull it away, so she doubts whether they're attracted to her or not. They use a lot of invalidation, the theory being that if you invalidate a woman, she'll have sex with you to prove her attractiveness." He adds that they use canned routines, and when they ask for a woman's opinion, they really don't care. "There's a lot of deception."
Nick responds, "We absolutely teach push-pull. That's flirting. If somebody says something that I enjoy, I will reward her for that. If she says something that I don't enjoy, I'll let her know about that ... If I'm constantly, no matter what she says, loving everything she does, that's boring."
Ross addresses Dr. Phil. "You missed the point about the Neg," he tells him. "The point about the Neg that they're teaching is the woman can't tell if she's being insulted or complimented, so
"You don't think that would sell if you said that on your Web site," Dr. Phil says.
"Absolutely not," Ross says.
"What you say instead of that is, 'Guaranteed to get women hot and ready,' Dr. Phil points out.
"That's what's going to get guys' attention on the Internet," Ross says.
"What he's saying is exactly what [The Mystery Method is] trying to do, but they're just trying to do it in a better fashion," Holli says.
"It's creeping me out," Valerie says.
Scott says that Ross has called his own teachings a form of hypnosis. "It resembles in no way what we teach, so we don't want to be put in a category
Ross denies the hypnosis claim. "What I teach is that all elements of strong human emotion have a hypnotic aspect to them because they're taking place unconsciously," he says. He maintains that Nick and Scott teach deceptive techniques. "They're prese
"What we teach, despite all these falsehoods and inaccuracies, is clearly presented on our Web site, and we see no reason to tell people we're teaching one thing when we're teaching another," Nick says.
"It's in the DVDs," Ross refutes.
Mike, a student of Nick and Scott's, says the class was helpful. "It was a confidence boost, so it makes it a little easier for you to approach women," he says, adding that it was helpful to have Nick and Scott critiquing him on scene at the bar.
"Do you think you're trying to deceive women?" Dr. Phil asks. "The person who's stepping up and meeting girls, is it really you, or is it some kind of fabricated image of who you wish you were?"
"What the whole community is about is not necessarily be yourself, but be your best self, and a lot of people don't know how to do that, and that's what this is teaching," says Darren, another student of The Mystery Method.
"Here's where some of the deception is," Ross explains. "When they do the Jealous Girlfriend opener … they don't have a girlfriend who did that. That didn't really happen, and furthermore, they don't really care about the girl's opinion. It's just an excuse to keep spinning a routine. If they want to do that, fine, but don't present it as something that it's not."
"We found stories that were relevant to them and openers that were relevant to them," Nick says, adding that all the stories were based on real experiences. "We just teach them how to say it."
"We show them Jealous Girlfriend as an example, and then they create their own openers based on things that are real from their life," Scott adds.
Ross maintains that The Mystery Method techniques attempt to throw a woman off guard by praising and invalidating her, but his method doesn't promote that manner of communication.
"An example would be to ask a woman a question like, ‘When you really want to cut loose, when you want to indulge yourself and just do something that feels good for you, what kind of thing do you like to do?'" he explains. "I would listen to her describe it, and then as she describes it, I would listen for her key words, what words she really leans on. I would say, ‘When you experience that and that, what does that feel like for you?' And then when those feelings get more intense, I'm going to anchor it. I'm going to anchor it
"Are you suggesting that that's not programming, that's not manipulating?" Dr. Phil asks.
"It's possible to move with deliberateness, to have an intent in your communication that doesn't have to involve any kind of misstatement of fact, or deception or punishment," he says. "Manipulation implies that there must be some kind of deception or punishment, so I don't like the word manipulation. That's not what I'm teaching." He says his major objection to other teachings is that men learn to punish women when they don't get the response they want. "If they want guys to be more confident, teach them routines to meet women, God bless them. Men need all the help they can get. But it's punishment that I find really objectionable."