Another Louise Hay Fan: manipulation

I am in fact careful about referring to comments from people in a blog post. I do want people to assume that if they post a comment, they will be engaged in the comment,s and not on the (somewhat) larger platform of a blogpost. I want the comments to remain a forum where people can put out their ideas spontaneously and in unpolished form. Writing is a tool for self-reflection, of emptying out the contents of ones thoughts and occasionally getting a horrid or pleasant surprise. The current culture of the internet doesn’t allow for this anywhere near enough.

So I do consider whether or not the risks outweigh the benefits in this light. In this case, I have decided to post a brief comment that I perhaps would have written a line or two in answer to in the comments, but there is in fact a lot in it that is worth unpacking. And I want to emphasise that the subject here is how Louise Hay has manipulated people into not only feeling an extraordinary degree of product loyalty, but expressing it publicly as well. And all this to such a degree that trumps normal human empathy.

In my post Speaking Ill of a Dead Cancer Quack, I highlighted an earlier comment from a man who had lost his wife to cancer:

“Thanks to her unshakable belief in the teachings of this lady, and her refusal to follow a real treatment, which repeatedly drove a wedge into our happy married life, my beloved wife died last month, age 47. I miss her tremendously.”

The commenter today reacted to this in the following manner:

Louise hay was never against medicine to cure. She believed God worked through medicine as well . I don’t see why this man is blaming her for the death of his wife .

The final sentence, of course, works perfectly as a statement of fact. The reason why she doesn’t see this is because Louise Hay has trained her not to.

Instead of feeling even a little sympathy for this man who lost his wife, the commenter feels compelled only to displays loyalty to the product Louise Hay sells. I defy anyone to read that man’s statement and not feel at least a twinge of his pain, even if they feel his anger at Hay is misplaced. Yet somehow Louise Hay has circumvented this person’s emotional responses at a surprisingly deep level.

This is what manipulation looks like. The commenter is no longer acting in her own interests, with her own priorities, but instead has unwittingly allowed Louise Hay in under her normal defenses, until she no feels her own feelings, but instead feels compelled prioritise Hay’s interests over even her own (I can only assume) feelings.

This manipulation has several strands. One of them is the way Hay weaves deeply personal details of her life (being raped – she claims – when she was five, for example) into her promotional material. This switches her sales pitch from the commercial to the personal, making anyone who questions her claims appear impolite. Hence the indignant if not positively outraged tone her fans adopt with me simply for doubting her statements.

In this case, instead of attacking me, she attacks a man she really knows nothing about except that he lost his wife: that is, she attacked what, underneath it all, probably touched her the most.

Instead of feeling her immediate feelings, she saw only a threat to Louise Hay’s status.

I won’t say much about the other two sentences beyond noting that Hay has also convinced this person to put her product on the same footing as medical science – God works through medical science, just as he works through Louise Hay. I don’t know of Hay explicitly saying this either, but it is interesting that this is the impression she elft with this commenter. Hay dropped her overtly Christian Science teachings in favour of New Age jargon and marketing strategies. But just as the Law of Attraction is prayer, only with quantum physics instead of Jesus, Louise Hay’s product is old fashioned religion from biblical times, only with ‘negative thought’ and cancer instead of sin and divine judgement.

…

Posted by Yakaru

Commenter: I will get cancer because I criticised Louise Hay (Fear as a marketing tool)

I will highlight yet another comment from a Louise Hay fan. It’s short, but revealing.

On my post titled Speaking ill of a dead cancer quack, Twila writes:

Yak-whatever.

As I mentioned previously, Yakaru is my spiritual name. I don’t know why this person feels compelled to mock it. I imagine they must be very angry with me.

Nevertheless, Twila has some advice for me:

You would benefit from anger management study.

Of course — it’s me who’s angry, not her.

So let me clear a few things up. I have indeed written plenty of angry words on this website, but I have always done it consciously, or deliberately, and for a specific purpose.

When people have developed an unhealthy loyalty to a spiritual teacher it shocks and angers them, to see someone undermine the elevated status they have granted to that teacher. And, often, it frightens them too. I’ve noticed clearly in personal interactions over many decades with followers of various sects and cults and teachings. They think it’s all love and light and outsiders just don’t understand, but they don’t see any connection between the feelings they feel when a (supposed) outsider criticises the boss, and the teachings of that boss. No no, those teachings are all nice and positive.

In fact, and this will come out clearly below, Louise Hay’s teachings are based on fear every bit as much as they talk of love and light. Above all, Hay was a fanatical Christian. She just switched from threatening people with hell for their misdeeds, to threatening them with cancer. Think a negative thought (about Louise Hay, for example) and you will get cancer.

This is what Louise Hay triggers in her followers: fear.

And this fear drives their anger when they see her being criticised.

It is people like you who are full of misdirected anger that get cancer.

Twila is angry enough with me to ridicule my name — a pointless personal attack that has nothing to do with the issue — and angry enough to tell me I will get cancer because of my misdeeds (I would bet she has never suffered from it herself nor had anyone close die of it)….

…..but somehow she has decided that it is only my anger that is negative. Her anger must be positive. She is defending poor dear Louise, so her anger is well-directed and won’t cause cancer. This is what Louise Hay does to her customers: criticise Ms Hay and you get cancer; defend Ms Hay’s product and you’re safe. It’s a form of psychological colonisation.

Louise Hay died from old age. She was a sweet and dedicated woman who believed in peace, love and light.

And customer loyalty.

Loyal customers who have all learned to repeat the same lines of defense when the product (the teachings) is being criticised. This is why I could already write my comment policy specifically asking Louise Hay followers not to leave their stereotypical defenses. It means I can just copy and paste instead of typing the same thing each time one of them shows up here.

From the comment policy:

…Also, before commenting about your “positive experiences” with a particular teacher, please ask yourself if it really in fact addresses my criticism. Unless I have explicitly argued that no one has ever had any positive experiences with a teacher, then your comment is likely to be irrelevant.

I also ask people please not to–

Attempt to analyze my motives rather than addressing my criticism

Judge me for being “judgmental”

Leave negative comments about me being “negative”

Criticize me for being critical

Assume that I am ignorant of- or feel threatened by spirituality and then criticize me for that

In other words, please don’t leave exactly the same comment that all the other angry Louise Hay fans have already left.

Twila continues:

My message is for anyone reading this who thinks…

And maybe I should add another one to that list, because they’ve pulled that one before here too.

Do not use the space I provide for your comment to talk over my shoulder in order to lecture those reading here. It is impolite. Comments are to respond to my article how ever you see fit, or to answer other commenters directly (as long as its on topic). It is not a platform for you to promote the product I was criticising.

My message is for anyone reading this who thinks you “have a handle” on life and living, because I feel strongly that you definitely do not.

I did not give out any such advice in that article. Rather I handed out a long list of substantial criticisms, and Twila ignored every single one of them. But still felt entitled to comment anyway.

Just guessing, but you probably have no sense of fairness either so if you delete my message it won’t bother me, but hopefully will bother you because you’ve read it.

Twila, you have used the comment space on my blog to mock my name, tell me I will get cancer, tell me about character deficiencies you think I have and assume you know how to fix them, talk over my shoulder to readers, and then lecture me about fairness.

Where exactly do you get this feeling of entitlement and superiority? Why do you think it is that you have just left the same comment that several dozen Louise Hay fans have also written?

Do you think it might be because you have all been taught to by someone, whose teachings are all directed at evading criticism and recruiting customers to promote the product to others? –And promote it so unconsciously that you all come out with the same sales pitch to defend it.

You are welcome to comment further, Twila, but I will give two conditions:

1. read the comment and fairness policy (side bar top right under Website: Comment & Fairness Policy)

2. respond to the criticisms of Louise Hay from the article this time.

…

Posted by Yakaru

Another comment from a Reader — the standard Louise Hay fan

Note to Louise Hay fans: please read my comment policy and re-consider whether or not the comment you want to leave is really your own. Here is the latest example of dozens of the identical comment left here over the years by Louise Hay’s fans. Here it is in full, after which I will respond, either by simply quoting from my Comment Policy, or personally.

Yakuru,
You are quite the judgemental person, which honestly sucks more for you then for anyone else. To tear down a person who recently died and who has positively impacted millions and millions of people’s lives is beyond sick, it’s even more sick that you find joy in this. Louise has positively impacted my life as well as many I know through the application of manifestation, affirmations and and positive thinking. I hate to tell you there is no cure for cancer, I study and practice medicine and this is a huge area where allopathic medicine fails… let me tell you that the way we think, feel, and act all influence the state of our immune system and this is our largest natural defense against cancer. We constantly are producing the cytokine TNF-alpha which targets and destroys cancer cells, so there is some validity in her reasoning, however there are pieces missing such as the other factors that are causing the cancer in the first place (poor diet, environmental toxins, lack of exercise, inadequate sleep, hormonal dysfunction, and cognitive dysfunction amongst many others). Have you positively influenced millions of people’s lives? Definitely not. Should you keep you negative uneducated opinions about cancer to yourself? I vote a strong yes.

Okay, so let’s start.

Yakuru,

Firstly, my name is spelled Yakaru. It is my spiritual name, and believe it or not, it is a part of my identity, even more so than my birth name is. I use it here for two reasons: because part of my spiritual path is to speak the truth as I see it, regardless of my fears of being judged or habits of fake politeness that still haunt my social life; and because it is my way of affirming my political belief in religious and spiritual freedom. I understand it’s unusual, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest when people spell it wrong, but if you follow it up with insults, you don’t get any Brownie points.

You are quite the judgemental person, which honestly sucks more for you then for anyone else.

From the comment policy:

Before Commenting —

Please do not do any of the following:

• Judge me for being “judgmental”

 To tear down a person who recently died and who has positively impacted millions and millions of people’s lives is beyond sick

From the comment policy:

Also, before commenting about your “positive experiences” with a particular teacher, please ask yourself if it really in fact addresses my criticism. Unless I have explicitly argued that no one has ever had any positive experiences with a teacher, then your comment is likely to be irrelevant. Feel free to share it if you must, but it would be polite to apologize for going off topic. (Note: having “helped people” does not automatically cancel out your favorite guru’s criminal activities nor the damage they have done.) 

it’s even more sick that you find joy in this.

From the comment policy:

Please do not do any of the following:

• Attempt to analyze my motives rather than addressing my criticism

–Louise has positively impacted my life as well as many I know through the application of manifestation, affirmations and and positive thinking

See above, and also realise that this is a baseless assertion. Events which you perceive as ‘positive’ have followed certain practices and you assert there is a cause and effect. Applying such labels to one’s own life is fine of course, but when you start asserting it in public, you need to have more to back it up that snootily saying ‘It simply is so and now pay me.”

I hate to tell you there is no cure for cancer

Really? Well the laser treatment on my skin cancer did work and saved my life. Had I followed Louise Hay’s advice I would currently be in a painful end phase of my life.

And instead of telling me this, you should have told Louise Hay not to write her book where she claimed she cured her own cancer that the doctors couldn’t cure. And you should tell her millions of desperate cancer sufferers who visit her website having searched for “Louise Hay cancer cure“. Get on the New Age forums and tell her fans there that she doesn’t have a cancer cure, and stop lecturing me — I already know she has none. Off you go.

I study and practice medicine

An appeal to authority, or an attempt at one. So you’re an MD? What of it? Or are you just trying to fluff up some flaky ‘healer’ status? Either way, your tone is self-aggrandising and odd.

and this is a huge area where allopathic medicine fails…

In fact, as everybody including you with your whatever-qualifications should know, medicine has made tremendous progress and is continuing to — unlike quackery where the only ‘progress’ to be seen is in alterations to advertising material. And ‘allopathic’ is an attempt at a pejorative term invented by homeopaths who have also made no progress whatsoever in the last 200 years.

let me tell you that the way we think, feel, and act all influence the state of our immune system

No I won’t let you tell me that because I already know it. It’s been entire field of medicine since the 1930s at least — the study of stress. There was even a Nobel Prize for it. It has been, and is being thoroughly researched.

and this is our largest natural defense against cancer. We constantly are producing the cytokine TNF-alpha which targets and destroys cancer cells, so there is some validity in her reasoning

Nope. There is no evidence that stress reduction prevents cancer. And “some validity” is not what she has been selling and is not what makes desperate people flock to her. And the way you are throwing around a fancy chemical term in isolation suggests to me that you have not studied medicine and are only borrowing such terms to try to sound authoritative.

however there are pieces missing such as the other factors that are causing the cancer in the first place (poor diet, environmental toxins, lack of exercise, inadequate sleep, hormonal dysfunction, and cognitive dysfunction amongst many others).

For some reason you didn’t mention genetic predisposition, the discovery of which and ever increasing ability to detect are among the most spectacular achievements of medical science. Louise Hay’s biblical teachings have continuted absolutely nothing to this.

Have you positively influenced millions of people’s lives?

Nope, but according to comments people have left, I have played a role in getting them to seek proper treatment rather than trust Louise Hay. I have also provided some comic relief to people who felt insulted by having been told that they created their cancer themselves with their “negativity”.

Louise Hay has convinced millions of people that they have been “positively” affected by her, but no one knows how many have died because they followed her advice — and died in misery believing they had failed to clear out their own negativity and thus let down their children and their loved ones, who have also commented here with their stories and expressed a hope that my words exposing this fraud my help save a life. That means a tremendous amount to me, but I would write what I write anyway.

Definitely not. Should you keep you negative uneducated opinions about cancer to yourself? I vote a strong yes.

My “negative” opinions about cancer will just cause more cancer, won’t they. There is nothing “positive” about paranoia.

Let me tell you something. It is psychologically unhealthy to divide the world, events, thoughts, emotions up into “positive” and “negative”. The whole idea was invented by Christian fanatics and is where Louise Hay, also a Christian fanatic (member of the Christian Science cult) got it. That’s why her blue book includes an entry for ‘leprosy’, (for heavens sake). Try some Eastern mysticism like Buddhism or Taoism instead of this Christian hellfire and divine punishment stuff. Events are just what they are. Don’t interpret everything according to your short term egotistical value judgments. And don’t think that you’ve “manifested” the money you’ve scammed out of people with this deceitful and deadly scam.

 

Speaking ill of a dead cancer quack — Louise Hay

Louise Hay, unlike some other cancer quacks, probably did not die of cancer. At least there is no evidence she died of cancer…. No evidence, in fact that she ever even had cancer at any time in her life.

Louise Hay said she had cancer in 1977 or 1978 — she can’t remember which. She said her doctors thought it would kill her. And she said she cured it herself. But she can’t remember the doctors’ names, and can’t remember what stage the cancer was at when she “cured” it.

But Louise Hay had already published her first book, You Can Heal Your Life, in 1976. So she published a book listing a hundred or more diseases from leprosy to cancer, listed a “metaphysical cause” and a “healing affirmation” for each, and then a year or two later, “got cancer” herself. She promptly “cured” it — the perfect vindication of her book — but didn’t keep any documents and can’t remember even the most basic details about it.

Or none of that happened, and she was lying.

Lying, and believed by her customers because people don’t usually lie about that kind of thing. And then watched as millions of customers bought her “cancer cure” and tested it on themselves.

The husband of one such customer left a comment here earlier this year:

Thanks to her unshakable belief in the teachings of this lady, and her refusal to follow a real treatment, which repeatedly drove a wedge into our happy married life, my beloved wife died last month, age 47. I miss her tremendously.

…

What Hay certainly knew is that cancer sufferers make great customers. They are already emotionally invested in the product’s success, and better still, they need a great deal of support and reassurance from others around them — so they will be promoting the product to these people too. If their cancer by chance goes into remission, then that’s  a success story for Louise Hay.

And if they die, it means they’re not hanging around anymore to warn people that the product doesn’t work. And, if they die, chances are they would not end their life blaming Louise Hay and warning others, but die instead condemning themselves for their failure to rid themselves of negativity as Louise Hay said she did.

Or their death is blamed on something else. As in the case of the cancer quack Bill Henderson who got cancer, and was foolish enough to test his quackery on himself rather than on his customers. And the quackery worked perfectly, or at least that’s what his followers said…… 

But…

The problem was that Bill also had thrombophlebitis, which resulted in blood clots in his legs. According to the physician who was treating Bill, it was a combination of heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism in the wake of a blood transfusion which took his life. It was not due to cancer.

Or, as the oncologist David Gorski explains:

Um, no.

Bill Henderson died of cancer. If he didn’t have cancer, he wouldn’t have needed a blood transfusion, and wouldn’t have had the heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism….When cancer kills, it is usually not the cancer itself that kills, but rather complications caused by the growth of the cancer.

Another deceased cancer quack is Hulda Clark. She got rich off her string of bestsellers, The Cure for All Diseases, The Cure for All Cancers, and, (in case the latter didn’t work), The Cure for All Advanced Cancers. And then she died of an advanced cancer, but not before killing an unknown number of her customers. (Read about one such victim here.)

Another was Jerry Hicks, husband of Esther Hicks, the originator of the “Abraham” channeling and law of attraction scam. He made a career out of telling people that illness is the result of negative thoughts and emotions. A former follower quotes Esther Hicks as saying “You could have every deadly disease known to man, within you, today, and if you chose different feeling thoughts tomorrow, they would all leave your body.”

So how did Jerry Hicks react when he discovered he had “manifested” leukemia for himself? He “started immediately with aggressive chemotherapy treatments. Something they have always claimed is that modern medicine of any kind is something that you don’t need.” He explained his hair loss with a convoluted story about a spider bite. Eventually they admitted it was chemo, and spun a spiritual yarn about how going along with the doctor’s recommendation was “the path of least resistance”.

Fear suddenly smells different, when it’s your own.

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Louise Hay is a dangerous quack

I often get “hits” on this site from people searching for information relating to Louise Hay. One of my most frequently viewed posts is about her claim that you can heal all diseases by using affirmations. 

The post asks why Louise Hay — despite possessing a “miracle cure” for every known illness — chose surgery to get rid of a few wrinkles, instead of using her own teachings. If affirmations cured her cancer (where medical science failed), then surely her affirmations can also maintain the health of cells in the epidermis — far less complicated than altering the growth cycle of cancerous cells. 

But it seems it’s only her customers who have the honor of testing out her miracle cures. And there’s no evidence that she even had cancer in the first place, let alone cure it.

Since I wrote that post, a slow but regular stream of Hay’s fans have commented, repeatedly claiming that 

Louise Hay does NOT claim to have a cancer cure.

Well, she most certainly does indeed claim that, and I usually demonstrate this by quoting Hay directly claiming or clearly implying she has a cancer cure. Strangely, the commenters very often reply that her teachings are not the actual words on the page or the sentences she speaks. Rather, they argue, people should “take that which resonates with them” and leave the rest.

In other words, Hay’s fans say she is not a quack as long as you understand her in the right way…..

And I suppose products like her Cancer Healing CDs are supposed to be metaphorical or something. I don’t know.

Cancer: Discover Your Healing Power by Louise Hay

From one commenter:

…It was a 4 day retreat and not once did I hear either one of them speak in the black and white language you so vehemently say she professes….

And

If I hear something that resonates for me, I can choose to take that and leave whatever doesn’t fit for me. I don’t believe there are mindless droves of human sheep who are experiencing some kind of horrendous consequences from reading her books. AND if there are, that’s not about her, it’s about each person who chooses to disregard their own inner truth.

Well it’s not me who needs to hear that Louise Hay doesn’t claim she can cure cancer — please tell those who hopefully typed the following words into a search engine and for some reason landed here on this site:

Sample of Search Engine Terms from the last few months

louise hay cancer affirmations
louise l hay cancer cured
louise hay ms
louise l hay cancer
louise hay cancer of the lip
what does louise hay eat for cancer
louise hay rape
louise hay cancer success stories
louise hay cervical cancer youtube
louise hay breast cancer
louise hays aids work
louis hay + what do seizures mean?
what does louis m hay say causes cancer
what does louise hay say about skin cancer?
what does louise hay say about breast cancer
louise hay cervical cancer cause
louise hay &+ epilepsy
louise hay why people get cancer
louise hay cervical cancer affirmations
louise hay on breast cancer
louise hay heal your life reasons for skin cancer
louise hay vaginal cancer
louise hay skin cancer
what ails my body can be fixed with my mind louise hay
what does louise hay say about strokes
louise hay and nicotine addiction

Needless to say, Louise Hay is not qualified to speak on any of these matters. Her ideas come from the fanatical Christian Science cult, and are based on the idea of sin and redemption and Jesus, and are directly contradicted by everything we know from medical science. Furthermore, she offers no proof she even had cancer in the first place. She “can’t remember” what stage the cancer was in, and all the doctors who treated her “are dead” and there are “no records”. 

And I don’t get much traffic here. It must be the merest fraction of a percent of the traffic Louise Hay’s site gets. I shudder to think of what will happen to those who searching for such advice, if they believe Hay’s story about healing her own cancer and try to do it on themselves or their loved ones. As the commenter above said, if they believe it and they die, it’s their own fault for “disregarding their inner truth” — not Hay’s fault. 

Please, from now on you fellows who don’t think Hay claims to have a cancer cure, get on the forums and tell everyone else what you keep telling me — that Louise Hay doesn’t mean it when she says she can cure these things.

…. And one last one:

louise l hay affirmations seem to have failed. ruined.

Update Jan 13 2017

Someone just left the following comment (rough translation from Dutch):

Thanks to her unshakable belief in the teachings of this lady, and her refusal to follow a real treatment, which repeatedly drove a wedge into our happy married life, my beloved wife died last month, age 47. I miss her tremendously.

…

Posted by Yakaru

Highlighting a Comment: Forgiveness & Louise Hay’s Emotional Blackmail

A few days ago someone left a brief but very poignant comment on a post here about Louise Hay. In a few measured words she sums up the private distress that Louise Hay’s teachings both trigger and exploit. I hope for it to be read by anyone who visits this site trying to gain some perspective on Louise Hay’s teachings.

The comment is reproduced below in its entirety.

(Please Note: Comment moderation has been switched on for first comments, and there may be a slight delay in posting.)

____________

Comment – June 18 2013:

Late on the thread. This thread [Link] has really helped clear my head. I’m 26 and am having a difficult time with my parents. My mother and I have a strained, messy, painful relationship and I think about it a lot. Many times I’ve felt even suicidal. I read the Louise Hay book “Heal Your Life” a few years ago. Then I ran into a particularly vampiric guy who told me that every painful family relationship is due to a curse that runs in families.

My grandmother died of breast cancer before my mom turned 3.

My mom never had any experience of cancer. I’ve been experiencing pains in my breasts since I was 15 due to growth around the beginning of each menstrual cycle. And until recently I didn’t have much of an issue with these pains, just assumed them to be a normal part of growing as many women experience these pains around the same times I do.

But recently the psychic stress of accepting Hay’s ideas as “true” is catching up with me. Now every time I feel an ache or twitch in my breast tissue I think about my relationship with my mother and if I’m still holding onto resentment (which will cause my ultimate cancerous demise).

Sad to say I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of that question and never will. In other words I don’t think I ever could forgive my mother enough or fully rid myself of “resentment” because it isn’t actually there.

By throwing arbitrary labels at people and leaving it up to them to incorporate the labels into their lives, Hay is able to sit back and let people work for her. Her key trick is that she defines herself as a spiritual medium without saying so by spouting sexy ideas about how we choose everything and are really powerful. And she’s really powerful with all her money and cache so why wouldn’t we believe her?

It’s very circular.

____________

“Anonymous” lectures you about Louise Hay

Dear Readers,

You have been personally addressed by an anonymous commenter on my (comparatively popular) earlier post on Louise Hay.

Now, commenters often pull various stunts to avoid dealing with the issues, (in this case, Louise Hay’s cancer quackery and dubious personal claims.) But this is the first time I’ve seen anyone simply open a comment with Dear Readers and then start lecturing people over my shoulder — as if to block me out of the conversation about my own post on my own blog!

And of course, this person didn’t deem it necessary to address any of the issues I had raised either. And it came as no surprise either, to encounter a New Ager with a narcissistic sense of entitlement instead of manners.

And she, (I feel it’s a she, but maybe I’m wrong), also didn’t bother reading the earlier comments in the thread: She would have seen that others had already made exactly the same points that she was wanting to make, (strange coincidence!), and that I (and others) had already responded to those same points.

She also didn’t bother reading my Comment Policy either, which specifically asks people not to leave comments exactly, point for point, like the one she left.

Never-the-less, after leaving a brief reply to her about her lack of decorum, I have generously decided to feature her brief and pointless lecture in a special post all of its own. I will also add the relevant sections of the comment policy (see side bar, top right), so that in future, Louise Hay fans can see how far this conversation has got until now, and can stop driving it around in circles.

And maybe they might even start reflecting on what it is that makes them all come up with exactly the same faulty logic. (Hint: manipulative persuasion and marketing should appear in your answer.)