encounter group

n.
A typically unstructured psychotherapy group in which the participants seek to increase their sensitivity, responsiveness, and emotional expressiveness, as by freely verbalizing and responding to emotions.

Encounter Groups were nontraditional attempts at psychotherapy that offered short-term treatment for members without serious psychiatric problems. These groups were also known as sensitivity (or sensory) awareness groups and training groups (or T-groups). Encounter groups were an outgrowth of studies conducted in 1946 at the National Training Laboratories in Connecticut by Kurt Lewin. The use of continual feedback, participation, and observation by the group encouraged the analysis and interpretation of their problems. Other methods for the group dynamics included Gestalt therapy (working with one person at a time with a primary goal of increasing awareness of oneself in the moment, also known as holistic therapy) and meditation.

Encounter groups were popularized by people such as Dr. Fritz Perls and Dr. Will Schutz (of the Esalen Institute) and had their greatest impact on the general population in the 1960s and 1970s. These groups fell out of favor with the psychiatric community because of criticism that many of the group leaders at the time were not trained in traditional group therapy and that the groups could sometimes cause great harm to people with serious emotional problems.

Bibliography

Corey, Gerald. Theory and Practice of Group Counseling. Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole, 2000.

Kaplan, Harold I., and Benjamin J. Saddock, eds. Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. Volume 2. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1995.

Lieberman, Morton A., and Irvin D. Yalom. Encounter Groups: First Facts. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

—George R. Burkes Jr.

A method of psychotherapy developed in the 1960s, in which a small group of people engages in intensive interactions to increase self-awareness and improve interpersonal relations. Group members are encouraged to be completely honest and open, reacting to one another with their immediate feelings, while exploring the entire range of emotions.

Often associated with the radical social upheaval of the 1960s, encounter groups have been criticized for their potentially damaging effects, because many groups are led by people not professionally trained in psychotherapy.

During the Second World War and immediately after it, there were several initiatives intended to help individuals to become, through participation in groups, more sensitive to their own and other people's attitudes and emotions and more spontaneous in expressing feelings. The focus of 'T-groups' (training groups) was on issues of leadership and authority and the dynamics of change in organizations. 'Sensitivity' groups aimed at producing change by promoting 'interpersonal awareness'. Encounter groups, which became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, first in California and later in Britain, developed from Carl Rogers's 'client-centred' therapy, which emphasizes personal growth and communication. Encounter groups provide the conditions in which participants can be freed from a sense of isolation and alienation through self-discovery in a supportive, permissive, non-authoritarian group setting. The qualities to be induced are openness, authenticity, honesty in the physical, non-verbal expression of feeling, and 'actualization' as a person. Those who advocate them have resisted any attempt at scientific formulation and investigation of the processes involved, and claim that they are 'theory-free'. Nevertheless, several assumptions seem to be made — for example, that the physical expression of feeling in an unstructured setting is cathartic and beneficial. Participants probably do acquire certain social skills, which are transferable outside the groups. Whether the persona revealed in the group, although more congenial to the other participants, is more real or true than the one it replaces is open to question. A few participants are more confused than liberated, and there is a small risk of more serious ill effects, especially if, despite the claim that groups are 'threat free', a participant is confronted aggressively.

(Published 1987)

— Derek Russell Davis

Bibliography
• Cheshire, N. M. (1973). 'Review of Carl Rogers's Encounter Groups'. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 43.
• Rogers, C. R. (1971). Encounter Groups.

---

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)