011374 nyt Encounter movement, a Fad last decade finds new shape

BERKELEY, Calif.-The encounter group movement, which became something of a national fad in the nineteen-sixties, has evolved into a new, more mature and gentler form.

Having largely discarded its more extreme and coercive aspects along with extravagant assertions of instant personal redemption, the encounter concept has quietly found an accepted place in such established institution as schools, churches, industry and even the military and sports.

Meanwhile, persistent doubts about the effectiveness as well as possible hazards of encounter groups are being sorted out in the first rigorous appraisals of the groups and their consequences.

These studies, performed here in Berkeley and at Stamford University, are fi4ng that, while many people benefit enormously from the openness and baring of emotions fostered by encounter, there are dangers to be guarded against.

Tried by Millions

By now millions of Americans have touched, walked and talked their way through some type of encounter session. Encounter is a loose term for a variety of group techniques, such as T-groups, sensitivity training, sensory awareness,  Synanon, psychodrama, gestalt therapy and others, that are used as means of personal I growth for ostensibly healthly persons.

The encounter, or "human potential" techniques are so routine  that the pioneers
at the Esalen Institute and elsewhere have already departed for new Psychological frontiers.Amid the dazzling succulents and eucalyptus trees on the broken California coast at Big Sur, the Esalen leaders are moving into the spiritual orbit of "transpersonal" psychology , oriental meditation, mysticism, "psychosynthesi" and other techniques of achieving new heights of self-awareness.

Others have been experimenting with such methods as "rolfing ", "feldenkrais .".. .. bioenergetics," in which massage and physical exercise are used to increase awareness.

A Variety of Methods

Encounter methods vary widely, but a group typically consists of eight to 18 persons led by a facilitator." The members are urged to express their emotions toward one another openly, both physically and verbally. Mutual trust, openness, honesty and naturalness are the watchwords, and & assumption is that this stripping away of psychological defenses is healthy and will enhance both interpersonal relation ships and self-awareness.

"A lot of mistakes were made during the youthful period," says John Levy, executive officer of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the San Francisco-based organization to which many of the practitioners of encounter belong.

"The movement suffered from excess enthusiasm - it made promises that could not holdup. There are still plenty of encounter groups, but you don't hear about them any  more. They are not the cutting edge."

Encounter may be passe in the compulsive California and New York milieus that nurtured it, says William C. Schutz of esalen , author of joy and other Popular works on encounter, "but in Athens Ga . and Rock Island, Il, it's like four or five years ago-for the overwhelming majority of Americans, encounter is just beginning."

Searing  Experience

Whether or not its assumptions are valid, encounter evidently filled a real need in a depersonalized technological' world. Millions f locked to "growth centers" like oases in a psychological desert, where they could throu.-h t I ie searing but often uplifting of spilling out their doubts and fears.
But as in most fads, the phonies, fast buck artists incompetents and predators soon moved in . Ill-equipped and sometimes sadistic leaders started 
 groups, the idea was exploited in the movies and on stage, the Concord hotel offered "encounter singles weekends," and a "group therapy restaurant was opened in New York.

Still the potential value of encounter has attracted a growing number of conventionally trained psychologists and psychiatrists. Carl Rogers the psychologist who is often called the father of the movement, has termed encounter ," the most rapidly  spreading social invention of the century, and probably the  most potent."

'A Psychic Whorehouse'

Even such a harsh critic of encounter as Prof. Sigmund Koch of Boston University agrees that the movement is ,the Most visible manifestation of psychology on the American
scene." He has denounced it as providing  "a convenient psychic whorehouse for the purchase of a gamut of well -advertised existential goodies; authenticity, freedom, wholeness, flexibility, community, love, joy.

One enters for such liberating consummations but settles for a psychic strip tease."

Such complaints notwithstanding, encounter has had a profound impact upon many  facets of American life. In Louisville, for example, educators credit it with helping to rescue the school system. Faced with the second-highest drop-out rate in the country (after Philadelphia), a demoralized staff, and bitter racial division, the schools obtained a three-year Federal grant in 1969 to restaff 14 schools with 1,000, teachers trained in encounter.

Called Project Transition, the program involved not only the teachers but also students, parents and community leaders. Robert Myers, a co-director says it was a "terrific impetus for change in a school system that was sinking."

Reports of Suicide

Countless individuals, meanwhile, reported that their lives have been improved by ' group experiences. But there have also been disturbing reports of, breakdowns, divorces and even suicides precipitated by encounter groups.

What has been lacking until recently were objective, tightly controlled studies to determine if groups really change behavior. What do groups do? What are the dangers? What skills are needed for leaders? Are the effects lasting? Is it worth it?

Some preliminary answer began to emerge from a massive study here supported by $1.25-million  from the National Institute of Mental Health. Directed by Dr. Jim Bebout of the Wright Institute in Berkeley, the study is evaluating 1500 persons who participated in 150 groups over a three-year period at the University Young Men's Christian Association in Berkeley.

The groups, mostly low-keyed' sessions led by non-profession- I als, were observed anu I ,and each member was asked to evaluate his attitudes and feeling before, dUring and after the experience. The results are still undergoing computer anal.,/sis, but some preliminary finding are the following:

Encounter- groups do work in that they consistently improve self-satisfaction,  self reliance and comfort with sexuality, and lessen loneliness, alienation and social inhibition.

Groups do little to improve productivity in work or school.

Professional therapists do not usually do well as leaders "They could not drop their professional bag," Dr. Bebout said.

2 Causalities Found

Of the 1500 members, Dr. Bebout said, only two could be considered casualties: an obese woman who was rejected by the rest of the group and a young man who fell in love with the leader, who rejected him.

Dr. Bebout offers the following advice to those considering joining a group:

"Pick a leader willing to share your experience with you: and not work on you without telling you what he is doing. Make sure some proportion of your group is on your side.
If the first two meetings are full of silences, attacks, tensions and obscure methods and general non sharing, then pack up and go home.

A smaller, different kind of study performed at Stanford University produced somewhat
more negative results. Unlike the Berkeley study, the Stanford Study used well-known professional group loci 210 students in 18 groups to represent a broad range of techniques, including-_ IT-groups, gestalt, transactional analysis, marathon, basic encounter and others.

 Higher Casualty Rate

The results of the study, performed by Dr. Morton A. Lieberman. Dr. Irvin D. Yalom

and Matthew Miles, were recently published by Basic Book3 under the title "Encounter Groups: First Facts." The study found 'that one-third of the participants benefited from their experiences, while the rest either Dropped out or had negative experiences. This proportion did not compare unfavorably with conventional psychotherapy.

The study turned up an alarming 10 per cent casualty rate, with a casualty defined as a person who was more psychologically distressed or maladapted eight months after the group than before. One girl for example, dropped out and sought emergency psychiatric aid after the third meeting, at which she was called "a fat Italian mama with a big shiny nose."

Verdict is Mixed

All in all, the Stanford study returned a mixed verdict ". "When one strips away the excesses and the frills, the ability of such groups to provide a meaningful emotional setting in which individuals can overtly ~consider previously prohibited issues cannot be ruled out as an important means for facilitating human progress," the study said. But it added, "Encounter groups present a clear and evident danger if they are used for radical surgery in which the product will be a new man,"

Those who improved, Dr.Yalom said in a interview were those who got something intellectual Out Of the experience.

Partisans of the encounter concept have faulted the Stanford study on various grounds, saying that some distress is a prerequisite to enduring change, and that the attack oriented techniques used in some of the Stanford groups are no longer in vogue. 

More Care Needed

Even so, many of the more ,responsible leaders agree that more care needs to be taken
"to screen out persons with histories of mental instability, and to train leaders better. Dr.
Julian Silverman, a psychologist who heads Esalen's program at Big Sur, agrees that much damage has been done in groups and says, "We are very concerned about getting better training of leaders."

Dr. Bernard Rappaport, a psychiatrist at Esalen who has written two survey papers on the movement for the National Institute of Mental Health, argues that "the benefits far out shadow the casualties," but he agrees that reservations and cautions are good. "We need an ethic of responsibility," he says.

"Now the approach is much gentler," said Mr. Levy of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. "There is less encouragement of coercive approaches ' Big wild breakthroughs are exciting to watch for a while, but not all that productive. People are respecting the dignity of others."