The Encounter Group
Fall 1968 Chapel Hill
Dad moved the family to Chapel Hill at the same time that I started there as a freshman. For three years he had been the North Carolina state director of vocational rehabilitation, and he had an opportunity in 1968 to leave the administrative job to work towards a PhD while also beginning a graduate program in vocational rehabilitation that he would direct. He would found what would become the first graduate department of vocational rehabilitation at UNC. He was 43.
Dad was interested in psychology. Later on, once he became a professor, he traveled to La Jolla to study with well-known psychologists, Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis. He included psychology in his teaching of vocational rehabilitation to graduate students.
One of the psychologists, a professor at UNC who held encounter groups for new students, suggested to Dad that I attend one.
It was the beginning of my first semester at UNC, and my parents believed I was open to learning new things and excited to have new experiences. I agreed to participate. In an encounter group, a popular form of personal growth in psychology in 1968, participants are not only free to confront one another, they are encouraged to do so. Rather than providing an environment of safety and trust, the goal was to interact in an unstructured situation with strangers to learn about oneself. It could be like a cold shower to be confronted about yourself and your behavior and not know how to respond. There was no official requirement, but people were expected to express feelings freely.
In my family I was not told outright what to feel or to think. It would be a signal, something indirect but nonetheless powerful. Because my parents didn’t tell me what to do, and only directed me with elusive emotional pressure that would be hard to pin down, they were able to control me while avoiding taking responsibility for telling me to do. I was signaled by Dad to feel happy and excited about the encounter group, and I felt happy and excited. If I had known fully how I felt, I would have known I was afraid. But feeling afraid, and knowing it, was not possible.
I was unlikely to do well in an encounter group. But the professor psychologist, who was a new friend of my dad, and who had never met me, would make sure that I had a positive experience.
A dark-haired shy girl in the encounter group named Louise was unable to express her feelings easily. Gradually, over the course of three hours, in subtle ways, the group leader put her down for her lack of openness. He analyzed her behavior and suggested it had a negative effect on the whole group. He compared her to me, saying that Laurie was an example of someone open to experience, and Louise was closed to experience and closed to learning about herself. He directed the group dynamic so that it was Louise who was criticized because she was unwilling to be open. She became more withdrawn and defensive, and he continued to put her down in calm ways that sounded kind and professional. I was protected by his negative focus on her, as well as by the frequent positive comments he made about me. He was skilled, and he was able to control the outcome of the group in such a way that our small group of first-year students, just arrived on campus, were not aware of his interference in the group process.
I was trusting of adults, especially professionals. I had been raised to trust my parents, which is not the same as saying that my parents were trustworthy. I was trusting of the blond, wiry yet well built, personable psychologist. I was dimly aware that what he was doing to Louise was wrong. I felt bad for Louise, but at the same time relieved. I was happy to disregard what I observed in the group with my own eyes and ears. I was happy not to try to make sense of what had occurred. I had been praised and told that I was valued.
In this story, I’m more interested in the psychologist who led the group than in the personalities of Louise and me. I’m interested in the psychologist because he was a friend of my dad, and it’s my dad I’m interested in knowing. The psychologist was willing to abdicate principle to attain the result he wanted. He actively interfered in the group process of the group, going against the avowed nature of the encounter group. And he was willing to behave in a way that was harmful to Louise, who had been brave to sign up for the group.
I think he did all of this to protect himself. If he had allowed the group process to evolve naturally, I would have been criticized and perhaps even ostracized in the group as someone not open about my feelings. If I had been criticized, like Louise I would have become withdrawn. I think the psychologist was unwilling to be consistent with the principle of the encounter group as an unstructured experience because of the negative report he feared I would give Dad. He wanted Dad to think well of him. And he wanted to be sure that dad would not talk critically about him to other faculty members.
These are the kinds of friends that Dad had, people in the wide mainstream of adult maturity. The psychologists were cool people. I saw Dad wearing white bell bottoms. The psychologist who led the encounter group was probably partially aware, but not fully aware of what he was doing, especially to Louise. In the moment, the trade-off of sacrificing Louise so that Laurie had a good experience so that her dad wouldn’t complain to faculty about him, may have appeared worth it. If he thought about it, and I’m not sure how much he would have thought about what he was doing, but if he had thought about it, he may have calculated that the result of allowing the group process to unfold was a risk that he was not willing to take.
Within three years, my dad would have a calculation to make of his own. He would act to prioritize his reputation with the psychologists at UNC, though it meant betraying his child. There would be many other factors. As with his friend who led the encounter group, I question whether or how much Dad would be aware of sacrificing doing what was right in order to insure his social acceptance. Would it bother him to deceive me?
Yes, I was a fool. I was duped. Did he calculate? Or was it his natural way of putting himself and his own interests above others? Was he aware of what he was doing?
There is a liminal space within me as well, where I am partially but not fully aware. Eventually, I would learn to seek out that space in myself, in an effort to bring things more fully into awareness, and it would become a way of life.
Laurie,
Your reflection on this experience from your freshman year, with understanding of the positions of your Dad and the professor in the academic system, and the impact it had on you and Louise is for me a story of the human moral dilemma we have as products of evolution.
As Darwin noted, in his writing on “struggle for existence,” and as you have seen in your study of life at the cellular level, those who survive and prosper do so, to greater or lesser degree, at the expense of others. For us humans, with our ethics of kindness and “do no harm” it is troubling to see the damage we do. We have the gift of rationalization. We can say that any harm done was for the sake of a greater good. Your Dad worked to build a career and support his family. You got a fine education at a fine university. We don’t know how things turned out for Louise. You found a deeper level of awareness for yourself. Thank you.
This is Victoria. You wrote a compelling autobiographical memoir without using any Bowen theory terminology. Yet, you describe the togetherness forces at play for your father, the interlocking triangle between your father, your prof and you (and Louise), and the development of your ability to observe and describe emotional process. How differently might you have written this history without BT? If you took your father’s point of view, what were the family influences over his focus on success and prominence? Thank you for the opportunity to read this.
Victoria,
Thank you for your question about my dad’s drive. He was the oldest of two brothers and was highly admired in his family. His mother was proud of him. His younger brother was also talented but gave up his career to take care of their mother. Perhaps Dad experienced his success as a way to redeem his family. Perhaps his family needed him to be great. He was from a small town in Tennessee, and his family was not well respected there. I will add that in addition to being upwardly mobile, he was an engaged husband and father. He had compassion rather than judgment toward people who had difficulty. I wonder if his unresolved issues had to do with the pressure to be great and never being able to be great enough! Thanks again, Laurie
You give us a good example of how to use theory to decode a complex set of interactions. Thanks.
There is a fine quality to the writing. The sentences are easy to read, but they are not breezy to think about. Something fresh. The simplicity of the sentences awakens the reader. “I had been raised to trust my parents, which is not the same as saying that my parents were trustworthy.” There is a voice there. “She became more withdrawn and defensive, and he continued to put her down in calm ways that sounded kind and professional.” What is the nature of the elusive quality of voice in writing?
This sentence seems to contain jargon: “The psychologist was willing to abdicate principle to attain the result he wanted.” Is the writer is making assumptions about the character’s principles? Few would use the word “principle” in this fashion outside the Bowen network. I believe “abdicate his principles” would be standard.
As you know, the encounter groups were from a long tradition that included the English Tavistock groups and T-Groups. Is the writer oversimplifying the facilitators principles? Or was he poorly trained? Or is training insufficient because it’s level of self that matters in any model? There were a number of instances where it seemed the writer was presuming to know what was in the minds of the others such as “He wanted Dad to think well of him.”
Encounter groups were part of the long American tradition of wild experimentation. Lots of cold showers. I attended a naked hot spring weekend in college. We like to try it hot and cold, and the slow and steady middle path bores us. Reminds me of much of the trans phenomenon today. And the rehashed excitement about psychedelics.
The writer takes us into one of many sketchy experiments and causes us to see it from a refreshing angle, a young woman/girl pulled by forces beyond her control. It reminds me a bit of Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”.
I find the descriptions of status particularly interesting. The writer awakens a sense of the dance of triangles. We feel the wild forces of approval seeking. It caused me reflect on the work I do.
Thank you Laurie for this reflection on an early encounter and the emotional forces that influenced you, your dad, Louise and the professor. Makes me think of all the forces influencing each individual from their multigenerational past and how that plays out in a single interaction.