One prominent feature of the progressive culture of turned-on America is the rapidly achieved popularity of sensitivity-training and encounter groups. Group leaders, some well trained, others bearing a diploma from a six-week “intensive” course, have only to announce the time and place of a group meeting, and people come. In San Diego, for example, two weekend encounter groups attracted 1,400 people with a minimum of advertising. Some come to groups to find out who they really are; others come because they are starving for human fellowship; still others come out of curiosity or in hopes of having an experience they can talk about at the next cocktail party.
In my clinical experience, I have seen a number of persons whose behavior warrants the diagnosis “Group Addiction.” When one group ends, these people begin a frantic search for another. Without their weekly group “fix” they feel scared, defenseless, unable to face their daily responsibilities. One noted psychologist has encouraged this dependence on groups by saying that, since the family is no longer meeting the need for a primary social frame of reference, people should turn to intensive group experience as a perfectly appropriate and lifelong substitute. Probably only a small minority of participants in sensitivity groups are afflicted with group addiction. The number of persons who are turning to groups in an effort to find more meaning in life and to experience personal growth and fulfillment is large and is steadily increasing.
Claims for the benevolent effects of honest encounter in an intensive group setting sometimes give evidence of almost fanatical zeal. Psychologist Carl Rogers, called by some the dean of the encounter-group movement, sees groups as perhaps the most significant and salutary cultural development in recent years. According to Rogers, encounter groups have unprecedented potential not only for aiding personal growth but also for successfully tackling problems of race relations, administration-student conflicts in education, labor-management disputes, and negotiations between rival countries.
An increasing number of theologians have added their voices to the panegyric. Groups, they say, offer persons an effective vehicle for self-discovery and for the achievement of wholeness. In supporting sensitivity groups, these theologians insist on the supreme importance of candid encounter and the healthful effects on the personality of open communication and freedom of behavior.
Some evangelical Christians are hungry for the sense of aliveness and interpersonal intimacy that characterizes many well run encounter groups. They are bothered by what appears to them to be an irrelevant routineness in many traditional church forms that often forestalls emotionally close relationships; by the repressive attitude toward innovation among church leaders; by the loveless “sit in your pew and wait till they come to you” approach to evangelism that many church members accept.
Because people tend to jump on whatever bandwagon is currently passing through and because Christians and non-Christians alike are often asking groups to provide what Christianity purports to offer (meaning in life, reality, fellowship), Christians would do well to develop informed opinions about encounter groups. In an attempt to provide a basis for this, I will sketch some of the theoretical and procedural aspects of encounter groups and will then look at the phenomenon from what I believe to be a biblical perspective.
The encounter-group movement has its strongest philosophical underpinnings in humanism. Since in humanistic thought man is viewed as basically self-sufficient and able to create utopian conditions without divine assistance, problems with individuals and with society are traced not to a basic flaw in man but to the denial, distortion, or inhibition of what is truly human. To put it in admittedly oversimplified terms, encounter-group proponents believe that the great need today is for man to become aware of the full range of internal experience and then to free himself of all artificial restraints that limit his expression and development of what he finds within. When a person is freed from a restricted awareness and from stifling inhibitions, he will develop increased feelings of personal worth and fulfillment.
The proposed means of accomplishing these worthy goals vary considerably, depending upon the orientation of the group’s “facilitator” (a term preferred to “leader”; the facilitator’s role is not to add anything to the group but to bring out what is already there, within its members). Rogerian styled facilitators will assume a distinctly non-aggressive role, attempting simply to relate to each group member in an empathic and non-possessively liking sort of way. In the resultant atmosphere of freedom and unconditioned acceptance, it is hoped, previously submerged feelings will find at least verbal expression. As these feelings become assimilated into conscious awareness, the individual develops a sense of personal integration and greater self-worth.
Groups run according to the Esalen model make regular use of Gestalt therapy techniques (sometimes called games), many of which were originated by the late Fritz Perls. For example, “games of dialogue” may be used in which a person suffering from inner conflict is asked to develop a dialogue between the two warring components within himself; the aim is to try to bring them together. “May I feed you a sentence” is a game in which the therapist, after requesting “May I feed you a sentence?,” proposes what he believes to be the message a group member is implying. The member is then asked to try it on for size by saying it to several people. The number of games is limited only by the therapist’s ingenuity. Any directed behavior whose goal is the more complete experiencing of the immediate present may be considered a Gestalt therapy game. Gestalt therapists attribute many symptoms of maladjustment (e.g., anxiety, depression, withdrawal) to the failure to be fully in touch with one’s real self at any given moment.
Some conservative Christians are prone to dismiss any activity with non-Christian roots, such as encounter groups, as worldly, and to expend great energy in condemning and avoiding it. At the other extreme, disenchanted younger Christians may uncritically accept the opportunity these groups seem to offer to put some emotional zing into their Christian lives. A more balanced, biblical perspective is needed.
Paul, especially in Romans 7, shows a painful sensitivity to the forces operating within him. It seems he did not deceive himself about the reality of his own sinful nature and its many subtle manifestations. In the eighth chapter of John, the Lord pointedly rebuked the accusers of the adulterous woman for not admitting into conscious awareness the reality of their moral condition. The lesson seems to be that conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit—or, in modern terms, a full awareness of internal moral reality—is a necessary prerequisite for the operation of grace for believer and non-believer alike. Notice that the teaching of Scripture is perfectly consistent with the primary tenet of humanistically based sensitivity training: don’t deny anything that is true about yourself.
Difficulties with encounter-group philosophy and procedure arise with the question of what to do with these newly admitted truths about oneself. Suppose, for example, that a young Christian man recognizes in himself strong sexual desires toward a specific girl. Three basic strategies for dealing with this recognized portion of internal reality may be identified. The first might be called the “stick your head in the sand” approach. In response to the guilt he feels for having these thoughts, the sexually alive young man may pretend he is sexually dead: “I don’t really want to have sex with her. After all, I am a Christian.” This approach clearly involves the distortion of something true. God is a God of reality. Pretense and denial can never be consistent with Christianity. (In passing, I might mention that the absence of open discussion of sexual matters in Christian churches and families sometimes conveys the message that one is not to think about such things if he wants to maintain his Christian profession. Denial of reality is thereby encouraged. This can lead to unnecessary difficulties with sexual adjustment in marriage.)
A second possibility is the “do your own thing” strategy that might be advocated in encounter groups with humanistic leanings. The proponent of this view might say to the young man: Recognize your sexual desires, and, since no morality exists external to yourself and the social situation in which you find yourself, express your desires within broad, flexible limits of social acceptability. The general message conveyed is that one’s feelings are real (with neither intrinsic rightness nor intrinsic wrongness) and are a worthwhile part of a worthwhile person; therefore they merit expression.
From a biblical perspective, the critical lack in such an approach is the absence of absolute guides for moral conduct. Armed with the belief that whatever is real about a person is good, members of the encounter group may relentlessly focus attention on the reality of a person’s feelings without concern for the morality of their expression. Desires and feelings that may, from a biblical perspective, derive from a sinful nature are reinforced and nourished by continued attention. Their expression in behavior consequently becomes more probable.
The third method available to the sexually aroused young man strikes me as most consonant with biblical teaching, common sense, and sound psychology: Be fully aware of the existence of sexual desires, but, by an act of choice, conform to the limits within which scriptural morality permits expression. In other words, the healthiest resolution would be the attitude, “Yes, I’m really turned on by her. I will neither deny the existence of these feelings nor dwell upon them. But, because I believe God’s standards are guides for an effective and fulfilling life, through the power and help of the Holy Spirit I will consciously and deliberately suppress the expression of these desires (in either reality or fantasy) until their expression conforms to God’s standards.”
Psychological and spiritual disorder has at least two very different causes: (1) the absence of self-control (consistently following the lead of one’s impulses without regard for moral limits) and (2) the absence of self-awareness (pretending, sometimes from piety, other times from a sense of guilt, that some real desire or feeling does not exist). To the degree that sensitivity-training experiences increase self-awareness, I endorse them. To the degree that they implicitly or explicitly nourish what needs to be fully acknowledged but also controlled, I reject and avoid them.
Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., is director of the Psychological Counseling Center and assistant professor in the psychology department at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton. He has the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.
