The Sex Therapists: What They Can Do and How They Do It (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 15) by Block Lawrence & Wells as John Warren

Author:Block, Lawrence & Wells, as John Warren [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lawrence Block
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

A Good Excuse for an Orgy

The encounter group is a phenomenon of the late sixties that was widely embraced upon its inception as a vehicle for instant psychotherapy. The premise of the encounter group, in essence, is that a collection of strangers operating in an intensive form of group therapy over an extended period of time may act upon one another in such a way as to facilitate significant breakthroughs which could otherwise only be achieved by months or years of more conventional therapy.

These groups have taken an infinite variety of forms and have held appeal for as great a variety of persons. Quite a few corporations arranged for key employees to attend groups designed to improve their emotional outlook and increase their self-awareness. Many neurotics saw the encounter marathon as a valuable shortcut to what they had thus far been unable to achieve via conventional therapy. Encounter groups have also drawn a significant number of persons who employ them periodically as a sort of emotional high colonic, a means of achieving a temporary catharsis; such individuals participate in marathon after marathon, playing in them as in any game situation.

In the past year or so, there has been a rather severe backlash. Persons in the field have become increasingly aware that what was at worst regarded as a psychic cocktail can be more like nitroglycerine than alcohol, with an unpredictable potential for explosive results. The most obvious danger—that an encounter can trigger nervous breakdowns in unstable individuals—seems to be the least of it. A far more insidious danger lies in the possibility that a person may experience an enormous emotional breakthrough (which of course is the whole idea) and will subsequently prove incapable of handling that breakthrough. The exhilaration of the experience is followed in a day or a week or a month by the unhappy realization that, breakthrough or no breakthrough, one is still the same person and one’s problems are still the same problems, and what appeared to be the light at the end of the tunnel was merely a mirage.

The result of this realization is apt to be depression, often suicidal in scope. This particular pattern is a known hazard in psychotherapy in general, but in conventional ongoing courses of therapy the patient has at least minimal safeguards. He sees the therapist on a regular basis, and the therapist is presumably competent to identify signs of such depression and deal with them as they manifest themselves. In addition, the therapist is available to the patient in times of stress.

This is not the case with the great majority of encounter groups. Once the marathon is over, once the emotional merry-go-round grinds to a halt, the participants are very much on their own. There is generally no follow-up by the person or persons running the operation, nor are they apt to be accessible to participants should they be needed. Some observers have detected a definite syndrome in which a person attends an encounter marathon, experiences enormous exhilaration and the sense that a whole new life has opened up for him—and, within a month or so, commits suicide.

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