A core concept of PCA in the spotlight: facilitating encounter

ABSTRACT

In this editorial, we introduce our inspiration for this special issue in facilitating encounter. We explore some of the tensions inherent in the person-centered literature, such as working with or prioritizing individuals or the group. We emphasize the necessity for the authenticity and spontaneity of facilitators and their role as participants as well as facilitators. In the current context of encounter groups, which is different from when they originated, we introduce what the authors in this issue suggest is important about facilitating such endeavors. Moreover, we argue for the necessity of a broader discussion of facilitating encounter seeing encounter as one of the core concepts of PCA.

Un concept de base de l’APC à l’honneur: faciliter la rencontre

Dans cet éditorial, nous présentons notre source d’inspiration pour ce numéro spécial consacré à la facilitation de la rencontre. Nous explorons quelques points de divergence inhérents à la littérature centrée sur la personne, tel que la priorité accordée à l’individu ou au groupe. Nous portons l’accent sur la nécessité de l’authenticité et de la spontanéité des facilitateurs dans leur rôle en tant que participants et que facilitateurs. Dans le contexte actuel des groupes de rencontre, qui est différent de celui de leur origine, nous introduisons ce que les auteurs de ce numéro suggèrent comme étant important dans la facilitation d’une telle entreprise. De plus, nous plaidons pour la nécessité d’une discussion élargie à propos de la facilitation de la rencontre envisagée comme l’un des concepts fondamentaux de l’Approche centrée sur la personne (PCA).

Ein zentrales Konzept von PCA im Rampenlicht: Facilitating encounter

In diesem Editorial stellen wir vor, was uns zu dieser Spezialausgabe zu Facilitating Encounter inspirierte. Wir untersuchen einige der Spannungen, die der Personzentrierten Literatur inhärent sind, wie die Arbeit mit oder das Priorisieren von Einzelnen oder der Gruppe. Wir unterstreichen die Wichtigkeit von Authentizität und Spontaneität der Facilitator*innen sowie sowohl ihre Rolle als Teilnehmende als auch die als Facilitator*innen. Im aktuellen Kontext von Encounter-Gruppen, der anders ist als zu der Zeit, als diese entstanden, skizzieren wir, was die Autor*innen dieser Ausgabe für wichtig halten, um solche Unterfangen zu fördern. Darüber hinaus halten wir eine breitere Diskussion zum Facilitating von Encounter für wünschenswert, da wir Encounter als eines der Kernkonzepte des PCA betrachten.

Um conceito central do PCA no centro das atenções: facilitando o encontro

Neste editorial introduzimos aquela que foi a nossa inspiração para esta edição especial dedicada à facilitação dos grupos de encontro. Exploramos algumas das tensões inerentes à literatura centrada na pessoa, tais como o trabalho com ou a priorização do indivíduo ou do grupo. Enfatizamos a necessidade de autenticidade e espontaneidade dos facilitadores e o seu papel tanto de participantes como de facilitadores. No contexto atual dos grupos de encontro, que é diferente do original, introduzimos aquilo que os autores desta edição sugerem ser importante na facilitação de tais demandas. Para além disso, debatemos a necessidade de uma discussão mais ampla acerca da facilitação dos grupos de encontro, perspetivando o encontro como um dos conceitos centrais da ACP.

Un concepto central de PCA en primer plano: facilitar el encuentro

En esta editorial introducimos nuestra inspiración para este particular tema, facilitar el encuentro. Exploramos algunas de las tensiones inherentes en la literatura centrada en la persona, tales como trabajar con o priorizar a los individuos por sobre el grupo. Nosotros enfatizamos la necesidad de autenticoa y espontaneos facilitaores. En el context actual los grupos de encuentro, que es diferente de como se originaron, inroducimos loa que los iutores de este grupo sugieren como importante acerca de ser facilitadoes esos esfuersos. Mas aun, abogamos papor la nevesidad de una discusion mas ampli de encuentros facilitadotres como uno de l conecptps claros del PCA.

KEYWORDS:

• Encounter
• group facilitation
• encounter philosophy
• authenticity

We were inspired to organize a special issue on facilitating encounter after our experiences of encounter in the PCE conference in Vienna in July 2018. Here it was clear, both at the time and from communications after the conference, that there were many different ideas among participants about what encounter does or should entail, and more crucially and interestingly for us, how encounter could or should be facilitated. We perceived a lack of clarity in the literature about what facilitation involves and a wide variety of ideas among facilitators who all believe they are facilitating encounter within a person centered approach. We were not interested, nor believe it to be possible or desirable to define the approach to encounter facilitation, yet wanted to collect contributions from facilitators around the world to show the range of approaches, their commonalities, differences and how they fit with the principles of the PCA. Our hope was then that these written contributions could be referred to at future encounter events by facilitating teams and in publicity materials to be clearer about what encounter facilitation could involve in any particular context. What is more, we aimed to stimulate theory development and discussion as well as the exchange of experiences as we see encounter as being a core area of the PCA.

The encounter movement had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s when such groups were popular for the general public interested in self-development, relating and collective action. Now, encounter groups seem to be limited on the whole to the experiences of some psychotherapy training programs, a few other educational settings, and at conferences or continuing professional development training for psychotherapists and counselors. This skew in who attends such experiences of course affects the diversity of participants (or lack of) and assumptions are often made that we share an understanding of what we are doing and why. In these special issues, we want to contextualize the current phenomenon of encounter groups and explore the implications of these contexts.

Rogers (1970) discusses the difficulty in writing about how to facilitate, not wanting to convey expertize or homogeneity in facilitation styles. Instead, he presents how he personally attempts to be facilitative: his strengths, weaknesses and uncertainties. He trusts the group process, believing that the group itself behaves like an organism, with a tendency to actualize. He tries not to have aims for the group as he believes these get in the way of the group process; he is confident the group will move but not how or that he can direct it. Regarding the aim of facilitation, he says: ‘A facilitator can develop … a psychological climate of safety in which freedom of expression and reduction of defensiveness gradually occur’ (Rogers, 1970, p. 6). He (Rogers, 1970) defines the aim of encounter, saying that a group is successful if most of the participants feel it to be rewarding and growthful.

Wood (2008, p. 41) defines the differences between an encounter group and individual PC psychotherapy saying: ‘It concentrates on the here-and-now situation as opposed to relating historical problems or explanations for behavior and feelings or discussing events which occur outside of the group. It emphasizes the capacity for growing, for loving, for experiencing joy as well as pain. As a path to self-awareness, it demands honesty and confrontation between participants, and transparency – communicating one’s private world to others in a language that they can clearly understand.’ Furthermore, there are clear ideas of the purpose of an encounter group. Wood (2008, p. 45) states: ‘ideally the group environment would allow the expression of, but not the provocation of, previously guarded feelings; would allow emotion, but not mere talking about emotions; would allow self-awareness, but not mere self-centredness. In short, it would allow the genuine expression of, but not the falsification of, human feeling, creativity and interaction.’ Schlien (2003, p. 135) presents a more group-centered focus for the aim of encounter saying: ‘There is one goal for the group and its individual members – that is the experience of freedom … 3. Group freedom is the most meaningful freedom, since freedom in isolation is almost always freedom with context. 4. When a group experiences freedom, it has a rare and unique experience, for groups usually have leaders, or levels of subordination among members, or are co-operating for common purposes, or hang together out of fear.’ So how might this environment be facilitated?

In the PCA, it is clear that facilitators of encounter are also participants although Rogers suggests that this balance may change over time saying: ‘My hope is to gradually become as much a participant in the group as a facilitator’ (Rogers, 1970, p. 45). Furthermore, he emphasizes the importance of the facilitator as a person rather than fulfilling a role saying ‘there is maximum growth for both group and facilitator when the facilitator participated as a person in his group rather than as any sort of expert’ (Rogers, 1970, p. 150). He notes that the process that occurs in facilitated encounter groups is similar to groups without facilitators so differences in process (p. 8) ‘depend on the style or point of view of the leader or facilitator.’ Is he perhaps saying that a successful facilitated encounter group is one in which the facilitators are or become redundant or that it matters little whether encounter groups are facilitated or not? Some of the contributions to the second special issue will argue the case for encounter without designated facilitators.

Rogers (1970) is clear about the lack of direction that a facilitator should provide, or leadership in the traditional way of understanding this role. He states: ‘ … the leader or facilitator makes clear at the outset that this is a group with unusual freedom and not one for which he will take directional responsibility … ’ (Rogers, 1970, p. 15). However, there is the argument that the facilitator takes responsibility to try and save the group from the pressures of conformity or pressure from any particular participants. For example, Wood (2008, p. 45) suggests: ‘The effective facilitator tries to help group members avoid the pitfalls of every convention, even the expression of feelings or activities which a participant has retained from his previous successful group experience.’

Rather than clarity about the behavior of encounter group facilitators, Rogers (1970) instead emphasizes the importance of their personal characteristics. He is clear about definite contraindications for offering facilitation, for example, people whose own needs are so great they can’t hear others, people who interpret, who lead the group in exercises, or who withhold themselves from emotional participation in the group, or stand aloof, with superiority. Facilitators need to be able to withstand attacks from participants, which are likely as a result of refusing to direct or lead.

However, Rogers (1970) avoids any kind of prescriptive advice for facilitating, stating instead that ‘ … spontaneity is the most precious and elusive element I know’ (p. 57). He also values encounter as a space in which he has learnt to take risks and these have paid off. He says (Rogers, 1970, p. 113)

‘Though I do not always live up to it, I have learned that basically there is nothing to be afraid of. When I present myself as I am, when I can come forth nondefensively, without armour, just me … then I can be much more real … I can learn much more – even from criticism and hostility – and am much more relaxed and get much closer to people. Besides my willingness to be vulnerable brings forth so much more real feeling from other people in relation to me that it is much more rewarding.’

Wood (2008, p. 44) similarly suggests the characteristics required from a facilitator and indeed from participants in encounter saying: ‘A broad outlook and a sensitivity to each person and his needs is required of the facilitator and group members to hard against the harmful application of any social pressure. Courage is also required in order to confront whatever thoughtless tendencies toward conformity may arise. And courage is required to, in fact, confront one’s own ghosts.’ He argues that encounter groups are likely to involve higher levels of unpredictability and emotional arousal than individual therapy, thus ‘greater flexibility in his or her behavior may be required in the group than in client-centred therapy’ (Wood 2008, p. 48). Furthermore, facilitators are also required to be participants, to be open and spontaneous with more genuineness/transparency expected than of a therapist.

We have been delighted by the level of interest we have received in our proposal and the range of themes covered by our contributors have certainly demonstrated the justification of such a special issue. This has resulted – so far – in two special issues of which this is the first. In our first paper, Peter Schmid (2019) introduces the reader to the philosophical underpinnings of encounter by taking us through the philosophical background to the concepts of Buber and Levinas and tracing the influence of these ideas on Rogers, arguing that the philosophy of encounter developed the person-centered approach into a clearly relational endeavor from its more individualist origins. Briefly outlining how Rogers understanding of ‘therapy as encounter’ developed in small groups, he elaborates on the application of the idea of encounter in large groups, institutions and communities. Thus, he focuses on its political implications. He closes with his ideas of encountering ‘the world’ framing encounter as a specific Weltanschauung.

This is followed by Maureen O’Hara (2019), who gives a profound and also very personal overview of the person-centered large group-workshops from 1974–1986, which aimed beyond personal growth to address political and social challenges of that time. Her focus hereby lies on the conceptions, the development and the practice of facilitating, as she herself was member of the facilitating staff all over this period. She describes Rogers’ and the staff’s ambivalence between the special requirements for facilitating and the dictum of being part of the group, which made it difficult to recognize the power and the authority of the staff. On the other hand, the intense and open occupation with these requirements – especially demanded by Natalie Rogers – and the experienced possibilities of the large groups enabled to recognize learning as a way of being and becoming.

Gay Barfield (2019) adds to this historical overview with her own, taking us through her over five decades of encounter facilitation, with Rogers and continuing after his death. She provides an invaluable history of the progression of the encounter movement to more explicitly focusing on social justice issues, arguing that encounter weaves together person-centered principles and social issues. She also makes a plea for the importance of careful language and how our language determines our social landscape and relationships.

Then, a series of two papers follow the themes raised by O’Hara and Barfield about the importance of encounter for socio-political issues and vice versa. Firstly, Gillian Proctor (2019) follows Barfield’s interweaving of person centered principles with social justice issues, arguing for the importance of a stance of humility and not knowing both for the facilitator and participants in an encounter group to be open to its transformative possibilities. She also hypothesizes a precondition for encounter, which is for all participants to believe the inherent equal value of all and that part of the facilitator role is to spot when this precondition is not being achieved, to draw attention to this and challenge it.

Maria Haenga-Collins, Margot Solomon, Wiremu Woodward, Brian Rodgers and Keith Tudor (2019) discuss in their article large group encounter in the context of biculturalism, a concept that is specific to the relationship and engagement between indigenous and settler cultures. To honor their differences they attempted writing both collectively and individually, and maintaining as much as possible a dialog between each and all of them about their thoughts, experience(s), contributions and differences.

Charles O’Leary (2019), inspired by his experiences in the encounter group at the PCE conference in Vienna last year, compares encounter groups to intimate relationships and brings ideas from his work with couples and families to bear on participating in and facilitating encounter groups. Erich Zauner (2019) raises questions about setting, resonance and directivity and can be read as a follow-up to Maureen O’Hara’s text. His main concern is the responsibility of the facilitator, as a person and in his professional role.

Finally, John Wilson, Fabienne Chazeaux, Carole Francis-Smith and Kate Dunn (2019) bring encounter groups into the current cultural context by discussing their experiences of facilitating encounter groups online and begin to explore the multiple ways in which participants can interact and the multiple concurrent facilitation requirements from this format. They argue that far from being not ‘real’, online encounter can offer different ways of relating and possibly suit certain personalities more than face to face encounter groups.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gillian Proctor

Dr. Gillian Proctor is the programme leader for the MA in counselling and psychotherapy at the University of Leeds and an independent clinical psychologist.

Renata Fuchs

Renata Fuchs is managing director of zb-zentrum für beratung, training & entwicklung, Lower Austria and she is teaching Psychotherapy at APG-IPS, Institute for Personcentred Studies, Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna and Bertha von Suttner University Sankt Pölten.

Aglaja Przyborski

Aglaja Przyborski, Ph.D. is full Professor of Psychotherapy at the Bertha von Suttner Privat University, St. Pölten, Austria. She is also teaching Psychotherapy at APG-IPS, Institute for Personcentred Studies, is an active researcher in the field psychotherapy, counseling, communication, and media, has contributed to the development of Qualitative Methods and published a number of respective books and papers.