I came across some material that should be pretty interesting. Most of this comes from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. First is a transcript of a speech given by Abraham Maslow, lead figure in the Human Potential Movement alongside Carl Rogers, while at the Synanon branch in NY called “Daytop” where he talks about his impression of their “therapy” and essentially tries to sell them on the idea for growing the model to become a social psycho-therapeutic proffesion. 2nd is a paper about Maslows colleague Carl Rogers and his involvement with CIA mind control experiments. 3rd is a paper about the common practice of using catharsis as a tool in human potential encounter groups. And 4th is a review of practice and research in marathon groups. These are all excerpts from the papers.
Synanon and Eupsychia. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 1967; 7; 28
These are excerpts from a speech given by Abraham Maslow, leading figure in the Human Potential Movement alongside Carl Rogers, at the Synanon branch in NY, Daytop Village, Staten Island, N. Y., on August 14, 1965. Synanon is a community run by former drug addicts to which addicts come to be cured. (Cedu was started in ’67. Also in 67' Synanon adopted the idea of lifetime therapy and became a self-proclaimed utopian community.)What I have read about Synanon, as well as what I saw last night and this afternoon, suggests that the whole idea of the fragile teacup which might crack or break, the idea that you mustn't say a loud word to anybody because it might traumatize him or hurt him, the idea that people cry easily or crack easily or commit suicide or go crazy if you shout at them - that maybe these ideas are outdated.
I've suggested that a name for this might be "no-crap therapy." It serves to clean out the defenses, the rationalizations, the veils, the evasions and politenesses of the world. The world is half-blind, you might say, and what I've seen here is the restoring of sight. In these groups people refuse to accept the normal veils. They rip them aside and refuse to take any crap or excuses or evasions of any sort.
Well, I have been asking questions, and I have been told that this assumption works fine. Did anybody ever commit suicide or crack in any way? No. Has anyone gone crazy from this rough treatment? No. I watched it last night. There was extremely direct talking, and it worked fine. Now this contradicts a whole lifetime of training, and that makes it terribly important to me as a theoretical psychologist who has been trying to figure out what human nature is like in general. It raises a real question about the nature of the whole human species. How strong are people? How much can they take? The big question is how much honesty can people take. There are all sorts of games cooked up to cover the truth, but the truth is that the average American citizen does not have a real friend in the world. Very few people have what a psychologist would call real friendships. The marriages are mostly no good in that ideal sense as well. You could say that the kinds of problems we have, the open troubles - not being able to resist alcohol, not being able to resist drugs, not being able to resist crime, not being able to resist anything - that these are due to the lack of these basic psychological gratifications. The question is, does Daytop supply these psychological vitamins? My impression as I wandered around this place this morning is that it does.
It seems possible that this brutal honesty, rather than being an insult, implies a kind of respect. You can take it as you find it, as it really is. And this can be a basis for respect and friendship. I remember hearing an analyst talking a long time ago, long before group therapy. He was talking about this honesty too. What he was saying sounded foolish at the time, as if he was being cruel or some-thing. What he said was that "I place upon my patients the fullest load of anxiety that they can bear." Do you realize what that implies? As much as they can take, that is what he is going to dish out, because the more he can dish out, the faster the whole thing will move. It doesn't seem so foolish in the light of experience here.
On the new social therapy. This is a thought which may turn out to be of professional interest to you. There is a new kind of job opening up that is an activist's job, and it is one that demands experience rather than book training. It is a sort of a combination of an old-fashioned minister and a teacher. You have to be concerned with people. You have to like working with them directly, rather than at a distance; and you have to have as much knowledge of human nature as possible. I have suggested calling it "social therapy." Well, this seems to be developing very gradually over the last year or two. The people who are doing best are not the people with Ph.D.s and so on; they are the people who have been on the streets and who know what it is all about themselves. They know what they're talking about. They know, for example, when to push hard and when to take it easy. With the sudden effort to try to teach the illiterate how to read; and of psychiatry to help people to maturity and responsibility; and so on, there is already a great shortage of people to do these jobs.
Well, one of the interesting things about Daytop is that it is being run by people who have been through the mill of experience. You people know how to talk to others in the same boat. And this is a job; it may be a new type of profession.
On the current social revolution. I could give you a half hour of examples of the way it takes place in different spots. There is a revolution going on. There are some spots which are more growing points than others; but they are all growing in the same Eupsychian direction, that is in the direction of more fully human people. This is going on in education as well. I think that it would be possible, if we got together and pooled all the experiences, bad and good, that we could all pool together, to take the skin off the whole damn educational system. But we could also rebuild it. Well, this is explosive because it demands a human reality, human needs, and human development, rather than a sort of traditional heritage from a thousand years ago which is outdated. It is difficult to speak about Eupsychian education. I think that you can contribute some with the thought that I suggested to you that you consider this as a sort of pilot experiment.
On encounters. May I tell you something. I've been in only one encounter group - last night - and I don't know how I would react if I'd been in that thing for a long time. Nobody has ever been that blunt with me in my whole life.
A major research question. That raises a question that I am asking around here. It is a very important question, and you don't really have the answer, I guess. The question is why do some people stay and others not? That also means, if you take this as a kind of educational institution, how good will it be for how much of the population? How many customers do you expect? How many people won't it work for? You know, the people who never show up do not get counted as failures. You people here overcame a hurdle, you overcame a fear. What is your theory about the people who don't jump over the fear? What is the difference between them and you? This is a practical question, since you people will be the graduates who will be running places like this somewhere else in the future. Then you must face the problem of how to make a larger percentage stay. I report to you that by comparison with that picture that procedure - what happens here is that the truth is being dished out and shoved right in your face. Nobody sits and waits for eight months until you discover it for yourself. At least the people who stay can accept it, and it appears to be good for them. That is in contradiction to a whole psychiatric theory.
From the kind of talking that we did last night, I very definitely have the feeling that the group would feed back things that you could not get in a hundred years of psychoanalysis from one person. Talking about what somebody looks like and what you look like to somebody else, and then having six other people agreeing about the impression you give, is revealing. Maybe it is not possible to form your own identity or a real picture of yourself unless you also get the picture of what you look like to the world. Well, that is a new assumption. In psychoanalysis that assumption isn't made. What you look like to other people isn't taken into account.
After you get over the pain, eventually self-knowledge is a very nice thing. It feels good to know about something rather than to wonder about it, to speculate about it. "Maybe he didn't speak to me because I'm bad, maybe they behaved that way because I'm bad." For the average man, life is just a succession of maybes. He doesn't know why people smile at him or why they don't. It is a very comfortable feeling not to have to guess. It is good to be able to know.
Below are excerpts from a paper about Carl Rogers, co-founder of the Human potential Movement With Maslow. It is taken from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology so it is biased in favor of Rogers, but still revealing.Carl Rogers and the CIAJournal of Humanistic Psychology 2008; 48; 6 originally published online Oct 24, 2007;
Carl Rogers was a pioneer and leader in the humanistic psychology movement. Although his many professional activities and accomplishments are well known, the story of his association with the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology—a front organization for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—is barely known and has never been explored in any depth. This article attempts to tell that story in the context of America during the 1950s, Rogers’s academic career, and the mission of the CIA.
Symbolic of Rogers’s stature in the world of psychology in the 1950s was his historic debate in 1956 with the leading figure in the behaviorist school of psychology, B. F. Skinner (Rogers & Skinner, 1956; Skinner, 1948, 1968). On that occasion, Rogers warned of the growing danger of governments using the behavioral sciences to exercise more effective control over their citizens. In his conclusion, Rogers stated,
“It is my hope that we have helped to clarify the range of choice which will lie before us and our children in regard to the behavioral sciences. We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood.” …… (Rogers & Skinner, 1956, p. 1064)
What Rogers did not mention and what virtually no one at the time knew was that while Carl Rogers was voicing these noble sentiments and was becoming arguably the leading spokesperson for the emerging movement in humanistic psychology, he was also working with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
1977 that John Marks, of the Center for National Securities Studies in Washington, D.C., dramatically exposed the CIA’s involvement in mind control and behavior control research. Marks’s book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control, appeared in 1979 and included additional information on Rogers’s involvement. Also of interest was psychological knowledge that might help the CIA understand “brainwashing,” that is, techniques to change a person’s belief, control a person’s thought processes, or get a person to carry out the controller’s wishes.
Agency officials were convinced that the Soviet Union and communist China had, or might soon have, powerful brainwashing techniques and witnessed the 70% of 7,190 American Korean War prisoners held in China who made confessions, denounced their country, or signed petitions against the U.S. role in the war, many of whom even held on to their beliefs after they were repatriated to the United States (Marks, 1979; Thomas, 1989). Hence, the CIA was committed to doing whatever it took to learn as much as possible about psychological processes that might facilitate or resist brainwashing and other forms of psychological persuasion.
Thus, within a few years of its creation, the CIA was involved with drug experiments, the use of hypnosis, and behavior-control programs, activities that continued for many years (Marks, 1979).
Ross (2000) documented that MKULTRA was the umbrella for 149 “subprojects” that covered
a wide range of topics, including but not limited to the effects of LSD and other drugs, hypnosis, stress, and sensory deprivation. In many of these projects, the participants were unknowing or unwilling participants—research that would be illegal or at least highly unethical today.
Although some scientists were funded without knowledge of CIA and MKULTRA backing, Rogers seemed to have top-secret clearance for his work and knowledge of the CIA connection (Ross, 2000). Why would the CIA want to give money to Rogers to study “the correlation of psychological and physiological variables in personality and personality change,” as he described it in his annual report?
Rogers’s work with schizophrenics outside the CIA context might seem worthwhile and admirable. However, this same work, when placed in the context of CIA mind control, may, to some, stain Rogers’s image or raise questions about his motivations or ethics.
As Rogers explained his motives to Greenfield (1977), “ It seemed as though Russia was a very potential enemy and as though the United States was very wise to get whatever information it could about things that the Russians might try to do, such as brainwashing or influencing people. So that it didn’t seem at all dishonorable to me to be connected with an intelligence outfit at that time. I look at it quite differently now. (p. 10)”
Or perhaps he knew the general content of the research but not the details. For example, a proposal might request funding to study the effects of LSD on the self-disclosure or memory of college students, but it seems unlikely that the full board would be told that the college students were to be duped into the experiment and not informed that they would be receiving an experimental drug.
Catharsis in Human Potential EncounterJournal of Humanistic Psychology 1974; 14; 27
In this article I shall focus on the rediscovery and use of catharsis in human potential encounter groups. I have chosen a limited topic. Catlarsis is but one aspect of contemporary encounter (Rogers, 1970; Schutz, 1967), and encounter itself is but one of many practices being explored by human potential practitioners (Peterson, 1971). Catharsis is not common to all human potential work. But its use is more widespread than in encounter groups. Practitioners of bioenergetics (Lowen, 1971), the Synanon game (Yablonsky, 1965), primal therapy (Janov, 1971) and gestalt therapy (Perls, 1969) utilize catharsis. From my point of mew, catharsis is a relatively easy and reliable way to produce a peak experience (Maslow, 1962), a period of self-transcendence. During this period, healing and personal growth take place more quickly than usual. Healing, personal growth, and self-transcendence loosely define the goals and purpose of the human potential practitioner. The range and scope of these myriad vehicles of transpersonal experience and exploration can best be judged through inspection of the Esalen Institute catalog or the more general listing made by Peterson
(1971).
Catalog of the Ways People Grow
In the discussion that follows, I shall focus attention on one such
practice: the use of human potential encounter groups to promote healing,
growth, and transcendence. Even more specifically, I shall emphasize the
use of catharsis in such groups, since I believe that catharsis is the most
frequent and valued tool for entry into transcendental realms of
experience.
CATHARSIS IN ENCOUNTER
Frequently in the course of an encounter group, participants experience a cathartic release of pent-up emotions or tension followed by an unusual, even ecstatic, sense of well-being-a feeling of having been cleansed or reborn. In this postcathartic state, conditions for healing, growth, and transcendence exist to an unusual degree: psychosomatic symptoms fall away, insights into personal behavior come easily and naturally, and a transcendent sense of union with cosmic order is common. But it is true that transcendent experience is the crown of the group experience. There exists no easier way to produce transcendent experience in a group of participants than through catharsis, assuming that we forego the use of psychedelic drugs.
Psychoanalysis, too, began with an exploration of catharsis or abreaction used to relieve hysterical symptoms. Freud (1963) describes his early work with Breuer: &dquo;We led the patient’s attention directly to the traumatic scene in which the symptom had arisen, endeavored to find the mental conflict inherent in it and to release the suppressed affect [p. 44].&dquo; Freud calls this &dquo;the cathartic method.&dquo;
I cannot say with authority why religious enthusiasts or psychoanalysts began their movements with catharsis. But encounter group leaders have explored it because catharsis is easy to produce, is dramatic to behold, and achieves remarkable short-term effects.
In encounter, we produce catharsis in a wide variety of ways. Each method has, I believe, historical precedent, although we as group leaders rarely realize these antecedents and frequently believe that we merely stumble upon our practices. For the sake of clarity, I shall divide these methods into three general dynamic categories: first, the resistance to free expression may be weakened, rather like attacking the walls of the tea kettle; second, the impulse-seeking expression may be strengthened, as if we turned up the heat under the kettle; third, we may &dquo;trigger the complex&dquo; which is an act of making conscious the tea kettle, the cork, and the steam all at one instant.
In actual practice, these three dynamics are not necessarily used in pure form. Usually combinations are invoked, if only because the encounter context and the immediate history of the moment may contain elements of all the approaches I have identified. Thus a person whose defenses are weakened through excessive or prolonged excitation may be triggered into a release simply by observing another person express some emotion. In the first case, the forces of control are reduced: fear, prolonged excitation, fasting, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation or sensory bombardment, deprivation of customary drugs such as nicotine, unaccustomed physical stress or exercise, exposure to the elements, or exposure to physical extremes such as cold and hot water all enhance the probability of catharsis in encounter group members. Nearly everyone in a five-day group will cathart if the third day is a day of fasting and no nicotine. A 24-hour fast makes everyone a bit light and giddy and very susceptible to the emotional content of encounter, that is to say, very easily triggered.
Beyond chanting, there exist many other energy-raising procedures including rhythmic breathing, imagery exercises, risk-taking games like follow-the-leader or truth-or-consequences, and even gentle or harsh bodily postures and actions which directly yield tremors and then shakes and finally epileptoid release.
Yet when encounter group leaders and members put a premium on the cathartic act, there is a temptation to push people to cry, to become angry, or to confess some sin or other. While such pressures fail more often than not, they set up an unpleasant atmosphere in the group room.
POSTCATHARTIC PERIOD
Following the massive emotional release of catharsis, a person typically, but not inevitably, experiences an ecstasy, then a depression, and finally a return to normal. This relationship between a peak experience followed by a valley experience, a depression, resembles the postparturant depression following childbirth, the letdown that may follow a festival or holiday, or the state following ecstatic sexual union.
The blissful state arises no matter how catharsis comes about. This state of bliss, this mini-satori, however transient, is sought and cherished by encounter practitioners and participants alike. We seek and desire this cleansing and rebirth, and we patronize encounter groups as one of the few institutions in our middleclass subculture fostering such experiences.
The symptoms of this first stage of the postcathartic period are virtually identical to those described by Maslow (1962) in his study of peak experiences.
In brief, the postcathartic individual appears radiant, even luminous, to others. The eyes are unusually clear; muscles are relaxed yet energized; physical movement and verbal expression are graceful, even beautiful, and very much to the point. Inner symptoms include a remarkable sensitization to color and sound; an unusual perception of somatic events; a pervasive feeling of energy; and a feeling of profound well-being, ease, and familiarity within the ongoing, existential flow of life.
All of the unusual powers or abilities attributed to ecstatic states of being are confirmed in encounter experience. The postcathartic person has an unusual number of coincidences and other intimations of paranormal perception or comprehension. Healings and other so-called miracles or gifts are manifested. Psychological, somatic, and spiritual pathology may be suddenly washed away as if disease were in some way antithetical to the radiant state. The pragmatic consideration for group leaders is this: during the postcathartic radiant period, remarkable conditions favoring healing and growth obtain. We call this good working space. In good working space, change occurs easily.
Laski (1970) has described the similarities between religious conversion, the psychoanalytic ab reactive event, and political uses of brainwashing following cathartic breakdown of customary controls. In each case, for better or worse, a person’s entire belief system may be quickly and radically altered.
In human potential work, we say that the postcathartic individual has been deconditioned or unprogrammed and may be reconditioned or reprogrammed according to new beliefs and values. At this impressionable time, a person may readily fall in love, accept another person’s value system, or reaffirm an essential faith in personal values and beliefs. It is as if the participant were returned to the neonatal state, open and susceptible to the imprinting process described by ethologists. Because the postcathartic radiant person may be so impressionable, even unconscious values of the group leader or cultural event which produced the catharsis may be adopted. The responsibility of any programming agent is very great.
Ordinarily the radiant, charismatic, ecstatic state does not last. The glow dims. The capacity for insight is lost. The experience fades into memory. This loss deeply disappoints those who believed that they had been permanently enlightened by what was, in fact, a transitory peak experience. After the peak, all too often comes a depression, a valley, as it were, to match the peak. In traditional mysticism, this depression has been called &dquo;the dark night of the soul (Underhill, 1955).&dquo; During the dark night of the soul, all the old discomfort may reappear, sometimes in exaggerated form.
Early psychoanalysts noted the fact that the wonderful effects of catharsis were not lasting. They especially noted that symptoms reappeared. Encounter group leaders, too, have become increasingly conscious of the disadvantages of catharsis. Even though catharsis produces peaks easily, the effects of these peaks seem random; no one can tell who will really change and who will merely taste the possibility for change.
But, even worse, the emphasis on catharsis leads practitioners and participants alike to seek ever more potent blowouts in the illusory hope of finally discovering the permanent high. We became addicted to a model of growth and transcendence based on the concept of the sudden satori.
Above all, we have not given up the postcathartic period of good work space in which insight and change can happen so effortlessly and quickly. But we have adopted disciplines to help prepare for that state of being and to help maintain it when the group has dispersed.
We have on the right hand a science and a technology and on the left hand a developing practice of spiritual growth, feeling, and intuition (see Ornstein, 1972). Our task is to bring the two hands together into a synthesis of the material and the spiritual realms of existence.
The Marathon Group: A Review of Practice and ResearchNorman G. Dinges and Richard G. Weigel
Small Group Research 1971; 2; 339
The marathon group represents the culmination of a convergence of two separate but related developments in the practice of therapy or training in groups: group psychotherapy and sensitivity training. The beginnings of group psychotherapy have been attributed to primitive healing ceremonies, or to Mesmer at the Baquet (Hill, 1961).
The National Training Laboratories’ sensitivity training movement started in 1946, and included principles derived from group dynamics, psychotherapy, and philosophy. It has been oriented toward facilitating learning of a special type; increased sensitivity toward group processes, increased awareness of the character of one’s own group participation, and increased ability to deal with a variety of group situations (Stock, 1964).
Casriel and Deitch (1968) state that the only productive group leader is the one who is capable of becoming personally involved in the group dynamics. Consistent with the position of Bach and Stoller, the leader has the dual responsibility of guiding the group members’ participation and revealing his own views and feelings. Bernhard (1968a) sees the marathon as a technical and personal challenge to the therapist’s own authenticity. She presents her function as one of commitment to interact with group participants as a person, but also as a technician in keeping the group on the course of significant therapeutic work. This is accomplished by using group pressures productively to change self-sabotaging attitudes and behaviors. She reports that her own experience as a marathon therapist-participant, although often emotionally painful, had taught her that tearing down defensive structures leads to emotional growth, and furthermore, resulted in a radical change of life style for her.
Bach (1967b) echoes Stoller’s concern that leaders be well trained, and decries the &dquo;wild&dquo; marathons conducted by unprofessional, untrained group leaders. He stresses the importance of the leader having the skill not only to facilitate candid communication among the members, but also to make full therapeutic use of the resultant tensions that emerge during the group meeting.
First, true feelings are to be shared as clearly and transparently as possible with the expressor responsible for keeping the group attention on himself; second, no holds are barred in giving feedback to the expressor; and third, making people feel better is not the purpose of the marathon. One of the most strongly emphasized rules is that expression of feelings in the here-and-now and their sharing is to be the mode of participation.
As a function of the extended session length, other new variables are added (e.g., sleep deprivation, fatigue, the &dquo;special event&dquo;) which presumably accentuate or generate other therapeutic effects within the marathon (e.g., high group cohesiveness; &dquo;peak experiences&dquo;).
Brainwashing. It should be noted that concerns about the fatigue factor have contributed to attacks on the marathon as being a form of &dquo;brainwashing&dquo; (e.g., Hollister, 1969; Let Freedom Ring, 1968). That there are apparent similarities in technique between brainwashing and therapy in general (Dolliver, 1971), and between brainwashing and the marathon must be acknowledged. Cecil A. Edie has noted, in a personal communication in 1969, some of the similarities, and he points out that a number of investigators have reported that brainwashing takes place after the individual is worn down to a state of physical and psychological exhaustion.
The wearing-down process most typically takes place by physiological stress resulting from fatigue, food deprivation, disease, and pain. It is thought that prisoners capitulate because of hypersuggestibility induced by the state of physiopsychological exhaustion. The captors refuse to recognize any of the prisoner’s previous roles and deny him all information from outside the prison. This may parallel the unacceptability of marathon group members to make use of roles and defenses they characteristically use outside the group, and the typical marathon rule of denying outside contact once the group has begun. Once the prisoner has lost his identity and role, he becomes motivated to change-to find a role and identity acceptable to those around him. Edie suggests that there is a parallel between the change of identity observed in brainwashing and the marathon group, and that in both cases the change is in the direction acceptable to those performing the treatment.
Kobler (1969) reports that sleeping during Synanon-type marathons lasting for 48 hours is discouraged in order to reduce emotional resistance.
GROUP ISOLATION AND COHESION ’
Dies and Hess (1971) have noted the substantial agreement among marathon leaders (i.e., Bach, Mintz, Stoller) that there is great group cohesiveness in marathon groups; certainly more than is observed inconventional time-interrupted group therapy.
Hoff (1970) asked seven participants several open-ended questions after the conclusion of a 24-hour marathon. In response to the question, &dquo;What effect has the marathon had on your life at this point?&dquo; the members said,
I changed and have had a very valuable therapeutic experience without drugs ... an opening up of my own problems. I also feel a little less inhibited with other people.... I know more about myself now than I did before. I’m more aware of my defenses, which was my major reason for going. I’m still unable to cope with these, though.... I have been &dquo;here and now&dquo; almost at will, continuously for two weeks.... I feel very much shaken by the experience, but I also feel stronger. I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I like that.... It has given me quite a bit of self confidence, calmed me down inside, made me think of others who have problems too. It has helped me to find myself as a person and drop some of the phony ideas I had of myself.... I feel I’m more aware of the gimics [sic] I use to keep people at a distance and why I seem to feel the need to do this [Demos, 1970: 14-15].
Coulson (1970b: 25) tells of a university faculty member who was disappointed by the failure of colleagues to follow through on the achievements of a weekend encounter group. &dquo;It was shattering to me to see that every single person in the group returned to his same role after the encounter group, the masks are all on again.&dquo;
Ellis (1969) suggests that the basic encounter method breeds narcissism and emotional elitism, is too hedonistic, diffuse, and inefficient, and in the long run is anti-therapeutic.
The most comprehensive compilation of criticisms of the group movement has been presented by Howard (1970). She notes that critics have claimed that groups:
(1) cause stirring wonderful things to happen, but the effects of these are not valid because they do not last; (2) use ridiculous jargon; (3) are pointless; . (4) invade privacy; ’ ’ (5) are anti-intellectual; (6) cheapen real emotion; (7) are guilty of phoniness; (
lead to emotional elitism; (9) may get to be a cult; ( I 0) hypnotize their members; ( I 1 ) can be run by charlatans who are corrupt or mediocre; (12) foster sexual promiscuity; ( 13) encourage physical violence; , (14) do psychological damage; ( 15) are a hotbed of junkies and dope addicts; and (16) can be fatal.
Stoller, the foremost systematizer of the marathon, had far too short a period to develop his views. We are told (Kovacs, 1971: 12) that Stoller &dquo;wanted to develop a new kind of growth center where all these techniques [i.e., psychotherapy, gestalt exercises, body movement techniques, encounter phenomena, and the myriad other burgeoning techniques which characterize our field] could be integrated in a sequential, systematic fashion and tied together by an organized theoretical system he was developing.&dquo;
It would be unfortunate for the potential of the marathon to be unintentionally squandered by overzealous and indiscriminate application in contexts and for individuals for whom it is not appropriate. This is particularly important since there are already concerns among professionals and laymen alike about the potential intentional misuse of the marathon for devious purposes, such as brainwashing.
Finally, despite the maelstrom of controversy, it is important to keep in mind that there is potential for future society to benefit greatly from wise use of the marathon group. &dquo;It appears that we have a tornado in a bottle, wondering how we can best release its power for the good of mankind, yet fearful for its potential misuse&dquo; (Day, 1970: 423).
