I have been reading over some old research on the Esalen institute (Big Sur, CA 1962-P) where they conducted many strange experiments with groups of people. Esalen was probably the epicenter for the development of many new “innovative” psychologies growing during that time. Maybe this will be of some help.
The one thing that remains constant throughout the TTI programs, LGAT’s (est, Lifespring), Synanon, and most all of the explosion of psychotherapeutic approaches coming out of the Humanistic Psychology era, is the presence of sensitivity training in various forms. Focused on individual/group change through group processes.
1955-1959: Sensitivity training, an extension of T-group ideas, was being explored at the UCLA School of Business Administration in California and in other locations as part of the expansion of the National Training Laboratories. Sensitivity training was developed by a german behavioral scientist/Gestalt practitioner who fled during the Nazi collapse and headed the National Training Labratories.
The Period of Innovation
1958-1966: Frederick (Fritz) Perls, Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, Ralph Hefferline, and others developed Gestalt therapy in New York; it became popular after Fritz Perls moved to the Esalen Institute in California around 1966.
1963-1966: Marathon (time-extended) group therapy (mainly for personal growth); Frederick Stoller, George Bach, Elizabeth Mintz.
1963-1966: Eric Berne developed his method of Transactional Analysis.
1963-1966: Michael Murphy and Richard Price organized Esalen Institute just south of Big Sur, California. It was the prototype of the "growth center," and hundreds sprouted up around the country (and some overseas) over the next decade. These centers became the focus of the human potential movement, which was a marriage of humanistic psychology and T-group methods.
1967: Will Schutz, at Esalen, combined many modes of therapy with the process of the basic encounter group psychodrama, bioenergetic analysis, sensory awakening, guided fantasy, and a variety of action techniques, many of which were ultimately based on Moreno's methods.
1967: Synanon "games" opened to the public as a form of encounter group in Santa Monica, a seaside suburb on the west side of Los Angeles. Synanon was started in 1958 as a drug abuse treatment center by Charles Diedrich. These games were just short of being violently confrontational, and some of this approach generalized to contaminate parts of the encounter group movement.
1968: Hindu gurus, swamis, and Eastern spiritual teachers and disciplines were becoming fashionable, in part stimulated by the support of the Beatles for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his system of transcendental meditation. The use of psychedelic agents added to metaphysical interest, and group therapies began integrating transpersonal issues.
In the 1960s, a number of other forms of psychotherapy became relatively popular, and some of these approaches were applied in group contexts: family therapy (involving several families at a time); art, movement, and other expressive therapies; Arthur Janov's primal therapy; William Glasser's reality therapy; and the like.
Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9, 1890 - February 12, 1947), a German-born psychologist, is one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology. Lewin is often recognized as the "founder of social psychology" and was one of the first researchers to study group dynamics and organizational development.
Lewin had originally been involved with schools of behavioral psychology before changing directions in research and undertaking work with psychologists of the Gestalt school of psychology. Lewin often associated with the early Frankfurt School, originated by an influential group of largely Jewish Marxists at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. But when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the Institute members had to disband, moving to England and then to America. In that year, he met with Eric Trist, of the London Tavistock Clinic. Trist was impressed with his theories and went on to use them in his studies on soldiers during the Second World War.
Later, he went on to become director of the Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. While working with at MIT in 1946, Lewin received a phone call from the Director of the Connecticut State Inter Racial Commission requesting help to find an effective way to combat religious and racial prejudices. He set up a workshop to conduct a 'change' experiment, which laid the foundations for what is now known as sensitivity training. In 1947, this led to the establishment of the National Training Laboratories, at Bethel, Maine. Carl Rogers (figurehead of the Human Potential Movement and heavily involved in the CIA mind control experiments of MK-Ultra) believed that sensitivity training is "perhaps the most significant social invention of this century."
An early model of change developed by Lewin described change as a three-stage process. The first stage he called "unfreezing". It involved overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing "mind set". Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed. In the second stage the change occurs. This is typically a period of confusion and transition. We are aware that the old ways are being challenged but we do not have a clear picture as to what we are replacing them with yet. The third and final stage he called "freezing". The new mindset is crystallizing and one's comfort level is returning to previous levels. This is often misquoted as "refreezing" (see Lewin K (1947) Frontiers in Group Dynamics).
Adherents of Lewin, such as psychologist Ed Schein, who studied brainwashing techniques in Korea, admitted that it was modeled on Pavlov’s brainwashing techniques. In an introduction to one of his papers on Sensitivity Training, Schein says that this method includes “coercive persuasion in the form of thought reform or brainwashing as well as a multitude of less coercive, informal patterns.”
