514
EDITH KURZWEIL
scratch by attach ing their study to a three-credit course on "Race and
Prejudice" at Stanford University. They registered about 180 students
and carefully selected sixteen of the best-trained group leaders, rep–
resenting Gestalt, T-groups, Synanon, Esalen, psychodrama, transac–
tional analysis, and leaderless therapy (a recording provides leadership).
But the trouble with the study is that the encounter under arranged cir–
cumstances and for academic credit - despite a randomly selected con–
trol group of other students -left out other motivations, like looking for
marriage or sex, for example; and the leaders were obviously not called
upon to act as marriage brokers, as they might have been in ordinary
encounter groups. We presume that fewer affairs, broken hearts, "de–
viant" relations, ill effects, and failures occurred in the classroom than
in groups drawn from the general population. Anyway, no appreciably
different results between the encounterers and the control group were
found . Only 14 percent of the participants thought that significant
"positive" change had occurred, while 16 percent expressed "negative"
change. O verall evaluations indicated that 57 percent experienced
mild "positive" result, 29 percent "neutral" ones, and 14 percent "nega–
tive" ones; and after six months mildly "positive" evaluations dropped
to 46 percen t, while " neutral" ones rose to 32 percent, and "negative"
ones to 21 percent.
All these statistics are valuable for pointing out encounter's false
claims. But the study's "scientism" and academicism which give the ap–
pearance of bringing order into chaos, of making sense out of much
nonsense, by its very existence itself legitimates the encounter movement's
presence and gives it respectability.
In the beginni ng, the encounter movement presumed to be the
panacea for all personal and social ailments and promised instant re–
covery from depression, dealienation, involvement, better understanding,
selfhood, "person-hood," a new personality or the revamping of the
existing one, rebirth or the ability to be "free," justification for egotism,
for self-assertion or self-expression. The original financial support for
research about group learning by the government and foundations not
only created a new lucrative profession which attracted persons from
academe, public relations, encounter participation, and psychiatry, but
supplied its seal of approval.
The pseudoscientific tone of the study also skirts the question of
sexual encounters and thus neither affirms nor denies the rumors about
orgies and experiments. Some groups encourage hugging, kissing, and
touching, others go in for body movemen ts and sensations. But the
