The marathon encounter group--vision and reality: Exhuming the body for a last look.

Abstract

Counseling Center and a professor at the University of Utah, where he previously served as interim vice president for student affairs. He is a fellow and past president of the Division of Consulting Psychology.This article is based on the author's presidential address to the Division of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy (Division 49), presented at the 109th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association,

Marathon Group Therapy: Potential for University Counseling Centers and Beyond

“…A recent query to the university counseling center directors' listserv yielded only one positive response that marathon groups were currently conducted at any university counseling center in the country. Consistent with Weigel's (2002) review, our literature search revealed very little substantive work published about marathon groups in the professional literature in the past two decades, and most of that had to do with confined populations-i.e., hospital, prison, or drug rehabilitation programs.…”

“…Extravagant claims included the likes of the end of prejudice, delinquency, alienation, even war, if only enough people were to participate in the life-changing process of the marathon group experience. Weigel (1977Weigel ( , 2002Dinges & Weigel, 1971) and others (Yalom, 1995;Rachman, 1975;Howard, 1970) have documented the rise and fall of the movement and some of the likely reasons for the decline. Suffice it to say that the marathon group movement has been proclaimed dead, outside of some vestigial forms that have survived in a few outlying clinical corners.…”

Further development of evidence-based coaching: Lessons from the rise and fall of the human potential movement

“…After the end of World War II, the need to address interracial tensions in the United States led Lewin and his colleagues to develop a unique group-based approach for providing human relations training to small groups of community leaders (Yalom, 1975). The aim of these groups was to facilitate learning about group processes (e.g., cohesiveness, scapegoating) and use basic principles drawn from group dynamics, philosophy, and psychotherapy to help community leaders work more effectively with different groups in different contexts (Weigel, 2002). Following the success of these early T-groups (as they became known), the approach was developed and became a basis for training people in basic human relations skills.…”

“…As the goal of the groups shifted from education to personal development, so did the name of the groups, with T-groups (training in human relations) and sensitivity training groups (training in interpersonal sensitivity) giving way to an array of other labels. Importantly, Carl Rogers was a vocal advocate of these groups and his generic term ''encounter group'' was used to subsume a multitude of groups that sought to facilitate personal growth by expanding awareness, promoting inter-and intrapersonal exploration and encouraging the release of dysfunctional inhibitions (Highhouse, 2002;Weigel, 2002). Yalom (1975) characterised some of the major groups as follows.…”

“…In this regard the coaching community is fortunate to be able to reflect on the events surrounding the rise and fall of the human potential movement (HPM); which emerged during the late 1940s, grew rapidly throughout the 1950s and 1960s, before declining in the early 1970s. It will be argued that the coaching industry has much to learn from these events because they powerfully illustrate how the promise and potential of innovative practices can be easily lost when its practitioners fail to adopt a measured and coordinated approach towards their development (Weigel, 2002). While coaching has certainly come a long way in the past 10 years , the existence of a modest scholarly coaching literature and the continuing lack of industry regulation suggests that the activities of the coaching industry could not yet be accurately described as measured or coordinated.…”