Psych 65 #2

Group of 8-12 (or as many as 100) that comes together to be more genuine with themselves and others, following the three definitions of "encounter."

- Coming across the unexpected
- Meeting face to face
- A hostile clash

Encounter:
- Emphasis on personal growth and development
- Improvement of interpersonal communication through experiential processes.
- Facilitator sinks into background.
- Egalitarian.

Gestalt:
- Everyone focuses on one individual at a time.
- The expert-looking facilitator singles out the individual in the hot seat.
- Diagnostic, theraputic point of view.
- Power dynamic.

- Raising of expectations: In encounter groups you feel genuine and open with yourself and other people, and are regarded with esteem. That is unrealistic in most circumstances.
- Social pressure: You need to accept people's diversity and their tendencies. You begin to feel as if something is wrong with you if you do not disclose your own problems. You get a decreased sense of self acceptance. It is important not to judge others' paths in the group - there is not one right way to do it.

5 key dimensions that one can move along toward self-actualization.

- View of reality
- Acceptance of others
- Locus of control
- Creativity, vitality, spontaneity
- Capacity for intimacy

- Increase an individual's functioning.
- Be realistic about human functioning: no one can work at full functionality at all times (those are peak experiences).
- Exist at middle-to-upper end of spectrum.
- Know that we can move up and down as a result of experiences.

They both constructed their theories around it using therapeutic techniques.

1. genuineness or congruence
2. unconditional positive regard for the client
3. empathy - therapist understands feelings and emotions of client and communicates back to them.

- Rogers was honest and sincere in his responses to her. "I can't give you simple answers"
- Communicated positive regard for her: "you would be a very nice daughter."
- Expressed empathy: "I know you're feeling nervous." "I would like to understand that more." Rogers said he'd like to tell her what to do but wants her to come to her own conclusions.

- Gloria appreciated Rogers' honesty.
- Gloria's perception of reality was distorted because she was projecting her acceptance problems on her daughter.
- Interlocus of control: Felt hopeless about the situation with her daughter. "I want you to tell me what to do. Will what I do hurt her? I don't want to take responsibility." Started feeling more confident and self-assured, talking about herself and leading the conversation. Had the capacity to do the right thing.
- Spontaneity: Told Rogers that she was thinking he'd be a good father figure. Became less defensive when she took responsibility for what she did.

1. Focus on person as a whole. Follow anything the person does - it might be a manifestation of their whole. See how they become their motions (like shaking feet).
2. Emphasize and focus on here and now. The present moment is the only thing that counts. "Are you a little girl right now or are you an adult?"
3. Help the client expand awareness - become increasingly aware of what is happening in the present moment. An uncomfortable, pressure-building experience.
4. Take responsibility for all levels of behavior.

Used gestalt therapy, talked down to her.

- Reality: Was not aware that she was playing games, or being meek. By the end she realized she had a right to be an individual and demand respect.
- Acceptance of self: Used defending tactics.
- Inner locus of control: At the beginning, she felt very defensive, small, and by herself in comparison to Perls. By the end she was standing on her own.
- Spontaneity: Yelled at Perls, became more defensive (perhaps moved away from top of spectrum.)

Somatic therapy

- The process of dissolving one's physical and psychological body armoring, or rigidity - gradually becoming a more free and open human being capable of enjoying full and satisfying orgasm.
- Discharging neurotic manifestations. Increasing orgasmic potency.

- Capacity to surrender to the flow of bioenergy, being free of inhibition, and to discharge completely dammed up sexual excitation within.
- To move up the spectrum of functionality, one must delight in orgasmic potency.
- Discharge results in exquisite self-regulation, psychological balance and maturation.

- Armoring
- Sexual repression

- Muscular rigidity.
- Stopping free expression of emotion and blocking flow of energy.
- Occurs in conjunction with repression as a result of overwhelming experiences like trauma and negative conditioning.
- If we can't break down armor, we cannot express emotions.

- Society and culture look down on natural impulses of sexuality in individuals.
- Repression: turning something away from consciousness.
- It is an obstacle because you have to keep expending bioenergy to keep the memory repressed.
- Reich: inhibits growth

Body techniques:
- Feldenkrais
- Rolfing
- Bioenergetics

- Retraining the body.
- Gentle manipulation of the body
- Awareness through movement exercises.
- Fixing motor cortex and muscular connections that have been distorted through trauma.

- Brutal manipulation of connective tissues.
- Results in alignment of gravity and better posture, and less musculature effort.
- Muscle tissue is realigned when there is deep emotional discharge.

- Uses breath.
- Putting body in postures.
- Emotional release
- Concept of being grounded.

- Bringing something into existence through imagination.
- Consists of primary and secondary creativity.

- Basic quality of being creative.
- The inspirational phase of the creative process.
- Many characteristics.

- Process of refining, completing, polishing the creative product for high quality.
- Taking the initial inspiration to completion.
- Takes hard work, discipline, training.
- May get in the way of primary.

- Primary process thought, which happens when in the act of being creative.
- Dipping in to primary process thought involves taking a leap, letting go, relinquishing control. Trusting the ability to improvise when confronted with novelty. Writing the first true sentence. Takes self-confidence, courage.
- Past/future cease to exist. Immersion into the present moment.
- Fusion between creator and subject matter. THE SELF IS TRANSCENDED: self ceases to exist, no separation from creative act.
- Fear disappears due to immersion with creative product. Anxiety, depression, conflicts, worries, physical pains cease to exist. We are un-neurotic.
- Aesthetic vs. abstraction: we can look at art and call it beautiful instead of trying to find meaning in it.
- Having a positive attitude.
- Worries and stress disappear.

- Unconscious, submerged stream of dreamlike, childlike thought.
- Where we play from.
- Recovering aspects of unconscious or preconscous mind.
- Manifesting deeply metaphoric, symbolic, poetic, inspirational thought.
- Not confined by analysis, logic, rationality, structure, order.

- Success-oriented US culture.
- Failure is unacceptable and avoided at all costs. Failure should be a building block - we learn from it, it is inevitable.
- Peer orientation toward conformity. Creativity is viewed as negative. Divergent thinking is labeled as strange. Due to this, original ideas drop off around the 4th grade since they are easy targets of peer pressure.
- Emphasis on quickness and efficiency. Multitasking. Always thinking about the next thing to do, skipping primary and going into secondary.
- Absolute dichotomy between work and play. (except at Google, for example)
- A very prevalent view that creativity and creative talent belong only to a select few gifted people in our culture.

- Experience of establishing relationships with others so that both the individual and those they are in the relationship with believe the interaction to be beneficial.
- There is a deep emotional understanding within.
- By this approach, importance of connection in relationships is the central and organizing feature of women's lives.
- Stone Center relational model.

- Prevention from participating in a mutually responsive and enhancing relationship.
- Viewed as the source of most human suffering.
- Socially and developmentally attuned to male attributes of independence and pride, efficiency, achievement, and strong-minded goals.

- Need for emotional joining or connection is primary. Disconnection and isolation lead to suffering and despair.
- If one is unable to move from disconnection to connection, the resulting immobilization and isolation may begin to feel like psychological prison.
- To avoid loneliness and despair, women may attempt to get connected to others at any cost, including altering their internal image of themselves.
- She might maintain relationships at the cost of failing to represent her own experience with them.
- Repeated disconnections can cause a heightened experience of anger, anxiety, depressive immobilization, and complete disconnection with self and others.

- Emphasizes centrality of connection in women's lives.

- We, as people, grow in, through, and toward relationship
- For women especially: connection with others is central to psychological well-being.
- Movement toward relational mutuality optimally occurs throughout life as the result of mutual empathy, responsiveness, and the contribution of growth to each individual in the relationship.

- The application of humanistic psychological theory into concrete processes in assisting people to move from normal functionality to fuller functionality along all levels of human potential.
- Relates to humanistic psych as the applied wing of the field.
- Self-actualization theory and human potential become concrete through workshops and exercises in which participants can experience theory "in vivo" (in real life.)

- HPM can raise expectations about life. Go into classes/workshops trying to become more fully functional and self-actualized. Learn about open communication and increased intimacy. Leave the workshop wanting to be fully functional all the time. Marriages end because of unrealistic expectations - "why can't my wife be like the people from my encounter group?"
- Do the means justify the ends? Like walking on hot coal: fear disappears, but your feet are still burned. If we know we can produce results, should we? By whatever means necessary? At what costs? And to whom? By technologizing humanism, we move away from Rogerian genuineness and toward authoritarian ways of relating to people.
- There is something inherently wrong with seeing everything in human condition as a problem to be solved. In some fundamental sense, we cannot learn how to have a relationship, how exactly to raise our children, or how to be human, because it is the very condition of not knowing, being vulnerable to life, and not knowing how to manage lovers and children that makes us most human. When we learn how to have romance, it is no longer romance, it is seduction. To see it as a problem to be solved robs it of humanity.