Sensitivity training is a form of training with the goal of making people more aware of their own goals as well as their prejudices, and more sensitive to others and to the dynamics of group interaction.

Origins

Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin ( ; ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social psychology, social, industrial and organizational psychology, organizational, and applied psychology in the ...

laid the foundations for sensitivity training in a series of workshops he organised in 1946, using his field theory as the conceptual background. His work then contributed to the founding of the

National Training Laboratories The National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, known as the NTL Institute, is an American non-profit behavioral psychology center founded by Kurt Lewin in 1947. NTL became a major influence in modern corporate trainin ...

Bethel, Maine Bethel is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,504 at the 2020 census. It includes the villages of Bethel and West Bethel. The town is home to Gould Academy, a private preparatory school, and is near the Sund ...

in 1947 – now part of the

National Education Association The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college st ...

– and to their development of training groups or

T-groups __NOTOC__ A T-group or training group (sometimes also referred to as sensitivity-training group, human relations training group or encounter group) is a form of group training where participants (typically between eight and fifteen people) learn a ...

. Meanwhile, others had been influenced by the wartime need to help soldiers deal with traumatic stress disorders (then known as

shell shock Shell shock is a term that originated during World War I to describe symptoms similar to those of combat stress reaction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which many soldiers suffered during the war. Before PTSD was officially recogni ...

) to develop group therapy as a treatment technique.

Carl Rogers Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of humanistic psychology and was known especially for his person-centered psychotherapy. Rogers is widely considered one of the f ...

in the fifties worked with what he called "small face-to-face groups – groups exhibiting industrial tensions, religious tensions, racial tensions, and therapy groups in which many personal tensions were present". Along with others drawing on the ideas of the

Human Potential Movement The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the counterculture of the 1960s and formed around the concept of an extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in all people. The movement takes as its premise the be ...

, he extended the group idea to broad population of 'normals' seeking personal growth,R. Gregory ed., ''The Oxford Companion to the Mind'' (Oxford 1987) p.221 which he called encounter groups, after the existential tradition of an authentic encounter between people. Other leaders in the development of encounter groups, including Will Schutz, worked at the

Esalen Institute The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American Retreat (spiritual), retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanism, humanistic alternative education. The institute played a ke ...

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of the U.S. state of California, between Carmel Highlands and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Range, Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from th ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Schutz himself stressed how "the terms 'T-group' (T for training) and 'sensitivity training group' are commonly used...synonymously with 'encounter group'".

Focus and legacy

The focus of the sensitivity training group was on here-and-now interactions among the group members, and on their group experience; and worked by following the energy of the emerging issues in the group, and dramatising them in verbal or non-verbal ways. An atmosphere of openness and honesty was encouraged throughout; and authenticity and

self-actualization Self-actualization, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, is the highest personal aspirational human need in the hierarchy. It represents where one's potential is fully realized after more basic needs, such as for the body and the ego, have been fulfill ...

were prominent goals. The heyday of the encounter groups were the sixties and seventies; thereafter nonverbal interaction was increasingly discouraged, in favour of a more modest emphasis upon following group processes as they emerged. The techniques of T-Groups and Encounter Groups have merged and divided and splintered into more specialized topics, arguably seeking to promote sensitivity to others perceived as different, and seemingly losing some of their original focus on self-exploration as a means to understanding and improving relations with others in a more general sense.

Research

Another legacy of sensitivity training, prompted in part by controversy, has been a new rigour in research methods for the study of group work, and of its outcomes.

In media

21stC sensitivity training was mocked on TV in 2008 by the program '' Penn & Teller: Bullshit!''

Criticisms

Criticisms of modern sensitivity training have repeatedly surfaced over the decades. *Therapists early expressed reservations about the encounter group both from within and without the movement. Thus Carl Rogers expressed concerns about its potential to license intrusive, bullying behaviour, concluding that members needed a solid ego to profit from it.

Eric Berne Eric Berne (May 10, 1910 – July 15, 1970) was a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior. Berne's theory of transactional analysis was based on the ideas of Freud an ...

similarly pointed to the danger of the group only providing a series of unassimilated insights functioning as insults, quipping that "One definition of a sensitivity group is that it is a place where sensitive people go to have their feelings hurt". *Right-wing critic and

conspiracy theorist A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

G. Edward Griffin George Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American author, filmmaker, lecturer, and a conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of right-wing views and conspiracy theories regarding politics, defense and health care. In h ...

, faced with the movement's more radical claims to promote social change, argued that sensitivity training involves the unethical use of psychological techniques with groups that come close to

brainwashing Brainwashing is the controversial idea that the human mind can be altered or controlled against a person's will by manipulative psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently ...

. *Research analysis of the results of encounter groups revealed significant effects for both good and bad: where some 30% of participants found lasting benefit, 8% experienced equally lasting negative results.I. Yalom, ''Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy'' (2005) p. 536

References

External links

Encounter Groups
{{Psychotherapy Existential therapy Group psychotherapy Multiculturalism Training