DCEsquire:
"HAI is not for everyone"?
This is a mantra amongst LGAT apologists.
And you appear to be a here to offer apologies about the group such as -- "The facilitators were really just wonderful..."
Were the "facilitators" Licensed mental health professionals?
How were they professionally credentialed in California to help participants "working through either personal or relationship issues"?
See [
www.culteducation.com]
Clinical psychologist Philip Cushman studied "mass maranton training" groups like HAI.
He pointed out 13 liabilities that such groups often posses.
1. They lack adequate participant-selection criteria.
2. They lack reliable norms, supervision, and adequate training for leaders.
3. They lack clearly defined responsibility.
4. They sometimes foster pseudoauthenticity and pseudoreality.
5. They sometimes foster inappropriate patterns of relationships.
6. They sometimes ignore the necessity and utility of ego defenses.
7. They sometimes teach the covert value of total exposure instead of valuing personal differences.
8. They sometimes foster impulsive personality styles and behavioral strategies.
9. They sometimes devalue critical thinking in favor of "experiencing" without self-analysis or reflection.
10. They sometimes ignore stated goals, misrepresent their actual techniques, and obfuscate their real agenda.
11. They sometimes focus too much on structural self-awareness techniques and misplace the goal of democratic education; as a result participants may learn more about themselves and less about group process.
12. They pay inadequate attention to decisions regarding time limitations. This may lead to increased pressure on some participants to unconsciously "fabricate" a cure.
13. They fail to adequately consider the "psychonoxious" or deleterious effects of group participation (or] adverse countertransference reactions.