What makes a circle safe, and what goes wrong when it isn’t?
Some Observations on Encounter Group Casualties
Adjacent
Encounter-group members differed from a placebo group and a control group just after the groups ended, but by six months the differences had gone, and signs of harm were no more common among members.
The authors argue that talk of encounter-group casualties had outrun the evidence, and they take issue with some of the recent casualty research. They call for rigorous designs and for behavioural measures of change. Their own study set encounter-group members beside a “placebo” group and an ordinary control group. Whatever separated the groups just after the sessions had faded six months on, and on the negative measures the three groups looked alike.
It is a counterpoint to the Stanford study (Yalom & Lieberman (1971)). A survey of harm in Circling would need its own comparison, since some people decline over any six months, whatever they have been doing.
What it doesn’t show
Finding no extra harm is not proof that there was none, and the abstract gives neither the sample size nor who took part. Encounter groups of the early 1970s, not Circling.
Summary based on the abstract.
Directions that build on it
- Safety, facilitation and harm
Links
Cite
Posthuma, A. B., & Posthuma, B. W. (1973). Some Observations on Encounter Group Casualties. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 9(5), 595–608. https://doi.org/10.1177/002188637300900504