"What accounts for the quick spread of groups? For the enormous demands? I believe the soil out of which this demand grows has two elements. The first is the increasing dehumanization of our culture, where the person does not count - only his IBM card or Social Security number. This impersonal quality runs through all the institutions in our land. The second element is that we are sufficiently affluent to pay attention to our psychological wants. As long as I m concerned over next month's rent, I am not very sharply aware of my loneliness. This is borne out, in my expirience, by the fact that interest in encounter groups and the like is not nearly so keen in ghetto areas as in sections of the population which are no longer so concerned about the phyical necessities of life.
But what is the psycological need that draws people into encounter groups? I believe it is a hunger for something the person does not find in his work enviroment, in his church, certainly not in his school or college, and sadly enough, not even in modern family life. It is a hunger for relationships which are close and real; in which feelings and emotions can be spotaneously expressed witout first beeing carefully censored or bottled up; where deep experiences - disapoitments and joys - can be shared; where new ways of behaving can be risked and tried out; where, in a word, he approaches the state where all is known and all accepted, and thus further growth becomes possible. This seems to be the overpowering hunger which he hopes to satisfy through his experience in an encounter group".

"I tend to accept statements at their face value. As s facilitator (as in my function as therapist) I definitely prefer to be a gullible person; I will believe that you are telling me the way it is in you. If not, you are entirely free to correct your message at a later point, and are likely to do so. I do not want to waste my time being suspicious, or wondering, "What does he really mean?"

"To attack a person's defenses seems to me judgmental. If one says, "You are hiding a lot of hostility, or "You are being highly intellectual, probably because you are afraid of your own feelings," I believe such judgements and diagnoses are the opposite of facilitative. If, however, what I perceive as the person's coldness frusrates me or his intellectualizing irritates me, or his brutality to another person angers me, then I would like to face him with the frustration or irritation or the anger that exists in me. To me this is very important".

"I do not welcome as facilitator a person who frequently gives interpretations of motives or causes of behavior in members of the group. If these are inaccurate they are of no help; if deeply accurate, they may arouse etreme defensiveness, or even worse, strip the person of his defenses, leaving him vulnerable and possibly hurt as a person, particularly after the group sessions are over. Such statements as "You certainly have a lot of latent hostility," or "I think you're compensating for your essential lack of masculinity" can fester in an individual for months, causing great lack of confidence in his own ability to understand himself".

"I felt a sadness as though a baby had died - but it was a grief for a passing feeling, rather than for a lost person. In the loss of that feeling, I may be opening my life for many more interesting and varied experiences. Instead of wanting to be available for the possibility of his presence I can now freely think of seeing distant friends I have not seen recently..."

"I believe that individuals nowadays are probably more aware of their inner loneliness than has ever been true before in history. I see this as surfacing of loneliness - just as we are probably more aware of interpersonal relationships than ever before. When one is scrabbling for a living, uncertain as to where the next meal will come from, there is little time or inclination to discover that one is alienated from others in some deep sense. But as affluence develops, and mobility, and the growth of increasingly transitory interpersonal systems instead of a settled life in the ancestral home town, men are more and more aware of their loneliness"
"But I believe there is a still deeper nd more common cause of loneliness. To put it briefly, a person is most lonely when he has dropped something of his outer shell or facade - the face with which he has been meeting the world - and feels sure that no one can understand, accept, or care for the part of his inner self that lies revealed.
Each person learns, early in life, that he is more likely to be loved if he behaves in certain ways which are approved by his significant others than if his behavior is the spontaneous expression of his own feelings. So he begins to develop a shell of outer behaviors with which he relates to the external world. This shell may be relatively thin, a role he consciously plays, with at least a dim awareness that he, as a person, is quite different from his role".