Who Has Been Influenced?

Who Has Been Influenced?
(Personal note.)

by
Dean Gotcher

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." 1 John 2:16

"And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Luke 16:15

"The heart is deceitful above all things [thinking pleasure, i.e., lust is the standard for "good" instead of doing the father's/Father's will], and desperately wicked [hating anyone preventing, i.e., inhibiting or blocking it from enjoying the carnal pleasures of the 'moment' it lusts after]: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9 It can not see its hatred toward the father's/Father's authority as being evil, i.e., "wicked," i.e., "desperately wicked" because its lust for pleasure is standing in the way, 'justifying' the hate. (Mark 7:21-23)

"To enjoy the present reconciles us to the actual." (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right') In other words "Lust, i.e., enjoying the carnal pleasures of the 'moment' that the world, i.e., the current situation and/or people are stimulating, over and therefore against the father/Father's authority that gets in the way reconciles us to the world." "Self is actualized in lust and the world that stimulates it."

Every institution (education, business, government, religious, etc.,) has been influenced by the NTL's and organizations like them.

Jane Howard in her book Please Touch: A Guide Tour of the Human Potential Movement (McGraw-Hill, NY, 1970) gives an extended list of organizations, and Who's Who that were involved with the NTL's up to 1970. Called T-groups (Training groups) and following the encounter groups of the NTL, Howard writes "the human potential groups were striving to reacquaint us with the ‘affective domain,' and help us to be less ‘cognitive.'" Small groups were the key to the movement's success. Administrators and faculty as well as students were the main target to be exposed to "affective education," otherwise known as "sensitivity training."

"Growth Centers," (like Esalen, etc.) she wrote "began as a West Coast phenomenon. The more conservative groups organized much earlier in the East" (Bethel). The Growth Centers' "most prestigious founders" were Maslow and Rogers and ranged from their "Basic Encounter Workshop" at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla to "Nude Encounter Therapy" sessions (blessed by Dr. Maslow) in Los Angeles. Warren Bennis stated "There is no sacredness to anything, including encounter."

Maslow commented to Howard "We have to teach everyone to be a therapist." He recognized the difficulty in getting the public schools to participate, "Reforming a school system is like melting a glacier." Administrators were the key to its success. Without a change in the Administrator the school system itself could not be changed.

Moreno stated "I told Freud he put people on a couch and isolated them, which was entirely wrong. We don't live on a couch; we live in groups from birth to death. Freud took people into the past, I take them into the present and future. Psychodrama deals with the Here-and-Now." As Howard put it "the groups provide the right gemeinschaft for the angsts of our zeitgeist." Moreno commented "Right now (in America, 1970) we're going through a transitional period of anarchy and chaos. The giants are dead and 200 million midgets are in charge. We have to wait for what we need: a psychiatry and sociatry for all mankind."

According to Howard the Human Potential Movement, (on which OBE, TQM, and STW are built), stems from Dr. Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist of the late 1880's who recognized the differences between Gesselschaft (a patriarchal hierarchy), and Gemeinschaft (a matriarchal community). Others who followed were Joseph Pratt, Trigant Burrow, J. L. Moreno, Frank Buchman, Frederick Perls, and Wilfred Bion (Tavistock). "Tavistock groups are emotionally right wing of the NTL. They're to the NTL what the NTL is to Esalen." Howard noted Bion, the English psychologist who eventually moved to Los Angeles, as its founder. Bion was to Tavistock in London, as Kurt Lewin was to the NTL in America. Margaret Rioch, Washington D.C. School of Psychiatry and the National Institute of Mental Health, officially linked the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to America in 1965.

Kurt Lewin believed that self-help groups could prevent the totalitarianism which developed in Germany under Hitler. He fled Berlin and came to America in 1933. Howard writes that "The small group struck him as the obvious link between individual and social dynamics."

Lewin believed he could use the group dynamic process to overcome "the social restraints imposed on groups by technology, economics, law, and politics." He believed the use of "Force Field Analysis" could help people identify the negative forces (pre-set standards) which acted as a barrier to self-determined, felt needs satisfaction and positive forces which liberated self-determined behavior.

T-groups were originally developed by Lewin at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress. Both were involved in the Basic Skill Training Group held in Connecticut in 1946 (see Benne's book Human Relations in Curriculum Change, 1954). "The use of groups for growth purposes is as old as human life on earth . . . these studies were rather late in coming," Kenneth Benne.

With the help of the NEA, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt continued Lewin's dream by setting up the first National Training Lab at Bethel, Main in 1947. That year Kurt Lewin died. Douglas McGregor's humanistic (anti-authoritarian) management theories, i. e. "sensitivity training," developed at Berkeley under the Industrial Relations Institute (joining labor-management relations with community service) brought the NTL to UCLA in 1954, forming the Western Training Lab.

Carl Rogers used the basic encounter group as an instrument for self-directed change in Immaculate Heart school system in Los Angeles. Dr. William Coulson overseeing this project stated that the project "simply fortifies the staffs' willingness to run risks. The individual is strengthened in encounter groups. He learns to trust his experience." He saw the encounter group "as a medium of harnessing the energy of the student revolutionary." Today those schools do not exist. The school disintegrated under the watchful eye of Rogers and Coulson. Both discovered a "pattern of failure" with the group encounter process. Rogers saw it as a pattern hard to overcome, traditional minds tended to prevail in society despite the pressure to change, while Coulson saw the process itself as a failure. Coulson continues to sound the warning today.

The NTL's carried out labs "geared to the special needs of key executives, middle-management workers and, corporation presidents." Companies were encouraged to commit themselves to five years of their time to the NTL's.

The National Council of Churches helped sponsor encounter groups such as "Theological Reflection on the Human Potential." As Jane Howard stated in 1970, "One could make a life work of visiting all the churches that have been affected by sensitivity training." Religious institutions such as "Willow Creek" and "Saddleback" push the encounter group experience in churches even today.

The encounter group experience produces an "ephemeral" effect on its participants. Like an intoxicating drug it keeps those who have experienced it "clamoring for more."

A few of the Growth Centers, as mentioned by Howard, which were in operation by 1970, were: Gestalt Therapy Institute of San Diego; Institute of Group Psychotherapy in Beverly Hills, Nexus in El Cajon; Western Behavioral Science Institute in LaJolla; American Association for Humanistic Psychology in San Francisco; Berkeley Center for Human Interaction; Esalen Institute in Big Sur and San Francisco; San Francisco Gestalt Therapy Institute; Institute for Group and Family Studies in Palo Alto; Senoi Counseling and Growth Center in Eugene, Oregon; Center of Man in Mincanopy, Florida; Family Relations Institute in Annadale, Virginia; Laos House: Southwest Center for Human Potential in Austin, Texas; Association of Community Trainers in New York City; Institute for Experimental Education in Lexington, Massachusetts; Institute for Rational Living in Philadelphia; Moreno Institute of Psychodrama in New York City and Beacon, New York; National Council of Churches in New York City; Psychosynthetic Research Foundation in New York City; and Gestalt Training Institute of Canada at Lake Cowichan, Vancouver, British Columbia.

By 1970 there were six NTL divisions: NTL Institute for Applied Behavior Science (Washington D.C.); Midwest Group for Human Resources in Kansas City, Missouri; NTL Institute in Portland, Oregon; NTL Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah; NTL Labs in Bethel, Maine; Cedar City, Utah; Lake Arrowhead, California; and Western Training Labs at UCLA in Los Angeles. The Diaprax article Regional Training Laboratories (Federally funded Marxist training camps) lists the contemporary NTL's, now called Regional Training Labs.

Howard's 1970 list of companies which use NTL training reads like Who's Who; American Airlines, Boeing, Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Foods, IBM, Kaiser Aluminum, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Procter and Gamble, Standard Oil, TRW, just to mention a few.

Her listing of colleges and universities is likewise extensive, mentioning Stanford, Brigham Young, Georgia State, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue, Universities of Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Oregon, Utah, Michigan, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Harvard, Maryland, Vermont, Yeshiva, Temple, Teachers College of Columbia, MIT, SUNY, New York, George Washington (D.C.), Boston College, Georgia State College, Colorado State College, etc. Today it would be a short list to name those who have not participated with the NTL's group encounter agenda.

"The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he hath left off to be wise, and to do good. He deviseth mischief upon his bed; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil." Psalms 36:1-4

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." 2 Timothy 4:3, 4

Facilitators of 'change,' i.e., psychologists, i.e., behavioral "scientists," i.e., "group psychotherapists," i.e., Marxists (Transformational Marxists)—all being the same in method or formula—are using the dialoguing of opinions to a consensus (affirmation) process, i.e., dialectic 'reasoning' ('reasoning' from/through the students "feelings" of the 'moment,' i.e., from/through their "lust" for pleasure and their hate of restraint, in the "light" of their desire for group approval, i.e., affirmation and fear of group rejection) in the "group grade," "safe zone/space/place," "Don't be negative, be positive," "open ended, non-directed," soviet style, brainwashing (washing the father's/Father's authority from the children's thoughts and actions, i.e., "theory and practice," negating their having a guilty conscience, which the father's/father's authority engenders for doing wrong, disobeying, sinning in the process—called "the negation of negation" since the father's/Father's authority and the guilty conscience, being negative to the child's carnal nature, is negated in dialogue—in dialogue, opinion, and the consensus process there is no father's/Father's authority, i.e., no established aka absolute command, rule, facts, or truth to be accepted as is, by faith and obeyed; there is only the persons carnal desires, i.e., lusts of the past and the present being verbally expressed and 'justified'), inductive 'reasoning' ('reasoning' from/through the students "feelings," i.e., their natural inclination to "lust" after the carnal pleasures of the 'moment'—dopamine emancipation—which the world stimulates, i.e., their "self interest," i.e., their "sense experience," selecting "appropriate information"—excluding, ignoring, or resisting, i.e., rejecting any "inappropriate" information, i.e., established command, rule, fact, or truth that gets in the way of their desired outcome, i.e., pleasure—in determining right from wrong behavior), "Bloom's Taxonomy," "affective domain," French Revolution (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) classroom "environment" in order (as in "new" world order) to 'liberate' children from parental authority, i.e., from the father's/Father's authority system (the Patriarchal Paradigm)—as predators, charlatans, pimps, pedophiles, seducing, deceiving, and manipulating them as chickens, rats, and dogs, i.e., treating them as natural resource ("human resource") in order to convert them into 'liberals,' socialists, globalists, so they, 'justifying' their "self" before one another, can do wrong, disobey, sin, i.e., can "lust" after the carnal pleasures of the 'moment' that the world stimulates, with impunity.

"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken." Jeremiah 6:16, 17

Home schooling material, co-ops, conferences, etc., are joining in the same praxis, fulfilling Immanuel Kant's as well as Georg Hegel's, Karl Marx's, and Sigmund Freud's agenda of using the pattern or method of Genesis 3:1-6, i.e., "self" 'justification,' i.e., dialectic (dialogue) 'reasoning," i.e., 'reasoning' from/through your "feelings," i.e., your carnal desires of the 'moment' which are being stimulated by the world (including your desire for approval from others, with them affirming your carnal nature) in order to negate Hebrews 12:5-11, i.e., the father's/Father's authority, i.e., having to humble, deny, die to, control, discipline, capitulate your "self" (your lusts) in order to do the father's/Father's will, negating Romans 7:14-25, i.e., your having a guilty conscience when you do wrong, disobey, sin, thereby negating your having to repent before the father/Father for your doing wrong, disobedience, sins—which is the real agenda.

"And for this cause [because men, as "children of disobedience," 'justify' their "self," i.e., 'justify' their love of "self" and the world, i.e., their love of the carnal pleasures of the 'moment' (dopamine emancipation) which the world stimulates over and therefore against the Father's authority] God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie [that pleasure is the standard for "good" instead of doing the Father's will]: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth [in the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ], but had pleasure in unrighteousness [in their "self" and the pleasures of the 'moment,' which the world stimulates]." 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 12