Beyond Words: The Story of Sensitivity Training and the Encounter Movement

Front Cover
Transaction Publishers, 1987 M01 1 - 280 pages

In Beyond Words, Kurt Back offers a critical analysis of the modern pilgrims who journey on weekends and summers to centers for group processes, encounter, and personality growth. He uses biography, sociological analysis, and current history to complete a picture of the intensive group process, sensitivity training, T-groups, encounters, and their off-shoots. The book, first published in 1972, emphasizes the social movement aspect of sensitivity trainingâ what it means for today's society, its promises, and its threats. It is an enlightening examination of a development in the science of humankind at the climax of its career as a social movement.

 

Contents

The Pilgrim Underneath
xxiv
Social Science and Social Movement
13
The Pursuit of Happiness
31
Chronicles of the Movement
47
Internal Logic and Mythology
77
Precursors
89
Current Concepts and Methods
103
Landscape
119
Teachers and Change Agents
175
The Elusive Search
189
Beyond Science
201
Playing with Fire
213
Escape or Movement
229
I HAVE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
239
BIBLIOGRAPHY
253
REPORTS OF RESEARCH EVALUATING SENSITIVITY TRAINING 1945 TO 1970
261

PsychResorts
131
Healers Patients and Groups
143
The New Entrepreneurs
159

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