The convergence of a number of distinct intellectual and traditions in the mental health field has produced a conception of non-professional, quasi-therapeutic communities that profoundly influences contemparary communes. One of these traditions started with Freudian psychoanalytic theory and the dynamic, individually-oriented psychotherapies built upon it. A second, initially-independent tradition that influences the contemporary situation is the socialcommunity psychiatric tradition, particularly the concept of therapeutic communities. Another tradition that impinges on contemporary communalism stems from the sensitivity trainingencounter movement. This tradition has given rise to numerous quasi-communal Growth Centers and further accelerated the national trend toward mass psychotherapeutic populism, currently reflected in the popularity of leaderless encounter groups and marathon groups. A final, more derivative influence can be found in the Rogerian-Existential-Humanistic psychology associated with writers such as Rogers, May, and Maslow. The central working hypothesis of this paper is that these traditions began to converge during the Post-World War 11 era. By the early 1960s the various originally independent traditions were increasingly indistinguishable and had, in effect, blended around certain common themes. A crucial common strand underlying the convergence of these various traditions was an emphasis on non-professional, on-going and continuous, multi-functional, quasi-therapeutic experiences for normals-for relatively healthy affluent upper-middle class Americans. From this perspective, present-day American communes are seen as transient, age-graded, quasi-therapeutic sheltered workshops. By providing a temporary psycho-social moratorium from competitive conventional society, contemporary communes facilitate individual-psychological re-orientation, growth, and re-integration into non-communal contexts. This latent function is fulfilled by encouraging interpersonal experimentation in the context of an intimate, permissive, supportive, non-hierarchical (non-professional) collectivity of socio
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Apr 1, 1974
Wesley F Ross + 2
