Cooper Union forum; 4; Spring 1970

In which point you'll see, comments and comments. F可能 in order to read a bit? So, that's love. 這樣的 The National Educational Radio presents The Cooper Union Forum, a program taken from a meeting at the great hall of the Cooper Union in New York City by station WNYC. This presentation was recorded on October 1, 1969. To introduce the discussion, here is Dr. Johnson E. Fairchild. Our subject for discussion this evening is psychology today.

And we have two very distinguished men here to open this discussion and talk about it. We're each going to take a little bit of time and then we're going to have a little discussion and then you're going to ask questions about the problem of psychology today. On my left hand side and our first speaker is going to be Dr. is it Alfred? No, Albert, that was, no, that was, that's an in joke, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Alfred, this is Albert, Emily Twins. And they are both very good in their field and very tremendous. Dr. Ellis is Director of Clinical Services of the Institute for Advanced Study in Rational Psychotherapy, a private practitioner, written more books than I can even count or read

if the Ellis books are all over the place, they're tremendous, several like 150 papers, folklore of sex, reason and emotion and psychotherapy. He's led you many times, he's been on television and he has talked here in the Cooper Union and there have been a very steady and helpful influence on our adult education work here. And on my other side, radio doesn't care about this, I know. But Dr. Alfred Jones, Dr. Jones, you're out here, and Dr. Alfred Jones has also spoken here many times and he's co-director of the Mental Health Consultation Center. These are practicing psychologists here in the art city and helped out with the Cooper

Union on many times with programs and with things. And we acknowledge our debt to both of these gentlemen. He has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia and Cooper Union and other places. We're glad they're both here and so, without taking too much more time, let's talk a little bit about psychology today. And here is Dr. Ellis, what do you think about psychology today, Doc? Go ahead. Well, Johnny, first of all, I want to congratulate you on reaching your majority. I always wondered when you would get through with your adolescence. But seriously, Johnny, Johnny has been around for a good many years. This here has always been a delightful host and I'm very happy to welcome him on this 21st anniversary.

But let's get to psychology today. I'm going to briefly discuss one of the revolutionary aspects in the field and that is usually called encounter therapy or marathon therapy or sometimes achieving human potential or even humanistic psychology. This is not necessarily new because it really goes back to the individuation of Carl Jung and to the holistic psychology of Alfred Adler and others. But it's been on the absurd duration years, particularly as a result of the doings at Estonia, which is in California, Big Sur, which has sparked a great many encounter marathon groups all over the country. We at Institute for Advanced Study of Management and Psychotherapy have been highly active in this field in the last couple of years.

We've sponsored and I've participated in more than 25, I would say, marathon encounter groups and we think in a very significant addition to the old style of psychotherapies. Now, a marathon group is a group that goes on usually for a minimum of about 12 hours which we often call a mini-thon or a micrason and then a marathon itself for about 24 hours. Maybe all in a row for 24 hours without sleep or as we do it and Betsy Mints and other marathoners do it. It may break up into, say, 14 hours and then 10 hours more was 8 hours intervening theoretically for sleep but actually for anything participant want to do in that time. When the marathon encounter procedure raises a good many revolutionary issues, some old, some new but all of which we have new flants on.

And the first of which is the here and now business because the old time, psychoanalytic Freudian's emphasized mainly the past historically. In group therapy in general and especially in counter therapy, we want the individual to do something, to experience something, to feel something, to talk about something with he feels right in the here and now. And often we don't even get around too much to the past. We may briefly get aspects of it and in our particular kind of marathon at the institute we make sure that we consider his present problems in his everyday life as well as those in the group itself. But there is a very large emphasis on the here and nowness and not on historical antecedents of his disturbance or his desire to fulfill himself to go beyond where he now is.

Then a lot of the marathon groups originally, especially the sensitivity training people at Bethel emphasized non-directiveness. The facilitator or trainer or leader, whatever you want to call him, gave practically no directions and let people mull around in their own juices and presumably thereby get in each other's hair and encounter each other's and this is considered very spontaneous and good. And others came along, especially Bill Schutt, who wrote joy and was an excellent and still is and practices gives marathons throughout the country and was much more directed. He directs his group that have various things to do, various kinds of exercises and then they express their feelings about them and go back to some sensitivity training techniques.

We in our variation, as we usually are in rationally mode of psychotherapy, are quite directed as parts of the marathon and direct the people, the participants to engage in certain encounters relating this with each other and then we go on to the expressiveness and feelings and the interactions with each other and we also, as I'll probably say a little later, end up or at least get to a good deal of problem. Then a rather new method, it really is a new method but it's more of an integral method in marathons is sensory awareness, meaning that according to a lot of the facilitators or coordinators, the group is led to encounter each other physically, nonverbaly in a number of ways.

Some emphasizes almost exclusively some of the Estonian encounters, they are relatively few words and do a great deal of moving around, Bernie Gunther's marathons can be somewhat along these lines. Others like our own have some amount of the sensory awareness that we are interested in the feelings and the ideas and the attitudes that come out as a result of the nonverbal encounters, so we go much further with the verbalizations and the problem solving which then partly from the encountering of a physical nature. Then most marathons, including our own emphasized honest confrontation in the old-type therapy, we would name the family, mill around with the client or patient for a number of years and never get around sometimes to confronting him very directly with his attitudes, his

behavior. But the marathons encounter type of thing, especially shown in synonym, doesn't cable. The individual is shown very often, very concretely, that he has feelings and ideas underneath those he is overtly revealing, and the object of the members of the group is not necessarily just to tell each other off, but to take no nonsense, to not let the individual get away with anything which, defensively, many people, most people, I would say, tend to do even in a therapeutic group. So marathons and encounters include a good deal of honest direct confrontation in an open manner with incidentally the therapist or leader of facilitating himself, being as much a target of this as anybody else, because he actively participates and doesn't sit back

on his high horse just telling others what to do. He's a member of the group and they can confront him and boy do that. I especially find that my own experience at the assistant leader or facilitator, frequently who has not had much marathon experience in his being trained to conduct some himself in the future, sits on his high horse and thinks that he's going to be just a director, just a therapist who doesn't get involved himself, and the group roundly gets asked at him and frequently gives him a rough time, especially when he gets on what we call a hot seat where everybody in the group tells what they think of everybody else after the marathon has gone on for one. Then there's a special kind of marathon which is originated by Paul Vindrum, where individuals

actually are largely or completely in the new. This may take place in swimming pools and other places or without the water, but they take off their clothes and supposedly honestly reveal themselves more so than they would do hiding behind their jacks, draps and their brisirs and the other things that they have on. And this gives another big joy and is supposed to release people very much and the question would be and we can argue it later here whether it actually does. Then marathons and encounters are every active. They try to get people very frequently to tell each other off who express hostility to be themselves to get rid of their feelings very openly and directly. They may not succeed in this, but this is one of them in purposes.

And they stress especially feeling tones. Now this can be taken to rare and great extremes, it's pointed out at an article quite a while going like magazine where if anybody says I think anything they think that's disgraceful. You're not supposed to think you're only supposed to feel or it can be done in the way we do it where we spend a good deal of time with the feeling tones and the physical express of this and the experiences of interrelating, but then we get around as I said before to the problem solving and we show the members of the marathon why they feel and act the way they do. What nonsense, because it's usually nonsense they are telling themselves to make themselves upset since they show the upsetness, the anxiety and hostility in the course of the marathon and we don't want to let them go out just expressing this on the big hole that it will

go away because it doesn't go away. They may be trained to actually be more hostile and they go back and kick their boss in the teeth which wouldn't be very facilitator for them on their job, especially as he has to pay it their way to this encounter. So we problem solve, but we get them to feel and think and to think about their thinking and to go in depth into what I call their ABCs, A being what happens, B being the boss you tell yourself about it and C being your behavioral or emotional reaction and before we end the marathon we close up most of the individuals. We don't merely open them which is very good and very therapeutic for many or most, but they can go off and become depressed or get overtly hostile as I said to others so we show them where I am when, but especially right now when they are telling themselves

a rival to make themselves upset and how they can challenge and question this so we even give them homework assignments as we do in regular group therapy and individual rational emotive psychotherapy and then we check six or eight weeks later we have a follow up to see whether they've done their homework assignments and if not why not. But I see that my 12 minutes or so is already coming to an end so let me briefly summarize and say that Maricana's Calcotherapy is not entirely new it has a great many new aspects it has ranges widely there is much that is controversial in it beyond but we are learning a great deal about humans under this particular kind of intensive prolonged stressful situation and helping them today in new ways thank you very much ladies and gentlemen you have

the first thing to Dr. Ellis and his discussion of marathon psychology and a new approach to it and now we have Dr. Alfred Jones who is going to continue with the same general subject for a little bit here go ahead sir before I begin my talk are there any questions we'll have some later go ahead how many people in the audience over 30 over there's your hands and how many people under 30 well I'm glad I'm there there are a few neutrals here I think I think I'm in the majority and if I'm in the majority I'm going to have to begin in

a very very unpopular vein I'm going to be a counter revolutionary many people have always asked me the question you know Alfred or Dr. Jones depending on how familiar they are are you a Freudian and I say as an answer well I'm more or less a Freudian more a Freudian when I understand him and less when I don't and I'm going to take tonight a more traditional role and being a traditionalist I'm going to reach for my crush which are my notes when Johnny asked me to talk tonight I welcome the opportunity because traditionally the role of a traditional therapist has been one to listen and not to talk and here's a fine chance for me to reverse the roles another reason when I'm given a topic I like to read up on it learn something so here was a chance to find out what's going on in

psychology today there are I think all about 30 divisions in the American Psychological Association each one devoting itself to a specialty and frankly that scared the hell out of me it's a lot of work reading so many journals and I'd like to learn about all of these divisions because some of the divisions in the American Psychological Association have very scary titles there's the division of military psychology there's the division of industrial psychology there's the division of engineering psychology and as yet we do not have a division of human psychology a colleague of mine suggested that I you know pick a topic in a field which I have some degree of familiarity with so I decided to talk about those fields which incidentally and maybe that's the wrong word it may not

be so incidental that the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have come in for a great deal of criticism one detractor and I hope he remains nameless characterise the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as the invention of many minds to make maxi dollars the next of all that's one two three four five six seven pages all list the various types of psychotherapy ranging from guidance psychoanalysis rational mode of therapy joy therapy group groups gangbangs all the latest the next thing that I try to do was to try to arrange

these various things in some sort of a meaningful some sort of a scientific you know some sort of a logical ordered list so I could then talk to a very educated audience and I'm sure you're all an educated audience get some meaning from all of these various types can we make up some scientific or philosophical rubrics which we can then list all of these things and examine them and then while I was thinking about this a movie title began to obsessively intrude into my mind it kept saying over and over and over again Alfred what's new pussy catch and then I read the New York Times and I noticed that playwright Edward Albee is having a play revived and the players tiny outs do you know all know what tiny outs means

I don't think they'll I will save that for the discussion we can use that as a projective technique now here's a playwright I think this play appeared on Broadway five years ago at the very very longest as a matter of fact Edward Albee his first play was produced in 1960 in Berlin and here we have this aged playwright having a revival that's what I mean by what's new pussy cat I began to see some of the current demands for innovation for revolution and psychotherapy as a cult of fashion and both patients and practitioners both becoming the sacrificial victims of a new man a modern day demon of cupidity and I'm reminded you know about Oscar Wilde you said you know those things are fashionable that

are so ugly they just can't last more than six months the cult of fashion of worship of the young the new the latest seems to be today an end in itself and you know it was bad enough keeping up with the Joneses but more tragically now we have to keep ahead of and this is not only a phenomenon that I see occurring in psychotherapy it's also present in the arts so that the avant-garde in any field of the arts is very very hard pressed to keep ahead of the public and I see the latest development in art is the only logical solution and that is that we have to come to the art of the destructive and here in this this really really horrifying insistence upon the latest what's new what's the best it has

to be different it has to be new you know there is some sense to it because in drug therapy for instance the physicians tell us if it's new use it because then it's most effective and this is the appeal for the miraculous if it's new it's somehow good without critical examination without an ability to differentiate between good and bad only between old and new and in this view the consumer the patient even the intellectual becomes somewhat like the old forced and veblin model of the conspicuous consumer and the practitioner who espouses innovation takes on the morals of the economic royalist don't examine what I do who don't look at it scientifically don't examine my meat let's not have anybody examine what I produce just

the fact that I produce it that it is a personal expression of mine should be good enough where does the question we should all ask the demand from novelty come from and it's a question we should take very seriously on one level of course there's a snob appeal the feeling of superiority in knowing something that another person doesn't and really you know that's horrifying it's an example of man's inhumanity to man forced it by a repressive society that uses affluence or the availability of new techniques to mask the alienation of the person who is undergoing these techniques I hope we should all understand that if we ever had to face the fact that there was nothing new in the products of society then we might

have to face the fact that the society itself is empty that it has on we it has boredom and it has superficiality and that instead of constantly grabbing for new devices the latest car the latest method of psychotherapy we have to face ourselves in a sense some of the recent innovations in psychotherapy are not new and Dr. Ellis has alluded to young and hotler all venerable and I use that word expeditiously venerable figures in the history of psychology it's all been done before it's been done before in art the recent innovations are not recent the Dadaists and the surrealists had it all done a long time ago but with much

more thought with much more criticalness and with less salesmanship I don't know how much time I've taken a few more minutes I object very strongly to the new expertise while there is strength renewal and renaissance in the new I must also remember that it has to have continuity it has to be reflective that as Dr. Ellis said not only does it have to be emotive it also has to be rational and in seizing upon new techniques I would like to point to the danger of blindly following taste makers the ones who tell us what is best what we ought to do to be better but in that particular way becoming better doesn't

come from us it comes from them in the eye and the vow and boobers phrase is not reconciled of course we all want something new the very definition of life is renewal and rebirth and perhaps the saddest words as we know the phrase of tongue and pen are enveloped in the idea of lost hope we can't sit and suffer in what might have been rememberances of things past indulging ourselves in the repetition of past events and futile hoping in terms of what might have been I'd like to have a modern day version phrased in an old writer Brad Hart he says you know the saddest words of tongue and pen are enveloped in the idea

it might have been I've got a new one it is but it ought to be and I would suggest a new idea to reverse myself we had the old idea of the three ours in order to get along in the world we had to have reading right and arithmetic and I'd like to propose a new set of ours and these are four ours that there has to be reason there has to be thought there has to be logical process there has to be reflective examination of who we are what we were what we might be there is also the tremendous necessity for the second hour and that second hour is revelation and by there I talk about the emotive the affective the feeling aspects of who we are and what we are and what we might become but these two

are still not enough there is the third and the third one is revolution and by that I mean that if we reason that if we feel we also need to do we also need to act and by revolution I don't necessarily mean the overthrow of the established order I mean we have to revolve we have to turn we have to change and then I add a fourth hour and that is the hour of relevance that it's not enough to revolt to change who we are what we were it's not enough to change the establishment but it also has to be relevant to a goal it has to be relevant to a hope to an ideal of what we might be and with that I leave you thank you very much Dr. Jones we have been talking and listening to a little discussion on revolution

but that has something to do with psychology today and in addition to Dr. Jones and sitting by beside me is Dr. Ellis what do you think about it Dr. you want to say something more naturally I just had that feeling by looking at you well first of all I want to basically go along with the points that Dr. Jones made particularly the four hours none of which I disagree with however the first one which is reason I think does sort of imply that we take a two-sided rather than a one-sided view of what goes on in the world and even what goes on in psychology so not that I disagree basically with anything he said but I want to give you very briefly the other side of the points which he critically sets and

I think a lot of criticism of what we do today in psychology is in order he first talked about the cult of fashion and I agree that there is particularly in the area that I spoke about the encounter business humanistic psychology there is a cult going today and yet on the other side today we have more different kinds of innovations and psychological methods in psychotherapy than has ever been shown before as Carl Rogers said in a talk almost ten years ago now his graduate students almost every day he was then at the University of Wisconsin keep coming up with new methods and needs to try it out and today we not only have encounter in marathon therapy but we have behavior therapy which has come up very greatly in the past few years bridge pearls is variation the stout therapy has become much more popular than it was before

and my own rationally motor therapy has now come more into its own and there are many Dr. Jones said himself many kinds of therapy maybe fifty fairly distinct though they do overlap in some way system so by no means are all therapists are all clients sticking rigidly to the cult of fashion then his point on impunity is a good one because we better face the fact that therapists are in business because they're in business among other things and they're not there just for the glow and helping of humanity at the same time we do have lots of innovations in psychotherapy today especially group therapy in marathon therapy and short range therapy which are much less expensive to the client than in years past and there are individuals in the field

who are promulgating these cheaper methods some of which seem to be as more effective than the long winded analytic and truly more expensive methods for the client rotation then he said truthly that we don't want that to validate our psychotherapy the newer ones in particular but we could also add the psychoanalysis which has been around low these 75 years now has virtually zero validation and virtually zero experiments to validate it as I think in many other critics pointed out he said that some of the newer therapies and I agree with him have snob appeal people run to echelon to say I've been to echelon you haven't been to echelon you can hardly speak to me unless you get out

at two and then the others run out in order to get spoken to but on the other hand we've had this same nonsense in therapy for at least a half century where people will say my analyst is better and more expensive than your analyst and lots of individuals go for older types therapy for these status seeking reasons snob appeal and finally he said that we'd better be wary and I agree with him of the new expertise because as I failed to note in my case introduction a lot of this basic encounter business is done by thoroughly untrained individuals the wild to echelon are some little echelon closer to New York City and take two or three encounters themselves which they

damn well lead and a lot more and then they go back and set up shock and pull themselves experts in the field and haven't the slightest idea what a seriously disturbed person is and their expertise is not very good expertise to say the least in our own encounters we make sure that every facilitator or leader is a trained psychotherapist a psychologist psychiatric social worker or psychiatrist or somebody in training as one of these before we let him lose on the public but on the other hand we have to accept the fact I believe that the old expertise has its great failings and people rigidly follow some doctrine of many years standing and consequently do not as I said before and as he said try to validate it so that has its lapses too I'm just trying

to show you that there are invariably two sides to the coin and if we are reasonable about it we will look at both and not merely at one. Thank you Dr. Ella, thank you Dr. Ella, thank you Dr. Ella. Now you and I agree so much that we can disagree but perhaps we can agree to disagree. I suppose in a lot of what Dr. Ella said was the implication that I was attacking some of the newer forms and defending some of the older forms. I would agree with him that the attacks that I made upon the older forms upon the newer forms are equally valid for the older forms but let's not just generalize the attack let's specify them. The attack upon the older form was that there was too much attention upon the past and I might

add too much intellectualization that the search for hidden memories lost the affective contact with the present that the therapist became more interested in hearing the material from the patient in order to substantiate the theoretical system he was working on instead of helping the actual living reality of the patient and some of the many perhaps even most of the newer forms have a healthy antidote to the sterile intellectualization in terms of stimulating the affective life of the patient. About the money that's a funny business. One analyst, psychoanalyst, seeing a single patient for 45 minutes can get anywhere from 20 to 40 dollars per session. That's expensive for the patient but not so rewarding to the therapist because one group therapist for the same

period of time can make one hell of an offer a lot of money even though it's cheaper for the individual patient. So I think that we have to look at the economic rewards of psychotherapy in both of these ways. I think and I hope you agree now that it's not a question any more of either war. I think that in psychology today we ought to stop having factionalism. We ought to stop trying to see who can line the pockets with more dough, who can gain more prestige by making greater contributions to the literature. Let's get down to helping the society and the people in the society that we're all dedicated to and that we're part of. Like each one of these approaches has its particular place and let's avoid having one particular parameter of therapy elevated to a

system of personality. Let's stop making slogans into manifestos. There are some treatment methods that are more efficacious, that are more relevant, that are more helpful to certain kinds of patients. Let's train therapists who recognize the differences, the limitations in each one of these modalities of the treatment that was even more important, recognized the limitations of their own treatment techniques, that when they get a patient be interested in the cure of the patient rather than in the ability to cure the patient. And if they see a patient who can be benefited from the avial therapy, from hypnosis, from drug therapy, from any one of the many, many modalities of the treatment, the important thing is what is helpful for that patient, rather than particular

method of psychotherapy that the individual practitioner employs. Very nice. Just no or agree, though. I quite agree. I just want to say the same thing with a slightly different emphasis, and that is that I think psychotherapy today is gradually becoming more comprehensive. The individual is the kind of a being who is cognitive, thinks, perceives, interprets, who is emotive, who feels, who abri acts, who expresses himself, and behaviorists he acts, he moves, he does something in life. And I think that all the psychotherapy sessions, for example, call rodents, psychotherapy, client sentence, psychotherapy, which has

responsibly do one of these things. They emphasize the emotive side, the relationship, and the behavioristic psychotherapy, behavior therapy, which has responsibly does another one almost exclusively because they emphasize the deconditioning, desensitizing, undoing, acting against your conditioning. They really include a lot of aspects of the other, because call rodents, people, when they say, uh-huh, because you've done what they consider the right thing, or reinforcing you, in fairly much the same manner as the behavior therapist was. And when the behavior therapist asks you to go through the hierarchy of phobias in your head, they talk to you about them as has been shown in a couple of papers on Joseph Walten's therapy, and they do relate to you. We all do some of these things. Now we may do it

differentially. Some of us will stress the cognitive, we particularly do, the odd laryans do, as against the emotive, or the behavioristic. Some stress one or the other, but really, they all have whether they are aware of it and admit it or not. The other aspect too, and the more consciously that we become aware of this and admit it, then they more comprehensive the more human, because man is a human being who is cognitive, emotive, and behavioral, then the more human in that way, I think we become. All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Jones. You want to say, uh, it's pretty worrying here as well. A concluding few words. I guess what we're trying to say is that we should have a holistic approach to treatment. We should treat the whole man, but let's watch out that we don't treat the whole

and not the man. Ladies and gentlemen, we have had two very distinguished psychologists discussing the problem of psychology today, Dr. Albert Ellis, and Alfred Jones, and I made it this time. You have been listening to a presentation entitled Psychology Today. The speakers were Dr. Albert Ellis, Director of Clinical Services for the Institute of Advanced Studies, and Alfred Jones, co-director of the Mental Health Consultation Center. The chairman was Dr. Johnson E. Fairchild of the Cooper Union. The program was recorded October 1, 1969, at the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in New York City by station WNYC. This is the National

Educational Radio Network.