The Fundamental Flaw, According to Me
I used to idealize the organization that is International Re-evalaution Counseling Communities. That was before i joined them. I had learned a little about the theory behind the co-counseling method - but didn't know much more than "crying is good" as it helps to eliminate illusions and repetition compulsions from past unhealed hurts. This, I still believe is true.
What i no longer believe is that IRCC as an organization can deliver an entirely healing message to the world or to individual people. Once i finally got into the organization after doing about 15 years of dedicated catharsis, on my own, i discovered that i was glad i hadn't joined in the first place, back when i found out about it in 1968 and read the basic book: "The Human Side of Human Beings."
Because if i had joined Personal Counselors, as it was called back then, I would have been told that a) i needed a counselor to help me cry b) i was supposed to practice shaping myself into something (a skilled co-counselor) that would enable other people to "re-emerge", the RC name for becoming a whole person.
It would have put me all off balance. In RC, they teach a method of counseling wherein the counselor assumes responsibility for healing change in the other person. I have fundamental problems with this idea, i think that each person needs to express their own information and take charge of their own selves and healing process.
If I use the RC value system, that claimed the first job and best use of my personality was to heal (create change in) others, and to shape my character into whatever would trigger their emotional response, i would surely lose an essential sense of myself. It is important to me that the look on my face, the words that come out of my mouth, and the movements i make express the truth that is contained in my personal body. I believe that if i revolve that expression around some outer manifestation, like the response in the other person i am dealing with, i am essentially training myself to lie. Further, I am splitting myself, as I am placing my motivational center "in" another person. It is co-dependency at its finest.
I believe lying is: speaking to impress the listener. I believe telling truth is: speaking to express the self. It is my personal experience, that trying to shape myself into something that RC taught me would further somebody else's re-emergence is actually a distortion of myself.
People who have become skilled in co-counseling methods can be unbelievably charming. After years of being confused about Re-evaluation Counseling, i feel like i am starting to understand my fascination with it, and my wariness of it.
I think the whole situation engenders a sort of addiction to the attention of another. Anytime one person holds what another person is addicted to, there is a reshaping of the identity of the addict into a false self that encompasses that projected "missing part" that is identified as being "out there." This was built into RC, as it was accepted as fact that everybody needed somebody else to initiate their healing for them.
People can easily become addicted to the systematic and specialized kindnesses, appreciations, and fond countenances (even automatic affection!) that come along with trained co-counseling skills. There is a built in protection that helps co-counselors maintain this image (yet not be besieged with offers to marry, for instance) and that is the "blue pages" rules against social involvement with other co-counselors. The only involvement that is allowed between members of the organization is what is carefully structured and shaped. That way, people can maintain the image of unconditional love for brief periods, but only for brief periods, because it is essentially a fake. Its an act. Its a role playing game.
I think that not only do the people while in the client role get addicted to the unconditional positive regard that the counselor is trained to express, but the person in the counselor role also gets addicted to the worshipful affection that develops in the client they attend.
I feel very lucky that i spent fifteen years doing "emotional discharge" (which, from now on, I shall try to call "catharsis") without belonging to the formal group that is RC (all the while thinking i was doing what they do, although by myself.) I have learned that catharsis is incredibly important in creating healing from past hurts, and in freeing the mind to respond to the present with a creative and open mind.
But I don't think that RC is the only way or even the best way to gain catharsis. I have done lots and lots of catharsis alone in my room, with friends, with my husband, with my other family members, in a yoga class, in a body work session, with professional counselors of all types, with psychiatrists, with co-participants at child abuse conferences, and even with strangers on the street. One time i had a really terrific cry on a public bus when i was repairing my bond with my home town. It was rush hour and the bus was packed. Not one person looked up, but I had the attention of every single person on that bus.
I feel lucky that i spent only a small amount in time in formal RC classes, support groups and workshops, before realizing that i was being twisted out of shape. There was a subtle confusion for me all the time that i was involved in RC, which grew to be enormous towards the end of my involvement. I was encouraged "in session" to speak my truth entirely and it was assumed that i would be listened to intently by the counselor i was with. Listened to, yes. But not received, as important information. There was an overall closed-mindedness expressed in the organization that was RC.
They had an agenda and definitions that seemed cast in concrete. Disagreements with policy were treated as expressions of inferior thinking, assumed to be caused by accumulated hurts. I struggled with my feelings of approach/avoidance to the organization that is RC but couldn't leave, not entirely, till someone I met completely by accident told me that the founder (and then still leader) had been the subject of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct with his female clients during sessions. Like, thousands of times.
I asked my RC teacher about these allegations immediately. He said "Harvey Jackins is such a great man, i can't believe somebody who can found a worldwide organization such as IRCC would make such a mistake" and he told me he did not believe it was true. He said he believed it was part of an overall tendency for people to compulsively attack their leaders.
This was finally enough to allow me to quit. Suddenly all of my confusions about RC were cleared up. I have long believed that there is an essential character flaw that shows up in sexual predators, and this is that they do not tell the truth. In the extreme, they just blatantly make up false data. They also exaggerate. But the most subtle and pervasive way that a sexual predator will lie is that they say things to impress, to create an effect, rather than to simply express their immediate truth.
It was clear to me that the entire co-counseling method was resonant with this type of lie. I became angry that i had been instructed in my co-counseling class to make promises of a lifelong commitment to the person I was assigned as a co-counselor. I had been instructed to present the most sacred of promises, whether i meant it or not, just to see what effect it could create in my client. This was another thing that i complained about to my RC teacher, i told him i felt i was being trained to lie. He said, it isn't really lying, and he made up rationale of how i can "be there" for somebody all of their life without "being there" at all. I said i was unhappy about this system of counseling, it seemed i was being trained to separate my words and my actions - and i interpret that act to be very injurious to my own spiritual and mental health. I couldn't see how distorting myself in the name of creating healing in another was a legitimate system of recovery and therapy.
This was the last conversation I had with my RC teacher. He was a very charming man. An irresistible man, in a way. And apparently a lot like the personality that is Harvey, because he was LIKE A CLONE of the man who originally taught me about RC theory and worked on me during dates. The exact same mannerisms. Same vibe. Same way of talking. I mean, a clone. I never pined after that guy again.
Recently I discovered, through an internet search, that there is a webpage, Liberate RC! and mailing list devoted to discussing the reality of the Re-evaluation Counseling system and organization. The literature and newsletters of the IRCC always censor the information that many people have left RC because of dissatisfaction with the way the organization handled and still handles the allegations of sexual misconduct by their leader. I sincerely invite anyone who has had any contact with RC to investigate this information for yourself.
What i no longer believe is that IRCC as an organization can deliver an entirely healing message to the world or to individual people. Once i finally got into the organization after doing about 15 years of dedicated catharsis, on my own, i discovered that i was glad i hadn't joined in the first place, back when i found out about it in 1968 and read the basic book: "The Human Side of Human Beings."
Because if i had joined Personal Counselors, as it was called back then, I would have been told that a) i needed a counselor to help me cry b) i was supposed to practice shaping myself into something (a skilled co-counselor) that would enable other people to "re-emerge", the RC name for becoming a whole person.
It would have put me all off balance. In RC, they teach a method of counseling wherein the counselor assumes responsibility for healing change in the other person. I have fundamental problems with this idea, i think that each person needs to express their own information and take charge of their own selves and healing process.
If I use the RC value system, that claimed the first job and best use of my personality was to heal (create change in) others, and to shape my character into whatever would trigger their emotional response, i would surely lose an essential sense of myself. It is important to me that the look on my face, the words that come out of my mouth, and the movements i make express the truth that is contained in my personal body. I believe that if i revolve that expression around some outer manifestation, like the response in the other person i am dealing with, i am essentially training myself to lie. Further, I am splitting myself, as I am placing my motivational center "in" another person. It is co-dependency at its finest.
I believe lying is: speaking to impress the listener. I believe telling truth is: speaking to express the self. It is my personal experience, that trying to shape myself into something that RC taught me would further somebody else's re-emergence is actually a distortion of myself.
People who have become skilled in co-counseling methods can be unbelievably charming. After years of being confused about Re-evaluation Counseling, i feel like i am starting to understand my fascination with it, and my wariness of it.
I think the whole situation engenders a sort of addiction to the attention of another. Anytime one person holds what another person is addicted to, there is a reshaping of the identity of the addict into a false self that encompasses that projected "missing part" that is identified as being "out there." This was built into RC, as it was accepted as fact that everybody needed somebody else to initiate their healing for them.
People can easily become addicted to the systematic and specialized kindnesses, appreciations, and fond countenances (even automatic affection!) that come along with trained co-counseling skills. There is a built in protection that helps co-counselors maintain this image (yet not be besieged with offers to marry, for instance) and that is the "blue pages" rules against social involvement with other co-counselors. The only involvement that is allowed between members of the organization is what is carefully structured and shaped. That way, people can maintain the image of unconditional love for brief periods, but only for brief periods, because it is essentially a fake. Its an act. Its a role playing game.
I think that not only do the people while in the client role get addicted to the unconditional positive regard that the counselor is trained to express, but the person in the counselor role also gets addicted to the worshipful affection that develops in the client they attend.
I feel very lucky that i spent fifteen years doing "emotional discharge" (which, from now on, I shall try to call "catharsis") without belonging to the formal group that is RC (all the while thinking i was doing what they do, although by myself.) I have learned that catharsis is incredibly important in creating healing from past hurts, and in freeing the mind to respond to the present with a creative and open mind.
But I don't think that RC is the only way or even the best way to gain catharsis. I have done lots and lots of catharsis alone in my room, with friends, with my husband, with my other family members, in a yoga class, in a body work session, with professional counselors of all types, with psychiatrists, with co-participants at child abuse conferences, and even with strangers on the street. One time i had a really terrific cry on a public bus when i was repairing my bond with my home town. It was rush hour and the bus was packed. Not one person looked up, but I had the attention of every single person on that bus.
I feel lucky that i spent only a small amount in time in formal RC classes, support groups and workshops, before realizing that i was being twisted out of shape. There was a subtle confusion for me all the time that i was involved in RC, which grew to be enormous towards the end of my involvement. I was encouraged "in session" to speak my truth entirely and it was assumed that i would be listened to intently by the counselor i was with. Listened to, yes. But not received, as important information. There was an overall closed-mindedness expressed in the organization that was RC.
They had an agenda and definitions that seemed cast in concrete. Disagreements with policy were treated as expressions of inferior thinking, assumed to be caused by accumulated hurts. I struggled with my feelings of approach/avoidance to the organization that is RC but couldn't leave, not entirely, till someone I met completely by accident told me that the founder (and then still leader) had been the subject of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct with his female clients during sessions. Like, thousands of times.
I asked my RC teacher about these allegations immediately. He said "Harvey Jackins is such a great man, i can't believe somebody who can found a worldwide organization such as IRCC would make such a mistake" and he told me he did not believe it was true. He said he believed it was part of an overall tendency for people to compulsively attack their leaders.
This was finally enough to allow me to quit. Suddenly all of my confusions about RC were cleared up. I have long believed that there is an essential character flaw that shows up in sexual predators, and this is that they do not tell the truth. In the extreme, they just blatantly make up false data. They also exaggerate. But the most subtle and pervasive way that a sexual predator will lie is that they say things to impress, to create an effect, rather than to simply express their immediate truth.
It was clear to me that the entire co-counseling method was resonant with this type of lie. I became angry that i had been instructed in my co-counseling class to make promises of a lifelong commitment to the person I was assigned as a co-counselor. I had been instructed to present the most sacred of promises, whether i meant it or not, just to see what effect it could create in my client. This was another thing that i complained about to my RC teacher, i told him i felt i was being trained to lie. He said, it isn't really lying, and he made up rationale of how i can "be there" for somebody all of their life without "being there" at all. I said i was unhappy about this system of counseling, it seemed i was being trained to separate my words and my actions - and i interpret that act to be very injurious to my own spiritual and mental health. I couldn't see how distorting myself in the name of creating healing in another was a legitimate system of recovery and therapy.
This was the last conversation I had with my RC teacher. He was a very charming man. An irresistible man, in a way. And apparently a lot like the personality that is Harvey, because he was LIKE A CLONE of the man who originally taught me about RC theory and worked on me during dates. The exact same mannerisms. Same vibe. Same way of talking. I mean, a clone. I never pined after that guy again.
Recently I discovered, through an internet search, that there is a webpage, Liberate RC! and mailing list devoted to discussing the reality of the Re-evaluation Counseling system and organization. The literature and newsletters of the IRCC always censor the information that many people have left RC because of dissatisfaction with the way the organization handled and still handles the allegations of sexual misconduct by their leader. I sincerely invite anyone who has had any contact with RC to investigate this information for yourself.
