Some Hidden Elements of Control in Group Facilitation

The intensive group experience is a setting for the development of the individual through a medium of open and candid exchange made possible by a cohesive group and a nondirective leader. In such a humanistic endeavor it is easy to exaggerate the free dom of expression and to underestimate the forces of social control and the authority of the unprepossessing leader. But open interaction is exquisitely controlled social behav ior, and groups employing it possess an impressive potential for social influence. In fact, these misrepresentations of the power of the activity and the group leader consti tute a kind of mystification by the practitioner of him- or herself and his or her clientele.