Some clarification

To the Editor:

I am a 45-year member of the NTL Institute, retired now, and would like to correct some errors and add some information to the articles on the “cultural island”. Kurt Lewin was not the founder of NTL. He was a Social Psychologist from the Univ. of Berlin who saw the handwriting on the wall in the early 1930s in Germany and came to America.

He could be called the “intellectual founder” since T-groups were based on his Group Dynamics research. NTL actually started as part of the National Education Assoc. on K Street in Washington, D.C. It became independent in a year noted in my History of NTL book currently residing in Massachusetts.

Most egregiously, the Weirs did not run nude groups, nor require waitresses to comply. I knew them well. I worked with them. Dr. John Weir was a Clinical Psychologist and a Prof. at the Calif. Institute of Technology. What participants might have done on their own, I cannot answer for – and they were being asked to experiment with behavior.

As to who these participants were, most “hippies” could not have afforded our Labs. Participants were teachers, ministers, military personnel, housewives, doctors, managers, psychologists, etc. All T-Groups (T for Training) had a trained facilitator present at all meetings.

His or her role was to help people learn about their own behavior as well as the group process. Bill Allen is right: it’s not easy to get feedback from people. You have to build trust first. Those blindfolded people walking around were doing a “Trust Walk”, or learning what it feels like to be dependent on someone else.

I used this exercise in my teaching of Medical and Dental Students at Harvard. The “processing” which followed, and discussion of their feelings and learnings from the experience, was very useful for our future professionals.

I can understand that many of our behaviors may have looked far out to a Bethel native at the time. We sat on the floor in circles, to express equality. We taught people to hug. We put everyone on a first-name basis. Whether we “took over” or not is a matter of perception. From my perception, the businesses and leaders did very much appreciate our presence in town every summer by the hundreds.

I started coming to Bethel in 1967, and I’m still here – as “summer people”!

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