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I wish to consider the question of the origin of the five items worth remembering, and how I came to them. The actual motive is, that about half a century ago emancipation of the individual flooded the western world. Since then there have been fifty years of profound changes in knowledge and insights. So it is clearly time to review, how far the visions and conceptions of those days are still relevant. Anyway, the question is still unanswered. So it is convenient to have an idea about how to live with that question on our way to the answer.
Around the fifties of last century a time period in which Authorities reign supreme comes to an end. Colonialism is almost finished. The demolition of the wall between East and West Germany, and the end of the Soviet Union signal the end of that era. In this period, starting around the British Victorian time, the world had to face horrible depths. Like the First and the Second World War and all wars after. These horrible experiences and the need to cope - and live - with them individually, have certainly contributed to the process of emancipation.
It also looks like as if these developments have enhanced the foundation of different kinds of self-help institutions. The American Harvey Jackins started, in 1952, a counselling agency that evolves in the seventies into Re-evaluation Counseling, the RC-communities. As boss of this RC organisation Jackins (1916-1999), pulls the strings firmly until his death. Those who do not agree with him simply have to leave, and many do so voluntarily. In the beginning of the seventies he appoints the British founder and director of the Human Research Project of the University of Surrey, John Heron as his European representative. This institute is the oldest centre for humanistic psychology and education in Europe. Later Heron became assistant director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation.
principal disagreements
Heron disagrees in 1974 principally with the theoretical approaches of the authoritarian Jackins. In Jackins opinion, all emotional pain is caused by ignorance, natural disaster and social oppression (people hurting people) and can be overcome by rational approach. Heron underlines this ignorance, but distinguishes it in two kinds as he describes in his declaration about the Paradigm Shift (J. Heron the original theory of co-counselling and the paradigm shift (1995). First the external ignorance: learning how to cope with the physical and social world, and second the internal ignorance: forgetting who I really am (a spiritual entity in a human body). Also politically there is a huge gap between Jackins - with his trade union background - and Heron.
Being a talented therapist and theorist Heron expects much from an opening up of the RC approach by trying out different aspects of other growth methods as well. Equality between worker (client) and co-worker (counsellor), each owning their self responsibility, and keeping strict confidentiality are hot items for him. He leaves RC in 1974. Almost at the same time the RC members Tom and Dency Sargent (an RC-trainer) from Connecticut USA, were thrown out of RC together with a big part of their community.
Eventually Dency took up teaching and leading outside RC and this was the birth of CCI-USA. John Heron and Dency Sargent created the first CCI meeting in the USA in 1975, and also then set up the first CCI workshop in Europe, at Farnham, England in 1975. In a meeting of teachers at this Farnham workshop the first CCI guidelines were agreed. Present at this meeting were John Heron, Dency Sargent, Rose Evison, Richard Horobin, Dick Saxton and at least two others whose names need digging out from long ago archives. An important guideline about organisation was that each community decided on how their organisation embodied the peer principle. These guidelines are still followed by CCI USA community.
Heron, a talented co-counselling practitioner and theorist, connects CCI principally with the humanistic psychology (Maslow, Carl Rogers etc.). A range of his publications about CCI are revised in 1998, such as 'Catharsis in human development' (1977), his 'Co-Counselling Manual' (1974), 'Suggestions for Exercises' (1978), 'Co-Counselling Teachers' Manual' (1978). At the CCI international meeting in January 1997 in Auckland, New Zealand, Dency Sargent and he share their experiences of leaving RC with the participants of that meeting (J.Heron and D. Sargent Dialogue about CCI -1997-2000). In 1973 Rose Evison and Richard Horobin take their (RC) fundamentals training from John Heron and facilitate their first CCI fundamentals in 1975 before attending the first European CCI. And they are still facilitating! Together they write 'How to change
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