Introduction

Frustrated longing for community will be readily accepted as a predicament of contemporary society. One may wonder why this is so. Simple explanations have been given either that there has been an actual deprivation or that we have a heightened awareness of human need for community. The clearest expressions of the search for community, as conceived in this way, are the mechanisms which have been created for group interaction and self-expression, such as encounter groups, T-groups, sensory awareness and their several variations. The twin goals of the spatially separated group and the lack of constraint on individual emotion show again the arrest at the liminal stage of the transition ritual, the formation of a community without tradition or future orientation. Brewster Smith demonstrates an equivalent process within the science most closely concerned, namely psychology. Encounter groups are only one mechanism of the new community consciousness.