ABSTRACT
The humanistic approach has always been very interested in group work. Many of the humanistic groups manage to deal with all three of these areas, but the most coherent version is the encounter group. The encounter group manages it very naturally and with little difficulty. The essential feature of encounter is that it is integrative. The fullest and most appropriate use of this term is any approach which unifies the three basic legs on which psychotherapy stands: the regressive, the existential and the transpersonal. The encounter group has diminished in popularity, and what has taken its place has often been the humanistic-existential group. During the 1970s, people started to come to encounter groups who were already involved in revolutionary politics, sometimes feminism, sometimes Maoism, and sometimes anarchism. In an encounter group it is possible to catch a glimpse of spiritual realities which go beyond ordinary consciousness.
