University of Georgia
This report is a heuristic case study of individual experiencing at a Person-Centered Community Workshop in Pezinok, Czechoslovakia during the week of April 13-20, 1991. The purpose of my study is to recreate the phenomenon of each participant's 'symbolic growth experience' (Frick, 1983) defined as "a conscious perception of the symbolic-metaphorical dimension of immediate experience leading to heightened awareness. The creation of meaning, and personal growth' (p. 68). The creation of each unique experience emerged from heuristic analysis of interviews of five of the participants in the workshop and immersion of the researcher in the workshop as a participant. The emergent depictions, portraits, and a synthesized integration of the data produced a dynamic flowing between three categories: (1) the individual factors of personal influencing and societal influencing; (2) the group factors of influencing of training and group interacting: and (3) group processing depicted as "struggling,,” “organizing,”and “dividing.” These three categories are interactive with each category flowing into the core category of "freeing." The findings of this study are reminiscent of a previous finding of a qualitative study by Frick (1983). Emerging from his study was a symbolic growth experience defined as a "freeing power” of experiencing 'self acceptance,’ ‘self-affirmation,’ ‘congruence', and ‘increasing trust’. The re-creation the individual experiences of the researcher and the co-researchers resulted in a synthesized creation of the phenomenon of individual ‘freeing’ as experienced in the person-centered community workshop.
In the eastern Slovakian region of Czechoslovakia, the small town of Pezinok lies nestled in the Low Tatra, the foothills of the Carpathian mountain range. During the week of April 13-20, 1991, a small country inn near Pezinok served as the site of a person-centered community training program sponsored by the Center for Cross-Cultural Communication. Ninety-one individuals with varying professions and from nine countries (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Greece, England, and the United States) gathered together to study, train, and experience an approach to psychotherapy called the person-centered approach. The premise of this approach was aptly stated by Carl Rogers (1989):
The central hypothesis of the person-centered approach, based upon experiential learning, can be briefly stated: It is that the individual has within himself or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering his or her self-concept, attitudes and self-directed behaviour and that these resources can be tapped only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided (p. 135).
The emergent content of the workshop included facilitator presentations, community meetings, large groups, encounter groups, empathy labs, individual consultation, and individual and group supervision with four facilitators from Greece, France, the United States, and England, three males and one female. Translation was provided in three working languages, English, Russian, and Slovak/Czech.
The idyllic location, the diversity of individuals and nationalities, and the verbal melange of communication contributed to an almost unreal, ethereal experiencing of freeing of individuals in the workshop. Even the climate contributed to the aura of unusual variety by fluctuating from heat to snow, a rare occurrence at this time of the year. A situation within the context of the workshop illustrates this phenomenon of almost surrealistic experiencing of freeing. One workshop participant opened a small group meeting by recounting in a story-like fashion an experience he had had during a break. He stated that he had seen two “fairies sitting on rocks” in front of him. These two people (an American participant and myself) seemed fairy-like to him because of their “free spirits.” The freeing that he was experiencing for the first time had previously only existed in his imagination. However, now not only was he experiencing a freeing but also beginning to imagine that just like the rocks, "fairies" (free spirits) could be real.
As a result of the data analysis, it was discovered that if it is this phenomenon of "freeing" about which this study revolves. My interest in this phenomenon in relation to person-centered workshops resulted in my own initial personal experience as well as subsequent experiences in cross-cultural workshops. My experiencing was one of a "passage" from a life of incongruent accommodation to society and others to an emergence toward a journey of increasing self-awareness and congruence. The rebirth of a hidden and subdued “self” changed my life in almost all areas. This experience created a passionate curiosity to know “the essence of this aspect of life through the internal pathways of the self” (Moustakas, 1985, p. 209). Thus the beginning of a my “exploration for the discovery of meaning and essence of human experience” (Barrineau & Bozarth, 1989).
Methodology
As researcher, I am using the heuristic method of research. This decision was arrived at through a personal struggle to conduct a research study in a way that is congruent with my respect for the individual and his/her individual experiencing of life while adhering to the parameters of research. Heuristic methodology emphasizes the researcher as the instrument of research and is rooted in a life experience of the researcher. The researcher's total immersion in the investigation results in a heightened inner awareness of the essential elements enabling the research question and methodology to emerge. The extent to which the researcher is able to experience this inner awareness through indwelling and intuition provides illumination of the investigation of the human experience (Moustakas, 1990; May, 1990). The emergent methodology was that of a qualitative phenomenological case study whose focus was on objectively re-creating the lived human experience of the researcher and the co-researchers of the person-centered community workshop in Pezinok, Czechoslovakia. The theoretical perspective guiding the study is symbolic interactionism. This underpinning is reflected in the focus of the study on an interactional view of life among individuals or groups (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984) while re-creating the lived experiences of “human beings acting toward things on the basis of the meanings things have for them” (Blumer, 1969). Additionally underpinning the study is phenomenology. Moustakas (1987) provides several guiding principles in phenomenological inquiry. These guidelines appear to be in tandem with the research question guiding this study and interwoven in the heuristic research approach.
Phenomenology focuses on the appearance of things, a return to things just as they are given . . . is concerned with wholeness, with examining problems or questions from many sides, angles, and perspectives until a unified vision of the essence of an experience is achieved . . . seeks meanings of the things that appear before us . . . is committed to descriptions of experiences, not explanations or analyses . . . is rooted in questions and topics which give direction and focus to inquiry and in themes which awaken further interest . . . is characterized by subject and object being integrated. What I see is interwoven with how I see, with whom I see it, and with whom I am . . . (p. 21).
The emergent research questions are: “What is the individual experiencing of the participants within the person-centered community workshops?” And, “What are the themes or patterns of individual experiencing?” The unit of analysis was the community workshop consisting of small and large groups, seminar presentations, triad groups of empathy labs, and individual interactions within the confines of the workshop. The data collection measure was four conversational interviews of thirty to forty-five minutes characterized by a heuristic emphasis on promoting a free flowing empowering atmosphere contributing to the expression of experiencing (Moustakas, May, 1990).
The method of selection of co-researchers for interviews was through opportunistic sampling according to availability (Newfield, Joanning & Quinn, in press) and emergent interactional opportunities within the workshop. The resultant emergent selection was three males and two females, ages thirty-eight to forty-five, all English-speaking. The prospect of taping in a country historically limiting in internal and external freedom was a consideration for opportunistic sampling. Therefore, individual interactions that I had with these co-researchers and with other participants in the workshops may have engendered a more trusting and freeing atmosphere. The emerging time for the interviews, the last two days of the workshop, and a dyad interview resulting from expressed discomfort may have reflected this variable.
A limitation of the study is the pre-selection factor of the co-researchers ability to speak English. A Czechoslovakian participant recognized the pre-selection and suggested that I interview other participants through a translator in the future in order to obtain a more heterogeneous population. Another limitation may be my biases inherent through professional and personal experience in counseling espousing the person-centered approach. Also, my experience in attending numerous person-centered workshops may inhibit as well as promote my understanding and insight of the phenomenon under study. Because of my previous attendance at workshops, I may have excluded some observations because of familiarity which would have inhibited data analysis. However, my previous experience may also have enhanced my understanding and insight into the process of the workshop which would have augmented data analysis.
Data Analysis
Heuristic data analysis centers around timeless immersion of the researcher in the data in an effort to understand and re-create the participant's experience as a whole. This data analysis is continuous with data collection. Because of time parameters and my participation in the workshop, I was unable to transcribe and analyze the interviews until I returned to the United States. Another difficulty in analysis was the language factor. However, in order to offset these limitations, immediately after I had conducted each interview, I allowed myself time to express my own thoughts by taping a "self-dialogue" (Moustakas, 1990). This “self-dialogue” served as analytical and theoretical memos. Another analysis procedure was to tape daily discussions with a facilitator (a co-researcher) in reference to the workshop occurrences during the day and my experiencing of the interviews. Upon completion of data collection, I transcribed the interviews and then listened to each interview a total of four times. One of my emergent analysis procedures was to listen consistently to the tape of the interview as I reviewed the material, took notes, and identified qualifies and themes emerging in the data. This procedure was an attempt to retain a wholeness of experience through my auditory senses while analyzing part of the experience, I found that the auditory stimulation satisfied my inner craving for preserving the individual experience as a whole.
Another method of analysis was an informal presentation of my tentative findings to a workshop I attended in Kansas in May. The group discussion format involved discussion of methodology and identification of categories as a response to my presenting a preliminary and tentative report of the study. From this presentation, I received invaluable feedback from experienced researchers that helped in my search for a core category as well as methodological considerations.
In an attempt to discover emerging patterns and themes, I coded the transcripts of the interviews as suggested by Strauss & Corbin (1990). Because of my biases against dissection of individual experiences and a heuristic essence of representing the lived human experience in its wholeness, the overview approach to open coding seemed more appropriate by which an intuitive impressionistic cluster of categories emerged. Axial coding of these clusters resulted in identification of seven categories with the number of sub-categories ranging from three to eleven. Thenthrough selective coding, I integrated the categories, many of which were subsumed in newly emergent categories, and discovered a "free flowing" or interactive relationship among the categories involving tension created by integration and differentiation of the individual and the group. As a result of selective coding and numerous hours of studying and constructing five different composite schemas in addition to individual schemas, three categories emerged: Individual, group, and group processing. These categories were all integrated in the core category, "freeing," an emic term derived from the data. The data was then synthesized in the heuristic mode of presentation of data through individual depictions, representing each co-researcher's experience; a composite depiction, representing the common qualities and themes of the co-researchers' experiences; an individual portrait of one co-researcher representing the group as a whole; and a creative synthesis, my creative rendition of the themes and essential meanings of the phenomenon of "freeing..”
Presentation of Data
Individual depictions of the co-researchers representing their freeing experiences in relationship to individual and group factors.
A forty-two year old mother recognizing incongruency between the words of group participants and their emotional content, experienced an awareness of her own life’s incongruency. She states:
It is difficult to describe what the real effect of that was, but I somehow found out for myself was that I'm not being congruent with myself for a number of years . . . in the sense that I was living in a relationship where that no matter how hard I tried all, it was all the times (begins to cry) sort of . . . painful all the time . . . I had though the feeling that I was being all the time against myself . . . It is difficult to sort of somehow admit that one failed . . . But for me it is like if you would wake up from a sleep. It is like sort of coming to an end . . .
A forty-two year old clinical psychologist and father of three recounted his freeing experience in terms of self-acceptance enabling him to accept the "unfinished personal luggage of anger.” The moment of freeing occurred when the group pressured him to speak.
And in a moment . . . there was a pressure on me to speak more about something . . . the whole group made a pressure on me. Speak, speak, and I was in a tension. And in that moment the facilitator said, "Well you know, if you don't want to speak it's perfectly okay." And it was the very first moment which made me good, made me feel well. And it made me feel safer. That was very, very fine . . . and the change in me was that uh (begins to cry) the great point of that change was that I felt my mother (the facilitator) accepts me with all my mistakes, all my wrong qualities . . . Because I was not accepted by my own mother, long ago in my childhood.
A third co-researcher, a forty-five year old doctor of philosophy and psychology had suffered under governmental control resulting in his five-year study in France as an historian of art being invalidated. He was considered an immigrant to Czechoslovakia upon reentry into his native country because he had studied without the permission of the Czech government. His freeing experience was an increasing trust in the group and a self-affirmation, personally and professionally, in his identification with the person-centered approach. He states:
I think this way of approach towards human beings is suiting my temperament and my character and my internal possibilities . . . This experience which I had I can say only confirmed that I did well . . . I feel more and more better, more and more interested in the processes of the group, and I feel more an urge in me to participate and to be willing to help others and more to let others to help me also.
Two individual depictions emerged in the dyad interview. A thirty-eight year old mother of two boys working as a counseling psychologist with children experienced increased self-awareness in relation to a freeing from stress caused by impatience with the group and the lack of rules in the group process.
We are always used to something organized and to put into some rules or BECOME these rules, not to create them and then to act under these rules we create, but we BECOME these rules. We SHOULD act under these rules. For myself, it is just to be more patient. And I feel much more freedom in this action. I don't feel to be stressed -- what will happen and for how long – it will come, something; so more to be calmer somehow, we are must be different, or we are growing somehow...
A thirty-nine year old father of two children and psychologist working in a diagnostic center for children experienced freeing as "something quite other," "a more softly walk.” His freeing experience of self-awareness and congruence concerned patience, permissiveness, interaction with others, and predictability.
I feel it so that I am more patient, more permissive, not such big need to be clever, or uh more freedom with other people. Not just something to do just to be ... I think I will be less predictable. I will BE.
A composite depiction of the lived experience of the five co-researchers resulted in a picture of individuals struggling toward freeing themselves from individual boundaries of personal and societal influencing and from group boundaries of professional group training and group interacting. The tension created between the need to preserve individual identity and the need to develop group identity through intimate knowledge of one another created a "dynamic free flowing" relationship of integration and differentiation. The dynamic flowing connecting the components provided a passage from restrictions and burdens in life to the experiencing of the powerful force of "freeing" of the self from external and internal forces. By the individual integration of the "group process" of the person-centered workshop, the "freeing" of the co-researchers occurred. The key elements in the “freeing” experience were self-acceptance, self-affirmation, trusting, and congruency. One participant introduced the metaphor of "a powerful force with benzene" in reference to the “freeing.” She explained it as "a force that is there but you do not do anything to that force, "put flashed light, hit it over and over again." This metaphor encompasses the composite depiction in that the force (gas) is restricted by its container as the individual may be restricted by individual and group influencing. However, the "freeing power" or force is present and is struggling to emerge. The data pictures the group process of struggling as a small spark from which the individual freeing phenomenon emerges.
An exemplary portrait re-creating the experiencing of "freeing" is a metaphorical representation offered by one of the co-researchers as a change from the way he was before experiencing the person-centered community workshop:
I see it so that I am in armor, and you come to me and swish, swish (makes motion as if with a sword) that armor away. And it was so very emotional and such a feeling that I needn't that armor. I can get away. And it was so very emotional and such a feeling that I needn’t that armor. I can get away . It is very safe, very fine to be with other people and . . . when I was alone. I worked very hard with this experience from group in contact with other people in other way. I think it was very much about self-acceptation.
I offer another analogy as a creative synthesis of a creation of my experiencing in the workshop and the individual experiencing of the co-researchers. I feel that I have stepped into a freely flowing river and am riding the currents of the river. I have become part of the river and the river nor myself will ever return to our previous states of being. As the river and I mutually journey, I sometimes collided with rocks or other obstacles in my pathway. I have the urge to hold on to these rocks or even grab an overhanging tree limb as I flow with the current. I sometimes wish to stop my journey and join others on the bank, but somehow I intuitively know that in order to do that I would impede the energizing force behind my journey. However, my need for others and the struggle to be with others while still progressing in my trek, is omnipresent..
In summary, the re-creation of the experiencing of the co-researchers and my experiencing in conducting this study offers a picture of the struggle toward "freeing" of the individual moving toward actualization or as stated by one of the co-researchers "to BE." This picture may be helpful to individuals in their own struggles and journeys through life. Also helpful to the research community may be the integration of the group process of the person-centered community workshop in releasing the "freeing" phenomenon.
References
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Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Douglass, B. G. & Moustakas, C. (1985). Heuristic inquiry: The search to know. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3),39-54.
Frick, W. (1983). The symbolic growth experience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23, 108-125.
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