Re-evaluation counseling
Re-evaluation counseling (RC) is a business, and a network of peer counseling. Its core philosophy prescribes regularly relating painful memories to a peer counsel or group and releasing strong feelings by crying, shaking, or laughing as the best salve for psychological wounds.[1] This idea was first developed in the 1950's by L. Ron Hubbard and called Dianetics (later Scientology).
Re-evaluation counseling recruits members by branding itself as a peer-based counseling procedure trying to help people and bring about social reform.[2]
In the early 1970s Personal Counselors, Inc, established the Re-evaluation Counseling Community, made up of local groups of people called "Co-Counselors" in Seattle and beyond, based until 2021 in Seattle, WA, currently in Shoreline WA. It was led by Harvey Jackins until his death in 1999. It is currently led by his son Tim Jackins.
History
In the early 1950's Harvey Jackins associated with L. Ron Hubbard (the founder of Scientology) and others interested in Dianetics (what later became Scientology).[3][4] This led Jackins to establish Personal Counselors Inc. which aimed to "engage in, conduct and teach the art and science of Dianetics."[5] RC reports that collaboration between Jackins and Hubbard became unworkable, and Jackins ended their association and continued to develop RC as a separate organization.[4]
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackins continued to build Personal Counselors, Inc., and in the 1960s and 1970s took RC from Seattle, where he first practiced it, to the rest of the US and then to other countries. Between 1975 and 1990, he appointed local teachers, area representatives, regional leaders and representatives of groups. A set of Guidelines for the community was adopted a biennial conference of local leaders. The Guidelines are revised at similar conferences, known as "World Conferences", originally biennial but currently every four years. The conferences also adopt general goals for the community.
After Jackins' death in 1999, his son, Tim Jackins, was chosen at a conference, attended by leaders in the RC communities worldwide, to take over the role of International Reference Person, the title given to the leader of RC.
Investigation by the Boston Globe
Co-counseling was recently the focus of a 2021 investigation by the Boston Globe, after a youth worker in the school system was found to be practicing co-counseling (which is not a licensed therapy program) with minors without the permission of the student's parents.[1]
Quoting from the Boston Globe: "Boston high school sophomore, Keondre McClay said he was pressured by the head of a district-sponsored youth advocacy program to attend an overnight retreat in Newton, where white adults asked the Black teenager to wrestle out his emotions on a gym mat with them. They said it would help him purge his trauma from experiencing racism. McClay fled to his room. Jenny Sazama, the program leader, and other retreat participants chased after him. For more than an hour, he recalled recently, they hugged him on his bed and entreated him to return to the group 'counseling' session while he hid under the covers screaming, “Please leave me alone!”.[1]
United to End Racism
Aggressive response to criticism
There have been few papers about RC in scholarly journals. RC often refuses to cooperate with attempts at independent investigation.[14] Dennis Tourish and Pauline Irving in a 1995 article compared his system of management to the communist state model of democratic centralism.[15]
The organisation is sensitive to criticism, either external or internal, which it regards as an attack on the organization. According to Steve Carr, "To counter attacks on RC and its leaders, RC members are instructed to interrupt the person, approach the accusation as the personal problem of the accuser, and vigorously come to the defense of the person or people being attacked."[14]