Do Personal Growth Laboratories Represent an Alternative Culture?

Abstract

The rhetoric of personal growth programs represents, as Shepard suggests (J.A.B.S. 6 (3), 259-266), an alternative culture. However, when one attempts to study the actual behavior of participants in a laboratory, preliminary research suggests that it may bb closer to the established culture than to a "clearer vision of a better life." A theoretical framework is here proposed in an attempt to explain the apparent discrepancy between the actual behavior of participants and what they say they experienced and learned in personal growth programs.