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DURING 1971 I SPENT four months at the Community, which is a continuation of Kingsley Hall. I learned then, among other things about myself and others, that so-called "blow-out" centers, such as this one, correctly recognize the need people have to disorganize. I also came to recognize the incomplete truth in this idea, since it is incorrectly assumed by some that disorganization is an act of growth in itself. My belief is that disorganization leads to endless chaos unless other conditions for growth exist simultaneously. It is toward an exploration of these conditions within the framework of psychotherapies that this paper is directed. In this paper I will initiate a clinical discussion around three constants: experience, dependency, and contact.
Experience, roughly defined by Buber's "relationship, " is the irreducible absolute of human growth essential to human physical and psychological survival. Contact is the facilitator and journeyman of experience. Whereas experience is that which is undergone, contact is the living act, the concrete involvement, the labor and craft of experience. The primacy of contact and experience as constants of human growth renders man almost infinitely dependent on his own kind. These three primary constants are the matrix around which are woven all basic human needs.
The first opportunity for "new experience" in therapy is contact with the patient's so-called "resistance." Resistance is understood here to be the expression of the patient's defensive self-system in the therapeutic situation. The patient's defensive system is essentially a mode of relating designed to maintain life-giving contact with people without risking pain, hurt, or annihilation. At best it is