Mutually Therapeutic Perception and Self-Awareness under Variable Conditions

Abstract

Two T Groups were studied to determine whether the findings obtained by Clark and Culbert (1965) would be duplicated under somewhat different conditions. In the earlier study, as predicted, group members who spoke with significantly more personal selfawareness at the end of their T-Group experience than at the beginning tended also to have formed a high number of two-person "mutually perceived therapeutic relationships (MPTRs)." In the present study, five of 20 members significantly increased in selfawareness and four of these five were among the ten members who formed a high number of MPTRs. Following experiential leads, an ad hoc analysis was made on the data from both studies. It suggested that combining the number of MPTRs and the number of mutually perceived nontherapeutic relationships may more accurately predict change in self-awareness than MPTRs alone.