A historical overview of personal development groups

Personal development (PD) groups have an interesting history and have survived as a method of increasing self-awareness on counsellor training courses for a long time. In this chapter Carole Smith looks at the historical background to these including ‘encounter groups’ and ‘T groups’, which were introduced as a form of experiential group therapy. The links between group therapy and usage in training are shown here. The chapter briefly defines what a group is and discusses the need for self-awareness in counselling training. It explains how PD groups in counselling training have developed over time and there is some exploration of early works on group dynamics. The final section looks at PD groups now.