Harvey Jackins - Development of Re-evaluation Counseling

Development of Re-evaluation Counseling

Jackins is said to have developed Re-evaluation Co-Counseling after observing a troubled friend change through being patiently listened to while he cried. Curious about the effect of this crying, he worked with others to develop a method of reciprocal counseling based on the recollection of psychological and physical traumas or "hurts" accompanied by various types of emotional catharsis. He called these effects "discharge" (as in when a battery discharges excess energy), which he came to believe led to clear thinking or "re-evaluation". He held that rational thinking was prevented by the accumulation of past hurts, which could be removed by repeated discharge through co-counseling. The objective of RC became the dissemination of this method of creating rational thinking, a process called "re-emergence". Re-evaluation counseling, it is held, can remove "oppression", which it considers to lie at the root of most of the problems in the world.

In the early 1950s, Jackins became acquainted with L. Ron Hubbard's theory of Dianetics. In 1952 Jackins formed Personal Counselors Inc. to "engage in, conduct and teach the art and science of Dianetics." While practicing Dianetics, he developed the concepts of "re-evaluation" and "discharge" and came to believe that they could be encouraged by the "exchange of aware attention" in the "co-counseling process". At this time, Jackins used some of the terminology of Dianetics, such as "clearing up patterns", "rationality", "present time" and "passing distress by contagion". Psychiatrist Richard M. Childs claimed that Jackins' book The Human Side of Human Beings (1965) plagiarized Hubbard's Dianetics (1950), saying that Jackins "paraphrased Hubbard's terms by recasting them in his own jargon. Hubbard's 'Engrams' became Jackins' 'distress patterns', 'release' became 'discharge', and 'to become clear' became RC's 'to re-emerge'." In 1957, Hubbard's Scientology organisation claimed that Jackins was describing himself as a "Dianetics Auditor".

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackins systematized his views and in the 1960s and 1970s took RC from Seattle, where he first practised it, to the rest of the US and to Europe. From 1975 to 1990, he appointed local teachers, area representatives, regional leaders and representatives of groups such as blacks and gays. He wrote RC's Guidelines and decided on all major issues. His policies were ratified by a biennial conference. Tourish and Iriving compared his system of management to the Communist state model of democratic centralism. Jackins supervised the involvement of RC members in external organisations. Jackins is said to have claimed that several governments were influenced by RC and to have thought that eventually religion will be replaced by Re-evaluation Counseling.