Re-evaluation Counseling - Organization

Organization

The organization's official title is "The International Re-evaluation Counseling Communities". It is owned by Re-evaluation Counseling Community Resources, Inc., with headquarters in Seattle. Its President is Tim Jackins and its Vice President is Sarah Elizabeth Jackins. The corporation owns copyright in the terms "Re-evaluation Counseling", "RC" and "United to End Racism". It also controls the Re-evaluation Foundation, a non-profit 501(c) organization, and Rational Island Publishers.

Within RC, Tim Jackins is called the "International Reference Person". He is a former mathematics teacher from Palo Alto, California, and a graduate of Yale and Stanford. He has been a co-counselor, leader and teacher of RC for most of his life. The International Reference Person appoints senior leaders, who appoint local leaders ("reference persons") in consultation with local groups. Reference persons decide who can attend events, teach RC, lead groups, and, to some extent, who may counsel together. They are not paid. RC considers that this form of centralized leadership is essential for uniformity of practice.

RC runs classes in co-counseling and local groups are set up by people experienced in the ideas and methods of RC who have been approved by the leaders. New members are invited to join "fundamentals" classes by existing members. They are expected to be well-functioning and emotionally healthy so that they can be effective counselors as well as being able to benefit from counseling. Fees are fixed at a low hourly rate per person, and there are scholarships for people on low incomes. Twenty-five per cent of fees are sent to the central body in Seattle. Participants are asked not to use caffeine or alcohol and must abstain from mind-altering drugs so as to be attentive and to have access to their feelings. People who counsel together are prohibited from socializing with one another. It has been said that, in discussing clients' "distress patterns" in classes and workshops, RC violates the standard of confidentiality that is normally expected in counseling.

Classes and local communities are organized into regions and loose, country-wide affiliations, although RC does not organize on national lines.

RC is committed to spreading RC practices and insights "as widely as possible in the general population". RC does not seek publicity and states that it keeps a "low profile". Local publicity has to be approved by the regional leader and national and international publicity by the leader of RC. RC does not list local contact information on its website.

RC does not publish membership figures or comment on estimates. On one occasion, Jackins claimed that more than a million had attended RC "Fundamentals" classes. The April 2007 edition of the RC publication Present Time listed 243 RC groups (each with about 45 members) and 428 teachers in groups of about 10 people, making an active membership of about 15,000.

RC tends not to co-operate with attempts at independent investigation and is sensitive to criticism, either external or internal, which it often regards as an attack on the organization. Jackins believed that much criticism was inspired by the US government, who feared RC's "profoundly progressive nature and its effectiveness". RC instructs members to "to quickly interrupt both attacks and gossip." It says that such attacks are "dramatizations of distress and are not acceptable behaviors within the RC Community. An attack is not an effective way to resolve disagreements or difficulties." "People who participate in an attack must first stop the attack and apologize for having participated in it. Only after they have done this should counseling resource be offered to them." Critics who persist "should be made to leave the group and their attacks ignored."

RC's system of unelected leadership and strict central control have been criticized by ex-members. John Heron, who was an RC leader and teacher, left the organization in 1974 to set up his own co-counseling organization, Co-Counselling International. He said he did so because he realized that RC "systematically conditioned its members to associate a certain kind of beneficial human development with centralized authoritarian control of theory and community policy. It was clear to me that this was pseudo-liberation." He considered that the authoritarianism of RC derived partly from the Leninist doctrines of central control that Jackins had learned in the Communist Party of America and partly from the autocratic example of his former associate L. Ron Hubbard. RC has also been criticized for suppression of internal debate. In an article analysing RC's "attack theory" Steve Carr says that "To counter attacks on RC and its leaders, RC members are instructed to interrupt the person, approach the accusation as the personal problem of the accuser, and vigorously come to the defense of the person or people being attacked." Richard Childs describes how he was treated in this way and expelled from RC when he tried to discuss allegations of sexual abuse within the organisation. However, other RC members have accused leaders or young leaders with sexually inappropriate comments, and there were no negative consequences, and any misunderstandings were resolved amicably.

Re-evaluation Counseling has been listed as a cult while some say that it is like a cult in some respects. The Study Group on Psychotherapy Cults, an organization of ex-members hostile to RC, described it as "cult-like". Denis Tourish and Pauline Irving in a 1994 article considered the characteristics that RC shared with psycho-therapeutic cults, namely, a charismatic leader, idealization of the leader, followers regarding their belief system as superior to others, followers joining the group at times of stress, the therapist becoming central to the follower's life, the group absorbing increasing time, illusions of superiority to other groups and the group becoming suspicious of other groups. They concluded: "Given its hostility to such pluralistic notions of participation and democracy, RC has the potential to become a fully fledged and harmful cult, despite its original humanistic aims."

Re-evaluation counseling encourages its members to play an active role in public life and has set up groups to promote its ideas, which it calls "naturalized" groups. The main groups promoting RC methods are United to End Racism" (UER), formed in 2000, and the National Coalition Building Institute, formed in 1984. UER is part of RC and shares its HQ in Seattle. It participated in the 2001 Durban World Conference against Racism, the 2006 Caracas World Social Forum and the 2006 Vancouver World Peace Forum. The National Coalition Building Institute is formally independent of RC but is linked through its Founder-Executive Director, Cherie R. Brown, who is a member of RC and active in UER.

The Re-evaluation Foundation aims "To provide opportunities for people to participate in Re-evaluation counseling who otherwise could not afford to participate." Founded in 1972, it supports projects based on the theory and practice of Re-evaluation Counseling that apply "bold, thoughtful action to freeing human beings from the distresses associated with past hurtful, unjust experiences." Its president is Michael Markovits, a former vice-president of IBM. Its assets at the end of 2006 were $1,063,634. "The Foundation considers grant requests only from members of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities who are seeking financial assistance that will further the dissemination of the theory and practice of RC." In 2007, the foundation made grants totaling about $240,000 to several organizations controlled by Re-evaluation Counseling, including "People-of-Color Leadership Development, Global Initiatives, Young People Leadership Development/Family Counseling Work, Elimination of Racism, and Mental Health."