Possible Selves in Emerging Adulthood: A Comparison of Two Group Interventions

The present study provides a pilot examination of two types of possible selves group interventions. The study evaluates emerging adults’ satisfaction with and outcome following participation in groups that were oriented on interpersonal-experiential and didactic-task interventions and that focused on possible selves. Analyses used data from 85 emerging adults who were randomly assigned to one of these intervention types and who completed pre- and post-intervention assessments. Overall, participants indicated a high level of satisfaction with both types of group intervention. Results indicate that significant improvement in personal growth initiative was achieved across both interventions, but only the interpersonal-experiential intervention was associated with an increase in participants’ efficacy to pursue relational possible selves. Change in hope across both interventions was not statistically significant, and participants did not improve in their efficacy to pursue vocational possible selves. Follow-up analysis found that group engagement was associated with improvement in participants’ efficacy to pursue relational possible selves through interpersonal-experiential intervention. While both interventions appear to be beneficial, interpersonal-experiential groups may be particularly useful in fostering emerging adults’ sense of future relational selves.

Narrative and Foundational Assumptions

This chapter describes a training program in China involving working intimately with Chinese therapists in quite revealing experiential groups over ten years. The author learned that whatever she could tell about her experiences would be infiltrated by her own Western culture. Her struggle was to bring her embeddedness in a Western perspective into narrative contact with an Eastern, quite different, set of foundational assumptions about life and human relationships. Narrative is always rooted in culture-bound worldviews but can also be a way of bridging them. Culture can only be told in storied form and involves the intersection of self and other. Cross-cultural knowing of the Other is a humbling experience.

Emergency at sea. Wading through the chaos of emotions

This article draws attention to the advantages of applying the theoretical model of the experiential group in particularly critical conditions, such as those dictated by a state of emergency, as a means of addressing an urgent need by putting up a sort of decompression chamber for emotional residues derived from the difficult and sometimes extreme work situations experienced by the participants. The shared participation in the unwholesome experience unites and creates familial bonds, and is infectious, giving back a universal language for the encounter with other cultures that are unknown to us. Not only that, the state of emergency gives rise to another form of language, the language of meaningful action, where doing as an institutional practice—acting together to save human lives—allows the structuring and consolidation of a sense of identity to which the strong ‘esprit de corps’ emerges, also told by the crew as the experiential groups bears witness.

Turkish counselor trainees’ experiences regarding experiential groups: A qualitative study

The purpose of the study was to examine Turkish counselor trainees’ experiences in participating in an experiential training group. The phenomenological research design was used to understand counselor trainees’ experiences in experiential group. The 18 undergraduate counseling students (14 female and 4 male) enrolled in a group counseling course were the participants of the study. The data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews after the completion of twelve- week experiential counseling groups. Content analysis was used to analyze the data and according to results, three main themes emerged: a) perceptions, b) contributions and c) problems. Under the perceptions theme emotions and metaphors codes emerged. Vocational and personal contributions were two main codes emerged under the contributions theme. And under the problems theme, two codes emerged as group structure and group process. The findings were discussed in the light of the literature and recommendations for counselor educators and researchers are presented.