Studying RC Theory, with Young Adults
Hey young adults,
I’m a twenty-nine-year-old middle-class Protestant white guy who was raised in Co-Counseling in Maine, USA. For the past six years I’ve lived and counseled in San Francisco, California, USA. I never met Harvey,* and in the last couple of years I’ve realized how little of his writing I know very well, despite assumptions some older adults have that people who started Co-Counseling young or were raised in RC picked up RC theory and mastered it just from being around the adults who were developing it.
In the last year or two, I’ve started reading some of Harvey’s writing and watching some of his talks on DVD, and it’s made a big difference to me. Many of the adults I grew up around had “liberal” patterns that prevented them from holding a strong line against distress, and Harvey’s refusal to ever agree with any part of a pattern (even if people felt like he was being hard on them) has been really helpful to me. I’ve loved his tone of high expectations for all of us, and how much he wanted distress off of us.
Recently I’ve been thinking that it could be fun to study Harvey’s ideas with other young adults, as a way for us to contradict our patterns of staying small or playing only supporting roles in our Communities and to get to know Harvey’s thinking better and build on RC theory.
So my question is, do any of you have experience studying RC theory together with a group of young adults? If so, how did you set it up, and how did it go? If not, what do you think would make it go well for you as young adults (and as people from your different constituencies)?
Nat Lippert
San Francisco, California, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion
list for leaders of young adults
* Harvey Jackins