The right group at the right time
The scene was set for Journey and other organizations like it. Millions of middle class kids feeling that somehow something was wrong with them. For some of us Journey provided both an anchor and a justification for being who we were.
Not everyone who came to Journey was a privileged, middle class brat. Some were people who had worked hard to rise from poverty but still had low self-esteem. Others came from the fringes of society, like our flasher. Others, suffered genuine psychological problems and sought help with us instead of the drugs and hospital beds of the mental health system. Some, like our founder, had both psychological problems and a troubled past of drugs and jail; a past that fosters shrewdness and the nothing-to-lose attitude that permits taking risks the rest of us wouldn't dare. The very kind of people who become the rabid evangelists and street corner speakers in any age; the seventies offered an opportunity for a new line of work for these people: group leaders.
To be fair, the human potential movement was very different on the West Coast. California has always had a much better class of extremist. Unlike Journey's ex-con, Sandstone and other California human potential centers were founded by people of money and education. Sandstone was a spa with group therapy. The movement in California lacked the cynicism of the East Coast disenfranchised. Nowhere was this difference clearer than at Journey Alert in New York.
To me the most amazing thing about Journey was the fact that despite its founding, it attracted some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. People who benefited and grew and helped others grow in life-changing ways. Somehow by sitting in a circle on overstuffed pillows, gently being prodded into vulnerability and sharing, changes, sometimes dramatic took place. Without being there, it is difficult to believe the power these groups had over our lives. It wasn't magic. It wasn't even mysterious. We learned the simple lesson that by being vulnerable and believing we could change. That doesn't mean we became different, more saintly people. No, not that at all. What did happen is over the time we participated, we became able to act where in the past we would have wished. We were able to follow our personal stars. In those early days, Journey helped us conquer life-draining fear so that we could live the lives we wanted. Did it make the fear go away? No, not at all. The support of other, loving people made it possible to be brave and rise above the fear and actually live! This was the heart and soul of the human potential movement. Journey was at its center.
This process was so powerful, that even blatantly exploitive behavior could still end up doing good. One of the first members of the group was a young man with terrible anxiety and insecurity. He would literally work himself unconscious in an effort to prove he was part of the group. The founder, whose purpose from the beginning was to manipulate people and make money without working, considered this young man a gold mine. Over nearly a decade, this poor guy worked harder than any three people to try to win the approval he could never take in. The enormous power of the movement saved him. While Journey had its exploitive founder, it also had forty or fifty people who were honestly committed to each other and the concept of human growth. It's still hard to understand, but the love and support of the people at Journey made enough change in this man's life so that he could marry, and spend the next four decades happily with a woman. A dream he felt unreachable in 1970.
Bonnie, the blind date from New Jersey came with me to Journey and joined our groups. We continued to date, and in 1972 married. Ours wasn't the first Journey marriage. Dennis and Evelyn were a couple who had been together for years before joining Journey. These two were the most perfectly matched people any of us had ever met. Both were kind, totally in love, and shared in virtually all of their interests, yet over the years never managed to take it past living together. Journey's groups let Dennis and Evelyn talk about feelings and dreams. In the course of that process, they discovered what got in their way, worked past it, and now are married almost 40 years.
I think that those early days were Journey's best time. People made whatever level of progress they wanted toward overcoming the fears that kept them from chasing their dreams. The groups were very successful. By 1972 there were two or three every night of the week. Many of us learned to lead groups. It was difficult-but-satisfying work.