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Encounter is a humanizing way of relating, enabling people to change and learn by having them take responsibility for themselves, focus on feelings, and engage in feedback. Encounter is relevant to the development of creativity; it can help people who live and/or work together get along more happily and productively; it is an effective way of dealing with social conflict; and it can also serve as a model for all human relations.
S. RICHARD SAUBER
Boston
Sir / I appreciated your article on the questionable merit of various shadowy encounter-therapy programs. It is important that laymen be informed that techniques such as Daniel Casriel's simply break down the patient's psychological balance and result in no constructive, integrated experience.
However, the comparison of encounter groups with Arthur Janov's primal therapy is completely out of order: The primal patient is directed to specific feelings and is aided by the therapist to integrate the experience, so as not to become subject to unconnected, dangerous, psychologically damaging feelings.
DAVID GRANT SVOBODA
Omaha
Israel as Miracle
Sir / The fact that Israel has "grown and prospered," though surrounded by enemies, is not, as you described it, "something of a miracle" [April 30]. Israel's continued prosperity is instead a result of the successful combination of Manifest Destiny and technological superiority directed against the underdeveloped, poorly organized indigenous population of Palestine. Americans should be only too familiar with this sort of "miracle," since our own history with regard to the American Indians is in many ways similar to the conflict between Israel and the people of Palestine.
THOMAS K. MANNION
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Sir / People must realize that the Israeli attack on the Arabs is justified by the fact that one of the Arabs' major goals is to demolish Israel. How can a country strive to survive without some means of counterattack? After all, the Arabs attacked Israel to begin with. Should such a tiny country not fight back?
BRAD STONER
Indianapolis
Sir / All kinds of good things might happen in the next 25 years. Lebanon, Jordan and Israel could agree to harness common rivers for electric power and irrigation. Egypt and Israel build a trans-Sinai railway from Tel Aviv to Cairo. All the nations of the Fertile Crescent join in a Middle East Common Market. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya each contribute one-half of 1 % of oil revenues toward the education and resettlement of Palestinian refugees.
Syria could help finance a Disney World on the Golan Heights, and Iraq and Algeria face each other in a super soccer stadium at Sharm el Sheikh. Yassir Arafat could retire on a pension, Anwar Sadat take a job as headwaiter in a kosher restaurant, and Colonel Gaddafi mount his white camel and ride off into the desert forever.
So why not? The first 5,733 years are the hardest.
STANLEY SCHWARTZ
New York City
Derogatory Term
Sir / You quoted Father Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, as saying "When we send a man to China, he becomes a Chinaman" [April 23].