Kurt Lewin laid the foundations for sensitivity training in a series of workshops he organised in 1946, using his field theory as the conceptual background.
Meanwhile, others had been influenced by the wartime need to help soldiers deal with traumatic stress disorders (then known as shell shock) to develop group therapy as a treatment technique.
[4] Other leaders in the development of encounter groups, including Will Schutz, worked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
[10] The techniques of T-Groups and Encounter Groups have merged and divided and splintered into more specialized topics, arguably seeking to promote sensitivity to others perceived as different, and seemingly losing some of their original focus on self-exploration as a means to understanding and improving relations with others in a more general sense.
[citation needed] Another legacy of sensitivity training, prompted in part by controversy, has been a new rigour in research methods for the study of group work, and of its outcomes.