Influences on Oasis

This section tells you a little about the people and ideas that have helped give Oasis our distinctive approach to development work, work which continues to evolve. It is the people we have had contact with that have been fundamental in shaping the Oasis approach – an approach that is based upon working with human relations issues in a live way, whether as part of a learning process or as part of the work we might be doing in an organisation, or with a group of people.

 
Underlying our approach is the creative influence of Eric Cassirer who died on 26th December 2004. Eric was a truly inspirational figure as all who worked with him attest. He had been involved in the earliest days of the Human Potential movement and trained at Esalen when in his fifties he changed career from being a wealthy Californian businessman to becoming a healer and workshop leader.
 
Eric worked out of a personal integration of all the influences he had experienced and put out a call to all those who connected to him to be themselves. His workshops were a combination of movement, fun, seriousness and always surprise. He never ‘taught’, but he had plenty to say and gave unstintingly of his own experience of having created an organisation in the sixties in the USA. His visits twice a year were a highlight of the Oasis calendar. He is deeply missed but his spirit lives on in all kinds of ways.
 
John Heron is the second source of influence and one of a very different kind to that of Eric. John was one of the first figures in the Human Potential Movement in the UK. He worked with all the great innovators in the early seventies before setting up the Human Potential Research Project at the University of Surrey. It has been the longest experimental project of its kind in Europe. 
 
John was strongly influenced by the peer approach of co-counselling which fitted his temperament and his strong philosophical commitment to the person – something which we have adopted with gratitude. Before meeting the humanistic approaches of the seventies, John already had wide experience of a large number of approaches to development including a number of spiritual traditions.  As many people in the UK know, John has had a deep influence upon the valuing of catharsis and the promotion of non-professional approaches to development (See his book Helping the Client).  He established a wide programme of events at Surrey and was instrumental in founding the IDHP (Institute for the Development of Human Potential) which supported a two-year diploma programme across the UK in the 80s. IDHP Diplomas introduced people to the aspects of Humanistic Psychology. The combination of individual development, group process work and social action, along with an openness to transpersonal development meant these programme had a lasting impact on all who took part in them. 
 
Many of the building blocks of those programme influenced the way in which Oasis has designed its longer educational programmes. The emphasis upon working with the person, the person in and with the group and the importance of learning experientially (Inquiry Based Learning and a Whole Person Learning Approach) all being linked to the individual’s contribution to the wider world are also at the centre of our work.

John went to Italy in the 90s and Oasis stayed in contact with him throughout that time. When we began to deepen our interest in Cooperative Inquiry we arranged a visit to work with him in 1998. (That inquiry was into Integrated practice and holistic learning and helped to deepen our ideas about Whole Person Learning). He later moved to New Zealand to found the South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry and Oasis has been to work with him and his colleagues there on four occasions. The Inquiries have all centered around transpersonal cooperative inquiry: experiences that have been life changing for many who took part.
 
Mario van Boescothen has been our organisational guide and mentor for over 20 years. He offers a steadying influence and wise counsel. Mario is Dutch with a strong loyalty to this country where he settled in 1974 bringing with him his knowledge and experience of organisational development that is drawn from the anthroposophical tradition of Rudolf Steiner. 
 
Mario brought to Oasis a reverence for the struggles and effort people make when they are working things out together to create organisational forms. His emphasis upon human meeting and the recognition of the person were all at the heart of his approach and his extra knowledge of organisational forms, and phases ensured his influence has been deep and wide. His range of contributions to organisational life across a wide cross-section of enterprises meant he had a great deal to offer us both in our own leaning about Oasis and how we wanted to develop as well as in how we approached helping other organisations. His international consultancy involved working with such organisations as Shell, British Gas, Laura Ashley, Walls, CDRA, Olive and many other well-known companies, he acts as mentor to consultants and facilitators around the UK.

Mario continues as a source of guidance and help to many of us as individuals, as well as to the organisation as a whole. 

Will Schutz was a long standing influence before any of us met him. His instrument FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Orientation - instrument B) is the most widely used psychological tool after the Myers Briggs inventory. Will started out life as a US academic; FIRO was his PhD thesis that looked at the way inclusion, control and openness influenced how an individual responds to group situations. It was particularly useful in composing functional teams in submarines! The potential of its wide applicability was evident from the beginning because it is a description of the universal processes that all individuals go through in the stages of group life. It also describes the effects upon individuals as they respond to the three phases of group life inclusion; control and openness. FIRO is a tool that is soon understood in general terms and at the same time it also has a degree of sophistication about it that grows as you get acquainted with its possibilities.

We have used FIRO in all the work we do that involves group development or helping groups understand how their personal view influences the way in which they respond to group phenomenon.
 
Will spend many years living out his philosophy of profound simplicity (the title of his book and more than worth a read) until the early 90s when he moved from Esalen back to San Francisco and began to earn money, as he put it, for his later life. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease but kept on working for a number of years. He was a wonderfully impish figure – a little like Eric and from that same immigrant Jewish background as Eric.

Michael and Eileen Scott - In our early days of forming as an organisation we relied strongly on the business knowledge and understanding of Eileen and Michael Scott. Their combined interest in creative activities, personal development and their background as senior figures in large scale commercial enterprises provided a richness of expertise that supported us through our early efforts at coming to grips with what becoming an ‘organisation’ might mean. They have also generously offered their time and support to several of the Directors at various times. They generously donated several paintings to the centre when it first opened.

Bill Berrett - Bill first came into contact with Oasis whilst we were still at Beechwood over a decade ago. His background is rich and varied being both a ‘planner’ and a keen enthusiast of interpersonal facilitation; work he pioneered  as a way of enabling a more engaged response from the public that officials seek to serve. He had already helped in supporting other initiatives (notably the Counselling centre in Leicester) and offered his interest and expertise to Oasis.

Over the years he has proved another steadying figure of solid support and assistance. Bill’s willingness to stick with us and keep our sights on the wider horizon has proved invaluable in more recent times and has begun to come to fruition with the work arising out of the UN/EFMD GRL Initiative.