Talks by Tim Jackins at the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia Pre-World Conferences, November 2025
Welcome to the Pre-World Conference. Let me start by giving you a history of Re-evaluation Counseling and the World Conferences.
When we started Co-Counseling in 1950, there was no organization. We found the idea of discharge by accident. A few people who had seen it happen were curious about it. They experimented in what they called Co-Counseling sessions. They did this for about two years.
None of these people had any training in psychology or anything like that. My father had been a chemistry student and his friend Eddie was a house painter. They were fascinated by what happens when someone discharges. They felt incompetent to continue exploring, so they tried to interest professional counselors and psychiatrists. All of those people dismissed them. My father couldn’t let it go, so they formed a small group to continue the work.
From 1950 until 1958 this small group worked with people. In 1958 they thought they knew enough, something that they could teach. If they could do it, anyone could do it. They taught the first fundamentals class (then called “Elementary Co-Counseling”). Enough people were interested that classes continued and multiplied in Seattle, USA.
Co-Counseling classes were held only in Seattle and the surrounding area until 1968, when RC began to spread by word of mouth [informal communication] beyond the city. People wanted to teach classes far away from Seattle.
The first problem was, “How do you teach them enough information when they are that far away?” Our ideas are interesting, but it’s only when you put them into practice and start discharging that you really understand them. The solution they came up with was to try to teach everything that people needed in a two-week-long workshop. In July 1970, that first Re-evaluation Counseling workshop was held. It did fairly well at giving a lot of information. People had two sessions a day for two weeks. They learned a lot and, more importantly, they discharged a lot.
It’s when you see that you have changed your own mind that you understand how powerful this is.
GROWTH AND GUIDELINES
After that first workshop in 1970, several people started teaching their own version of RC in the United States. The reports we got back were interesting: some people had some basic ideas and were adding other ideas that they didn’t hear from us. It became clear that we needed some sort of organization to keep RC as “RC.” People were not intentionally distorting RC but, like all of us, our distresses affect what we hear and what we say.
The first World Conference took place in 1972. Every RC teacher in the world was there. I think there were forty-two people. That was where we laid out our first RC Community guidelines to help us think about what we were trying to do and refer to something that would help us remember.
RC continued growing and spreading, inside and outside the U.S. At some point within a few years there were enough of us that we needed to get together but there were too many of us to actually do it. That’s when we started having the Pre-World Conferences.
The first purpose of a Pre-World Conference is for us to get together, because although we have many important ideas, they all involve us building relationships with each other. Some of that you can do on Zoom; because of the COVID-19 pandemic, at times that’s all we’ve had. But to build the relationships we want with each other, you have to sit in the same room. You have to be able to hold each other’s hand. You have to be able to lean against someone as you talk about what’s been hard in your life.
It’s been very clear in RC that you can’t alone undo all the hurt that happened to you. We are building the relationships we need to heal ourselves. There are many things we can do on Zoom, on the telephone, and even by writing letters to each other. But it’s different when you are right there with each other. You both get to be alive in a different way. That’s always part of a Pre-World Conference, and it may be the most important thing.
The Guidelines for the Re-evaluation Communities started out about eight pages long. As time went on, they grew and grew and grew. They were trying to take into account all of our different Communities and all of the different conditions that keep happening around us, like the ongoing collapse in most of our countries.
The purpose of the Guidelines is to make you think. Often the best way to get yourself to think is to see someone else’s thinking. Not as a set of rigid rules, but as a way people thought about and understood different situations.
LEADERS WORKING TOWARD AGREEMENT
In an organization, you need people to lead. First, there were RC teachers. We have an application process and we’re usually very careful. Sometimes my father went to a new place and thought somebody was smart and honest. He would say, “Would you teach RC?” He’d be trying to get something started in the new place. If he was lucky, he made a good choice. He wasn’t always lucky, but he wanted there to be opportunities for RC everywhere you could find them.
He was the first International Reference Person (IRP) for the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities. As groups began to form Communities, we decided to have Area Reference Persons. When there were getting to be many Areas, we created Regional Reference Persons. As we recognized the different constituency groups we represent, we created International Liberation Reference Persons. I think the first one was in the mid-1970s for women.
For the last couple of decades, we have held Pre-World Conferences in ten parts of the world. They all do the same things and the same work, and they are all different because there are different people in different conditions. But we’re all headed in the same direction. If half of one group got mixed with half of some other group, everyone would be right at home. They know and want the same things that you do.
After these ten Pre-World Conferences, we will have the World Conference. The most experienced RC leaders go to that, and some up-and-coming leaders too. At the World Conference, we mix people from across the world and do the same things as at the Pre-World Conferences. We get to make some decisions; that is our decision-making body. If our Guidelines or Goals need to change, that’s where it happens. It happens not quite by vote, but by agreement.
It’s interesting to get over two-hundred people who have used Co-Counseling for twenty years each, ask them to decide something, and then have them all agree at the end. It’s a wonderful testament to the human mind and to the fact that, if we get distresses out of our way, we can find common ground.
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE PERSON
There is one other thing that happens. The IRP is chosen every four years at the World Conference. The first IRP was my father, and the 1972 World Conference chose him. No one thought anyone else could do it. It was a pretty simple decision. The Alternate IRP was a woman called Mary McCabe, who was one of the people involved early on in the development of the ideas of RC.
At every World Conference, the IRP is rechosen. From 1972 until 1997, the World Conference decided my father should be IRP. I think he was by far the best person. But I also know no one else wanted to do it. It is a wonderful, horrible job.
In about 1978, Mary McCabe decided not to continue. It was in between World Conferences, and so the IRP got to pick a temporary Alternate; my father chose me. I agreed to be the Alternate, but I didn’t really want to be. I wanted to make it safe for my father to work because this was the most important thing in his life. He put most of his life into building this Community, developing these ideas, and helping people understand them. I knew how good he was long before Co-Counseling. He and I understood things—not the exact same things, but not in conflict with each other.
You know what these Reference Person positions are like in RC. Nobody gets paid for this. You do it because you want it to work and you’re willing to put your life into it.
After that, every four years until 1997, at each World Conference, the RC Community said that he was the IRP and I was the Alternate. My father died July 12, 1999, after having been the IRP for twenty-seven years. He had led a large workshop in Seattle at the beginning of July with people from all over the world. It was wonderful, and he was surprised at how good it was. I flew home to California, USA, and talked to him on the phone the next day. He asked, “Was it really that good?” He was asking if his work had succeeded that well. And it had.
That night, he died. I got a phone call at three in the morning; I was now the IRP. I had agreed and I was committed, at least until the next World Conference, when all of us would get to decide it again.
CHOOSING TO UNDERTAKE THIS ROLE
I thought I was one of the best people to do that job because I had done a lot of RC and workshops. I knew a lot of you. I had lots of sessions and discussions with experienced people. I finally decided the path to the best life I was likely to have required me to do that. It gave me the best challenges, let me work with good people, and let me care about thousands.
At the following World Conference in 2001, it was officially agreed by the whole conference that I was to be the IRP for the next four years. I asked Diane Shisk to be the Alternate, and the people at the conference agreed. It was one of the better decisions I ever made. She has been a very important driving force in making sure many other things we all care about stay in motion [continue to happen].
The IRP resigns every four years at the World Conference. Then everyone at the conference is asked, “Who do you want as the IRP for the next four years?” In general, there is not much competition. In 2001, I had to decide if I wanted to be the IRP again. I had been the IRP for two years because I had supported my father, not because I had decided to be the IRP. I had to figure that out. Did it make sense for me to offer to be the IRP again?
I never wanted to lead. I was about the fifth RC teacher to ever exist. I think I was the third Area Reference Person who came into existence. I was one of the first Regional Reference Persons. I never did it out of eagerness, but I knew it worked. I never saw any set of ideas work as well as ours. I could see that leadership is necessary and useful and that I would grow if I did it. Also at that point I didn’t see anyone else ready to take over, so I agreed that I would be willing to take the position of IRP.
In 2001, the World Conference selected me as the IRP and Diane as the Alternate. They did that again in 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2017. In 2017 I agreed but put a condition on it. I said to the more than two-hundred people there, “You have eight years. I agree to be the IRP—if you want me—for eight more years but no longer.”
OUR NEXT INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE PERSON
I’ve been the IRP since 1999. I’m eighty years old now. Someone else ought to do this. The 2021 World Conference didn’t happen. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we couldn’t get together. I decided we would delay the conference for a year, because maybe we could have it in person the following year. We couldn’t. The pandemic was still way too heavy. We did the Pre-World Conferences and the World Conference on Zoom. It was useful to do, but not the same as in person.
Before that conference, Diane and I and others were talking about the Alternate. Diane’s younger than I am, but not by much. She’s seventy-two. Given how long it takes to understand the role and make it work, we thought that it would be useful if the person that had to step in was younger than that.
After lots of discussion between us and many other people, we all came to the agreement that the person who should be the Alternate was Teresa Enrico. Many of you know her. She has done many aspects of this work in many places and has fought her way through all sorts of distress.
I asked Teresa if she would be willing and she agreed. She understood that it meant eventually becoming the IRP. Most people don’t have to think about becoming the IRP, so they don’t. She had to think about it enough to agree to become the Alternate, knowing that in four years I would not be the IRP.
The World Conference has complete freedom to choose anyone as the IRP and the Alternate IRP. At the last World Conference on Zoom, Diane resigned and didn’t wish to be reconfirmed. I proposed that Teresa be the Alternate. It took about twenty seconds to get agreement.
At this next World Conference, it will have been nine years since I said that I would quit in eight. I’m late. But I intend to step away from this position and propose that Teresa be the IRP. She has to figure out whom to propose as the Alternate.
We’ve never had a transition like this before. My father died one night and I became the IRP. There was no transition. So we’re learning how to do this.
Teresa has agreed to come with me to many places so that you can learn who she is and understand why I think she is our best choice. Also so that she can learn who you are and add you to the list of people she cares about. To be the IRP, you need to know a lot and be willing to do a lot. You have to care deeply about everybody. I think every human does that when they’re born and then distresses can take that away from us.
UNDERSTANDING WHAT THIS WORK IS ABOUT
It’s important that the IRP has done the work to know that they are going to get their caring back. We have all of these ideas and ways of working together. Our goal is to be together—to find out how close we can be with each other when we remove distresses. RC is how we work, but it is not what we are after. We are after each other. We are learning how to care and think about each other and build societies that are good for each other. After we get there, who knows what we can do after that.
I have had people ask me, “What are you going to do when you retire?” I’m not going to do anything that different. I’m just not going to be in that position. It won’t be my job. But I will be standing right behind Teresa very close for two or three years. Then I’ll be doing RC anywhere I damn well please.
Part of a Pre-World Conference is to understand that this is your organization. This is who we are. There are hundreds of thousands of us spread around the world. You are an important part of your organization. You use these ideas and test them in your sessions. You know they work. Not because I say they work, but because you make them work. You test these ideas all the time. That’s why you know who we are in this special way. This is the structure we worked out that has carried RC for fifty-some years.
It lets us as a group grow larger, spread out, do all sorts of things that no one else has been able to do. You are part of this. Maybe by accident or maybe you didn’t know you were. But you are here and I want you to be part of it. I know of nothing else that allows for such possibility for us to be human and reach other humans.
I also know that most of the people who have taken fundamentals classes leave. It’s not just your fundamentals class. I can tell you that this happens around the world. It’s not because of you and it’s not because these ideas are wrong. We have tens of thousands of people who left us hoping we could do things they couldn’t do. What we know, we’ve proven to be correct. This is difficult to do without close relationships.
Learning to build these relationships ever stronger and ever more quickly is at the core of the work that we do.