"Relationships" — Honolulu Advertiser Column

In 1994, Dr. Loren Ekroth was one of four rotating counselors writing the “Relationships” column for the Honolulu Advertiser. The column, based on questions from readers, was produced by the staff of the Unity Professional Counseling Center — the counseling arm of the Unity Church of Hawaii at 3608 Diamond Head Circle, where Ekroth had been a guest speaker and seminar leader since at least 1988. His co-columnists were Bobbie Sandoz, Sondra Dockham-Leong, and Kay Johnson.

Two surviving columns show the range of his interests. On May 22, responding to a woman who worried that the men’s movement was about “bashing women,” Ekroth drew on personal experience: “The many meetings and conferences and retreats for men I have attended have been absent any ‘women bashing.’” He described men’s councils conducted “according to rules of native American councils, with talking stick” where men are asked to “speak from the heart, speak briefly and listen from the heart.” He cited Robert Bly’s Iron John and named mythopoetic work, recovery from abuse and addiction, and community service as the movement’s principal strands.

On June 19, a reader asked what had become of the Human Potential Movement. Ekroth traced its origins through Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and the Esalen Institute, listing “encounter groups, sensory awareness, Gestalt therapy, meditation, Rolfing, and Psychosynthesis” as key approaches. He described Psychosynthesis — in which he held a four-year diplomate (1974–1978) — as “a ‘height psychology’ because it included a spiritual dimension.” He argued that the movement’s innovations had been “assimilated into our culture” through self-development seminars, holistic healing, and the writings of doctors like Bernie Siegel and Deepak Chopra.

The column captures Ekroth at a pivot point. He had retired from the University of Hawaii Speech Department the previous year. He was running Kama’aina Fundraisers and Loren Ekroth & Associates. And he was practicing as a counselor at Unity Church — the institution where he had been a guest speaker, seminar leader, and now therapist for at least six years. The men’s council format he described — structured conversation with rules about speaking and listening — prefigured the conversation methodology he would formalize when he launched “Better Conversations” a decade later.