Desarrollo Humano training

Domain III · Humanistic, existential & experiential · Juan Lafarga Corona, José Gómez del Campo · 1966 · Mexico City

What it is

DH is not a single manualised therapy. It is a training and practice tradition: a university-based movement, with master's and doctoral programmes, that forms "facilitators" of human growth. It draws on Rogers, Maslow, Allport and Teilhard de Chardin, and Lafarga called it a philosophy of the…

Format

• DH has no fixed treatment phases. Read the framework at two levels: (A) how a facilitator is formed, and (B) the formats in which facilitators work with people.
• A. Formation pathway (ITESO MDH, five cycles; the curriculum is updated periodically)

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• In the historical UIA training, early seminars mixed psychologists with priests, nuns and teachers. Lafarga's five-year programme was for psychologists only.
• Some Spanish-language DH teaching uses Barceló's 7-phase model, which matches a predominant facilitator attitude to each phase. Barceló works in Spain, so this model is secondary to the Mexican founders.
• Version followed: the Mexican Desarrollo Humano (DH) tradition founded by Juan Lafarga Corona SJ at the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA, Mexico City) and carried to ITESO (Guadalajara) by José Gómez del Campo. Its practice is the person-centred approach (Rogers) applied to individual helping relationships, encounter groups, talleres vivenciales (experiential workshops) and community and educational projects. The…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• using the list as a checklist to drive the group.
• the content of these courses is not described in the opened sources.
• This is a Spanish (Barceló) model, not Lafarga's or Gómez del Campo's.
• Pile-ons. Feedback used as attack. Members who receive only criticism.
• Labelling children as "problems". Parent groups turning into advice lectures.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.