Other variations have included the nude encounter group, where participants are naked, and the marathon encounter group, where participants carry on for 24 hours or longer without sleep.
It developed in the 1960s along with the encounter group movement as a way to challenge preconceptions and promote intimacy and trust, but suffered a decline in the 1980s.
To alleviate this, we need to create large, serious, pseudo-family units with holiday and birthday gift obligations, assigned familial roles (maternal, filial, fraternal, etc.) financial obligations and encounter group intimacy.