Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Hyde Schools

Advice to Parents Considering Hyde School

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Lars:
The FLCs's and Family Weekends were HORRIBLE.  They have absolutely no business whatsover doing these kind of things.  They get away with it because the parents are desperate.

I can't even describe how angry I'm getting just remembering this garbage.  I felt violated.

Anonymous:

--- Quote ---On 2005-11-09 19:07:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I am amazed & heartened to see this site.  I'm a parent whose child left Hyde last year - after 2 years.  He transferred to another boarding school, one we should have enrolled in in the first place.  ANY good small school with caring faculty would have done it for us - without the high drama of Hyde. People put their kids into Hyde in a crisis - often on the advice of a consultant.  It was negligent to do this.  Leaving Hyde was leaving a cult.  I won't go on about this - lest I be accused by a Hyde fan of being over- emotional. My son wanted to go to a real school - one that valued academics and didn't use him as a 'proctor'.     Hyde pressured him intensely, wanting him to stay and 'face his fears'. I had several horrendous phone calls with staff.  At Hyde the first day they tell parents not to believe what your child tells you:  Deciding to listen to my son and advocate for his leaving was the best and hardest thing I have ever done.  Hyde doesn't want to hear the 'truth' - and when a parent and child decide what's best for themselves, they accuse you of various character flaws.



The 'seminars' - "let go, Let Hyde"... as they say...

With its foreground of "character" being more important that academic achievement, Hyde uses intensive ad hoc group therapy sessions to  intentionally intrude into the fabric and balance of the family system.  A retreat or "flc' is several days of 3 long 'seminars' a day punctuated by various group exercises designed to break down defenses.  This is practicing family systems group therapy without a license.  Of course no one at Hyde will admit this!   Hyde can't call itself a therapeutic school, of course, because there is no qualified counseling staff running these seminars or working with the kids -   despite the obvious needs of many if not most of the kids.  With missionary zeal and techniques that you suddenly realize are quite coercive, they push their untested educational theory on families who didn't realize they were captives of the 'process'.  



The premise of 'fix the family, fix the kid', and 'personal growth through the Hyde process"  could not be more destructive.  People end up disclosing intimate and often painful things about themselves.  If a family chose to seek therapy, a trained therapist would guide this slowly over time and know what to do with the results.   Imagine yourself In the 6th seminar hour of the 2nd day of a 4 day 'retreat' - led by an intrusive untrained leader pushing you to 'Tell the truth! What do you do when you don't go for truth!" - you're unbelievably divulging some intense personal issue (in front of your child...) and then - after hearing 'feedback' from the group (often misplaced, stereotyped and hurtful in itself), your time is up!  Dry your tears!  It's someone else's turn now!  It's no wonder Hyde doesn't have therapist on their staff: no professional would do this to people.  The state licensing boards ought to take more of an interest in what actually takes place in seminars.  Not just individual psyches are damaged: marriages, sibling relationships - all if it.  These people have no right to put families through this in the name of 'education'.  And this is only what the parents see:  it's the kids, who have to live this psychodrama day after day, who are really stuck.  Imagine being an underclassmen and having a posse of 'seniors who run the school' in your room at night accusing you of being 'dirty'.  ("Dirty" - their work for 'breaking ethics').  "If you're not dirty, are you willing to sign this paper saying if we find anything on you that you won't go home for spring break?"  



As I read this I cannot believe I ever got involved to the level I did.  In my region, for a time, I held a leadership position where I was supposed to do this to others.  I regret not standing up at these seminars and walking out, I regret any hurtful intrusion I ever made into other people and at some point I will write  apologies and explanations to them.



Simplest advice - stay away.  If you or your family need therapy, get a good therapist.  If you need a therapeutic school, there are many.  If you need a boarding school, find one.  It's hard to believe Hyde gets away with this.  Any why am I anonymous?  Maybe in a year I won't be.  At the moment I still don't trust the school - I do feel like I've left a cult.  I left my brains at the door when I entered, and hopefully my experience will prevent you from doing the same."

--- End quote ---


Thank you for taking the time to write this wonderful commentary.  I really appreciate these insights; indeed, parents considering Hyde need to read this.  I'm very glad you found this website.

Anonymous:
I attended Hyde for a summer session and a school year (not by choice) a few years ago. Admittedly, at the time, I was a bad kid, getting into a lot of trouble, and messing around with alcohol and drugs- this resulted in my expulsion from the local public high school.  At the time, Hyde felt like hell on earth, but I've had several years to gain perspective on the situation, and this is what I've learned- Hyde was hell on earth. The only two things it provided that definitely helped me was making me tougher, and the fact that being somewhere else physically makes you gain perspective on where you were. But the Hyde process itself is, if you'll excuse my language, complete bullshit. I was forced to be lectured to all day by older students' parents who thought they knew everything, and first year teachers (I'd say at least 50% only stay for a year) who obviously don't know anything. Their perverse form of therapy definitely left me with insecurities about myself and screwed me up emotionally for a couple years- years that have had a huge impact on my life looking back, as a 22 year old man. We were forced to degrade ourselves and humiliate our families based on their opinions (i say opinion because, as posted above, have not ONE legitimate therapist there), and if we disagreed, we punished, harassed, and humiliated further until we complied. I would strongly recommend anyone considering sending their kids there to evaluate other options, because this place won't help them- in all probability, they'll walk out with a whole new list of problems.

On a side note, I attended the Woodstock campus, and an adult coach of one of the sports teams was caught partying with students, messing around with the females, and selling them and a few teachers on campus cocaine. All the students were punished severely- the coach was let go quietly, and his main teacher customer was still teaching class the next day. Shows where Hyde's moral compass is really at- what would happen if it was a public school?(This is a 100% true story, I'm not making it up for revenge- i've made my own mental peace with that place, I just want you to have a full understanding of what they're really like before you subject your children to it.)

Ursus:
Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to check back and lend your perspective! I'd venture that in another five years, or ten, you might even have a bit more to say about it all... I've been out quite a few more years than that, and my perspective as to the the damage done has increased, rather than lessened.

As you so correctly point out, Hyde Schools has NO PROFESSIONAL PERSONNEL skilled in the psychological or psychiatric arts on board (I hardly think that one administrator between two campuses, who went back to school to get a Masters in Addictions Counseling, can even begin to qualify). In fact, Hyde has a tremendous disdain for such professions, maintaining that the only qualification necessary -- to pass judgment on other people's "character" and how they live their lives -- is that one "cares."

Anonymous:
One of the reasons why desperate parents (and desperate kids) sometimes do benefit from Hyde or stay at Hyde for as long as they do is because life at home is not pretty. The yelling in seminars can seem appropriate compared to the yelling at home, and having an environment that is fairly predictable can provide stability to a family that has completely fallen apart. If the home life is bad enough, Hyde can be the first place where people feel safe and feel cared for. There are faculty who take a true interest in the kids, and there is a feeling of a community in which, attacked or not, every person exists. I'm saying this because I went to Hyde when my family life was horrible. We had many issues, some of which my family dealt with semi-privately in seminars, and some of which we did not deal with at all.

I left Hyde with different problems, some of which developed there or were exacerbated by that environment. I became even more self-critical. I felt ashamed about every little mistake I made and took criticism too personally for many years. It made me fear public scrutiny and try to proactively avoid "mistakes" that would bring me negative attention, even if I disagreed that those decisions were mistakes... That said, Hyde was the best alternative for me at the time if the alternative was living at home. I cannot say what would have happened if I had gone to another program. I can say that I was living in a private hell at home. My family pathologized me, blamed me for everything, and verbally abused me. If I had not gone to Hyde, I would have gotten pregnant, run away from home, or killed myself-- I was that miserable. For me, Hyde was my great escape. My parents only let me go because the parent program assuaged their guilt for sending me away.

I am grateful that Hyde did not pepper me with psychological labels. I do not see myself as damaged goods now, although I have sought the help of mental health professionals from time to time to make sure I am dealing with my issues. I think that if I had been in an environment that called me a crazy kid, it would have been just another attack on a person who was already under fire. I found seminars helpful if my family talked about their reactions to things and not specifics. When families end up discussing specifics, some of these topics are inappropriate for that environment, but no one was told to gauge that boundary, which is and was scary. I do see that for some people, it was a totally unhealthy environment, and even for people who benefitted from Hyde, there are some definite negative effects. I would not send my own kids to Hyde, and yet it is a place to which I feel eternally grateful... it is a strange dichotomy, but I feel that if I ever have kids, I won't treat them badly enough that they need Hyde to be their safe space.

Hyde's current state makes me really sad. I think that it is useful to talk about character issues. It is not useful to be forced to share every self-examination in a public forum, but the questions Hyde raises could be helpful in and of themselves. I am angry at Hyde for forcing me to be in an environment that was intensely drug-focused-- I am not an addict of any kind-- and that made big dramatic displays all of the time as a crisis-focused school.

I do think that the ethics are appropriate for high school students, that having students participate in sports & performing arts is a good opportunity for raising a balanced kid, etc. I like that there is a tight-knit community within Hyde of people who do really care, and for me, my experiences with those people were much more common than the ones with the overly-aggressive faculty. It really is a love-hate relationship. I think I will always feel conflicted about Hyde. It is a strange place, for sure. I wish that Hyde would deal with its gross-oversights in its application of its own principles so that people could benefit from what it has to offer, instead of needing to recover from it afterwards. I also think that I would not be who I am today without having had to struggle through all of the moral nuances it intentionally and unintentionally provides.

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