Hi All,
I wrote this paper for a class during my undergrad studies...I thought some of you might be able to relate or find it interesting to look at...
In the interst of keeping things concise and shoretnening the paper I switched around a few punishments/'consequences' and described them to be all in the beggining of my time at MMS, but everything actually happened over the course of a few months.
Incidentally, my grammer and spelling it's sometimes/often not the best- so...if you can bear with that then I hope that some of you can relate and maybe take something from it. It was in writing this paper that helped me find my voice and clarify what was going on in my thoughts.
?Welcome to Montana, it?s your lucky day. You may not know this now, but this is the first day of the rest of your life.? said to me a big burly man named Mike. This greeting, I would come to find out later, was reserved to virtually all the new students who were escorted there, or who arrived voluntarily with their parents. I had come there voluntarily after a suicide attempt with the understanding that I was getting the help I needed. I was wrong.
With a brief introductory group led by the headmaster, John, I would come to later find out had only a masters in ecology, each girl sitting in the circle gave a long list of issues that brought her there, namely drug abuse and sexual abuse- many expressing emphatically their gratitude at being given a second chance by the school for they otherwise surely would have died or ended up in jail. I noticed they all used their words uniformly, as if reading from a script. Shortly after group ended, I was allowed to walk my mom to the door of the lodge, but no further. I did this as stoically as possible. She left me that day in a state of sheer terror at what I sensed was not quite what I had in mind when I hoped for help.
Once she was gone, I could barely contain my stoic posturing. I did not understand the rules of my new home, but quickly discovered it was an environment unlike any other I had ever experienced. I asked the headmaster, John Mercer, when I could call my mom and suggested I felt that maybe I was not in the right place. I have never done drugs as was pretty sure I had not drunk enough to be an alcoholic yet ? I thought my problems to be far more complicated. He shook his head and smiled knowingly, explaining that until I was able to ?get honest? with myself about why and stop resisting being there, which would probably take at least several months, I would not be allowed to speak to my parents so as to prevent manipulation. He then told a girl to show me to my new room.
Decidedly, this was a hierarchal model of power and, I was soon to realize, one that heavily relied on the role of the other students. The girl explained that she would be my ?chore partner?, with whom I would do daily chores, rotating cleaning the common areas. As we walked to my room I expressed despair and the desire to runaway. The girl quickly left me and the next thing I knew an emergency group was called to discuss the nature of my infraction. Just as Foucault describes the immediate surveillance of the subjects? body in French prisons as a necessary component to domination , surveillance at MMS was ever present through fellow students, who exhibited leadership and demonstrated their loyalty to school philosophy by pointing out to staff or confronting a student who was not assimilating properly and subscribing to school philosophy in word and deed, if not in thought, during regular group meetings. Such unacceptable behavior was punishable by exercise, labor or, most frequently, humiliation and ridicule as being singled out as problematic/dysfunctional. Underlying all this, of course, was the realization that you would be going home to be with your family far later than if you were one of the leaders who set an example.
Unacceptable behavior was characterized as ranging from talking about past life, parting your hair, speaking, walking in such a way that reinforced your past identity. Other acts punishable were not doing chores properly (standards were often impossibly high), being late, or not ?being honest? in processes of disclosure, which were detailed accounts of your life, sexual history, drug history, and abuse history as well as thoughts that were deemed diversionary like sexual feelings, acts of masturbation, and thoughts of getting high (whether or not you ever had prior to attending the facility). Words, such as ?being honest?, came to mean purging yourself of thoughts contradictory to program philosophy as prescribed by John and his ?intuition?. The aim, as was later explained, was to create an environment where the students are too exhausted to keep anything inside, forcing the child to confess their demons, eg. confessing the desire to escape the environmental ?stressors? if dealing with the self with food, sex, drugs.
If you weren?t busy confessing John?s 'intuition' may dictate the need for you to go out and do more work, thus this system required students to became a part of what Foucault calls the ?economy of power?. It was for this reason that if any ?hidden transcripts? existed at all, they were a rarity and it was only between newer students, occurring when new students did not understand their place and what was expected of them as condition of their ?treatment?.
Foucault explains that ?the perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates hierachizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes? and that became clear. John decided that, for me, the punishment for my publicly revealed ?hidden transcript? should be 2 hours of skiing in circles along with the other girls in the school, in addition to week of labor and being dropped off 25 miles away only to hike back while staff biked along side. This technique was particularly effective in creating and reinforcing John?s own creation of power reality, as 20 exhausted girls geared up angrily to ski because of what I had done. I was singled out that day, for the purpose creating of a homogenous student body, while simultaneously reinforcing/recreating Johns power as the dominant force, and setting me as an example as the abnormal one who was different from the manner one ?ought? to behave.
Foucault points out that ?each society has its regime of truth?that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true? (Power/Knowledge p. 131) So long as John said we were sick, that is, unwilling to accept our own 'well being', as defined by him, the possessor of the knowledge of which we were not privy to, we were not healthy and not of sound mind, justifiably removed from society and the objects to be known, who did not themselves know. Word, signs and representations like ?being honest? and ?getting healthy? truly came to take on meaning determined by John, who outlined the discourse that supported his truth-regime.
The following morning it was decided that my infraction warranted a far more severe punishment. I was placed on what the school called ?intervention?, which could be personal or involve the entire group and ranged from a few weeks to months of daily labor from early morning until dusk, depending on the level of ?resistance?, with breaks only at meal time, group and for chores. This labor consisted of improvements to their for-profit facility, such as building fences, ice picking, wood chopping, and what Young describes as exploitative structural relations. It wasn?t much longer after that day that I came to some degree of acceptance and let go to a large extent, my mind, greatly encapsulating what Foucault refers to as the creation of a real non-corporal soul, born out of punishment.
I left 18 months after I had arrived and lived for a short while as if Johns words were my own, carrying this soul which embodied Johns power over me for years to come. Foucault writes ?the soul is the prison of the body? (p.177) It took over 5 years after graduating from MMS to overcome that prison, manifested by the anxiety surrounding my attempts at understanding by questioning what had occurred and later to challenge that truth-regime.
In my estimation my experience was absolutely unfair on many levels. A just scenario would have involved, first and foremost, a system of power that took into consideration student thoughts and feelings, that is, a system that distributed power far more equitably by which youth feel empowered, not humiliated and frightened. Secondly, industry regulation where there are certain government assurances that these facilities are run ethically, with access youth are protected, proper evaluation of the facility to ensure efficacy, and evaluation of youth to ensure placement is appropriate for the individual. I would expect facilities such as Mission Mountain to cease using exercise, labor and humiliation in the name of care as coercion. Aside from preventative measures, my hope is to bring awareness to this long ignored issue by the mental health community and the public, which has only served to further alienate youth or adults who have experienced such abhorrent ?care? by appearing to sanction such mistreatment in their silence and has allowed an industry to flourish, with unqualified workers, 'qualified' workers using ethically questionable methods and questionable philosophies.
Perhaps the truth-regime that dictates children who are on the path of growing up to be ?non-productive?, literally, members of society that appear unable to become economic producers are in need of disciplining. In this sense, what Foucault describes as points of power that are not centralized, but scattered and systematic by nature, like building blocks of one upon another, appears clear in forming this ?political economy?. It is dificult to explain the absence of public outcry, why the outcry by mental health professionals has equally been slow to come, and lack of Congressional action- especially given the many lawsuits, deaths, and public allegations of abuse. Certainly, as Foucault defines the intellectual as being equally susceptible and not at all immune to the ?general functioning of the apparatus of truth,? I can think of no other explanation for the longstanding inaction by mental health professionals and Congress, as well as instances of each actively involved in supported such violence against youth.
Such outcry by intellectuals is crucial, particularly in our society, where the industry has fought regulation heavily, lobbying to protect their interests. It appears we have a long road ahead in replacing the truth-regime that agrees that the 'abnormal' youth of our society ought to be ?cured? by any means necessary rather than empowered and considerations made of their own humanity. Coercion, abuse, mistreatment and violence is replaced by words like ?tough love? and framed as common sense approach. The underlining reasons for behavarioral problems, which are likely to reflect a larger systematic problem in our society, a truth-regime far more difficult to alter because it is not in our economic interest to care for youth, thus we privatize rather than provide funds for evidence based approach and support this by calling abuse and mistreatment capitalist innovation.
References:
Foucalt, Michel, (1977) Truth and Power. In Rabinow, Paul (Ed) The Foucalt Reader, Pantheon Books, NY (1984)
Scott, James Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press. New Haven, (1990)
Young, Iris Marion Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press. (1990)
