Civil discussion: Troubled Teen Industry

[Awake]

Well I don’t know.  I know this isn’t the VERY first history of TC’s, which have alot more influences than from what I’m talking about, (and I have really cut out much more that I would include), but in terms of a solid connective history that implicates the deceptive intent of a TTI model,  this is really as summative as I can say it, but am I missing something?

[Ursus]

Guess the date; this is from a description of "group" or "seminar" or what have you, emphasis added:

Many of the boys are shrewd and wily. They know how to tell pathetic stories to win sympathy. But among themselves, when someone tries to sell such a story, the others won't buy it. And they tell him. These boys are trying to unearth truths, about themselves and others. For it is the meeting that measures a boy's progress. The basic decision for his release depends on the other boys' judgment of his improvement.

While XXXX or XXXXX conduct the group psychotherapy sessions, they are not psychiatrists, nor do they play such a role. The boys are their own psychiatrists. They go at it as though the best way to find out what's inside a boy's head is to split it open with an axe.[/list]

[Awake]

I will guess but I don't know what that comes from. Bion and Lewin? Tavistock, Northfield related?

[DannyB II]

For now the very(very) short version is Synanon meets the Human Potential Movement and has a bunch of TTI program babies. Synanon is the model of the TC, and the Human Potential Movement that uses humanistic philosophy for the purpose of cultivating successful societal change.

The therapeutic community modality was introduced to the American public long before Synanon. It was introduced to treatment of malingering adolescents long before Synanon. I think you are making a big mistake to assume "it all began" there.

Ursus explain more, if you will.

[DannyB II]

Guess the date; this is from a description of "group" or "seminar" or what have you, emphasis added:

Many of the boys are shrewd and wily. They know how to tell pathetic stories to win sympathy. But among themselves, when someone tries to sell such a story, the others won't buy it. And they tell him. These boys are trying to unearth truths, about themselves and others. For it is the meeting that measures a boy's progress. The basic decision for his release depends on the other boys' judgment of his improvement.

While XXXX or XXXXX conduct the group psychotherapy sessions, they are not psychiatrists, nor do they play such a role. The boys are their own psychiatrists. They go at it as though the best way to find out what's inside a boy's head is to split it open with an axe.[/list]

This was in the early 50's.

[DannyB II]

Re-posted here, I felt it was relevant to the conversation or at least add to the content here. The author of this post is Mark Babbitz's he is from Elan. Mark great post, thanks once again for your tireless digging.
 

Re: Elan discussion from New Forum Policies

New postby mark babitz » 29 minutes ago
:jawdrop: :jawdrop: To the Editor: :jawdrop: :jawdrop:

. . . Why do child-care workers think they must bribe children? Susan Seidner Adler is on target when she observes the peculiar social-work attitude which so simplistically and absurdly perceives the root of evil in a child as caused by deprivation whose reversal will eliminate the evil.

No such cause and effect exists. Careful studies in Britain posed the very pertinent question: why don't all children from culturally and economically deprived neighborhoods go bad? . . . The answer was clear: children went “bad” when they were not held accountable for their actions, their time, their behavior. The real indicators of potential problems were not race, single-parent families, class, or levels of parental education, but the extent to which existing parental figures—including the school—expressed their care for children through some clearly communicated, . . . consistently applied code of behavior whose breach would be punished. Discipline is a form of caring. It is that simple. . . .

Last year, the directors of an institution almost certainly on Mrs. Adler's list visited Elan, the facility for delinquent adolescents of which I am director. They saw—and very much appreciated—a diametrically different philosophy and methodology of treatment. A facility where there was no violence and no drug traffic, where character (not just behavior) was expected to change and did change. It delighted them, and they said so. These are sophisticated, intelligent, highly competent people, not the fools Mrs. Adler makes them out to be. But they regretfully also said that changing things was impossible for them. The New York State bureaucracy would never permit it. How did we manage at Elan? . . .

The Juvenile Justice Act . . . is largely behind the mess described by Mrs. Adler. It mandates the treatment of juveniles according to arbitrary, irrelevant legal categories rather than medical or psychological problems. Adjudicated delinquents are to be segregated from others (status offenders, the dependent, the neglected, etc., etc.) and hence treated differently. In other words, adolescents are to be treated according to what a defective, overworked, overburdened court system thinks they did, rather than according to what the problem actually is. . . .

Adjudicated delinquents are to be segregated. They really are on a one-way rail to jail. The others are to get different treatment. As with all excessively punitive laws, we try to evade them. Every decent person in the system tries to avoid the adjudication process. The truly dangerous criminal youth is by law lumped together with (1) the loser who was dumb enough to get caught; or (2) the child who wanted to get caught as a cry for help; or (3) the juvenile whose family can't afford a lawyer; or (4) the child who comes from the wrong side of the tracks, etc., etc. That is why Mrs, Adler's institutions have this frightening, untreatable mixture of the dangerous with the unfortunate, the troubled, the crazy; and with a lot of healthy aggressive children, too. That's why that ridiculous term “emotionally disturbed” was invented and why it is used so assiduously.

What is “emotionally disturbed” in the real world? About 10-12 percent (I'm guessing, but after lots of experience) are psychotic, i.e., have disordered thoughts, are crazy, and suffer from schizophrenic disease. Another 10 percent are criminally sociopathic. We do not know yet how to treat these groups and cannot always recognize them clearly. The rest are treatable. . . .

At Elan, we know that a psychotic or a criminal adolescent eats up all our energy, and deprives the treatable of their just share: we cannot mix them with the others. So we do not accept them. But Mrs. Adler's institutions do. They take them all. . . . Dealing with another sector of adolescent care—the high school—Edward A. Wynne has also placed the blame squarely on what I, too, perceive to be the villain: the courts and lawyers. In recent years a whole series of laws, attitudes, and judicial judgments have been created which have led our society—and most certainly our contentious youth—to perceive youngsters as adults with a full range of civil rights which need to be actively protected from . . . infringement by adults in authority. Schools and child-care agencies have been forced into a defensive posture by self-styled advocates who apply the most rigid rulings of civil rights and who assume the malevolence of the institutions toward the child. All authority is seen as evil by these people. . . .

Schools and other public and publicly-assisted (and therefore publicly legislated) institutions have been left without their communal or authoritative functions: the care implied by the concept in loco parentis has been replaced by legalistic intervention by an uncaring party. I have yet to see a child-advocate lawyer take responsibility for a child's care after rendering an institution powerless to do so in court. Wynne points out the result: “Educators. . . . have abdicated their parental duties and have become mere custodians.” Custodians can only hope for limited, short-term effectiveness, and bribery is the easiest way to achieve their goal. . . .

In the long run, the legalistic interpretation, and the irresponsible interventions performed in its name, are removing more and more options for the care of disturbed children. Since I co-founded Elan as a residential psychiatric-care facility eleven years ago, we have prided ourselves on providing the highest quality care to a wide spectrum of adolescents, including those referred to us by public and quasi-public agencies. We play no games about defining success: success is a graduate who does not reenter the criminal-justice system, who completes a realistic level of education, and who becomes self-supporting. Our rate has been as phenomenally high as is the recidivism rate of state institutions.

But no longer. We simply cannot provide quality care while fighting the de-facto malevolent forces of child-right advocates in the twenty-five or more states we serve. Our doors are now open to privately-funded residents only. We, at least, care not to be caretakers. We insist on the role of real healer.

[Dr.] Gerald E. Davidson
Elan One
Poland Spring, Maine



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mark babitz
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[Troll Control]

We simply cannot provide quality care while fighting the de-facto malevolent forces of child-right advocates

This is a sick, demented statement.  Child advocates are "evil" in the minds of program supporters because they insist on valid, quality, clinical care by licensed professionals and that hits programs where it hurts, the pocketbook.

Gerald E. Davidson should not be allowed near children at all.  He has serious problems.

[Froderik]

We simply cannot provide quality care while fighting the de-facto malevolent forces of child-right advocates

This is a sick, demented statement.  Child advocates are "evil" in the minds of program supporters because they insist on valid, quality, clinical care by licensed professionals and that hits programs where it hurts, the pocketbook.

Gerald E. Davidson should not be allowed near children at all.  He has serious problems.

I agree 100%.

[Ursus]

We simply cannot provide quality care while fighting the de-facto malevolent forces of child-right advocates

This is a sick, demented statement.  Child advocates are "evil" in the minds of program supporters because they insist on valid, quality, clinical care by licensed professionals and that hits programs where it hurts, the pocketbook.

Gerald E. Davidson should not be allowed near children at all.  He has serious problems.

I agree 100%.

Yeah... 'cept that Dr. Gerald Davidson was one of those "licensed professionals" providing "valid, quality, clinical care," at least as it was perceived to be at the time...

Danny's post, quoting Mark Babitz, contained no link back to the original post, nor any workable links for that matter. Pertinent and missing, perhaps also from Babitz's post as well, is a link to Davidson's "Letter to the Editor," as well as to the original article being responded to in the first place. So... here they are:

Commentary Magazine
Bribing Delinquents to be Good
Susan Seidner Adler
October 1981

Commentary Magazine
Juvenile Delinquents
Reader Letters
January 1982[/list]

[Ursus]

Guess the date; this is from a description of "group" or "seminar" or what have you, emphasis added:

Many of the boys are shrewd and wily. They know how to tell pathetic stories to win sympathy. But among themselves, when someone tries to sell such a story, the others won't buy it. And they tell him. These boys are trying to unearth truths, about themselves and others. For it is the meeting that measures a boy's progress. The basic decision for his release depends on the other boys' judgment of his improvement.

While XXXX or XXXXX conduct the group psychotherapy sessions, they are not psychiatrists, nor do they play such a role. The boys are their own psychiatrists. They go at it as though the best way to find out what's inside a boy's head is to split it open with an axe.[/list]

This was in the early 50's.

I'm not gonna say you are correct or incorrect ... 'till you explain a lil more about why you chose that time period.  ::evil::

[Troll Control]

Commentary Magazine
Bribing Delinquents to be Good
Susan Seidner Adler
October 1981

Commentary Magazine
Juvenile Delinquents
Reader Letters
January 1982

If anyone is seriously interested in examining the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency, I would suggest reading some of the books authored by my dear friends, colleagues and professional mentors Herman and Julia Schwendinger whose exhaustive and detailed field work and experience are surpassed by none.

One of my favorites, Adolescent Subcultures and Delinquency, goes into the fairly recent (25-30 year) trend of middle class juvenile delinquency and provides some insight into why "programs" (of various sorts) have arisen, even though they show no quantitative evidence of efficacy.  It also offers insight into appropriate ways to deal with delinquency.

I worked closely with Dr. (Herman) Schwendinger for several months doing research and field work on Los Angeles gangbangers for one of his research projects in 1990.  To see a tiny, elderly Jewish man hanging around on street corners, in gang houses and projects with some of the deadliest gangs and bangers around taking notes and asking questions was pure anomaly to say the least, but nobody does it better than he.

[Awake]

I still don't know but ? Maxwell Jones ? Jones, M. (1952) Social psychiatry. A study of therapeutic communities.

[Ursus]

I will guess but I don't know what that comes from. Bion and Lewin? Tavistock, Northfield related?

I still don't know but ? Maxwell Jones ? Jones, M. (1952) Social psychiatry. A study of therapeutic communities.

Good answers, but none of the above ... directly.

Incidentally, the Northfield Experiments at Tavistock dealt with adult male soldiers as subjects/patients/clients. (I know you had said "related;" this was meant as a clarification in case others were less familiar...)

[DannyB II]

Guess the date; this is from a description of "group" or "seminar" or what have you, emphasis added:

Many of the boys are shrewd and wily. They know how to tell pathetic stories to win sympathy. But among themselves, when someone tries to sell such a story, the others won't buy it. And they tell him. These boys are trying to unearth truths, about themselves and others. For it is the meeting that measures a boy's progress. The basic decision for his release depends on the other boys' judgment of his improvement.

While XXXX or XXXXX conduct the group psychotherapy sessions, they are not psychiatrists, nor do they play such a role. The boys are their own psychiatrists. They go at it as though the best way to find out what's inside a boy's head is to split it open with an axe.[/list]

This was in the early 50's.

I'm not gonna say you are correct or incorrect ... 'till you explain a lil more about why you chose that time period.  ::evil::

It doesn't work that way, I answered the question and it is correct. This is based on accurate study and research.
Ursus give up my game of being ignorant here, nope.
Have fun.

[DannyB II]

Dr.Davidson is dead, no longer with us. I posted this letter to show folks with knowledge of Elan just how insane Gerald Davidson was, he was the "behind the scenes owner" the "shadow" we called him of Joe Ricci. Alan Frey coined that phrase.
What I do love to see is how Ursus and others try to comment on Dr.Davidson with absolutely to information what so ever. It just cracks me up, how programed you folks are concerning your rebuttals.