The Carlbrook thread

[Anne Bonney]

Carlbrook doesn't have absolute power.  A parent can remove their child at any time.  You did not pay in advance (paid per month).  A kid could refuse to comply with anything. Yes, there would be consequences, but there was no force used.  To me ,this is not absolute power.  As a spiritual person, I choose to believe that no one can have absolute power over another individual.  An institution can not have absolute power.

I don't give a shit what you "choose to believe".  These places have an inordinate amount of control over the kid and family.  Ain't no getting around that.

[psy]

Carlbrook doesn't have absolute power.  A parent can remove their child at any time.  You did not pay in advance (paid per month).  A kid could refuse to comply with anything. Yes, there would be consequences, but there was no force used.  To me ,this is not absolute power.  As a spiritual person, I choose to believe that no one can have absolute power over another individual.  An institution can not have absolute power.

From the point of view of a kid who is placed there by a parent, and has no other option... yes. Carlbrook has absolute power.

Non compliance meant consequences yes.  But this is the same in any state of "absolute power".

I can hold a gun to your head and say "don't do that or i will kill you"...  And you can still do that.  In that sense... anybody can always refuse to comply with anything... the consequences?

Becuase of the consequences...  a person chooses to give power over himself to another... chooses to give him/herself over to the system.  Little by little, level by level...

This is normally not such a big deal, becuase by and large in society, there are few instances where consequences conflict with conscience...  In Carlbrook/CEDU/Bmark...  Consequences more often than not, are handed out for kids following their consciences...  Your son refused to rat on people for silly reasons.. He got consequences for it.  He was right.  Why?  Because he refused to compromise what he felt was right.

Why do they do this?  Becuase they know the further a kid strays from his own conscience, the less he/she is attached to who he/she is...

[Charly]

I spoke to him briefly a little while ago.  
He said there were three group therapy sessions a week. There was rarely a specific topic.  Someone would begin by saying, "There's something I would like to take about."  It would go from there.

The more senior levels did have power over the lower levels. I asked if there were abuses of this power and he said, "Of course." He said there was some ordering around of other kids to do certain things or criticizing and meanness.

[hanzomon4]

Carlbrook doesn't have absolute power.  A parent can remove their child at any time.  You did not pay in advance (paid per month).  A kid could refuse to comply with anything. Yes, there would be consequences, but there was no force used.  To me ,this is not absolute power.  As a spiritual person, I choose to believe that no one can have absolute power over another individual.  An institution can not have absolute power.

Therein lies the problem charly, you simply don't believe that a person or institution can have absolute power over another. Adults who get caught up in cults have the free will to leave but they don't, the cult has absolute power over them. Kids who are sexually abused can tell someone abut the don't because the predator has control of them.

There's so many examples of people or institutions having absolute power over others, if you can't understand that it's even possible you will never get it on this issue. Read up on thought reform I've posted the tactic types on here before but you should go and read up on it. The tactic types of thought reform reads  like program 101 and they enable people to have absolute control over others. It's shocking but true.

[psy]

Coercive persuasion and thought reform are alternate names for programs of social influence capable of producing substantial behavior and attitude change through the use of coercive tactics, persuasion, and/or interpersonal and group-based influence manipulations (Schein 1961; Lifton 1961). Such programs have also been labeled "brainwashing" (Hunter 1951), a term more often used in the media than in scientific literature. However identified, these programs are distinguishable from other elaborate attempts to influence behavior and attitudes, to socialize, and to accomplish social control. Their distinguishing features are their totalistic qualities (Lifton 1961), the types of influence procedures they employ, and the organization of these procedures into three distinctive subphases of the overall process (Schein 1961; Ofshe and Singer 1986). The key factors that distinguish coercive persuasion from other training and socialization schemes are:

   1. The reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack to destabilize an individual's sense of self to promote compliance

   2. The use of an organized peer group

   3. Applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity

   4. The manipulation of the totality of the person's social environment to stabilize behavior once modified

...

Robert Lifton labeled the extraordinarily high degree of social control characteristic of organizations that operate reform programs as their totalistic quality (Lifton 1961). This concept refers to the mobilization of the entirety of the person's social, and often physical, environment in support of the manipulative effort. Lifton identified eight themes or properties of reform environments that contribute to their totalistic quality:

   1. Control of communication
bans, monitored phone calls
   2. Emotional and behavioral manipulation
confrontation, propheets (LGAT techniques), countless examples
   3. Demands for absolute conformity to behavior prescriptions derived from the ideology
the silly rules...  to quote a staff member at benchmark "the point is not the rules themselves, but whether you will obey them".  If you obey rules that make no rational sense... you abandon your will to resist the unreasonable... which becomes reasonable... the kid, given enough time, ends up believing in the "wisdom of the program"
   4. Obsessive demands for confession
propheets, groups, ratting out others...
   5. Agreement that the ideology is faultless
see number 3
   6. Manipulation of language in which cliches substitute for analytic thought
ask your son if they did this
   7. Reinterpretation of human experience and emotion in terms of doctrine
ask your son if this was the case.  if a "life story" was requested to be written for instanced... and then criticized/re-interpreted.  He should have many examples of this
   8. Classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior and not worthy of respect
higher levels...  how well do they treat the lower levels... are those who do not aggree with the program's ideology respected?

Why kids who graduate often "blow up":

The surprising aspect of the situationally adaptive response is that the attitudes that develop are unstable. They tend to change dramatically once the person is removed from an environment that has totalistic properties and is organized to support the adaptive attitudes. Once removed from such an environment, the person is able to interact with others who permit and encourage the expression of criticisms and doubts, which were previously stifled because of the normative rules of the reform environment (Schein 1961, p. 163; Lifton 1961, pp. 87-116, 399-415; Ofshe and Singer 1986). This pattern of change, first in one direction and then the other, dramatically highlights the profound importance of social support in the explanation of attitude change and stability. This relationship has for decades been one of the principal interests in the field of social psychology.

(source article)

From:
Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change
Encyclopedia of Sociology Volume 1, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York
By Richard J. Ofshe, Ph.D.

[Charly]

I think Carlbrook was more concerned with keeping the kids so the groups weren' t disrupted and everything ran "smoothly".  There was a waiting list, so losing the paying customers wasn't as crucial.  Since it was fairly new, there was an interest in building up the numbers of grads who moved on to college, other schools etc.

I'll have to ask about not having anything to say in group.  I suspect my kid found things to say just to stir things up.

[Charly]

When new kids came in, they started a new peer group up to a cut-off date.  I think there were about 12 to 15 in a peer group.  They were Greek letters (Alpha, Beta etc)  

The parents I saw ranged from totally buying in to one spouse buying in and the other strongly resisting to both totally befuddled.  It was very inconvenient for the staff if the parents were always complaining, interfering or calling.  I understood that- the staff worked long hours and had a lot of kids to deal with.  I thought everyone was pretty responsive to emails, calls etc.

[Charly]

I'll have to ask about the bans.  I am thinking the answer is no.

[psy]

Can the higher level students give bans to the lower level students? My guess is no but Charly will have to confirm that.

I have a few questions for Charly's son:

1.  Did other kids break down?  If so, how?
2.  Did you feel it was wrong to give in to the system?  Why?
3.  Did staff embarrass people in group, or let people be embarrassed?
4.  Were personal issues (sensitive ones) brought out for discussion in group?
5.  Were kids ever verbally attacked in group?  How common was this?
6.  How many of the following did carlbrook do:

1. Control of communication
2. Emotional and behavioral manipulation
3. Demands for absolute conformity to behavior prescriptions derived from the ideology
4. Obsessive demands for confession
5. Agreement that the ideology is faultless
6. Manipulation of language in which cliches substitute for analytic thought
7. Reinterpretation of human experience and emotion in terms of doctrine
8. Classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior and not worthy of respect

7.  What at Carlbrook made people most upset?
8.  Did you feel manipulated?  Did others?
9.  Would you describe some kids at the school as brainwashed?
10.  Do you think the methods used damaged some kids?

[Charly]

KSA1: did you get my emails? was that exactly like Carlbrook, or was Carlbrook softer?
das1: well they fed us fine
das1: and i dont remember it being that cold
das1: but other than that its pretty much the same
das1: and the structure of the workshop is all the same
KSA1: did they yell at you and force you to make stuff up?
das1: yeah
das1: they didnt force anyone to make anything up
KSA1: it sounds like it is designed to brainwash you- but I thought you liked the workshops
das1: i dont know they were ok
das1: but its like the girl said
das1: if you are cunning and manipulative enough it doesnt get to you
KSA1: like you
das1: because you can play the system and not have your reality screwed with
das1: everyone at carlbrook was weak
das1: i just sat there and let them yell at me

das1: its not just the workshop thats coercive or designed to brainwash you...its the entire school
das1: the whole structure and constitution of the place is designed carefully so that its much easier to go along with it and "buy in" than it is to resist - internally and externally
das1: some of those kids are so fucked up no therapy will be effective

Until I can get more info, I reposted this Im conversation.

[Charly]

The one thing Carlbrook really did do was work on the parents not to succumb to the pleas to take the kid out.  We were told that the kids would manipulate us and would not be comfortable there, and would promise anything to get to leave.  It was tough to keep a kid there when he/she was begging to come home or threatening to never speak to the parents again.  You got a lot of support for the effort of resisting the pleas.

[Anne Bonney]

KSA1: did you get my emails? was that exactly like Carlbrook, or was Carlbrook softer?
das1: well they fed us fine
das1: and i dont remember it being that cold
das1: but other than that its pretty much the same
das1: and the structure of the workshop is all the same
KSA1: did they yell at you and force you to make stuff up?
das1: yeah
das1: they didnt force anyone to make anything up
KSA1: it sounds like it is designed to brainwash you- but I thought you liked the workshops
das1: i dont know they were ok
das1: but its like the girl said
das1: if you are cunning and manipulative enough it doesnt get to you
KSA1: like you
das1: because you can play the system and not have your reality screwed with
das1: everyone at carlbrook was weak
das1: i just sat there and let them yell at me

das1: its not just the workshop thats coercive or designed to brainwash you...its the entire school
das1: the whole structure and constitution of the place is designed carefully so that its much easier to go along with it and "buy in" than it is to resist - internally and externally
das1: some of those kids are so fucked up no therapy will be effective

Until I can get more info, I reposted this Im conversation.

[hanzomon4]

The one thing Carlbrook really did do was work on the parents not to succumb to the pleas to take the kid out.  We were told that the kids would manipulate us and would not be comfortable there, and would promise anything to get to leave.  It was tough to keep a kid there when he/she was begging to come home or threatening to never speak to the parents again.  You got a lot of support for the effort of resisting the pleas.

That seems like a conflict of interest....
They get money based on how long the kid is in program
And if they were abusing kids this "support" would be more to their advantage in covering their hands.

Did you ever hear from parents what the other kids were saying to leave?

[Charly]

hanzo- the huge majority of kids who finish (which is most of the kids that start) finish in the 14-15 months originally planned. There really is no push to keep kids longer.  I think there is a clear recognition by senior management (based on their own history at program) that the longer a kid is there the more potential there is for "unrest".  There appears to be an optimum time where a "good" program kid will really buy in and leave with warm, fuzzy feelings and that has been pegged at 14-15 months.  Occasionally a kid will stay past program "graduation" if they have one quarter or semester of high school left, but that is by special permission and is actually not encouraged.

Kids who leave the program early usually have turned 18 and walk, have been too difficult (like my son) or are pulled because the parents disagree with something that is going on (meds management etc)

[hanzomon4]

hanzo- the huge majority of kids who finish (which is most of the kids that start) finish in the 14-15 months originally planned. There really is no push to keep kids longer.  I think there is a clear recognition by senior management (based on their own history at program) that the longer a kid is there the more potential there is for "unrest".  There appears to be an optimum time where a "good" program kid will really buy in and leave with warm, fuzzy feelings and that has been pegged at 14-15 months.  Occasionally a kid will stay past program "graduation" if they have one quarter or semester of high school left, but that is by special permission and is actually not encouraged.

Kids who leave the program early usually have turned 18 and walk, have been too difficult (like my son) or are pulled because the parents disagree with something that is going on (meds management etc)

Exactly, if a kid's "begging" went unchallenged by the program I doubt many would remain the 14-15  months. My question is why would the kids be begging? What would make them leave after turning 18? What is the nature of this "support" the program would give to parents? I don't get why this isn't being questioned by most parents.....

I remember psy bring up what programs would tell parents if their kid(18?) walked out of the program, abandon them. Was this the case at Carlbrook?
It wouldn't surprise me as this advise seems to be the bedrock of tough-love think