Steve Rookey's New Program

[Anonymous]

he is no longer married to a wasserman

[Che Gookin]

He must tone it down until he gets them under his will...
I went to Monarch and saw Steve freak out on kids outside of groups (raps) in front of everyone more than one or two times, once at a kid just for filling his water bottle with milk. I mean the kid had only been there for a month and he publicly humiliated him and made him cry in front of 40 people. nuff said.

What an asshole.

[RMA Survivor]

The post started with Steve's background and experiences.  The problem is that his experiences started with RMA/CEDU.  You go to "Shitty University" and get a "shitty degree" you then have shitty credentials.  

Steve's work in the Troubled Teen Industry began at RMA/CEDU, and because RMA/CEDU were LifeSpring, Synanon, EST clones with a little Khalil Gibran thrown in for added weirdness, Steve's experience is in serious question.  His foundation of experience is based on a cult, one that was sued in to the ground for harming children, plain and simple.  The fact the guy started off as the hired cook for the kitchen, shows that he had nothing much coming in.  But that he went out with his PhD in Messing Up Kids, from RMA University, shows that where he is today, is a product of where he came from.  He came from RMA/CEDU, thus he is today what RMA/CEDU were.  You can't escape your past no matter how hard you run.  

It's like a cook in the navy coming up the bridge after the ship has been hit, finding everyone dead, taking command, leading the ship to absolute disaster and then later claiming he deserves to be an Admiral because he was briefly in charge once.  The real world doesn't apply to these Troubled Teen Schools.  No university in the country would employ a professor who had been a cook at their last job.  No hospital would employ as a psychologist someone who didn't at least have some actual education such as a Masters Degree in that specific field.  But in the Troubled Teen Industry, anyone can become the Director.  Hang out long enough, learn the system and you too can soon start your own Troubled Teen School.

Isn't it telling that not a single one of these Troubled Teen, Wilderness Boot Camps are founded by actual professional Psychologists or Psychotherapists?  People with actual schooling and training in these areas?  Only in the Troubled Teen Industry are short order cooks, local carpenters, local farmers, past criminals, former drug addicts, able to run or start schools for kids.

[Che Gookin]

It's like a cook in the navy coming up the bridge after the ship has been hit, finding everyone dead, taking command, leading the ship to absolute disaster

Not to bust your balls but considering that everyone on the bridge is already dead I'd suggest to you that the ship and its crew has already found themselves in the midst of a big fucking disaster even before the cook wandered onto the scene.

[try another castle]

It's like a cook in the navy coming up the bridge after the ship has been hit, finding everyone dead, taking command, leading the ship to absolute disaster

Not to bust your balls but considering that everyone on the bridge is already dead I'd suggest to you that the ship and its crew has already found themselves in the midst of a big fucking disaster even before the cook wandered onto the scene.

what about captain cook?

  :ftard:

[RMA Survivor]

Well, if we're going to bring in Captain Cook, that's a different story.  But he wouldn't have taken command and then led the ship to disaster.  He would have taken command and then gone off to discover new lands.  Or Atlantis.  He discovered Australia and Hawaii, both of which are cool places.  Steve the Rookie?  He just would have done nothing useful, everyone would have died and he would have explained it all away as having stepped in to a losing situation and that any subsequent disasters were not his doing.  But odds are, his cooking was partly to blame for the original disaster, as a thorough investigation would surely prove.

[Ursus]

Steve's work in the Troubled Teen Industry began at RMA/CEDU, and because RMA/CEDU were LifeSpring, Synanon, EST clones with a little Khalil Gibran thrown in for added weirdness, Steve's experience is in serious question.

Ya know... I think the obsession with Kahlil Gibran may have been a sign of the times, perhaps a product of the then popular culture's understanding of the Human Potential movement? Joe Gauld's pontifications, particularly the earlier ones, make ample reference to Gibran. He did interpret him a little differently than Wasserman did, of course. All these goo-roos like to come off as being extra specially unique. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, eye of newt, wing of bat, gizzard of a lizard...

Isn't it telling that not a single one of these Troubled Teen, Wilderness Boot Camps are founded by actual professional Psychologists or Psychotherapists? People with actual schooling and training in these areas? Only in the Troubled Teen Industry are short order cooks, local carpenters, local farmers, past criminals, former drug addicts, able to run or start schools for kids.

Some of those so-called professionals can be pretty screwed up, if you ask me. I guess you could say it's analogous to there being a tremendous range in personal philosophy which does end up affecting practice, not to mention the truism that there are charlatans in any industry. The APA was split pretty much right down the middle, if I recall correctly, re. Margaret Singer's Taskforce Report on thought reform and cults, hence some members tried to preempt its completion by filing an amicus curiae brief in early 1987.

Certainly some of the programs discussed on fornits seem to favor such a "mental health professional" to do their dirty work, e.g., most of those run by Aspen Ed Group. These are just as fucked up (albeit in a slightly different way) as the ones which eschew the degrees...

While I totally agree with your comment about short order cooks and other hacks performing brain salad surgery (Hyde School is that type of place also), I also don't think having mental health professionals on board will change anything as far as the damage this industry wreaks. Some people just think they have every right to mess with kids' psyches, they think know what they are doing, and they are gonna try to do it regardless of the consequences. It all boils down to "the ends justifying the means."

[RMA Survivor]

Yes, some professional can be whack jobs too.  Just because you are a holder of a PhD in psychology doesn't mean you are good at your job or work well with people.  

But you don't go in to a hospital and find nurses who have never been to nursing school, doctors who never went to medical school.  Yeah, you might find an "alternative medicine" clinic where nobody is really a professional, but what would you expect to get out of there?

RMA/CEDU prided themselves on not having professionals.  Not having people with college degrees.  Their stated reasons for that pride may have been that they weren't going to use the "normal" procedures and methods of professionals, but personally I think they wanted to avoid the issue of ethics.  Most professionals have to undergo ethics training, sign statements that they will work ethically and are regulated by others who try and maintain standards of ethics.  Some measure of accountability.  Whack jobs might get through the cracks, but I think RMA/CEDU were trying to avoid any professionals and subsequently any ethics or oversight.  And I think they succeeded.

[Che Gookin]

Who is that guy, he's gay as hell, but he wrote this great book about being raised in a cult family of a shrink? I think.. eh.. I think he wrote the book Running With Scissors.

[Inculcated]

Who is that guy, he's gay as hell, but he wrote this great book about being raised in a cult family of a shrink? I think.. eh.. I think he wrote the book Running With Scissors.

Augusten Burroughs. He also wrote "A wolf at the table", "Magical Thinking" and "Possible side effects".

[Che Gookin]

Bingo.. that's the one.. Great book of his Running With Scissors and its about being raised in a psych cult.

[Ursus]

RMA/CEDU prided themselves on not having professionals.  Not having people with college degrees.  Their stated reasons for that pride may have been that they weren't going to use the "normal" procedures and methods of professionals, but personally I think they wanted to avoid the issue of ethics.

It may have also had something to do with the time period. I think the earlier programs definitely had that anti-psych mindset (despite the fact that they used every single psychological tool for manipulation that they could get their hands on from the Human Potential movement). I've heard it described at Hyde as "all you really need is ... to care." In fact, I think there was a real antipathy towards professionals, like they were "too much in their head," and not "real" enough.

Maybe that mindset goes back to program roots which were in the addiction treatment field, where former addicts could be considered to be somewhat on par with those who had done the legwork in academia, since they had the "field experience." That field experience was actually considered superior, at Hyde, to any bona fide in-depth course of study. Joe Gauld always used to say, "You can't con a con (and you can't kid a kid)." About half the time (according to my memory), he would only say the first part of that quote, lol.

But aside from being able to come up with their own barometer of ethics, I think it also had a lot to do with founder ego, namely folk who possess an inflated sense of self-importance and destiny. Hey, maybe they were right. After all, here we are, decades later, still wringing our gray matter over it all... I think megalomaniac narcissists like Wasserman really wanted to play God, really had a sick psychological need to play God and, on some level, probably couldn't help themselves from trying to play God. And to be able to control people like they did, they had to be in charge of "the rules," whatever they may have been. An outside body of expertise would have been able to second-guess or undercut that way too much.

Most professionals have to undergo ethics training, sign statements that they will work ethically and are regulated by others who try and maintain standards of ethics.  Some measure of accountability.  Whack jobs might get through the cracks, but I think RMA/CEDU were trying to avoid any professionals and subsequently any ethics or oversight.  And I think they succeeded.

To renew their license, professionals would need to undergo some kind of regular review by their peers, no? They would be held accountable to some other body of judgment, not Mel's. My impression is that would not have sat too well with Mel.

[wild thing]

Mel Wasserman, dyslexic, only had a 7th grade education, undoubtedly why he shunned anything with an academic bent.  He did have his sidekick, Jim Powell, ex-Synanonnie, who had a PhD from a non-acredited program.  He was "grandfathered" in when California passed stricter rules for therapists.

[RMA Survivor]

Didn't Synanon have their own university or something where they pumped out fake degrees until that was taken away from them at some point?  I know our diplomas were built on the same life credits nonsense.

I didn't know Mel had only a 7th grade education and was dyslexic.  Dyslexic people usually have trouble perceiving the world as it is.  Backwards in fact.  My step monster was the head of the International Orton Dyslexia Society for a number of years.  She had a PhD from Stanford University, but she cheated to get it.  

It doesn't surprise me that those who founded CEDU were anti-education, against any formal and established structure and against any accountability.  Did Mel's own kids have troubles too?  Was he unable to raise them properly, thus creating his own system where kids are dominated and subjugated to relentless, unending punishments as his way of getting back at the world for his own inability to properly raise his own?

[wild thing]

Now that is interesting, I didn't know that Synanon had its own fake school of higher learning, but it makes sense.  Dr. Soltani, who provided psych services to CEDU also had his degree from whatever school it was...that was how Soltani got hooked into CEDU.  A few years ago I met a school psych, who knew Soltani and did not think too highly of him.  I mentioned that he had a cracker-jacks box degree and the psych was quite insulted, he, too had the same surprise inside degree!  Talk about inserting foot in mouth!  
From what I remember, Mark, Mel's son was the whipping boy for Mel.  I don't know too much about Mel's daughters.  They were fairly young when Mel started his program.  I imagine he spent more time with kids other than his own.  He was pretty much out of the picture when I was at CEDU, descending into dementia in Idaho, I think.