More Synanon terms:
Dishpan (Dinner Dishes).
Splitting, splittee.
Contract.
"You can't do that here/ We don't do that here" (ie - homosexuality, other taboo human functions).
Processes that stayed while terms changed:
"synanons/game" = Cedu raps - and feature, at Synanon, wild, incredible, near-fabricated exaggertions of a persons negative intentions, beliefs, rationale, thoughts, and actions - exaggerate the negative was key. Again, it's necessary to remember that the Synanites were heavy and recalcitrant major drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes, degenerates, criminals, etc. (It's important to remember that the kids at Cedu were not).
"haircuts" - these we called simply, "getting blown away." Could happen in or out of raps, in the staff office, in any family room, or out on a work assignment.
Public humiliation was key - the center of the experience. This was the cornerstone of the Synanon - and Cedu - experience. Public exaggeration of a person's deficits, or real (or imagined/invented) bad behavior.
The central therapy of Synanon was constant, chronic and inescapable immense public ridicule ("synanons"), in which real hatred would be leveled from person to person, group to person, person to group, and back again - this was constant, chronic, inescapable, and never-ending.
There was a secondary kind of group ridicule, this from a larger group to one individual. At Cedu, we had to do this in various raps, propheets, etc; it was generally called "receiving feedback"; no argument was permitted. In Synanon, it was called, in Dederich-speak "haircuts" - where the verbal denigration was sometimes accompanied by literal head-shaving.
Charles E. Dederich: Read the books for his biography - Barely reforming alcoholic with eating disorder, massive phobias, and some apparent narcissistic disorders, penchants for peer-abuse and verbal cruelty and psychological violence, with little, very little, precious little, and mostly erroneous understanding of human development, or biology of addiction.
While in A.A. and suffering from various phobias, he reads a few lines of R.W. Emerson, immediately quits his job, and starts, with a couple other A.A. members, his new 'school', his cult, his religion - which found not insignificant support among some, (but not all) rather permissive and probably desperate, or easily persuaded, or charmed, or bullied, or impressed, liberal psychologists in the 1960s.
One gets the clear sense, reading these dated histories, that what was available for drug rehab was little to nothing ... we are somewhat more humane dealing with major addiction today, but it's hit and miss. But to read the starry-eyed apologetics for the program by these few psychologists, or independent writers (listed in the previous post) is an exercise in open-jawed disbelief. What is being described is so cruel, and so invasive, and so unregulated, and based so much on a sort of ramshackle, wildly-unstable 'strongman' patriarchal tribal hierarchy - you just can't believe that these folks thought this would really work as a genuine, lasting therapeutic solution to what some of these people were doing.
Find these books in your local library, and read the tales of the early Synanites. Those who went through Cedu will recognize the distasteful, home-grown, illogical, insane, exaggerated, grotesque, bullying, isolating, humiliating aspects of the program.
