Now that I have had that mate, it's time to address psy's questions.
It sounds like they incorporated a bunch of elements into that one philosophy (attack on the self, missionary work, group cohesiveness). I am guessing that by "helping" others you would be expected to harshly confront them in group? What did help entail? Would it be accurate to state that the group was seen as more important than the individual?
Did you ever have to write written reports on yourself or others (some programs call this a "dirt list" or "moral inventory")? How detailed did these reports get? Were people expected to rat on others for minor offenses? For doubting the program? Was there a sort of "thought crime" you could be accused of? Did objective criteria for advancement in the program really matter, or was it mostly based on the subjective evaluations of the staff into whether you had the "right" attitude (whether you were agreeing with the group philosophy and taking it to heart)?
Now please understand that this was about fifteen years ago and these are things I have not pulled to my conscious mind in a long time...this is stuff from I was 18/19, and I am 34 now. Usually I try not to think about DAYTOP so much, not until lately.
Yes, the "help" we were expected to inflict on others entailed harsh confrontations, personal attacks, and basically put, DAYTOP's philosophy is essentially one that encourages psychological dominance over others and I too learned to pass that abuse on to others around me. I myself am not one for much confrontation, and find it hard to be mean to people, to yell and scream and such. But I learned how to be, learned how to pretend like I was a lot more angry than I really was so that it was not
me who was the one getting reamed out.
In the DAYTOP groups, I'd always prefer to try and talk my way through some problem, use reason and deal with people in a compassionate and persuasive way.
It's one thing to tell somebody "you hurt my feelings and this is how" or "you made me feel angry and this is why". In DAYTOP you'd never say to somebody "You pissed me off" or "that makes me mad." They'd have you
identify your feelings and
articulate them: we were taught that "Pissed off is not a feeling" or "dogs get mad, people get angry" etc. you see.
So I was never one for a lot of yelling, and in DAYTOP-speak I was not properly identifying and expressing myself if I preferred a calmer and more rational approach. No, we were supposed to YELL. If I tried to talk it out with somebody, Marcia would scream at ME and tell me how phony and plastic and wimpy I was. So I was encouraged to let 'er rip and really give people a piece of my mind "YOU'RE SO FULL OF SHIT, YOU LITTLE PUNK!!" Generally we were not supposed to use profanity, but everybody did from time to time anyway. They'd allow it as long as it wasn't too "excessive," however they were defining "excessive" at the time.
So I was always encouraged to act a lot more offended or upset than I really was. It got to where I was actually belligerent and happily confrontational too.
They (the counselors) tell you how they saw you, effectively telling you "who you really are" whether you really were that person or not. They'd tell you what was wrong with you, what your issue was whether that was really your issue or not, or whether what they were saying had any validity at all. They'd try to break you down and then put you back together again the DAYTOP way, tampering with the fundamental building blocks of your inborn personality, basically tell you that "you" weren't good enough (because it's your own junkie thinking that got you here, right?) and that they were going to build a "new and improved" you. An attack on the self, yes. "You are now part of a whole, something greater than yourself the messed-up individual, and you need the group to keep you well." Dispensing of existence, doctrine over person, yes. Mystical manipulation, it was all there. I see it now, or I am starting to understand what was really going on there.
Was the group more important than the individual? Yes and no. It's all about situational context, and the power of the situation you see. On the one hand, the whole point, the end result was personal growth. One of thier little "values" I remember was
"Personal growth before vested interest." But in that
situational context you needed
the group to tell you how much "personal growth" you
the individual had attained. You'd have to prove yourself constantly to the staff and to your peers before you could make advancement in the DAYTOP chain of command.
So here's a question: had one advanced up the chain because of one's personal growth, or had one's personal growth been increased through the shifting and growing sets of responsibilities put upon one through that very administrative advancement?
Did you ever have to write written reports on yourself or others (some programs call this a "dirt list" or "moral inventory")? How detailed did these reports get? Were people expected to rat on others for minor offenses? For doubting the program? Was there a sort of "thought crime" you could be accused of? Did objective criteria for advancement in the program really matter, or was it mostly based on the subjective evaluations of the staff into whether you had the "right" attitude (whether you were agreeing with the group philosophy and taking it to heart)?1) According to my recollection, coordinators and Department Heads did, yes. (Coordinators and Department Heads being the two topmost levels of the DAYTOP chain.) We'd keep log book of who committed what infractions and when. We'd keep log books of who we gave a "haircut" or a "dealtwith" to, the time of day it was administered, the offense committed, and a short but somewhat detailed, concise report of it to be delivered to the counselor on duty, whoever it might have been on a particular day.
But no, there were not any daily written reports that we all had to write out, or regularly-submitted moral inventories in a written form from what I remember.
2) People were expected to rat each other out for minor offenses, yes. Because, according to our indoctrination, if you know somebody is doing something wrong, breaking some rule or whatever, and you do not turn them in for it or at least persuade them to confess, then you were complicit to their bad behavior and might as well have been doing it yourself. It became kind of a "feather in your cap" in terms of showing your "personal growth" if you turned somebody in for some small thing, say, if you catch them smoking behind the fence out back. The more things that you could point out that you saw somebody doing wrong, the more you called them out on some improper attitude or inappropriate thinking, it showed that you had "matured" and must be gaining "personal growth."
People were expected to rat each other out for doubting the program, too, and again, the more you called somebody out on their "bad attitude" the more "feathers in your cap" you'd get and the more "personal growth" you had achieved. Was there any kind of "thought crime" that one could be accused of? Sure, in questioning the program at all, or questioning anything for that matter. Any kind of non-conformity or not going along with the DAYTOP lines could land you in the coordinator's office for a quick "dealtwith" at any time. No grumbling, no murmuring, no dissenting allowed. Oh, you might be allowed to express an independent thought a time or two, but they'd set you straight pretty quick, or try to at least. If you still didn't go along with it, did too much complaining or asked too many questions, you might have to spend time in "The Chair" after a series of "haircuts."
Did objective criteria for advancement in the program really matter, or was it mostly based on the subjective evaluations of the staff into whether you had the "right" attitude (whether you were agreeing with the group philosophy and taking it to heart)?
I know of this one guy (a good friend of mine to this day, and he might post here a little bit someday soon) who was in the program for
two and a half years before they let him graduate. Why so long? Nobody really knows. The level of "readiness" to graduate was all subjectively judged by the staff and the director of the place. Pretty much all subjectively judged, yep.
A big part of my story, and the others' too was in our relationship with our families. They were so ignorant, so naive, and ate up everything DAYTOP told them. It's like they were looking for some help to "fix" their son, when it was our dysfunctional family that was the problem. The main lesson I learned
is that there are no "quick fixes."
I don't think that my friend will post much, if at all. I talked with him tonight and he said that his memories of DAYTOP make him want to vomit. But we'll see.
More later, after another yerba.