Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village
DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run
Inculcated:
A dawning moment of insight wakes, while turning pages...
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism
By Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.
Loading the Language“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.
The loading is much more extreme in ideological totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed certitudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlying assumption that language - like all other human products - can be owned and operated by the Movement. No compunctions are felt about manipulating or loading it in any fashion; the only consideration is its usefulness to the cause.
For an individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction. He is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed. This is what Hu meant when he said, "using the same pattern of words for so long…you feel chained." Actually, not everyone exposed feels chained, but in effect everyone is profoundly confined by these verbal fetters.”
Hmmm...So, it was lingo used in session that reminded me of Daytopia that led me to seek understanding of why I had such a visceral reaction to those words…angry after all this time. In a later session,I attempted to describe my experience of Daytop. I was frustrated by the fact that I could not seem to communicate this without choking out a lot of the lingo. I actually put a hand to my mouth and said “I can’t make you understand. I don’t know how to say it without using their words, so I’m just not going to say anything.”
The philosophies that were branded in to separate plaques were also branded in to what thinking we were permitted at the time:
"To understand rather than be understood"They didn't really respond to pointed questions with anything but blunted answers.
“You can’t keep it unless you give it away” was the emphasis added to status members who were being given a “dressing down” for "not working their program"( yep, they actually phrased it just so) by showing enough punitive love to their peers with “pull ups”.
"Be your brother’s keeper, but keep no secrets here", was the topic called of a particularly scathing house meeting.
“Trust in your environment” "Wearing this sign will help the family to recognize what you most need help with and open you to feedback".(involved a lot of shouting)“Be careful what you ask for you just might get it.”The circular logic had its intended effect of causing dizziness."What goes around comes around"
When all else fails “Act as if”.
My “belly is flipping”.
Inculcated:
“It’s a battle of philosophies really”, summed up Monsignor William O’Brien, cofounder and president of Daytop Village. “The current way is to impose control from outside the person by putting him or her into a cell. The Daytop way… is to intervene…by changing destructive life patterns, building in self-discipline and boundaries with the help of a therapeutic community.”
From: Dark paradise By David T. Courtwright
Build the prison within them. Let their peers be their jury. Obtain from them confessions under duress. Teach them to carry their own prosecutor and judge in their rehabilitated minds…Yeah, they’ll walk the line. :flame:
SEKTO:
http://books.google.com/books?id=VxUuPa ... P60Y&hl=en
SEKTO:
God didn't condemn Rahab for hiding the spies and lying to the Jericho officials. The little hand that in that velvet glove weaves the web, and you can learn to deal with spiders. There's a way, Inculcated, and I would like to bring you to it. I have found found my one true family. Let me lead you there. Suffer the little children...
Inculcated:
Hmm…SEKTO, I’m as concerned as I am intrigued.
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