What in the therapy is the world of TC’s talkin about ?TODAY?
I just think it is important to keep up with recent events. I’ll refrain from pointing out my skepticism, just focus on the fact that these ‘therapies’ continue to perpetuate themselves.
In reviewing the workshops taught at the XXIV WORLD CONFERENCE OF THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITIES, apparently we have not left the 60’s and 70’s behind. Many questionable applications have silently made their way into the global mainstream. It raises the question of whether the TTI and most TC’s are really an example of how to respond to perceived individual pathologies by creating real, social, global pathologies?
It’s a long document, so here are some specifics that I think are important, not that there’s not more, so look into it. (download abstracts here
http://www.mundolibre.org.pe/conferencia/content.htm )
Key words: Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Dual Pathology, Daniel Casriel, New Identity Process (NIP), Bonding Therapy, Daytop, 12 steps, comorbidity, neurolinguistics, gestalt therapy, humanistic philosophy, psychodrama, bioenergetics, spiritual recovery, Jung and the ‘shadow’, etc.
AN ALTERNATIVE FOR HUMAN AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
XXIV WORLD CONFERENCE OF THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITIES
February 6 - 10, 2009
A B S T R A C T S O F
WO R K SHO P P A P E R S
INDEX OF WOKSHOPS ABSTRACTS
...
INTEGRATION OF MET, CBT AND SELF HELP APPROACHES INTO THE
THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY MODEL
By: David Stockton and Cecilia Velasquez
Gaudenzia. Inc.
EEUU
… Using the social learning TC model as a foundation, and the stages of change as a focus, we integrate motivational enhancement therapy (MET), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), 12-Step and other self help approaches, in a specialized program to meet the needs of the specific treatment population…
DUAL PATHOLOGY “AN EXPERIENCE OF INTEGRAL THERAPEUTIC
COMMUNITY IN ARGENTINA”
Daniel De Angelis & Sebastian Rodríguez
Proyecto U.N.O. – Una Nueva Oportunidad, Argentina
Daniel D’Angelis is a social therapist, a social psychologist and has a degree in
psychology. He is a specialist in Relational-systematic Family Therapy, founder
and current president of U.N.O. Project “Una Nueva Oportunidad” (A new
opportunity) at the addictions and mental health therapeutic Community. He has
made various presentations about the treatment that kept on developing U.N.O.
Project in the approach to dual clients, specially, to those who have schizophrenia.
Sebastián Rodríguez has a degree in psychology and he is the Director of the
treatment of dual clients of U.N.O. Proyect “Una Nueva Oportunidad”(A new
opportunity).
ABSTRACT
In our daily practice in mental health centers and support centers in addictions, we see increasingly that the consultation on a problem associated with drug abuse or dependence, (when it begins to investigate issues of the personality of the same; or, when suspending the consumption of substances), the most varied symptoms of appear. Our therapeutic communities provide us with a daily eye on those points which are suffering following the situation of consumption.
Along the therapeutic route on the causes that lead a person to dependence and / or systematic abuse of toxic substances, we are going to encounter with specifi c mechanisms such as low tolerance to frustration, high levels of impulsivity, the need for immediate gratifi cation, lack of personal projects (product of the fl attening of desire and current social determinations), and also we are faced with patients in whom the substances have accelerated the process of unleashing their psychosis, or have started with consumption to alleviate the symptoms of psychosis unleashed.
In these cases we talk about dual diagnosis patients, those in which there is a comorbility between serious mental disorder and consumption of psychoactive substances.
Therefore, and in accordance with the vicissitudes of current events in the health process, is becoming increasingly necessary to understand and integrate into the complex system of health, those people whose suffering is also rooted in a psychiatric problem.
This paper comes as a need to access to an instrument in planning and therapeutic care of patients addicted to consumption of toxic substances in comorbidity with psychiatric problems. In it, we will try to describe and work on the technical, clinical and therapeutic sides of the rehabilitation program, and in each step treatment from admission until the end of it, trying to account for the implementation of strategies to service this aim.
OVERCOMING OUR SHADOW
Por Efrén Ramírez MD
Ocean Park Therapeutic Ambulatory Community
Puerto Rico
… Attention defi cit disorder syndromes (ADDS) have reached a pandemic level. The results are global: distress,
functional impediments, and chronic mental and physical health disorders which have sunk humanity into a state
of denial, and incapacity to face reality.
Since the Second World War psychiatry has been moving away from a narrow attention to individual medicalpsychological
practice, towards a holistically based community psychiatry. An example of the above is the drugfree
therapeutic community which arose in Puerto Rico in 1960, and became a model for the over 9,000 programs
of the WFTC.
The Ocean Park Therapeutic Ambulatory Community has developed a drug-free treatment program for ADDS,
based on the principles of micro-nutrition (including non-toxic chelated lithium), therapeutic dialogue, “tertulia”,
community action and meditation. This program has proved to be .effective in helping persons surmount their
tendency to addictive behavior and to accumulate toxic beliefs and experiences in what Carl Jung called the
Shadow, thus allowing them to overcome diverse observable patterns of mental dysfunction (Axes I and II of
DSM-IV-TR), and multiple other psychosomatic conditions, through a process of Jungian individuation. The
program includes techniques for developing home-based therapeutic communities, geared towards rehabilitating
the family and the wider neighborhood.
RETENTION IN THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY IN THE FIRST 30 DAYS:
QUALITATIVE APPROACH
By: Anagnostou Eleni,
Greece
…Findings suggest that retention in treatment in the fi rst month is related with individual factors and with
the therapeutic environment too. Subjects’ motives for retention in treatment in the fi rst 30 days result from
motivation for personal change and pressure from external factors.
Lack of contact with signifi cant others, the previous lifestyle with drug use and previous experience in treatment
are pointed out as individual factors that impede the smooth adjustment to therapeutic environment. Smooth
adjustment is also impeded from factors that derive from therapeutic environment?s characteristics such as the
structured programme of daily activities, the hierarchical model and limits in the behavior.
Personal changes that subjects have already experienced from drug use abstinence and persons that seem to
function as role models for them appear to strengthen subjects’ decision for retention in treatment. Findings also
indicate the positive role of: (i) the existence of a supportive therapeutic environment, (ii) the educational and
recreational activities and (iii) the therapeutic processes.
“SPIRITUALITY IN THE TREATMENT OF ADDICTIONS”
lleana Castro,
TC “Hogar Vida Nueva”
Venezuela
In Hogar Vida Nueva (Hovin), the person is considered as an integral human being with a body, a soul and a spirit,
and so the treatment is applied to the following areas:
- Physical: to help physiological alterations.
- Social: to promote the practice of social, cultural and sport activities.
- Mental: group and individual interventions carried out by Psychotherapists.
-Spiritual: to promote the development of the inner being by teaching values, love, honesty, respect, friendship,
responsibility, work, solidarity, confi dence and faith.
In our treatment, spirituality is the natural and conscious practice of the vigour or strength that encourages a
person to act, and it is expressed in inspiration, courage, support, vigour, effort, vivacity and talent.
In addition, Hovin’s spiritual program contemplates the AA’s twelve steps, which is improved by the bible’s lecture.
We consider that this is a very useful program that transforms the drug-consumer’s personality and allows him to
leave the addiction behind. The institution has used this treatment for ten years and with good outcomes.
ADDICTIONS: AN ERRANT SEARCH FOR LIFE MEANING
By Jaime Torres
Peru
ADDICTIONS: AN ERRANT SEARCH FOR LIFE MEANING
By Jaime Torres
Peru
Drug addiction is a very complex problem that goes beyond any psychological, sociological, economic and politic
analysis: it’s a problem of our modern western society.
From historian and anthropologist observations we know that addictive behavior did not exist in traditional
societies, even if the ingestion of psychoactive substances contained in certain medicinal plants was a widespread
and usual practice. It’s through the ritual use of these psychoactive plants that people could get into the spiritual
world looking for equilibrium between material and spiritual forces.
According to Traditional Medicine, addiction is created by a profanation transgressing the spirit of the plant, an
action that disrupts the equilibrium between man and Nature. In this way, the spirit of the plant takes possession
of the person inducing the wish to continue consuming and fi nally leading the person to the addictive behavior.
We are now in a society where important religious dogmas have been lost or deeply transformed. We observe
dissatisfaction with the world, facing a moralizing and extremely rational society, where people is forced to
productivity, where rituality and initiation rituals have no longer the importance and status that used to have
before in every human culture.
Addictions represent a way of searching “the sacred” through numinous experiences, transcending and fi nding
a meaning of life. However, while consuming the plant in a profane way the addict transgresses the spirit of the
plant and the action of consuming become a failed self initiation.
THE T.C., AN ANSWER TO SOCIAL VIOLENCE
Por Jorge Blanco K., MA, CADC, CSW
Director of Research and CURA International
New Jersey – USA
This presentation calls to refl exion regarding the importance of the Therapeutic Community, and its therapeutic processes including the social re-entry process, as an alternative to social violence that triggers the use of alcohol and drugs in modern society. This presentation covers, among other topics, concepts regarding the roots of violence behaviour, anger management within the family, social and therapeutic environments, and the search for an emotional balance.
Concepts such as ethics, values, spirituality, moral and dignity, as well as injustice, inequity, poverty, pain and dependency, will be presented within the context of the social responsibility the T.C. has in its daily provision of services to the population it serves. This presentation hopes to inspire the participants to continue their commitment and motivation to answer the challenge of the world conference’s main theme “an alternative for human and social development”.
A JOURNEY TO HOSPITALITY TO SELF AND TO OTHERS
Jose Gabriel Piedrahita MA, LMSW
Colombia
This workshop reviews the dynamics of the Therapeutic Community as a mirroring process that empowers the whole person to embark upon a journey of self-knowledge and personal growth. This workshop describes the development of spiritual availability, as the willingness to be accessible to another person with one’s entire being when others are in need. It illustrates how the more one is in touch with personal failures, weakness and limitations the more one can express compassion and understanding.
Finally this workshop describes the Therapeutic Community as a living paradox that embraces the human condition as “both/and” (both a wounded warrior and a healer) rather than “either/or” (either a wounded warrior or a healer) and that transcends its own boundaries as compassion breaks through the boundaries of language, nations, race, rich and poor, pulling people into a larger sphere where a sense of hospitality to self and to others is restored.
BONDING PSYCHOTHERAPY GROUPS AT THE THERAPEUTIC
COMMUNITY
Dr. Martien Kooyman
The Netherlands
Martin Kooyman from the Netherlands is a renowned psychiatrist and neurologist.
He is the founder of several treatment centers for addiction in the Netherlands,
among them, in 1972, he founded Emiliehoee, the fi rst therapeutic community
in his country. He is co - founder of the WFTC and the European Federation of
Therapeutic Communities of which is one of its honorary vice-presidents. He is also
the co-founder of the European Working Group on Drug-Policy-Oriented Research
(EWODOR). He is a Teaching Fellow in Bonding psychotherapy, also called the
New Identity Process, developed by Dr. Daniel Casriel. His book on therapeutic
communities for addicts is published in English and has been translated in the
Spanish, Polish and Tsjech language.
SUMMARY
Bonding Psychotherapy is a Group therapy, a technique developed by Daniel Casriel a psychiatry doctor from the USA, founder of the fi rst Therapeutic Community in New York: Daytop Village. The purpose is to overcome the fear of physical and emotional closeness, and of separation, also to improve the patient’s self esteem.
The group focuses not only on the problems and painful experiences of the past and present, but also on the ability of enjoying the pleasure of living. Most residents in Therapeutic Communities lived traumatic experiences in their childhood with the result of lack of trust in themselves and in others and in negative attitudes like not being good enough, not being loveable, not having the right to exist.
There will be three different activities: fi rst a brief experience of the body work, second a DVD will be shown which was fi lmed in group sessions in the Netherlands, subtitled in Spanish, and last questions and answers about this method in Therapeutic Communities.
THE BENEFITS OF HEALING MEDITATION AND THE POTENTIAL
EXPANSION OF THE THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY AS A VEHICLE OF
CHANGE
Portia Mereki
Meditation is a valuable Therapeutic Community (TC) program component, which can increase inner peace, promote responsibility, resolve personal issues and speed up the healing process. Group and one-to-one guided healing meditation sessions facilitate exploration of the person’s inner world and offer solutions. Increased use of this modality coupled with the basic principles that TCs stand for can strengthen the provision of a reliable path to a positive shift in awareness. Such programs have the potential to expand into new community sectors, which include those people who contribute to the causes of alcohol and other drug misuse and the associated socio-economic problems. TC programs which include meditative practices can become a more powerful vehicle of wider societal change in the areas of policy, wealth distribution, spirituality and Earth sustainability, among others.
BODY, EMOTION AND VOICE IN THE THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY
Ramón Néstor Vega
Argentina
Ramón Nestor Vega: is a specialist in emotional educational work and has an
ample formation and experience in the treatment of addictions. His formation
begins in 1986 with Psychodrama, Gestalt, Neurolinguistics, Bioenergetics,
Biosynthesis, and as an instructor in Body work, it continues as a Sociotherapeut (
he studied in Argentina and in Italy) he specialized in the work with New Identity
Process groups, now called Bonding Psychotherapy, in Italy ( Rome and Belluno),
and in Portugal.
He has led workshops in Argentina and in Brazil, Mexico and Spain, and at the
present time as co leader with Martien Kooijman in Italy in Belluno. He is founder
of the Therapeutic Community Ancoradouro in Brazil, and he is Fellow of the
International Association of Bonding Psychotherapy and president of the Argentine
Association of Bonding Psychotherapy called El Abrazo Primario
ABSTRACT
It was part of the conception that personal history is embodied in the body. Such history is entering from the moment of conception, during pregnancy and throughout the development until the last moment of life. The bodies accommodated in ways that have been touched, cared for, loved, rejected, hit ... While the time passes, several memories physical, mental and emotional memories are an active and dynamic, as witnessed lived. The personality is expressed through the body, which shows its vitality, its history, its healthy and sick, that’s how the body language content complaints of mental and emotional people.
Emotion and body are together, the movement as a way to express in a great way because without it you can not talk, shout or gesticulate. What is not expressed is accumulating in the body with different modalities such as muscle tension, blockades and various physiological dysfunction which can develop itself and chronic or serious illness.
Then, it asserts the importance of being fully aware that life goes entirely in the body. That statement implies to understand the complexity involved the concept of body and the importance of their approach in the process of Therapeutic Communities as a growth and openness in the development of this process.
SPIRITUALITY AND RECOVERY
By Richard Dunn
Consultant & Staff Trainer – Daytop Village
EE. UU.
Dr. Dunn is a consultant for counselor training at Daytop and Veritas Villa. An
educator, author, counselor, researcher and trainer, he created one of the fi rst
curricula in the US to award an accredited academic degree in substance abuse
counseling. His publications include Relapse and the Addict
ABSTRACT
This workshop will explore the role of spirituality in recovery from drug addiction. It will review
(1) C.G. Jung’s 3 major options regarding the spiritual,
(2) spirituality and religion compared and contrasted,
(3) the Spiritual vs. the Material and Faith vs. Reason,
(4) spirituality and crisis,
(5) the intoxicated state and spiritual experience,
(6) the role of surrender in spirituality,
(7) the dark side of religion and spirituality, and
(
issues of meaning, purpose, suffering, guilt and forgiveness.
.
