Author Topic: David Deitch  (Read 21509 times)

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dragonfly

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #15 on: January 11, 2011, 02:47:44 PM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Inculcated

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #16 on: January 11, 2011, 04:24:19 PM »
As for the primordial days of Synanon for the most part what I’ve come across tells of Dietrich starting running his game or the precursor to it in the twelve-step setting and then breaking off to form Synanon.

I have no links that provide additional details about Deitch and his journey from The Narcotics Farm to Synanon. This one that turned up covers the book and expands just an ity bit http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/201 ... 1935-1975/
Quote from: "dragonfly"
I guess I'm gonna have to call Deitch himself and ask him what came first the brainwashed chicken or the Feds on Maoist acid?
LMAO! Do please, let me know how that call goes.

Excerpts from a cached version of this article which may or may not be already pasted on another thread Deitch tells a slightly different (perhaps more forthcoming or revised) version than others. In this interview he attributes his recovery to Synanon whereas previous accounts acknowledge his relapse following his time on The Narco Farm, but mentions of his subsequent journey to Synanon were brief and along the lines of seeking training. Interestingly, in this interview he also asserts that Synanon was his "first exposure to peer based mutual help".

David Deitch, PhD and George De Leon, PhD on Recovery Management and the Future of the Therapeutic Community
Written by William L. White, MA   Tuesday, 21 September 2010 16:44  Counselor Magazine

This article—the third in a series of articles profiling pioneers of modern addiction treatment—engages two leaders of the international therapeutic community (TC) movement. Dr. David Deitch is one of the most singular figures in the American TC movement and one of the few people whose career transcends the infancy, adolescence and maturation of TCs around the world. Dr. George De Leon has spent a career conducting and publishing scientific studies of TCs, and using the results of these studies to guide the evolution of the international TC movement…
David Deitch: It’s a delight to participate with you and George to reflect on the evolution of the therapeutic community. I come to this discussion with a lengthy history of over 60 years in the addiction world. My first education was regrettably my early use of heroin, which I began at the age of 15. In 1951, I was arrested for drug possession and entered addiction treatment at the federal prison/hospital in Lexington, Kentucky (known as “the farm”). Upon release, I finished high school and became excited about learning, particularly philosophy and psychology. I continued sporadic college education amidst a continued cycle of relapse, crime and arrest. I was unable to get it together in spite of multiple treatments. At each institution, I tried hard to understand what was wrong with me. I attended every group, had great and caring psychiatrists, but always relapsed upon my return home. Then in 1961, I left New York in search of a new rumored “cure” called Synanon in Santa Monica, California.

Synanon was the beginning of the American TC movement and my first exposure to peer-based mutual help. It had everything—a charismatic leader, colorful ex-cons, con artists, motorcycle gang members, great jazz musicians, liberated women. We (recovering addicts) did everything, including security. Everybody started at the bottom and earned their way up. It wasn’t a treatment program; it was an amazing community, and every­one contributed to its magic. Synanon was a new society that honored the outsider, played to the rebel. It was a place where we entered to get clean and ended up seeing ourselves as the heroes of a new movement. These were the days before Synanon evolved into a cult and eventually imploded.

Many of us who left before Synanon developed into such a closed community were called upon by different agencies to help start new therapeutic communities. Daytop Lodge was the first. The lead psychologist for the Brooklyn Department of Probation, Alex Bassin, and the Chief Probation Officer, Joseph Shelly, visited Synanon and embraced it as an answer to the growing heroin problem in New York. They sought funds from NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] to place addicts on probation into a Synanon-like setting and recruited me to develop that program. In 1965, we, along with Monsignor William B. O’Brien, formed Daytop Village. Daytop Village marked a break from Synanon and set the model for future TCs in terms of acceptance of government funding, evaluation procedures and external governance.

1965-1970 in New York was a breeding ground for TCs due in great part to the influence of Dr. Efren Raimirez, a psychiatrist recruited as New York City’s first “drug czar” by Major Lindsay. Efren, who had been trained in the Maxwell Jones TC model, persuaded me to use the term therapeutic community (TC) as a more scientific way to describe our method. Until that time, we had proudly used the term, “A Humanizing Community.” Efren hosted regular meetings of key people interested in the treatment of heroin addiction. These meetings included Mitch Rosenthal, who developed Phoenix House; Judy Densen-Gerber, who founded Odyssey House; and a young social worker, who helped create Samaritan Village. Within a few years, Daytop graduates went on to help build Gaudenzia in Philadelphia, Gateway in Chicago, Walden House in San Francisco, and Marathon House of New England. By the 1970s, a full fledged TC movement was spreading across the United States, Europe and Asia. TC methods became more diverse across these different geographical, cultural and political contexts. Since this period, I have had the privilege of observing and participating in the worldwide spread and evolution of the TC as a treatment for addiction.
Bill: Thanks, David. George, could you introduce yourself to our readers and add your thoughts on the early evolution of the TC movement?

George De Leon: As a jazz musician, years before my career as a psychologist, I understood the drug problem through its impact on friends and fellow musicians, some of whom turned their lives around in Synanon. I had early contacts with Daytop Village and Synanon groups in New York, but my work in the TC movement began when Mitch Rosenthal asked me to bring my research skills to help in the development of Phoenix House, circa 1967.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free”  Nikos Kazantzakis

Offline Inculcated

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Re: David Deitch "Change agent"
« Reply #17 on: January 11, 2011, 08:25:23 PM »
You know what I find interesting…well, it’s not nearly quite the conundrum of just how Art Barker (whose job history seems to have been previously limited to being a comedian) was transformed from his life of performing as an intermittent fill in for the local Playboy club to somehow suddenly being endowed with the funds to set up The Seed program and just how the hell that selection process came about…

However, it is also interesting (if we go by David Deitch’s own account of his addiction history given in the above quoted interview)to wonder at the marvel of just how Joseph Shelly, head of the Supreme Court Probation Department in New York, Criminologist Alexander Bassin, psychologist and Director of Research and, Prof. Herbert Bloch and psychiatrist Daniel Casriel and Monsignor O’ Brien all concluded that David Deitch (with a decade long history of relapse and at that point (just ehm 2 years? of sobriety) and a criminal record that dated back to his time at the Narcotic Farm) was the ideal person to run their program...hmmm...
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“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free”  Nikos Kazantzakis

Offline heretik

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #18 on: January 11, 2011, 09:29:04 PM »
Quote from: "Inculcated"
As for the primordial days of Synanon for the most part what I’ve come across tells of Dietrich starting running his game or the precursor to it in the twelve-step setting and then breaking off to form Synanon.

I have no links that provide additional details about Deitch and his journey from The Narcotics Farm to Synanon. This one that turned up covers the book and expands just an ity bit http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/201 ... 1935-1975/
Quote from: "dragonfly"
I guess I'm gonna have to call Deitch himself and ask him what came first the brainwashed chicken or the Feds on Maoist acid?
LMAO! Do please, let me know how that call goes.

Excerpts from a cached version of this article which may or may not be already pasted on another thread Deitch tells a slightly different (perhaps more forthcoming or revised) version than others. In this interview he attributes his recovery to Synanon whereas previous accounts acknowledge his relapse following his time on The Narco Farm, but mentions of his subsequent journey to Synanon were brief and along the lines of seeking training. Interestingly, in this interview he also asserts that Synanon was his "first exposure to peer based mutual help".

David Deitch, PhD and George De Leon, PhD on Recovery Management and the Future of the Therapeutic Community
Written by William L. White, MA   Tuesday, 21 September 2010 16:44  Counselor Magazine

This article—the third in a series of articles profiling pioneers of modern addiction treatment—engages two leaders of the international therapeutic community (TC) movement. Dr. David Deitch is one of the most singular figures in the American TC movement and one of the few people whose career transcends the infancy, adolescence and maturation of TCs around the world. Dr. George De Leon has spent a career conducting and publishing scientific studies of TCs, and using the results of these studies to guide the evolution of the international TC movement…
David Deitch: It’s a delight to participate with you and George to reflect on the evolution of the therapeutic community. I come to this discussion with a lengthy history of over 60 years in the addiction world. My first education was regrettably my early use of heroin, which I began at the age of 15. In 1951, I was arrested for drug possession and entered addiction treatment at the federal prison/hospital in Lexington, Kentucky (known as “the farm”). Upon release, I finished high school and became excited about learning, particularly philosophy and psychology. I continued sporadic college education amidst a continued cycle of relapse, crime and arrest. I was unable to get it together in spite of multiple treatments. At each institution, I tried hard to understand what was wrong with me. I attended every group, had great and caring psychiatrists, but always relapsed upon my return home. Then in 1961, I left New York in search of a new rumored “cure” called Synanon in Santa Monica, California.

Synanon was the beginning of the American TC movement and my first exposure to peer-based mutual help. It had everything—a charismatic leader, colorful ex-cons, con artists, motorcycle gang members, great jazz musicians, liberated women. We (recovering addicts) did everything, including security. Everybody started at the bottom and earned their way up. It wasn’t a treatment program; it was an amazing community, and every­one contributed to its magic. Synanon was a new society that honored the outsider, played to the rebel. It was a place where we entered to get clean and ended up seeing ourselves as the heroes of a new movement. These were the days before Synanon evolved into a cult and eventually imploded.

Many of us who left before Synanon developed into such a closed community were called upon by different agencies to help start new therapeutic communities. Daytop Lodge was the first. The lead psychologist for the Brooklyn Department of Probation, Alex Bassin, and the Chief Probation Officer, Joseph Shelly, visited Synanon and embraced it as an answer to the growing heroin problem in New York. They sought funds from NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] to place addicts on probation into a Synanon-like setting and recruited me to develop that program. In 1965, we, along with Monsignor William B. O’Brien, formed Daytop Village. Daytop Village marked a break from Synanon and set the model for future TCs in terms of acceptance of government funding, evaluation procedures and external governance.

1965-1970 in New York was a breeding ground for TCs due in great part to the influence of Dr. Efren Raimirez, a psychiatrist recruited as New York City’s first “drug czar” by Major Lindsay. Efren, who had been trained in the Maxwell Jones TC model, persuaded me to use the term therapeutic community (TC) as a more scientific way to describe our method. Until that time, we had proudly used the term, “A Humanizing Community.” Efren hosted regular meetings of key people interested in the treatment of heroin addiction. These meetings included Mitch Rosenthal, who developed Phoenix House; Judy Densen-Gerber, who founded Odyssey House; and a young social worker, who helped create Samaritan Village. Within a few years, Daytop graduates went on to help build Gaudenzia in Philadelphia, Gateway in Chicago, Walden House in San Francisco, and Marathon House of New England. By the 1970s, a full fledged TC movement was spreading across the United States, Europe and Asia. TC methods became more diverse across these different geographical, cultural and political contexts. Since this period, I have had the privilege of observing and participating in the worldwide spread and evolution of the TC as a treatment for addiction.
Bill: Thanks, David. George, could you introduce yourself to our readers and add your thoughts on the early evolution of the TC movement?

George De Leon: As a jazz musician, years before my career as a psychologist, I understood the drug problem through its impact on friends and fellow musicians, some of whom turned their lives around in Synanon. I had early contacts with Daytop Village and Synanon groups in New York, but my work in the TC movement began when Mitch Rosenthal asked me to bring my research skills to help in the development of Phoenix House, circa 1967.

Inculcate, could you help me find the link that was used here. I would like to follow the trail that just may give me more info concerning Marathon House.

excerpt from your post: ^
Quote
1965-1970 in New York was a breeding ground for TCs due in great part to the influence of Dr. Efren Raimirez, a psychiatrist recruited as New York City’s first “drug czar” by Major Lindsay. Efren, who had been trained in the Maxwell Jones TC model, persuaded me to use the term therapeutic community (TC) as a more scientific way to describe our method. Until that time, we had proudly used the term, “A Humanizing Community.” Efren hosted regular meetings of key people interested in the treatment of heroin addiction. These meetings included Mitch Rosenthal, who developed Phoenix House; Judy Densen-Gerber, who founded Odyssey House; and a young social worker, who helped create Samaritan Village. Within a few years, Daytop graduates went on to help build Gaudenzia in Philadelphia, Gateway in Chicago, Walden House in San Francisco, and Marathon House of New England. By the 1970s, a full fledged TC movement was spreading across the United States, Europe and Asia. TC methods became more diverse across these different geographical, cultural and political contexts. Since this period, I have had the privilege of observing and participating in the worldwide spread and evolution of the TC as a treatment for addiction.
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Offline Inculcated

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #19 on: January 11, 2011, 10:32:29 PM »
Quote from: "heretik"
Inculcate, could you help me find the link that was used here. I would like to follow the trail that just may give me more info concerning Marathon House.
Sure:
A “Pioneer series” PDF link
The other search results for the same article from counselor magazine say that the “webpage cannot be found” and seem to be only retrievable by google cache at this time.

 I’d be very interested to read anything that comes from you following that trail regarding Marathon or even Phoenix House or threads you create about your experience of those programs, Heretic.
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Offline heretik

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #20 on: January 11, 2011, 11:14:26 PM »
Quote from: "Inculcated"
Quote from: "heretik"
Inculcate, could you help me find the link that was used here. I would like to follow the trail that just may give me more info concerning Marathon House.
Sure:
A “Pioneer series” PDF link
The other search results for the same article from counselor magazine say that the “webpage cannot be found” and seem to be only retrievable by google cache at this time.

 I’d be very interested to read anything that comes from you following that trail regarding Marathon or even Phoenix House or threads you create about your experience of those programs, Heretic.

I sure will accommodate. Thanks.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

dragonfly

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #21 on: January 12, 2011, 01:49:52 PM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline heretik

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #22 on: January 12, 2011, 02:23:09 PM »
Quote from: "dragonfly"
Thanks Inculcated, I read the David Deitch article...

I suspect that somehow, the Feds were getting curious about communist brainwashing and instigated all this TC stuff...

I guess it could be that chuck D just accidentally discovered the dynamics on his own but that seems unlikely...

Too many random people suddenly being funded by NIMH to not have some sort of mastemind behind it...

Not that it matters, Its just so fascinating...the whole human capacity to be brainwashed...how our basic human need to connect can be turned against us...

You said it right there, funds. IDK about a mastermind, but people were falling all over one another to get their  product out there to get the money. Treatment Center models were the new fade...according to some. The gov't was interested in spreading the wealth.
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dragonfly

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #23 on: January 12, 2011, 06:48:45 PM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Inculcated

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Re: David Deitch
« Reply #24 on: January 12, 2011, 11:05:21 PM »
Indeed it is and at the moment it is still a working link to a very interesting PDF. One of the authors is the same William Whitehead who conducted the above quoted and linked interview with Dietch and DeLeon….
It’s got a strong lead in to an informative body of work, then it goes askew with a bit of revisionist history that has become all too familiar
(See Deitch laments under subsequent developments  p. 12)
I'm also going to put excerpts from and a link to it in the confrontational attack therapy thread.
Edited to add: LMAO just realized it is the same fricking article as posted in the confrontational attack therapy thread. Okay, I'm going to step away from thinking because clearly my brain is at status :ftard: tonight. In my brain's defense it’s been tweaked (the article) renamed and loaded with a couple of graphs and I've just come off of reading mind numbing excerpts of MSDS reports contrived to be more obfuscating than a shill troll could ever aspire to compose.
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Offline Inculcated

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David Deitch Duplicity or Dissonance...
« Reply #25 on: January 23, 2011, 12:49:51 AM »
From Heretik’s contribution  in The Seed forum which happened to include quotes including but not limited to Daytop and Phoenix House David Deitch opportunistically casting aspersions on Straight --thereby seizing an opportunity to imply that their tactics are legitimate and Kid cruelty free and that the absence of physical restraint/violence in their respective programs means an absence of indemnic abuse.
Quote
The LA Times noted in 1990 that Phoenix House and Daytop use peer pressure and confrontation like Straight but for shorter periods, with smaller groups, and that they also provide formal education.
That rag sure needs to retract that flat out BS! Over two years for me and many many others and the girl who had the bunk above mine at Millbrook spent about five years in that so called short term exposure!
Formal education? Only one of the four locations I went through was even accredited and the others had packets instead of text books and passed off grounds keeping duties as horticulture class.

Quote
Former Synanite Dr. David Deitch, then a Phoenix House director, has stated, "A client must have the choice of leaving treatment, even if the youngster is on probation and the alternative is jail."(19)
Excerpt from Ursus' post on the same thread
Quote from: "Ursus"
Riiiiiight. Someone oughta inform all those kids in Daytop (David Deitch) that there simply has been some kind of misunderstanding re. the concept of "choice." Along with similar misunderstanding re. the attack therapy ... which must be called "something else" now for perception management purposes. It's nothing short of surreal to read Deitch spouting this stuff in print.
Freedom of choice from the guy whose made a career of promoting (even w/ legislation) and profits from remand situations. ..yeah. Tell it to the TYC kids who had threats of their PO being called hanging over them for even the most petty infractions or objections.Tell it to the kids whose parents were told to bar them from returning home and to report their splitee kids as runaways (some need no such motivation, but that’ll keep for an abusive treatment setting as an abdication of parenting/ perpetuation of parental abuse rant some other time). Tell it to the kids shipped time zones away from home to a place where residents and counselors are keenly aware of the “inventory”  of those who object to a given aspect of Daytopian life…some (those who are closer to aging out or have much to fear where they’ve come from ) are told they’re free to leave any time whilst others are put on a van to the city to see the doc’ and then put on "one to ones".And for that matter confrontational attacks were at the time of that quote and are to date still integral and central to the milieu.

David Deitch’s self promotion in speaking out against Straight (which was already circling the drain at that time) is not dissimilar to Hazelden renouncing the use of verbal abuses/confrontational attack therapy at places like Daytop and Phoenix House in the mid eighties. Interestingly both Daytop and Phoenix House inherited a number of Straightlings in the early-mid nineties. Lol it is fuckin’ surreal.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free”  Nikos Kazantzakis

dragonfly

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Re: David Deitch "Change agent"
« Reply #26 on: August 13, 2011, 11:53:50 PM »
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »