Author Topic: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?  (Read 2404 times)

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Offline Anonymous

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Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« on: July 17, 2009, 07:04:49 PM »
I am a survivor of Desisto.
Desisto operated  like Elan or Synanon.

Does anyone know which gulag Desisto has roots in?
I find it difficult to believe Mike Desisto formulated  Synanon-identical methods of torture and thought reform on his own?

Can anyone help me?

thank you.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2009, 07:08:47 PM »
Nice try, troll. This is a standard technique for programs to pose as information seekers. Then someone posts the full name of this individual, accusations and rumors all in one post. Then they sue, and the end result is bankrupting the fornits hosting fund and we will all be silenced. Nice try, but people here are not as stupid as you think.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2009, 07:21:49 PM »
Quote from: "DONT RESPOND"
Nice try, troll. This is a standard technique for programs to pose as information seekers. Then someone posts the full name of this individual, accusations and rumors all in one post. Then they sue, and the end result is bankrupting the fornits hosting fund and we will all be silenced. Nice try, but people here are not as stupid as you think.

Clearly there is no coherency behind your assertion.  Please ignore this poster, and post information relevant to the question, if you have any.
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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2009, 07:36:16 PM »
Quote from: "Desisto Survivor"
I am a survivor of Desisto.
Desisto operated  like Elan or Synanon.

Does anyone know which gulag Desisto has roots in?
I find it difficult to believe Mike Desisto formulated  Synanon-identical methods of torture and thought reform on his own?

Can anyone help me?

thank you.

I agree, you're a troll of the highest order.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2009, 07:57:13 PM »
Quote from: "bobpeterson1973"
Quote from: "Desisto Survivor"
I am a survivor of Desisto.
Desisto operated  like Elan or Synanon.

Does anyone know which gulag Desisto has roots in?
I find it difficult to believe Mike Desisto formulated  Synanon-identical methods of torture and thought reform on his own?

Can anyone help me?

thank you.

I agree, you're a troll of the highest order.

Presenting a relevant question about the program that brutalized me does not infer I am a troll. Going by writing style, you just agreed with the poster known as "thewho."

If you do have nothing relevant to say in response to my inquiry, please do not bury it in cyber theater. Thank You.

Mike Desisito will not be suing anyone because he is dead.
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Offline Ursus

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2009, 02:06:32 AM »
I'm not so sure that I'd use the word "spin-off" to describe Desisto... A. Michael Desisto founded the school in West Stockbridge, MA in 1978 primarily with pre-paid tuition funds from parents who followed him from another place, Lake Grove School in Long Island, NY. He left the directorship of that place allegedly due to ideological differences; I believe he had been there 11 years. It sounds like he had been working out his ideas of how to deal with "troubled youth" for some time. I know that he was big on therapeutic communities and Gestalt therapy; beyond that I'm hard-pressed to think of more at the moment...

As to "Positive Peer Culture," that comes straight out of TC experiments that Lloyd McCorkle did at a reformatory for boys in Highland, NJ in the mid 1950s (before Synanon). Back then it was called "Guided Group Interactions." Don't forget that National Training Labs (T-groups, prototype for encounter groups) was up in Bethel, Maine. There may well have been study groups for that kind of stuff in the 50s and 60s at MIT and BU, since people known to be associated with it were teaching there. I also don't doubt that he and Tom Bratter knew each other (John Dewey Academy in Great Barrington, MA; also big on TCs).
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Offline Oscar

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2009, 02:16:29 AM »
In a article in Education week you have to pay for it is stated:

1) That he was a theology student
2) That he was teacher, therapist, and director for eleven years at The Lake Grove School in New York but he was kicked out because the administrators didn't like the results he produced

It is often stated that he had a master degree, but from what school?

Clearly his methods seems to have been based on Gestalt therapy, but in a very different way than it is used in the Monarch Wilderness program. On Youtube you can search for "Teenager ausser kontrolle". While it is in German you can see how Gestalt therapy is used normally.

When he founded his school it was based on Gestalt therapy but he took ideas from the other early members in the business and Synanon was state of the art back then. There are also a lot of testimonies that points in a direction where he used his position to achieve some personal needs.

If you want to research more into this person there is a lot of litterature out there. I will recommend:

Into My Own (2006) by Roger Kahn (Son couldn't handle life after Desisto)
The Crazy School (2008) by Cornelia Read
Death In Paradise (2001) by Robert B. Parker

You may also try to interview the actor Susan Sarandon as she made a marketing piece for the school.

Some may claim that the only positive we can remember the Hogan family for is their fathers partipation in the rather well-played serie Thunder in Paradise where they blew parts of the school in Florida up in the episodes "Deadly Lessons".
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Offline Ursus

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Re: Where did Desisto "spin off" from?
« Reply #7 on: March 03, 2010, 09:29:16 PM »
See also:

    De Sisto's Controversial Leader Dies
    viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3367[/list]
    « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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    Offline Ursus

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    Getting that DeSisto Glow
    « Reply #8 on: March 03, 2010, 09:30:22 PM »
    This article that came out about a year after Desisto broke off from Lake Grove School and went his own way:

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    TIME
    Behavior: Getting that DeSisto Glow
    Monday, Nov. 26, 1979

    Disturbed kids are straightened out at a Stockbridge school

    To the casual visitor, it looks like a typical boarding school for the overprivileged—300 acres in Stockbridge, Mass., a mansion, dorms, art studios, a gym, music rehearsal rooms and a barn, and 150 teen-agers so bright-faced and chipper that local residents say they can identify them by the "DeSisto glow."

    In fact, DeSisto at Stockbridge is a haven for the walking wounded. Some of the students have been beaten and abused much of their lives. At least half of them were drug users by age twelve. Others had been given up on as hopeless schizophrenics, and some of the girls—and boys —were rape victims and prostitutes.

    As new students quickly learn, the school is a therapeutic bootcamp. Each youngster has individual psychological sessions at least once a week, and everyone on campus—faculty and students alike—is subjected to group therapy virtually all the time. The psychology is Gestalt, involving constant confrontation and intense expression of feeling. Discipline and structure are maintained primarily by the students themselves. The use of drugs, alcohol, or any violence or sex results in an instant dorm meeting and, sometimes, a call for a temporary expulsion. The student is sent outside the gates, then allowed back in after agreeing to perform 250 extra work hours for the community. If homework is neglected or a bed left unmade, fines are subtracted from the $10 weekly allowance earned by each student. An honor code requires everyone to report infractions by other students.

    Though DeSisto may sound like a work camp dreamed up by Dickens and Freud, it has successfully straightened out disturbed youngsters who had failed to respond to treatment elsewhere. One boy, who is due to graduate next spring, had previously been expelled from a state mental hospital as uncontrollable. A recent graduate, now working on the school staff while he waits to enter college, had a long theft-and-burglary record. Until the school turned him around, he had an unusual career goal: to be a bank robber.

    The school is the brainchild of Mike DeSisto, 40, a bearded and pudgy teacher turned therapist. For eleven years, DeSisto was the salaried director of Lake Grove, a Long Island school where he developed his therapeutic program. Fired after he was accused by the Lake Grove trustees of trying to break up the school, the strong-willed DeSisto announced plans to found his own school; and most of the faculty and student body quit to go with him. Parents of the kids were loyal too. DeSisto bought the Stockbridge property with tuition money they paid in advance.

    One of DeSisto's basic ideas is not unique to Gestalt psychology: that all youngsters, not just troubled ones, need structure and responsibility to get through adolescence. Says he: "You can't change anybody. All you can do is set up a supportive, warm, natural environment and then a natural process takes over." But all is not sweetness and light. At endless and merciless dorm meetings, rationalizations and excuses are brusquely dismissed as "bullshit," perhaps the most commonly used word on campus.

    "I see this as an accepting, caring place," says a girl named Lisa. From across the room comes the commentary of a fellow student: "Do you believe that? I have a hard time believing anything you say." Admits Lisa: "I bullshit a lot." In a therapeutic community, no one is ever offstage, and Lisa's reputation for lying will make every conversation a confrontation until she breaks the habit.

    The basic question at DeSisto, in and out of therapy, is "Where are you?" The answer usually comes in Gestalt terms of physical feelings. "My heart is pounding," one girl will say, or "I'm shaking all over. I'm very embarrassed." The student will be urged to "stay with the feeling." There is a lot of gentle mockery, and requests for hugs are granted, but no Esalen-like, nudie-feelie techniques are allowed. Guilt feelings are frowned upon, and youngsters are not allowed to blame themselves for long. One girl whose parents beat her is coached to tell residents of her dorm: "It was their fault, not mine."

    DeSisto requires that parents get involved in therapy too, so that they change along with their children. He regularly brings together as many as eight families for week-long sessions of parent-child group therapy. There are also monthly meetings of DeSisto parent groups in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Boston—nuclei for what DeSisto hopes will some day be a nationwide chain of therapeutic schools. Says he proudly: "I want to make this one a flagship."


    © 2010 Time Inc. All rights reserved
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    Offline Ursus

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    Former DeSisto headmaster and executive director Paul Babeu
    « Reply #9 on: February 20, 2012, 06:03:36 PM »
    Former DeSisto headmaster and executive director Paul Babeu (during the years 1999-2001), and as-of-now Sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, as well as vocal chest thumper regarding the illegal immigration issue, is currently facing some personal difficulties re. his public image.

    Moreover, Babeu has also opted to resign his position as Arizona co-chairman for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

    These developments follow in the wake of allegations of possible intimidation tactics used to silence a former love interest, a man originally from central Mexico, as well as numerous online postings of a nature some might consider less than discreet.

    See the thread:


    There is also some chatter on the internet that Babeu may have engaged in similar transgressions with DeSisto students during his tenure at the school...
    « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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