@ Whooter,
Hostage just can’t work. It certainly works to describe my personal experience as i was taken out of my home in my sleep, my family was gone, and I was not given any answers to where I was being taken except that it would just be for a weekend and I was going to have fun.
But the word hostage implies that the context is, overtly, one that utilizes force over it’s victim. Hostage is a word that dances around the issue in the same way as ‘patient’, only on the other side of the coin.
Again, this is unique. If an individual is a prisoner the environment will reflect that. It will be clearly understood that the guards are there to keep him by force, same with the walls and bars. It is also very clear that this is not for his good, but to protect the larger society. Everyone’s roles are clearly spelled out.
The same goes for the mainstream understanding of the term ‘patient’, which is why I believe the TTI doesn’t use it because it would betray that definition. If we describe an individual as a patient there is a clear understading that the therapist is working with him within a frame of agreement, and that the overall effort is to relieve the symptoms of the patient, to help the patient. This is in contrast with a prison that is, overtly, operating forecully upon individuals (prisoners) for the purpose of relieving symptoms on the societal level.
But we have a very real situation in the TTI where teens are placed there by force, often times in areas that hold little possibility for escaping, yet the environment is one that reflects itself as one that is therapeutic and gives results construed to be with relation to personal growth and achievement. This context is unique, and prevalent in the TTI. Seeing that they have developed a context that functions so profitably it only seems right that there be a proper epistemology with which to discuss it.
I think my word provides an apt description for the position of many program teens, Projectipant.
“I was a projectipant at CEDU. I was not a patient, or a student, it was like prison only with the added frustration of being told that it was not, and that if I was there I was agreeing to be there, as there were no rules only agreements curiously, so no, the words prisoner or hostage don’t capture the experience. The results of the program offered as emotional or personal growth were not mine, I was a projectipant of the process.”
@ Danny, you wrote, "Well whether you want to believe it or not you are wrong very wrong. I personally know many folks who chose a TC over juvie/prison and would consciously do it again. So Awake this is not, "a generalized result this is a actual direct experience result". Yes I would choose Elan over any juvie or penal system."
I think the issue of who is given the option as an alternative to a criminal sentence is just important to identify, and there is plenty worth discussing. I think that this word gives us an opportunity to measure results coming from distinct groups rather than lumping everyone together uncategorically. It’s a bit like when the banks decided not to file the high risk home loans with the low risk ones. They bundled them all together and traded them on the open market. We payed pretty dearly for a mistake that distorted the profit potential of that industry. I think if we don’t concern ourselves now we will find we have to be concerned about it later.
