Yablonsky studied sociology and criminology at Rutgers University and in 1958 at New York University for the Ph.D. doctorate...
During this time period, and part and parcel of the fieldwork requisite to getting his degree, Yablonsky had a research project involving a residential treatment facility in New Jersey called Highfields, founded by F. Lowell Bixby and Lloyd W. McCorkle.
Nigh a decade prior, Lloyd McCorkle and Dr. Joseph Abrahams worked out a methodology which became known as Guided Group Interaction. This was accomplished under the auspices of the Dept. of Defense during World War II at the Fort Knox Rehabilitation Center for Military Prisoners. It involved what can easily be described as a regimen of "confrontational group therapy."
Along with founding Highfields in 1950, McCorkle went on to work as a warden in the New Jersey prison system, later heading up the entire corrections system for the state. Abrahams went on to work with schizophrenics and the criminally insane at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC and various hospitals, therapeutic communities, and prisons elsewhere.
Yablonsky, of course, went on to discover and extol the virtues of Synanon, becoming one of its more influential fans and apologists.
GGI is the direct progenitor of "Positive Peer Culture," which is in use, in one form or another, at pretty much every program in the TTI (with the possible exception of the IFB homes).
