This book describes the first therapeutic community of Synanon, an innovative drug rehabilitation centre near Santa Monica beach which began in 1958. Synanon centred around Charles E. Chuck Dederick, who began the community/family/home for individuals voluntarily assisting one another through the experience of drug withdrawal and rehabilitation. Many had extensive histories of crime, imprisonment, and failure to cease drug use via the route of traditional mental health services. Synanon was a highly controversial therapeutic community and counselling style, and remained such throughout it's history. Its confrontive counselling style, called attack therapy, had its believers and its critics both in and out of the traditional mental health community. The concept of former addicts treating recently-arrived addicts did not fit some of society's view of the professional hospital environment. Individuals wanting to have a chance to change their lives at Synanon were invited to join the organisation if they were willing to live by the house agreements which were basically no drugs and no socially embarrassing or inappropriate behaviour. Synanon did not consider its residents to be sick. Synanon's emphasis on self-help and self reliance is one of the major areas of contrast between it and Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is built upon a person's reliance upon a higher power. Synanon was established upon the basis of self-help and actualisation.
This book describes the first therapeutic community of Synanon, an innovative drug rehabilitation centre near Santa Monica beach which began in 1958. Synanon centred around Charles E. Chuck Dederick, who began the community/family/home for individuals voluntarily assisting one another through the experience of drug withdrawal and rehabilitation. Many had extensive histories of crime, imprisonment, and failure to cease drug use via the route of traditional mental health services. Synanon was a highly controversial therapeutic community and counselling style, and remained such throughout it's history. Its confrontive counselling style, called attack therapy, had its believers and its critics both in and out of the traditional mental health community. The concept of former addicts treating recently-arrived addicts did not fit some of society's view of the professional hospital environment. Individuals wanting to have a chance to change their lives at Synanon were invited to join the organisation if they were willing to live by the house agreements which were basically no drugs and no socially embarrassing or inappropriate behaviour. Synanon did not consider its residents to be sick. Synanon's emphasis on self-help and self reliance is one of the major areas of contrast between it and Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is built upon a person's reliance upon a higher power. Synanon was established upon the basis of self-help and actualisation.
Subject terms:
holistic care, interpersonal relationships, mental health problems, reality therapy, self-advocacy, self-determination, self-help, social work history, therapeutic communities, alcohol misuse, communities, drug misuse, empowerment, group therapy, groups;