Narcotics research, rehabilitation, and treatment. Hearings, Ninety ...

313The concomitant is the assumption upon the part of other members that thenew member is potentially equal to them and is equally capable of doing for himselfand growing up.In AREBA, it is assumed that the new entering member knows nothing, haslearned nothing but self-destructive, maladaptive behavior, thinking, and feeling.The members and staff of AREBA have in their own growth learned to betruly concerned for the entering member. They enjoy the challenge and will involvethemselves with the new member. They know that the more they teach,the more they learn. They desire to give. They are given the time and knowledgeto teach the newer members everything they need to know to be mature, loving,adult human beings. An entering member's potential for being a mature individualis assumed when he arrives.There is also the assumption that the emotionally and socially bankrupt memberhas learned nothing constructive for himself. The staff and senior residentsof AREBA painstakingly teach the new member minute by minute, hour by hour,day by day, week by week, and month by month how to do for himself ; how, ineffect, to act like a mature human being. After a few months, the member startsto learn how to feel like an adult human being—and feels what an adult humanfeels.In the Casriel Institute, the patient is confronted at the stage of his emotional,vocational, educational, and social maturation at which he enters the group therapyprocess and is taught from that level upward.There is a general avoidance of constructive confrontation throughout oursociety's social fabric, because most people fear the consequences of challengingand being challenged. If a child disagrees with his parents, he is scolded, punished,rejected. If he disagrees with teachers, he is reprimanded, expelled, orfailed. If one disagrees with the boss, he may be fired for insubordination,recalcitrance or personality incompatibility. If one disagrees withthe social power structure, he may be considered a traitor, criminal, rabblerouser, coward, anarchist or fascist. Disagreement with any authority withinour culture gives one a stamp of social disapproval. We have grown up with theattitude that even if we're right, to disapprove of authority will result in painor loss of love.Translated into a peer relationship, the attitude becomes, "I'll mind myown business." 1. If I try to help, I'll only get hurt (i.e., the murders that inthe sound and sight of others were not interdicted). 2. If I reach out and showmy concern by expressing constructive criticism, I leave myself open and vulnerableto other criticism * * * people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.This peer indifference and isolation is endemic throughout our social fabric!human—including therapeutic—relationship if personal growth is to ensue. TheYet constructive challenge between equals is precisely what is needed in anytherapist, be it friend, doctor, or group member, will, in this open bilateralinteraction, change and grow too. The therapist must not only be willing andable to change, but to show by example—by his role model position—that theenjoyed and benefited from the experience, though he too was once frightenedand lost. He was not delivered into adulthood magically well but had to undergohis own painful therapeutic re-education, which was hard work, and only laterbecame training for what he is now doing.The humanistic-peer attitude on the part of the therapeutic teacher-leaderis essential. Peer relationship on the part of the therapist demands a morepersonal kind of involvement. It leads to a quicker, more resonant, and fullerhuman growth for the patient. It is diametrically opposite to the formal, detached,impersonal, nonfeeling therapeutic relationship demanded in our trainingand experience in psychoanalysis.The effectiveness of humanistic-peer involvement as a therapeutic treatmentprocess has several significant implications.First and foremost is a total change of attitude that professionals have todevelop in order to effectively engage in this type of process.Second, the obvious empirical observation that a feeling human being, whohas learned for himself as a patient-student the process, and has the capacity,ability, and desire to engage others, can be an extremely effective therapeuticchange agent. Previous academic training is of relatively little use, though previouslife experiences are of great value as are one's own former neurosesor character-logical problems which have been resolved. In line with this, curedhysterics are most effective with uncured hysterics; cured alcoholics are most60-296—71—pt. 1— —21