NCJ Number
147626
Journal
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic Volume: 33 Dated: (1969) Pages: 233- 243
Date Published
1969
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This paper describes how one group of young patients encouraged their members to be uncooperative with staff members and to resist treatment; one type of staff intervention used to dilute their negative influence upon each other is described.
Abstract
The adolescent patients in the group resided in a private, 150-bed, psychiatric hospital, where they lived on mixed wards with older patients. The staff analysis of resistant and hostile behavior by the group toward staff reasoned that the juveniles united against adult authority figures to distract the juveniles from a consideration of what they mean to each other and from an examination of their feelings about authority figures. Group interaction has consistently shown that when an adolescent becomes frightened by intimacy with a peer or by negative feelings toward a friend, he/she will often displace the aroused fear or hostility to staff members. Status in the peer group is all-important and cannot be risked by exposing vulnerable or hostile feelings to friends. The major tenet of this paper is that such displacement of feelings toward staff, which can disrupt treatment, can be subverted in some measure by direct work with the juveniles in their natural groups. The aim of such groups should be to help the juveniles sublimate feelings rather than displace their anxiety to the staff. Another objective should be to help them to understand some of the irrational sources of their uncomfortable feelings toward each other and the staff. 8 references