Word: synanon
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...getting a doctorate, one man heads a poverty-research company, two are federal poverty officials. Only one is back in prison. To Grant, this shows that criminals can be cured by trying their best to cure other criminals?an idea confirmed by many other experiments and selfhelp groups like Synanon and Alcoholics Anonymous...
White Man's Opiate. Dr. Karl Deissler, medical director of Synanon, thinks that methadone alone deprives its users of the will to deal with the problems that led them into drugs. Hassan Jeru-Ahmed, who runs the Black Man's Development Center in Washington, D.C., shares that skepticism. Describing methadone as a "white man's opiate," he uses it to ease withdrawal, not for maintenance. Other critics question the wisdom of allowing an individual to remain dependent upon any drug...
What's most enduring, though, about the movie qua movie is the depth of intimacy between camera and subject, a depth which bespeaks much patience and long familiarity. Warrendale is neither the expose that Follies was not a panegyric like Synanon, but a complex view of an institution which isn't open to easy evaluation. It's clear that more such places are needed, yet it's also clear that personal as well as social obstacles are in the way; with the possible exception of Walter, none of the staff comes off appealing or even particularly competent, more like...
...psychiatrist friend once told me that in therapy, as in show business, you gotta have a gimmick. Howard Lester's Children of Synanon keyed on The Game, a nebulously-defined situation in which a circle of adults and ten-to fourteen-year-old kids were supposed to get out front through continuous verbalization. Warrendale has the "holding session," which is spoken of as a physical vet loving restraint in which hostile feelings are "worked out." But since these holding sessions mean holding down every one of a child's limbs, physically demanding immobility, it's hard to see exactly...
...months for an individual. Though those who leave the communities often return to narcotics, most of those who complete the programs stay on. forming a cadre to help other addicts through the ordeal of rehabilitation. A few go on to form similar communities. More than five Synanon chapters have sprung up across the country since Synanon was founded...