Word: vaillants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most brutal attack was saved for L'Ecole Nationale Argentine Bellegarde, a school on Ruelle Vaillant in downtown Port-au-Prince. Two hours after the 6 a.m. opening of the country's 6,000 polling stations, a mob of 50 goons descended on a line of about 100 waiting voters. Using machetes and machine guns, they cut down several Haitians on the spot, then hunted down and butchered many who had tried to flee. One woman was decapitated under an almond tree in the schoolyard. Another was dismembered in an adjacent alleyway. At least 17 people, possibly more, died...
What about expensive hospital treatment centers, now so fashionable that they have become a growth industry with companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange? Vaillant concludes flatly that they do not work in the long run, although he believes they may be useful in rescuing, however temporarily, a person who is about to collapse under the strain of his illness. Nor can a seriously ill alcoholic "will" himself to give up liquor...
...Recovery," says Vaillant, "occurs through a series of events coming together." One is that alcoholics usually need some kind of substitute for alcohol, such as tranquilizers or psychotherapy or a support group of people with similar problems. "Second, even though it's terribly unscientific, alcoholics usually do seem to need some kind of source of hope and selfesteem, or religious inspiration-whatever you want to call it-and that seems more important than hospital or psychiatric care...
...What Vaillant calls the "natural healing processes" that relieve suffering and create hope are best fostered today, he believes, by Alcoholics Anonymous. He argues that the first step to sobriety is an acceptance of the first precept of A.A.: "I am powerless over alcohol." Says Vaillant: "A.A. is the most effective means of treating alcoholism, and it worked for sophisticated, Harvard-educated loners as well as for gregarious blue-collar workers...
...most impressive aspects of Vaillant's work is his own deep respect, strengthened instead of diminished after close analysis of 600 lives, for the capacity of human beings to heal even their most inexplicable and terrifying afflictions themselves. He also argues persuasively that it is not only essential, but possible, for alcoholics to regain control of their lives. -By Jane O'Reilly. Reported by Mary Carpenter/New York and Ruth Mehrtens Galvin/Boston