Overview: Basic TC Concepts: Orientation to De Leon’s Eight Essential Concepts

This curriculum exposes participants to the basic assumptions common to most TC’s, although the implementation of the assumptions varies in form.  In any TC, assumptions that promote global changes in lifestyle and identity include the participant developing new roles, being public, personal accountability and participation, and operating from a position of including both self and others.

Dr. George De Leon has identified 8 “essential elements” of a Therapeutic Community.  These elements are the theoretical distillate of observation and study of multiple TC’s.  In these modules, participants are educated about the eight essential concepts, and are provided an opportunity to practice them on a smaller scale.  In order for participants to incorporate theoretical concepts into their experience, we use “basic assumptions” in our community.  Each assumption frequently relates to more than one of the De Leon concepts.  The basic assumptions, then, are brought to a tangible, experiential level by the use of teaching tools, activities and methods that are common in most TC’s.  The basic assumptions highlighted in this curriculum were selected by virtue of their importance in preparing participants for participation in a therapeutic community.  To promote treatment readiness, the participant must gain an understanding, not only of expectations, but also of how fulfilling these will improve his life and widen his perspective.  Towards this end, DVD’s, experiential exercises, ceremony and personalized discussion surround each of the assumptions.  The assumptions are presented essentially as antidotes to alienation, criminality and addiction. Assumptions are presented as tools to aid the participant in improving emotional literacy, overcoming addiction and engaging in the habitation needed to fulfill his role as citizen, family member, parent, and more.

The two DVD’s used exemplify use of these assumptions.  Weapons of the Spirit is a documentary depicting a real life community where members chose to participate in a “conspiracy of goodness” helping themselves and saving some 5000 Jewish families during the holocaust.  The basic assumptions of best community practices utilized in the TC are evident in the film.  Basic Assumptions of a Therapeutic Community is a training tape made by Zev Putterman and alternates between a lecture of a TC practitioner to those who graduated from different TC’s who articulate how they have actualized these assumptions within the TC and in their life as citizens. 

Overview: Motivation for Continued Treatment

This unit utilizes four documentaries that present life histories of both TC participants and TC pioneers, and one documentary funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and produced by Edward James Olmos regarding street life in East Los Angeles. TC participants in both prison and community-based TC’s demonstrate learning to speak out rather than act out regarding their most difficult issues. DVD’s also include interviews with parents and children left behind by those incarcerated. Culture, experience, race and socio-economic backgrounds of those depicted in the documentaries are varied and representative of the current CDC population and experience; a range of men are depicted from those who have successfully returned to society to one man who has been turned down by the Parole Board seven times. Students watching the DVD’s are given assignments to identify and articulate similarities in their lives to the lives of those that have successfully overcome criminality and addiction. Students examine choices they have made in the past and options that are available to them in the future. Exercises and questions that accompany the DVD’s examine the effects of incarceration, addiction and death on family members as well as secrets that have promoted violence and alienation. Importantly students are given assignments to re-examine their concepts of respect, loyalty, and pride from the perspective of anti-social and pro-social perspectives.

Overview: Relapse Prevention

In the arena of addiction and criminality, some of the most dramatic and far- reaching solutions have come from the people who have suffered the most. The pioneers of the Twelve Steps, Therapeutic Communities and other self-help groups were individuals who were moved to engage in a personal revolution to address their own responsibilities, and overcome their exclusion, repression, and denial. By demonstration, they have paved a way for others to follow. The objective of these modules is to create a forum in which students can examine common emotional themes that lead to relapse. Concepts such as exclusion, repression, denial, emotional illiteracy, and lack of vision are studied, and evaluated for their common role in relapse to drugs and criminality.

Criminal addicts develop emotional conditioned responses that result in “ knee-jerk” reactions to certain conditions. Relapse to drug addiction and criminality can be viewed as one such emotional reflex. What is viewed as a “fall” or “relapse” starts long before that actual use of drugs or criminal acts. A relapse response is a result of a build up that occurs long before the actual “trigger” event. This unit will introduce students to some of the basic elements that they will need to examine regarding their behavior in order to prevent relapse once they are fully engaged in a recovery process. The six modules that compose this unit are excerpted and modified from a 3 volume series of Extensions curriculum entitled CONCERT, an acronym for Class on Conditioned Emotional Response Retraining, which has been used successfully with similar populations of participants. For participants who length of stay exceeds the duration of the Thresholds of Change curriculum, this unit provides a segue into the CONCERT series.

The work involved in this unit is primarily introspective in focus. This unit relies heavily on personal (homework) assignments and on small group and individual presentations. The focus of this unit is to challenge students to evaluate their paradigms and prejudices about recovery and relapse, and identify their conditioned responses and evaluate them with peers. Documentary movies have been chosen because of the cultural diversity they represent (Asian, Afro-American, Hispanic, Caucasian).