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Abstract
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We have tried to define in this paper what we feel are the necessary ingredients in treating the adolescent drug abuser and have tried putting the idea of a "therapeutic community" within a theoretical framework for treating a specific population.
We defined what problems we felt needed to be provided for if one considered the issue of adolescent drug abuse without a treatment model in mind. We offered guidelines in providing for these problems and tried to give a general picture of the major diffculties in working within this kind of model. Not all the problems have been solved by us, and we have tried to clearly show where we find paradoxes and unsolvable problems.
We have described some of what it is like to struggle with the problems of normal parenting of adolescents, with providing a medium in which ego defects can be repaired, and with providing a forum where internal psychological conflicts can be resolved. We have shown how we have constantly to keep in mind our own unconscious and conscious needs and the difficulties encountered in trying to do so.
Our search continues to be one for a model that offers the moet effective form of treatment to the patient and that also makes our work more gratifying, our intimacies more pleasurable, and our struggles less painful. The task of our staff is this constant search, with its joy and anguish for a utopian goal that can probably never be reached. We are reminded again and again that the rewards and successes are in the search itself, but they can only be seen when we take our eyes off the distant horizon where they keep futilely seeking the journey's end. |