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Commentary on Marc I. Ehrlich's “adolescents in transition: A look at a transitional treatment center”
Author(s) -
Rasmussen Gary G.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6629(198101)9:1<93::aid-jcop2290090110>3.0.co;2-r
Subject(s) - community center , competence (human resources) , similarity (geometry) , psychology , context (archaeology) , public relations , center (category theory) , identity (music) , social psychology , sociology , gerontology , political science , computer science , medicine , law , geography , artificial intelligence , chemistry , crystallography , physics , recreation , archaeology , acoustics , image (mathematics)
Today's residential treatment programs often have the same goal of their historic precursors. This goal is the restoration of the program members to functional and integral community members. Marc Ehrlich's article is a clear statement of how this goal is objectified by focusing on work behaviors, contrasting premembership identities with an ideal identity supported by the program, providing clear status hierarchies, and by attempting to replicate the values, behaviors, and expectations of the community. As research indicates that community treatment programs fare no better than institutions in aborting reinstitutionalization, this paper considers how these transitional communities are similar. They are similar in defining residents in a problem paradigm, in a reluctance to bring the community into the programs, in maintaining a strict separation of functions and status between the staff and residents, and in separating the resident from the program at the point the resident has demonstrated competence within the context of the program. The paper suggests that the strength of community programs is their similarity to extended families, and this similarity ought to be more fully explored and developed.