INDEX OF QUOTES
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Fritz Redl was an internationally acclaimed scholar and clinician who cared about aggressive delinquent children. He was their friend and mentor, with great insights into the complexity of helping them. Redl understood the nature of their early developmental deprivation, the destructive power of their social reality, and the frequency of physical and psychological conflicts they experienced in their daily activities at home, in school, and on the streets. As Redl studied the problems of treating these resistant children who were in the juvenile justice or the mental health system, he concluded that the use of individual psychotherapy, by itself, was not powerful enough to make a difference in their lives. Redl’s response to this treatment problem was to expand the concept of the treatment team to include all the staff members who worked and lived with these children every day. This meant reaching out and providing training for more skills to child care workers, hospital attendants, classroom teachers, recreational leaders, probation officers, and other community and residential workers. In 1952, Redl documented and promoted his new total treatment philosophy by publishing, with David Wineman, two now classic books entitled Children Who Hate and Controls From Within. These books, which were based on Redl’s clinical and educational treatment program with delinquent boys at Pioneer House in Detroit, presented the helping professions with a host of new, exciting, and effective therapeutic concepts and intervention skills, such as The Therapeutic Milieu; Seventeen Management Techniques; Life Space Interviewing; The Meaning of Punishment; The Dynamics of Group Life; and The Significance of a Therapeutic Relationship. These concepts and skills were embraced enthusiastically by Redl’s colleagues, and by 1960 they were adopted and incorporated into the basic training curriculum for graduate students wanting to work with these children. It was amazing how this one man, Fritz RedI, was able to bridge and unite the fields of special education, social work, clinical psychology, child psychiatry, and child care counseling through the elaboration of his concepts. It was amazing how this one man’s treatment philosophy significantly changed the ways in which professionals approached and helped these troubled children. Redl’s time was a creative time, a time of growing professional optimism, program innovation, and expanding treatment services. Thirty-five years later, the concepts remain, even though the professional optimism has faded. Redl died in February 1988, but not before he commented on the changes in our society and discussed the current status of high-risk children. He talked about the multiplying number of urban gangs; the increase in poverty among minority children; the increase in violent delinquent acts; the drug wars; the sexual exploitation of children; the rapid rise in the number of homeless, abused, neglected, disappearing, and alcoholic children; and the shocking frequency of adolescent suicides and severe mental illness. He also reflected on the marginal school programs for these children, the lack of group homes, and the exorbitant cost of residential care. At the end of this conversation Redl shook his head and said, sadly: “All of a sudden, in today’s society, we have to prove that somebody ought to take care of our children. This is a frightening thought!” For a man who had dedicated his life to caring for these children, it was painful to acknowledge the changes in society, and the deep and pervasive negative attitudes our citizens have toward helping troubled children and youths. As a result, new policies, programs, and resources will not be developed for these children unless new leaders emerge in the field to challenge public apathy and resistance to caring for these children. |
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