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1 SEPTEMBER 2008
NO 1342
The other 23 hours
Nearly twenty years ago, when Fritz Redl and David Wineman were writing the preface to Children Who Hate, they stated their primary objective thus:
Our main goal is to encourage the theoretician as well as the practitioner in all walks of life with children to take seriously the need to become more specific about ego control as well as about the techniques of handling child behavior ... and we want to induce communities, children's institutions, and school systems to take new courage from an attempt to gain insights about children which have close bearing on the behavioral level and a practice in daily life.
This work along with its companion volume, Controls from Within (published together as a single volume, The Aggressive Child), is today a unique and enduring classic in the children's field. The authors' work in Detroit and their subsequent publications about their early labors in residential treatment stand today as a pioneering effort from both a practical and a theoretical point of view. Not only were these two professionals intimately involved in the "life space" of the children at Pioneer House, their subsequent theoretical formulations dealt in great detail with the subtleties and perplexities of everyday behavior management with hyperaggressive children. It is sad to note that since the publication of The Aggressive Child there has been precious little written about this most crucial subject. It was our aim in writing The Other 23 Hours to bridge somewhat the gap that exists between the theoretical expertise of the professional clinician on the one hand and the very practical, often mundane problems of those who live with the children for the 23 hours apart from the therapy hour.
Many of our observations were made at the Walker Home for Children in Needham, Massachusetts. Walker is a residential center for severely disturbed, acting-out boys. The program includes individual psychotherapy, group therapy, and remedial education. It is also a training center for the mental health professions. The child-care worker bears the brunt of the therapeutic task in this setting and there are currently six full-time child-care workers on the staff. Another main source of our observations was the University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp – a treatment camp for emotionally disturbed and delinquent youngsters and a training center for students in the mental health professions – where two of the authors were associated for a number of years.
Essentially, the book attempts to do two things: to shed some light on the major routines of the day (wake-ups, mealtimes, and bedtimes) and to deal at length with two phenomena that are part and parcel of every children's institution: the temper tantrum and the therapeutic relationship. Additional chapters deal with the therapeutic use of games and activities with disturbed children, some pitfalls to be avoided by child-care staffs, and the rather involved process of observing and recording children's behavior. The initial chapter sets forth the rationale for the therapeutic milieu and deals with its component parts and their application to the problems of the individual child.
In no sense do we intend The Other 23 Hours to present a definitive theoretical model to be followed studiously in every detail by other child-caring facilities. It is our firm belief that the institutional model that ultimately will survive is the one that remains eclectic and able to incorporate new theoretical formulations as they are developed. The theoretical underpinnings of this book derive essentially from three different areas: psychoanalytic ego psychology, the "life space" model of Redl, and some of the new sociobehavioral theories. If The Other 23 Hours is able to make a substantive and practical contribution to the statement that "the child-care worker is the most important figure to the child in the institution," then our major purpose will have been well served.
AL TRIESCHMAN, JAMES WHITTAKER AND LARRY BRENDTRO
Trieschman, A.E., Whittaker, J.K. and Brendtro, L.K. (1969). From the Preface to The Other 23 Hours, New York: Aldine de Gruyter
Reference
Fritz Redl and David Wineman, The Aggressive Child (Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press, ig57), p. i5.
