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12 NOVEMBER 2008

NO 1372

Programming

The eight types of "goals" for which "programming" seems to be used do not claim to be mutually exclusive, nor is it our intention here to weigh their merits and defects more in detail. For, more important than the question of just which "goal" programming sets itself is the spirit in which any one given program goal is pursued. And in this respect the last few decades have really brought with them a contribution to the field of recreational and group work programming without which the mere idea of a therapeutic use of programming would have remained indeed unthinkable. What we refer to here may summarily be described under the title of: The Mental Hygiene Approach to Programming. This can easily be depicted in its crude outlines as follows:

No matter which "goal" we have in mind in our program planning, whether a given program is any good or not depends primarily on the question of whether it achieves its goal without doing damage to the individual or the group involved in other respects. Let us use just a few crude examples as an introduction to the problem. Even a "good" program in terms of efficient competitive athletics may sometimes be ill-designed for some of the members of a team. With too heavy insistence on athletic triumph on high levels in the foreground, individual participants may be thrown into the doldrums of inferiority feelings or of anxiety about rejection by their own group for not meeting the standards. Groups which are not adequately prepared for a specific level of competition may be thrown into stages of triumphant snobbishness, real hostility to the opponent instead of fair team spirit, or apathetic withdrawal out of discouragement after defeat. The demand of the "Mental Hygiene Approach" to programming would, therefore, not be to substitute different goals for the original ones, or to substitute mental hygiene speculations for program goals, but to scrutinize what is being done to people under the title "programming" from the viewpoint of mental hygiene effect. In this way, for instance, sometimes the goal of using the phase of a program for the "socialization" of the youngsters involved might be retained, but different specific games might be selected, or the way in which children are handled while engrossed in those games might have to change. The modem trend in mental-hygiene-conscious group work is to retain the value of originally designed program goals but to blend criteria for good programming from that angle with the mental-hygiene-produced awareness of its effect on people. This development of a "mental hygiene approach to programming" has first led to a debunking of the original naive concept of what constitutes a good program as such. We have learned to consider the importance of making the program fit the needs and readinesses of the children rather than expose children to activities which are traditionally considered "good" for them without mental hygiene scrutiny. In this way, the mental hygiene point of view in programming has already, even on the straight group work scene, developed much more "psychiatric sophistication" in the field of program planning, even where no direct therapeutic tasks are involved.

FRITZ REDL AND DAVID WINEMAN

Redl, Fritz and Wineman, David. (1952). Programming as a fully fledged therapeutic tool. Controls from within: Techniques for treatment of the aggressive child. New York. The Free Press. pp. 85-86.

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