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24 AUGUST 2009
NO 1478
The power of peers
August Aichhorn was an Austrian educator and psychologist who challenged traditional punitive approaches to "wayward youth." In 1925, he described his attempts to transform negative peer influence in a group of delinquent youth."1 In an early experiment, Aichhorn placed several particularly difficult boys together in the same group. Quickly banding together, they pumped one another up with wild behavior and delighted in purposely defying rules. Aichhorn instructed his staff not to interfere. Using this permissive approach, it took staff six months to settle this group down, by which time the youth literally destroyed their cottage. This experiment demonstrated that catharsis only fuels negative behavior.
Anna Freud was a colleague of August Aichhorn until World War II when she went to England to work with war orphans. She described in careful detail how children alienated from adults developed strong dependency on peers.2 A group of Jewish children were rescued from a Nazi concentration camp. When placed in a group setting, these children quickly bonded together to fight all efforts of adults to control them. Yet in spite of their total opposition to authority, they were remarkably kind and supportive to one another, showing great concern and self-sacrifice. Peer attachments can provide powerful substitute belongings to children uprooted from adults.
Fritz Redl was trained by both Aichhorn and Anna Freud in Austria. He carried this philosophy to the United States where he worked with highly troubled youth from Detroit. In spite of their problems, he saw strengths, contending that he should write a book titled The Virtues of Delinquents but it might be hard to find a publisher. Redl was one of the first to carefully document the process of "group contagion" among "children who hate." While these kids hated adults, many showed extreme loyalty to peers. Even when the group was absent, its negative power persisted: Redl noted that attempts to individually counsel troubled youth were often sabotaged by the gang under the couch.3
Columbia University professor Howard Polksy produced fresh insights on negative peer influence in his classic book, Cottage Six. Polsky summarized decades of research on deviant youth subcultures: "delinquents learn delinquent techniques from each other and overcome inhibitions about breaking the law by mutual stimulation and reinforcement."4 This of course describes the processes others would call peer deviance training.
But Polsky found most research studies were superficial and fragmentary, leaving investigators with factoids instead of workable theories. Investigators were uncertain just how deviant youth subcultures operated or how they might be altered. To remedy this situation, Polsky became a participant observer in a cottage of troubled youth for a period of eight months. He quickly discovered that what treatment staff claimed was going on in promotional brochures was a far cry from reality. In fact, youth had set up their own hierarchy of power and peer abuse with adults locked out of this delinquent underground. Polsky concluded that the fundamental treatment task was not to treat the individual in isolation but to create a positive youth culture which would have a profound positive influence on youth. He called for new treatment models to transform deviant peer influence into a positive therapeutic force. Positive Peer Culture emerged as a response to this call.
LARRY BRENDTRO, MARTIN MITCHELL AND HERMAN MCCALL
Brendtro, L.K., Mitchell, M.L. and McCall, H. (2007).
Positive peer culture: Antidote to 'Peer Deviance Training'.
Reclaiming Children and Youth, 15, 4. p.202
NOTES
1. Aichhorn wrote a German-language book on reclaiming delinquents in 1925. It was translated into English in 1935 as Wayward Youth. New York: Viking Press.
2. Freud, A. (1965). Normality and pathology in childhood. London: International University Press.
3. Redl was trained by August Aichhorn and Anna Freud in Austria. He emigrated to the United States as World War II erupted and began working with youth in Michigan. See: Redl, F., & Wineman, D. (1957). The aggressive child. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Redl clearly described negative peer group processes. As his colleague William C. Morse would note, it would take specific methods of Positive Peer Culture to reverse this destructive process.
4. Polsky, H. (1962). Cottage six: The social system of delinquent boys in residential treatment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation (p. 21).
