and reach thousands of daily visitors
27 SEPTEMBER 2010
NO 1633
An innovative book
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 thé 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.
ALBERT E. TRIESCHMAN, JAMES K. WHITTAKER AND LARRY K. BRENDTRO
Trieschman, A.E.; Whittaker, J.K. and Brendtro, L.K.
(1969). An extract from the preface written forty years ago in The Other
23 Hours. New York. Aldine de Gruyter. pp. xii – xiii.
