NO 1823
ASPECTS OF POSITIVE PEER CULTURE
Trust and Openness versus Invasion and Exposure
Some confrontation groups use strong group pressure to break down a person's defenses in order to compel "honesty." A target of such a group is sometimes referred to as "being on the hot seat." Trying to defend against interrogation but subjected to intense attack from the group, he eventually breaks under the strain of prolonged confrontation. Defenses are shattered, a flood of emotion comes forth, and the inner person is bared for the scrutiny of the group. The climate of these confrontation groups is one of invasion and exposure.
In contrast, PPC seeks to build a climate characterized by trust and openness. The young person in a PPC group does not enter a group to be placed on the hot seat; rather, he is, in effect, in the help seat, and his peers' preoccupation is to show their concern for him. This is no minor distinction.
PPC groups have no concern other than to be of help. Groups are never empowered with the "right" to punish, harass, restrict privileges, exclude, or in any other way hurt a member. PPC is based on the application not of peer coercion but of peer concern. While peer concern may sometimes lead to peer pressure, PPC has no place for pressure without concern, for such is only psychological intimidation.
While many strong feelings may be shown in a PPC group meeting, the goal is not to force an unwilling youth to bare his emotions. Advocates of exposure procedures may define a good meeting as one in which somebody "breaks down." While an individual should feel free to express any feeling to his group, achieving some catharsis in which all comes pouring out is not the object. For this reason, ppe groups usually are less threatening to a young person than are groups based on intense confrontation and exposure.
(PPC) assumes initial fear and distrust to be normal responses as one enters a group. The youth who has experienced disillusionment in past human relationships has no reason to believe that he should trust other group members. This distrust is not a "sick defense" but the appropriate response to a world that has not always been safe. The person who enters a group that is intent on exposing him feels very much alone, an outcast. If he resists the advances of a confrontative group, the members become more and more adamant; should his defenses hold, the group becomes frustrated and the attack increases to an almost unbelievable barrage of screaming and shouting that nobody would interpret as "caring."
A recent newspaper account of a group program built on the notion of confrontation and exposure emphasizes this problem:
During the first day at the home, Charles experienced the most harrowing one-and-a-half hours of his life. In a searing confrontation with fellow delinquents to determine whether Charles was redeemable and could be accepted into this group ... (italics added).
It might be asked what gives any group of strangers the right to engage in a searing confrontation with another person. The poet Sir Rabindrinath Tagore wrote: "He only may chastise who loves" [1]. Further, we wonder who has the wisdom to determine whether a person is "redeemable" or not. In PPC group members never sit in judgment with authority to reject one another.
PPC assumes that the young person will initially distrust the group, which bears the burden of proof that distrust is groundless. During the vulnerable initial days in the program, the other members offer assistance to the new youth rather than exploit him. They learn that the newcomer's superficial behavior must be tolerated for a while, for any attempt to destroy his front will frighten him and perhaps drive him away from the group.
Many group programs have been criticized for the way they collapse defenses that have been constructed over a lifetime. This concern is valid. PPC does not assume that people with problems need to be forced into communication; the young person in a PPC group does not enter into some once-in-a-lifetime episode of contrived communication with a group of strangers. Rather, foundations are laid for a lifetime of experience with care, concern, and mutual trust.
HARRY VORRATH and LARRY
BRENDTRO
Vorrath, H. and Brendtro, L. (1985). Positive Peer Culture. New
York: Aline de Gruyter. Pages 9-10
