“That hurts you badder than punchin’”: The Troubled Teen Industry and Therapeutic Violence in Group Rehabilitation Programs since World War II

Abstract

To explain the development of the troubled teen industry and the autocratic therapeutic community (ATC) movement, this article explores the rapid diffusion of Synanon-type programs in the United States since the early 1960s. Instead of tracing a history back through self-help programs similar to Synanon, a history of therapeutic violence in experimental group therapy settings suggests a new genealogy and perspective. This line of inquiry highlights the central importance of delinquency treatment methods and programs that originated during World War II, originally called the “total psychotherapeutic push method” and then renamed, “guided group interaction.” This article argues that American professionals and politicians in the 1960s were primed to endorse Synanon’s confrontational peer-counseling approach. The early adoption and rapid spread of the ATC model was facilitated by 2 decades of interest, research, policy entrepreneurship, and professional enthusiasm for guided group interaction before the spread of Synanon-type programs. That broader context helps explain the diffusion of military innovations into the civilian rehabilitation programs that normalized the use of therapeutic violence in ATCs and the troubled teen industry in the United States.