Cult Around the Corner
I have been so busy running around, liquidating my assets, and filling up my smoothie punch card. Once you buy ten smoothies you get entered into a sweepstakes to go on a cruise!! They put all the winners on a ship and take them out to sea and then you spend the next six years diving for water melons.
Review of "Cult Around the Corner"
And the government is trying to cover it up. Everyone who comes back from the cruise looks so healthy and so quiet. He loves logic puzzles. The Smoothie Believers have the best swag. We should def split the chips and guac.
- More from the same.
- The Cult Around the Corner: A Handbook on Dealing with Other People's Religions!
- The Cult Around the Corner.
- Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science.
- S.P.I.R.E. Decodable Readers, Set 1A: The Pet Hen (SPIRE)!
Can I stand on this chair? When it comes to pineapples look for golden color and sweet scent. Corn should never be broken, certainly not bent. A ripe eggplant should be tight and elastic, never soft.
The New Smoothie Place Around the Corner is Delicious and Definitely Not a Cult!
Szalavitz, an investigative reporter, is at her best tracing the main players in the TTI, how they share similar backgrounds e. Their failure to change their methods or learn from their mistakes raises the ongoing question of whether these "treatment specialists" are delusional and narcissistic "true believers" or sociopaths just out to achieve power, fame, and wealth. Veteran cult-watchers will recognize this debate as one that perennially engages journalists, researchers, and former cultists alike. While many of her statements might seem controversial, I suspect the sections in which Szalavitz reviews the research on adolescent drug use and psychosexual development will cause the greatest uproar among readers who know or have troubled teenagers.
Szalavitz is clearly in the camp that believes that the country's drug policies are determined by political and cultural agendas that ignore science. She eschews the histrionics of the drug war advocates and "Just Say No" campaigners, and attacks their uninformed and superstitious views on drug abuse and addiction.
She documents how scare tactics such as the claim that minor drug experimentation or even listening to "druggie" music or wearing "druggie" tee-shirts will inevitably lead to active addiction have led to ineffectual and even destructive drug-abuse programs. Szalavitz also documents, in sometimes scathing terms, how the TTI employs parents' testimonies of miraculous changes, and the supportive statements of respected leaders such as former President and First Lady George H.
These "facts," often presented by TTI "professional" staff with no addictions training or clinical credentials, may be used to overwhelm frightened parents into enrolling not only the identified problem child but his or her siblings, as well. As Szalavitz correctly notes, in reality the vast majority of teens who experiment with drugs and other forms of self-destructive behaviors do not become addicts and, in essence, "grow out of it. We now understand that the "shock and awe" approaches used by highly confrontational addictions and delinquency treatment programs are ultimately unsuccessful at best and often harmful at worst.
Elberg currently serves as president of the International Cultic Studies Association. Rather than attack KIDS as a "cultic" organization, Elberg took the innovative approach of claiming malpractice. In essence, Elberg convinced the jury that KIDS had violated established and well-known guidelines for the competent and ethical practice of medical and psychiatric treatment. Nevertheless, according to Szalavitz, the jury concluded that "KIDS was more a cult than a clinic-and that such treatment had no place in a healthcare system" p.
Szalavitz ends her book with a useful appendix, "For Parents of Troubled Teens," which contains information about how to obtain appropriate treatment for defiant, oppositional, antisocial, and addicted youth.
Book Review - The Cult Around the Corner
The information is presented in a reasoned, undramatic manner with references to several well-known Websites for additional information. One section is an especially helpful "questions parents should always ask" format that is concise yet reasonably comprehensive.
Szalavitz is understandably puzzled that residential treatment for children TTI is a multibillion-dollar industry, while proven treatments such as multisystemic family therapy MSFT , motivational interviewing MI , and cognitive-behavior therapy CBT , "which are actually cheaper than long-term residential care She notes that the United States also has a gross shortage of child psychiatrists. While I agree with her general points here, Szalavitz neglects to mention the harsh reality that, while MSFT, MI, and CBT have indeed been proven to be significantly more effective than other treatments, including residential treatment, the success rates for these interventions are still disappointingly low.
This minor failing aside, Help At Any Cost is still a must-read for those interested in adolescent treatment in general, and in how an iatrogenic therapy program can degenerate into a therapy cult.
See a Problem?
Increasing motivation for change. Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches: New York, Pergamon Press, Preparing people for change. Motivational Enhancement Therapy Manual: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,