ABSTRACT
The therapeutic community has provided a treatment structure which integrates social and interpersonal approaches with psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Therapeutic communities have sometimes been criticised as inaccessible to outside scrutiny and accusations made that they have been reluctant to define and explain their practice. Therapeutic communities have had to define their work in order to retain their credibility and funding both within the health service and the Prison Service. In marked contrast to the cognitive behavioural approach, significant developmental experiences, key attachments, loss and separation are explored. Likewise, learning occurs through the pro-social culture, where acts of antisocial behaviour such as violence are highly discordant with community values and where the principles of joint problem solving, non-violent conflict resolution and accountability dictate the behaviours which are and are not deemed acceptable. The task has been to describe what happens in therapeutic communities, how it is managed, how staff are trained, how the process is recorded and how change is measured.
