ABSTRACT
The organization of an environment that provides these two conditions (tentative access to every matter and the absence of worrisome signs from the child’s life) requires a communal, rather than an institutional, pattern of living. The village tries to remove from the child’s life any worrisome signs concerning his identity. The life conditions in the youth village are such that the youth’s relations with his physical, human, administrative, and mental surroundings are full of repeated messages concerning his identity, telling him where he belongs, to whom he is important. The different ways of organizing and running the types of youth villages may be compared to the work of a film director vis-a-vis a producer. The youth’s motivation to strengthen or weaken a relationship is affected by his understanding of the world around him and of the changes taking place inside himself, causing him to gain or lose interest in his contact with the person or subject.
