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Some confrontation groups use strong group pressure to break down a at-risk youth’s defenses in order to compel “honesty.” A target of such a group is sometimes referred to as “being on the hot sea.” Trying to defend against interrogation but subjected to intense attack from the group, the at-risk youth 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 the confrontation groups is one of invasion and exposure. In contrast, WRA Boarding School for Troubled Youth seeks to build a climate characterized by trust and openness. The at-risk youth in our WRA Youth Program 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. The WRA Youth Program 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. The WRA Youth Program is based on the application not of teen peer coercion but of teen peer concern. While teen peer concern may sometimes lead to teenage peer pressure, the WRA Youth Program has no place for pressure without concern, for such is only psychological intimidation. While many strong feelings may be shown in a WRA Youth Program group meeting, the goal is not to force an unwilling at-risk youth to bare his emotions. Advocates of exposure procedures may define a good meeting as one in which an at-risk youth “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, WRA Youth Program groups usually are less threatening to an at-risk youth than are groups based on intense confrontation and exposure. Youth Programs assume initial fear and distrust to be normal responses as one enters a group. The at-risk 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 at-risk youth who enters a group that is intent on exposing him feels very much alone, an outcast. If he resists the advances of a confrontational 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 at-risk youth to determine whether Charles was redeemable and could be accepted into his group. It might be asked what gives any group of strangers the right to engage in a searing confrontation with an at-risk youth. The poet Sir Rabindrinath Tagore wrote: “He only may chastise who loves” Further, we wonder who has the wisdom to determine whether a person is “redeemable” or not. In the WRA Youth Program group members never sit in judgment with authority to reject one another. WRA Youth Program assumes that the at-risk youth 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 at-risk youth rather than exploit him. They learn that the new comer’s superficial behavior mush 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. The WRA Youth Program does not assume that at-risk youth with problems need to be forced into communication; the at-risk youth in a WRA Youth Program 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.
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