Pubdate: Fri, 15 Sep 2006
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Section: Feature Article
Website: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm
Author: Stephen Young
Note: Stephen Young is an editor with DrugSense Weekly.

BOOK REVIEW: HELP AT ANY COST BY MAIA SZALAVITZ

Help At Any Cost by Maia Szalavitz (Riverhead Books, 325 pages, $25.95)

Under what moral system would it be considered perfectly reasonable 
to torture children, both physically and emotionally, sometimes to 
death? What moral system would insist such actions are the best thing 
for those children?

Maia Szalavitz's book "Help At Any Cost" doesn't directly ask or 
answer those questions, but the questions lurk around the margins of 
Szalavitz's engaging text, as she explores how "tough love" morphed 
from a cult-like catch-phrase to a hugely profitable industry.

The coercive treatment programs examined in the book claim to deal 
with issues beyond drugs, and some kids end up in such programs for 
years at a time even though they never tried drugs. But drugs are 
never far from the subject at hand (with some young people being 
dragged into programs for merely dressing like "druggies"), offering 
disturbing clues to the moral sensibility guiding the drug war itself.

The financial and emotional exploitation of a family in crisis serves 
as the starting point for many of the episodes described in the book. 
Things generally get worse from there.

The author interviewed hundreds of people involved with programs such 
as STRAIGHT and WWASP, both those who were coerced into the programs 
and their parents, as well as employees of the programs. The stories 
of shattered families and remorseful parents who thought they were 
doing the best for their kids can be heart-breaking to read.  Imagine 
the pain of Sally Bacon, who sent her 16-year-old son off to a 
wilderness treatment experience from which he would not return alive, 
as she read the blood-spattered pages of a journal describing the 
torment of his experience, and knowing that she ignored his pleas for 
help (as instructed by staff from the wilderness program), precisely 
when he needed her most.

Difficult as episodes like that are to read, particularly if you are 
a parent, Szalavitz has performed an important service for those want 
to understand both the psychology and morality of the drug war.

While drugs and drug culture are frequently blamed for moral decay, 
"Help At Any Cost" shows a moral code within the tough love movement 
which is fluid to the point of nihilism.

The stated goal of the programs is behavior modification and 
personality change.  Adolescents are supposed to come back from the 
programs literally as different people, though the always fact-based 
Szalavitz finds no evidence to show such efforts succeeding. While 
there are anecdotal success stories, the anecdotal failure stories 
are more convincing.

Anyone who claims to know how to properly rearrange another 
individual's personality claims God-like insight. Starting from that 
position, and insisting that they are saving the other person from 
themselves, it's not hard to see how clearly immoral behavior can 
come to be justified.  And there's a disgusting amount of immoral 
behavior described at these treatment facilities: Past sexual abuse 
is used as an emotional weapon; basic nutrition is withheld; privacy 
is denied 24 hours a day; physical attacks are encouraged; and acute 
humiliation is viewed as therapy.

Even after deaths in such programs and former clients being diagnosed 
problems like post-traumatic stress disorder, some tough love 
advocates still refuse to acknowledge any shortcomings.

One section of the book shows how parents who committed their 
children to one coercive program were themselves subjected to 
mind-control techniques during weekend-long seminars. "From the very 
beginning of the seminar, efforts were made to undermine our current 
belief systems and values.  We were told early in the game that our 
current belief system was what was causing our problems in life," one 
parent reported after attending a seminar.

The parent was told by one of the seminar speakers, "There is no 
right or wrong, only what works and what doesn't work."

While most of the book consists of straight reporting, Szalavitz 
offers pointed analysis at the end. Regarding the seminar speaker who 
said, "There is no right and wrong," Szalavitz pulls no punches:

"This is unquestionably a sociopathic ideology: it means that people 
are morally justified in doing whatever they believe 'works' and that 
they aren't responsible for the harm this may cause to others, 
because others' own choices put them in whatever situation they now 
find themselves.  While many of the other programs are less obvious 
about presenting these ideas, they all teach that the ends justify 
the means and that altruism is foolish."

Her point is illustrated repeatedly in stories from the facilities, 
particularly by one anecdote from a harsh treatment center in Jamaica 
for boys.  A rumor spread among the group that if anyone died, the 
program would be shut down for six months.  So some desperate boys 
made a detailed plan to murder the weakest of their cohorts.  The 
plot was stopped before it could be carried out, but the idea that 
even troubled teens would contemplate such a thing shows the real way 
these programs influence young people.

Hatred of certain drugs and their users seems to be the prime moral 
directive of the tough love movement.  Like anything that defines 
itself strictly by what it hates, that movement, along with the 
larger drug war, remain exercises in fundamental amorality.
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