Learning from experience in therapeutic community living

Citation

Kennard, D. (2014), "Learning from experience in therapeutic community living", Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 35 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/TC-05-2014-0016

Learning from experience in therapeutic community living

Article Type: Letters From: Therapeutic Communities: The International Journal of Therapeutic Communities, Volume 35, Issue 2.

I was very interested to read Aldo Lombardo's paper in this journal “LLE and LfA: two powerful tools for TC workers” (Lombardo, 2014). It is rare that someone has the opportunity to compare these two well-established workshop formats at first hand, and Aldo's long experience in therapeutic communities (TCs) makes him an ideal observer. However I must correct him on one point, regarding the origin of the workshop format. The Living Learning Experience format was devised in 1978 by Peter Hawkins, Jeff Roberts and myself as Members of the Association of Therapeutic Communities Training Group. It was called “Learning from experience in therapeutic community living” and was held at Lower Shaw Farm in Swindon. Jeff and I wrote this up in Group Analysis (Kennard and Roberts, 1978, 1980), as the journal Therapeutic Communities had not started yet.

Its success led to it becoming an annual event in Swindon and later also in Leeds, continuing until the late 1980s, usually attracting around 30 participants with six staff members. Numbers declined, perhaps linked to the launch in 1986 of the ATC/RCN one-year certificate course in TCs, and the workshops had ceased by 1990. The LLE workshops developed by Rex Haigh and Jean Rees in 1995 were a welcome and successful revival of the format.

Coming to Aldo's comparison of the two workshop formats, I think he is right that the difference between them echoes differences between Foulkes's and Bion's therapeutic styles. An anecdote relates how in group sessions at Northfield Military Hospital during Second World War, Foulkes suggested to the soldier-participants that they should disregard his rank whereas Bion pointed to the stripes on his uniform and said, “these cause a lot of trouble.”

More generally, the main purpose of the LLE format was, and is, to give participants the experience of what it is like to be a patient/resident in a TC. All psychodynamic therapy trainings view the experience of being a patient in the model as a crucial part of training, in order to fully appreciate how the model works, and to develop sensitivity to what the patient is going through. The workshop provided this opportunity, albeit briefly, for TC staff. It enabled them, for example, to feel what it was like to “act out” in the resident role in ways they cannot do as staff members – e.g. to walk out of a community meeting. By contrast the LfA format focusses on learning at first-hand about group dynamics and authority issues, influenced by the Tavistock inspired Leicester Conference format. The aim is not to replicate the TC experience, as the LLE does, but to create situations that maximize opportunities for staff to develop and deepen their understanding. Hence staff members in the workshop sitting together to emphasize their role. In a way, this approach can be traced back to Bion's style of group work at the Tavistock Clinic, described in his classic book Experience in Groups (Bion, 1961), which was aimed at educating professionals, not treating patients, but was often misapplied as the latter.

Properly understood for their different aims, I think both workshop formats have great value and may be best left as they are rather than amalgamated.

David Kennard

References

Bion, W.R. (1961), Experiences in Group, Tavistock Publications, London
Kennard, D. and Roberts, J. (1978), “Learning from experience in therapeutic community living: a residential weekend”, Group Analysis, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 223-6
Kennard, D. and Roberts, J. (1980), “Therapeutic community training: a one-year follow-up”, Group Analysis, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 54-6
Lombardo, A. (2014), “LLE and LfA: two powerful tools for TC workers”, Therapeutic Communities, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 5-9