CONTENTS

 

 

APPENDIX CONTENTS. 474

 

APPENDIX 1. Obituary of Dr. Neville Thomas Yeomans Psychiatrist 1928 - 2000. 476

APPENDIX 2. List of the Early Actions and the Isomorphic Social Action Neville Had me Experience as Action Researcher 478

APPENDIX 3. Diagnosis of Fraser House Population as at 30th June 1962 (Clark, A. & Yeomans, N., 1969 Page 56) 481

APPENDIX 4 The Roles of Fraser House Nurses – A Paper by Patients (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4, 17-20) 483

APPENDIX 5 - Fraser House Big Groups – A Paper by Patients (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4, 50-54) 488

APPENDIX 6 - The Roles of the Fraser House Patient/Outpatient Committees. 491

APPENDIX 7 - A list of the Questions That Were Asked in Neville’s Values Research. 496

APPENDIX 8 - Research Questionnaires and Inventories -                       Neville T. Yeomans Collected Papers 1965, Vol. 11. 497

APPENDIX 9 - A List of Other Inventories Developed and Used at Fraser House (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4 , p. 43): 498

APPENDIX 10 - A partial List of Research by Dr. Neville T. Yeomans other Research with Colleagues during the years 1959-1965. 499

APPENDIX 11.  Organizations Assisted by Members of the Fraser House Research Group on an Individual or Workshop Basis - 1965. 504

APPENDIX 12. A Comparison of Goffman’s ‘Total Institutions and Fraser House. 505

APPENDIX 13. Features of Fraser House That Were Neither Present in the Paul and Lentz’s American Research nor Referred to by the American Researchers (Paul and Lentz 1977). 511

APPENDIX 14. A List of Advisory Bodies and Positions Held by Neville. 513

APPENDIX 15. Participants in the Watson’s Bay Festival (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 3) 515

APPENDIX 16. The Range of Events and Activities Teed up as Part of the Centennial Park Festival. 516

APPENDIX 17.  Terms Listed in the Natural Business Concepts Lexicon. 517

APPENDIX 18.  Globalocal Realplay - Healing Nightmares. 519

APPENDIX 19. A List of Laceweb Functional Matrices Most of Them Dating From the Late Sixties and Early Seventies. 523

APPENDIX 20. Governments and the Facilitating of Grassroots Wellbeing Action. 526

APPENDIX 21. Nexus Groups’ Constitution. 530

APPENDIX 22. Excerpts From an Aboriginal Woman’s Diary. 536

APPENDIX 23.  A List of Some of the Activities Used in Cultural Healing Action. 537

APPENDIX 24.  A Summary of Ken Yeomans’ 1992 Petford Keyline Survey. 538

APPENDIX 25. Some of Neville’s Actions Leading to the UN Funded Gathering. 539

APPENDIX 26. One Fortnight’s Laceweb Action in the Atherton Tablelands. 539

APPENDIX 27.  The Rapid Creek Project 542

APPENDIX 28. Extegrity - Guidelines for Joint Partner Proposal Application. 543

APPENDIX 29. Inter-people Healing Treaty Between Non-Government Organizations and Unique Peoples  554

APPENDIX 30. The Young Persons Healing Learning Code. 557

APPENDIX 32. A list of Laceweb Aspects as a ‘New Social Movement’ 561

APPENDIX 33. Possible Ways Laceweb Differs From Latin American New Social Movements  562

APPENDIX 34. Cape York Communities Aboriginal Youth Living Well Project 563

APPENDIX 35. Laceweb Ethics. 567

REFERENCES. 569

 

APPENDIX 1. Obituary of Dr. Neville Thomas Yeomans Psychiatrist 1928 - 2000

 

 

 

Neville Yeoman's affection for and empathy with the original inhabitants of Australia began very early in his life when, at the age of 3, he was saved by an Aborigine after he had wandered off and become lost in the bush in far north Queensland. This rescue from certain death, laid the foundations for his later work with indigenous communities as a carer, with an intense interest in the peoples and their cultures. He was a co-healer rather than a prescriber and believed in approaching the problems of mental health, alcoholism and drug addiction from a community perspective. He devoted much of his life to providing counselling and treatment to those most underprivileged and handicapped especially women, alcoholics and drug addicts. After 1975, he extended these activities to northern Australia, from the Atherton Tablelands to the Kimberleys, from Arnhem Land to Central Australia. In a sense it was a repetition of his childhood years when his family travelled like "gypsies" throughout the northern parts of Australia with his prospecting father.

 

Neville Yeomans was born in Sydney on 7 October 1928 to Percival Alfred ("P.A.") and Rita Yeomans. It was the depression and life was hard.  His father, "P.A." Yeomans, a mining engineer (who later became famous for his contributions to agriculture including Keyline Farming, City Forest, Shakaerator plough and other agricultural developments) took the family around northern Australia trying their luck at prospecting. These were important years for Neville Yeomans when many aspects of his character were molded.     

 

The vagabond existence of the family meant that they were never in the one place for long. Experiences such as attending 13 schools in one 12 month period, taught him that friendships were ephemeral and superficial.

 

He completed his schooling at Scotts College in Sydney and then went to Sydney University from where he graduated as a Bachelor of Science (Biology) in 1948. He wanted to work with and heal people and he went on to obtain his Bachelor's degree in Medicine and Surgery in 1956. But it was people's minds that fascinated him most and he completed a Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1959. In the same year he won an overseas scholarship that enabled him to meet with some of the World's leading psychiatrists. Neville Yeomans was a brilliant and sensitive man who understood things in their context, and he had an ability to see things from different perspectives to those commonly held.

 

He was appalled by the methods used at the time to treat psychiatric disease (especially shock treatment which he regarded as a crime) and on his return from overseas he established and became the Director of Fraser House at North Ryde Psychiatric Clinic, Australia's first family Therapeutic Community with accommodation for some 86 adults and children. It was a revolutionary contextual approach that treated psychiatric disease on a family and community basis instead of treatment of just the individual. Patients were able to be rehabilitated and return to society rather than being locked away out of sight and restrained with drugs and straight-jackets. Many of his peers did not understand this radical approach to treatment and Neville was frequently vilified for being out of step with the main stream of things. It is interesting to note that 40 years later, his approach to psychiatric treatment has become the norm rather than the exception.

 

During the period from 1959 to 1972, he ran "healing community" courses for Aboriginal and Islander peoples in Sydney, in country New South Wales and at Alice Springs in Central Australia.

 

He was the Co-ordinator of Community Mental Health  for New South Wales Health Department from 1965 to 1970. He published many papers on psychiatric treatment (which are now held in the Mitchell Library in Sydney) and with a colleague, wrote a book "Fraser House: Theory Practice and Evaluation of a Therapeutic Community."  published by Springer, New York (1969).

 

As his interest in community work developed, he completed a Diploma in Sociology at the University of New South Wales in 1963, to better understand the social aspects of human responses. He also broadened his interests to studying other cultures and their values and, among other things, joined the Australia Eurasian Association in the late 1960's, and followed his passion for multiculturalism. He regarded Australia as a "cooking pot" rather than a "melting pot" of cultures, cooking up a new and better culture for the future! It was on a platform of multiculturalism that he stood for the seat of Philip (Liberal, Sydney) in the 1972 elections and gained sufficient votes not to lose his deposit, but failed to gain the seat.

 

Not content with his already numerous qualifications he went on to complete a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of New South Wales in 1975 and was admitted to the Bar. In spite of this, he was more interested in mediation than litigation and closely studied the mediation systems used in China. He studied Japanese and Chinese languages and travelled overseas to Asia, Europe and the Americas on several occasions over the years. He was an avid supporter of Bliss Symbolics, an international sign language based on symbols.

 

Neville Yeomans was drawn more and more to the area he grew up in and in 1975 he moved back to north Queensland where he became engrossed in working with Aboriginal people. He conducted a private psychiatric counselling and family therapy practice, facilitated community support for Aboriginal and Ethnic groups, established "Healing Haven" houses in North Queensland and assisted in the creation of a black women's shelter in Cairns.

 

In the early 1980's he became interested in and a keen qualified practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) which was a revolutionary way of treating emotional states and of helping people overcome psychiatric illness and addictions. He and a friend, Terry Widders, set up NLP Centres in Cairns, Townsville in Queensland and Bondi Junction in Sydney. Neville Yeomans continued to pay the price of being a pioneer of new ideas and was regarded as a pariah by many of his professional colleagues in the establishment, with many refusing to refer patients to him.

 

In 1987 he was a consultant to Petford Aboriginal Training Farm in far North Queensland and from 1989 to 1994 he facilitated camp-outs/Intercultural Healing Training festivals in the Atherton Tablelands and at the Petford Aboriginal Training Farm. In 1990 he was an Adviser to the Australian South Sea Islander United Council. He was on the Steering Committee for Training on Torture and Trauma in 1994 and conducted a three day training course in Darwin. His working career came to an end in 1997 in Darwin where he was discovered sick with bladder cancer by his youngest son, and brought back to Sydney for treatment.

 

Neville Yeomans was a very intelligent, passionate and insightful person with a deep sense of purpose and an ability to focus absolutely on the job in hand, a characteristic that often made it difficult for those closest to him. He was also an introspective, artistic and aesthetic person who loved music (he played the clarinet) and art and he wrote poetry on a regular basis from the mid 1960's. Many of the poems demonstrate his sharp wit and sense of fun. The hundreds of poems he wrote, which give glimpses of the man within, will be published shortly. His passion was to treat people in need, his skill was his ability to engage with people and to make suggestions for change. His dying wish was to leave a legacy of clinics for Aboriginal people to enable them to help themselves. Neville Yeomans died in Brisbane on 30 May 2000 following a painful struggle with cancer. He spent his final days at home, surrounded by members of his family and friends. He is survived by his two brothers, two half-sisters, five children from two dissolved marriages, and eight grandchildren.

 

Peter N. Carroll

Leura, N.S.W.

 


APPENDIX 2. List of the Early Actions and the Isomorphic Social Action Neville Had me Experience as Action Researcher

 

 

Type

 

Examples of the Early

Social Action

 

 

Isomorphic Metaphor

 

 

Therapeutic Community

 

Fraser House

 

Bondi Junction Network

Geoff Guest at Petford

Small Island Gathering

Jail Groups

 

Group Work

Fraser House Groups

Human Relations Groups

Bondi Junction groups

Petford Groups

Small Island Gathering

Jail Groups

Trauma Support Groups

ConFest Groups

Family Therapy contexts

Healing Ways:

 

Work Therapy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cultural Keyline

 

Cultural Healing Action

 

 

Laceweb Healing Ways

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type

 

 

Family therapy

 

 

 

 

Fraser House:

 Committee work

 Canteen

 Bowling Green

Suicide Support

Domiciliary visits

 

All of listed action

 

Festivals, happenings, events, parties

 

Laceweb sharings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of early social action

 

Fraser House; Small Therapeutic Community Houses; Laceweb action

 

 

 

Letters to global governance

Jail Groups

Networking

Internet

This PhD

 

All metaphoric action

 

New Years Eve Party

Rainforest campouts

At Small Island Gathering

 

Tapped me into Laceweb sharings in Qld. and Darwin Top End; Balmain Work-shops; other Sydney work-shops with Neville; in Australian South Sea Islander Communities; personal co-learning

 

 

Isomorphic metaphor

 

 

Engaging me in family therapy contexts

Festivals

Watsons Bay; Centennial Park; Paddington; Cambelltown; Aquarius at Nimbin; Cooktown

ConFest; Aboriginal & Islander Therapeutic Community Gathering; Small Island Gathering;

 

 

Community Markets

 

 

Paddington; Yungaburra

Rapid Creek

 

 

Paddington, Yungaburra, Rapid Creek; St. Andrews (Vic) Channon (NSW)

 

 

Intercultural

 

Asia Club; Watsons Bay Gathering; Laceweb Networking; Rio Earth Summit

 

Small Island Gathering; Laceweb Networking among Aboriginals, Torres Strait Islanders, Australian South Sea Islanders, Hmong, West Papuans, Bougainvillians, and East Timorese Communities; linking in Malaysia, Thailand and Fiji

 

 

Networking

 

Fraser House Family Friendship networking; Self help Groups; Laceweb Action

 

 

Bondi Junction; Laceweb Action – Atherton/Cairns, Rapid Creek; Byron Bay for Small Island, Australian South Sea Islander Communities;

 

 

Functional Matrices/Self Help Groups

 

Mingles; Connexion; Chums; Inma Nelps; Nexus Groups; Funpo,

UN-Inma; etc.

 

 

Mingles; Inma Nelps; Nexus Groups; Funpo,

UN-Inma; Ematrix; C4OS

 

 

 

Type

 

 

Keyline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of early social action

 

P.A. Yeomans action

Use of Keyline at Festivals

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isomorphic metaphor

 

 

Aboriginal & Islander Therapeutic Community

Gathering; visit to Nevallan and Yobarnie;

 

Interaction with Ken, Allan and Stephanie Yeomans

 

 

Interfacing with Dominant System

 

Fraser House; Community Mental Health; Psychiatric study group; Rio-Earth Summit

 

Global-local Realplay; Letters to Global governance bodies, RHSET, NACADA; Extegrity documentation;

Canberra briefings; mentoring of CEO’s of multinational organizations;

 

UNICEF expert study group; SE Asia Oceania Psycho-social Emergency Response Network.

 

 

Interfacing with business

 

 

 

 

 

 

Business Cultural Keyline Study Group;

Asia link Business Study Group

 

 

 

Current versions of the Business Cultural Keyline Study Group (Ematrix & C4SOS); Lexicon

 

 

Everyday life action

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neem Production

Tree Oil Extraction

Horses

 

Laceweb action

 

 

 

 

 

Mentoring of CEO’s of multinational organizations

 

 

Laceweb action Sydney, Melbourne, Byron Bay, Atherton and FNQ, Darwin Top End, Malaysia, Thailand, Fiji; Jail Groups

 

 

 

Type

 

 

 

Local Governance

 

Examples of early social action

 

 

Fraser House; Small Therapeutic Community Houses, Small Island Gathering; Aboriginal & Islander Therapeutic Community Gathering

 

 

Isomorphic metaphor

 

 

 

Small Island Gathering; Aboriginal & Islander Therapeutic Community Gathering; ConFest; Jail Groups

 

Micro Gatherings/events

 

Fraser House

Blackmountain

Yungaburra

Asia Ball

 

 

Blackmountain; Jail Groups Yungaburra; ConFest Site Trips

 

 

 

 


APPENDIX 3. Diagnosis of Fraser House Population as at 30th June 1962 (Clark, A. & Yeomans, N., 1969 Page 56)

 

 

 

                                                                                     Male    Female  Total

1  Disorders Caused by or Associated                                                                    

    with Impairment of Brain Tissue

 

1.      Acute and Chronic brain disorders                                0          0          0

2.      Mental deficiency, mild with epilepsy                 1          0          1

 

2        Disorders of psychogenic Origin

3         

Psychotic Disorders

Affective Reactions:

Manic Depressive reaction depressive type             1          1          2                     

Schizophrenic Reactions:

Schizophrenic reaction, simple type                         3          8          11

Schizophrenic reaction, hebephrenic type                0          3          3

Schizophrenic reaction, catatonic type                                 2          2          4

Schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type                                 3          6          9

Schizophrenic reaction, acute                                             

undifferentiated type                                                            1          2          3

Schizophrenic reaction, schizo-affective type                       2          0          2

 

TOTAL                                                                                   12        22        34

 

2   Psychoneurotic Disorders

         Psychoneurotic Reactions

Anxiety reaction                                                 0          1          1

Conversion reaction                                                       0          1          1

Obsessive - compulsive reaction                         1          1          2

Depressive  reaction                                                       2          2          4

 

TOTAL                                                                                   3          5          8

 

3   Personality disorders

          Personality Pattern Disturbances:

Inadequate personality                                      0          1          1

Schizoid personality                                                      1          0          1

Sociopathic Personality Disturbances

Anti-social reaction                                                       3          2          5

Dyssocial reaction                                                         1          2          3

Sexual deviations:

homosexuality                                                   4          0          4

pedophilia                                                         2          0          2

prostitution and beastiality                                 0          1          1

Personality Trait Disturbances

Compulsive personality                                     1          0          1

Addiction:

alcohol                                                             4          2          6

drugs (bromides; amphetamines;

narcotics)                                                         1          1          2

Both alcohol and drugs                         4          1          5

TOTAL                                                                                   21        10        31

__________________________________________________________________

 

COMPOSITE TOTAL                                                          37        37        74

 

 


APPENDIX 4 The Roles of Fraser House Nurses – A Paper by Patients (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4, 17-20)

 

THE ROLES OF FRASER HOUSE NURSES

 

Preamble

 

As with all new work situations, so to working as a new nurse in this community means coming to grips with a degree of initial stress.  The job is not easy at first, and one thing is certain - it can only be done well by all staff members seeing themselves as members of a TEAM.  Only then can new tasks become tolerable and the difficulties surmountable.  This is the first and most important working rule to be learned, and with the acceptance of it everything else will tend to fall into place.

 

This basic point can’t be stressed too much, and new nurses are advised to lean heavily on the team in the first few weeks in particular. By communicating difficulties, responsibilities will be spread out and training will continue. Nothing has to be faced alone.

 

The staff team gives the example on which the patients will perforce model themselves. It has been a lesson well learned here, as in other therapeutic communities all over the world, that when the staff team pulls together the patients tend to do likewise, and from this comes the amalgamation of true community effort that results in success all along the line in the treatment program.

 

Perhaps the most immediate observation made by a nurse coming to work in this therapeutic community for the first time, is that the patients themselves have had a great deal of authority delegated to them. Indeed, in some matters they are virtually the sole authority. At first glance it will seem fantastic that patients assess and admit new patients; review progress and institute treatment procedures; make new rules and alter old ones; mete out discipline, etc.

 

To many new nurses and doctors as well, and particularly to those whose previous experience was connected with the physically ill in the general hospital field, or who come from psychiatric settings more formalized in approach, all of this will be right out of line with their training and role appreciation. Adjustment will have to be made, and acceptance that this is necessary is the first and most important step towards fitting into the altered (and ever changing) role required.

 

In sum, nurses here at Fraser House are not so much doing FOR the patients as working WITH and SHARING an experience. This is basically what is expected.

 

Understanding the reason behind the differences in work standards and altering roles helps - no one would be willing to change his work pattern in, or the why he sees himself in work without reasonable explanation.  If the therapeutic community can be viewed as necessary evolution change towards democratic self-discipline, and if the nurses’ role can be seen as becoming more therapeutic as it moves away from that of custodian towards autonomy for the patients, then the first step is made.

 

CONCEPT

 

In the basic role of the nurse in Fraser house is that of therapist and this means accepting the patients as worthwhile and worthy of help and so, aiming to change their deviant behavior and the deviant ways they see themselves or others.  The nurse also is a representative of society, and becomes involved with patients in order to return their neurotic, psychotic or other deviant behavior to the norm of this society.

 

The nurse remains as much a therapist in being with one patient or with an informal group of patients as in formal group therapy.  To be a therapist means to express real caring and times, discipline about patients.  Training in psycho and socio-therapeutic techniques is a continuing process and the nurse enters into research work and the domiciliary field as well.  The nursing staff makes up the largest portion of the staff team and has 24-hour close interpersonal contact with the patients.  The role is vital, and in many ways is the most important.

 

ROLE

 

Nurses are assigned in teams to regional areas at the moment  - Lane Cove, Ryde, Rest of North Shore, Other Areas.  Each regional team is expected to be responsible for knowing their area, its problems and helping agencies etc..  Moreover nurses in each team are expected to come to know all in-patients and outpatients of that area in; to be specially involved in the appropriate regional small groups, both in the community and in the Unit; to record progress notes on their regional patients; be part of both for medical officer and follow-up committee planning for the patients of their region.

 

Nurses working in community and social psychiatry ‘steal’ many of the roles of psychiatrists, psychologists, medical offices, sociologists and social workers.  This gives the nurse much more power to initiate and decide and also the accompanying responsibility.

 

So the role of the nurse in Fraser house is seen as complex and wholly therapeutic, using a team approach in a therapeutic community to set the climate for personality change and social reorganization.

 

The new nurse will at first learn various areas, and these will be filled in to fit into shape as the tour of duty lengthens. An hour or so will be spent with a senior staff member on the first day for initial induction discussions, and the newcomer is paired off to work with a nurse who is versed in Unit procedure. Experience has shown how the patients actually give a great deal of help to new staff in aiding in their orientation. The new nurse will receive plenty of support to fit into the community. Fraser House traditions are now well established. There are no great dissatisfactions to overcome.

 

Nurses are on the staff to work as members of a therapeutic team, and to receive a training that has profitable personal and career rewards. Better training and greater work satisfaction for staff are basic aims in therapeutic communities.

 

GROUP THERAPY

 

The significance of group therapy in Fraser House may be gauged by the fact that there are about three thousand groups structured in a year involving twice this number of man-hours by the nursing staff. Reporting sessions, attended by nursing staff follow each of these groups, also consume more man-hours devoted to analysis and interpretation of each group, and exchange of information brought out by these groups. These reporting sessions are also for continuous training in all aspects of community and social psychiatry

 

Small groups are made up of from eight to twelve people, and are allocated daily. These allocations are made to conform to different patterns according to age and marital state, according to social class and marital state, according to sex and marital state. Also, there are intergenerational groups consisting of patients and their families, of each medical officer attached to the Unit, and groups made up of ‘withdrawn’ patients.

 

The unstructured groups are special groups held for particular patients for various reasons, e.g., they may be planned and scheduled for certain times during the day or night when a patient’s relatives arrive from the country. Or they may be spontaneous, when a relative arrives unexpectedly. Or they may be held as and when a particular patient, or patient family becomes disturbed over some crisis which arises.

 

THE THERAPIST IN SMALL GROUP THERAPY

 

The role of small group therapist and observer has always been the province of the nurse in Fraser House, and represents part of the rise in therapeutic status. Nurses have become therapists in their own right.

 

The first essential in taking a group is to see it as a meeting, and like all meetings, there is a need for a chairman to conduct affairs and keep issues to the point.

 

The initial function of the therapist is to see that the group functions as a group. It may be necessary for him to be quite directive in order to achieve this in some groups, but on the other hand it may just happen anyway even if he adopts a completely passive and wordless role. How active or passive, directive or non-directive the therapist is or chooses to be, may be influenced by many things – e.g., the attitude or mood of the group itself and tensions built up prior to and during its running; the type of group and purpose, or the themes introduced during the group. The therapists own personality is a basic factor which determines handling, and this may vary from day to day depending on the therapist’s mood, and also on his attitude to the type of group or even some of the people contained in it.

 

It should be said here that, whilst one might be influenced to some extent by the way certain therapists conduct the group, it is inadvisable and unwise, and indeed well nigh impossible for one therapist to copy another, for the previously stated reason that the therapist’s own personality is a basic factor in determining the handling of groups. So that even if one decided on a particular therapist as ones ‘idol’, one should not attempt to emulate too closely. Because of this ‘personality’ factor and other rather intangible factors, there are not many rigid rules which can be generalized to apply to all groups, but the following can be applied to most:

 

THEMES

 

If a theme is introduced, and it is considered to be not too superficial or inappropriate, the group should pay some attention to it, and not change the theme to another without good reason. If an attempt to change the theme is made, it may be done deliberately by a patient for a fairly obvious reason (such as a personality clash with someone involved in the previous theme), or a less obvious reason such as an unconscious identification and a consequent wish to avoid the theme. It may also be done through plain insensitivity on the part of the person making the attempt at the change. There are many reasons for these moves, and it is the therapist’s role to decide on the dynamics of the situations and then to make use of them by feeding them straight back into the group at the time, and if necessary, to make an interpretation of the dynamics operating in the events and occurrences.

 

It is also in the province of the therapist to direct the group away from superficial themes or from discussing themes in a superficial manner. The therapist, in order to discourage superficiality, may find it necessary to commence the group immediately he enters the room, by physically structuring the group in such a way that he gains attention, establishes some kind of control, and incidentally builds some initial tension within the group. This, of course is not always necessary or desirable, but is often helpful in dealing with groups of teenagers who tend to spread themselves around the room, put their feet up on chairs, and throw matches and cigarettes about. These practices in themselves are quite harmless, but in group are often used as avoiding tactics, and are apt to wreck and render valueless the group itself. So the therapist can avert these disruptions when he enters the room by making everyone get up and draw their chairs into a tight circle in the center of the room and disallowing feet up on chairs.

 

In general, the therapist should make use of what is going on in each particular group at the time it is taking place. He has first to be able to recognize what is going on and he can only do this through observation and experience. The way he uses these things which are going on within the group depends to a large extent on the therapist himself – again the personality factor. Even though a therapist is inexperienced, and perhaps not very confident, he should keep in mind that he brings something very valuable to the group with him – something which no one else can do in the same way – the sum total of his own unique life experience. When used with confidence, this is a very powerful force which all nurses have at their disposal.

 

INTERACTION AND INTEREST

 

If most of the group is involved in interaction, it goes without saying that they are also interested. However, interest can be very high even though there is not much interaction. Look at their faces, their feet, their hands, their respiration, the way they sit, and it will be known if they are interested or not. Interaction may not be high if the therapist has found it necessary to be active or directive. This sometimes must be the case.

 

TENSION

 

There will usually be varying amounts of tension as the group progresses, both from the group as a whole, and from individual members. Silences usually build up while tension is mounting, and the best way to use this tension is not to break these silences; let the members of the group do it as they will when they can no longer stand the tension – and then see what is released with the tension and make use of it.

 

MOOD

 

The mood of a group is sometimes sustained throughout, but more often it changes, ranging through many emotions and frequently depending to some extent on the build up and release of tension, the themes discussed and the manner of the discussion, the interaction and the interest, and the cross-identification of those who interact. The role adopted by the therapist is also important here. Once again, the emotions which set the mood for the group are used.

 

 

 


APPENDIX 5 - Fraser House Big Groups – A Paper by Patients (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4, 50-54)

 

FRASER HOUSE BIG GROUPS

 

Whereas much has been achieved over the years in the way of explanation and handling of individual and small group difficulties, little is to hand to clarify the acknowledged emotional forces and the psychotherapeutic techniques of large community groups.

 

Most individual maladjustments can be readily recognized by seeing a personality at conflict with himself and his environment. Small groups portray the ‘family’ setting and inter-personal interaction. But ‘Big Groups’ forming as they do the backdrop to all therapy in this Unit, are not explainable adequately in the term of psychology or psychiatry previously applied to the individual patient or even to the classical group situation.

 

The sciences of sociology and social psychology, with their study of whole collections of people and the interplay of these groupings within entire societies, are used to explain both these dynamics of the Big Groups and the therapeutic directions of the whole community. Theories of behavior of crowds and audiences apply to the Big Groups in particular.

 

The techniques used in handling these meetings are principally our own and have evolved through testing and retesting of basic theories by adoption and ‘trimming’ of those found successful by some leaders, and by constant discussion and evaluation of the problems these community groups pose.

 

The community meetings held at Fraser House are of two main types and a third is gradually evolving. Morning community groups have two main therapeutic functions; personality change is the aim of four meetings, while social control is the focus of the Thursday morning administrative group. Evening Big Groups, though not compulsory, are invariably well attended by in-patients. But by far, the majority attending can be classified as outpatients and these receive the bulk of the attention. With family therapy as a principle, the projective interplay of the various families present characterizes these meetings to such a degree as to almost typify the aim of the evening Big Groups.

 

The setting is a large hall (the Center Block) in which clear speaking is adequate, central to both wings of the building. Seating is in two rows at the sides and one end with a single row at the end nearest the entrance door. The group leader usually sits in the center of this row, but is free to move according to his or her dictates. All of the chairs face centrally so that, as much as possible, everyone is in view and speakers can face each other. But principally the people are shoulder-to-shoulder as in an audience as well as being members of a single crowd - usually numbering about one hundred persons.

 

Two members of the nursing staff (one male - one female) observe and record the meeting from a detached point behind the back row.

 

Other staff members (medical, nursing, research, etc) intersperse themselves among the patients, paying particular attention to the three inner corners (notorious geographically for the most destructive and resistive sub-groups) but leaving the doorway clear of staff. Portion of a row is reserved here to lessen the interruption made by latecomers.

 

It has become traditional that the four ‘therapeutic’ Big Groups commence with a reading of the ‘Ward Notes’ by one of the patients. On Thursdays this is deferred till after the various committee reports and elections. In essence these ward notes serve the purpose of an informal Unit newspaper and comprises all manner of notifications from grouches about yesterday’s foodstuff to staff warnings against suspected ‘conmanship’.

 

Usually the therapist then allows the group to enter into spontaneous ‘free floating’ discussion until a general interconnecting theme is apparent. This may then be pursued with promptings towards interaction between different generations or social classes or psychiatric opposites – or perhaps to tie in together for mutual support those with similar difficulties, personally or because of family or life-crisis situation.

 

At times the focus might fall on one particular patient or family to highlight a special need, and it is quite common for sub-groups or cliques to merit attention. These latter are constantly forming, breaking and re-forming, and the group leader much of the time finds it impossible to be aware of these changes and undercurrents. The interspersing of staff members throughout does much to obviate this as these moves can be discussed later in the reporting session, or if urgent, brought to the attention in the group by the staff member aware of the moves. Most meetings see the group as a whole reacting much like and audience to a few main actors. This can be constructive as an insight-gaining process as the personal, intra and inter-family or sub-group projections are portrayed and leadership values rise or fall. At other times when matters affecting the internal security of the community arise or pressures are brought to bear from outside sources, interpersonal differences are dropped for combined feeling and action and the Unit becomes united as its projection against threat is shown. So the audience-type reaction displaces to behavior more attributable to that of a crowd. When these crowd-like emotional forces move the whole community, the opportunity is presented to harness these towards a therapeutic goal which can do more in a single hour towards personality change for more people than many months of other therapy. Herbert Blumer says of these forces:

 

‘People become aroused and more likely to be carried away by impulses and feelings; hence rendered more unstable and irresponsible. In collective excitement, the personal make-up of individuals is more readily broken and in this way the conditions prepared for the formation of new forms of behavior and for the re-organization of the individual. In collective excitement, individuals may embark on lines of conduct which previously they would not have thought of, much less dared to undertake. Likewise, under its stress and with opportunities for the release of tension, individuals may incur significant re-organization in the sentiments, habits and traits of personality (Blumer and Shibutani 1970).’

 

When both the staff and patients are working well together in the Unit, a peak of enthusiasm is reached at times when everyone sees almost any move at all as being gainful. New enterprises are embarked upon with an eagerness that is almost inspired and success is a certainty. Whereas perhaps a month earlier the same move would have met an equally certain failure. All improvements in expanded therapy services and the patient-government structure (and the recent acquisition of the Unit vehicle) have been adopted at such times.

 

The opposite of gain is loss and this is felt most acutely in a feeling-wave by the entire community at a time of bereavement, deprivation or mourning – when a fellow-patient’s close relative dies; rejecting parents spurn pleas for help; or there has been a serious or fatal attempt at suicide. Here the all-pervading shared sadness can give rise to depressives becoming overwhelmed with emotional forces of loss and breaking into bitter tears as a sign of externalizing their feelings of aggression and loneliness. The sincere sympathy given by fellow-patients and therapist at these times can do much to consolidate future lessening of inhibition while false exaggeration of hope is avoided.

 

Again, when as a whole the Big Group is swayed by frustration, contagious aggression and excitement result; just as contagious as the feelings of fear and panic experienced due to a shared threat anywhere.

 

The recognition and use of these crowd feelings by the therapist are usually intuitive. The leader must ‘feel’ these and employ them – they are of the greatest value when utilized therapeutically towards corrective emotional experience. This can be rated as either an individual, a family, the whole group, or any combination of these being helped in this direction.

 

Community meetings are followed by a report by the two official observers, and comment by all staff members present, including the therapist who took the group. Points assessed are:

 

·        Mood

·        Theme

·        Value and interaction

·        Therapist’s role

·        Techniques employed

 

From these ‘post-mortems’ comes much of the knowledge needed. At the moment this seems by no means exhaustive. The aim must be always to look at the community in the ‘BIG’ – as a whole and this certainly is no easy matter.

 

FURTHER THEORY AND EXAMPLE

 

The Fraser House Therapeutic Community is a sub-community of Lane Cove and Ryde aimed at all the different social problems of these areas. There is an inherent movement towards change resulting from the emotional contact of people with different problems.  This change is a therapeutic change if the atmosphere is one of help, respect for the worthwhileness of each person, and discipline where necessary. A professional man, father of a schizophrenic girl, once abused the patients and the Unit, because he was sick of people of lower education etc. telling him what to do. His education and professional knowledge were not in doubt, but his capacity as a loving trusting father was. Those like him in age and education had tried and failed to change him in the past. Those unlike him could do so with much more effect.

 

This therapeutic community attempts to reproduce normal life in many ways, particularly in allowing the development of emotional storms (as they occur in families) and in not enforcing overly good behavior, as is the usual hospital pattern. Like normal life too, there are limits and so effective discipline is a major part of the program, especially for those with antisocial or hostile problems.

 

The process of change for the disturbed patient and family may be described in many ways. One is that the Unit attempts to provide emotionally corrective experiences in the conflict area. This can be seen in the spreading of a theme within a group or in the contagion of feeling within the Unit that always most deeply affects those with the problems in the area of conflict which set off the emotion. When sexual interference becomes an emotional topic, the experienced therapist can tell at a glance all those women and girls who have had a similar experience - it screams from their faces. They can then be helped to face this and all the covering up about it, in them and in their family.

 

 Success for a therapist is now known to depend very much on how much the patient realizes that the therapist cares. This cannot be acted by the therapist – and here lies the importance of learning to relax and be oneself and express oneself in the therapeutic situation

 

Caring for the patient does not mean loving and accepting everything he does. You don’t care for someone if you let them wreck themselves or harm others. It means coming to see and feel that the patient is a person worth helping and changing. It means to accept the person, but reject their deviant problems (e.g., love a depressed person, but NOT their depression – want to change their depression). Particularly it means rejecting abnormal behavior, particularly that which is harmful to others. So here caring will mean love and discipline.

 

There are some points which help in the therapeutic approach to whole families in groups:

 

  1. Aim to help the whole family
  2. Help them not to push the most deviant member down when they are under tension
  3. Encourage parents of the presenting patient to talk about their difficulties with their own parents, and each other.
  4. If the presenting patient has improved more than the rest of the family, suggest they forget his problems and talk about their own
  5. Make sure the different generations in the family attend different small groups much of the time
  6. The overt symptoms in the presenting patient usually indicate the key conflict for all the family
  7. Suggest family members who insist they have no problems, that you would like them to be more selfish and talk about themselves anyway
  8. Don’t reject the parents because of what you see they have done to their child – find out what he has done to them
  9. No parent ever purposefully wrecks his or her child. They should not be blamed for a tragedy they were caught up in
  10. Don’t adopt any of the above techniques unless you feel it

 

The emotional comfort and satisfaction of the Unit staff is one of the most significant features of the therapeutic program. The numerous staff meetings aim to foster this. Specifically their role is to prevent the development of covert, hidden conflict between staff members about patients. Such conflicts are proven to result in overt patient disturbance. The staff remains the most powerful members of a therapeutic community and their welfare and comfort are of paramount importance.

 

 

 

 

 

 


APPENDIX 6 - The Roles of the Fraser House Patient/Outpatient Committees

 

Admitting Committee (devolved from the psychiatrist)

 

Roles:

·        Interviewing people seeking admittance

·        Identifying problems and problem areas

·        Specifying the type of treatment

·        Specifying period before review

·        Specifying conditions of admission

·        Ensuring prospective patients know the requirement for both patients and their families and friends to attend 12 groups before the patient’s admission

·        Making a record of all the above details which is presented at the following Thursday’s Administration Big Group.

 

Membership:    Residents eligible for election upon being six weeks in the Unit.

The split between residents and outpatients is unavailable.

 

Staff present:    Medical officer and members of the nursing staff

 

Progress Committee (The senior committee - devolved from the psychiatrist)

 

·        Discussing and assessing individual patients and families

·        Discussing problem areas

·        Suggesting treatment procedures

·        Confirming, altering or changing treatment

·        Maintaining close liaison with Rehabilitation Committee

 

Membership:    Residents eligible for election after being two months in the Unit. The Split between residents and outpatients is unavailable.

           

Staff present:    Senior male nurse and senior female nurse

 

Pilot Committee (devolved from director/psychiatrist)

 

Roles:

·        Attending all other committees

·        Investigating all other committees

·        Reporting to Progress, Parliamentary or Big Group on irregularities or failing activities

 

(Formed March 1965)

 

                                    Membership:    Residents who have considerable functionality and a hence likely

to be leaving the Unit in the next few months. The Split between

residents and outpatients is unavailable.

 

 

Staff present as representatives: Senior and Junior charge nurses

 

Parliamentary Committee (devolved from senior charge nurse)

 

Roles:

·        Liaising between residents and staff

·        Sustaining paramount emphasis on democratic government, rights, dignity and freedom

·        Presenting staff with a uniform view of resident feelings about the Unit’s functioning

·        Airing criticisms of the efficiency and policy of any committee

·        Hearing applications of resignation from any committee.

·        Holding elections for vacant positions on any committee at start of Thursday Administration Big Group

 

Membership:                                        All residents on structured committees.

                                                            The Split between residents and outpatients

is unavailable.

 

Staff present as representatives: Senior and junior charge nurses

 

Ward Committee (devolved from nursing staff)

 

Roles:

·        Maintaining discipline

·        Ensuring ward cleanliness (as adjunct to domestic and maintenance staff)

·        Being responsible for patient cleanliness and welfare

·        Discussing treatment procedures with the Progress Committee

·        Meting out justice when rules are broken

·        Drawing up work rosters

·        Ensuring cleaning duties done

·        Monitoring resident’s behavior

·        Permitting or denying weekend leave based on behavior

·        Instilling responsibility, initiative and independence

 

Membership:                                        Residents who have considerable functionality and a hence likely to be leaving the Unit in the next few months. The split was 8 residents and

                                                4 outpatients.

 

Staff present as representatives: Nurses

 

Teenager’s Committee

 

Roles:

·        Promoting a spirit of friendship amongst teenagers in the Unit

·        Organizing a program of group outings and activities

·        Enforcing peer discipline

·        Assuming a group parenting role

·        Liaising with Ward Committee re inter-generational issues

 

Membership:                                        Restricted to members under 20 years of age

Split between residents and outpatients unavailable.

 

Staff present as representatives: Nurses (check)

 

 

Outpatients, Relatives and Friends Committee (devolved from Social Worker)

 

Roles:

·        Supporting the evolving of local psycho-social support networks

·        Maintaining locality based card index with names and addresses and typical travel modes

·        Providing a coordinated transport system to enable more regular attendance at groups

·        Providing assistance to outpatients within their own district

·        Providing relatives and outpatients with a voice in Unit management

·        Liaising with Follow-up Committee

 

Membership:                                        Family and friends of inpatients, and inpatients. Split - 2 outpatients

 

Staff present as representatives: Social worker

 


Rehabilitation Committee (devolved from Social Worker)

 

Roles:

·        Assisting discharged patients finding work

·        Arranging accommodation

·        Liaising with the Progress Committee re progress and employment prospects

 

Membership:   

 

Residents who have considerable functionality and a hence likely to be leaving the Unit in the next few months. Split between residents and outpatients unavailable.

 

Staff present as representatives:             Social worker

 

 

Follow-up Committee (devolved from Social Worker)

 

Roles:

·        Establishing close liaison between inpatients and their relatives and friends

·        Organizing and financing home visits by resident domiciliary group members and searches for AWOL residents

·        Administering emergency aid

·        Liaises with Outpatients, Relatives and Friends Committee

 

Membership:   

Residents who have considerable functionality and a hence likely to be leaving the Unit in the next few months. Split - 4 residents and  2 outpatients

 

Staff present as representatives:             Social worker

 

Activities Committee (devolved from Occupational Therapist)

 

Roles:

·        Arranging individual, small group or whole community occupational therapy for therapeutic and disciplinary purposes; examples: pantry duty, assisting the librarian, collecting workers meals, emu parades - a line swoop through the Unit picking up rubbish as everyone walks through; a tender was won by the residents to build a bowling green at the unit; in 1964 a contract was obtained to pack light globes.

·        Liaison with the Progress, Rehabilitation and Ward Committees and staff relating to appropriate occupational therapy

 

Membership:                                        After resident has made considerable move

to functionality. Information on split

between residents and outpatients

unavailable

 

Staff present as representatives: Nurse/occupational therapist (check)

 

Finance Committee (devolved from Administration - accounting, banking and welfare)

 

Roles:

·        Holding surplus funds

·        Allocating these funds as necessary to other committees

·        Monitoring all committee funds and recalling funds surplus to need

·        Safeguarding the Units patient welfare funds

·        Inspecting cash records and cash balances of all committees at weekly meeting

·        maintaining Fraser House Finance Committee bank account

·        Being the Unit’s accountant, banker and internal Welfare Officer in respect of money

·        Assisting people who mishandle money towards greater responsibility while in office

 

Membership:                                        The treasurers of all of the other Committees

 

Staff present as representatives: Administrative staff involved in accounting,

                                                            banking and internal welfare; Nurses.

                                                            At one stage the rule regarding the split

                                                            was 3 residents and 3 outpatients

 

Canteen Committee - devolved from Administration (accounting, banking and welfare) and Occupational Therapist

 

Roles:

·        Contacting goods suppliers and ordering

·        Receiving goods from sales/delivery people

·        Serving patients, staff and visitors

·        Maintaining coin-in-the-slot soft drink machine

·        Supporting fellow Canteen Committee members who are isolates (e.g. depressed or schizophrenic residents)

·        Providing public relations role

·        Tallying up daily takings

·        Presenting weekly report at Administration Big Group

·        Generating surplus used to purchase van used in domiciliary visits and supplying petrol and maintenance

 

Membership:                            Restricted to members under 20 years of

                                                age. The split was 6 residents and

                                                2 outpatients

 

Staff present as representatives: Nurse/occupational therapist

 

 

Social Committee

 

Roles:

 

·        Arranging social activities both inside and outside the unit

 

            Membership:                            Residents who had been 6 weeks or more

                                                in the Unit. The split was 3 female

                                                residents, 3 males residents and 3 outsiders

 

Staff present as representatives: Nurse/occupational therapist

 

Notes:

 

The Social Committee was disbanded a couple of times when there was no residents with flair for being on this committee. When some ‘live wires’ turned up as residents it would get restarted again.

 

Notice that the membership split ensured that outpatients were also represented and involved in the committee process with all of the benefits flowing from this in emerging them in the healing community process.

 


APPENDIX 7 - A list of the Questions That Were Asked in Neville’s Values Research.

 

·        The nature of the universe

      (In the range ‘is basically good or makes sense’ through to ‘is

      basically bad or pointless’)

·        Human nature

      (In the range ‘good or sensible’ through to ‘bad or senseless’)

·        Can mankind change itself or be changed?

      (Yes, Perhaps or No)

·        Man-nature - what matters

·        Activity – Who do you take notice of

·        Direction –

 (Self, Others, What fits)

·        Degree –

Unimportant, moderate importance, important

·        Time important 

(Future , present, past)

·        Verticality place

(Above, level, below)

·        Horizontality place

(Center, Between edges, out one edge)


APPENDIX 8 - Research Questionnaires and Inventories - Neville T. Yeomans Collected Papers 1965, Vol. 11.

 

A list of the many of the surveys and questionnaires that patients and outpatients were asked to complete. The page reference relates to Volume 11 of Neville Yeomans Collected Papers in the Mitchell Library –NSW  State Library, NSW.

 

 

p. 175       

p. 183       

p. 193       

p. 197       

p. 207       

p. 213       

p. 221       

p. 237       

p. 245       

p. 251       

p. 265       

p. 271       

p. 271       

p. 277       

p. 283       

p. 291       

p. 317       

p. 331       

p. 329

      p. 337

     

      p. 355

      p. 366

      p. 365

      p. 367

      p. 399

      p  399

           

 

Emergency Services Survey

Research Study Group Student Opinion Record

Course Assessment Record

Counselor Opinion Record

Social Organization Study

Child Parent Group Reporting

Total Care Adjustment Record

Group Reporting Record

Landscape Planning Attitudes Questionnaire

Attitudes Towards Overseas Trade

Crime Attitudes

International Studies on Drug Dependence

Alcohol Attitudes Questionnaire

Personnel Study – Social Problems Record

Group Description Record

Follow-up Questionnaire

International Study on Family Planning

Attitudes Questionnaire

International Study on Handicapped Children

Patient and Family Questionnaire

Fraser House Opinion Survey – Psychiatric Research

Study Group

      Elderly Peoples Attitudes Questionnaire

Attitudes to Mental Illness

Opinion Leaders Inventory – Fraser House Questionnaire

Opinion Leader Record

      Migrant Attitudes Questionnaire

 


APPENDIX 9 - A List of Other Inventories Developed and Used at Fraser House (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 4 , p. 43):

 

 

 

Personal Adjustment Record  (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 6)

Social Health Record (Yeomans 1965, Vol 11)

General Adjustment Record

Child Adjustment Record

Family Adjustment Record

Group Reporting Record

Follow-up Record

Social Problem Record

Social Value Record

Opinion Leader Form

 

 

 


APPENDIX 10 - A partial List of Research by Dr. Neville T. Yeomans other Research with Colleagues during the years 1959-1965

 

This Appendix contains Tables A, B and C listing fifty-seven of the extensive body of Neville’s research papers and monographs mentioned in his collected papers in the Mitchell Library. Many are undated though come from the 1959-1965 period. Table C lists research in association with others.

 

 

 

The Unit Career of Staff Members (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 2 p. 35.)

 

Whisperer’s Relationship - a Collusive Liaison (Yeomans 1965, Vol .5 p.38.)

 

A General Theory of Welfare Functions (Yeomans 1965, Vol .2 ,p. 38 - 40.)

 

File Note - Reference to a Suicide in Fraser House (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 2, p. 43.)

 

Network Therapy (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 5, p.40.)

 

Abotat - A Modification of the Thematic Apperception Test for Administration to Aborigines (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 125, p.67-69)

 

The Problem of Taking Sides – Taking the Side of or Supporting the Healthy Component (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 5, p.46 - 47.)

 

Power in Collective Therapy (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 5, p.52 - 54.)

 

Sydney Therapeutic Club (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 5, p.104.)

 

Follow Up Committee (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 5, p.106.)

 

Personal Adjustment Record (Yeomans 1965)

 

Personal Information Record (Yeomans 1965)

 

Early 1960’s. Social Values (Yeomans 1965)

 

The Psychiatrist’s Responsibility for the Criminal, the Delinquent, the Psychopath and the Alcoholic (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 50.)

 

 

Table A - Research by Neville in the early 1960’s

 

 

Research on Alcoholism – Theory and Administration – A Paper for the National Committee on Alcoholism – Adelaide Meeting of Medical Sub-Committee. Neville T. Yeomans Collected Papers 1965, Vol. 1, p.183 – 185. (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 1, p.183 - 185)

 

Collective Therapy – Audience and Crowd. Australian Journal of Social Issues 2. & 4. (Yeomans 1966,Vol. 1, p,187-188, Vol.12, p. 77, 87).

 

The Role of Director of Community Mental Health (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 66. )

 

Culture, Personality and Drug Dependence - The Problem of Drug Abuse in NSW. The Institute of Criminology, Sydney University Law School.  Seminar Working Paper No. 3 (Yeomans 1965, Vol .1 p. 297)

 

Social Categories in a Therapeutic Community (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 2 p. 1)

 

 

Mental Health in the Office - Institute of Administration - University of NSW (Yeomans, Vol.1 p.203-213)

 

The Sociology of Medicine 1967 - Synopsis of Community Health Services and Informal Patterns of Care (Yeomans (Unknown date), Vol 1, p. 215)

 

Incontinence Research (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 67-69)

 

The Nurses Self Image and its Implications - The Australian Nurses Journal Vol. 61 No. 4., April 1963 (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 94.)

 

 

 

Table A (Contd) - Research by Neville in the early 1960’s

 

 

 

The following Table B. lists further research and papers by Neville in the 1960’s.

 

1961. Treatment of Alcoholics and Drug Addicts in Fraser House Neurosis and Alcohol Unit (Yeomans 1961,  Vol. 2, p. 45.)

 

1963. Sociotherapeutic Attitudes to Institutions - Paper Presented at the State Psychiatric Services Clinicians’ Conference - 22 April 1963 (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 46, 60-61. )

 

 

1963. Letter of Congratulations to Fraser House Patients Regarding Patient’s Rules for Committees – Jan 1963 (Yeomans 1963, Vol. 2 p. 13.) 1963. Some Detail of Patient Government - 13 May 1963  (Yeomans 1963, Vol. 2 p. 25. )

 

1964. An Alcohol Treatment Program in Australia – A Paper Presented at the 27th International Congress on Alcohol and Alcoholism – 11 Sept 1964. Neville T. Yeomans Collected Papers 1965, Vol. 1, p.91. (Yeomans 1964, Vol. 1, p.91.)

 

1965. Post Graduate Psychiatry and the Social Sciences. In Kiloh, L.C. & Andrews, J.G. (eds.). Undergraduate and Post Graduate Teaching in Psychiatry. University of NSW Press Sydney (Yeomans 1965, Vol 12. p. 77. )

 

1965. Post Graduate Psychiatry and the Social Sciences. Teaching of behavioral Sciences, p.11. Neville T. Yeomans Collected Papers 1965, Vol. 1, p.165-181 (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 1, p.165-181.)

 

1965. Values Orientation and National Character (Yeomans 1965, Vol .1 p. 253 - 265).

 

1965. The Therapeutic Community in the Rehabilitation of the Aged. A Paper Presented to a Conference on Clinical Problems among Aged Patients, Held at Lidcombe State Hospital – 30 April 1965. (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 1, p.155-163).

 

1965. Cultural Values, Aboriginals and Mental Health – A Paper Prepared for the Third Congress of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 1, p.189-201)

 

1967 Value Orientation in Normal and Deviant Australians – A Revision of a Paper Read at the Annual Meeting of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand January 1967 (Yeomans 1967, Vol .1 p. 225 - 241).

 

1967. A Community Developers’ Thoughts on the Fraser House Crisis (Yeomans 1967, Vol. 2, p. 46 - 48.)

 

1968 Coordinator Community Mental Health Dept of Public Health NSW. The Therapeutic Community in Rehabilitation of Drug Dependence - Paper Presented at the Pan Pacific Rehabilitation Conference 1968 (Yeomans 1968, Vol .1 p. 267 - 283)

 


 

1968. Draft of Speech on Social Problems to the Ionian Club Sydney – Introduction on the Origins of the Ionians (Yeomans 1968, Vol. 1 p. 291. )

 

1968. International Study on Attitudes to Drug and Alcohol Use (Yeomans 1968, Vol .1 p. 293)

 

1968. Mental Health and Social Change - Brief  File Note (Yeomans 1968, Vol .1 p. 295)

 

 

 

The following Table C lists research by Neville and other Fraser House Staff in the 1960’s.

 

Table C

 

 

Yeomans, N. T. & Psychiatric Research Study Group – Social Values Questionnaire, 1965 (Yeomans and Psychiatric Research Study Group 1965, Vol .1 p. 243 - 251)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Hay, R. G. early 1960’s. Psychiatric Epidemiology of Sydney – A Pilot Study - Medical Journal of Australia No 2 p. 986 (Yeomans and Hay 1965, Vol. 12, p. 77)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Hennessy, B. L., Bruen, W., early 1960’s. Suicide Study (Yeomans, Hennessy et al. 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 89. )

 

Yeomans, N. T. and the Fraser House Staff, early 1960’s. The McQuarie Health Project (Yeomans and the Fraser House Staff 1965, Vol. 12, p. 91.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Hennessy, B. L., Hay, R. G., early 1960’s. Recent Developments in a Therapeutic Community (Yeomans, Hennessy et al. 1965, Vol. 12, p. 87. )

 

Yeomans, N. T., Daly, J., early 1960’s. Child – Parent Group Reporting Form (Yeomans and Daly 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 88.)

 

Clark, A. W., Yeomans, N. T., early 1960’s. Observations From an Australia Therapeutic Community (Clark and Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 88.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Hennessy, B. L., 1965. Nursing Disturbance Study (Yeomans and Hennessy 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 88.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Cockett, M., 1965. Leadership Study (Yeomans and Cockett 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 89.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Johnson, J., 1965. A Study of Teenage Patients in Fraser House (Yeomans and Johnson 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 89.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., & Bruen, W., 1965. The Five Year Follow Up Study (Yeomans and Bruen 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 89.)

 

Yeomans, N. T.  Cockett, M. 1965. Ward Note Tabulation (Yeomans and Cockett 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 89.)

 

Yeomans, N. T. and the Fraser House Research Team, 1965. The Social Values Study (Yeomans and the Fraser House Research Team 1965,  Vol . 12,  p. 45, 89. )

 

Yeomans, N.T., Hanson, R., Dall, E. 1965. The Aboriginal and Ethnic Minority Study (Yeomans, Hanson et al. 1965,  Vol. 12, p. 45, 90.)

 

Yeomans, N. T. & Cockett, M., 1965. The Fijian Project (Yeomans and Cockett 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 90.)

 

Yeomans, N.T. & Cockett M. 1965s. Intra-familial Conflict – A Simple Questionnaire - Submitted to the Family Process Journal (Yeomans and Cockett 1965)

 

Yeomans, N.T. & Cockett, M. 1965s. Precis of Intra-familial Conflict – A Simple Questionnaire (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 1, p.91.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Hennessy, B. L, Hay. R. G., 1966. Recent Developments in a Therapeutic Community With Assessment of Improved Technique For Introducing New Patients. (Yeomans, Hennessy et al. 1966, Vol. 12, p. 45. )

 

Yeomans, Neville. T., Cockett, Margaret, 1966. Intra-Familial Conflict – A sample Questionnaire (Yeomans and Cockett 1965, Vol. 12, p. 45, 87.)

 

Yeomans, N. T., Clark, A. W., Cockett, M., Gee, K.M., 1970. Measurement of Conflicting Communications in Social Networks. (Yeomans, Clark et al. 1970)

 

 

Table C.  Research and Papers by Neville and other Fraser House Staff

 


APPENDIX 11.  Organizations Assisted by Members of the Fraser House Research Group on an Individual or Workshop Basis - 1965

 

As an example of linking Fraser House to the wider community and vice versa, during 1965 assistance was given on an individual or workshop basis by members of the Fraser House Research Group to the organizations listed below (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 94.):

 

 

External Affairs Department

Anthropology Department – Sydney University

Department of Sociology NSW University

NSW Marriage Guidance Council

NSW Department of Education

Health Education Division of the Health Department of NSW

Australian School of Pacific Administration

Department of Law – Forensic Psychiatry – Sydney University

Hanover Center for Homeless Men – Melbourne

Victorian Council of Social Services

Melbourne University Research Workers

Victoria University - New Zealand

Research Council of the Foundation for Research and Treatment of Alcoholism

 

 

Organizations Assisted by Members of the Fraser House Research Group

on an Individual or Workshop Basis – 1965


APPENDIX 12. A Comparison of Goffman’s ‘Total Institutions and Fraser House

 

       Total Institutions                                     Fraser House

 

The key fact of total institutions is ‘the handling of many human needs by the bureaucratic organization of whole blocks of people’ (p18).

 

 

The focus is the inmate (p 18).

 

 

In the three big chunks of life - work, play, and sleep - these happen in the same place, under a single authority. All phases of the daily round are done with a large group of the same people (p 17).

 

 

People are inmates and/or patients (p 17).

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are required to do the same thing together.

 

All are treated similarly (p 17).

 

 

 

All phases of the daily round are time bound and tightly scheduled (p 17).

 

This schedule of activities is imposed from above by explicit formal rulings by a body of officials (p 17).

 

 

 

 

 

 

The aim of this scheduling is bureaucratic convenience (p 17).

 

 

 

The key fact of Fraser House is the embracing and satisfaction of individual and the therapeutic community’s needs by the staff supporting and enabling residents taking responsibility for themselves.

 

The focus is the resident in his/her social (family and friends) network.

 

Essentially the same at Fraser House. However, residents were constantly been rotated through various small groups and patient run/controlled committees having differing mixes of people.

 

 

People are termed patients, residents or clients. While conscious of the potency of terminology within the wider hospital processes residents were ‘patients’ and all the documentation designated them as ‘patients.

 

As for two above.

 

 

Rather than being ‘treated’, people are ‘related to’ and each person is related to differently.

 

As with Fraser House.

 

 

While small groups and big group are required by officials, virtually every aspect of community life is determined by the residents via committee structures that are run by the residents, often with no staff as observers. A body of rules governs a large part of schedules and these are also determined by the residents.

 

The aim of the scheduling is to compel residents to enrich their psychosocial self and take responsibility for making decisions affecting the quality of their life and behavior in community with others.

 

All the staff enforces the schedule of activities (p 17).

 

 

 

 

 

The schedule coalesces into a single rational plan designed to fulfill the official aims of the institution (the power of the fittest) (p 17).

 

 

There is a basic split between a large managed group (the inmates) and a small staff (p 18).

 

Both staff and inmates are in uniforms owned by the institution (p 18).

 

Staff work 8 hour shifts and are socially integrated into, and live outside (p 18).

 

Inmates live inside. Some may get passes

(p 18).

 

 

 

 

Inmates have no contact with the outside world or have restricted supervised contact or non-contact visits (p 18).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each group tends to see each other in ‘narrow hostile stereotypes’ (p 18).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social mobility between staff and inmates is grossly restricted (p 19).

 

 

Social distance is typically great and often formally prescribed (p 19).

 

Inmates are not given information about what is being discussed about them by staff (p 20).

Both residents and staff are responsible for ensuring adherence to the schedule. Issues relating to residents’ non-adherence to the schedule are resolved through resident committees and community processes, especially at Big Group

 

The schedule coalesces into a single sensible plan (survival of the fitting) designed by the residents to support residents’ self-help and community help towards psychosocial wellbeing.

 

While staff and inmates are in different roles, there is closeness between them including strong friendships.

 

Some staff and all inmates wear their own casual clothes.

 

As with Fraser House

 

 

While inmates live inside, some go out to work; some attend from 9 AM to 9 PM; others typically can get passes; most go home for weekends; many attend as outpatients.

 

A condition of being a resident at Fraser House is that family and friends have to attend Big Group and small groups as ‘clients’. Whole families were in residence, so for them, there was constant contact. Visits by family and friends to Fraser House outside of big group visits were restricted (were there social and conjugal visits?)

 

The staff patient distinction is always maintained (cleavage) although residents and staff see each other as individuals with unique abilities and potential. Everyone in both groups is a potential resource for everyone else. Staff seeks to have residents build upon their ecological bits.

 

Social mobility between staff and residents is possible.

 

 

Social closeness is typical and encouraged.

 

 

Communication is very open; anything may, be brought up in Big Group.

 

The Institution is deemed to belong to staff

(p 20).

 

 

 

 

The self is systematically, if often unintentionally, mortified (p 24).

 

People are stripped on entry through a series of abasements:

 

(i)   degradation

(ii)  humiliation

(iii) profanation of self (p 24)

 

 

 

 

 

 

On arrival people loose their clothes and end up nude, then given identical issue (all uniform); stuff that never belongs to you

(p 24).

 

 

The barrier between the inmate and the outside world marks the first curtailment of self (p 24).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The buildings and plant are designed to separate and control, and to segregate sexes (p 24).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the outside world inmates may take a number of separate roles, and typically none will block their  performance and ties in another role (role segregation). Being inside automatically disrupts role scheduling. Staff determines inmate’s roles (p 24).

 

 

 

Every behavior encroaches on every role and will be used to curtail and mortify self (p 24).

 

Role dispossession occurs (p 24).

 

Fraser House ‘belongs’ to the therapeutic community and all involved, including friends and relatives (attending as ‘outpatients’) are part of the therapeutic community.

 

The enrichment of self is pervasively built into every aspect of the Unit.

 

The initiation & admittance process was through the traditional North Ryde Hospital process. Once at Fraser House people are welcomed into the community through a series of bonding processes, examples:

 

Each person allocated buddies and room mates

Advised of Fraser House lore

Told slogans

 

Residents maintain their own clothes.

 

 

 

 

 

While being ‘inside’ and having friends and family required to visit, the absence of barriers in the therapeutic community makes enrichment of self through ecological interaction almost inevitable. Residents go on regular outside trips (as recreational activities and as domiciliary and crisis therapists). Some residents go to work. Most return home at weekends.

 

While the buildings and plant were a traditional design they were used in ways ensuring constant interaction between residents, between residents and staff, between residents and outpatients and to integrate and foster interaction between the sexes. The Dining Room and recreation rooms were located so as to maximize mingling.

 

While virtually everything is known by everybody (through the ‘bring it up in the group’ protocol), through the resident run committee process all residents help evolve the various roles within the community. Resident committees determine resident roles. People may volunteer for these roles and all play a part in deciding who participates for a time in the roles.

 

Every behavior encroaches on every role and will be used to expand and enrich self.

 

 

Enriched and new roletaking is encouraged and role flexibility occurs.

 

 

Because of the institutions pervasive intrusion into virtually every aspect of inmate’s lives, the admission procedures include obedience tests and will-breaking contests in order to compel co-cooperativeness from the outset (p 26).

 

 

Inmates are likely to be stripped of their usual appearance and their ‘identity kit’ (p 30).

 

Inmates subject to indignities - examples:

.  must use spoon

.  must beg/humbly ask for little things

.  being teased, sworn at and ignored

   (p 230)

 

The boundary individuals place between their being and the environment is invaded and the embodiments of self are profaned (p 32).

 

 

Unavoidable contact with aliens (no choice) and contaminating of objects of self-feeling - such as one’s body, immediate actions, thoughts and possessions (p 36).

 

 

 

There is the violation of one’s informational preserve regarding self. During admission, information about past behavior (especially discreditable facts) are collected and written up in dossiers available to staff (p 32).

 

 

 

While the schedule of activities is to be complied with, considerable freedom is given till the person is immersed in the community and does not want to leave. Then tough constraints are placed on mad and bad behavior by staff and other residents.

 

Residents’ appearance is unchanged or they are encouraged to improve it.

 

 

Censure of any staff or resident subjecting anyone else to indignities.

 

 

 

 

As with Fraser House - though this is balanced by potential for all residents and staff being there to support residents’ self help. The embodiments of self are respected and celebrated.

 

Unavoidable contact with resident/staff enablers (no choice) and processes interrupting and sabotaging madness and badness towards decontaminating objects of self-feeling - such as one’s body, immediate actions, thoughts and possessions.

 

There is the violation of one’s informational preserve regarding self. During admission, information about past behavior (especially discreditable and creditable facts) are collected and made available to staff and residents as part of local knowings of everyone in the therapeutic community. Any non-ecological use of this information is interrupted.

 

Inmates undergo mortification of the self by contamination of the physical kind - by forced interpersonal contact and social relationship

(p 36).

 

 

 

 

 

Enforced public character of visits by friends and relatives (p 38).

 

 

 

Contaminative exposure by having mail and phone calls monitored, limited and censored

(p 38).

 

 

Contaminative exposure by denouncing significant others, especially when others physically present (p 38).

 

 

 

 

 

The usual relationship between the actors and their acts is disrupted (p 41).

 

 

 

The above firstly by ‘looping’, where an agency creating a defensive response in inmates hones in on this response for its next attack. The reaction to the situation is collapsed back into the situation. Inmates can’t defend themselves by creating distance between the mortifying situation and themselves (p 41).

 

Another form of looping follows from the lack of role segregation (desegregation) allowing behavior in one role/context to be brought into every other role/context (p 41).

Inmates undergo shifts within the self by being placed in dorms with one ‘mirror’ person and two ‘opposites’ (for example, two ‘under-controlled/over-active’ residents with two ‘over-controlled/under-active’ residents - with forced interpersonal contact and social relationship compelling a shift to the psycho-socially functional middle ground.

 

This applies to visits by friends and relatives attending big group. (Check re privacy of other visits including conjugal visits.)

 

Typically no monitoring. Some contact restrictions and limits with dysfunctional others

 

 

Community based pressure to ‘bring it up in the Big Group’; concern about consequences for the community as a whole, and personally experiencing the results of the process ‘working’, had residents exposing significant others (refer Bus Depot Gang, Chapter Seven).

 

As for Fraser House though the behavior of residents and the outcomes of their behavior are constantly a matter for group discussion towards functionality.

 

Within pervasive frames of ‘self help’ and ‘therapeutic community’, looping occurs where the full range of resident’s responses to the therapeutic community may be reflected back to them and be the subject of discussion and action. They cannot distance themselves from their acts and the consequences of their acts.

 

As for Fraser House, although within a context of enabling self help.

 

 

 

In mental asylums a permissive environment entraps inmates to ‘project’ or ‘act out’ their typical difficulties, which they are then confronted with during therapy sessions (p 42).

 

 

 

Inmates are regimented and tyrannized in that within civil society, the issue of ‘correctness’ rarely arises. Inmates have to constantly look over shoulders to see if criticism or other sanctions are coming. Minute matters, usually those of personally taste and choice in the outside world, are prescribed by authority

(p 42).

 

Each specification robs the individual of an opportunity to balance needs and objectives in a personally efficient way and opens up lines of action to sanctions (p 43).

 

The autonomy of the act is violated (p 43).

 

 

 

Economy of action is disrupted by being required to ask permission for supplies for minor activities; adults placed into suppliant submissive roles unnatural for adults; allowing ‘interception’ by staff, (being put off, teased, denied, questioned or ignored) (p 45).

 

Regimentation by being required to perform regulated activity in unison with others (p 46).

 

 

Use of an echelon form of authority in that any member of staff has certain rights to discipline or impose sanctions on any member of the inmate class (p 46).

As for Fraser House, though within a context of enabling self help. Permissive-ness continues till the person is so enamored and imbedded in the community they do not want to leave - then things may get humanely and ecologically tight and tough.

 

‘Enabling wellbeing of self and others’ is the standard for both residents and staff in relating with and intervening in the life of others. Some minute matters are pre-scribed by decision of resident committees. Also refer Nanotherapy in Chapter Five..

 

 

 

 

Specification is decided by residents, providing an opportunity to balance needs and objectives in both a personal and community sensible way and opens up lines of action to enhancement by all.

 

The autonomy of the act is supported at the individual and community levels with scope to explore fit in both sectors.

 

Economy of action is facilitated by residents being in charge of supplies for minor activities. This places adults into active responsible roles natural for adults and allows ‘enabling support’ by staff.

 

 

 

Some regimentation by being required to perform regulated activity in unison with others within a context where residents have established most of the ground rules.

 

Use of an echelon form of communal empowerment in that any resident or member of staff may provide enabling support to another resident or member of staff.

 

Echelon authority and strict enforcement of regulations may result, especially in new arrivals, in living with chronic anxiety about consequences of breaking rules (p 46).

 

 

 

 

 

Loss of self determination through having no capacity to decide certain bodily comforts such as soft bed and quietness at night

(p 47).

 

Even the capacity for self determination by the mode of response given back to authority may be denied or discounted by staff ignoring the response and reframing the response as a symptom of pathology (p 47).

 

 

Curtailment of self may be almost total (p 49).

 

 

 

It is largely the privilege system that provides the framework for personal reorganization

(p 51).

 

Firstly, proscriptive and prescriptive house rules layout required conduct (p 51).

 

 

Secondly, there are a small number of clearly defined rewards or privileges held out in exchange for obedience. The inmates’ world is built around these minor privileges - e.g., a coffee and a smoke. These are akin merely to the absence of deprivations one normally expects not to sustain (p 51).

 

Release is elaborated into the privilege system (p 53).

Echelon empowerment and strict enforcement of healing ways may result, especially among new arrivals, in living with ecological levels of anxiety, e.g. overactive/undercontrolled may usefully have more anxiety, and underactive/ overcontrolled may usefully have less anxiety.

 

As for some aspects of  Fraser House such as the ‘soft bed’. However, residents have full control of regulations and involvement in the therapeutic change process ensuring things like a quiet nights sleep.

 

The capacity for self-determination. Ecological responses given back to authority would be supported by staff at every opportunity. Residents would be encouraged to explore the consequences of non-ecological responses to other residents and staff.

 

Virtually everything fosters enriching the self towards self determining action and sociable relating with other selves in community

 

Every aspect of the caring therapeutic community provides the framework for personal reorganization.

 

 

In Fraser House and the bulk of proscriptive and prescriptive rules are decided by the residents.

 

Residents evolve their own lore and rules. They have free access to their own canteen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Privileges a right for all. Non-ecological behavior may see a withdrawal of some privileges. Release not linked to privileges; rather based on ecological functioning and capacity to fit into outside community, though required to leave after six moths stay. This was reduced to three months to foster change.

 

Thirdly, there are the punishments including withdrawal of privileges and as these assume great significance; withdrawal of small privileges also has a terrible significance

(p 51-2).

 

Rewards and punishment received by inmates are only received by children and animals in outside world (p 53).

 

 

Rewards and punishment woven into the residential work system with certain places, roles, and perks associated with reward

(p 53).

 

There is among inmates an informal system of what Goffman calls ‘secondary adjustments’ - practices that don’t directly challenge staff, but allow inmates to obtain forbidden satisfactions (‘the angles, deals, ‘knowing the ropes’)

(p 56).

 

An informal inmate system ensures that no inmate informs on others’ ‘secondary adjustments’; violators defined as ‘finks’ ‘squealers’, and ‘rats’ (p 56).

 

Inmate support groups developing in opposition to the system (p 56-57).

 

 

 

 

Typically, inmates find out that fellow inmates have all the properties of ordinary, occasionally decent human beings worthy of sympathy and support. Past offences cease to be an effective means of judging personal qualities  (p 57-59).

 

In therapeutic institutions, the inmates become less able to protect their ego by direct hostility towards the institution (p 59).

The rules for sanctions were evolved and administered by the patients and outpatients.

 

 

 

 

Rewards and punishments were not imposed top down. Sanctions were context and age relevant.

 

 

Consequences flowed from context and everyday life milieu.

 

 

 

The everyday life milieu worked its constituting potency. Anyone seeking ‘advantage over’ and ‘egocentrically working the system’ would be confronted with this by patients, outpatients and staff.

 

 

 

The oft-invoked slogan and practice was, ‘bring it up in the group’.

 

 

 

Support groups fostered and linked to the to Fraser House community. There were functional and dysfunctional factions and cliques forming and disbanding regularly. Dysfunctional ones were cleavered.

 

Developing inmate support groups as an integral part of  the system.

 

 

 

 

 

As for Fraser House, except that the system enhances ego, identity and mindbody integrity.

 

 

Adapting:

 

Firstly, by using regression (situational withdrawal) as a defense.

 

Secondly, flagrant non-cooperation

 

Thirdly, colonization, fitting in and ‘doing it easy’.

Fourthly, conversion - becoming the perfect inmate.

 

Fifthly, playing it cool by a combination of the above. (p 61-64)

 

Typically, ‘stripping’ processes nor reorganizing processes seem to have lasting effect, partly because of secondary adjustments, counter mores and playing it cool (p 64).

 

The presence of release anxiety due to disculturation and stigmatization (p 69-71).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inmate’s families have little understanding of the institution and can cause major embarrassment to inmates (p 123-135).

 

 

 

Some, because of prior experience of traditional hospitals, may set out to make use of secondary adjustments though such behavior would be challenged and immediately brought up in a group. Being involved in Fraser House minimizes the necessity to resort to these ‘secondary adjustments’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reorganizing and re-constituting processes had lasting effect. All involved are vigilant in stopping processes that may strip.

 

 

 

Processes foster residents expanding and enriching their culture (as ‘way of life’). Close involvement of family and friends being in therapy themselves minimizes resident stigma as does domiciliary care visits by those who are about to be released.

 

Resident’s families have intimate understanding of the institution and are actively involved in resident healing (and typically, self healing).

 

 

 

 


APPENDIX 13. Features of Fraser House That Were Neither Present in the Paul and Lentz’s American Research nor Referred to by the American Researchers (Paul and Lentz 1977).

 

 

·        Creating Cultural Locality

·        Pervasive attention to place in enabling patients and outpatients extend their family-friendship networks functionally

·        Full family residential therapeutic community

·        The therapeutic community as therapist – though this would tend to happen naturally

·        Clients as self-therapists, co-therapists and community therapists

·        The Resocialising Program - Self Governance and law making through an extensive patient run committee structure providing residents daily scope to learn firstly, about how administrations in communities and societies work, and more importantly, how they malfunction, and secondly, how to live with malfunctioning administrations without resorting to pathological accommodations (refer Presthus (Presthus 1978))

·        Staff devolved their administrative roles to resident committees, thus freeing up staff time for engaging in the healing role – administrative therapy

·        No token economy, rather an actual economy. Example one: via residents running the canteen - all aspects of canteen was run by patients as work therapy including book-keeping, preparation of accounts, stock-taking and reordering. Example two: The residents making the bowling green after winning the tender to do the job.

·        The Tikopia model - intentional use of structures and processes engendering diverse cleavered unities

·        Matched sleeping with counterbalancing of over-active/under-controlled and under-active/over-controlled - an example of diverse unities

·        Socio-therapy based on the assumption that the primary locus of psychosocial dis-order was in the client-family-friends nexus rather than just within the client.

·         Big Group therapy (180 plus) with family & friends required to be in attendance as a condition of the client being in the unit - with all of the associate potential for family and friends to learn coping and healing skills in relating with the client – learning to live well together

·        Small group attendance based on sociological categories (location, age, marital status, etc.)

·        Residents running a suicide crisis intervention resource.

·        Residents running the domiciliary service for ex-patients and outpatients.

 

·        Residents taking the main responsibility in getting friends and relatives agreeing to come to groups - usually by making unannounced calls

·        Residents involved in evolving each others’ social networks (through the Outpatients and Friends Committee and the Location-based Small Groups)

·        Virtually everything that happened was shared by all staff (including cleaners) and clients. This oral ( as well as written record keeping) and information exchange allowed virtually all staff time to be in interaction with clients.

·        Use of simple slogans (e.g. ‘bring it up in the group’)

·        Use of tight group processes to contain and prevent assaultiveness so there was no need to use isolation as practiced in the American treatment groups

·        Residents and or staff being constantly with (specialing) suicidal clients (with clients never isolated)

·        Defining local areas as ‘catchment areas’ and providing crisis support, especially suicide crisis support, to these areas so that the clients saw themselves as being part of a therapeutic community - which was in turn an integral community preventative resource

·        A collection of psychosocial therapies including:

 

·              collective (big group) therapy

·              ecology therapy

·              governance (administrative) therapy

·               

·              family and friends network therapy (with impetus from Big group and domiciliary care, as evidenced by the growth of the Grow self help group by ex Fraser House residents

·              family and friends socio-therapy

·              family (residential) therapeutic community

·              milieu therapy

·              nanotherapy – work at the micro-level

·              parent & child play therapy

·              research as therapy

·              residential co-therapy

·              work therapy

 

 

 


APPENDIX 14. A List of Advisory Bodies and Positions Held by Neville

 

 

 

A founding director of the NSW Foundation for the Research and Treatment of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency.

 

A founding director of the national body of the above organization.

 

The Government Coordinator on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Research and Treatment of Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

 

A member of the Council for an International Conference on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

 

An advisor on an Australian National University Research Program on the Study of Alcoholism.

 

Chairman of the Departmental Conference of Clinicians Panel (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 67)

 

Member of the NSW State Clinicians Conference (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 96)

 

A member of the Committee of Classification of Psychiatric Patterns of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

 

An advisor to the Research Committee of the New South Wales College of General Practitioners.

 

A member of the Executive Council of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs and the Chairman of their Health Advisory Panel   (Yeomans, N., 1969, Vol.12, page 92)

 

A patron of Recovery (now Grow) and the organizer of the first group in Sydney Hospital.

 

The Patron and Counselor of Recovery Groups

 

A member of the Advisory Committee of the Institute of Criminology

 

A member of the Advisory Editorial Committee of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.

 

 

 

 

Having extensive court experience as an Expert Witness and involved in prison rehabilitation and prison reform for some years. He assisted development of rehabilitation and research programs by parole and probation officers. Some of these were involved in the Psychiatric Research Study Group (Yeomans, N., 1969, Vol.12, page 73).

 

The president of the Total Care Foundation which was the entity used to evolve the Watson’s Bay Festival (discussed later in this Chapter).

 

A Founding member of the Sydney Arts Foundation

 

Member of the Ministerial Committee involved in the repeal of the Inebriates Act (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 71)

 

Member of the Health Education Advisory Sub-Committee on Alcoholism (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 72.)

 

Organizer of a Fellowship on Alcoholism (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 72.)

 

In 1980 Neville became a member of the Editorial Board of the academic Journal, The Journal of Therapeutic Communities.

 

An examiner for the Fellowship Examinations of the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry – confirmed by Dr. William McLeod, psychiatrist and former Director of Psychiatry at Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital in Melbourne for over twenty years.

 

A founding member of the Sydney Opera House Society (mentioned by E. Deuk-Cohen)

 

A member of the Board of Directors of :

 

            The Drug Addiction Foundation

            The Drug Referral Center

            Aged, Sick and Infirm Appeal

 


APPENDIX 15. Participants in the Watson’s Bay Festival (Yeomans 1965, Vol. 12, p. 3)

 

 

Australian Don Henderson sung folk with poetic interludes

Australian Folk singer - Don Gillespio

A collection of expensive sculpture, pottery and art was on display - on loan from Art Galleries

Czech Trich Trotch Polka

Filipino Band

Greek display by Girls of the Lyceum Club

Hungarian Czards

Indian dance by Rama Krishna

Indonesian singers

Israeli Dancer - Vera Goldmen

Japanese dancers

Karate display

Malaysian Scarf dance

Mike Harris - guitarist

Oriental dancers

Polish dance music and songs

Rev Swami Sarcorali and Roma Blair and the Yoga Fellowship gave a Yoga demonstration

Sally Hart - also folksy

Spanish Classical guitarist Antonio Lazardo

Spanish Flamenco Dancers

Spanish Flamenco Guitarist played by Ivan Withers

Welsh folk singers

 

In the evening was a psychedelic light display and pop band.

 


APPENDIX 16. The Range of Events and Activities Teed up as Part of the Centennial Park Festival.

 

 

A film show

Barbeques

Cultural displays

Display by historical fire engine Association of Australia

Displays of national dress

Displays of yoga

Dog obedience exhibition

Dress and fashion parades,

Folk dancing

Folk singing

Handcrafts

Horse drawn cart pageant

Jazz groups

Jogging

Kite flying

Light shows

Lions club display and activities

Marching girls

Marquee and geodesic dome

Music performances

National dancing

National feasts

National songs

Painting groups

Physical fitness activities

Poetry reading