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Most therapists, at some time or another, will have come across “maladjusted” children whose disturbance is too severe for ordinary outpatient psychotherapy to be a sufficient remedy, and whose need for affectionate and understanding handling by their environment calls for a residential setting specially orientated to their difficulties. The workers whose papers appear in this book have endeavoured to provide such settings.
Environment Therapy is defined by Marjorie E. Franklin as “using selected environmental factors to promote healing”. This book, the first of a series, is largely concerned with setting out the basic aims and methods of Planned Environment Therapy, and the beliefs and theories on which these are founded; Marjorie E. Franklin's paper, “The Meaning of Planned Environment Therapy”, and W. David Wills’ paper, “What do we mean by Planned Environment Therapy”, may be given special mention as representing psycho-analytic and religious viewpoints respectively. But in reading all the papers it is interesting to see how, starting out from such diverse backgrounds as Religion, Psycho-analysis, Social Science and Education, the various contributors have arrived at largely similar conclusions concerning the therapeutic needs of maladjusted children. In this volume there is particular emphasis on the reward and punishment controversy, and the reviewer especially appreciated David Wills’ succinct summary of the supposed aims and effects of punishment, and his discussion of the dangers of enforcing superficial conformity at the expense of deeper-going changes, especially the capacity to accept responsibility for one's own actions (“Eliminating punishment in the Residential Treatment of Troublesome Boys and Young Men”). Throughout all the papers runs the theme of these children's special need for understanding, affection and appropriate guidance and intervention from the environment.
Most of the papers are concerned with work in residential settings, but a paper by