Author's Response

I found all of the comments of the discussants most helpful and stimulating and I would like to respond to the following points in particular.

Dr. Shields in Cure of Delinquents points out that with older adolescents and adults it would be too dangerous for both therapist and patient to permit the emergence and expression of the type of rage which he believes has to occur for the full “cure.” My impression is that the early stages of treatment of the adult offender are a type of “ego exercise” which can strengthen the ego's capacity to tolerate rage without physically hurting anyone.

Four major avenues are open for affect discharge: muscular, glandular, verbal, and fantasies and dreams. I do not yet know if the great quantities of rage expressed verbally during the shouting and screaming of the Therapeutic Community interaction at Vacaville will be sufficient to free the great quantities of energy bound up in the unexpressed anger and in the defenses against its expression.

At some future date research during phase two may ascertain whether verbalization of rage is enough. If, as Dr. Shields found in young adolescents, the rage in adults must also be expressed in a muscular “rageful moment,” then realistically the most we can hope for is encapsulation and perhaps some diminution of the destructive forces—but not their resolution. Even this encapsulation would be a monumental achievement.

Dr. Hacker is correct in stating that prison populations do not represent a true cross-section of offenders in general. We see many individuals in our daily office practices and in our everyday

lives whose narcissism and feelings of entitlement lead them to cheat, defraud, physically abuse family and strangers, etc. Most of these people, however, are intelligent enough or capable of mustering sufficient power, financial or otherwise, to avoid the judicial process.

Examples of this are also readily apparent to the viewer of the national and international scenes, past and present. There