Marjorie Franklin
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Biographical/professional details
Reprinted by the kind permission of Maurice Bridgeland from his PIONEER WORK WITH MALADJUSTED CHILDREN, Staples Press (London), 1971.
So many charlatans have claimed to be therapeutic educators and have got away with it because the concepts are complicated and difficult and cannot be readily checked and assessed in the way in which a training approach can be assessed, that we are in danger of associating a therapeutic approach with woolliness of thought, laziness of practice and an irresponsibility towards the seriousness of our children's disorders. - A.T. Barron.[1] It may be argued that before anyone can be regarded as a 'pioneer' he must not only do something which is original but he must point a way that others may follow. His individual practice must lead to theory, or some body of practical directions, which can be generalized from and which serve as a guide to others in similar but different situations. The link will normally be some degree of conceptualization. In therapeutic education 'experiments' are many and concepts few. Nevertheless some do exist. Some have been derived from apparently successful practice; a few have preceded practice; and others have developed in conjunction with practice.
'Planned environmental therapy' is of the last-named type. It is the most generally acknowledged theoretical base for work done with maladjusted children in this country, although interpretations of its principles have been wide, various and frequently far from legitimate. It represents an attempt to conceptualize the practice of people such as Aichhorn, Lane, Lyward, Wills and Shaw, within a general theoretical framework derived from a mixture of social psychology and post-Freudian psychoanalysis. Its chief exponent is Dr Marjorie Franklin.[2]
Dr Franklin, as a young junior medical officer in the Portsmouth Borough Mental Hospital in the early 1920s, became intensely interested in the relationship between mental illness and the patients' environment. She observed not only the often-noted improvements that occurred in response to a cheerful, encouraging environment and sympathetic nursing but also, in some cases, the dramatic improvement of the psychotic condition with the onset of severe physical illness. The latter phenomenon she attributed not only to a change in the location of the cathexis but also to the greatly increased attention and care which the ill patient received. The improvement was seldom maintained but Dr Franklin considered that with skilful psychoanalytical intervention and support it might have been.[3]
These experiences were very germane to her later understanding and they were strengthened by her subsequent psychiatric training in the United States and by her course of psychoanalysis with Freud's pupil and colleague Ferenczi Through work with the Howard League and the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency she involved herself in the problems of adult delinquency and established contact with Norman Glaister and Cuthbert Rutter (a former 'progressive' Borstal housemaster and then headmaster of the Forest School). The idea of Q Camps as an experiment in therapeutic community-living subsequently brought Dr Franklin in touch with David Wills, whose own ideas, forged from a very different experience, were so complementary to her own. The Hawkspur Camp was founded as the first practical experiment in planned environmental therapy (see Chapter 12).
The war brought an end to direct experiment but many of the ventures in caring for disturbed evacuees described in earlier chapters led to a closer study of the needs of maladjusted children and some modification of those principles which had been evolved with young adult delinquents. After the failure of the junior Q Camp under Barron, an attempt was made to launch an experiment in planned environmental therapy under the auspices of The Children's Social Adjustment Society, at Arlesford Place. Some of the practical difficulties of this venture have been described in considering the work of Bill Malcolm, but the principles invite further study.
Arlesford Place was planned as an 'on-going' experiment in that it was intended to measure, by testing and observation, the effect of a particular method of re-education on maladjusted children. The 'experiment' was to be conducted by psychiatrists, who were largely responsible for selecting the children and organizing the treatment policy, wardens and other staff responsible for constructing and maintaining the environment, and psychologists both inside and outside the establishment who were to assess the results.
The subjects were a group of thirty to forty, all-age, boys and girls with I.Q.s ranging from 87 to 167. They were all suffering from some failure to adjust socially, emotionally or educationally. The aim of the experiment was to test the effect of a specific therapeutic approach in terms of individual adjustment.
The methods to be used were specified and, in theory, contact was maintained between psychiatrists, school-staff and psychologists so that a specific policy could be adhered to.
In general terms, social adjustment was to be achieved by a creative use of the environment, which was an elegant mansion house near Winchester, and by the experience of 'shared responsibility' within the school council, which was a legislative and judicial body of which all staff and pupils were members.
Educational adjustment was to be achieved through improving motivation by making lessons voluntary, by the use of arts and crafts as creative outlets for tension, and by individual remedial teaching.
Emotional adjustment was to be achieved through close and loving personal relationships with adult members of the community and by individual psychotherapy. The warden, Bill Malcolm, saw the process as a three-stage one. 'First, sometimes after a brief period of distrust, a strong attachment to an adult; these attachments are treated with respect and care and then when this friendship has brought a feeling of security, an interest in other children will develop. Once accepted by them the third phase is reached, of interest in the government of the place. By this time the child has become less dependent on his grown up friends'.[4] It will be noted that this is largely a social interpretation. A direct attack on the emotional problem was to be made psychotherapeutically by the honorary psychiatrists, who visited fortnightly to talk to the children and discuss treatment policies with the warden. 'By this means', it was suggested, 'there is a close inter-relation between, on the one hand, the influence of adults in daily association with the children, who are responsible for maintaining the environment, and on the other hand, a more scientific and detached approach'.[5]
It was hoped that 'apart from ... successful therapy the scientific experiment of which it is the result may eventually give Arlesford a value beyond its immediate aim'.
That Arlesford failed both as a school and as an experiment did not invalidate the theory of planned environmental therapy; rather it was the inevitable result of the nature of the research design.
In any educational research project the number of uncontrollable extraneous variables in a human and dynamic situation make anything like real experiment difficult if not impossible, however limited the scope of the enquiry. This piece of 'action-research' was endeavouring to measure changes in emotional adjustment (an exact evaluation of which is always impossible) occurring as the result of a number of widely different processes, variously interpreted and never clearly specified. The people concerned in the process consisted of a large number of subjects of widely differing ages, abilities, symptoms and degrees of adjustment and of observers of different, and frequently conflicting, disciplines, aims and personal attitudes. The warden, who was essentially concerned with the maintenance of the environment, appears to have been opposed to psychological investigation and psychiatric methods and interpretations. He did not accept the desirability of unnecessarily primitive conditions and his approach to 'shared responsibility' involved the exercise of a good deal of guidance. His periodic reports on children's progress can hardly have been helpful to people thinking in entirely different terms. It was inevitable that both professional and personal rivalries and jealousies would disrupt the work, particularly since its nature involved close personal and effective ties between staff and children.
In such an atmosphere any objective evaluation of the results or the drawing of any valid conclusions from them were clearly impossible. The failure of the Arlesford Place 'experiment' in 1962, however, did not unduly discourage the supporters of 'planned environmental therapy' who, by this time, had been joined by many eminent practitioners in both independent and State schools (whether as headmasters, wardens, psychiatrists or psychotherapists). In January 1963 a 'planned environmental therapy discussion group' was formed under the leadership of Dr Franklin, in whose house members met monthly 'to talk together about the theoretical and clinical aspects of treating people (of all ages) with emotional and/or behavioural problems by means of a therapeutically planned environment (residential or otherwise) of various patterns within the framework of methods loosely described as progressive or evolutionary (non repressive)'.[6] This sort of discussion both widened the context and clarified the common aims of various forms of environmental therapy and in 1966 the Planned Environmental Therapy Trust was formed to promote 'the serious clinical study of the use of the environment as a means of correcting asocial and other related character deficiencies'.
Dr Franklin claims that 'planned environmental therapy has long ago reached the stage of a serious branch of psychotherapy' and Barron describes it as 'the only method I know that provides a viable method and approach to the residential care and treatment of the maladjusted'. [7] Its terms of reference are very wide but there are certain principles of organization and certain ideas of therapy which appear, if not fundamental, at least customary.
Environmental therapists must initially have a concept of 'maladjustment' which lays stress on the environmental causes of the disturbance. The 'environment' may be widely interpreted to include the whole life experience, but particular emphasis has usually been placed on experience within the family. The maladjustment may be largely the product of social factors, which can be dealt with by the experience of living together in a tolerant and sympathetic community, or may be of more deep-seated emotional origin related to the quality of love which the child has received. Theoretical support for this position has been drawn from the work of Suttie,[8] D. W. Winnicott, Anna Freud and others, who stress the importance of loving relationships within the family as the prerequisite of mental health.
A planned therapeutic environment, therefore, must include provision not only for a new social experience but also for the rediscovery of the healing power of love. Therapy is based on the assumption that there is an 'inherent impulse towards health' which the therapist must encourage and assist. In performing this task the therapist will be aided by an environment free from unnecessary frustrations, but skill and insight will be needed to find the appropriate techniques and time to remove the harmful defences which the individual has constructed to insulate himself from hurt, fear and guilt. The aim is not to change habits of behaviour but to rebuild and strengthen the ego so that a healthy individual may be free to live his own life within society.
The therapist, whether psychiatrist, teacher or other stair member, is the key to the process. By identification with him and transference to him of the feelings of love and hate which have not found adequate expression within the family the child will be able to regress and recapitulate his experience and so find security and relief from guilt. At the same time the environment will give him challenging opportunities for building self-respect and sublimating his impulses and his energies in socially acceptable ways.
If this process is to succeed, certain characteristics are posited for the environment itself. Identification and transference will occur only if it is possible for the child to establish close personal relationships with adults who are mature enough to accept the child and his problems without reserve but without forming collusive relationships through which their own problems can be projected on to the disturbed child. Security will be the product not of organization but of mutual trust in an environment free of authoritarian coercion and discipline based on punishment. Punishment, in the traditional sense, is not only viewed as unconstructive but as positively damaging to therapy, destructive of human relationships and productive only of a moral code based on the idea that if what is punishable is wrong what is not punishable must be right.[9] The relief of guilt which punishment sometimes affords is seen as an inducement to delinquency. Guilt must be relieved by psychotherapy reinforced by opportunities to rebuild self-respect within the community.
Such opportunities are to be found in the experience of co-operation in creative activities and particularly in the creation of both the physical and political structure. Homer Lane, Makarenko, Wills, Barron, Marjorie Franklin and indeed many 'progressive' educationalists working with normal children have stressed the value of 'pioneering' experience through which children create and structure their own environment for living. This experience is thought to produce both individual self-esteem and respect for others and for the community. Where the physical circumstances have initially been adequate emphasis has been placed on estate work, building and crafts.
The principle of shared responsibility is also seen as a fundamental part of the re-educative process. By sharing together with the staff the full responsibility of the management of their community, children are thought to share in something much more than exercises in decision making. They learn to be responsible both for and to others, to accept the natural consequences of their own acts, and to value themselves as people who have something to contribute to the general good. [10]
In that the general purpose of planned environmental therapy is to create that experience of good family life of which the majority of maladjusted children are considered to be deprived, it follows that coeducation is considered important.
Although there are many variations, produced largely by the personalities of those actually involved, the 'planned environmental therapy' establishment would therefore have certain determining characteristics. It will be, ideally, a coeducational community in which human relations are based on unconditional love and acceptance. It will be based on a belief in equality and trust and will be essentially non-punitive. Individual difficulties and disturbances will be treated by psychotherapy both direct and specialized and also indirect and non- specialist. The life of the community will be based on hard, co-operative work, and on shared responsibility in management. Cultural and educational opportunities will be geared to the needs of the individual. This is, perhaps, not so much a theory as a plan of action forged from experience.
© Maurice Bridgeland
References / Citation
- ^ BARRON, A.T. What is Therapy - what is Training? in Therapeutic Education p.35. Autumn 1969.
- ^ Some of the following material based on an interview with Dr. Marjorie Franklin, 1969
- ^ RANKLIN, M.E. in Studies in Environmental Therapy, I pp 27-30, 1968
- ^ TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT. Correspondent, Arlesford Place Hostel School: Care and Cure of Maladjusted Youth, p 206, 16 March, 1951.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ RANKLIN, M.E. Discussion Groups, The AWMC Newsletter, p. 7 March, 1968
- ^ BARRON, A.T. The Inter-action of Psychotherapy and Environmental Therapy. (Unpublished - provisional title)
- ^ SUTTIE, I.D. The Origins of Love and Hate Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London 1935
- ^ WILLS, W.D. Eliminating Punishment in the Residential Treatment of Troublesome Boys and Young Men. Studies in Environmental Therapy, I, 1968
- ^ Shared Responsibility, in Problems of Child Development. New Education Fellowship, London 1948. See also Evacuation in Scotland. S.C.R.E. publication XXII p199. V.L.P. 1944
