Retrospective Study of Similarities and Relations between the American drug-free and the European Therapeutic Communities for children and adults

1 Abstract – This article focuses on the similarities and relations between the European therapeutic communitiy for children and adults on the one hand and the American drug-free ‘concept ’ therapeutic community on the other. Both approaches are reviewed in a historical and comparative perspective with special attention for the critical issues ‘democracy ’ vs. ‘hierarchy’, ‘self-help ’ vs. ‘professionalism’, ‘psycho-analysis ’ vs. ‘behaviorism ’ and ‘concept ’ vs. ‘social learning’. These two different TC-approaches can be considered as subdivisions of one modality, namely an environment for social learning in which living together in a group can be regarded as the primary agent of growth and human development. In recent years we have seen a tendency towards further integration of these two approaches