Counseling the Disturbed Adolescent: The Role of the Child Care Counselor in Residential Treatment Setting, Stuyvesant Residence Club, Jewish Board of Guardians, Lower East Side Manhattan, New York, 1958-1959
Abstract
”A young man employed by a treatment center as a boys’ supervisor was asked by a board member the qualifications for a member of the house staff of such a center. His reply sums it up rather aptly: ’A cross between Tarzan of the apes and a mother hen." With all its apparent facetiousness, this reply contains much inherent wisdom. It capsules the fact that staff members working directly with children are key personnel in residential treatment. Like all services for children, residential treatment developed from the recognition that there was in the community a group of children that could not be met by existing services. These children have been classified as emotionally disturbed, which implies early unsatisfactory familial relationships and the resulting lack of emotional sustenance required in the formation of a healthy person. Symptomatically, they appear generally aggressive to or withdrawn from adults and peers, overly exhibitionistic or narcissistic, extremely punitive or masochistic. They may steal, lie, truant, fail in school or be slovenly in their personal habits. In short, they function with crippling efforts or under strained emotional power. The literature is filled with case histories of them. There are daily attempts at exposition and at * comprehension of their emotional twists.
Subject Area
Judaic studies|School counseling|Social work
Recommended Citation
Mecca, William Francis, "Counseling the Disturbed Adolescent: The Role of the Child Care Counselor in Residential Treatment Setting, Stuyvesant Residence Club, Jewish Board of Guardians, Lower East Side Manhattan, New York, 1958-1959" (1959). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30557681.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30557681
